RE: God Became a Mirage
March 20, 2009 at 4:07 pm
(This post was last modified: March 20, 2009 at 4:09 pm by Edward.)
(March 20, 2009 at 6:34 am)EvidenceVsFaith Wrote: Welcome Edward!!!
I do not understand what you mean by "atheist doctrine" exactly...I mean - what doctrines are you talking about?
Atheism itself is simply the absence of belief in God, nothing more, nothing less - by definition. Atheist is not a belief, atheism is not a belief SYSTEM. Atheism is an absence of a belief, an absence of a belief system. One who does not believe in God is an atheist.
What is God? You say you don't believe in it, so what is it that you don't believe in?
Quote:So you can be a spiritual atheist and believe in an afterlife or whatever even - for example. Simply because you're still an atheist because you don't believe in God.
I guess it depends how you define God but I at least...simply define God as the supernatural creator, designer, or the universe, etc.
Bruce Lee for example was an atheist because he didn't believe in God...when asked if he believed in God he replied "To be quite frank...I do not" - (I think I must have paraphrased a bit, IF only the punctuation) .
However I think Bruce Lee did believe in an afterlife..; another time when he was asked if he believed in God he replied "I believe in sleeping"...I wonder if he was referring to an afterlife or something...and I'm pretty sure he did believe in an afterlife I think...but I dunno...
Anyway if you don't believe in God...or any "gods" at all - then you are an atheist by definition. You could believe in many crazy things but its the not believing in God - i.e a supernatural creator - that still would make you an atheist by definition.
OK, so in your opinion, what I hear you to be saying is that God, defined as a supernatural creator of the universe, does not exist. I'm not saying I disagree, but I'd like to see how far this rabbit hole goes. Would you say that God, defined as a supernatural creator of the universe cannot exist?
Quote:I assume you could even believe in Ghosts and an afterlife and lots of weird things etc, etc...but if you don't believe in God - you're still an atheist by definition.
If you believe nature or the universe itself is God...or "God is energy" and use God as a metaphor for the universe or nature itself etc...then I believe that would make you a pantheist...what Dawkins has called "sex-upped atheism"...also thought of as the "Einsteinian religion".
I believe all there is is nature. You can capitalize it (Nature) you can lower-case it (nature), none of that really matters. I think the most logical thing to say about reality is that ultimately, it is nature. Wouldn't that be atheism? There is no god, there is only nature. Or are you going to tell me that atheists don't believe nature exists?
Quote:Because Einstein didn't actually believe in God...he just used God as a metaphor for the universe, nature, etc...
And Einstein described himself as: "a deeply religious non-believer" and he said "This is a somewhat new kind of religion".
A lot of things are said to be quotes of Einstein's. I think about half of them actually are, but if he said the above as you qote him, then I pretty much agree.
Quote:Anyway sorry for the ramble lol...so what do you mean by atheist doctrines? What doctrines are you referring to?
Not at all. You ramble well.
Quote:...And more importantly: Welcome to the forums!!
Thanks!