(January 2, 2014 at 1:49 pm)Get me Rex Kramer! Wrote: Violet - Video number 9 was the best I think. Thanks for taking the time.
cantor - good point and exactly counter to what I've been saying. If atheism is a simple fact (Pedro 1. happens to be born in spain 2. he has a sister 3. he doesn't happen to believe in a God), then it isn't a philosophy, or a doctrine, or perhaps even a choice. It's just a description.
However anything that you are isn't a description, but something real and meaningful. An atheist therefore could be meaningfully so without having any consequences for them personally within their lifetime. For those of us who may affect believers (or even influence the development of other people's atheism) it is certainly at the very least a point of contention and sometimes is driven by a real interest in the truth. Atheism has at least the personal consequence of having not accepting something socially acceptable, socially enabling and in many places enforceable. Atheism is a philosophy because it has philosophical antecedence and consequences that are very important both for us and for others. The reason we use a description, after all, is to describe something worth talking about.
There is also the internal method for deciding that atheism is a philosophy - the fact that its principles aren't established through math, or anything else, but in and through philosophy.
People who study philosophy never refer to 'a philosophy'. Your post is just babble and bears no relationship whatsover to anything in Any Philosophy department.
Atheist is just a description of someone who does not believe in god. That's it. It is not an ethical system or praxis. Atheism has no principals other than not beleiving in God.
