Athiesm is a Faith?

[downbeatplumb]

Atheism is not a faith. Neither is it a belief, an ideology or a religion. It is simply a lack of belief in the existence of a god or indeed gods.

That much is correct.

But

A lot of atheists, especially the kind that join atheist forums™ have a belief that God doesn't exist. That's different to not having a belief. Faith is another word for "belief", esp. where said belief cannot be proven.

So do you believe that Unicorns do not exist.
If you do it makes unicorn non-belief your faith...according to you.

I believe that there is no god for the same reason I believe there is no elephant in my kitchen, lack of evidence for the positive position.

There is a difference in a belief in a positive position (I believe elephants live in custard tins) and a belief in a negative position (I do not believe elephants live in custard tins) particularly if the positive position is silly.

[Mark 13:13]

Have you ever really given it a try?

What do you mean by it? Christianity? And, what precisely is menat by really try? If I don't believe I suppose this means I wasn't really trying, right? Why so vague if what you believe is true?

Sry for the confusion... I mean't that you give a fully reasoned out arguement that was irrefutable and fully consistent in its logic to see the outcome. As someone new to the forum and your posts, the display you give so far falls well short of this. Of course i could be doing you an injustice.

[Napoléon]

As someone new to the forum and your posts, the display you give so far falls well short of this.

You are a condescending, presumptuous little cock aren't you?

[Mark 13:13]

Rolf prove he doesn't and I will nananananah

Burden of proof is on the claimant.

By what authority do you claim this rule regarding burden of proof is on the claimant. And does the inability to prove something mean that you are wrong? how many innocent people are dead because the could not prove themselves innocent. I will concede that there is a logic in saying that should I want to convince you of something i believe to be true I should be leading the conversation with some evidence but in reality i'm not trying to prove anything to you so there is no burden, rather I hope to stimulate thought and discussion. As far as proofs you have already constrained the proofs by relegating spiritual and emotional intelligence to a non acceptable proof so i respect your position on this and don't bother to bring this dimension to the discussion. To sum up , I am not going to prove anything I claim and have no need to, but that does not make what i say false.

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which makes no sense if God does exist and exists outside of the scope of human observation and only reveals what God chooses to reveal.
[/quote]

Hahahahaha, you absolute gonad.

The fact you don't quote in context shows you don't understand what I have said or don't want to. I did not in the above say anyone has to believe this just that athiests trying to put up a strawman arguement for the Christian God is ,are not debating properly but rather talking to themselves. and to use a suitable metaphor playing with their own gonads. If you want to attack my beliefs all i ask is you be accurate in what I believe.

[Welsh cake]

Tell you what - when you stop calling Christianity a "religion" we'll stop calling atheism a "faith". Until then, we remain at an impasse.

Don't be so bloody childish. >_>

Christianity is a monotheistic and Abrahamic religion. A faith-based position.

Atheism is none of those, and you know it.

You're just butt hurt because we couldn't give a rat's arse about your beloved magic man concept.

[Mark 13:13]

To answer a few people above who ask about the debate about words let me quote wiki "Depending on the religion, faith is belief in a god or gods or in the doctrines or teachings of the religion. Informal usage of faith can be quite broad, including trust or belief without proof,[1] and "faith" is often used as a substitute for "hope", "trust" or "belief"." I am using the later " belief without proof " for Faith and would contend that both Athiests and Theists if they are honest with themselves will accept that when pushed back to the metaphorical which came first the egg or the chicken will accept that we have no proof beyond the reality we can experience. We both have to accept a contradiction to logic, that being either something always existed or was created from nothing (and i mean nothing as in no fields no energy, real nothing) We theist say God is that something that created the Cosmos and that you can search the Cosmos forever for God but you wont find him there as although we are part of that Cosmos and God is not so therefore we have no absolute proof therefore we believe in our position with faith. Likewise thinking some athiests (in my opinion) would contend that the Cosmos does not need a creator to exist which again is a statement that can never be proved as each time we push back creation we find a new mystery that needs explaining but they have faith that science will finally push back the boundary to a final answer. Other athiest would argue like Einstein in a non personal God alien to the general monotheist God again with no undisputable proof. Of course there is a group of athiest whose only contribition to this is we don't give a sh*t and I would ask them to leave the discussion to those who do give a sh*t because they are just as boring as those who believe in a religion without ever questioning and exploring. As far as those who would like to play with words such as there is a difference between belief and non belief and faith and non faith , are not these 2 statements to follow not saying the same things .. 1) I do not believe you are right ... 2) I believe you are wrong . Its just a subtle way of trying to get out of the honesty of when we try to start at the very begining of the Cosmos be we Athiest or Theist we start with the same uncertainity and make a decision on what we believe without the comfort of absolute proof. Now I will stop for a breather lol.

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As someone new to the forum and your posts, the display you give so far falls well short of this.

You are a condescending, presumptuous little cock aren't you?

MMH well have you read his reason out responses yet to what I wrote? What other conclusion could I reach on what He had said so far? and BTW a little less of the little

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Burden of proof is on the claimant.

By what authority do you claim this rule regarding burden of proof is on the claimant.

Common sense.

An invisible dragon god called Barry is destroying a planet 6000 light years away right now.

Disprove this please, right here:

And does the inability to prove something mean that you are wrong?

Of course not, but it doesn't mean we have to take you seriously. If you're going to make a positive objective statement of fact (God exists) then you'll need to give EVIDENCE to back it up.

how many innocent people are dead because the could not prove themselves innocent.

FALSE EQUIVOCATION

No doubt copy pasted from an apologist website. The old court of law burden of proof fallacy eh? Same old theists, same old tired arguments.

I will concede that there is a logic in saying that should I want to convince you of something i believe to be true I should be leading the conversation with some evidence but in reality i'm not trying to prove anything to you so there is no burden, rather I hope to stimulate thought and discussion.

As far as I can tell this is a flat out lie. You are here only to proselytize as I see it. If you're not here to 'convert' us to your way of thinking, you should respect that this forum, and the majority of its members, will only take claims that have evidence behind them seriously.

We reserve the right to criticize, make fun of, and out right ridicule your beliefs if we choose.

As far as proofs you have already constrained the proofs by relegating spiritual and emotional intelligence to a non acceptable proof so i respect your position on this and don't bother to bring this dimension to the discussion.

Ok, fine. But just to clarify, we relegate them below empirical evidence because they are nonsense terms that can define whatever they want depending on the person providing them (as evidence).

To sum up , I am not going to prove anything I claim and have no need to, but that does not make what i say false.

It also doesn't make it right or, further, worth listening to.

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Oh, and to answer the OP, no, it's not.

[genkaus]

To answer a few people above who ask about the debate about words let me quote wiki "Depending on the religion, faith is belief in a god or gods or in the doctrines or teachings of the religion. Informal usage of faith can be quite broad, including trust or belief without proof,[1] and "faith" is often used as a substitute for "hope", "trust" or "belief"." I am using the later " belief without proof " for Faith

Good. Atleast we are starting at the same page.

and would contend that both Athiests and Theists if they are honest with themselves will accept that when pushed back to the metaphorical which came first the egg or the chicken will accept that we have no proof beyond the reality we can experience.

Now you are just being ridiculous. There can be no proof beyond reality, but as far as our experience goes, we can and do have proof for things that are beyond our capacity to experience.

We both have to accept a contradiction to logic, that being either something always existed or was created from nothing (and i mean nothing as in no fields no energy, real nothing)

This old tripe again! I've never met an atheist who claims that "something was created from nothing". This strawman has never worked before.

We theist say God is that something that created the Cosmos and that you can search the Cosmos forever for God but you wont find him there as although we are part of that Cosmos and God is not so therefore we have no absolute proof therefore we believe in our position with faith.

And we atheists say "Unless you can give us proof for this ridiculous hypothesis, we are not going to believe you." You see? No faith involved on our part.

Likewise thinking some athiests (in my opinion) would contend that the Cosmos does not need a creator to exist which again is a statement that can never be proved as each time we push back creation we find a new mystery that needs explaining but they have faith that science will finally push back the boundary to a final answer.

You see how you contradict your own position here? We've accepted the premise that something has always existed. Instead of making up that something, calling it god and believing in it by faith, we say that it is our spatio-temporally bound universe that has always existed. It is not a faith based position because, by definition, such a universe not existing at some point of time would be logically impossible. Not all of us expect a final answer and not all of us think that science can find it. In fact, not all of us believe that there is such a thing as a final answer.

Other athiest would argue like Einstein in a non personal God alien to the general monotheist God again with no undisputable proof.

Then that person would not be an atheist.

[Mark 13:13]

I agree with a lot of what you say FIDEL from your perspective apart from the apologist point, i use my own ideas and words and can be clumsy as a result. Of course my ideas can't be separated entirely from what I have read and digested elsewhere just as a musician does not compose entirely independent of what they have head before. Common sense is a very vague term. whether you take me seriously or not is your choice. As far as an out and out lie that's also false because from my belief system I cannot change anyone's mind so all I do is stimulate discussion in the hope that I may move people to explore their position more and be open to another truth. As far as you are free to ridicule my posts and I expect such but i'm free to respond. I will leave it to every member to decide if what i'm saying is worth the read or not and do what is sensible for them. If what you are saying is that this forum is only open to athiests and anyone else who has an opinion different from this should stop posting or expect ridicule then its a strange forum and if it is the consensus of the forum then I shall depart and leave you to your one handed clap.

[pocaracas]

We theist say God is that something that created the Cosmos and that you can search the Cosmos forever for God but you wont find him there as although we are part of that Cosmos and God is not so therefore we have no absolute proof therefore we believe in our position with faith.

And how, may I ask, did you come by that proposition?

How has anyone interacted with such an out-of-this-world character?

Do bear in mind that the first claims of divine entities date to over 10000 years ago, when big-bang, gravity, relativity and other scientific discoveries were... lacking.