RE: Thanks for creating a forum with real debate!
March 6, 2013 at 1:34 am
(This post was last modified: March 6, 2013 at 1:36 am by FallentoReason.)
(March 6, 2013 at 12:17 am)jstrodel Wrote:(March 5, 2013 at 8:41 pm)FallentoReason Wrote: Atheists can't be grouped together. Tell me what these people have in common (apart from a lack of belief in god obviously):
Atheist Buddhist
Atheist who believes in paranormal events (ghosts etc)
Atheist whose philosophical world view is solipsism
Atheist Taoist
Atheist who supports communism
Atheist who supports democracy
I would distinguish between the atheists who are Buddhist and Taoist from the western atheists.
That is true that there are differences between atheists that believe in paranormal events and that culture.
In my mind, the vast majority of atheists that I meet in America (I realize, not the center of the world or exhaustive of the atheist movement) fall into the category of people that put great stock in enlightenment epistemological notions (this would include liberal and left wing atheists). I would see the atheist movement as being composed, probably 80% by people that follow some sort of enlightenment influenced understanding of evidence, proof, epistemology and the nature of science.
All I was doing was highlighting that this statement is highly ignorant:
Quote:Atheism is certainly not mere absence of belief, atheism is a specific cultural, philosophical movement that has its own values and advocacy that surround its epistemological stances, which are far from being self evident.
Is it reasonable to assume that an Atheist Chinese Taoist & an Atheist Swedish Solipsist both fit into the same "specific cultural [and] philosophical movement" purely because they share the one thing in common; a lack of belief in god(s)?
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it" ~ Aristotle