"You guys are the most preachy atheists I've ever met!"

by GetBusyLiving 78 Replies latest jw friends

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  the_classicist

  
  Atheism is just another "religion" for it requires faith just as anything else.

  The only difference is you quote Dawkins with a sense of smugness, you worship yourself, and you go about telling everyone else how wrong they are. Religious people quote religious people with smugness, but they worship God and then they go and tell everyone else how wrong they are.

  To fill a world with ... religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used. -- Richard Dawkins, "Religion's Misguided Missiles" (September 15, 2001)

  Case in point, Marxism, which is the most popular atheism in the world, has killed millions. It's like littering the streets with loaded guns... but only these loaded guns are real.
• 

  LittleToe

  My last vestige of "hands off religion" respect disappeared in the smoke and choking dust of September 11th 2001, followed by the "National Day of Prayer," when prelates and pastors did their tremulous Martin Luther King impersonations and urged people of mutually incompatible faiths to hold hands, united in homage to the very force that caused the problem in the first place .

  Society bends over backward to be accommodating to religious sensibilities but not to other kinds of sensibilities. If I say something offensive to religious people, I'll be universally censured, including by many atheists. But if I say something insulting about Democrats or Republicans or the Green Party, one is allowed to get away with that. Hiding behind the smoke screen of untouchability is something religions have been allowed to get away with for too long.

  The strange thing is that when religous leaders have the balls to get alongside each other and have a minute or two of silence, it's disrespected, but when Politicians do it, he doesn't bat an eyelid.

  Dual standards of the very type he decries...

  Do you think really Dawkins really fits into the "norm" camp, either?
• 

  doogie

  classy:

  Atheism is just another "religion" for it requires faith just as anything else.

  careful buddy. dems fightin words.

  maybe if you define what you mean by "faith" it will help. or maybe you're using the all-inclusive term *atheism* to refer to one specific person you have in mind?

  atheism is a lack of belief. not belief of a negative (which would require faith). i know, i know. i've posted this before and at this point it's a bit silly. sorry, it's my sticking point: people attacking a vague representation of "atheism" without understanding what atheism *really* is. i was scared off from reading atheistic papers/books (or even hearing Their side of the "story") for the longest time because of the prevalent stereotypes such as what classy posted. atheism requires no faith because it is the absolute LACK of faith (by definition).
• 

  the_classicist

  atheism is a lack of belief. not belief of a negative (which would require faith). i know, i know. i've posted this before and at this point it's a bit silly. sorry, it's my sticking point: people attacking a vague representation of "atheism" without understanding what atheism *really* is. i was scared off from reading atheistic papers/books (or even hearing Their side of the "story") for the longest time because of the prevalent stereotypes such as what classy posted. atheism requires no faith because it is the absolute LACK of faith (by definition).

  Atheism doesn't mean a "lack of faith" it means "without God" or without divine. An atheist has faith that science and naturalism can explain everything and is capable of deducing the totality of all reality.
• 

  kid-A

  Nonsense!

  Atheism DOES NOT require 'faith' in science....I personally know many atheists with no interest whatsoever in science or in empirical methods of deducing truth. They have simply abandoned the notion of a "god" on purely moral grounds....

  Certainly, many atheists DO support empirical methods of reasoning and support scientific inquiry...the difference between the 'faith' of a religionist and the 'faith' of a scientist is that the scientist has PHYSICAL, DEMONSTRABLE, EVIDENCE of the proposed theory or hypothesis and approaches the experimental problem without a pre-conceived notion of what the result of the experiment will yield. This is first necessity of scientific inquiry...all testable theories and hypotheses MUST be falsifiable. Unfortunately, those who believe in god believe A PRIORI that god most certainly exists and NO AMOUNT of evidence to the contrary (and despite the complete lack of any physical evidence to support its existence) will falsify this a priori assumption.
• 

  Elsewhere

  I like this saying: If atheism is a religion then bald is a hair color.
• 

  the_classicist

  Certainly, many atheists DO support empirical methods of reasoning and support scientific inquiry...the difference between the 'faith' of a religionist and the 'faith' of a scientist is that the scientist has PHYSICAL, DEMONSTRABLE, EVIDENCE of the proposed theory or hypothesis and approaches the experimental problem without a pre-conceived notion of what the result of the experiment will yield. This is first necessity of scientific inquiry...all testable theories and hypotheses MUST be falsifiable. Unfortunately, those who believe in god believe A PRIORI that god most certainly exists and NO AMOUNT of evidence to the contrary (and despite the complete lack of any physical evidence to support its existence) will falsify this a priori assumption.

  One would argue, then, that religion is demonstrable and there is evidence: this evidence is not physical. Again, atheists belive that the totality of reality is contained within our physical and observable world: that requires faith.

  Atheists base their faith on a a priori assumption that the totality of reality is within the physical and observable world with contrary evidence, which is usually dismissed as an invention of the mind, group hallucination, or some other naturalistic explanation. Even when naturalism cannot explain something, it still dismisses supernatural explanations because of their a priori belief that the totality of reality is in the physical and observable world.
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  Sara Annie

  I used to work with a guy who described himself and his wife as 'practicing atheists'. As someone who loves irony in all of it's various forms, it still makes me giggle when I think about it.

  I think that people who have wholeheartedly believed in and defended a religious philosphy often have a tendency to espouse a philosophy directly opposed to it with a fervor equal to one they've abandoned. I don't begrudge people the right to do so, I tend to think it is a relatively natural part of the journey away from totalism--the desire to concretely know the 'truth' will hopefully be abandoned with time and perspective.
• 

  Big Dog

  In response to Mr. Dawkins assertions that religion is akin to loaded weapons (and I want it on the record that all I said was i felt that a belief in God was not harmful, I did not endorse any particlular religion) I would say that a stone atheist is a very dangerous person. An atheist (if I understand the term correctly) does not believe in the spirit world, any after life, etc. so the worst you can do to him is kill him. He can murder, rape, pillage, plunder to his heart's content knowing that there is no justice to be meted out in the here after, as I said before, the worst you can do is kill him. To me a person with no fear of any sort of divine justice is capable of anything, as much if not more so than a "religious" person. Edited to add: This is not to say atheists are immoral, barbaric, etc., this was simply taking Mr. Dawkin's logic and heading the other way with it.
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  googlemagoogle

  Atheism doesn't mean a "lack of faith" it means "without God" or without divine. An atheist has faith that science and naturalism can explain everything and is capable of deducing the totality of all reality.
  
  pardon me, but that's completely untrue. a theist is someone who believes in (a) god(s). an atheist is someone who does NOT believe in a god, thus exactly has a "lack of faith" in god. there are positive atheists who would claim "there IS no god", but most serious atheists would say "i don't believe there is a god, because i don't see any evidence".
  
  about science: atheism has nothing to do with faith in science. one can be an atheist and not rely on science. there's no real connection here. i as an atheist wouldn't claim that EVERYTHING can be explained by science either. but i prefer logical and scientific explainations to faith-based explainations.
  
  one big mistake that is made very often is to mix the (at least 2) semantics of the word "believe". one semantic paradigm is "thinking, but not be 100% sure about it", like in "i believe i left the keys on the table". the other semantic paradigm is "having a religious belief", like in "i believe in jesus". religious people often exchange these semantics to "show" that atheists also "believe". indeed, everyone "believes", but not necessarily in the religious sense.
  
  just imagine all well known scientists gathering every sunday, singing songs like "oh i believe in gravity, i believe, i believe that everything that goes up-up-up comes down-down-down again oh yeah". i'm not sure how much trust you would put in these people.