Atheism

For what its worth, I am in essential agreement with these lyrics:

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace

You, you may say
I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world

You, you may say
I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will live as one

John Lennon Imagine

So stipulated, as OmSigDavid would say.

Yeah Tim. That verse was one of the main ones for why I chose to quote the whole poem. Not that I agree with it mind you. I don't think the Christian creed is worthless. Not yet at least.

And without the Church Militant that creed would soon have trickled into the sands.

All our atheists seem to want to do is whine and whine and more whine about trolls coming on the thread having first conveniently defined a troll as anybody who doesn't dance to their tune.

And they abuse Kant's Categorical Imperative on a permanent basis in the absence of any sign of a rebuttal of it.

What if everybody converted to atheism due to their brilliant arguments? What do they think would be the consequences for social life? Allowing that the historical pseudomorphosis does have traction in the short term which Herald didn't.

To which I expect them to reply that everybody wouldn't convert which is tantamount to admitting that their arguments are ******* useless. And the slender wraith that was Emily Bronte, in your selected verse, said it all for them.

But not an atheist.

O God within my breast,
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life, that in me has rest,
As I, undying Life, have power in Thee!..

"Immortal energy".

You're entitled to your opinion Thomas ,but when I sense that you believe your opinion is the truth and an all encompassing truth, well...it's worrying.



One man's troll is another man's thread buddy...it's all a bunch of hoo ha

Plus it's easy and free to start threads of their own, where no one need be annoyed with them.

I do find it interesting that that the only theists are united on is the 'wrongness' of atheism. They don't even agree on how many gods there are or the number of 'personalities' those gods have, or even how you choose who represents these gods' interests. Particularly when the only thing that unites atheists is our estimation of the number of gods. Whatever else we agree on is mere chance.

I also find it somewhat amusing that atheism is viewed by many of the posters as specifically anti-christian.

a) We don't care what label you use to address your god-belief

b) Not believing in your god doesn't mean we automatically reject all other values associated with your creed. Seriously, the golden rule, dharma, refraining from deceit, are all OK by us - but we do want the right to question and test assertions handed down to us.

Never mind that wishy-washy bullshit. Question the assertion.

It is that if you don't do it this way it all goes tits up.

Get on with it hinge. Question the assertion. Demanding the right to question it is not worth a blow on a ragman's snot rag.

On my part, I'm not anti-christian. I've known a couple(close friends) who believe the world was formed 2,000 years ago.
I don't argue with them but I admire the goodness of their lives as Christians.
The only time I get riled is when Christians brain-wash children in schools and churches.

I'm not going to debate this with you. You asked for an explanation why we react the way we do. I explained it. You don't have to like my explanation or agree with it. And that concludes what I have to say about this digression.

As Richard Dawkins once put it to a Christian caller on NPR, "you are an atheist about all the thousands of gods that people have been believing in --- except one. We atheists just take it one god farther." I couldn't have said it better.

Dawkins gets knocked from many quarters. I have not read his work, but I certainly like many quotations by him.

By all means, read The God Delusion. I think you'll like it.

I may do that. Most of my reading concerning atheism comes from Phillip Wylie, and I have not read much of his work in some years. I love Essay on Morals and Opus 21 as much as any other books I have read. I realize he is dated, but the underlying information does not change much. He was nourishment to an eighteen year old in search of some straight talk.

Everything depends on the definition of 'troll' and 'wasting our time'. To me for example some of the atheists might be viewed as trolls and might annoy us ... slightly, because I am not going hither and thither explaining to the population how great non-atheist I am and how the atheists are wasting my time ... whatever 'wasting our time' may mean. Sometimes 'wasting time' may mean 'gaining time'. BTW how did you come to know that the time (of the general relativity theory) belongs to the atheists.
In the general case atheism means the absence of belief that any deities exist, in other words it rejects the belief in the existence of deities and claims that there are no deities (in the physical and non-physical world, in the universe and in the para-universe, if exist).
This is the general statement, and what can be inferred from there is mind-blowing:
- we are the only intelligent life form (ILF) in the universe
- we are the first and still the best, no other ILFs exist ... or ever existed (isn't that a little bit arrogant)
- there is no intelligence in the universe
- our intelligence is somehow not exactly intelligence
- we are not deities - we are simply a set of cells arranged by the big bang with dices
- the understanding of the atheists of the world is somehow truth of the last resort
... and we the simple mortal should keep our mouth shut ... in order to save their time.

I seriously recommend it too - my brother gave it to me as an audio book.

The issue you and I and others raise with the annoyances is not about theism/atheism it's about simple netiquette. The thread has a topic. Try and stick to it.

Would they walk into a 4H meeting and start talking about WWII fighter bombers? Probably. And the meeting attendees, like us, would think 'who are these dicks?'

Agreed.
I will try to afford Dawkins. Don't know how long it will take. Likely Half Price Books will have a copy.

By the time i was 14, i was no longer participating in organized religion. I had cut a deal in which i would undergo the confirmation mumbo-jumbo, but i would, apart from that never attend church again.

In the years following i looked around me and tried to understand what motivated people in their beliefs. One thing occurred to me fairly quickly, and that is that people hold their beliefs unexamined. What they believe they have accepted as "revealed truth," received wisdom. More than that, they assume that everyone around them thinks just as they do. They'll take into account doctrinal differences between, say, Methodists and Presbyterians, but they always assume that the differences are minor and that they otherwise believe the same things (even though nothing could be further from the truth). If you have 200 Presbyterians in a church (they will all be sitting as far back as they can), it is unlikely that in an exhaustive discussion of their beliefs, that they will find that any two of them believe exactly the same things. This works in politics, too. They are affronted to learn that others don't agree with them. I believe this motivates the nastiness of the god-botherers when confronted by the fact that there are atheists. They see this (probably unconsciously) as an assault on the basic narrative by which they live their lives, of their basic description of the cosmos. I think this accounts for their anger, their scorn and their vicious reactions.

Most Organised Religions and cults are rotten to the core and I'm in full agreement with atheists there..
But atheists attack Jesus too, and that makes no sense to me at all!
How can anybody not like him? For example he bust the asses of the Org Rel of his time when he told them-

"You're full of ****!"

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look good on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean" (Matt 23:27)


And he rescued a woman from a fundy mob who wanted to kill her under the old law-



And he sends a clear message of support for all rebels who refuse to be pushed around by the World-


And- "You're my friends if you follow me. I don't call you servants, but I call you friends"- (John 15:15)

I know you don't have the concentration span but look through this thread and try and find a professed atheist who says he or she hates Jesus. You just make **** up. We may doubt his historicity, and severely doubt he's an imaginary being's son, but a lot of what he reportedly said made plenty of obvious sense.

Of course I should thank you for highlighting yet another issue atheists face in a secular society - cockheads that just make **** up to denigrate us.

I believe you are spot on with those observations, setanta.