Myths & Truths About Atheism

[Atheismo]

Thanks Adrian and Kyu, in the future I will hopefully step up to the challenge, if it should ever present itself again.

[dtango]

Atheists believe there is no god: No, atheism is about disbelief in current claims to deity not actually insisting we know there is (indeed cannot be) a god or gods.

I believe it is agnosticism that Kyuuketsuki is describing above.
Dawkins is quite right when he says: “I’d be surprised to meet many people in category 7”.
There are very few of us (…me…) who managed to reach milestone 7 and I am now obliged to clarify that I’m a category 7 atheist as the term atheist alone is not the proper one.

Kyuuketsulki writes that “atheism is about disbelief in current claims to deity.” What about ancient claims to deity? The idea of the deity is not ours. How far back into the past should we look for the origins of the idea, and why is our idea of God different or better than theirs?
The One and Only God of Jews, Chistians and Muslims was born out of the union of the Egyptian gods Amun and Ra.
W.Budge quotes, in the preface to his book “The Egyptian Book of the Dead,” some striking passages, as he says, that the German Egyptologist Brugsch had collected from the Egyptian texts.
A sample of these passages is following.

God is one and alone, and none other existeth with Him.
God is the One, the One who hath made all things.
God is the eternal One, he is eternal and infinite and endureth for ever and aye.
God is truth and He liveth by truth and He feedeth thereon.
God is life and through Him only man liveth.
God hath made the Universe, and He hath created all that therein is.
He is the Creator of what is in this world, and of what was, of what is, and of what
shall be.
God is merciful unto those who reverence Him, and He heareth him that calleth
upon Him.
God knoweth him that acknowledged Him, He rewarded him that serveth Him, and He protected him that followeth Him. (xcii)

The contemporary German Egyptologist, Jan Assmann, writes in his book “The Search for God in Ancient Egypt” the following regarding the birth of Monotheism:

The Theban theology of these decades can be interpreted as an attempt to fill the hyphenated formulation Amun-Re with theological content, that is, to develop a divine concept sufficiently comprehensive to include all the traditions concerning Amun and all those of Re as well.
The pure Amun aspect of the city god and the pure Re aspect of the sun god are connected by the concept of the supreme being who had already emerged in the theological fragments of the Middle Kingdom in his aspects of primeval god, creator god, and god of life.
I call this process “additive” for I have the impression that this new concept of a supreme being was arrived at primarily by accumulation and juxtaposition. All aspects of divine unity –preexistence, creator, sustainer- were combined and connected with one another by means of simple but well-ordered juxtapositions of sequences of predicates of Amun and Re.

Jews, Christians and Muslims continue to invoke the name of Amun (Amen) in their prayers. So, how current are our current ideas of God?
If one presents evidence of how the One and Only God was created, this God will be discredited but, of course, the general idea of the deity remains unmolested. Yet, we only have to penetrate enough into out past to acquire the means to discredit the idea of the deity entirely.
We do not have to prove that God does not exist. It suffices to prove that he who first informed humanity of the existence of immaterial gods was either joking or lying.

[Kyuuketsuki]

Cheers Dtango ... you're right about me missing past claims to god/s (a slip of the pen 'tis all) and the other stuff was interesting

What would be a good name for a category 7 atheist (that's a straight question)? Also, how do you logically justify a belief in their not being a god? The truth for me is, of course, that I do believe there are no gods I simply don't care to advance that as a claim because I can't rationally justify it although I believe there are some very strong "clues" so I'm interested in anyone who can justify a belief that there are none.

Welcome to the forum BTW

Kyu

[Edwardo Piet]

Yeah welcome, and interesting post Dtango.

[dtango]

What would be a good name for a category 7 atheist (that's a straight question)?

"Theomachus" (in the Homeric sense).

Also, how do you logically justify a belief in their not being a god?

The general idea is that God is a human idea and therefore we cannot say that we lack the cognitive capability to understand it. However, it can be shown that even the idea in itself is neither the product of philosophical meditation nor the result of the ignorance of the “savage.”
Mythology and tradition teach that it was the messengers who supplied the information about immaterial gods.

A pure popular legend, uncontaminated by philosophy and theological interpretation, will demonstrate who the Messengers were and what their function was.
The legend is told by the Yorubas of Africa:

Once, long ago, all people lived in one town, called Ife, and they all spoke one simple language, Yoruba. In those days everyone was equal in all respects. Their skin was the same color, they were all good at the same things, they were all equally strong, equally beautiful, and equally healthy. Everyone had enough of what they needed, but no one had too much. If anyone needed something, they had only to inform God’s messenger, and he would tell God, who would provide them with what they needed.
There was only one problem. People were bored. They wanted a change. So they started complaining to God’s messenger, asking for different things. Some wanted a bigger house. Some wanted different color skin. Some wanted to speak differently. So it went on. In the beginning the messenger would faithfully carry all their demands to God and God would listen patiently. But after a while God became irritated. He told the messenger what to tell them. The messenger went back to the people.
God says you are to be content with what he has given you. He has deliberately arranged things in this way so that you will not have anything to quarrel with each other about.’ But the people were not happy. ‘Tell God he must give us what we ask, or we will revolt against him. We will have nothing more to do with him. We will organize our affairs the way we want them, without his help.’ (Essential African Mythology, Ngangar Mbitu and Ranchor Prime, Thorsons 1997, pg 6)

The messengers are called by the Yoruba “Eschu.” They are indispensable but nasty.(Anne S. Baumgartner, A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Gods, Carol Communications, 1984, pg 64)

There is almost no god, in the International Mythology and traditions, without his personal Messenger.
Zeus’s Messengers were Hermes and Iris.
Cherub is the name of the familiar winged figures from Mesopotamia, with human heads and animal bodies that closely resemble sphinxes and serve as guardians of important places. They intercede with the divinities and for the divinities.
The deity Baiame, of the Australian aborigines, could be addressed only by the ‘wise men’ and only via his messenger.
In the Vedic tradition, Angirases are the mediators between gods and humans.
According to the Rig Veda Agni was the messenger of the gods.
Isimud is the name of the messenger of the Sumerian god Enki.

Most of the messengers of the Mesopotamian gods are known by their names.
In the Norse mythology the messenger of the gods is Hermod, one of the sons of Odin. Gna is the messenger of the goddess Frigga, wife of Odin.
For the natives of the Caroline Islands, the god of fire, singing and dancing, Olofad is the messenger of Lugeilan, the god of knowledge.
The god Tiki, from the Marquesas and Society Islands, is the god of virility and the messenger of the gods.
The natives of the Samoa Islands say that the creator Tangaroa created several Tangaroas; among them was Tangaroa the messenger.
Messengers are found in the Japanese tradition too, in the book known as Kojiki:
The great Mexican god Quetzalcoatl besides his other many titles is also called messenger of the gods.
The Yezidis, a Kurdish tribe, say that the divinity was the creator of the universe but not its keeper. The world is being taken care of by the seven angels (angel in ancient greek means messenger).
In the Persian tradition, Sraosh is the divine messenger and mediator between gods and humans.
The messengers in the Old Testament are called Mal’akh.
The Egyptian texts provide a definition of the term “messenger”:

I am the essence of a god, the son of a god, the messenger of a god. (Utt. 471 §920)

From the legend of the Yorubas we deduce that what people know about the gods is what the messengers told them about them.
You may have noticed the following sentence in the legend:In the beginning the messenger would faithfully carry all their demands to God
Most probably when the conduct of the nasty messenger became unbearable to the people, they asked for the god to come to listen to their complaint in person. Then the messenger said the fatal tale: The god was not available because he chose to ascend to the sky in order not to be disturbed, or something like that, or maybe even worse if the messenger meant it as a joke!
The messengers were real persons, as nowadays are their descendants: the clergy.

As regards the gods whom the messengers were talking about –and, obviously, the people regarded as material beings somewhere not far away, where the messenger could reach them- a long story has to be told but it is the only story that can persuade an agnostic to change into an atheist (or an atheist into a theomachus!).