'Splain this one Atheists...

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Ian
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Re: 'Splain this one Atheists...

Post by Ian » Mon Aug 31, 2015 1:51 am

Atheism is like any other religion the same way that "off" is just one of the channels on the TV. Nobody sits and watches the Off Channel. And nobody follows or worships the tenets of atheism; there are none.

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Re: 'Splain this one Atheists...

Post by Seth » Mon Aug 31, 2015 3:21 am

JimC wrote:
Seth wrote:
JimC wrote:If you say you don't fuck buffalos, we'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and take your word for it.

Have the courtesy to do the same.
If you have evidence of the claim, feel free to post it.
You have no evidence that the atheist posters on this forum "worship atheism"
Where did I say they "worship atheism?"
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Re: 'Splain this one Atheists...

Post by Seth » Mon Aug 31, 2015 3:30 am

Ian wrote:Atheism is like any other religion the same way that "off" is just one of the channels on the TV. Nobody sits and watches the Off Channel.


Some people do. Particularly idiots who don't know what the button is for.
And nobody follows or worships the tenets of atheism; there are none.
But there are tenets of Atheism. One of them is "God does not exist." Another is "Anybody who believes God exists is delusional." There are plenty of others, although they apply to different sects of Atheism differently from time to time. The unspoken assertion in your claim is that all persons who claim to "have no belief" with respect to theistic claims actually "have no belief," but this is simply and very obviously not true and that fact is demonstrated here almost every day. Every single person I've ever met or even encountered on the Internet who claims to be an "atheist" is, in demonstrable fact, a religious Atheist with a very firm and quite predictable dogmatic set of beliefs and practices with respect to their chosen religion.

One of the most firmly held dogmatic and irrational religious beliefs held by Atheists of quite literally every stripe and sect is rigid, uncompromising and entirely fallacious denial that they are members of a religion with a set of beliefs and practices largely indistinguishable from those whom they choose to insult and revile.
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S

"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke

"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth

© 2013/2014/2015/2016 Seth, all rights reserved. No reuse, republication, duplication, or derivative work is authorized.

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Re: 'Splain this one Atheists...

Post by Hermit » Mon Aug 31, 2015 4:03 am

Seth wrote:But there are tenets of Atheism. One of them is "God does not exist."
The vast majority of atheists are agnostic about God's existence. I am one of them. When asked to respond to that you call us liars. Thanks.
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Re: 'Splain this one Atheists...

Post by Seth » Mon Aug 31, 2015 4:20 am

Hermit wrote:
Seth wrote:But there are tenets of Atheism. One of them is "God does not exist."
The vast majority of atheists are agnostic about God's existence. I am one of them. When asked to respond to that you call us liars. Thanks.
So, you're "agnostic," which is a belief. Beliefs turn into religion under certain circumstances, as I've shown with the pertinent definitions. You don't speak for the "vast majority" of atheists either, you speak for yourself and only yourself.

As I've said before there are only two kinds of atheism; Implicit atheism, which is only true of those who have never, ever been exposed to theistic concepts or who are mentally incapable of giving consideration to theistic concepts; and explicit atheism, which is everybody else who claims to be an atheist, which is true of everyone who has been exposed to theistic concepts and has given those concepts thought or consideration and has drawn a conclusion that the theistic claims are not sufficiently supported by facts to persuade them to accept them as true.

All explicit atheists hold beliefs about theistic claims and many of them, and every single one I've ever met or corresponded with, hold a very specific set of beliefs and they hold those beliefs quite firmly and with conviction and as a matter of conscience or ethics, which is the definition of a religious belief.

Now, the interesting question to me is why do explicit Atheists get so upset when they are shown to be engaging in religion?

You see, religion in and of itself is not inherently theistic nor is it necessarily anti-intellectual or irrational. "Religion" is how you practice what you believe. Theism and atheism are WHAT you practice.

What on earth is wrong with being labeled as "religious" in your beliefs about theism, which are as you admit, "agnostic?" You can't say you don't have any beliefs about theistic claims because clearly, to be "agnostic" about it, you must hold some sort of beliefs.

So, when I say you're practicing "religion" it's not (or rationally should not be) an insult or a slur, it's merely a statement of fact about your system of beliefs and practices with respect to theism and atheism.

Why not simply admit that essential truth?
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S

"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke

"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth

© 2013/2014/2015/2016 Seth, all rights reserved. No reuse, republication, duplication, or derivative work is authorized.

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Re: 'Splain this one Atheists...

Post by JimC » Mon Aug 31, 2015 4:36 am

Seth wrote:

So, you're "agnostic," which is a belief.
Betraying your ignorance, here. It is possible to say that a strong form of atheism, which asserts that there is definitely no god, could be regarded as a form of belief, although of a very different kind than a belief in a supernatural being.

However, the majority of posters here would simply assert that they have no belief that a god exists, without committing themselves to a definite assertion of its absence, mainly because it is not a provable contention. This position, which can be loosely called agnosticism, cannot be logically regarded as a belief in any sense of the word; literally, it is the absence of a belief. It is compatible with living one's life on the working assumption that there is no god, certainly not one of the personal gods of most religions, but it is not a belief in anything. Not being a stamp collector is not an example of a hobby.

I think your problem stems with conflating "belief" with "adopting a philosophical stance". The two are not synonymous. :tea:
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Re: 'Splain this one Atheists...

Post by Hermit » Mon Aug 31, 2015 7:07 am

Seth wrote:
Hermit wrote:
Seth wrote:But there are tenets of Atheism. One of them is "God does not exist."
The vast majority of atheists are agnostic about God's existence. I am one of them. When asked to respond to that you call us liars. Thanks.
So, you're "agnostic," which is a belief. Beliefs turn into religion under certain circumstances, as I've shown with the pertinent definitions.
Agnosticism is no more a belief than not collecting stamps is a hobby, and especially not so when one holds that one lacks a belief only for as long as no convincing evidence for accepting a belief has surfaced yet.
Seth wrote:You don't speak for the "vast majority" of atheists either, you speak for yourself and only yourself.
And on whose behalf do you speak when you call the vast majority of atheists liars? Anyway, let me rephrase then: The vast majority of people I have personally encountered or whose opinions I have read profess to withhold a belief in the existence of a god thingie until they are convinced otherwise.
Seth wrote:All explicit atheists hold beliefs about theistic claims and many of them, and every single one I've ever met or corresponded with, hold a very specific set of beliefs and they hold those beliefs quite firmly and with conviction and as a matter of conscience or ethics, which is the definition of a religious belief.
Going by your definition of 'explicit atheist', I am one of them. My parents were practicing Catholics, and they raised me as such. The last three and a bit years of my secondary education was administered by a Catholic school, daily religious indoctrination and all. Somewhere along that line I grew a bit indifferent to theism and became a deist. That made sense to me. Though Catholic dogma and Catholic rituals became to me nothing more than some tribalistic mumbo jumbo gone global, there must be some ultimate cause for the existence of life, the universe and everything, right? Right. So what to make of that? What can we say about the ultimate cause apart from regarding it as not having been caused itself and being that ultimate cause of for the existence of life, the universe and everything? How could we know if that creator's motivation was sadistic, benevolent or indifferent in regard to its creation? To this day I have not discovered even a hint of how we could find out. So, yeah, as far as I am concerned an ultimate, uncaused cause may well exist, but at this stage we have no way of figuring out what, if anything, that cause wants us to do and not do.

In summary, my belief in a personal god, one who observes me in particular among seven billion people on a mote in the dust that orbits one star among the approximately 7×1022 other stars we have calculated to exist in the bit of the universe we are aware of, and will punish me for my infractions and guide me via ten laws Moses has supposedly downloaded from the cloud, has vanished. I am similarly sceptical about all other beliefs concerning a personal, interfering and guiding God. All that remains is the possibility that some unfathomable creator exists, but because I can't really fathom its intentions, the existence of such an entity becomes a matter without consequence to the way I conduct myself.

Excuse me for going off at a tangent now: I attempt to live by the adage, somewhat inadequately I must admit, to "do to others what you wish others to do to you" and its inverse "don't do to others what you don't wish others to do to you". It sounds rather biblical in our societies, but the adage is common all over the planet. It is also not even religious in origin unless one believes in an interfering god in the first place, and if there is no such god it can only be the product of this human insight: "Behavior tends to be reciprocal. Unless I treat others as I wish to be treated myself, I cannot even hope to have a pleasant life." That is where morals come from. They are of human construction and ultimately motivated by selfishness. As long as we are selfish we will try to follow that supposedly religious adage.
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Re: 'Splain this one Atheists...

Post by JimC » Mon Aug 31, 2015 7:55 am

^^^^^^^^^^

:this:
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Re: 'Splain this one Atheists...

Post by Svartalf » Mon Aug 31, 2015 9:48 am

I worship nothing, there's nothing I know of that deserves worship.
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Re: 'Splain this one Atheists...

Post by Ian » Mon Aug 31, 2015 12:11 pm

What, was the troll dead wrong again? Shocking.

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Re: 'Splain this one Atheists...

Post by Forty Two » Mon Aug 31, 2015 1:14 pm

Seth wrote:
And atheism is a motivator because a disbelief in gods justifies the suppression of those who believe in gods. Atheism may not be the primary motivator of totalitarian despots but it is most certainly a motivation, as Stalin proves. The motivation to suppress religion in order to facilitate totalitarianism does not mean that it's not a motivation. One need not have only one motivation for any action.
Except that it's communism that needs the suppression of religion, for the reasons I stated (basically, it's a part of society holding private power, which communism posits should be held in the community [the State] and not in individuals or organizations).

Atheism itself is as compatible with tolerance of religious pluralism as anything else, and oftentimes moreso. Some atheists, first of all, are religious -- lots of UUs, Buddhists, Jains and the like are "atheists." They are not generally out to squash religious freedom. And, even nonreligious atheists are very often into religious freedom -- classical liberals, civil libertarians, libertarians, etc. are often atheists, but very much pro freedom, which includes freedom to practice religions.

The motivator behind communism's desire to destroy religion is political, not religious.
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Re: 'Splain this one Atheists...

Post by Svartalf » Mon Aug 31, 2015 1:17 pm

Actually, I'm more religious than I said in my last post. I positively worship the female sex... not the first time a guy would be worshipping cunt, but I do so literally.
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Re: 'Splain this one Atheists...

Post by Forty Two » Mon Aug 31, 2015 1:26 pm

Svartalf wrote:Actually, I'm more religious than I said in my last post. I positively worship the female sex... not the first time a guy would be worshipping cunt, but I do so literally.
Image
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar

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Re: 'Splain this one Atheists...

Post by rainbow » Mon Aug 31, 2015 1:40 pm

Hermit wrote:Agnosticism is no more a belief than not collecting stamps is a hobby, and especially not so when one holds that one lacks a belief only for as long as no convincing evidence for accepting a belief has surfaced yet.
I lack any belief in the existence of Atheists.

Therefore stamps.
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Re: 'Splain this one Atheists...

Post by surreptitious57 » Tue Sep 01, 2015 1:58 am

Seth wrote:
Every single person I have ever met or encountered on the Internet who claims to be an atheist is in demonstrable fact
religious Atheist with a firm and predictable dogmatic set of beliefs and practices with respect to their chosen religion
A religious atheist by your definition would be a gnostic atheist who is absolutely convinced that God does not exist
I however am an agnostic atheist because while I do not think he exists I can not prove it. So I have to allow for the
possibility that he might. Also I have no dogmatic set of beliefs or practices pertaining to my atheism because none
are required. For me it is just a non belief in the existence of God and nothing else. Furthermore my atheism is just
one aspect of my worldview. It is not the whole worldview as such and not even the most important part of it either
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