Is Atheism Intellectual Cowardice?

[The Grand Nudger]

"I don't believe in god therefore I don't need to learn anything else"...

Yeah, you know what, Im gonna call bullshit on that one Polaris, I think your "few" is equal to my "none". By all means, if you've actually encountered someone who has said something like this, send em my way to bitchslap em, but I'm willing to bet that you haven't.

[Angrboda]

"I don't believe in god therefore I don't need to learn anything else"...

Yeah, you know what, Im gonna call bullshit on that one Polaris, I think your "few" is equal to my "none". By all means, if you've actually encountered someone who has said something like this, send em my way to bitchslap em, but I'm willing to bet that you haven't.

I think you will find a portion of atheists who aren't "life long learners" just as you will in any group. The question is rather is the relative size of this group tangibly, quantifiably larger for atheists on account of their atheism or not. Lacking seeing specific evidence that this is the case, I'm going to maintain skepticism and withhold belief of this notion until I have reasonably compelling evidence. "Polaris' personal experience" doesn't feed my bulldog.

Moreover, while life long learning does have important benefits for anyone, especially to general health and fitness, I wouldn't make a moral or other judgement about someone simply because they lack this trait. That's being normative about something which is probably just a matter of natural variation, and I don't think that makes sense.

Myself, I love to learn. I'm also rather lazy. Neither of these necessarily make me a better or worse person in and of themselves.

[genkaus]

Nope. On general academia. A few atheists compare themselves to the stereotypical theist and get the impression they don't need to further their lifelong education because they are just content with up-staging Fundies. Again, thankfully, these atheists are few and far between. The only reason they even show up at all is because of the pervasiveness of the internet.

"I don't believe in god therefore I don't need to learn anything else"...

Yeah, you know what, Im gonna call bullshit on that one Polaris, I think your "few" is equal to my "none". By all means, if you've actually encountered someone who has said something like this, send em my way to bitchslap em, but I'm willing to bet that you haven't.

I'm gonna call bullshit on both here. Just being an atheist does not put any obligation on anyone to engage in lifelong education. In fact, I think most of the atheists would fall into this category. They'd say to themselves "Okay, religion is bullshit and there is not god. But that doesn't mean I have to go around looking for answers to all the things religion supposedly provided answers to. Questions about quantum physics, the origin of universe, the origin of life etc are not relevant ot my life. What is relevant is how that fucker Johnson is gonna screw me out of the promotion."

I used to be one of those atheists. I became an atheist during the course of my education and was perfectly alright focusing on my job and the rest of my life. I felt no need nor obligation to educate myself on anything. If and when I did encountered theistic arguments, I could easily use my pre-existing knowledge to counter their claims - they were quite sufficient in that regard. And what's more, two or three atheists I do know in my personal life are the same. They don't care about debating online or discussing god and they have no interest in expanding the horizons of their knowledge in any way that doesn't personally benefit them.

The only reason I'm here is because I enjoy it. I enjoy debating and I enjoy learning new things - even though I'm not obliged to do either.

[CapnAwesome]

I'm rather curious if the thread starter takes the same agnostic position with other supernatural beliefs as he does with god. Is denying astrology intellectual cowardice? Is it wrong to take a position on the existence of ghosts? I think more likely if a gun was held to his head and he had to say 'does god exist or not' He would probably take a position, and that position would probably be that there is no god.

Yes, I admit that I cannot 'know' with certainty that there is no god. If I lived my entirely life not taking a position on things that I couldn't know with 100% certainty, I would never be able to leave my couch.

[The Grand Nudger]

You used the -excuse of being an atheist- as the reason behind your in-curiousness (with regards to general academia, no less) Genk?

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-Atheism is only intellectual cowardice if any atheist foolishly uses the excuse of being an atheist for not needing to continue the lifelong passion of studying and expanding one's knowledge -of my god-....I've seen it but I am glad it is quite rare.-

Fixed that for you troll.

Nope. On general academia. A few atheists compare themselves to the stereotypical theist and get the impression they don't need to further their lifelong education because they are just content with up-staging Fundies. Again, thankfully, these atheists are few and far between. The only reason they even show up at all is because of the pervasiveness of the internet.

[System of Solace]

Diffidus-
1. You display an inability to understand what agnostic/gnostic atheism/theism are.
2. You claim making assertions (atheism/theism) is cowardly while staying on a sort of borderline (agnosticism) is not.

[Darkstar]

Atheism is only intellectual cowardice if any atheist foolishly uses the excuse of being an atheist for not needing to continue the lifelong passion of studying and expanding one's knowledge....I've seen it but I am glad it is quite rare.

Err...but isn't the notion that goddidit far more likely to stifle the desire to learn? A better question would be "Is theism intellectual cowardice, or do they honestly believe that there is no evidence for evolution?" (I know that not all theists deny evolution, but enough do...you could replace evolution with anything else theists don't learn about because they are convinced goddidit)

[Omni314]

Intellectually, there is not much difference between an Atheist and a Theist. As a species we have only existed for a miniscule amount of time compared to the age of the universe(~14 Billion years according to Scientists). Of this time we have only been studying Science in a rigorous sense for ~ 300 years. It is no exageration to say that, although we have learned a lot in that time, we have much to learn in the future. In fact, it is not just that we do not know everything, but we do not even know how much we don't know.

From this it follows that a claim that God does not exist can only be made on the grounds of probability, based upon current scientific knowledge. But probability is only based upon uncertainty and therefore, any claim that God does not exist must be, in the end, a belief (even if based upon the latest empirical and scientific evidence). From this perspective an Atheist and a Theist both share something in common - belief.

Atheism cannot, therefore, be ascerted based upon certain knowledge. Therefore, it follows that the truly honest position of any member of humanity is Agnostic. It is intellectual cowardice, on the part of Atheists, not to accept the rational conclusions that reason leads to - namely, that no definitive statement can be about the existence/or not of God, due to lack of knowledge.

Does that make the belief the unicorns are fiction and 2+2≠5 cowardly?
Also you seem to have made the mistake of thinking atheist and agnoistic are interchangable terms. It's; theist or atheist AND gnostic or agnostic.

[Whateverist]

Oh gawd .. it lives .. IT LIVES!!!!!

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What I think is cowardly is running from uncertainty by adopting the swagger of a fundamentalist. The correct response to the theist challenge "you have no more evidence that God doesn't exist" shouldn't be "oh yes I do". It should be "so fucking what?"