Has atheism made you different?

[The Grand Nudger]

At what point did you stop understanding the point being made, you clearly had your hands on it a few pages back?

[Mister Agenda]

Can atheism ever compel someone to do something?

Has atheism ever motivated you to do anything?

Can atheism affect your character?

No. Neither can mere theism.

The part where you get confused is where you start and stop at atheism. How much would you know about someone if you knew only that they were a theist? Next to nothing. That's also how much you know about an atheist if you don't know anything else about them.

You don't know if I'm a communist, a rationalist, a Buddhist, a humanist, a nihilist, a secularist, a Raellian, a combination of some of the above or something more surprising if you only know I'm an atheist, and that means you can't know what motivates me. Because it's the other things, not the atheism, that motivate us.

If I'm an old-school Soviet-style communist I might be motivated to try to implement a state free of religion. If I'm a rationalist I might be more concerned with your spelling and grammar than changing the government. If I'm a secular humanist I want a world with freedom of religion and less poverty and more education. You don't know what I want if you don't know more about me than that I'm an atheist.

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If you were to logically necessitate that there were no teapot then surely you would believe there was no teapot? Are you telling me you would have no belief about the teapot in this situation? Like if someone said to you - "Do you believe there is no teapot" you would say "I don't believe anything about that teapot"....

I'd say that's strange...

So you don't have any beliefs about God? You don't believe it's imaginary? So you accept the possibility (though maybe slight) that God exists?

Most of us do accept that slight possibility. Most of us are agnostic atheists. One of the things it's helpful to know about someone in addition to whether they're an atheist.

Believing there is no teapot would be a belief, although pretty justifiable, it's not something one can know for sure, so it's not knowledge.

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So if someone said "I do not believe in God so I avoid churches"

They wouldn't really be talking sense... I mean it is a non-sequitur really...

I see.

So no-one could ever be compelled to do something because they have no belief in God - it has no bearing in their actions...

That's deep!

Everyone agree?

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So you hold no beliefs about god?

What do you know regarding God?

I don't believe in God and I go to church. Q.E.D.

What would keep me out of churches is a lack of desire to attend or a belief that I shouldn't. Note that I could be a theist and think the same thing. You're trying to get atheism and theism to do too much work.

Being a theist doesn't mean you go to chuch (or mosque, or temple, etc.). Being an atheist doesn't mean you don't.

[frz]

It's a shame that prejudice is so rife here

Against what or who? You are one started this thread calling atheists believers and putting words in everyone's mouth about an atheist is and how it so some sort of motivation to base their actions on in society. It is one thing to ask a question only then to proceed to answer it for the people you ask the question to. Is that how you theist folks do things?

It is obvious theists have a very narrow view of anyone who doesn't follow their world view.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

It's a shame that prejudice is so rife here

[Angrboda]

Dawud. In no particular order.


1. You're a monumental douchebag.
2. You're conflating atheism the social movement, atheist the self-identity, and being an atheist. I'm relatively certain that lacking a belief never motivated anybody to do something in and of itself. Centuries worth of bronze age Egyptians did not believe in Allah and their not believing in Allah had no effect on them.
3. Even if "atheism" in some nebulous sense motivates or affects atheists in certain ways, what is important is not that mere possibility but the specific ways in which atheism motivates or changes an atheist's behavior (I'll get to Stalin in a minute). In no way is it comparable to the way in which religion affects the religious, and no pointing of fingers at what atheists do or have done is going to whitewash what religious fucktards do and have done. It doesn't balance the motivational scales at all. Or have you forgotten that your Muslim brothers continue to blow themselves and innocent men, women, and children up in the name of Allah? That's an effect we can see.
4. Christians and Muslims seem to want, actually desperately need, to drag everybody down to their level. This displays an obvious inferiority complex, as well as a guilty conscience. It sounds to me that you're aware of what the real problem is, and it isn't atheists or atheism.
5. As noted elsewhere, as long as you're stuck in the paradigm of belief and lack of belief, you will not be able to successfully complete your project.
6. As someone who has studied psychology and the human mind her whole life, it's clear you're relying on a mix of folk psychology and a few follies of your own thrown in to explain the behavior of atheists. In a nutshell, you don't have the first fucking clue about real psychology, so anything you do demonstrate ends up built upon nonsense beliefs about psychology.
7. Regarding Stalin, and the Communists in general. First, in addition to being a tu quoque argument to excuse religious evils, and not connecting with the behavior of atheists generally, it shows a remarkable ignorance of history. The communists persecuted religion because according to communist philosophy, religion hindered and impeded the development of the ideal communist state, and therefore to engage in religious practice was a crime against the proletariat. Just as in the previous example of atheists reacting to theism, communists were reacting to what they perceived to be a threat to the good of society, namely religion. It was a reaction to what they saw as the harmful effects of religion, though those harmful effects were defined considerably differently than contemporary atheists define them, and than those outside Marxist, socialist politics might have defined them. They weren't promoting atheism for atheism's sake. So your whole point is botched by the particulars. More than that, however, I will agree with you that there are extremes in combating religion which are not justified by the potential fruits; however, I would evaluate the justifiability of a reaction to religion on the merits of the individual case, not based on a stereotyped response that reacting to religion negatively is always wrong, nor that atheism in some sense 'causes' any unjustifiable reactions.


I'll also admit that your posts, not my religious beliefs, are motivating me to learn more about Islam and Muslims, not in the interests of peace, but simply to become a more effective weapon against your kind.

[Dragonetti]

You are born an atheist. Religion is taught!

[CleanShavenJesus]

No, it has not.

[Whateverist]

By way of answering the original post .. yes, I have noticed some changes since losing my religion.

I talk to myself a hell of a lot less for one thing. When I was in early elementary school I imagined God was tuned into my wave length 24/7. Now I just talk with other people and consider that an improvement.

I also tend not to dwell on what might be the 'best' thing to do in every situation morally. Fuck it. I never eat babies mind you but I don't weep over every ant I step on. Hell, as a gardener I am quite content to squish the life out of a snail with my bare hands or toss an elderly, less productive plant into the compost. So I guess you might say I get less sentimental over the small stuff.

But the change my wife just can't stop talking about is the increase in that certain part of this man's anatomy. Now she has to use both hands when she gives me oral. I'm afraid I may have ruined her cock sleeve for lesser, more theistically inclined men. So it's probably true that once you go atheist, you don't go back.

[Silver]

I figured this was relevant here:

[JDS]

Well if I said there was a teapot flying around in the debris ofspace you would not be compelled to believe me (there is no evidence) - but to believe that there is no teapot would be to have belief. Like if there was an agnostic regarding the teapot who said "it doesn't matter it doesn't affect me!" - they wouldn't believe either way. But if you said to them "no - there is no teapot" that would be quite different - they could believe your statement or not: it is a claim about the way the universe is...

Teapots exist and space debris exists, we have observed both. It would not be impossible for a teapot to be in orbit among other space junk circling earth.

However, gods exist only in fables and myths. Nobody has ever seen one, there is absolutely no evidence of a god.