(September 4, 2008 at 3:19 pm)josef rosenkranz Wrote: There is absolutely legitimate for every member of the forum to have his own opinion about the definition of Atheism.
This matter has a vital importance for atheism as an idea so that it should not be exagerated from time to time to reopen the dicussion of how atheism is to be defined.
Without entering in the whole definition the essence of it circles around the key words "disbelief"or disprove"of God.
To my opinion the use of both key words are in a certain way disminishing the core of atheism.
What does it mean "disbelief"?
It is the opposite of belief ,a thing we do'nt b e l i e f that it exists,
bears the nuance that we are not a 100% sure of it.
The definition "disprove of God" means that we have a direct prove ,a scientific one of his nonexistence ,which we obviously have not.
To my opinion the key word is "denial "of the existence of God.
We deny the existence of God as a material entity not because of "disbelief "or "disprove" but because we k n o w that He is a creation of mankind.
We k n o w without the slightest doubt that all Holly Scriptures of every religion ,whithout any exception were written by human beings.
We are not only sure that he is a creation of man but we also k n o w
why he did it:to satisfy his spirtual needs and to help him in his daily struggle for life.
The denial of the existence of God extents to all beliefs in supranatural
powers colateral to religion ,the belief in Destiny included.
May be that famous atheist philosophers have better definitions of atheism but thay does not mean that we have to live in the shadow of importatnt men.
There are a lot of definitions for atheism on the internet, all of them pretty similar. Since you appear to be a Christian I chose this one.
"The lack of belief in a god and/or the belief that there is no god. The position held by a person or persons that 'lack belief' in god(s) and/or deny that god(s) exist."
I found it at a Christian Apologetics website here.
http://www.carm.org/atheism/terms.htm
I think the above definition pretty well sums up what atheism is. However, not all atheists take the 'lack belief' or 'deny' stance towards god(s), for example,
"Theological noncognitivism - is the argument that religious language, and specifically words like 'God' (capitalized), are not cognitively meaningful. Some thinkers propose it as a way to prove the nonexistence of anything named "God". It is sometimes considered to be synonymous with Ignosticism."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theological_noncognitivism
"Ignosticism - the view that the question of whether or not God exists is inherently meaningless because (1) the notion of God has no consistent definition among the various religious factions, and (2) all definitions of God refer to words that do not point to anything verifiable or testable in the 'real world' but only to presupposed 'attributes' extracted through an arbitrary collection of other words."
http://www.ignosticism.org/
(September 4, 2008 at 3:19 pm)josef rosenkranz Wrote: Finally I woul like to emphasize that to my opinion one can not be an atheist whithout being convinced of the law of indeterminism ,(known also as randomness or hazard or chaos) without what one falls in the pitfall of Destiny.
An opinion based on your flawed understanding of atheism. All an atheist has to be convinced of is their views regarding god(s) as per the definitions provided by Brick-top and myself.
"May God bless her, and all who sail in her" - Florence Ismay, at the launching of the Titanic