(January 21, 2018 at 11:30 am)Rev. Rye Wrote:(January 21, 2018 at 10:50 am)CapnAwesome Wrote: It's funny how people have a problem with the word Atheist.
It's too in your face or something. I like it though. Probably for that reason. Brights is ironically the stupidest name ever.
Well, atheist is a negative term because it describes what one doesn't believe in, instead of what one does believe in. That's why I use the word "Freethinker," it describes what I do believe in: freedom of thought and freedom to reach your own conclusions about things. If I lemming off a cliff, it's only because I followed my nose and not the ass of another lemming, as Dennis Miller once said.
This comes closest to my take - some dissatisfaction with having my beliefs characterized by just the fact that I don't believe gods are independent entities in the empirical world. Atheism isn't really about me, it's about defining what's different between me and the religious. It even falls short in communicating what I believe about gods in general. I have opinions about why god belief has been a thing for so long, and am willing to concede they have value to some believers even if literally they lack substance. I think the phenomenon of god belief has the potential to tell us a lot about who we are and how we are wired. Lets study it.
