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So, do you mind pointing out where I went on that crusade against people using the word God in any way? Or maybe where I said that I disliked any theology and ranted against theism of any kind?

I am not particularly interested in prescribing any particular meaning to the word God, people may use it however they like. Of course, it makes things a lot easier if they define what they mean with it so one can have a meaningful discussion. I did not quite see the logic behind the reasoning in your original post.

Now, I do happen to believe that there most likely is no such thing as a God (as the word is most commonly used, referring to some kind of almighty being). And I do believe that I am allowed to tell the world about my stance if I were so inclined. And if someone starts arguing with me about it, I might argue back I guess. Or maybe I won't bother, it has yet to happen.

"some people use the same term ("God") to describe very different things, rather than describing the same thing with different names"

and i am asking you to accept that this is the way it was, and always will be, and this cacophony is never going away, and you need to lose your discomfort with this ugly but inescapable status quo of humanity. unless you want to do away with free will and wage a crusade for cognitive conformity. which is obviously worse. and yes, i know, such a crusade for conformity is going on, in the name of religion. but fighting that crusade with a crusade of your own ("there is no god!") basically means you are just as wrong as everything you dislike about theism

not to the idea god

if someone were so negative and stupid as to use god as justification to suicide bomb or murder abortion providers, then your argument is with stupid and negative people, not god

god is just a metaphor. in fact, your hostility to the idea of god is the same sort of irrationality that drives those who have to fight for the existence of god. the extremely intolerant atheist who insists on the destruction of theism is just as wrong as the religious fundamentalist who insists you believe as he believes: its the imposition of your will onto other people, which is more wrong than the existence or lack thereof a silly metaphorical idea. god can be interepreted a million different ways, so your argument is with certain wrong interpretations, including some interpretations that reject his or her existence but are still just as violent as a religious fundamentalist. belief in god or not does not define anything at all, its a red herring, a false pointless argument

just accept that people think differently about the world, and always will. whether or not their thinking includes the idea of a god holds no meaning, positive or negative, either way. in fact, if you waved a magic wand, and removed all the world's religions, new ones would spontaneously spring into being. why? because belief in god is a sociological and psychological phenomenon of human existence: it is never going away. you need to accept it, or you at war with mankind, not god. some day you will die. do you fight this ugly truth? or accept it? well, you also need to accept that belief in god, like sitting on the toilet every day, just happens. it does no good to accept an unbending fact of human reality

i am a nonbeliever. yet the idea of god doesn't threaten me, i'm perfectly at peace with it. i am completely beyond the argument, such that i am comfortable even calling myself a believer nowadays, deceitfully, mischievously, or just because i'm bored. with such contempt do i hold the whole debate about god's existence. it is such a colossal waste of time and thought. the root of the argument is about conformity, which is the real danger, whether for or against god

I don't think Buddhish is a religion in the same way as other religions. I see it more as a philosophy. What is the Buddhist god? Buddha? No. I don't think there is a buddhist god, therefore it is closer to atheism that theism. Of course plenty of versions of Buddhism resemble religions more due to rituals and various forms or idolatry - but that's not Buddha's fault.

Like many things in this subject it comes down to definitions. Theism is pretty consistent, in that most people accept it as being belief that a deity exists and is somehow active in this world or the supposed next. Atheism could have two basic meanings - depending on who you're talking to.

1) Denial that god(s) exist
This is rarely expressed as absolute certainty, and is a position I personally consider indefensible and problematic in that it shifts the burden of evidence. Also, no-one can say for definite that there are no gods, but one can with a reasonable level of certainty say that the gods described by the major religions are either highly improbable or hideously misunderstood by their followers and biographers. Personally I find it rare to find atheists who'll say with certainty that there are no gods, and most cases it's believers creating straw men that can easily be knocked over. If anyone suggests this to be the norm for atheists then I'd challenge them to show me evidence of well known atheists or atheistic groups that adopt such a line.

2) Non-belief in the existence of god(s)
This is the same as agnosticism. The existence of gods is a binary proposition. The best way to clarify this muddle is to ask the question: Do you believe that gods exist? The answers "no" and "I don't know" amount to the same thing. Personally I adopt this line for gods and all other supernatural frippery. An intellectually honest atheist should be willing to accept, given sufficient evidence, that gods could indeed exist.

It becomes slightly annoying when people self-identify as agnostics with the implication, or stated claim, that their reason for this is because they're not certain enough to adopt the position of atheism. Just as Christianity as a label can in some contexts be pretty vague, it's always worth asking someone to clearly state their beliefs. Atheism doesn't require certainty, and certainty only comes in to play when theists make very specific claims that can through naturalistic observation be refuted. Even then it can reach ridiculous levels - such as the argument that the devil planted fossils to confuse us, or the concept of Last Thursdayism. Therein lies madness like solipsism and conversations that'd belong among a bunch a stoned teenagers rather than serious philosophers and theologians.

Oh for fuck's sake, every post in this series has contained hypocrisy. You think you aren't just some guy on slashdot to the rest of us trying to argue that Buddhism and pantheism are theistic? You think it's not a "no true Scotsman" fallacy to proclaim that your club, atheists, contains no Buddhists and no pantheists?

This whole thread is an argument about what words should mean, rather than an actual exchange of ideas.

Buddhism describes a range of positions (as does "theism"), and much of that range is pretty clearly atheistic, unless you're using a variant of atheism with which I'm unfamiliar. In which case, give that definition. Because mine deals with the nonexistence of supreme beings, and has doesn't really have anything to say about Nirvana.

Pantheism is, as Richard Dawkins says, "sexed-up atheism". Yes, theism is in the word. It's also in the word atheism, and that doesn't mean atheism isn't atheistic. Antitheism is also not incompatible with atheism. Stop getting caught up in the word theism, or in metaphorical uses of the word "god".

I say this as an atheist with no spiritual beliefs.

Pantheism isn't theism (words don't always mean the same things in different configurations; some pantheists might take offense to be grouped as believers in a personal god), and it was more of an example than a statement that Buddhism is pantheism. You need to work on your reading comprehension; it was analogous, a comparison. There's no creator god in Buddhism, nor are there any supernatural beings, nor is the universe a stand-in for supernatural beings. It's atheistic, without gods, full stop. Argue all you want, but it doesn't change the facts.

You may have noticed that the word "pantheism" contains the word "theism". I know it's hard to spot, but trust me, it's there.

Buddhists are atheists, for example.

No, they're not. You may have noticed that the word "atheism" contains the word "theism". I know, it's hard to see, but it's in there.

Yeah, try actually looking to see what "theism" means. It means a belief in a deity. Buddha isn't a god. Hence Buddhists are atheists with spiritual beliefs (such as reincarnation).

I don't know what "definition" of [a]theism you're using, but it isn't the correct one.

Atheists don't believe in a deity, but they might still have some spiritual component

Yes, but that's because the word "spiritual" is completely fucking useless, and can mean absolutely anything.

Buddhists are atheists, for example.

No, they're not. You may have noticed that the word "atheism" contains the word "theism". I know, it's hard to see, but it's in there.

Funny enough, the ancient Greeks used to refer to Christians as atheists, because they didn't believe in the Greek Gods. If you're going to use such a limited definition of the word, you're making the same mistake the Greeks did.

Specifically don't want to start a flame war...
Why despise religion? I am religious, but I also acknowledge that we all have free will to decide what, if any, religion we follow.

My problem with religion is not that I don't want adult people believing whatever it is they want to believe in. My issue is with the fact that on a massive scale we feed children superstitions and, contrary to the local version of Santa and the Easter bunny, we go on letting them believe that for the remainder of their life. And even those that really don't believe will still allow the same to be done to the next generation.

I find it interesting that the human psyche seems hardwired to believe in a higher power. Go back through history and you will find some form of theism in almost every culture. Whether it is belief in ancient ancestors, all powerful God/Allah/Yahweh, the Greek/Roman/Norse/Egyptian gods, Gaea etc. That we appear to be hardwired for it makes me wonder.

I'll be the first to admit that religion is throughout all of human culture. There are things out there that are scary, unfair, that we cannot understand or influence etc. And within every group of people there will be one who's just a little smarter than the rest who will be more than happy to fill in the gaps and tell us what we can do about it, usually in such a way that said individual inexplicable comes out a little better.

I despise religion for the very same reasons that many Slashdotians despise/fear government. No matter how pure it may be at first, within no time it becomes a tool for people to control other people. It becomes a means of shirking responsibility, for claiming "God's Will" in those situations where we have no explanations (yet), etc.

Free will? Maybe...but when religion has been force-fed to you from the age of 4 and your entire peer group consists of people for whom the same applies...you're in a big heap of trouble if you want out.

Specifically don't want to start a flame war...
Why despise religion? I am religious, but I also acknowledge that we all have free will to decide what, if any, religion we follow.

I find it interesting that the human psyche seems hardwired to believe in a higher power. Go back through history and you will find some form of theism in almost every culture. Whether it is belief in ancient ancestors, all powerful God/Allah/Yahweh, the Greek/Roman/Norse/Egyptian gods, Gaea etc. That we appear to be hardwired for it makes me wonder.
-nB

I can see you do not have an answer to my question. Just more "but look at this !" statements. "The others are just as bad !". "Hypocrites exist !". All are very true statements, and completely beside the point.

My theory : you do not have an answer, and you cannot find any reason why an atheist, not believing in an afterlife, would refrain from genocide, if it were convenient.

Why not make the other argument : the only reason I find genocide unacceptable is religious in nature, and that's obviously so very unoriginal of me ... Maybe I should think for myself and see that genocide might be good ...

At least that'd be a honest argument.

I cannot fathom how can you get from, I don't believe in god (and afterlife), to genocide is good. You are just asserting that a person who thinks he will have only one life would nessessarily live it in selfish manner or would optimize for comfort. My morals say that genocide is always unacceptable and I hope that Christians would share this moral even though Bible advocates genocide.

The examples you give are almost all non-atheists (except perhaps humanism, which is indeed a moral abomination once you look past the thin upper layer). All of the examples you give (including humanism) base their standards of behavior upon unchallengeable higher authority, which would seem a very non-atheistic stance to me. Most of your examples include very supernatural things like an afterlife.

All of those examples are atheist, you cannot just go and redefine atheist as person who doesn't believe in afterlife and optimizes for personal comfort. I just listed some other philosophies that are required to build your morals, just saying you are atheist does not give you (almost) any information on what kind of morals the person might actually have. Other sources one could use to come up with morals includes parents, society, friends, Categorical Imperative, the Golden Rule, Empathy, Matt Dillahunty, IRC, etc.

Humanism in mathematics, incidentally, has failed. Why ? Simple, because there are known mathematical truths that cannot be tested or proven (they're not just unproven, they are provably both true and independent of any set of axioms, look up Godel-sentences for an algorithm that will create an infinite (at least aleph-1) number of them). In humanism, such a thing cannot exist. And then the proof came down that the set of true knowledge is infinitely larger than the set of provable knowledge. If all we can prove about mathematics would be a small grain of sand, mathematics itself would be bigger than the universe. Needless to say, humanist standards for knowledge were thrown out the door, replaced by a still-running project to find the most useful unfounded beliefs to include in our axiom sets (this search turned out to be a minefield).

Humanism has not been much more succesfull in other disciplines and has been universally replaced for various reasons.

What has humanism in maths have to do with morals? Even if it is nor perfect, it still can be used as rule of thumb in order to form ones morals.

A baby that is born is an atheist and could be thought morals he/she would live by easily without any theism.

I have a doctorate in AI, and unless babies work totally different from all known AI neural network algorithms this is not true (and it does seem unlikely that we've done everything wrong). A baby would not even survive without interaction with adults, his brain would lose entropy and he/she would die because the brain would (eventually) stop the heart and the breathing when this happened. It would not matter if that brain's body were afforded all the tools for survival and even very comfortable living (obviously this has never been tried with human babies, but it does happen with mice).

I can see you do not have an answer to my question. Just more "but look at this !" statements. "The others are just as bad !". "Hypocrites exist !". All are very true statements, and completely beside the point.

My theory : you do not have an answer, and you cannot find any reason why an atheist, not believing in an afterlife, would refrain from genocide, if it were convenient.

Why not make the other argument : the only reason I find genocide unacceptable is religious in nature, and that's obviously so very unoriginal of me ... Maybe I should think for myself and see that genocide might be good ...

At least that'd be a honest argument.

The examples you give are almost all non-atheists (except perhaps humanism, which is indeed a moral abomination once you look past the thin upper layer). All of the examples you give (including humanism) base their standards of behavior upon unchallengeable higher authority, which would seem a very non-atheistic stance to me. Most of your examples include very supernatural things like an afterlife.

Humanism in mathematics, incidentally, has failed. Why ? Simple, because there are known mathematical truths that cannot be tested or proven (they're not just unproven, they are provably both true and independent of any set of axioms, look up Godel-sentences for an algorithm that will create an infinite (at least aleph-1) number of them). In humanism, such a thing cannot exist. And then the proof came down that the set of true knowledge is infinitely larger than the set of provable knowledge. If all we can prove about mathematics would be a small grain of sand, mathematics itself would be bigger than the universe. Needless to say, humanist standards for knowledge were thrown out the door, replaced by a still-running project to find the most useful unfounded beliefs to include in our axiom sets (this search turned out to be a minefield).

Humanism has not been much more succesfull in other disciplines and has been universally replaced for various reasons.

A baby that is born is an atheist and could be thought morals he/she would live by easily without any theism.

I have a doctorate in AI, and unless babies work totally different from all known AI neural network algorithms this is not true (and it does seem unlikely that we've done everything wrong). A baby would not even survive without interaction with adults, his brain would lose entropy and he/she would die because the brain would (eventually) stop the heart and the breathing when this happened. It would not matter if that brain's body were afforded all the tools for survival and even very comfortable living (obviously this has never been tried with human babies, but it does happen with mice).

You see babies copy behavior from those around them. That copy would include believing behavior and (maybe) explicit belief (this happens long before a child is ever confronted with a church or school). It would most certainly not be possible to exclude implicit belief from this. (this obviously means that all owners of neural networks, not just humans, have what you could usefully define as religion, or at the very least "ideology". Ants, cats, dogs, cows, pigs, wolves, even some plants ...)

When you think about the problems the brain has to solve, you'll immediately see why it cannot ever work without unfounded beliefs. You see, either you copy knowledge from some source, or you do trial and error. There is no third way. The problem with trial and error is simple : if humans found out dropping from a balcony was dangerous by trial and error, we'd be long extinct. The concept of thinking itself does not, cannot work without unfounded belief.

Incidentally this means, obviously, that science itself, and indeed the way you think is also based on unfounded assumptions. Your opinions are simply copied from somewhere. Given how this system works, even arguing this point with me is dangerous

Noh, the whole point of atheism is simply a lack of belief in gods. You need to apply some other things, such as secular humanism, Buddhism, Raëlianism, in order to get your morals.

Even if I believed in God, it wouldn't mean I would automatically accept her moral code. I might play along if I was forced at gun point, but would that really mean I shared those morals.

I am more moral than those characters depicted in the Bible. I would never support slavery and I do believe that people should be treated equally and fairly. I like to do positive things, like helping people, because that might make those people help others and maybe when I need help, there is someone who shares this wish of helping people. I have heard the term 'Enlightened self-interest' use for this.

Again, atheism simply is the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. A baby that is born is an atheist and could be thought morals he/she would live by easily without any theism. One could even take the moral code from the Bible and teach those (just leave out the God part and threat of Hell) and the child would live by them, and would still be an atheist. And I wouldn't be suprised that there was a group of people who believe the teachings of Jesus and live by them but don't believe in Gods.

OK, that's a bit over the top. If a theist can proselytize, so can an atheist. Give that a rest. No need to call each other stupid. But certainly evangelists can exist on both sides of the scale. Others, like me, just get fed up with anyone who wants to convert me to anything (be it theism or anti-theism). I think all folks should just shut the hell up and believe what they want to believe and leave everyone else alone. However, the protagonist in this story is obviously out there proselytizing so it isn't too over the top to expect folks from the other side of the spectrum to do the same.

We really don't need any of the
"neener, neener, you have an invisible friend"
vs.
"you are an evil satanist"
drivel here.

I don't think that's ever been a problem for Julian in entire adult life. Do you really think the 100's of K in donations is nobly used only for his great cause? This guy isn't exactly taking public transportation and living is substandard housing. He is fond of telling people he 'has no home'; that he is essentially 'homeless'. However he travels the world to his so-called '4 bases', at his whim, all expenses paid by donors. Do you think he flies coach? He certainly does not live the austere, spartan lifestyle that he allows people to believe his does.

Reminds me of those beggars on the corner holding signs asking for money and saying 'god bless'. Looking closely you can see many of them have nice shoes and good teeth. When walking up to give them a few quid, you find they don't reek of filth (i.e. they bathe regularly) and have clearly shaved that morning. They have no callouses on their hands and are wearing a decent watch. It's all just a show to encourage support and funds.

His life story is all very dramatic, complete with hacker theism and running from dangerous cults. Of course, none of it can be really verified, but who needs that when you have a marketable personage, right? I've been looking into his background for some time, and the only thing I can even come close to verifying is his birthplace of Townsville, Australia (and even that I cannot completely verify without actually going to Australia). All the so-called facts are taken from interviewers who apparently just take Julian's fantastical stories at face value. I suppose it's conceivable that it's all true, but if he were standing up for a cause that was not such an egalitarian, "nothing hidden that will not be revealed" crusade, I am certain he would be known as a far more pedestrian and boring person.

A man once said "The inferior fight to be equal, and the equal fight to be superior.". I think Julian is working his way to the end of that truism.

Or when the word is weird, species, science, sufficient, ancient, society, seize, theism, protein, sovereignty, foreign, feisty, kaleidoscope, being, rottweiler, keister, leisure, seize, caffeine.....

Agreed, the OP is an idiot and can't tell the difference between blind faith and intuition. Anybody who thinks there isn't a difference obviously doesn't know many women.

Any good mathematician uses intuition when solving problems. Scientists do as well. When you "act on your beliefs" you have faith. If you do nothing with them, then they are just that, beliefs. Faith eventually produces proof.

The Wright brother demonstrated faith by trying to build an airplane. They didn't _know_ the outcome until they _did_ it. A few people had the mere belief that lighter then air travel was possible, but how many put this belief to the test in an earnest desire to know if this belief was true or false.

To add yet another dimension to this discussion, even if every man, woman, and child, knew 100% about their Higher Self, it wouldn't change the nature of Religion. Religion is the kindergarten version of spirituality. You don't criticize a child for going through elementary school in order to enter university / colleage!

What the OP is unable to see is that both atheism & theism are built upon the ignorance of higher reality. Only a gnostic / mystic is able too see what the *theists are blind too. At least the agnostic is little more honest in that he has begun the first step towards knowledge: "I don't know."

prefer to say "I don't believe in God." instead

Myself I prefer to say "I don't believe in an anthropomorphic god".

Myself I prefer to say "I don't give a toss."

Atheism is taking a position on the argument just as theism is, I simply don't care about it enough to have a position.