Atheism 2.0 (page 4)

N.drew

Please don't confuse sensations, impressions and emotional reactions to THINKING in any rational, cognitive sense of self-communication.

Now your practicing bull-shit art. Before language was thought obviously. For who invented the first word?

^ This wasn't always the case. In fact much of our genetics come from lines where there was no spoken language. Those people still wanted to find truth just as we do. I don't believe words are required for truth, but they can be used to expedite it.

-Sab

sabastious

Hi N Drew, there we go again. Two posts about similar things posted within the same minute!

-Sab

Terry

Terry, please! you are simply being counterfactual here. For instance when you write:

Religion produces a flood of conversation which contain IDEAS about behavior.

Atheism chokes off the basis of that flow of conversation.

Why? because you say so? Sam Harris wrote an entire book (which i have not read) on how to ground moral in the absence of God or Gods, where is the choking off a flow of conversation there?

Atheism CONCLUDES (as its very premise) the negation of something (god, gods, deity). How much clearer do I have to be?

Sam Harris wrote an apologetic. A defensive philosophical treatise. Atheism creates a vacuum in his world that he rushes to fill with explanation justifying why he is just as good and moral as a believer. There is no CONVERSATION. It is one-sided monlogue.

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Atheism would be more EFFECTIVE if it challenged the use of language instead of the existential trivia.

You sure ask us to use language correctly, but could you please try to support your definition of atheist as an a-priori belief (thus entirely removed from evidence) in any way? Let us first agree that your definition of atheist is different from any common definition and thus the statement you make above has nothing to do with any poster on this thread who merely (and wrongly) call himself an atheist...

What Evidence is contained in the assertion of the definition of THERE IS NO GOD, i.e. ATHEISM? Nobody can logically prove a NEGATIVE.

As I mentioned above, there is a history to the development of Atheism. It was one thing, then another and another over time. Since its modern incarnation it has become, since 1963, institutional by some measures. I've attended a convention of the American Atheists. It is largely a political movement.

Defining Atheism is a NO-BRAINER. It is contained in the word itself: without-god.

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Anybody on a discussion thread who takes personal offense at my opinions when I have not singled them out personally is demonstrating an insecurity I don't understand. Should I really have to effectively be forced to hijack the thread responding to personal pejoratives now?

I think about what I think about. I have opinions on what I think about. I engage in discussion. No personal assault is intended. Ever.

Nickolas

Just passing through. Felt a need to comment on Terry's perspective. Most of the time I read his stuff and nod quietly, but let me cherry pick a couple of his statements to illustrate where he is mistaken.

Atheism has a superiority complex. In the worst packaging possible.

Any intellectually honest person will admit that he does not know why the universe exists. Atheists readily admit their ignorance on this point, while religious believers do not. What is most remarkable to me is how believers praise themselves for their humility, while condemning atheists for their intellectual arrogance. But could there be a worldview more arrogantly superior than that of a religious believer? He believes and lives his life according to a precept that the Creator of the universe takes an interest in him, approves of him and loves him, and will reward him with eternal paradise after his death, or even save him from death entirely. His beliefs are drawn from one of the many sacred texts the Creator of the universe has supposedly inspired (pity there are so many and so contradictory) and what is written in those texts represents absolute Truth. Furthermore, everyone who disagrees with him will be destroyed. The average believer has achieved a level of self important arrogance to which no atheist I have ever known has aspired.

Atheism isn't so much an argument as it is a fart in an elevator. "Here, smell my opinion."

The corollary is that theism is a pile of excrement on the elevator floor which everyone must by convention honour and respect, if not smell and eat. Atheism doesn't fly jet planes into buildings, doesn't seek to incarcerate people for what they do when they are naked or who commit any other victimless "crime" in the privacy of their own homes. Atheists don't blow themselves up in crowded bazaars, march en masse in the streets demanding the deaths of those who have insulted them or seek to fill the minds of children with nonsense. Nor do atheists assign greater importance to human blastocysts than the millions of people suffering from diseases that could be cured through medical advances based on stem cells. In short, atheism seeks not to impose on others restrictions and punishments for some imaginary crime which might otherwise cause offence to an imaginary God.

A rational rejection of faith in God, regardless of the particular flavour of that faith, does not entail a blind embrace of atheism as a dogma. As the late Christopher Hitchens expressed so pithily, what can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence and one need not accept anything on the basis of insufficient or absent evidence to find the notion of Mohammed and the Archangel Gabriel flying together to Jerusalem on a winged horse, or of the virgin birth of Jesus of Nazareth, or that God is preoccupied with women's clothing or any of hundreds of beliefs held dear by believers as anything but preposterous mythology. Regardless, as an atheist I am very happy to leave you and believers like you with the beliefs that you hold dear. All I ask in return is that you do not try to impose them on my life, knowing full well that that is something you cannot do.

sabastious

Atheism is not akin to intellectual honesty, Nick, that's just an opinion that happens to be yours. Hello by the way!

-Sab

Terry

Doesn't this thread show that atheism doesn't choke off that conversation?

Surely whether a god exists or not us fundamental to a right to assert behaviour? I find myself disagreeing 100% with your statement. Maybe I'm missing what you are saying.

Atheism DOES choke off conversation about the specific behavior (look at my context) generated from belief in god because it asserts there is no god on which to base that behavior.

Humans either behave in their own self-interest or they are compelled to consider a higher (supernatural) authority claiming that right in place of human autonomy.

A discussion about Atheism can only legitimately be Philosophical discussion or about Language.

sabastious

Atheism doesn't fly jet planes into buildings, doesn't seek to incarcerate people for what they do when they are naked or who commit any other victimless "crime" in the privacy of their own homes.

Atheism challenges the very fiber of all religions, you know the ones that have killed untold millions. That can be considered a very dangerous prospect, no? Or are you hoping that they will be as intellectually honest as you?

-Sab

Nickolas

Atheism is just a facet of a rational mind, Sab. I identify myself as "An Atheist" only in a context like this one, because in here it comes down to a pinpoint focus on this very small aspect of who I am. I reject faith in ancient books simply because they demand my acceptance of things that cannot be rationalised intelligently. Honesty, in order to be real, has to be manifested first within oneself.

Terry

Please don't confuse sensations, impressions and emotional reactions to THINKING in any rational, cognitive sense of self-communication.

Now your practicing bull-shit art. Before language was thought obviously. For who invented the first word?

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I can only conclude you don't read Philosophy. I'm not saying that in a snotty, superior way, believe me.

You may be in a knee-jerk mode because I'm coming at this discussion having immersed myself in Philosophy for a number of years.

So, your position and mine are a mater of jurisdictions.

In the history of reasoning about "what we know and how we know it" (Philosophy) many intelligent thinkers have disagreed about what thinking is, what ideas are and how we accomplish it and how it differs from the lower animals.

A body of knowledge exists which I've tackled in the last 20 years or so. I apologize for assuming everybody else finds any of it interesting or even worthwhile. I believe in bringing as many tools to my reasoning as I can and that INCLUDES Philosophy. Not because it is AUTHORITY but because it is REASONING.

The mind receives stimulations from OUTSIDE itself through our 5 senses. These perceptions are then Conceptualized into our mental processes.

While all of this is "thinking" it is not higher level thinking. When we reach past extracting and collating and analyzing from contrary positions we get to RATIONAL THOUGHT and language.

I doubt I've made myself any clearer.

But, really---"bullshit" is not an argument.

Atheism 2.0

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