Atheism

I have been thumbing spendius down with regularity, ever since he first sullied our thread. I have not read his posts and I only sometimes skim replies adressed to him.

To me, being an atheist means there is no speck of a chance any sort of a god or supernatural happening could be real. End of story. All I want in life is to pursue my writing, live a good family life, abolish war, help institute a capitalist system that is tempered with socialism, help educate to eliminate brutality from the lives of children in particular but inclusive of us all. Now is that being pushy, or asking too much?

No supernatural. Does't that mean like no ghost, not spirits, no hauntings? What about BigFoot? No just kidding on that last one.

No ghosks. No Amityville horror. No to Bigfoot; yes to the Yeti. (kidding also)

Watched a show on the Amityville house the other day. Apparently it's been cleansed of it's spirits.

I will assume that there is no belief because there is no belief in life after death. Correct?

I agree with your sentiments. However the concept of "to live a good family life"
is not acquired in a cultural vacuum. Take as a contrast "family concepts" of some muslims who will willingly sacrifice their family members to jihad. And lest we think our culture is immune to "sacrifice", consider the "proud parents" whose offspring "died for their country" (if not their God). So it may be that as "atheists" we must also reject nationalism as well as religion if we are to be consistent with our rationality.

I have to have evidence before accepting these kinds of tales. My bro in law had unexplained things happening in his house that made them think something like ghosts. Turned out the house sits on a fault line. When it moves the house shifts, however slightly.

Note, if you will, the lack of nationalistic fervor in my post.

I understand that everything comes on an evidence basis. But what would happen if there was such evidence. I understand as well that people have being trying to site such evidence for reals as well as giving the "you can't see the wind, but you still believe it's there" line over and over.

How would it mess with your fundamental core beliefs if such evidence was shown to prove ghost and supernatural phenomena?

If I could examine proof conclusive, I would have to change some of my views, but it would not alter who I am. It depends on the evidence and if the evidence points in a specific direction, how I would change.

Point taken. I'm just wondering whether we could have resisted the zeigeist of WW2.

What spirits? That was a hoax from start to finish, and the perpetrators of the hoax have admitted it, although with as little publicity as they could get away with, because they have a book to sell. The priest they involved has admitted that he perjured himself, and now will make no comment. Really, Boss, you need to develop some healthy skepticism.

Get Out!

((you are no fun))

Hey I said apparently... that shows skepticism.

And as far as skepticism goes, I have mine. They just do not come to light in this thread.

If we could change our time in history, all things would become possible. I prefer to not speculate.

On some threads, humor must be signaled rather broadly.

That seems more like agnosticism to me. If we are going to use words like atheism and secularism in different ways we are going to be talking past each other for ever more.

Atheism, as generally used in the western culture, means a belief that there is no Christian God. We cannot put our minds into cultures having other gods or the nature of any beliefs held in those cultures that their god does not exist. Our atheism is specific to our culture. It would be difficult to believe a sun-god did not exist. Or a fertility Goddess. Our atheism posits a godless universe. Opposition to Christian doctrine and dogma. An absence of conviction in a force field of conviction. The intensity of the force field being managed by the Church and now, media, ever more encroaching on the territory under the chimerical banner of "free will" or "free thinking" both of which are impossible concepts to a materialist though he may think otherwise.

The atheism of the Classical world was an attitude of contempt towards any religious ritual. An empire like the Roman demanded an attitude of toleration to everybody's gods. Atheism there would be the absence of that toleration rather than an absence of conviction. Hence the early Christians would have been classed as atheists. The religion of paganism allowed no freedom of attitude to the cults of others. Every house and district had its own cult figures, probably dependent on economic factors, and people visiting went through the rituals involved whether or not they venerated the same god. One might say Classical atheism was bad manners. Not for public display. If an emperor was the god it would be treason.

It was their toleration of early Christianity which enabled it to gain a foothold. It may have been persecuted in some places but by then it was too late.

Atheism is statistically correlated with the megaloplois, and the "educated" person and represents the acquiring of a mechanistic world view in place of an organically experienced one. Folk wisdom against intelligence which is a word sounding sterile and mechanical. The growth of atheism in our sense represents the dawning of civilisation which also sounds sterile and mechanical and is experienced by many as such and measured by a determination to escape it when the chance arises.

And it's more involved than that. A psychologist might say that an unconscious sense that the universe is Godless precedes the coming to consciousness of a realization that it is Godless and then defended and promoted by self-justification. The question is begged of how the unconscious sense has arisen. Hard knocks maybe and their associations.

That is another point I have touched on from time to time in another place although my not wishing to put it quite so brutally probably led me to cloak it in a cloud of images.

I suppose one would seek to exploit it and get all the jobs around the house done whilst one sat in the pub or snoozed.

I would argue that the supernatural phenomena of our culture does do a lot of the jobs through it's scientific developments which are unique to us.

The following is from Wikipedia. I know many people don't necessarily trust it as a source, but the article from which this is taken cites its sources.

I recall reading it was a hoax long ago.