Atheism

@hingehead,

That is entirely caused, hinge, by not only a total absence of knowledge of the subject but of prejudices which would need to be eradicated before gaining any actual knowledge of it.

Any conversation between people who have some knowledge of the matter is possibly the most interesting subject of a conversation that exists outside of those where the shortage of physical necessities dominates life.

With your Ignore record, my answer to your statement would likely cause you to break the conversation off rather than me. It would be that with genuine Theists it is neither belief nor view. That it is a feeling. A belief or a view only attempt to verbalise the feeling. The feeling is authentic. Art tries to convey it.

Those who have experienced it, and mystics are in it all the time, allowing that some might be pretending, (it is a decent job), would say that it is necessary to be Spock like to avoid it at some point or to be in denial of it in order to fit in with other less intellectual positions.

But good luck trying to eradicate it.

What do you think matey? It's your turn.

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@hingehead,

Quote:

The baseball thing was used to explain to you that there isn't a shared ideology of atheists. We each get by in our own way. You cannot group together people by what they don't believe in.

I could not disagree more with the idea that atheists don't share common ground. E.g. most of them at some point lost their religion, which had be taught to them by their parents (at least among our generations - my kids did not have any religion to lose because we never taught them any), and often for similar reasons and at the same age, more or less (puberty or early adulthood, typically).

Likewise, believers of all stripes share some common ground, even though they hate to admit it. Remember that people from any group will often be of the impression that there is much more to separate them than to unite them, but that is often a "optical illusion". We like to focus on those details that differ and we take commonalities for granted.

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Would you tell everyone who doesn't believe in Santa Claus that they have to offer a credible alternative to Santa for the good of society?

The funny thing is: every parent I know, including atheists of course, told the big Santa lie to their kids and therefore perpetuates the myth... Make an experiment: join a family reunion around Christmas time and tell all the little kids in the house that Santa does not really exist; that their parents are buying the gifts... See if you can survive that, socially.

I think it is a mistake for atheists to shy away from a discussion on ethics and leave it to believers. It's really saying to believers: "we don't care about morality", which is clearly not true and plays in the believers' hands. And to be fair, not all atheists are shy about these issues, but in my experience, on A2K they tend to be.

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@Germlat,

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I bet he would not be elected to public office by the people , if they knew he was an atheist. I bet many parents would not even allow his children to play with his.

Good points.

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@hingehead,

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In short: it's frustrating, annoying, boring, unless there are only atheists in the conversation.

Well hinge--the latest conversation on here is between 4 atheists. Yourself, Olivier, Germiat and myself.

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@Olivier5,

You just set up at least four straw man arguments in there Olivier

- I didn't say we didn't share common ground, I said we don't have a shared ideology - feel free to disagree with something I didn't say.

- Saying 'all' atheists share common ground because 'most' lost the religion they were taught at roughly the same age give or take 10 years is logically flawed. Straight away I fall outside your facile generalization.

- Atheists and theists share common ground (and biology) - so your observation that theists share common ground isn't enlightening

- You skipped my point about Santa Claus - I asked if you demand non-believers have create an alternative Santa Claus to believe in. Like you were demanding all atheists need to create their own ideology and stick to it. I never said anything telling kids anything at christmas - your point isn't an argument. I could have the same affect at a christmas family gathering advocate paedophilia or cannibalism - neither of which require a belief system.

I don't think atheists shy away from discussion of ethics at all. We just don't believe that there is a god who dictated what our morals and values must be. There are atheists who believe in the Golden Rule, some who believe in the strictures of the 10 commandments, or any other religious or cultural rules that were taught or found. They just don't believe there is a god or gods.

And for some reason some theists, when discussing ethics, fall back on a god as the basis for ethics. Sometimes I suspect because it's easier than thinking.

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I don't know when anybody else became an atheist. There was never a time when I considered myself something else.

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@edgarblythe,

That's the same with me! I always felt that the teachings of the church were self-aggrandizement and discriminatory against other churches (and people). Besides that, my brother 'forced' me to go to church, and he beat me up when I didn't go (come back with the weekly program).

I left home when I was 17 years old.

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@cicerone imposter,

I can relate...I left home at 17...made my world on my own terms. Paid for all on my own. Unheard of these days...

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@Germlat,

That's only a small part of the whole story; my brother is still a member of that church, but he has no concept of brotherly love, and still believes in god. He never went to church when he forced me to go.

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@cicerone imposter,

Wow!! Sincerely I can relate.

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@hingehead,

hingehead wrote:

You just set up at least four straw man arguments in there Olivier

hmmm this is going to be a tough one, let's see...

Quote:

- I didn't say we didn't share common ground, I said we don't have a shared ideology - feel free to disagree with something I didn't say.

Well yes, I disagree with something you did not technically say but Set said, which is that 2 atheists would have nothing else to talk about than baseball. Are the Yankees a baseball team? you couldn't try that one with me... I know it's a caricature but still, it's BS to imply that 2 atheists couldn't talk about their respective atheism or its consequences in daily life, as the thread intended to do originally.

So you did the straw man (or is it a non-sequitur?) by talking out of the blue about ideology. The issue is whether such a thread has even a sense or not. People don't need to have the same ideology to share stuff, do they? Or nobody would never share anything since we all differ here or there in ideology. As soon as there're two guys in a room, there're three ideologies.

Quote:

- Saying 'all' atheists share common ground because 'most' lost the religion they were taught at roughly the same age give or take 10 years is logically flawed. Straight away I fall outside your facile generalization.

So you were not brought up in any religion at all? Or you lost faith later? I mean, yes, there's plenty of differences, sure. Just seems to me there could also be similarities.

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- Atheists and theists share common ground (and biology) - so your observation that theists share common ground isn't enlightening

Yes, we all share common ground, smaller or larger, but it is hard to maintain a conversation with someone with whom you share very little common ground. Some common ground is enough for a conversation to start, put it this way.

Quote:

- You skipped my point about Santa Claus - I asked if you demand non-believers have create an alternative Santa Claus to believe in. Like you were demanding all atheists need to create their own ideology and stick to it. I never said anything telling kids anything at christmas - your point isn't an argument. I could have the same affect at a christmas family gathering advocate paedophilia or cannibalism - neither of which require a belief system.

errr, now you're doing the strawman thing again. Nobody said we "need to create our own ideology and stick to it". All I have been saying is that an atheist political outlook / discourse / debate is possible. One can articulate one, and it is legitimate to do so. You're welcome to disagree with something I didn't say.

Quote:

I don't think atheists shy away from discussion of ethics at all. We just don't believe that there is a god who dictated what our morals and values must be. There are atheists who believe in the Golden Rule, some who believe in the strictures of the 10 commandments, or any other religious or cultural rules that were taught or found. They just don't believe there is a god or gods.

And for some reason some theists, when discussing ethics, fall back on a god as the basis for ethics. Sometimes I suspect because it's easier than thinking.

Gods have been the basis for ethics for thousands of years... It's an heritage that is not so lightly disposed of. Why do you think religion was invented, if not to control men with fears of eternal punishment and stuff?

The issue is: moral values, some of them at least, are supposed to be absolute. E.g., how much money should I pay you to convince you to kill someone? Or simply, to hit a perfectly innocent child? I like to think that I would be saying no to any offer of such kind. Morals are absolute. Big no-nos exist. How do you enforce and drill into people's minds the big no-nos? That's where Santa comes in.

You would have a very hard time getting rid of Santa if you tried to. Imagine a public campaign with sign and advertisements and protests all over the country: "Stop lying to your children, stop the lies about Santa!"... Now imagine the response of society to that, the backslash.

The point I am trying to make is: almost everybody, all the parents at least, would aggressively object. They want to keep lying to their kids about Santa. So anyone who would TRULY speaks of getting rid of any belief in him in society has better come up with A FINE GOOD REPLACEMENT for the goofy old red man from the North Pole, his sledge and his reindeer.

In actual fact, Santa himself is already a replacement, of older myths: in parts of Europe it was Jesus who brought gifts to children at his own birthday. In others in was St Nicolas, in others the Wisemen or la Befana. But the idea is always the same: you have to be a good child to earn the gifts. Not only behave in front of adults, because Jesus/St Nicolas/the Maggi can see you always and wherever you go... Very useful socialization trick that helps keep the little monsters to become bigger monsters, and that is why parents like the idea.

Santa Claus is therefore a secular version of St Nicolas, or of Jesus. He already replaced God and His Saints in the hearts of men during the 20th century (all this is very recent)... and maybe he is PRECISELY one of these societal responses / adaptations to an increasingly secular world that Spendi and I (and you are welcome to join) are talking about... :-)

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@cicerone imposter,

So you never believed in God, even as a child? Smart kid!

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@Olivier5,

Never. Our first religion (in our family) was buddhism, then our mother converted to christianity while we were in concentration camp during WWII.

I just didn't feel any connection to any of their teachings or promises of salvation. It was such an intangible issue as a child, I just "didn't get it."

As I learned more about their dogma, it made less sense to me that they were the "only true church."

I must admit that the most impressive and religious experience I've ever had was
at a Catholic service when I was in the USAF when the service was in Latin of which I understood not a word. I went only because most of my friends based in Morocco were Catholics.

My wife is a Buddhist, and we have traveled to Japan on a Buddhist pilgrimage - which I enjoyed for the experience of praying at churches built during the 7th and 8th centuries. This is one of the best ways to really see Japan. We visited one of the largest cemeteries in Japan (in Kyoto on Mt Koya) where the son of Tokunaga is buried.

From Wiki.

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Shogun Ieyasu (1603–1605)[edit]
Main article: Tokugawa Shogun

Tokugawa Ieyasu as shogun.
On March 24, 1603, Tokugawa Ieyasu received the title of shogun from Emperor Go-Yōzei.[10] Ieyasu was 60 years old. He had outlasted all the other great men of his times: Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, Shingen, Kenshin. He was the shogun and he used his remaining years to create and solidify the Tokugawa shogunate (that was eventually to become the Edo period, about two hundred years under Ieyasu's Shogunate), the third shogunal government (after the Minamoto and the Ashikaga). To consolidate his rule, Ieyasu gathered his men for one last battle to eliminate the remnants of the Toyotomi clan in Osaka Castle. He succeeded in the Siege of Osaka and removed all of the possible threats to his power. He claimed descent from the Minamoto clan by way of the Nitta family. The Tokugawa Shogunate would rule Japan for the next 250 years.
Following a well established Japanese pattern, Ieyasu abdicated his official position as shogun in 1605. His successor was his son and heir, Tokugawa Hidetada. This may have been done, in part to avoid being tied up in ceremonial duties, and in part to make it harder for his enemies to attack the real power center, and in part to secure a smoother succession of his son.[11] The abdication of Ieyasu had no effect on the practical extent of his powers or his rule; but Hidetada nevertheless assumed a role as formal head of the bakufu bureaucracy.

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@cicerone imposter,

You were in concentration camps during WWII?

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@Olivier5,

Yes, in Northern California for almost four years.

This is one of my favorite pictures from that journey to Japan - at the cemetery.

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7016/13478352293_756ca783f5.jpg

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@cicerone imposter,

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Yes, in Northern California for almost four years.

Wow. How was that?

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@Olivier5,

As children, we acclimated to our environment very quickly, but the older folks had a very difficult time living in tar-papered shacks that provided very little protection from the elements - and snow during the winter months. Our home was a 20x24' room, and the barracks had no partition between them above the roof line, so there was no privacy to speak of. Each family, no matter what size, had only one room. We were considered one of the lucky ones, because our uncle was in charge of assigning the rooms at Tule Lake Concentration Camp, and he gave us an end unit which was a few feet larger.

One thing I'll mention for your benefit, is that young men from the concentration camps volunteered to serve in the US military, and they were the most decorated of any unit of all the wars the US was ever involved in. Many served in the Pacific in intelligence, and to translate communication and from prisoners. They were the 100th Battalion, 442nd Regimental Combat Team. When we were in Hawaii last January, I took pictures of the memorial to the 442 located at DeRussy Park in Waikiki.

The memorial.

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7430/13480025244_80e28fab06.jpg

The 100th, 442, MIS, and Engineers.

https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2876/13479771363_0aaa2f94ba.jpg

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@cicerone imposter,

It was ironic that the 522nd FAB liberated the slave laborers at Hurlich.

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@Olivier5,

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it's BS to imply that 2 atheists couldn't talk about their respective atheism or its consequences in daily life, as the thread intended to do originally

Well you twisted that round - you were saying that atheists are all the same, now when confronted, you say we we were denying we could talk about our respective atheisms - explicitly implying they are different.

To quote you:

Quote:

There are atheist philosophies, whether you like it or not. Atheism is not just, for most of us anyway, an absence of belief. It often goes with a set of beliefs such as that religions are bad things, in the grand scheme of things.

To which I say bollocks. Anything other than a lack of belief in gods is a belief and is not atheism.

Their is no church of atheism, and it was not inculcated into me. There wasn't a user manual and I certainly didn't read about it's 'philosophies'

Now on to your next point....

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@Olivier5,

Quote:

Gods have been the basis for ethics for thousands of years... It's an heritage that is not so lightly disposed of. Why do you think religion was invented, if not to control men with fears of eternal punishment and stuff?

It was invented to explain the unexplainable and turned out to be useful tool for social control. But the basics of ethics predates gods - how did humans survive long enough to invent gods? That heritage isn't easily disposed of either.

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