(March 5, 2013 at 8:03 pm)jstrodel Wrote:(March 5, 2013 at 7:52 pm)whateverist Wrote: What are atheist 'principles'? (How come I never get the memos on these things?) My own atheism is only the logical extension of my agnosticism. I don't embrace, endorse or much care about theism one way or the other, including its negation.
Open inquiry, opposition to censorship and epistemological coercion, respect for rational, impartial inquiry as a primary means of mediating understanding of the world. I would "Enlightenment values" which seem to me to be ubiquitous among the more intellectually mature atheists.
Those are primarily principles of scepticism (or skepticism if you really must] and critical thinking, of which atheism is merely a specialised subset dealing with one issue only. Beyond that there are no universal points by which to categorise atheists.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
