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That - to be blunt - is poppycock.
Theism is the belief in a god or gods. A-theism is the state of being without belief in a god or gods. Those are the two possible states. Agnosticism addresses why one does, or does not, hold such a belief, that is, whether one has knowledge with regard to the subject sufficient to establish belief — but it does not address whether one holds such a belief.
Knowledge and reasons aside, you're either theist, or atheist. There is no middle state. You can't believe and lack belief at the same time. Either you believe, or you don't. The terms theist and atheist don't delve into why. They simply address your state of belief.
When it comes to why people decide as they do, there are many types of atheist thinking as there are many types of religious thinking. One atheist will tell you the idea is simply ridiculous; another will tell you they see no evidence; another will tell you religion is clearly a control system; another will tell you they "know" there is no god. Theists will tell you god(s) are real within the Christian, Muslim, Hindu, etc. systems and further, within a range of variations within those systems of thought.
Bottom line, you can't be agnostic instead of theist, or atheist. If you say you are, what we take away from your statement is that you're bewildered and don't understand the subject matter.
The meanings of words change, sometimes for good reasons. Indeed they do. But in this case the change is propagandistic, and leaves us without a term for what the word originally meant, and the actual position a lot of atheists seem to take.
Not everyone is on a crusade.
If we take "atheist" to mean "someone who doesn't believe in a god", then what do we call the annoying zealot who feels the need to loudly and continuously declare that not only does no god exist, but anyone who believes in one is stupid, delusional, childish, even outright crazy; or perhaps a devious schemer dastardly subverting the minds of the weak-willed to become his devout brainwashed slaves ?
The meanings of words change, sometimes for good reasons.
We are all atheists with respect to specific theologies and gods we don't believe in. You know that feeling you get when people start talking to you in all earnestness about how great Poseidon is?
That's nonsense. Atheism is a specific term, not just another word for "doesn't believe in". Someone who doesn't believe in the Christian god isn't an "atheist in regards to Christianity", they're a non-Christian. A-theism: no gods. You can't be an atheist and still believe in a single specific god - it means "no gods".
Interestingly enough, you can still be religious and atheistic - any religion that centers around a non-personified cosmic force is atheistic.
IMO, that's the *only* viable option. On one extreme, no one can prove that no gods exist. On the other, if you lower your standards of evidence to accept one religious claim, you have to accept them all (or else be hypocritical about it). So the only options are ordinary atheism (as in "I don't believe anyones religious myths") and self-delusion.
FWIW, 'agnostic' seems to have come into use due to a shift in the popular meaning of 'atheist'. Acording to Wictionary, the term didn't even exist before 1870. If people would try to quit reading more into a-theism than the word actually suggests, we wouldn't need a term for the neutral category.
But in excessively religious societies like ours, people tend to interpret atheism as yet another competing claim, rather than merely a rejection of other people's claims. For me, atheism isn't a religious belief; it's a *lack* of religious beliefs. I suppose you could call it "a belief", but only in the same sense that my lack of any particular reason to believe in Bigfoot is "a belief" about Bigfoot.
By your reasoning, we should believe every religious claim that has ever been made. IMO agnosticism is the only tenable position for the non-theist. Everyone is an agnostic, including you.
As for "non-theist", that's exactly what a-theism means. (The Greek alpha privative is in fact cognate with our "non".)
" negative blanket statements about 1.2 billion VERY VERY diverse Muslims on Earth is also hate crime..."
No, it is mere insult. Insult is not a crime, except under Islam, which does not tolerate a wide variety of other Free Speech.
You are invited to make all the derogatory cartoons of me you like, and of my beliefs (I'm theism-free). It bothers me not.
I've deployed to the richest Muslim societies on the planet, and seen the best they can do under the guidance of your oppressive, barbaric, pseudo-Nazi superstition. I will not yield to demands to change our social discourse just because it is not on Islamic (or Christian, Jewish, Scientologist, etc) terms.
Your Prophet can kiss my fat white arse.
This issue is also a good argument for school vouchers. The public school system sucks, religious fanatics want to turn it into a madrassa system, and those who would rescue their kid should be able to.
School choice will let the Bible Nazis self-segregate (good), relieve their pressure on the public school system (good), and let freethinking parents self-segregate to appropriate schools (very good).
I was fortunate to attend boarding schools, didn't have to mingle with the thug trash infesting my hometown school system, and wasn't exposed to religion. Most people won't want that, but we should have a system that can rescue and nurture those who do. We can't fix the stupid people, but if we cater to ourselves instead of trying to polish a turd we can do quite well. Theism-free people should seek protected apartness just as some of the Christian Taliban do, and exploit the Christian Taliban support for school choice to do it!
"Sure about that? Because I've met my fair share of Atheists that are as aggressive in trying to convert people as any Christian would be."
They have demonstrated that they are not merely theism-free, but are promoting their alternate philosophy.
Atheism is a philosophy in the way that not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Words are such tricky beasts.
a-theism is greek. We know what theism is (I hope), and a- is the greek prefix for negativation, so atheism isn't a religion but best translated as non-religionism or non-belief - the exact opposite.
Silencing includes silence, but none of these scientists ever said that the pope should be silent. They asked him to not speak in one specific place at one specific date. If I tell you to get off my lawn, that's not an infringement to your free speech. You (and the pope) can speak your mind any other place.
Exactly, finally, creates the impression of a precise copy. As a previous comment wrote: When scientists burn the pope at the stake, then you can talk about "exactly". Until then, you should use less loaded words like "I see this as similar to..." or "comparable to..."
Interestingly, messing with words and meanings is what religion is all about. Once we've abandoned it like we've abolished the belief that not eating all your meal will cause rain to fall, it'll be shoveled into psychology (as a mental disease) and linguistics (for its abuse and creation of words).
Actually, I saw this on the discovery channel about five or six years ago. Back then, they were deploying this in major cities in Europe and Asia. Note how the article says Loyola is the first in *the midwest* to deploy this. Way to go, America. Maybe if we spent less money on needless invasions, we'd have better health care (and education and fusion and a moon base and flying cars and pet dinosaurs and global non-theism AKA world peace and disco would come back into fashion).
In my five years on Slashdot, I don't recall ever posting about theology. Perhaps you are thinking of my posts on philosophy of religion, a different field. In any event, my only point in those discussions has always been that people should always back up what they argue with appropriate citations to the experts in the field (i.e. Mackie or early Flew for non-theism, not Dawkins), not act as if one's own ideas suffice just because one really strongly believes them. Sorry, but that's the rule for any kind of productive discussion on the Internet.
There is no "in regards to Zeus, Allah", etc. Agnosticism, like atheism, is a blanket statement. Atheism says definitively "there is no god". There is no "soft" or "hard" atheism. A-theism. No god. As such, it's not a scientific position (see your own comment regarding not proving a negative). It's as much a faith-based belief as theism is, albeit in the other direction. Agnosticism says "There may or may not be a divine entity; I don't know". It's much more consistent with the scientific view; it basically amounts to "show me some evidence, until then I have no opinion one way or the other".
And now you're relegating a-theism to something "alternative"? So a non-belief in astrology is what? a-astrologistic alternative? Non-belief in fairies, a-fairistic alternative? Non-belief in spiderman, a-spidermanistic alternative? There is no evidence for any of these nonsense. For some reason, you don't feel the need to proof their non-existence. But you feel that the God of Abraham is somehow special and deserves a free pass.
I don't claim to know all the answers. I just don't believe things without evidence. Therefore, I contend that atheism is the default position, until evidence arises to proof otherwise.
And thus you give away your own self-reinforcing belief system. Because you believe God to be ficticious, religion has no worth.
Actually, no.
One, it isn't a self-reinforcing belief system. My assumption that god (and let's ignore the tricky question of which god) doesn't exist does not result from the conviction that religion has no worth, but from a look at the world, the claims made by religion, and the simple fact that they don't align.
My conviction about the worth of religion, again, is not a result of god being a fiction. Even with that major problem, religion could still be worthwhile, if it were a good thing. For example, if it would cause people to be more gentle with each other, more caring, or other positive contributions to society. As it is, those contributions are far outweight by the damages done by religion, from the crusades and witch hunts to modern day fundamentalist terrorism, not to mention the massive burden religious special treatment puts on society (example: The catholic church is one of the largest land owners in my country, and pays virtually no taxes).
Finally, I do not believe religion has no worth. I do believe religion has negative worth. That's a difference. If I would believe it has no worth, I wouldn't care one way or the other.
I've read enough of the bible to know it's horribly written and a lot of it would be viewed as, let's say "problematic" by our society today if it weren't protected by irrational respect for religion. I've not read it all, because to be honest it's a piece of shit as far as literature goes, and there are a lot of better books to spend my time on. However, I've read quite a bit of stuff about the bible, including many interesting facts about just how much of it can be considered true, and what kind of definition of "true" you have to use in order for it being so.
but this is NOT an accurate representation of Christianity or it's beliefs.
And that's the funny thing. Christians always claim that about every negative aspect of their faith. And really, it's a cop-out. Can you imagine "Jesus Camp" without Jesus? No? Then "Jesus Camp" is a part of your faith. Probably a part you don't like, but it's there, because it can't be a part of something else. Certainly not, say, ancient greek religion, or Buddhism. If you run "select * from features group by faith" then "Jesus Camp" will show up in the "christianity" group.
Atheism teaches there's oblivion.
No, atheism teaches that there is no god. A-theism - the "a" being greek for "not" and "theos" being greek for "god". Most, but not all, atheists include all supernatural phenomena in the category of fiction.
Atheism certainly rejects your average afterlife, which funnily enough, always seems to be a "members only" feature of its specific religion. That alone should tell you it's a scam.
Personally, I don't like just going away, but so far any and all evidence points to exactly that being the case. Then again, when I think of the atrocities that people commit because they believe in an afterlife, I tend to think oblivion as a perspective would be better. It's not as good as heaven, but it's better than hell, and it sure will reduce the number of suicide bombers quite a lot.
You know, it just might make people treasure the life they have more.
You're saying religion is wrong, primarily, [...], because you don't like the idea it could be right.
For christianity to be right, we would have to be living in an odd world indeed. And even if it is right, there are still so many variants that you can't be sure just which one is really right. But heck, I'm not afraid, if your god has any brains at all, he'll welcome free thinking over sheep mentality, and if he doesn't then I don't want anything to do with him anyways.
But the most important points are two:
One: What are the chances? As I see it, the
That's not what agnosticism means, but regardless, atheism is the same as non-theism in the most inclusive sense. If you're not a theist, you're atheistic.
Also, atheism has no 'doctrines' that are explainable outside the context of theism. Without theistic religions and their descriptions of gods, atheism is completely undefinable.
American Atheists are free to use whatever definition suits them, but they're plainly mistaken here - the above is actually a definition of philosophical naturalism, which implies atheism but also more than that alone.
The Atheism entry in Wikipedia has this assertion:
Strong atheism is the explicit affirmation that gods do not exist. Weak atheism includes all other forms of non-theism. According to this categorization, anyone who is not a theist is either a weak or a strong atheist.
Found here
By that criterion, my assertion is absolutely correct. However, that is not the source of my original comment. I based my opinion on some of the ideas presented by Richard Dawkins in his book "The God Delusion" which crystallized my understanding of atheism. There's an interesting Q and A session linked to this Digg page.
Even though people believe that religious influence is on the rise, America seems to have gotten more atheistic. A 1997 ABC poll put the number of Americans that did not believe in a god at 4% and a Newsweek poll a few weeks ago put the number at 6%. Although this is not a change within the margin of error the number has most likely increased. There are many signs of a welling if atheistic ideas catching hold on Internet forums, on Youtube, and in bestselling books. I think people will be surprised by a steady but slow increase in non-theism.
Also the birth rate of religious and nonreligious people is not the only determinant of future demographics. After all a person raised in a religious family can become nonreligious and visa-versa. This is a characteristic determined an individual and not necessary their genes alone. In fact nearly all of the vocal atheists that I respect were raised in a religious family.
I can. Can you?
Good question. What is the likelihood that "there is 'The Programmer', who is infinitely more intelligent and beyond the comprehension of any program, and he designed and wrote everything"? For that matter, what is the likelihood that there was a team of "Programmers"? Or that the programmer was more intelligent but not infinitely more intelligent? Or that there were multiple competing Programmers?
Thank you for summarizing what I, at least, see as a deep, and unfixable, problem with theism.
I'd have difficulty worshiping a god who hadn't yet switched to something such as SVN. A source code control system that doesn't understand renames? Bletch.
I'm after something better than "well, you have to have faith".
Something subject to experimental test, rather than something that can always be explained away as "the ways of the Lord are mysterious", for starters.
The best thing that could happen to the future of the world is the advent of a more universal, worldly, consciousness and an ascendency of non-theism. After all, there'd definitely be less or no wars (no God to justify them, no virgins in Heaven), less suffering (no wars plus no religious barriers to medical research), better integration (no separation of the righteous and 'wicked'), and hopefully more compassion (less Godly judgement), and definitely more time spent on learning about science and the natural universe and less about the supernatural, religious texts.
Sigh.
Remember Communism? No religion. They still had a few problems.
And religious people have gotten into a lot of trouble over the years, too. And then there are Martin Luther King, Jr., Ghandi, and Mother Theresa.
Could everyone, atheist, theist, whatever in this thread stop with the shallow ad hominem? There are plenty enough examples of bad atheists, good atheists, bad theists, good theists to go round in circles without ever getting anywhere.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo