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BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or......
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: MGM·Lion Date: 27 Mar 13 - 01:22 AM Steve ~~ agree with your demolition of the supposed definition. I had already had a say about that from slightly diff pov, esp as to its not being in fact a 'definition' at all but just a list of desiderata. See my post of 0342PM 26 Mar. ~M~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: GUEST Date: 27 Mar 13 - 01:30 AM 26 Mar 13 - 04:40 PM Anyone not liking the definitions there given should take it up with the editors of Merriam-Webster. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Joe Offer Date: 27 Mar 13 - 01:41 AM Well, Steve, there is a small but vocal minority in the U.S. who think that carrying guns and executing criminals are the Will of God - it definitely does seem tied to their religious beliefs. I live in a county where that kind of thinking is very common. Mind you, that's not the thinking of all religious people - I certainly don't think that, and I'm religious. Almost all the Catholic priests and nuns I know, oppose guns and capital punishment. But if you go to the Baptist or Mormon churches down the road, you will find very few people who oppose guns or capital punishment. We do have atheists who are gun-totin' execution advocates, but that sort of thinking is far more prevalent in the born-again religions. -Joe- |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: MGM·Lion Date: 27 Mar 13 - 01:43 AM Well, you're clearly no atheist, GUEST, whoever the hell you are. You clearly think Merriam-Webster = Holy Writ! Following your own precept, try looking up 'non sequitor' and 'irrelevance' there. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Steve Shaw Date: 27 Mar 13 - 06:38 AM Sorry, Michael, it was rude of me not to acknowledge that I'd agreed with your post. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Steve Shaw Date: 27 Mar 13 - 06:53 AM Joe, attaching one's more despicable convictions to one's religion is a time-honoured way of "legitimising" them. As you imply, it's what religious fundamentalists commonly do. In fact, the practice almost defines them. We should be more alert to that. It's a pity, for example, that the Church failed to distance itself from Mussolini, Franco and Hitler, who were all more than happy to have the Church's convenient acquiescence. Franco was happy to be seen receiving Communion every day, for example, at the height of his nastiness, and I don't recall reading of much discomfiture at this within the Church. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Steve Shaw Date: 27 Mar 13 - 06:57 AM "If you could enlarge on what you see as inconsistencies between two it would be helpful. " I'm not qualified to treat you and a durned sure ain't doing it for free. You ridiculed two of my statements for reasons I couldn't see. I'm not quite sure what it says about you if, when I ask politely for an explanation of the inconsistencies you detected, this is the best you can come up with. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Rob Naylor Date: 27 Mar 13 - 07:13 AM Jack The Sailor "There are no qualifications. You hit the ground running and learn on the job. It's dead easy, because there is actually nothing to learn! No big funny lists of stuff! No brotherhood stuff! Just leave your bags at the door! " "Well what a load of soft-centred, airy-fairy, cloudy twaddle. If "atheists" rewally drew this lot up they are not atheists. This reads suspiciously like the construction of the sort of belief system that we atheists simply have not got. " Hard to believe the same person wrote those two paragraphs isn't it? Er, no, not at all. Looking in context the two paragraphs seem consistent. I guess to someone who sees atheism as a belief system rather than simply a lack of belief they could seem contradictory....but that was pretty much what I understood Steve Shaw to have been complaining about in the 2nd paragraph above anyway! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: GUEST,Zabbar Date: 27 Mar 13 - 07:52 AM BillD. Can you please let me know what rule/s I have broken here, and perhaps more importantly where those rules are? If I posted under two names on the same thread I could understand the concern, but as I haven't what is the issue? As a guest from the UK I am not permitted to have membership as you know. I have not posted under more than one name to cause trouble or post "against" myself to rile things up, so what is the issue and (in my opinion) overreaction in calling for the thread to be closed. For me personally that would have been a shame, as I feel I have learned something from some of the posts here. Which was my only intention in the first place. Apologies if I have transgressed some Mudcat rule that resulted in an attack of "the vapors".
Posting under various names, makes Mudcatters nervous. There's no rule against it, but common sense should tell you that switching your name is going to cause consternation for other people. -Joe Offer, Mudcat Archivist (and registrar)- |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Little Hawk Date: 27 Mar 13 - 09:03 AM As one who grew up in an atheistic household, I think I can safely say that an atheist is simply a pretty conventionally-minded modern person who already takes for granted that his rational knowledge about the physical, observable world and the scientific viewpoint IS the complete, absolute answer to everything, and that there's nothing more he needs to ever enquire about, because he already HAS the "keys to the kingdom", he is one hell of a smart character, way smarter than those poor simple-minded people who go to church, and he can snicker down his sleeve at people who believe in anything else at all besides material things and science for the rest of his gloriously entitled and brilliant life. ;-D Yup. That was me as an adolescent. The young atheist. The brain of the class. I knew everything worth knowing, yessiree. (extreme sarcasm) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Steve Shaw Date: 27 Mar 13 - 09:14 AM Well I think that anyone who even remotely thinks they have more answers for things than anyone else is deluded. I like not having answers. If you have certainty, you're severely missing out on the joys of living. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Little Hawk Date: 27 Mar 13 - 09:38 AM Exactly, Steve. Now, the thing that will surprise you is this: Most of the people I have known who are most willing to keep asking new questions and most willing to admit that they don't already know everything are the people who are most involved in spiritual studies and spiritual search. They are the people least afraid to face uncertainty. (Obviously I'm NOT talking about the George W. Bush type of religious fundamentalist here....but another type of person entirely. The most notable ingredient of religious fundamentalism is its deep fear of uncertainty.) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: GUEST,redhorse at work Date: 27 Mar 13 - 09:44 AM @ Guest,Zabbar " As a guest from the UK I am not permitted to have membership as you know." I'm a member (at least when posting from my home computer) and the last time I checked, Crewe was in UK, though to be honest at the moment I wish it was somewhere a lot warmer. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Jack the Sailor Date: 27 Mar 13 - 11:35 AM Rob Naylor, He said that there were no qualifications to be an atheist right after he himself, Bishop Shaw of the ungodly church of misinformation, disqualified the largest and most important Atheist organization in the USA from being atheist. Add that to the fact that he has several times disqualified HIMself from being atheist because he says that he cannot prove that there is no God. It points to a very confused person and an inconsistent conversationalist. Though no doubt his childish and ill-tempered rants are amusing to those who disagree with the targets of those rants. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity Date: 27 Mar 13 - 11:37 AM 'Are Atheists really Atheists or.....' Well God Damn....or would it be God forbid??? GfS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Jack the Sailor Date: 27 Mar 13 - 11:42 AM GUEST,Zabbar There are many many members from the UK. One more won't hurt anything. Please feel free to register. I think the rule is that people logged in as guest may not start threads in the BS section. I have not seen this rule, if it is written standard of Mudcat management, a link might be nice, and obviously, good news for your thread, this thread, it is not strictly enforced. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: GUEST,Stim Date: 27 Mar 13 - 11:45 AM Forgive him, Jack, he knows not what he does... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Amos Date: 27 Mar 13 - 12:22 PM It depends on where you put the hyphen. A-theism is a nullification of theism, a resistance to theistic doctrines. Athe-ism is a a conviction about the lack of evidence for the existence of a Supreme Being. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Jack the Sailor Date: 27 Mar 13 - 12:57 PM I don't think that the word we are discussing has a hyphen. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Don(Wyziwyg)T Date: 27 Mar 13 - 01:19 PM ""a pretty conventionally-minded modern person who already takes for granted that his rational knowledge about the physical, observable world and the scientific viewpoint IS the complete, absolute answer to everything, and that there's nothing more he needs to ever enquire about, because he already HAS the "keys to the kingdom", he is one hell of a smart character, way smarter than those poor simple-minded people who go to church, and he can snicker down his sleeve at people who believe in anything else at all besides material things and science for the rest of his gloriously entitled and brilliant life."" You obviously as unlucky in your atheist upbringing as I was in my religious one. A real atheist has no such pretentious belief in his own total knowledge, and questions everything, but he does so from a standpoint of logic and evidence, which he finds singularly lacking in the belief system, doctrine and dogma of religion, When he does question those, he is met with a barrage of often hostile and vituperative responses, in which he is treated as though he were somehow attempting to destroy their faith. To say that the spiritual and religious are more inclined to question and an atheist is certain in his doctrinaire attitudes is IMHO a total reversal of the truth. At least I have never heard Steve Shaw repeatedly use the circular arguments which regularly ar advanced by the other side. And I am not an atheist, but a Theist, even more likely to question in both directions, but only the atheists of this world have ever supplied an answer which I can accept based on any evidence at all. The religious response has always been some variation on either "You've got to have faith", or simply "Get out of this classroom". As a result, I am my own religious guide and my church is wherever I happen to be. Don T. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Bill D Date: 27 Mar 13 - 01:37 PM "..So don't call me anti-religion." ?? I didn't.. I carefully used the word 'some' to clarify that not all who adopt atheist as a label agree on their attitude. I have personally met various types. My awakening to relevant distinctions was in 1959, when I attended a lecture by Walter Kaufmann, of Princeton, and subsquently bought his books. One included 3 essays of imaginary dialogues between Satan and a Christian, a theologian, and an atheist. After arguing with the 'plain' Christian and the theologian, Satan tries to discuss things with the atheist (who, in this essay, is a hard-line anti-religion type). At the end, Satan takes the atheist to task, telling him that although he disagrees with the other two, he at least enjoys the dialogue with them, but finds the strident atheism unpleasant, and ends by telling the atheist.."You...I wish you'd go to Heaven!" So... I do wish Kaufmann had written a couple more dialogues to show other attitudes...like the skeptic's which I prefer. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Jack the Sailor Date: 27 Mar 13 - 01:40 PM "At least I have never heard Steve Shaw repeatedly use the circular arguments which regularly ar advanced by the other side." You are not reading his writings (rantings) as a whole. He constantly contradicts himself. But you have to take into account that he is not trying to put forth a rational argument. He only attempts to provoke and to ridicule others. He said he calls me "Jacko" to taunt me and squeals like a stuck pig when I don't address him in friendly and familiar manner as "Steve." On the other hand. This thread is about definitions isn't it? Definitions go back to word origins. Don't they? Pretending that there is a single type "real" atheist is nonsense. Isn't it? The terms "atheist", "agnostic" and may others of that ilk were made up and defined by Christian theologians more or less as diagnostic categories of conditions to be cured. American Atheists, mentioned in this thread, are trying claim the term and re-purpose it in a positive light. But the prevailing use of the word atheist is as someone with a recognizable flaw in their Christianity. So Don, the best you can say is "my idea of a "real Atheist" and that would preclude you from implying that someone else's view of a "real atheist" is wrong. Wouldn't it? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 27 Mar 13 - 03:15 PM "There are many definitions of atheism, but I think the most general one is 'a lack of belief that a deity (or deities) exist'. This is more positive than the agnostic uncertainty of the existence of a deity" I can't see that there is differentiatin between 'a lack of belief that a deity exists' and 'uncertainty of the existence of a deity'. Two ways of saying the same thing, both being expressions of an agnostic position, both to be distinguished from the atheist position, which is a confident opinion that no deity exists. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Steve Shaw Date: 27 Mar 13 - 03:53 PM He constantly contradicts himself. I keep asking but you refuse to tell me how. He said he calls me "Jacko" to taunt me Those words have never passed my lips! :-) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Jack the Sailor Date: 27 Mar 13 - 03:56 PM sigh.... more taunting form "Mr. Logic." |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Little Hawk Date: 27 Mar 13 - 04:04 PM Don - Yes, exactly! I was as unlucky in my atheist upbringing as you were in your religious one. We were both, I think, oppressed by rigid-minded, dictatorial, arrogant people...people with a grandiose sense of their own "rightness"...who tried to shove their particular self-absorbed mindset down our young throats, while putting an example of hypocrisy and callous egotism in front of us that ended up driving us as far away from their damned mindset as we could possibly get. And we were driven in the complete opposite directions as a result. People move away from what has hurt them! Kind of sad, isn't it? I wonder how many people in this world end up fighting the battles of their childhood and youth for the whole rest of their lives? It's a little hard to determine what a "real atheist" is, because everyone seems to have their own definition for that. To one person a "real atheist" would be someone they approve of, while to another it would be someone they do not approve of, while to another it would be more sort of a neutral thing. What's a "real Jew"? Ask 7 different people, and you may get 7 different answers. Ask Hitler, and he'd tell you a whole bunch of really bad stuff! Ask Ariel Sharon, and he'd tell you a whole bunch of really good stuff. Ask someone else, they'd tell you something else again. And just going to the dictionary will not end the debate. My own opinion is...there are many types of atheists, just like there are many types of religious people. To find out who a person is, you pretty much have to figure out what they like...and why.....what they dislike...and why....what they love...what they hate...what they fear...who they think their friends and enemies are....what they desire...what they wish to avoid...all that stuff....and most important: Why? How did those seeds get planted in their mind in the first place to make them think that way? Figure all that out and you may begin to understand why they follow they path they have chosen. Hitler didn't become who he was in a single day. It took time. He had many experiences that he reacted to, some of them quite traumatic (during and after WWI), and he slowly became the dangerous, angry, unstable man who led Germany into WWII. He set out to battle what HE identified as the "evil" in the world, according to his own past and his unique interpretation of that past. The same is true of the rest of us. We react according to what we have suffered and/or enjoyed over the years of our lives. We fight the old battles, seek out the old joys, replay the old tragedies time and again. And the other people around us wonder why... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: GUEST,Stim Date: 27 Mar 13 - 04:38 PM Good points, Little Hawk. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Stringsinger Date: 27 Mar 13 - 04:56 PM "I don't think a person who is an atheist needs to get any specific religion involved. And there are loads of things in the universe to be amazed at which aren't gods and don't have personalities that one can worship." Well put, Jeri. In fact, the amazement of the universe is put especially well by Neil deGrasse Tyson who states that the universe is chemically in all of us and we that derive our chemical components from the time of the Big Bang when meteors hit the earth. This beats a description of any god. We don't have to worship the universe to be awed by its amazing construction. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Mrrzy Date: 28 Mar 13 - 10:57 AM I am skeptical of agnosticism. I think that either you believe there is something other than the natural world, a "higher" "power" or a god or God or gods or something, in which case you are what the French would call "croyant" - believing; or, you don't, in which case you're an atheist. I don't think that you have to either believe, or profess, that there actually are no gods, to be an atheist. All you have to do is not believe in anything supernatural. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Bill D Date: 28 Mar 13 - 11:40 AM I think I have really said all that in necessary to clarify my position....but on re-reading, I was struck by this comment by Little Hawk: "Good stuff, Bill. What you are, in my opinion, is a freethinker." It comes across as a sort of compliment from one whose views differ quite a bit from my own, and I wonder what it actually means? Care to elaborate, L.H.? I called myself a 'skeptic', and am not sure what the difference is between that and 'freethinker'. I actually feel that some of my thinking is not totally free, as I feel obligated to follow various rules of logic, science and linguistic coherence when chewing on an issue. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: theleveller Date: 28 Mar 13 - 12:02 PM ....are they Humanists. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Little Hawk Date: 28 Mar 13 - 12:04 PM Well, Bill, my feeling is that a freethinker is someone who draws his own conclusions rather than letting his parents, his teachers, his government, his church, his society or his peer group do his thinking for him. All freethinkers won't necessarily come to the same conclusions, but at least they'll honestly come to their own conclusions rather than just adopting someone else's. Mrrzy - The interesting thing about the "supernatural" is this: it isn't really supernatural, in my opinion. It's just quite unusual in terms of our common experience. That doesn't make it supernatural, because it's surely just as natural as other things are....just very rarely seen, that's all. Example: electric lights and firearms and radio transmissions all seemed supernatural to natives who'd never experienced them before. Why? Unfamiliarity. The very unusual is often interpreted as "supernatural" by awestruck people, but after some familiarity builds up with it, then they decide it's not supernatural after all, and they just take it for granted after awhile. I know you already think you can divide things up into the "real" and the "unreal"....so you wouldn't for example countenance the idea of Angels being real, would you? Not for a moment. But that's for just one simple reason: You haven't seen any Angels yet. So you assume they can't possibly be real. If you did see an Angel, you'd have a very hard time maintaining that assumption. But in the meantime, you can easily discount any story from someone else who says they saw an Angel. You can just dismiss it, saying that they must have had a hallucination or made some kind of mistake. This is how the country farmer in 1810 dismissed the guy who told him about seeing a giraffe at the zoo in New York. He'd never seen one himself, and none of his friends had either, so he knew it must be a lie! Or a delusion. ;-) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Steve Shaw Date: 28 Mar 13 - 12:36 PM My own opinion is...there are many types of atheists, just like there are many types of religious people. Here we go again with the tired old equivalence thing. Well if you mean that there are many religions, therefore many shades of believer, OK, I'm up for that. But atheism is not equivalent. You invented us by having religion. We are not actually here. If religion miraculously disappeared tomorrow there would be no word "atheist" yet not one of us would have done a single thing to change anything. There are not different kinds of us. There are not any kinds of us. You invented us and now you want to patronise us with some kind of faux-taxonomy. Bring us into your fold by embracing us with a classification of your making. No way! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Steve Shaw Date: 28 Mar 13 - 12:55 PM Example: electric lights and firearms and radio transmissions all seemed supernatural to natives who'd never experienced them before. Why? Unfamiliarity. The very unusual is often interpreted as "supernatural" by awestruck people, but after some familiarity builds up with it, then they decide it's not supernatural after all, and they just take it for granted after awhile. I know you already think you can divide things up into the "real" and the "unreal"....so you wouldn't for example countenance the idea of Angels being real, would you? Not for a moment. But that's for just one simple reason: You haven't seen any Angels yet. So you assume they can't possibly be real. If you did see an Angel, you'd have a very hard time maintaining that assumption. Electric lights, firearms and radio transmissions all obey the laws of nature. Given time and decent teachers, your natives [sic] could be taught to understand the laws that make those things happen. All very commonplace, all very ordinary. A thing does not have to be familiar to be ordinary. The "supernatural" does not fall in at all here. Supernatural phenomena do not obey the laws of nature. They go against them at every turn. But here's the clincher, just to disappoint those whose flights of imagination carry them away a little too much: not one single supernatural phenomenon, angels included, in spite of millennia of claims and striving by advocates, has ever amassed anything like sufficient evidence that it exists to convince anyone except the completely gullible. I should like to suggest that there is more than enough delight, amazement and wonder in the commonplace things of this universe to satisfy the hungriest imagination. It's just that religion would like to sidetrack you into believing there's something even better. Religion is the thief of wonder and imagination. It makes you see things through an obscuring veil instead of in their bright, clear, ordinary glory. You don't see the beauty of a lily when it's gilded. You can't see the beauty of the universe through a supernatural veil. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Little Hawk Date: 28 Mar 13 - 01:40 PM Steve, your very defensive reaction to my statement that "there are many types of atheists, just like there are many types of religious people" indicates that you don't get the drift of my statement. I wasn't necessarily applying it to you. I'm not saying anything about you. I'm saying that there are many different types of atheists in the world, period. That doesn't necessarily say anything about you. Here are several types of atheist, for example: 1. Someone who casually thinks there is probably no God, but he doesn't worry about it much. 2. Someone who only believes in material things, not in spiritual things. 3. Someone who is actively hostile to the very idea of religion, and attacks it at every opportunity. 4. Someone who doesn't believe in a God but has no particular hostility toward religion. 5. Someone who doesn't believe there's a God because his Daddy and Mommy and science teacher told him there isn't a God. 6. Someone who doesn't believe in God because the idea conflicts with his understanding of science. 7. Someone who wants to convert everyone else to atheism. 8. Someone who doesn't care one way or the other. Etc...ad infinitum. There are probably enough different kinds of atheists that I could type all day and never get to the end of it, just like I could about different types of religious people. So instead of taking it as a personal attack of some kind on YOU, which it was not, just look at it in a reasonable and rational fashion. I was being tolerant and positive, not attacking, when I said there are many different kinds of atheists. I was not indicating an EQUIVALENCY between them all. I'm sure some of them are quite reasonable and lovely people, while others are bloody unreasonable fanatics. The former are good people to know, the latter are a pain in the neck, because all they want to do is fight about it and convert the rest of the world to their own opinion. (Just like the bloody religious fanatics do.) I try to avoid the bloody fanatics of either persusasion if I can. I don't mind a bit if people have a different belief from me. I only mind if they try to dominate and convert the rest of the world to accepting their belief. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Jack the Sailor Date: 28 Mar 13 - 04:01 PM Don't you all find Argument that there would be no atheists if there were no believers, a little circular? I see a cartoon group of cave men having marvelous conversations about cosmology and of course their own evolution, "Aunt Gertrude, yeah you can't mind her, she was more from the Chimp side of the family." "Cousin Clara, she is a wild one! Oh my! the bonobo doesn't fall far from the family tree! Does it?" When another cave men wearing purple buffalo robes and a pointy hat made of turtle shells stomps up to the fire and imposes religion on him. Though Steve is right about one thing, the atheists who define themselves by their attacks on religion, those like himself, would have to find something else to do. Hopefully something more useful. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Steve Shaw Date: 28 Mar 13 - 10:09 PM My response was neither defensive (a poor tactic there from you to try to put me on the back foot!), neither did I see it, in the remotest sense, as an attack on me. Your list of alleged atheistic types is condescending, hopeful and downright wacky in a suspiciously Aunt Sally way. I mean, just look at this: Someone who doesn't believe there's a God because his Daddy and Mommy and science teacher told him there isn't a God. Blimey, bet you wish you hadn't typed that particular piece of stupidity. As for the e |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Steve Shaw Date: 28 Mar 13 - 10:34 PM Blimey, my post got chopped. Second time today. Here's a rehash of what was supposed to be the whole thing. My response was neither defensive (a poor tactic there from you to try to put me on the back foot!), neither did I see it, in the remotest sense, as an attack on me. Your list of alleged atheistic types is condescending, hopeful and downright wacky in a suspiciously Aunt Sally way. I mean, just look at this: Someone who doesn't believe there's a God because his Daddy and Mommy and science teacher told him there isn't a God. Blimey, bet you wish you hadn't typed that particular piece of stupidity. As for the equivalence issue, now I don't know whether you were being deliberately obtuse or what, but no-one except you is talking about the equivalence between atheist type and atheist type. We are talking about the false equivalence often made between atheists and believers. Do make the effort to properly get your head round the issues you're so eager to engage with. It avoids making you look less than sensible. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Steve Shaw Date: 28 Mar 13 - 10:38 PM Though Steve is right about one thing, the atheists who define themselves by their attacks on religion, those like himself, would have to find something else to do. I haven't said anything remotely like that, and that is not the first time today you have ascribed words to me that I haven't said. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: GUEST Date: 28 Mar 13 - 10:59 PM When someone says this comes before that when in fact that comes before this, we have a main bus B undervolt. That there Houston, IS a problem. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: GUEST,concerened Date: 29 Mar 13 - 06:04 AM I am with Steve here..but I am never suprised at the extent of poples stupidity |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: GUEST,concerened Date: 29 Mar 13 - 06:10 AM ..but it does concern methat some of the so called clever people on this site have the vote. Self indulgent claptrap an half forned argumentsput forward by semi educated buffoons..dear me..were you all asleep for the last few years..get a life you lot |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Mrrzy Date: 29 Mar 13 - 11:33 AM The ones who don't care are the apatheists... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: GUEST,Stim Date: 29 Mar 13 - 11:37 AM You first, concerened (or however you spell your name today). |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Steve Shaw Date: 29 Mar 13 - 11:38 AM And those who have a bee in their bonnet about their lack of belief are called apiathists. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: GUEST,Stim Date: 29 Mar 13 - 11:57 AM So what do we call the ones (of whatever persuasion)that have nothing to say, and say it anyway? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Amos Date: 29 Mar 13 - 12:12 PM I don't much care what a person thinks about the Infinite, as long as he is kind to his dog. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: GUEST,Stim Date: 29 Mar 13 - 12:23 PM And the people who wait tables in restaurants. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Stringsinger Date: 30 Mar 13 - 10:04 AM What many religious people do is define any criticism of their religion as an attack. This is their reactionary stance against non-believers. Richard Dawkins has been accused of this despite his reasoned calm approach to the subject. He is open-minded and interviews many fanatical religious people with the true purpose of inquiry, not censuring. To find something completely negative about anything is fanatical. Most atheists I know don't do this. They acknowledge that there is something socially useful about many religions but this isn't the point. The point is that this premise of religion is based on a false idea, a mythology that interferes with the intellectual clarity of important issues. Religion in itself is used to foster destructive behavior and this can't be separated from the belief system of these individuals. ie: bible verses on gun stocks. Child abuse in churches. To say that this is not "true religion" of ____________________ is specious. Who defines this "true religion"? Atheists don't stop at criticizing Christianity. All religion is suspect because it is based on mythology not science. A critical point of view doesn't constitute the establishment of a religion in all cases. That's because those who level that charge are imbued with the need for religion and assume others need it as well. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Are Atheists really Atheists or...... From: Steve Shaw Date: 30 Mar 13 - 11:51 AM What many religious people do is define any criticism of their religion as an attack. This is their reactionary stance against non-believers. That's right. atheists are bullies, poor listeners, have a new belief system, are militant, are quasi-religious, act just like fundamentalists... and that's why poor old besieged religion has had to resort to excommunication, ostracism, fatwas and heresy laws in order to defend itself. Richard Dawkins has been accused of this despite his reasoned calm approach to the subject. He is open-minded and interviews many fanatical religious people with the true purpose of inquiry, not censuring. And he's a very good listener who responds to his opponents by addressing what they say with calm, reasoned and measured words. |
