To all atheists

Agnostics Does NOT know if a god exists and BELIEVES it's beyond humans ability to discover.

What i posted before is pretty much true Mr Clash

 

I do not try to convince others to be an atheist, and I don't want to. I respect that people believe in their own religion and I understand that. However, if someone asks WHY I'm not, then I will explain myself. And since you have asked that question, here you go:

A few reasons

1. Your religion is largely dependent on where you were born and raised, and also where your parents were born and raised. If I were born in India, odds are I would be a Hindu(I believe, correct me if I'm wrong). If I were born in the Middle East, I have a high chance of being Muslim. Etc.

2. This is more directed towards Christianity. I don't mean to offend anyone by what I'm about to explain here.
I don't believe that the 'God's way or the highway' philosophy is right. I can't believe that if 'God' really did love us, then he would let people that have helped others, tried to make the best of their lives, never murdered, never intentionally hurt others out of spite, yet did not believe, go to Hell. Frankly, probably a third of Christians just repeat what they hear in church yet never follow it. I know plenty of Christians that are ass holes, and I also know many Christians that are nice and actually follow what they believe.

If God really thought through it, he would realize that alot of Christians don't deserve to go to heaven, and alot of athiests/other religion followers should.

3. Religion just brings trouble. ie The Crusades, all the wars and battles you read about in the Bible. This may not be your favorite reason, but throughout highschool(I'm in my senior year) it seems that WELL OVER HALF of the wars that happened were started over religion.


For all of you that are going to start getting mad at me over this, I have a right to express my views, he asked why, and I told you. I am a former Christian myself, so keep it in mind and don't say "You don't know what happened in the Bible!" I do, I have read it along with the Qur'an.

 

Atheists do not claim 100% certainty on their disbelief. Belief is the acceptance of a claim as true. My beliefs have varying degrees of certainty. The only 100% certainty one can have is of their own existence (ie. I can claim that I exist with 100% certainty because "I think therefore I am") and of the 3 logical absolutes (law of non-contradiction etc. ie. something must either exist or not exist, it cannot do both). All other claims have varying degrees of certainty.

Now, any intellectually honest atheist (and from the discussion I've had, this is most of them) will not claim they are absolutely certain no gods exist. They simply don't believe in a god or gods. This doesn't mean they believe no gods exist (a positive position), it means they don't believe the claims made by theists (a negative position).

As an atheist, it's not that I'm selling something else, I'm just not buying what theists are selling. Just because I'm not buying anything, doesn't mean I'm selling something. I hope you see the analogy here. Atheists aren't claiming gods don't exist (although some may do, as I do), they simply aren't buying the theists' claims.

Most atheists are AGNOSTIC ATHEISTS. This is the only intellectually honest position one can be in.

Agnosticism refers to a knowledge claims, atheism refers to a belief claim.

Theist makes a claim: "A god exists".
Atheist replies: "I reject that claim, the burden of proof is on you to justify your claim".

Atheism is a response to theism, hence the term "A"-theism (meaning "without" theism.

As for atheism being "another religion" heres a simple analogy you may be able to wrap your head around:

There are two types of people:

People with hair.
People without hair.

Only people with hair can have a hair colour.

Is bald a hair colour?

In this scenario, the people with hair are theists, and the people without hair are atheists. The people with blue hair could be muslims, the people with green hair could be christians etc. The people with no hair colour are not any religion because they don't have hair, ie. they don't have a belief in a god.
Simple really.

Atheism is a religion in the same way that not collecting stamps is a hobby.

 

No, I am an agnostic AND an atheist. Either you are an atheist or a theist. There are many different types of atheists.

There are the animal atheists and the human baby atheists - These beings do not believe in a god/s simply because they have no ability to think about such a concept.

Then there are the reasoned atheists etc.

Everyone is born an atheist simply because at birth we do not have the cognitive ability to believe in a god as we do not even understand the concept.

Then, once we've determined we are an atheist or a theist, then we can determine whether we are an agnostic or a gnostic. An agnostic does not claim 100% certainty on their belief, a gnostic does. Hence why I am an agnostic AND an atheist. Agnostics do not "BELIEVES it's beyond humans ability to discover (whether or not a god exists)" as I am an agnostic and I do not make this claim.

 

Excellent point. If I were born in a nomadic tribe with no knowledge of christianity, would I be a christian? Of course not. So when you claim that you are a christian and you chose to be one, just remember this, your religion was already pre-determined at the beginning of the universe (unless of course you take the view that events in our universe are due to random chance quantum effects). In any case, you had no choice in the matter.

 

Sorry, you are fractally wrong.

http://www.squidoo.com/Atheist-Charities

Oh, and the Bill Gates foundation. Bill Gates is an atheist and one of the best philanthropists in the world.

Have another try...

 

This is probably the stupidest thing that I've read all day. First of all, neither theism nor atheism have anything to know with knowledge that a deity exists, they address a belief that such a being exists (the latter being an acceptance of the claim, and the former being a rejection of the claim). Agnosticism is not mutually exclusive with theism nor with atheism, as agnosticism (literally, without knowledge) deals only with the question of knowledge of the existence of a deity, and not the existence of a belief, or a lack thereof.

As is also evident in your post, you don't understand what theism is, because theism (as illustrated above) is merely an acceptance of the claim that a god exists, it does not deal with knowledge.

I'll define the terms for you.

• Theism: Belief that a god exists
• Atheism: Lack of a belief that a god exists
• Gnosticism: Knowledge that a god exists
• Agnosticism: Lack of knowledge that a god exists

As is clear from these definitions, one can be one of four things

1. Agnostic theist: One who believes that a god exists, but does not have knowledge of such
2. Agnostic atheist: One who does not believe that a god exists, but does not have knowledge of such
3. Gnostic theist: One who believes that a god exists, and has knowledge of such
4. Gnostic atheist: One who does not believe that a god exists, and has knowledge of such

The rejection of a claim does not take faith. The default position is to reject a claim. If I told you that fairies exist, you would not believe me because there is no evidence. If I told you that unicorns exist, you would not believe me because there is no evidence. If I told you that leprechauns exist, you would not believe me because there is no evidence. As is clear, rejecting one of these claims does not require any sort of "faith". As is also clear, by no measure is atheism a religion.

This is also incorrect. An agnostic asserts that he does not possess absolute knowledge regarding the existence of a deity. If somebody says "there is probably no god," they are an agnostic atheist, as they do not claim to possess knowledge regarding the non-existence of god, yet they do not believe that there is one.

This, too is wrong. An agnostic does not say that it is absolutely impossible to know, but rather that they themselves do not know.

You have misunderstood what deacon said. He did not say "no religious person has ever made any sort of worthwhile discovery, or been a benefit to human existence in any way," but rather, that religion itself has not contributed.

It almost sounds as if you would tell a child that Santa exists and then never tell him that he doesn't, so that he will live his entire life holding comfortable, but ultimately delusional beliefs. If this is indeed what you think, then the issue at hand here is, "Is it better to know the truth, or live in a comfortable delusion, even if living in such a delusion can be dangerous to those around you?" My answer to this would be that the truth is liberating, even if it hurts.

While that itself is pretty bad, what I was going for isn't simply saying that god allows bad things to happen, but causing bad things in the name of god. I'm against when people go out killing others as infidels, or burning people as witches.

Some may, some may not. The definition of atheism does not provide for that distinction, although I have never actually encountered anybody who does claim with 100% absolute certainty that no god can exist.

 

I am also yet to encounter a gnostic atheist. I should rephrase my statement to: "Agnostic atheists (which, from my experience, make up the majority of the atheist population) do not claim 100% certainty regarding their disbelief."

 

most of us keep our views to ourselves. We aren't going around door to door trying to bring people over, but atheists are generally more expressive of their opinions.
It's very hard to explain "why" without being rude, so we're sorry.

 

Bias. This is the self righteousness that Christians feel. They feel that they are the only ones that ever help anybody, the only ones that do it right, and after they help them they MUST be saved.

Look around, you will see many atheist organizations that help the needy.

 

Yep, in fact Bill Gates is one of the most renowned philanthropists in the world and he is an atheist. So too is Warren Buffet, one of the richest men in the US.

 

This I did not know.

 

I didn't mean to come off like that, I knew there were some atheist organizations that provide for the greater good.

Did you know every single president of the United States is some kind of Christian? JFK being the only Catholic. Lets not get into that argument.

 

Don't call me bias when the only information you present is against organized religion.

 

I believe you mean organize religion*

I myself was a Christian. I know both sides of the argument. You're only defense is belief and what, supposedly, Jesus's accomplices wrote.

I prevent no information, just my opinion and why I feel that way.

 

Thank you, I'm sick at the moment, and these meds have been messing with me.

I'm glad to see you know both sides of the story.

 

If you don't respect atheists for pushing their viewpoint on other people, what do you think of Mormons/Jehova's Wittnesses/Catholics/Adventists/Protestants/Baptists? I've had someone from each of these religions (and probably more, I just never bothered asking) try and convince me to give myself up to Jesus. It's just the way things are. If you know your viewpoint is right and will save you from the most terrible thought imaginable (like each of these people did, no doubt), why would you not save someone?

That being said, I tend to tell people that I am an atheist, although my view is probably not the type of atheistic view the OP was referring to. My view deals more with the personal side of religion rather than the spiritual side: I think religion is, more or less, designed to give personal (moral) guidelines. As long as you don't really need the guidelines (i.e. are satisfied with your moral standing), you don't need the stuff that's added in to assist in the delivery. (A metaphor of this could be a mother feeding a baby with the "Here comes the choo-choo!" tactic. Religion is the choo-choo, feeding us moral values.) Therefore, as long as you're behaving morally, I don't really feel the need to insist that you're wrong. You're doing exactly what you need to be doing in order to feel that you are a moral, decent person.

 

I think it would be very interesting to see what percent of the Sythe forums practices a certain religion.

That being said, I would consider myself an Atheist, though I have never tried to convince someone else otherwise. In fact, until reading through the posts in this thread, I didn't think that there were Atheists out there that did that. I have been approached by people of many different organized religions, but never an atheist. I have defended my standpoint to many of my close friends and I have listened to what they've had to say about their respective religions.

 

You're wrong on that one.

*Nobody* really knows anything.

Religion is belief, not knowledge.

To add a little bit of my two cents, watch these videos, it is not me, but he sums up a lot of what I'd like to say.

 

A true believer in any religion(or lack thereof) is confident enough with his beliefs that he does not have to attempt to force them on others.