My issues with Atheism, Lets talk :)

[LoveandLight]

Hey everyone. This is my first post. I'm confused so I'll apologize for the ramble that follows.

I've always been agnostic. My parents went to catholic school and were beaten on a regular basis so they decided to drop organized religion. We never went to church and never talked about religion or god... ever. I've always felt a very spiritual presence in my life - in the eyes of woman, the outdoors, the moon, the rain, mountains, deep meditation, writing music (not the analytical type). In other words you could say I'm agnostic, or an atheist or an agnostic atheist (what the hell am I? haha). I've NEVER believed in 1 or 100 gods, but I've always believed that god was everything - I worship nature, I can FEEL nature, and human connection and that there is a larger power and force at work in the world. I can't prove it... but you can't disprove it. My problem with Atheism in its sole dependence on the scientific method. It is simply a tool to break things down into categories, but creating categories is really just created by humans, its a human process.

In other words, we, as human beings, created EVERYTHING that can actually explain anything. The basis of Atheism seems to be, I'll believe only that which is proven with logic or experiments. But in actually proving anything, your using tools that humans designed. The scientific method was designed by us, just like the bible. Even words are a tool that we designed ourselves... the fact that I read that my soul is created by a firing of neurons, or that love is a chemical reaction... neurons and chemical reactions are really just a matter focusing on one part of a bigger picture and labeling it. A neuron is just a word describing a part of you that YOU are focusing on right now at this moment. Not seeing the forest for the trees, or in other words, not seeing the soul or love for the neurons and chemical reactions... Science in general is really just breaking things down and breaking them down again, and labeling this and categorizing that... It seems like Atheism is based on a million illusions that we created ourselves to try and understand ourselves. But my FEELING of the divine, of spirituality, of ONE with the EARTH and the stars and universe... I can be the universe or I could be a single cell at the same time, its just how I am perceiving it in that moment (is this how Quantum Theory works in a sense too? I'm not all too familiar with it) F**k I'm confused

Isn't Atheism just believing in the scientific method which was created by us. Is Atheism giving humans too much credit? Isn't reality just our consciousness and what we are focusing on at the moment... I mean to me, Atheism can't disprove god either. You can say, "how could god allow such a messed up world." But that would assume that god has human traits and morality. Atheism just seems to be too simplistic for me, its rooted in too many man made concepts. I need a beer my brain hurts.

[KichigaiNeko]

Have one for me!!!

Don't stress it Loveandlight.

'A True Atheist Thinks Of The Gods Constantly, Albeit In Terms Of Denial. Therefore, Atheism Is A Form Of Belief. If The Atheists Truly Did Not Believe, He Or She Would Not Bother To Deny.'....Costable Dorfl (Feet of Clay-Terry Pratchet)

The above is out of a novel and seems to sum it all up. As far as I can understand humans just delight to appear more powerful than the opposition and so we have atheistic debate as the opposition is so vocal.....meh

As for being everthing and nothing at all...(my paraphrase) this is a truth. Just relish the fact that you are asking questions and that the answers will come that make the most sense to you.
Blessed be and welcome to the universe

[TruthWorthy]

Hi love&light, welcome to atheist forums.
Basically being an atheist means not believing in any god or spiritual forces.
Many atheists are interested in the various branches of science, I'm mostly interested in psychology, but I have an interest in physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, etc.
These, for me, aren't pursued for atheist (anti religious) reasons but for my own understanding. As I've come to learn much from other AF members on many different arguments, I'm sure you will too.
Kind regards, TruthWorthy.

[Tiberius]

Atheism has nothing to do with the scientific method. There were philosophical / logical arguments for atheism before science even came along. Some of the great atheist philosophers lived thousands of years ago. Science, and the scientific method, is much more recent.

Nor does science somehow prove atheism, or that atheism somehow "relies" on science. Atheism is the disbelief in gods. I don't see how the existence of gods is a scientific question at all. Science deals with the natural, not the supernatural. It deals with the observable and testable, not the unobservable and untestable.

So yeah, you are very confused if you think atheism is anything but a simple stance on belief in gods.

[LoveandLight]

Thanks for all your posts. I guess I am generalizing Atheism with the many arguments against organized religion on the internet. Most of the proof I hear is scientific but -

"As far as I can understand humans just delight to appear more powerful than the opposition and so we have atheistic debate as the opposition is so vocal.....meh" - KichigaiNeko

That about sums it up. I have read some Atheistic arguments that REALLY pissed me off me because it resembles fundamentalist christianity pushing in the opposite direction.

So If I believe there IS a god, and there ARE supernatural forces and they are beyond what can be explained in both science and philosophy or logic because these are too simplistic (man made). And I feel connected with the earth and the universe spiritually, and... what the hell am I? Agnostic? And is there a "religion" out there, or books and philosophies that you could suggest? I guess I came here to look for a direction, a home.

[TruthWorthy]

I feel connected with the earth and the universe spiritually, and... what the hell am I? Agnostic? And is there a "religion" out there, or books and philosophies that you could suggest?

That sounds a little bit spiritual to me, so you probably find that you have some beliefs in new age spirituality. It can be difficult to find that catagory which suits your point of view because of the amount of fragmentation post modern spirituality has undergone.
Basically they all overlap and segregate/combine etc in innumerable ways, but if you find one that suits your definition and adopt the label, you might need to describe how your views differ.
Otherwise you can say you have your own brand of spirituality like so many others do.

[theVOID]

Hey everyone. This is my first post. I'm confused so I'll apologize for the ramble that follows.

I've always been agnostic. My parents went to catholic school and were beaten on a regular basis so they decided to drop organized religion. We never went to church and never talked about religion or god... ever. I've always felt a very spiritual presence in my life - in the eyes of woman, the outdoors, the moon, the rain, mountains, deep meditation, writing music (not the analytical type). In other words you could say I'm agnostic, or an atheist or an agnostic atheist (what the hell am I? haha). I've NEVER believed in 1 or 100 gods, but I've always believed that god was everything - I worship nature, I can FEEL nature, and human connection and that there is a larger power and force at work in the world. I can't prove it... but you can't disprove it. My problem with Atheism in its sole dependence on the scientific method. It is simply a tool to break things down into categories, but creating categories is really just created by humans, its a human process.

You misunderstand what Atheism means for starters.

Atheism is not a belief system, it tells you nothing about what an individual believes, only that they do not have a belief in god(s).

Atheism is from the latin word Atheos, meaning A (without) Theos (belief in god), If you don't believe in a god you're an Atheist by definition. Agnosticism is an entirely different position and is about Knowledge, again from latin, the word Gnostic which means 'Knowledge' making the word Agnostic mean 'Without Knowledge' - Agnostic Atheism therefore is a lack of a belief of God, not a position that God certainly does not exist. Gnostic atheism is a position that claims that god does not exist.

By spiritual presence i assume you mean some outside force or something inside yourself lighting up? We all know that feeling speak about, people who believe in this fantastical spirit stuff and those who don't, we just don't subscribe to the idea that these things aren't anything but natural phenomenon, just part of being an sentient organic machine on a little blue dot in the vast regions of the cosmos.

In other words, we, as human beings, created EVERYTHING that can actually explain anything. The basis of Atheism seems to be, I'll believe only that which is proven with logic or experiments. But in actually proving anything, your using tools that humans designed. The scientific method was designed by us, just like the bible.

Science is a methodology for examining phenomenon in the universe, it relies on empirical evidence, testability, repeatability. In Science a massive network of relationships between phenomenon is described in a theory, such as the Theory of Relativity or the Theory of Evolution. These are frameworks that provide the best available description of the observable facts in a way that is testable, reliable and makes predictions about events or phenomenon not yet known, in cases hundreds of years before their discovery.

The Bible is a collection of stories that claims to be divinely authored. There is no reason at all to think that anything in that book was divinely inspired.

Even words are a tool that we designed ourselves... the fact that I read that my soul is created by a firing of neurons, or that love is a chemical reaction... neurons and chemical reactions are really just a matter focusing on one part of a bigger picture and labelling it. A neuron is just a word describing a part of you that YOU are focusing on right now at this moment. Not seeing the forest for the trees, or in other words, not seeing the soul or love for the neurons and chemical reactions... Science in general is really just breaking things down and breaking them down again, and labeling this and categorizing that... It seems like Atheism is based on a million illusions that we created ourselves to try and understand ourselves.

1) Nobody worth taking notice of claims that your soul is a firing of neurons, the people who believe in the soul don't want you to think that the soul could be just a word that describes a common natural feeling and the people who don't believe in the soul hate the word for how tainted and ambiguous is is and wouldn't use it to describe anything!

2) A Neuron is a single entity amongst 10^14 other neurons all linked to each other through a mesh forming a vast network of information that we experience as consciousness.

3) Science quantifies things because we learn more from understanding the parts and the parts of the parts etc, and the more we know the better off we all are from the new medicines, technology, agriculture etc it generates.

4) Imho looking deeper at the universe, breaking it all down into parts, helps unveil a far more profound and beautiful truth to the universe than any God myth or supernatural cop out.

But my FEELING of the divine, of spirituality, of ONE with the EARTH and the stars and universe... I can be the universe or I could be a single cell at the same time, its just how I am perceiving it in that moment (is this how Quantum Theory works in a sense too? I'm not THAT familiar with it.) F**k I'm confused

You've obviously been listening to complete bullshit if you think quantum theory states anything even remotely close to that. You should look into some real scientists describing actual quantum theory and how we don't understand it rather than the idiots who think that we can affect reality with our 'consciousness'. The people who spread the quantum consciousness bullshit seriously don't know a damn thing about Quantum theory, you ask them some simple questions about the theory and they can't answer, Deepak Chopra was asked on a lecture video by a student if he could describe Plank Length, an extremely simple feat for anyone who knows anything about QM, and Deepak couldn't answer. He's a guy who sells books on quantum healing and gives talks about Quantum consciousness but he couldn't even answer a stupidly simple question.

Isn't Atheism just believing in the scientific method which was created by us. Is Atheism giving humans too much credit? Isn't reality just our consciousness and what we are focusing on at the moment... thoughts? I need a beer

Atheism is no belief in god.

Reality exists regardless of whether or not anyone is there to see it.

[leo-rcc]

That about sums it up. I have read some Atheistic arguments that REALLY pissed me off me because it resembles fundamentalist christianity pushing in the opposite direction.

I'm not trying to sound callous here, but so what? Just because some atheists piss you off that somehow is the fault of atheism? As pointed out before, atheism is not believing in gods. The reasoning behind this non belief is irrelevant for the position of atheism, and different from person to person.

So If I believe there IS a god, and there ARE supernatural forces and they are beyond what can be explained in both science and philosophy or logic because these are too simplistic (man made).

These are the tools we have to distinguish fact from fiction, as accurate and flawed as we can make it. What use is assuming something else is there if there is no way for us of verifying it's validity? That is why I do not believe, hence my atheism. You say it is because our methods are insufficient, then provide a better method and see if this gods hypothesis works then. As long as all tests for gods give no conclusive evidence, I see no reason to believe in one.

And I feel connected with the earth and the universe spiritually, and... what the hell am I?

Human?

Agnostic? And is there a "religion" out there, or books and philosophies that you could suggest? I guess I came here to look for a direction, a home.

Agnosticism has to do with knowledge of gods and whether or not gods can be known. Belief in gods is not covered by that. You can be agnostic and believe in a god or multiple gods, or be agnostic and not believe in any gods. You can also assert to be gnostic and believe or not believe. One can also be agnostic of many gods but claim gnosticism on the (non-)existence of a particular god.

Either way, gnosticism and agnosticism is not a middle ground position like some people pretend it to be. You either believe in gods or you don't. Whether you can back up that belief or non belief with knowledge is a totally different matter.

As for suggestions, I can't give you some magic book that will make you see "the truth". These things you need to figure out for yourself. You may arrive at totally different conclusions as I do and that is fine by me.

[downbeatplumb]

Thanks for all your posts. I guess I am generalizing Atheism with the many arguments against organized religion on the internet. Most of the proof I hear is scientific but -

"As far as I can understand humans just delight to appear more powerful than the opposition and so we have atheistic debate as the opposition is so vocal.....meh" - KichigaiNeko

That about sums it up. I have read some Atheistic arguments that REALLY pissed me off me because it resembles fundamentalist christianity pushing in the opposite direction.

So If I believe there IS a god, and there ARE supernatural forces and they are beyond what can be explained in both science and philosophy or logic because these are too simplistic (man made). And I feel connected with the earth and the universe spiritually, and... what the hell am I? Agnostic? And is there a "religion" out there, or books and philosophies that you could suggest? I guess I came here to look for a direction, a home.

Ah the fundamentalist Athiest lie again.

There are a lot of things I dont believe in Pink faries, unicorns, gnomes, Santa and of course god.

Am I a fundamentalist Asantaist no I just dont believe in him because there is no (real) proof.
Am I a fundamentalist Agnomeist no I just dont believe because there is no proof.

I could go on.

I am not going to adjust my view without some spectacularly good proof from you, just because you've got a vague feeling there must be something more.

[Tiberius]

The difference between fundamentalist religionists and "fundamentalist" atheists:

Fundamentalist religionists try to force their opinion down your throat and insist you are completely wrong, and that what they say is the only truth.

"Fundamentalist" atheists try to have an open dialog with believers to discuss all opinions equally, and to debate over points of contention.

What is usually a situation of an atheist arguing that things should be fair and representative of all beliefs, comes across to believers (and the ill-informed) as some kind of proselytising. All we want is equality; the right to say what we want, to discuss ideas. We don't want governments to support faith-based initiatives because they have no business doing so. Faith is a person issue, and the more the government stays out of our personal lives, the better.

As I've said before (on numerous occasions), I'm as much against an atheist nation as I am a Christian (or other religion) one. I don't think governments should represent any religious belief, given that those religious beliefs are varying throughout the country.