Atheism

I found this strangely fitting as I read some works by Mark Twain this morning. It is the starting lines from a short story entitled "A Dog's Tale"

Quote:

My father was a St. Bernard, my mother was a collie, but I am a Presbyterian. This is what my mother told me, I do not know these nice distinctions myself. To me they are only fine large words meaning nothing.

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Jesus Seed . . . this thread is about atheism.

Do you mind if we discuss that subject?

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@Setanta,

By all means, may apologizes for taking it off subject.

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I don't think any apologies are necessary. However, Kay recently complained about this.

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@Seed,

Seed wrote:

... Doubt does not make you believe less, nor does it not make you religious. I also do not thing that if you have doubt that you don't have faith. Every day faith is tested, and it is that doubt that will drive you to either be more faithful, or less.

Seed, that proves my point in a way. Doubt is the furnace you use to harden the steel of your faith. You use temptation to prove your ability to resist it. So an atheist to many religious people, represents the failure of faith, the surrender to any and all temptations, whereas other religious people are clearly not like that, they are just misguided on a path close to the one path. Atheists are on the same path as you but willfully going in the opposite direction.
This likely does not apply to all (and probably not you Seed) but I'm trying to explain the results of that survey.

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@Setanta,

Setanta, it's been my understanding that religions, especially Christianity, attempts to discourage doubt in the general population but encourages exploration of doubt within the clergy and scholars. In the way one might take courage from admitting to and facing ones fears, one is thereby lead to feel ones faith is strengthened by admitting to ones doubts. It's a genius way of ensuring the intelligent faithful feel more rather than less faithful when confronted with cold hard modern reality.

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@Seed,

Seed wrote:

By all means, may apologizes for taking it off subject.

I'm not sure atheism as a concept would exist in the absence of theism.

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@Eorl,

I don't dispute that, although i would suggest to you that, especially as regards Protestantism, that the exercise was investigating doubt about the meaning of events in terms of "god's" will, and never one of doubt about the dogma.

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Do atheists ever doubt their atheism?
That is, do they ever wonder whether there may be a god?

I'm not talking here about the God of Judaism or Christianity or any other
religion, just the concept of god in general.

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@Seed,

Seed wrote:

How can one search for something if there was not doubt?

Easy. I do it all the time. For example, I'm messy, so in my daily life I have to search for my keys a lot. I have never doubted the existence of my keys, no matter how little evidence of them I saw at the moment.

Moving on from such trivial searches to more "noble" ones for knowledge and the like, doubt still doesn't figure into them for me. For example, my motivation for checking out physical phenomena, and eventually becoming a physicist, were real-world observations I couldn't explain. One day I might ride my bike; as I got faster, the frame would start to vibrate, and vibrate more and more with increasing speed.

That was noteworthy in itself, but then something even more interesting happened: As I accelerated further, the oscillations would reach a peak and then get weaker again. When I rode as fast as my legs could pedal, there were barely any vibrations at all. Why would my bike behave like that? Fascinated by this question, I decided to search for the answer. That's how I first learned about the physics of oscillation and resonance.

Almost all important searches in my life follow this pattern. Doubt rarely plays a role in them.

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@George,

Not really.

I'm superstitious, so in that sense maybe (especially in terms of karma). But I really don't think that there are any gods in a true sense, just in a useful-metaphor sense. When I entertain the notion it's more a conscious suspension of disbelief than any doubt.

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@George,

Only in the sense of: "I wonder if . . . naaaaa."

You may as well wonder if wishes can come true.

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@George,

George wrote:

Do atheists ever doubt their atheism?
That is, do they ever wonder whether there may be a god?

Only to the extent that I wonder about the leprechauns who keep hiding my keys.

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Goddamnit!

I'm sick of all this Irish bashing. It's gremlins who do that . . . gremlins!

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@George,

Quote:

Do atheists ever doubt their atheism?

I can't remember one time in my life when I have. However, the saying: "There are no atheists in foxholes" makes a good point. There is great comfort in believing that a deity might save one's ass!

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@George,

George wrote:

Do atheists ever doubt their atheism?
That is, do they ever wonder whether there may be a god?

I'm not talking here about the God of Judaism or Christianity or any other
religion, just the concept of god in general.

For me, yes. I periodically rethink my basic premise on things and consider new information. However, every time I've done it so far, the result has always been the same.... back to atheism.

1 Reply

@Seed,

Seed wrote:

I found this strangely fitting as I read some works by Mark Twain this morning. It is the starting lines from a short story entitled "A Dog's Tale"

Quote:
My father was a St. Bernard, my mother was a collie, but I am a Presbyterian. This is what my mother told me, I do not know these nice distinctions myself. To me they are only fine large words meaning nothing.

Very nice quote. I find myself agreeing with old Sam Clements quite often. It often surprises me that someone from such a different time period could see things so much the same way as I do today.

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@panzade,

panzade wrote:

Quote:
Do atheists ever doubt their atheism?

I can't remember one time in my life when I have. However, the saying: "There
are no atheists in foxholes" makes a good point. There is great comfort in
believing that a deity might save one's ass!

I think there are plenty of atheists in foxholes.
The theists and the atheists are equally scared.

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I always found that claim to be self-serving for the theists.

Sitting in your bunker clutching your rifle and muttering "Oh god, oh god, oh god . . . " does not constitute evidence of subscribing to theism.

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@rosborne979,

rosborne979 wrote:

George wrote:

Do atheists ever doubt their atheism?
That is, do they ever wonder whether there may be a god?

I'm not talking here about the God of Judaism or Christianity or any other
religion, just the concept of god in general.

For me, yes. I periodically rethink my basic premise on things and consider
new information. However, every time I've done it so far, the result has
always been the same.... back to atheism.

Your response surprised me until I realized you were not talking about
doubt, but a logical re-evaluation.

0 Replies

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