[Serious] Atheist Dogma

[The Architect Of Fate]

Why should he be tolerant ?

Why should I submit to his inadequate arguments?

Too bad they aren't

[Mr.wizard]

Merriam Webster also lists non-belief, unbelief, and disbelief as synonyms. 

Right, that's what I said.

Mitchell portrays atheism as knowing there are know gods, that's a misrepresentation of atheism. He can use Atheism to mean bananas for all I care but he is misrepresenting the concept.

He uses it in the way that some people use it. You use it a different way. You don't want him to use it that way. 

When you are emperor you can put him in jail.

Lack of belief in something does not require belief in something else. 

In many cases I'm sure that's true.

When we hear and evaluate claims, however, we do so based on criteria of judgment. Thinking people who reject claims have reasons.

It may be that lots of people reject claims based purely on prejudice or force of habit. That's not something to be proud of, and I hope that this is not the case with most atheists. 

Rejecting the claim that God made the stars requires, for thinking people, a number of things we hold to be true. These include, but are not limited to:

~ What the word "God" means.
~ What stars are.
~ How stars are generally thought to be formed. 

If you claim there is no evidence for such a position, then you already have beliefs about what constitutes evidence.

If you reject the claim without having any of those things in your mind then I think you're just allowing it to bounce off your skull for no reason. It's better to have reasons.

Yes rejecting the theistic claim could be for a number of reasons, but I don't see why that would be inconsistent with a lack of belief in a god or gods.

[Belacqua]

I don't see why that would be inconsistent with a lack of belief in a god or gods.

It's not.

[The Grand Nudger]

I reject theistic claims because I don't believe in gods. Same reason I reject deistic claims. Always been that way. I could rattle off reasons™ if other people require them, but I never have.

At the same time, I accept a huge number of religious claims.

I can even offer an actual justification for them that amounts to something a little more thorough than "cuz gods, and they said so". Why do we even consider the items of things set apart and forbidden. Is it because of god belief? No. Gods are a narrative device, a vehicle for those sorts of propositions - each rooted in how we perceive the world as it is, and how we wish the world to be. Believing or not believing in gods has no necessary bearing on the acceptance or rejection of religious claims.

[Prof.Lunaphiles]

What pray tell is a "spiritual" belief (that does not include gods)???  


Is this organized trolling, that SodHead was warning me about?

Are you serious ? Do you think all spirituality requires a god ? 

(I'm sorry, i did not respond to this as other post got my attention and i never got to this one.)

I would say that no spirituality requires a god, because their is no god, just as religion does not require gods; but such a claim coming from you seems to be contradicting your conservative views about definitions of words. So, please enlighten me to the better understanding of spirituality.

[The Grand Nudger]

The belief in an animating force that connects all life would be typical of spiritual beliefs that proceed in the absence of gods. Fairly common in indigenous traditions, and probably representative of a long period in the development of religious beliefs. Burials and symbolic representations of natural objects with use and connection to man predate any evidence of god beliefs by quite some time. Tens of thousands of years.

Believing in spirit, or spirits, is not equivalent to believing in gods. Probably wouldn't be hard to find an atheist who believes in ghosts. Spiritualism, in this context, is probably our oldest religious tradition. We're still burying our dead, still feeling the sense of the numinous, still yearning for and even seeing our dearly departed. That's part of how full modernity is dated. We see recognizable behaviors, 50k years between us and looking at a burial site you learn not just about the person in the grave, but how the people who went to all that trouble were feeling putting them there.

Then we have more complex forms, woodland spirits, river spirits, personifications of natural or cultural forces. Each stuck somewhere between a ghost and a god. There are atheists who believe in these as well. Likely to be a transitional form of belief between animism and ancestor worship, and yet more elaborate notions like deism or theism.

[Prof.Lunaphiles]

Are lizards atheists?

Yes, lizards are atheists. So are rocks, bottles of milk, apples, roadways, roofing tiles, tins of baked beans, pocket calculators, newspapers, steering wheels, onions (pickled as well as fresh), Bibles, insurance companies, hypodermic needles, bicycles, and roast beef sandwiches.

Boru

Absolutely Hilarious. I have been monitoring atheist forums for 18 years, and this is definitely the outrageous extension of the erroneous definition for atheism that I have been looking for to present in my dissertation concerning the need for a reliable knowledge classification system. I would not have been able to generate such a possible claim for fear that atheists would accuse me of straw man, or something that I could not defend.

Thank You.

[The Grand Nudger]

Would you like to maintain that lizards do believe in gods..or..?

[Peebothuhlu]

At work.

Would a hazarded guess be that Prof.Lunaphilez is simply seeking..... 'Clarity' (?) in how the word 'Should' be used?

I mean... the French have an academy that works out such things for their language use.

Pretty sure us Engilsh speakers don't give that much of a fek.

A resply would be interesting/enlightening.

Cheers.

[The Architect Of Fate]

Absolutely Hilarious. I have been monitoring atheist forums for 18 years, and this is definitely the outrageous extension of the erroneous definition for atheism that I have been looking for to present in my dissertation concerning the need for a reliable knowledge classification system.

So because you don't like it .It isn't valid .No that's what's hilarious 

 I would not have been able to generate such a possible claim for fear that atheists would accuse me of straw man, or something that I could not defend.

Too bad you say stuff like this but fail to actually counter 

Thank You.

Your welcome