Around the forum from time to time, I've seen posts about how atheism is only the rejection of the god(s) claim. In such posts, people have said that it is possible to be an atheist and still be spiritual.
Atheism, in my understanding, is the lack of belief in god(s), due to the fact that there is no evidence for them.
My question is this: are there any atheists on the forum who believe in anything for which there is no evidence? because if you do, I hope you can see how this is intellectually dishonest.

Why would it be intellectually dishonest? Being an atheist doesn't automatically mean you're rational, nor does it mean you disbelieve due to lack of evidence, as you reckon.

I believe that it is stastically likely that there is life elsewhere in the universe. Not certain, mind you.

Go ahead and tell me how intellectually dishonest that is.

(January 8, 2014 at 9:58 pm)Napoléon Wrote: nor does it mean you disbelieve due to lack of evidence, as you reckon.

Are there any other reasons not to believe in the existence of something?

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(January 8, 2014 at 10:01 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote: I believe that it is stastically likely that there is life elsewhere in the universe. Not certain, mind you.

Go ahead and tell me how intellectually dishonest that is.

I wouldn't say that is intellectually dishonest. Life on Earth itself is evidence that it is possible for life to exist elsewhere in the universe.

Life elsewhere is a high statistical possibility though. I mean before we wouldn't be able to make that statement, but now that we know the universe is really huge and there are other planets that have conditions for life and we've seen protein formation in jars and stuff, it's not that big of a leap to suppose there is life as it is to suppose there isn't life. Right? Not saying we know, but from what we know, it's more reasonable to suppose there is life, if we're going to suppose anything.

You mean like the resurrection?

(January 8, 2014 at 10:02 pm)Sejanus Wrote: Are there any other reasons not to believe in the existence of something?

You seriously can't think of any?

I think when we say that as atheists, that it's possible to believe in other "supernatural" things while not believing in a god, comes down to a response to theists.

Often times we're hit with, "Oh, you're an atheist, so you don't believe in <insert concept here> either."
It's just a response to show that aliens, ghosts, dragons, whatever, etc, has nothing to do with atheism. Atheism means you don't believe in a deity, nothing more. This is just to prevent them from adding more meaning to the word that isn't there.

(January 9, 2014 at 9:06 am)LostLocke Wrote: I think when we say that as atheists, that it's possible to believe in other "supernatural" things while not believing in a god, comes down to a response to theists.

Often times we're hit with, "Oh, you're an atheist, so you don't believe in <insert concept here> either."
It's just a response to show that aliens, ghosts, dragons, whatever, etc, has nothing to do with atheism. Atheism means you don't believe in a deity, nothing more. This is just to prevent them from adding more meaning to the word that isn't there.

Exactly.

Whilst it may indeed be true that you'd be hard pushed to find an atheist who believes in dragons, this is entirely irrelevant to being an atheist. Indeed, if no atheists believed in a dragon of any sort, this would not be because they are atheists. It would be because they have applied the same reasoning to why they disbelieve in claims of deities to that of dragons.

This sort of fallacious reasoning gets more insidious when terms like 'secularism' are thrown into the equation. A lot of people purposefully distort the word secular to become almost synonymous with atheism, when really it's nothing of the sort, and bares no relevance whatsoever.

Again, whilst it may indeed be true that all atheists are also secularists, it doesn't thus mean that all secularists are atheists.

When someone says something particulary stupid I try to believe they meant it ironically. It keeps me sane.