Atheism

Some here pointed out how ridiculous it would be to have an atheist organization or movement, since atheists are individuals with no other, except coincidental, ties. I don't recall telling those who see it otherwise to shut up. Before all this started, I was referring to the religious trolls who hijack the thread every time it shows any spark of life.

I also remember a time when people of religion used to call us atheists a religion too! That was tooo funny.

This thread is a troll magnet. This is just what is happening now. Edgar posts a video, and not one person discusses the topic of the video, they just show up to attempt to push their points of view.

The thread is not dead--this **** has been going on since shortly after the thread started. Either religionists or people who claim to be atheists but certainly don't resemble atheists show up and flood the thread with BS. Sometimes we get a discussion going, but it gets flooed with the BS.

Something i find interesting is that this site has so may active religion threads, which are, by and large, not troubled by the non-believers, who ususally post at the beginning of a thread and then go away. Put the words athiest or atheism in the thread title, though, and not only to the religious warriors show up, fut for years afterward, they show up as thy find this site. They almost always have in common that they lack the ability to reason and really have no clude what an atheists is.

Yes to all that..
but Olivier is saying that atheists like he is, apparently those considering atheism a positive philosophy, were essentially told to be quiet. I don't remember that at all, though a lot of us are set in our ways of simple not believing.

I did shut this thread down for a while, re the trollers, so I might have missed it.

The POV i expressed was that atheists share some common ground, and thus that some form of platform could help us promote this common ground. For instance to fight against discrimination.

As put by ed, this was deemed 'ridiculous'. The accepted view appears to be there is no such common ground between atheists and thus no need for any structure, organisation or platform of any kind.

But if that is so, what is this thread supposed to discuss?

If you scroll up you will see that indeed, some argued against the need for this thread, on this very ground if memory serves. It certainly looked like the debate was unwelcome. Or maybe i was being too sensitive.

My take is that I personally won't take my card in any atheist organisation anytime soon but i could support a decent atheist promotion group otherwise, including with cash. I also believe that atheists have a lot to discuss, if only how to approach believers. We could use if not a battle plan, at least a debate about how to survive and thrive in this world of believers.

Hate to bust your bubble, but atheists don't have 'common ground' issues.

That's because there are many religions with all manners of differences in their beliefs outside of religion. It's the same with atheism; there are going to be equally different beliefs amongst atheists as there are the people of religion.

I do remember that edgarb is more of a 'believes there are no gods' person than I am, me with my plain old lack thereof - though I may misremember on that..

and I'm not at all against discussions of how to talk with believers, in particular those who really really want to discuss faith and all, other than being curt. Fine with talking about what to do re discrimination issues. I remember our talking at some point about christmas scenes in Palisades Park in Santa Monica (where I used to run, back in my running days), with some guy putting up an atheist creche-like exhibit and the bru ha ha that followed; at least I think it was this thread.

I haven't scrolled back yet. Might. Ok, will, but only so far. I'm just in from weeding weeds with stickers and crabby now.
A while ago, after I had not read the thread for what felt like a long time, maybe months, I read about twenty pages back and it was mostly us types, sans me, answering the religion distractors. Like ping pong.

You're not the first one to claim we have nothing to say if we don't talk about something - I think it was Spendius that poo poo'd our wanting to converse with ourselves. It's just that his gripe was our not wanting to talk religion - not our not wanting to talk about atheist differences.

As to religion distractors and how to deal, that would be interesting generally as a social and political issue. I dunno re philosophic - there are already myriad quagmires going on that. Daughter of a philosophy major, friend of several who are very interested in it, I'm a philosophy recalcitrant.

I liked Spendi's rant against the establishment. :-) but my point is i think different: it is that, if there is no common ground between atheists, then atheists do not exist at least as a group, which may explain why this thread is dead. If there's no common ground between atheists and no social existence of atheism, there is nothing to discuss.

That's at least somewhat what is going on, at least re ongoing discussion of social or political issues by those here to date, we're basically lackadaisical. It's not so much an ongoing discussion situation about searing problems as a place to come post if something shows up in daily life that affects atheists or agnostics, we have a place to post and talk about it.

But, I do think there is common ground. You know, like cats have.

Reports of the death of this thread have been greatly exaggerated. is someone keeping score? Are people not posting often enough. Considering the bulsh*t that gets posted by the loons and trolls whenever someon does post, as EB just did, no one should be surprised if it's not a terribly active thread.

I think Olive Tree is playing the fool, while trying to dominate the conversation, and i also suspect that he's nor really an atheist.

Setanta said one time that nobody bothers him for being an atheist, off line. I have told stories of hysterical believers trying to shout me down and/or convert me. Two examples of we are atheists, but our histories are not the same. I declare unequivocally that there is no god. He says he doesn't believe in a god. Two examples of why we don't need an association.

Ok, now that you reminded me, I do remember that, which I took as yeah, hard to make us into a movement. I didn't take it as a go away to people who want to discuss along that line. I can see feeling that way though.

Yes, something like that. I guess the only way to tell what common ground there might be, is to explore the possibility, and thus to try and entertain the idea at least as an hypothesis, and see where it leads us in a open-minded way. I suspect there's a lot more commonality between cats than most cats would be ready to acknowledge.

But, if others want an association, it's up to them. Alias whatever that used to be a regular here likes that.

They probably still do, that wasn't that long ago.

You're the one who tries to do that. I am just saying there is room for a conversation. As for my atheism, I wonder why you would say that.

I'm with Set on the non belief, and re dealing with others of faith, have had a small wedding without my inlaws since I wasn't catholic (they didn't know the atheism bit, nor of their son's either, though I'd tag him as ephemerally more agnostic than atheist at the time). The inlaws did their ranting at home and the rest of us went out for chinese food after the 20 or so minute ceremony.

This was several years after my first lover left me, convinced by his mother that once a catholic, always a catholic.

Hard to win on some occasions.

Alisas was a poster here? I'll have to look back.

That name reminds me of Anon, of fond memory for me.

He posted as Alias and there may have been more to the name. I see his posts on Facebook and I am pretty sure he likes the organizing of atheists bit.

Now I think back, I think he started with that name and became diest tko.

When you declare unequivocally that there is no God you do that on what standard ? Just curious Edgar...