"You guys are the most preachy atheists I've ever met!" (page 6)

googlemagoogle

so the worst you can do to him is kill him.

yes, and that's pretty bad for an atheist. because this is the only life he has. so an atheist would be treating life very carefully.

the question for a sense is senseless.

Eyebrow2

Ahhh well you know...what you said rings true even with the bible.

I was flipping through the big book today, and was reading Ecc., and the first few chapters talks about how everyting is meaningless, wisdom is meaningless...etc..

It took a long time after I left the JW to realize that I don't have to find a "meaning" to my life. However, I sure would be wasting my life if I weren't living it...

LittleToe

Google: Interesting assertion. So are you suggesting that those who "believe" that science will eventually unravel all this world's answers cannot, by definition, be true atheists? I think they would balk at that - maybe we need a definition for the kind of atheist who is also "a-faith-ist".

LittleToe

googlemagoogle

So are you suggesting that those who "believe" that science will eventually unravel all this world's answers cannot, by definition, be true atheists?

no, i don't suggest that. i only suggest that atheism is not necessarily connected to reliance on science. and reliance on science is not necessarily connected to "the faith that science WILL (without the eventually...) unravel all this world's answers".

LittleToe

I agree that the question of atheism has nothing to do with reliance on science (there's a turnup for the books - agreeing with ya) but (had to be one, huh?) a great many atheists do have a reliance on science. Ergo, they have faith in it.

I have no difficulty with the idea that some have no such faith, the "a-faith-ists", to coin a phrase. However I suspect these are in the minority, as many people like to pin their hopes on something. It's in the nature of the [human] beast.

googlemagoogle

btw, i don't think there are "true" and "false" atheists. this is a typical christian esclusive fundy paradigm to discriminate other christian belief-systems.

but there are of course different atheists. atheism is NOT a religion. i see at least 2 categories of atheists: those who positively say there IS no god, and those who don't believe in a god because they don't see any evidence.

religious people often think, atheists are all of the first cathegory. those who call themselves atheists are most likely of the second cathegory though. because it's impossible to prove the nonexistence of something.

interestingly most religious people are atheists of the first cathegory though. most christians would positively say "zeus does not exist". or "quezalcoatl does not exist". or "vishnu does not exist". or "baal does not exist". in fact, all exclusive religionists are millionfold atheists of the positive cathegory.

so in case you don't believe in 99,999,998 of the gods made up by other religions, we are not that far from each other. coz i don't believe in 99,999,999 of them...

googlemagoogle

heh. you answered without using a question! (another turn-up for the books) ;-)

Ergo, they have faith in it.

in science the known things are explained with known things (as soon as something new is found, it's a known thing). i'd say that's a quick and dirty definition of "falsifiable". in religion the known things are explained with unknown things. that's "unfalsifiable".

the thing is, we've seen hundreds of years ([edited] *) of science making progress. we know that science is capable of finding out new things, developing better theories and improving things. we don't need faith to know that science is capable of this.

or do you want to go down to the roots and say that everything is faithbased?

[*]
of course i have not SEEN it. but history shows us... do i have to BELIEVE in history?

LittleToe

Do we really want to get pedantic about semantics? Would you have prefered the phrase "truly an Atheist", rather than "true Atheist"? I wasn't getting into aspects of atheistic religiosity, at all, would you like me to?

(Just a few questions to make up for the lack in my last post, if that's acceptable? )

googlemagoogle

Do we really want to get pedantic about semantics?
not in the case of "true" and "false" atheists, but surely in the case of "belief", as it's semantics are confused very often.

Would you have prefered the phrase "truly an Atheist", rather than "true Atheist"?
not really, but let's better focus on the rest. i just wanted to point out that i don't set cathegories like true and false atheists just as JWdom and other Xiandom groups see themselves as "true" Xians versus the "false" other Xians.

I wasn't getting into aspects of atheistic religiosity, at all, would you like me to?
whatever you wish, but only after tearing apart the rest of my posts before ;-)

(Just a few questions to make up for the lack in my last post, if that's acceptable? )
so glad about that!

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

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