Agree, the current gods are a metaphoric vestigial organ which will wither away in generations to come...

and possibly replaced by an augmented supergod! Yikes.
Actually come to think of it, it's not like any new god can give less of a fuck than the old bastard we know and love! lol.

Atheists can be atheist for whatever reason they like.


Me - I like to sleep in on Sunday and I'm not a gefilte fish fan, so being Jewish wasn't an option.

Why some people have a need to believe in God seems to me no different than a need to believe in flat Earth or aliens secretly visiting Earth or bigfoot roaming forests - because it is fun, for some people, to believe in fairytales.

Indeed, everyone needs to take a pause from a real world and go into the imaginary one--be it by playing video games, reading novels, watching TV shows; it's just that religious people (and believers in other fantasies) do it all the time, they don't get out of it.

Now why is that? That's perhaps a question for a psychologist. Fairytales offer banal world which maybe brings people back when they were little kids with banal minds, when they also didn't have to worry about grownup problems. So perhaps being religious, or believing in aliens and flat Earth, is analogous to sucking thumb and lying in fetal position.

And like masturbation - prayer fills the same need.

To do something that effects little, but leaves the practioner feeling good about themselves.

But at least a guy jerking off has something to show for his efforts when he's done.

If I was the authority of atheism these would be my set of principles that are incontrovertibly true.

Some people are gullible and believe things to be true without any evidence to support the truth of said thing.

As probably said in earlier pages, atheism has no dogma.
There is no authority that lays down a set of principles.

Stop making shit up.

It's probably more accurate to say that a new born lacks the capacity to entertain the question. They can't focus their eyes properly, have the muscle coordination of over-cooked pasta, and only recognize their parents on an instinctual level, so theological discourse is probably above their pay grade.

I suspect that if you raised children in complete isolation (good luck getting this one approved by the ethics board) both sides would be in for a surprise. Atheists would probably get a shock when the kids grew up to be theist courtesy of our innate propensity for superstition and our need to look for meaning in the meaningless. Theists would be in for a surprise when they discovered that the kids weren't kneeling at the altar of their chosen omnimax deity but a much more primal shamanistic assemblage of gods of sun, rain, thunder, and toys that go squeek.

One thing you won't see - children spontaneously believing in a deity that is not indigeonous to their geographic location.


Any.religion they pick up is simply an accident of local....

Yet another thread about atheist "dogma". I wonder how many people will be surprised by the fact that holding the Bible as a moral code is not contradictory for an atheist.

(April 12, 2020 at 12:40 pm)Paleophyte Wrote: It's probably more accurate to say that a new born lacks the capacity to entertain the question. They can't focus their eyes properly, have the muscle coordination of over-cooked pasta, and only recognize their parents on an instinctual level, so theological discourse is probably above their pay grade.

I suspect that if you raised children in complete isolation (good luck getting this one approved by the ethics board) both sides would be in for a surprise. Atheists would probably get a shock when the kids grew up to be theist courtesy of our innate propensity for superstition and our need to look for meaning in the meaningless. Theists would be in for a surprise when they discovered that the kids weren't kneeling at the altar of their chosen omnimax deity but a much more primal shamanistic assemblage of gods of sun, rain, thunder, and toys that go squeek.

I was raised without religion. It just didn't come up. For years I said "I'm not religious enough to call myself an atheist." I could have extended that to "anything at all religious." So I am a good case study that lack of religion produces people who aren't religious.

(April 11, 2020 at 8:19 pm)Prof.Lunaphiles Wrote: Atheists will usually claim that they have no dogma - that they do not believe in things that are not supported by valid evidence.
We begin this discussion with the recent argument:

(March 31, 2020 at 9:42 pm)Belacqua Wrote: Maybe it would clarify things to be stricter about the word "secular." 

I can guarantee you that it would be extremely beneficial to atheists to get a bit stricter about several words that are significant to the atheists - including the definition of atheism. You have all heard of the relative degrees of atheism, "weak," and "strong," which are absolutely absurd; and only prove that there is a problem with the definition of atheism.

Sorry, but what is absurd is the above.

Theism is the belief in the existence of a god or gods, especially belief in one god as creator of the universe

The "A" prefix means, without. So, atheism simply means, without the belief in a god or gods. In other words, if one is not convinced that a god or gods exist (weak atheism), they are an atheist. SOME atheists go further, and claim that there are no gods (strong atheism), but both of these types of atheists, are not convinced that gods exist.

Quote:The problem starts with the incorrect definition of "theism" - belief in gods. Atheists unwittingly dispute this definition when they argue that theists have to be indoctrinated to believe in gods. But then they falsify their correction by claiming that a child is born an atheist and has to be indoctrinated, or that atheists have no doctrine or dogma. A person cannot be an atheist, if they are unaware of the theist doctrine. Atheism is not a disbelief, or non-belief, or what ever other convoluted descriptions atheists generate to avoid the correct description that atheism is a doctrine that opposes theist doctrine as the basis for public policy.

I have never encountered an atheist that thinks that to be a theist one must have been indoctrinated in order to believe in gods. Any belief in gods, whether indoctrinated or not, defines someone as a theist.

I agree, the claim that everyone if born an atheist is incorrect. One has to be able to cognitively understand the god claims, and evaluate them, in order to be an atheist or a theist.

Quote: Atheism is not a disbelief, or non-belief, or what ever other convoluted descriptions atheists generate to avoid the correct description that atheism is a doctrine that opposes theist doctrine as the basis for public policy.

This so wrong, it is not even wrong. It is fractally wrong.

Atheism is simply the disbelief in the existence of gods. What you are describing is "anti-theism". Yes, anti-theists are also atheists, not all atheists are anti-theists.

YOu do know there are plenty of deists (a subset of theism) that also oppose theism as the basis for public policy. They are certainly not atheists.

Atheism is simply a response to a single claim. If one believes that at least one god existe, they are are theist. If one is not convinced of the god claims made by theists, they are an atheist. All this other crap you are trying to tack on to atheism is something else.

Quote:Atheism is not the proper opposite of theism. Humanism is the proper opposite.

Wrong again.

First of all, there are pleny of theists that are also humanists. A high percentage of deists, for example.

Quote:Theism is the ontological doctrine that suggests that there is a supernatural dimension of human existence that causes and defines reality.Humanism is the ontological doctrine that suggests that humans define reality.Atheism is the political doctrine that opposes theist doctrine for the basis of public policy.Secularism is the ontological doctrine of no bias.Religion is the practice of exercises for the maintenance of dignity.[/list]

A child is born secular - not atheist.

Not sure where you got that definition from, but the only definitions I find are similar to this one:

Humanism - an outlook or system of thought attaching prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters. Humanist beliefs stress the potential value and goodness of human beings, emphasize common human needs, and seek solely rational ways of solving human problems.

Humanism does not have ontology to it.

Quote:Atheism is the political doctrine that opposes theist doctrine for the basis of public policy.Secularism is the ontological doctrine of no bias.Religion is the practice of exercises for the maintenance of dignity.

Again, you are defining anti-theism, not atheism.

Your definition of secularism is nonstandard also. Where did you find this definition?

Cambridge dictionary defines secularism as; the belief that religion should not be involved with the ordinary social and political activities of a country