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Although unapersson gave an accurate response to your statement, I thought I might elaborate one thing concerning types of atheism. Namely, there are two: positive and negative atheism. Positive atheism states that because we have no empirical or logical evidence for a deity, that deity does not exist. Negative atheism states that because we have no empirical or logical evidence for a deity, we have no reason to believe at this time and place that such a deity exists. The former is a positive belief, the latter is an absence of a positive belief.

What you describe is positive atheism and does, in some cases, suffer from the problem that it assumes lack of knowledge implies non-existence. Some positive atheists might argue that because many forms of theism state that since such a deity is supernatural, one could not use natural means to discern its existence, and hence is no better than if it did not exist at all: we would be none the wiser either way from an empirical standpoint.

But you have a point. Positive atheism can often border rather close to religious thinking with some people. If you'd like, "Atheism: The Case Against God" by George H. Smith is a pretty good lay-person's primer on the topic. (Even though he believes negative atheism is just a form of agnosticism.) It's pretty useful for theists who want to think more critically about their beliefs.

Regards, Tom

No it's not, it's a lack of theism. Many religious people seem to find it really difficult to get their head around. Religion and gods have absolutely nothing to do with our lives. We don't sit down every morning and pray to the void. We simply accept reality for what it is and don't see anything in our every day lives that needs a special explanation.

Amen, brother, couldn't have said it better myself.

"Atheism is also a religion, because you have to believe that there is no God. There's no proof of either existence or non-existence of a supernatural being."

No it's not, it's a lack of theism. Many religious people seem to find it really difficult to get their head around. Religion and gods have absolutely nothing to do with our lives. We don't sit down every morning and pray to the void. We simply accept reality for what it is and don't see anything in our every day lives that needs a special explanation.

I don't know why it's so difficult to understand. It's not much different to being disinterested in football. You'll have groups of people that are obsessed by it and cannot understand how its not a part of someone elses life.

Surely there's something that's completely irrelevant to your life? Tiddlywinks, Tabletop roleplaying games. As far as most atheists are concerned, religion is just another interest, and only relevant when it tries to force itself on our lives. Imagine how cross you'd get if tiddlywinks players got together and tried to force an hour of daily tiddlywinks playing into national school curriculums.

You've completely missed my point.

No, you've completely missed mine.

Pushing your 'lack of belief' on others is little better then the Christian fundamentalist trying to push his belief on you. I'm not accusing you specifically of doing that -- but many Atheists seem to be on a mission to "save" the world from religion and I personally find that to be very offensive. And I'm not even a particularly religious person!

See, atheists are in fact believers just of a different stripe. The belief they subscribe to is that there is no god.

Belief in a god is theism. Belief in no god is atheism. No belief in a god and no belief in no god is neither of these.

Lack of belief does not equal belief.

Do you realize whatever evidence that is completely immanent (a necessary condition to be scientifically explorable) is insufficient to tell a god from an immanent creature? Back to the game's metaphor, whatever thing the creator does to the game's universe to assert his "divinity" is indistinguishable from what a hypothetical creature that found a weakness in the game implementation so it's able to reprogram it.

This is called "preserving the phenomena"--arguing that a claim is true on the basis that it does not contradict observed phenomena. This is trivial. The claim of existence of fairies or unicorns in some hitherto undiscovered location does not contradict observed phenomena either, but we assume they do not exist by Occam's razor. The claim makes no testable predictions, nor can it be falsified, and it proliferates assumptions needlessly.

The term evidence is misleading, the correct one is revelation. It may seems specious but IMHO an atheist/agnostic which does not believe until he gets a revelation is acceptable, one that waits for evidence is not behaving logically.

Subjective convictions do not lend support to anything. All religions make claims based upon 'revelation' that are mutually incompatible. At most one, if any, can be right. What does this say about the reliability of revelation?

So what?. A light bulb burns out in the instant T. Postulating time as continuous the probability of it happening numerically is zero. The event happens anyway. Events do not know about their probability. Of course that enables people to say: no way I am betting on that event happening at instant T since it's so improbable. It doesn't enable people to say: burning at any instant is improbable so no burning will occur.

Irrelevant, and a gross misunderstanding of probability and the claims of religion. To put the analogy in proper focus, you are the one claiming that the light bulb will burn out at a specified instant. One of the possibilities is correct--the light bulb will burn out at some time; at least one of the huge set of all possible explanations for the origins of the universe must be right. You are the one claiming that only your explanation is valid, or that the light bulb must burn out at 07:32 and 498 milliseconds on March 28th. On what basis? What are the odds that you are right?

Yep, also because the spiritual dimension could well be just a scientifically unexplored/unexplorable aspect of our universe, spiritual != divine. Atheists rejecting spirituality unless a scientific framework is built around it ought to realize that atheism is independent of the existence of such dimension.

Non sequitor. Dimension? What dimension? Spiritual practices are cognitive methods intended to instill habits of thought conducive to peace of mind and greater compassion. They do this quite well without requiring any form of superstition. There is no extra-spatial dimension involved.

A supernatural explanation being the traditional fallback one doesn't prevent a hypothetical divinity to act in/through the spiritual dimension. Theism is independent of the existence of such dimension even if most religions aren't.

Incoherent. As much as I can make any sense of this, it is another case of preserving the phenomena.

Warning: circular reasoning. They are the foundation of religious dogmas only if God(s) never inspired any religion. Else the dogma is either the equivalent of an axiom, or a misconception. The problem of a god allowing such a misconception is interesting but faith specific.

Circular reasoning indeed. You believe in your dogmas because you think they were inspired by God, and you believe in God because your dogmas tell you to. I need something other than your opinion, and your assent to these dogmas, on which to base my judgements.

> No, but the knowledge of an entity operating within that game regarding the outside world would be void--pure speculation.
Fine for me. I wasn't the one characterizing the object of speculation after all.

> Without evidence for a belief...
Do you realize whatever evidence that is completely immanent (a necessary condition to be scientifically explorable) is insufficient to tell a god from an immanent creature? Back to the game's metaphor, whatever thing the creator does to the game's universe to assert his "divinity" is indistinguishable from what a hypothetical creature that found a weakness in the game implementation so it's able to reprogram it.
The term evidence is misleading, the correct one is revelation. It may seems specious but IMHO an atheist/agnostic which does not believe until he gets a revelation is acceptable, one that waits for evidence is not behaving logically.

>...only the belief itself remains to be explained, and the human predilection for intentional explanations, ego-centrism, social conventions, and a tradition of pre-scientific supernatural beliefs is all that is required here.
Please be scientific. Even if all religions but one were documented as coming out of the explanations you listed, until the last one is dealt with too you can't say those are "all that is required". A plausible explanation of a phenomenon is not necessarily the cause of a phenomenon.

>Taking that into consideration, the probability of the theistic explanation drops back to negligible.
So what?. A light bulb burns out in the instant T. Postulating time as continuous the probability of it happening numerically is zero. The event happens anyway. Events do not know about their probability. Of course that enables people to say: no way I am betting on that event happening at instant T since it's so improbable. It doesn't enable people to say: burning at any instant is improbable so no burning will occur.

> All of this does not mean that spiritual practices are worthless...
Yep, also because the spiritual dimension could well be just a scientifically unexplored/unexplorable aspect of our universe, spiritual != divine.
Atheists rejecting spirituality unless a scientific framework is built around it ought to realize that atheism is independent of the existence of such dimension.

> ...but it does mean that the supernatural explanations that often accompany them are.
A supernatural explanation being the traditional fallback one doesn't prevent a hypothetical divinity to act in/through the spiritual dimension. Theism is independent of the existence of such dimension even if most religions aren't.

> These are the foundations of religious dogmas, without which these dogmas cannot survive.
Warning: circular reasoning. They are the foundation of religious dogmas only if God(s) never inspired any religion. Else the dogma is either the equivalent of an axiom, or a misconception. The problem of a god allowing such a misconception is interesting but faith specific.

The problem is that religion is inherently *irrational*.

Shit, we're going to get into this argument again. I guess the only surprise is that it wasn't the "Frist post, niggaz!".

Just because you haven't had any experiences or thoughts that make a religion plausible, doesn't mean that other people haven't. Many reasonable people have experiences for which religion seems to them be the best explanation. Perhaps given your experiences atheism seems the most sensible world view. Yeah for you. But don't you feel a little, well, irrational in assuming that no one on the planet has a even a single good reason for thinking that theism might be accurate?

Also, show me 10 people with an apparently irrational belief in God, and I'll easily dig up about 4 other people with an irrational belief in athiesm.

They can see it however they want. My personal viewpoint is that the only thing that's dangerous about atheism or theism are the adherents of both philosophies that seek to impose their views on other people.

I think atheism is more properly defined as a belief in the non-existence of god or gods.

Atheism is a spectrum. On the "soft" end, it is a lot like Agnosticism in that it asserts these things are unknown or unknowable. On the "hard" end, it is a lot like Theism and asserts that gods do not exist.

I would consider myself a "moderate" and assert that religious faith is lunacy. I draw conclusions from objective reality and am extremely skeptical of any claims of supernaturalism. I understand human nature, history, and the evolution of mythology, and recognize religion as just another mythology, though with a more cynical purpose than mere entertainment. Some people assert that religious beliefs cannot be examined objectively, but they forget that we can back-trace the entire history and evolution of specific religious beliefs and canons. And objectively, this history is reveals it to be a big pile of horseshit.

You are confusing Deism with theism.

Were you referring to Slashdot? If so, then maybe, who knows? these things aren't collected. In the wider world, atheists (or those who describe themselves as neither spiritual or religious) occupy only about two percent of the population.[1] It varies by region; in the USA it's about ten percent.[2] (Those were brief googlings)

Of those who are nonbelievers, I don't think more than half are "hostile to religion in general." I would describe myself as such, and I'm not too bothered about most of it.

Whether militant atheism (or anti-theism or whatever) is more predominant in geekdom than in the wider world is probably the subject of many awful blog posts somewhere, but would be an interesting study to undertake. I've no idea how to go about it. It would seem a very thorny task from the ten seconds of thought I've put into it, but I wouldn't mind seeing the results.

[1] http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/60/Worldwide_percentage_of_Adherents_by_Religion.png
[2] http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_prac2.htm

"And in some places, this works. Catholicism has been gaining a lot of ground in Africa and South America even as it loses influence in the 'richer' countries--leading to, amongst other things, rather amusing conflicts between hereditarily Catholic (but not actively participating) Quebecois and immigrants to Quebec who are 'taking over' the old Catholic churches."

Catholicism gains ground easily among primitive peoples (before flaming me, read on!) because it is suited to the ways they prefer to think. That is why it was devastatingly effective in South and Central America as a tool of conquest. It is a natural for Africa too, as is Evangelism. Primitives who are not fond of Islam (perhaps due to having Muslim tribal rivals) have Christian alternatives. People like "General Butt Naked" (Google for him) can switch to a forgiving religion when they tire of ritual cannibalism.

Religion should be seen by awake people as primitive superstition, suitable for manipulating simpletons. They will not be rid of theism, so it is fair to use it to steer them politically.

Oh for god's sake (lowercase 'g' to ensure I get your god, not just some other random god), morality is not the sole domain of theistic belief. There are plenty of other moral theories that can define "good" and "right" from "bad" and "wrong" without having to resort to the will of god, or having the existence of god as an axiom, or anything else associated with some sort of theism.

"Humans who aren't psychotic extend their sense of self to encapsulate their operating environment, their peers and their progeny, and we'll destroy ourselves to protect it because we have an expanded sense of self."

Actually you've made a pretty good argument that human beings ARE psychotic, they do not live in a rational manner. There ability to 'extend sense of self' is primtiive and quite limited, (religions, atheism vs theism, capitalism vs socialism, and on and on). If we count up all the wars and all the wasted energy on prejudice and ridiculous social status games, political idealogies, and 'us vs. them'. We could definitely have an argument that most people are in fact psychotic in some sense.

Philosophers attributed the madness of the world to limitations on peoples intelligence (i.e. they did wrong because they were ignorant and powerless (no intelligent enough) to change their environment to solve the problems of existence)

Consider mahciavelli for instance his estimation of most human beings is thus:

Of humanity we may generally say, they are fickle, hypocritical and greedy of gain -- Niccolo Machiavelli

We might add 'psychotic' to the list and miss a beat when it comes down to defining human behaviour.

The analogy fits perfectly; I've experienced God, so there's no way I'll be argued out of belief by someone who has not experienced God, any more than you could be argued into believing Red doesn't exist by a man blind from birth.

Your analogy presents a pre-determined supposition that God does indeed exist, which is the point of the argument in the first place, yes?

As I said, there is no point in arguing God's existance with me. Argue with an agnostic instead. I'm only illustrating my personal experience. George can argue that xebras don't exist all day, but since you've been to a zoo there's no way he'll convince you.

Are you implying that atheism is a state at which humans arrive at, being theistic at first? I would propose that humans come out of the womb atheistic and them develop theism at a later date.

I would agree with you. The kid either has to be taught about God, or experience him directly.

I see your Theism and Atheism and raise you Agnostic ....

"Of course atheism is a religion, it is a system of belief about the supernatural nature (or lack there of) of this universe."

Atheism in my case is simply the absence of theism. I don't have any "belief' about the universe, though I agree with asking questions about how it works.

That professed atheists often advocate alternative belief systems does not mean that any of these constitute atheism.

"It's the null religion. Do you believe that zero is not a number? Or perhaps that a null pointer isn't a pointer at all?"

That implies a "religion metric". I don't define my non-religion in religious terms any more than I would define my beliefs in terms of all the other possible beliefs I do not share.