Your 3 main reasons

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

Perhaps my understanding of the word is slightly wrong but I wouldn't say it was a complete erroneous use of the word

That's nice, but I would.

The word 'atheism' comes from the Greek 'atheos" a=not theos=god. An atheist is simply a person who doesn't believe in gods. Nothing else is implied or may be inferred. Atheism does not meet any of the criteria for an ideology you cited. There are no common beliefs. None.


Bored now.

.

[iamatheist]

For the record, no one gives a shit about what your avatar looks like or what you say when you sign off ... we just know that TYPICALLY, people with no "personality" attached to their threads are OFTEN hit & runners or liars or looking for some lame set-up - never to be seen again. It didn't help your case that you jumped right into a topic that often draws those exact kind of people. So ... we were cautious ... Simple really, isn't it.

Yeah, perfectly simple.. I see the obvious now the more I read the forums but surely simply an answer... or just not to reply would have been easier

You insulted everyone on this site by calling its members spineless and yet you still wish for them to join you in intellectual debate?!? Why would anyone want to bantor with you now?

Read my post again, I did not call anyone spineless, I said that the first two posts gave me such an impression (i.e why treat neww members as such) and then went on to say that a mistrust and hiding of belief was the spine i was accusing them of lacking... In the hopes of forcing some sort of intelligent rebuttle or maybe an answer to the original question

I believe I have been more than reasonable in my answers and my subsequent explanations of them, and also with regards to..

Especially when your 3 reasons offer nothing we haven't seen 100 times before

Hey new member here, and second of all you tell me something ANYONE on here hasn't heard before?

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Bored now.

Me too, so why choose my choice of words to be your only subject in that reply

[Rayaan]

List the 3 points that you would make if you tried to convince a stalwart Religious believer (theist) over to non-belief (a-theist). And give reasons why you chose those 3.

Simply a thought provoking exercise.

Here's a thread with a similar question:
What is your favoured argument FOR atheism

I think it's relevant to your topic ... and you can also figure out the top 3 arguments for atheism ... by looking at the poll results and the replies.

[fr0d0]

My name is purposefully ambiguous

You think!?

[Violet]

....
Spineless, simply one word sums up the first impression you guys have given me.. I was not here as a 'troll' or to be passing you comments on to anyone.. simply to further my knowledge and find out about fellow atheists

You call me spineless when you've never had the opportunity to stroke my spine? Surefire way to never bed me

If one wishes to further their knowledge and find things out about people by interacting with them... i find that being personable in your interactions is the best way to achieve that end. If your goal really was only to know us better and to further your knowledge and not to become a part of our community... then why would you not simply 'lurk' through the threads and learn both about the arguments and about us by doing such?

I am Atheist to the bone, not only do I not believe I am of the schooling that not only religion but also a belief in god of any description has far more negative impacts than good and if you have any direct questions send 'em at me (yes, i realise one of you is a Deist, but being open and precise about what you believe is the 'spine' that I am claiming you lack)

Disregarding your odd use of English grammar in the first sentence that makes it very difficult to read... some of our better members are theists (Ie: Tackatack, fr0d0, and Rayaan come to my mind). We also have not one... but several deists, some of them being rather good members.

Again with the claiming we lack spine... how very quaint

I have posted this exact thread on a lot of boards from atheism to religious ones, under the same ambiguity and so far you guys... my 'brothers in ideology'.. are the only ones to act like this

I should think we would respond to such commands in distaste... we are a discussion (and debate) forum. We also require you to be respectable before we will respect your wishes, and starting out by alternately insulting us and commanding us is hardly going to provide that.

According to the quote... you appear to be a copy+pasting (troll?) that is bouncing around with zero desire to be part of a community. Precisely why should we respond to your post if it is your intention to move on without hanging around at least a little?

Maybe put less thought into what avatar or witty signature you're 'gonna have this week' and start talking about things that matter to you/society/the members of this board... Otherwise don't post on it, simple really isn't it

As it turns out, most spammers/trolls do not have an avatar or signature. They also typically post a thread with a topic just like this one and either 'hit+run' or post singularly in that thread while flaming people.

[Frosty]

You're approaching this the wrong way, theists are the claimants who are asserting god exists and they have the burden of proof, theists should be providing a reason to believe it's not the job of the atheist to disprove god.

The best you can do is investigate why a the theist believes and then find the inevitable faulty logic in their thinking and address it.

[Violet]

You're approaching this the wrong way, theists are the claimants who are asserting god exists and they have the burden of proof, theists should be providing a reason to believe it's not the job of the atheist to disprove god.

Depends, does the atheist believe that there is no god(s), or do they not believe that there either is or is not a god(s)?

The best you can do is investigate why a the theist believes and then find the inevitable faulty logic in their thinking and address it.

I take it you haven't yet challenged Ryft to a philosophical debate about the christian god?

[lilphil1989]

....
Spineless, simply one word sums up the first impression you guys have given me...

Maybe put less thought into what avatar or witty signature you're 'gonna have this week' and start talking about things that matter to you/society/the members of this board... Otherwise don't post on it, simple really isn't it

Sorry, but you don't get to come into our forum and start making demands on our behaviour.

[Violet]

My, 3 reasons

1. Perhaps most obviously and maybe a cop-out, i start with the atrocities undertaken in the name of a deity. This is fairly obvious and needs no reasoning, however i will explain that while this is my main argument against religion it is not necessarily an argument against the religious at large

And you wouldn't say that stalin's regime wasn't atrocious?

I think it is fairly difficult to notice, and needs a great deal of scientifically verifiable evidence to support it for me to believe it.

This is a really lame main point against religion, as I understand it. 2 and 3 weren't up to snuff either

2. My second being an idea springing from the dark ages, so called because of the lack of intelligent thought to come out of that era, provoked not wholly but mainly by the fear of going against the rulings and laws of the church for fear of imprisonment or worse yet an ETERNITY of damnation in a literal "yes its underneath you" hell. And is basically the drag-factor on moral, scientific and social understanding of the world around us.. the tendency for a religious person to disregard evidence of anything that makes their 'god' seem less likely

Anecdote + failure to understand subjectivity as it relates to evidence = ... point?

3. My final point in my "top 3" would have to be the undeserved sense of worth that religion encourages, self worth comes from achievements in life, and I don't mean your first steps or any other meaningless task in the grand scheme of things... A perfect human would use the limit of his intellect and the entirety of the time possible that he has to further the species, solve issues and better the lives of those around him near and far... And while religion teaches this, there is a constant double standard that they must better your life by engaging you in battle (whether metaphorically or literally) and CHANGING it

A person's sense of worth is separated from religion by moderates, it only either lowers or increases on extreme ends. In which case we can safely say that it isn't religion that changes one's worth of self: it is how extremely high or low they value their life in relation to their causes.

The original question was to find out exactly what people hold as their own main reasons... why do you choose not to believe when so many choose to, given the same evidence... but i guess hope of ever finding that out has been lost in argument now? Or by some 'divine intervention' are you guys gonna start talking

We are talking. We are not talking about our '3 main reasons' that we disbelieve in gods because of, but we are still talking.

[theVOID]

3 Reasons:

1. To posit that an omniscient god created the universe requires you believe that, in the state of affairs that caused the universe, there existed the knowledge necessary to describe every single imaginable detail about the universe, the position and momentum of every single particle throughout time and space - This means you believe that the state of affairs that caused the universe was vastly more complex than the initial state of the universe affairs it's self.

To say that the universe is so complex that it must have been caused by an even more complex being is entirely irrational.

2. God is inconsistent with our background knowledge - You look at all of the knowledge that we have about minds and beings and it becomes quite abruptly apparent that this "god" is inconsistent with most, if not all of it. For instance, he is an immaterial mind, we have knowledge of billions of minds and no knowledge of immaterial minds, thus to posit one exists is to do so with out any justification. This is not to say that God cannot possibly exist because we have no evidence of immaterial minds, it is to say that you are unjustified in believing that such a thing exists as an explanation for anything.

Using an argument from best explanation "God" entirely fails the category of consistency with background knowledge.

3. The vast majority of conceptions of God simply cannot be coherently expressed, most definitions of deities are either incoherent, impossible, internally inconsistent or just so poorly conceived of that they are literally nonsense. If you want to say that you are rational in believing in God then before we get down to any matters of argument or evidence, epistemic justification and probabilities a concept must be coherently defined - Excuses such as "God is mysterious" or "It is beyond our comprehension" are just other ways of saying "I'm talking shit".