Atheism

Interesting. Some people say "atheism is (sometimes) a religion". You're saying: "atheism is (often) a theology".

There's some truth to that. Many atheists were raised in one religion or another and became atheist through some philosophical journey or another. They've thought about it, there's often something deliberate about being an atheist.

In the bad ol' days, when I still took strong drink, there was this former preacher (not unfrocked, he just got tired of the life) who would come over to "discuss" religion with me. He knew me well--he always brought a fifth of John Jameson pot still whisky.

I think religious atheists are far less common than most Christians imagine. Richard Dawkins is the real deal and I’d love to have a chat with him.

For me, it’s that the more common atheists are more open about the subject.
The religious have already accepted numerous dogmas and dare not question them. They feel their soul is at risk by questioning them.

The only problem I have when talking about God with atheists, is that I have to get through their assumptions about theists in general and me in particular. Claiming to know God comes with **** tons of baggage.

Something tells me he wasn’t so crass as to try converting you. Least I hope not. I assume his goal was to hang onto his sanity while waiting. I say that because that 'being tired of life' thing is familiar to me.

I’d worry about it except that it is the inevitable consequence that one would expect if the goal was knowing God. The rest of it is just waiting or vanity.
I am ever so glad it didn’t happen sooner.

God is where we park the stuff we don't know.

See what I mean. Baggage.

What else? Questions by the dozen.

According to Religious Tolerand dot Org, as many as 26% of Americans may be atheists. (They acknowledge that atheists don't respond, or don't respond honestly to phone surveys.) One statistic that I found interesting is that when Angus-Reid in Canada, and more than one polling agency in the United States altered their questions, they found that as many as 10% of those claiming a religious confession do not necessarily believe in god. (This is complicated by the distinction between a god and a personal god.) Religious Tolerance came to the conclusion that most atheists are the so-called "weak" or implicit atheists, once again with the disclaimer that atheists usually don't respond to such polls. I don't think my preacher buddy was tired of life so much as he had gotten tired of the preacher gig. I'm not tired of life, but at my age, I definitely know what Shakespeare meant by "the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to."

The unwritten 'fact' that most Christians have been fed is that Man could never comprehend the Mind of God. It is sinful to imagine you could.

So in that you are correct. Even though there is no theological foundation for this, they accept it as true. Yet another cliche About God and theists that I must get through.

To me, god is unknowable by design. It's the concept under which we hide the undecidable.

Some have to educate themselves into atheism. Others of us have never been indoctrinated into a belief system and when confronted with religious doctrines it just doesn't take. Nobody ever tried to teach me there was or wasn't a god until I was old enough to accept or reject. I smelled the bullshit right away. They said that morality came from "god." I figured out on my own that it was an innate trait. They tried to frighten me with talk of eternal death, versus heaven. It put me in turmoil for a bit when confronted with that prospect. But once I faced up to it, there was for me no further conflict over being an atheist. In one period of weakness, I tried to talk myself into accepting Baptist style faith, because they claimed to have the way to a happy fulfilled life and my life was miserable enough I wanted something else. But that lasted less than a month. Before I learned there was evolution I already had a firm atheism going. Science has helped confirm the wisdom of atheism but was in no way the cause of it.

I was about five when I decided that god's employees were a bunch of shits. I did at that time accept the premise. But my disgust with organized religion and the bullsh*t stories served me well when it came to the point that I determined to ditch all of that. As I said about my years in the army, I look back with no regrets.

Then You are perfectly in step with organized religion.

It still sounds like a defeatist position to take, no matter which side of the fence you’re on.

Not really. It's useful to know what you don't know, and recognize it as such.

If human brains are machines made up of deterministic physical/chemical reactions, yet they are capable of recognizing themselves as having agency/intent, then why can't/shouldn't they project the same agency/intent onto other deterministic/mechanistic physical/chemical reactions outside of the human body?

In other words, if the distinction between passive determination and active agency/intent is superficial, why should it only be applied to humans and not the rest of the natural world?

Why can atheists interpret human actions in terms of active agency and intent, but not other kinds of actions? Could it be anthrocentrist bias?

I’ll buy that. But to willingly sentence oneself to eternal ignorance?

You still make me laugh when you talk of atheists as a monobloc.

We just don't see any evidence that a god or gods exist. Our thoughts on anything else are at least as varied as theists.

If god is unknowable by design, how is that willing ignorance, let alone eternal?

Did you read my post? It had nothing to do with treating atheists "as a monobloc."

What I said is that if an atheist can see a human brain, which is ultimately just a collection of deterministic physical/chemical reactions, as having consciousness/agency/intent; then why can't the same person interpret other natural events in terms of consciousness/agency/intent?

In other words, you don't want to anthropromorphize nature by talking in terms of divine agency and intent, but then why do you find it so easy to anthropromorphize that hyper-intelligent ape we call 'human?'

In other words, why don't you question the attribution of human qualities built on religious traditions to humans, and re-envision us as purely deterministic mechanical systems? Why continue to think of humans as having consciousness/agency/intent if you reject it as something that can be projected onto other parts of nature?

Yes I read this: