Atheism

I don't accept a concept of souls. Thatt's a personal decision, I suppose, since some atheists do and some don't. I feel it just clutters a concept of self unnecessarily.

2 Replies

@edgarblythe,

I accept a concept of self, for better or worse. Looking waaaay back, I remember having to make some mental leap to get the idea of soul. But in the end I think of them as at least similar, timing being a problem.

0 Replies

@panzade,

Quote:

@Joe Nation,
It's no use Joe. The pusillanimous lad won't even admit to believing there is a God

Everyone deserves a last chance.

Joe('tis one of my core beliefs)Nation

0 Replies

I just got all kinds of WTF lost in here. I blame spendius

1 Reply

@littlek,

littlek wrote:

Ultimately I'd love a green burial buried without a coffin. Maybe that'd be a more likely option by the time I kick it. The problem I have with cremation is that it is polluting.

The idea of ashes is nice though. I'd want family members and maybe friends to scatter me where they felt they could connect to me in the future if they so desired. If I hike with my niece in a place over many years, she might choose to toss me there. My brother might choose to scatter me at the National Seashore. What happens after I'm dead is really all for the sake of the living who cared.

Green burials are available here.
It's what I plan on.

You are buried vertically in a simple (biodegradable, I assume) shroud.

Are they not in USA?

1 Reply

@dlowan,

Yes, sure.

1 Reply

@ossobuco,

Personally, I can't afford it.

0 Replies

@Seed,

Seed wrote:

I just got all kinds of WTF lost in here. I blame spendius

Pretty sure that was his intention.

0 Replies

@edgarblythe,

edgarblythe wrote:

I don't accept a concept of souls. Thatt's a personal decision, I suppose, since some atheists do and some don't. I feel it just clutters a concept of self unnecessarily.

Allow me to emphasize that.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

edgarblythe wrote:
I don't accept a concept of souls. Thatt's a personal decision, I suppose, since some atheists do and some don't. I feel it just clutters a concept of self unnecessarily.

Allow me to emphasize that.

Does it need a second? SECOND!

1 Reply

@Eorl,

Quote:

Setanta wrote:

edgarblythe wrote:
I don't accept a concept of souls. Thatt's a personal decision, I suppose, since some atheists do and some don't. I feel it just clutters a concept of self unnecessarily.

Allow me to emphasize that.

Does it need a second? SECOND!

Perhaps it is too easy to say. The Materialist Theory of Mind scares most people witless.

A few philosophers of the type who can take sharp intakes of breath through tightly clamped teeth can handle it. The concept of self which necessarily results is an epidermal sac containing chemico-physico **** pulsing with the identical determinants of new born organisms.

Hence the absence of wit.

In a nutshell, so to speak--

Quote:

Philosophy of mind A theory developed as a result of the criticisms of the dualist theory of the relationship between body and mind. While dualism claims that mind and body are two independent entities, varieties of materialism claim that mental phenomena are determined by, identical with, or supervenient on physical phenomena. Materialism holds that human beings are distinguished from other physical objects only because of the special complexity of their physical organizations. This theory has two main versions: behaviorism claims that to have a mind is to have tendencies to behave physically in a certain way, and central-state materialism or identity theory claims that mental events are identical with certain physical events in the brain. Supervenience can allow a person to have mental states in virtue of having certain brain states without the mental states being reduced to the brain states.“In sharp opposition to any form of dualism we have materialist or physicalist theory of mind. For a materialist, man is nothing but a physical object, and so he is committed to giving a purely physical theory of mind.”D. Armstrong, A Materialist Theory of Mind

Armstrong's book is a riveting read. I strongly urge you all to read it so that you can get a proper idea of what you are signed up to once you get past facile statements intended to leave your companions gobsmacked.

On the pleasure/pain principle and assuming you are fed, at an acceptable temperature and without fear of lions and tigers it has to be sexual in nature. My reading is that it a philosophical system designed to vanquish any arguments a lady might deploy as to why she shouldn't submit to a shagging when force has been ruled out due to fear of the law.

In my experience it only works with very intelligent ladies. The scuzzers in the pub require some soulful efforts on the grounds that if they are going to employ a physical object they might as well use a vibrating dildo.

0 Replies

@Joe Nation,

Quote:

Homework assignment: Please list your core beliefs.

1. I believe snow is white.

2. I believe Paris is in France.

3. I believe spring is just around the corner.

4. I believe the Dow Jones is hovering around the 10,000 mark.

5. I believe getting out of bed before 10 am is dangerous.

6. I believe the female principle rules the world.

7. I believe pubs are the last bastion of freedom.

8. I believe Mr Obama told a load of porkies in his election campaign.

9. I believe the NFL is a symptom of mass hysteria.

10. I believe that's enough beliefs to be going on with.

1 Reply

@spendius,

Your grade D-
What you've listed, as always, are opinions, except for #3 which is a hope. I was myself hoping you would finally reveal something of yourself that a reader could bite down on, instead we get the usual cottoncandy of avoidance. Cute but dismal.
Joe(really dismal.)Nation

0 Replies

You know, i don't read the posts by Spurious. However, it is obvious that he is going to trash this thread as he has trashed so many others. In scrolling, i find he is pursuing his usual MO, by making one long post after another. My experience in the past has been that there would be nothing worth reading in any of them.

You folks here who respond to Spurious are just helping him to trash this thread--to make it about him, rather than about atheism. This thread may be hopelessly trashed already, now that he's battened upon it. Nevertheless, it is possible to have discussions when the old drunk is playing his stupid games, by simply ignoring him.

I ask other members to ignore Spurious when he posts here. Don't encourage him, he doesn't need encouragement as it is.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

You folks here who respond to Spurious are just helping him to trash this thread--to make it about him, rather than about atheism. This thread may be hopelessly trashed already, now that he's battened upon it. Nevertheless, it is possible to have discussions when the old drunk is playing his stupid games, by simply ignoring him.

I concur.

0 Replies

Quote:

I know there are other threads about atheism, but they tend to be focused somewhat specifically to some argument or subtopic. I'd like this thread to be open for constructive conversation, sharing of ideas and resources, etc.

One big issue that some friends and I feel is weird is that religious people seem to feel that we are persecuting them. I can't see how that could be given that we represent such a small minority of any population. If anything, it is we who are persecuted.

Atheism is the belief that there is no God. Most arguments for atheism are directed at the Christian God and are irrelevant to other gods. So atheism might be said to be a belief that the Christian God does not exist.

What else is there to say? There's only "constructive conversation, sharing of ideas and resources, etc." left. In attempting to encourage those things, ineptly possibly, I don't see why I am accused of trashing the thread.

As for persecution by atheists a glaring example has just appeared before your very eyes. You are being asked to voluntarily censor your reading on the strength of a pair of ignorant blurts based on the premiss that I am trashing the thread which I have just shown is untrue.

1 Reply

@spendius,

spendius wrote:

Atheism is the belief that there is no God.

No. Atheism is a belief that all things have a natural origin/relationship. Atheism's view on the concept of any god is that the evidence provided is inadequate to base belief on. Certainly an atheist will have a stone of doubt that a god could exist, but that stone is no larger than the other stones of doubt for the unicorn. It's not a belief that simply reduces to no gods. It is more involved than that.

spendius wrote:

Most arguments for atheism are directed at the Christian God and are irrelevant to other gods. So atheism might be said to be a belief that the Christian God does not exist.

Projection. I reject the possibility of Zeus exactly as much as the Christian god. If someone was here telling me about why I need to entertain the notion of the god Zeus, they'd be receiving the same degree of attention.

spendius wrote:

What else is there to say? There's only "constructive conversation, sharing of ideas and resources, etc." left. In attempting to encourage those things, ineptly possibly, I don't see why I am accused of trashing the thread.

You're welcome to help contribute resources. Nobody here needs you as a "common enemy." We're not looking to come together on a common negative, but a common positive theme.

spendius wrote:

As for persecution by atheists a glaring example has just appeared before your very eyes. You are being asked to voluntarily censor your reading on the strength of a pair of ignorant blurts based on the premiss that I am trashing the thread which I have just shown is untrue.

This isn't an example of persecution spendi. If it was, the other Christian theists in this thread would have been included in who should be ignored. Plenty of people here at A2K struggle to find patience with you, and many of them are not atheists. You aren't being ignored because you are a Christian or because you believe in god.

T
K
O

2 Replies

@Diest TKO,

I too find Spendius incomprehensible for the most part (as he already knows), but on one of the threads he touched on the interesting theme that we are all "prisoners" of our cultural roots. That theme is illustrated for example by Heidegger's cryptic "language speaks the man" - a point taken up by contemporary French philosophers such as Foucault who argued along the lines that a culturally acquired linguistic framework "shapes reality". So in that respect, Spendius has a point in arguing that "atheists" including myself, are bound by the prevailing "god of our culture" in providing the semantic framework within which we categorize ourselves. Of course we can extrapolate to "Zeus" or other "deities", but our conception of those too will be inevitably coloured by our own culture.

1 Reply

@fresco,

I get what you're saying, but I disagree. I believe that what spendi represents is religious entitlement. The idea in this case that any topic of theology MUST be talked about with respect to his Christianity.

I get frustrated when atheists say "I don't believe in God," because in their reply they subtly contribute to the idea that atheism is somehow specifically bound to monotheism. I wish more atheists would say that they don't believe in "any gods." I believe this would convey to the individual theist that the atheist is not singling them out.

T
K
O

1 Reply

@Diest TKO,

I agree, but to be fair, it is the right wing conservative God that we get foisted upon us by the media every day.

he is particularly frustrating to some of us.

0 Replies

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know