Atheists...

Huh, how does it take more faith? This is impossible for all atheists, because not all atheist try to convert people. I know I don't care if you believe in a god or not. I do care if your "moral" codes leaks into my life by rule of law or other forced means. I'm against all moral codes btw! Hasty generalizations make you look very foolish. I didn't read your entire diatribe(not worth my time), so I probably missed other nonsense you spewed.

Now onto the OP, I feel like I became an atheist instinctively. I was unable to believe in the stories my mother taught me from the Bible and she had to tell me they were just moral stories. I did believe in that god, but I asked a lot of questions when I was young. I must of been agnostic Christian early on. I became an atheist at 12 because nothing worked and the Bible never made sense to me. Prayer never worked, god never talked to me, and I never had a spiritual experience as the religious describe the phenomena.

It takes faith to be a atheist and there is more to it then lack of belief of god.

Followers of atheism often try to convert people like other religions it hates other religions like other religions do.

It holds many of the same characteristics of a religion "set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs." In the quotes is the definition of religion.

Atheism concerns the cause, nature and purpose of the universe.

It also has a moral code.

ones disbelief in any god has identical effect on someone that might believe in a number of other "gods". And that effect is that it changes there way of living, thinking and their view on life.

It takes more faith because you cant disprove or prove god exist, and if a atheist is wrong the consequences are very bad also hating moral codes is a code and further you hating moral codes leaking into your life proves you want to convert people because there will never be no leaking of moral codes until everyone has the same one.

It takes faith to be a atheist and there is more to it then lack of belief of god.

It's difficult to generalize about atheists, because the term is used for different perspectives. For some atheists, there isn't anything more than a lack of belief in god.

People can place faith in anything, but no faith is required to be unconcerned with god-talk and god-devotion.



Personally, I've never seen an atheist stand on the corner reciting Darwin.

Philosophical speculation and criticizing other points of view is not tantamount to proselytizing. If convert means make a case for their perspective, we do this about non-religious issues as well as religious, so I see no reason to pick atheism out of the crowd any more than people who swear that BMWs are the best cars.



The definition of religion you quote doesn't seem to account for all religion. More importantly, an atheist need not be without religion - atheism only necessarily refers to god. Though, someone who does not believe in any sort of god and who also rejects religion is termed an atheist.



Only in that god does not factor into an atheist's view of the cause, nature and purpose of the universe. Atheism does not entail any sort of belief about the cause, nature and purpose of the universe.



Again, atheists do not have a standardized moral code. The only thing moral and universal to atheists is the lack of god in the consideration of morality (except, perhaps, when considering how to treat the god beliefs of others).



This has a great deal of truth in it. Belief in god is a big part of how believers see the world. But the only relation here is that atheists do not have the sort of world perspective that a theists might have.



I can't prove or disprove that a purple flying spaghetti monster rules the universe and, with his infinite power, gives us no knowledge of him. However, it would be strange to say that I have faith in the non-existence of the purple flying spaghetti monster. And even if we did say something to this effect, the use of faith in such a context is radically different than the faith usually mentioned in religious contexts.

Atheists do not hate moral codes... well, not necessarily anyway. I suppose they could. But the fact of the matter is that most atheists are concerned with being decent people, concerned with being moral. God just doesn't enter into their moral lives. An atheist doesn't necessarily have anything against other moral points of view - how could they? Atheists do not have a particular moral view. More importantly, atheists do not necessarily have anything against god, or belief in god.

You are failing to the point of my posts and that is that a disbelief in god means certain things have to be true this would account for me saying there is a code ect... It effects someones life very similar to that of a religion

But there isn't a code among atheists. Atheism isn't even necessarily disbelief in god; most broadly, an atheist is someone who does not believe in god. Maybe someone has never heard of god.

Do those of us who do not believe in the great purple flying spaghetti monster have a code? How could we have a code when most of us are probably not even aware of the single proposition that ties us together?

The influence of atheism on a persons life isn't similar to the influence of god, it's the lack of a certain kind of influence of god. The influence of atheism is that the influence of god on a person's life is not present in the same way the influence of god is present in a believer's life - whatever that influence might amount to.

Lacking belief in god doesn't necessarily entail anything more than just that. Someone might even lack belief in god and be religious. Monotheists were often labeled atheists by pagans. The word has many uses, and so it is difficult to generalize about atheists.

Its not like I even want to be religious here. Atheism does not mean that you have to consider your dis-regarding of God. There are no customs needed, no idol, in a society, it seems rather liberating. Then again that is rather subjective.

Christmas is ok because the reason we celebrate it in our family is not for God but for affection, something that does not require a symbol to know comes from good rather than bad.

I view atheism as getting away from " it all ". Religion, meaningless customs that only hold moral pretence, the reliance of an omniscience,

Ill be more specific then someone who outright denies the possibility of a god

i bet that between an atheist and a theist, the atheist has given more thought to his conviction than his counterpart about this. Many believers does not even know what they believe in, while ask an atheist what his belief about the issue and he will give a clear cut explanation.

Perhaps this goes to show us all how when we just sit down to actually think about why we dedicate our lives to such 'useless features' more people are able to 'see the light' and know that God does not need to exist.

Yeah, there is value to some people believing in God, but if there isn't a value then God would not allow himself to have influence on those who do not wish it to have value (simply a moral absolute in my opinion).Yet God would ofcourse have influence upon those who believe in it.

The easiest way to allow for this equilibrium would to be only to exist in a fundamental sense (if you can think of a better way tell me); a physical sense, separate from human entities would be excluded because God would have to become something physically without ultimate potential (in whatever sense you wish to give God).

Even visions, or introspects of the subconscious playwrights of the mind are fundamental, lacking experience beyond the scope of a single mind, heck if they are even credible.

God must lack material credence in order to be a part of humanity's rational in my opinion, therefore physically innate, or to a better extent self destruct. And I don't see the people who believe in God and heaven and the whole 'works' viewing God as merely fundamental.

Its like saying if humanity never conceived the concept of God does God exist? Because in the end thats all that matters.

It is a needless paradox. But nevertheless very interesting to talk about.

God is a human concept; the influence of God is up to you.

What equilibrium are we trying to attain?

You follow with some metaphysical speculation about God, as if God needs to be demonstrated in a logically coherent way. Western Christianity follow the Greek tradition of Plato and Aristotle, trying to logically explain God.

Reliance on logically coherent Gods is rather unique to western Christianity. Often God is described in purposefully paradoxical terms in order to emphasize the inability of metaphysical speculation to adequately explain God.

What do you mean by credible?

Faith traditions have developed an impressive body of work dedicated to instruction on how to achieve some sort of 'awakening'. The methods are oddly similar in the traditions. Most notably, meditation on breathing; these practices are found in the three western monotheisms, Hinduism and Buddhism. More importantly, we find the sages of the various traditions pioneering methods like meditative breathing independently of one another.

Many brilliant minds have made metaphysical speculations about God. Those who thought the metaphysical speculations about God were bound to logical coherency represent a minority among those writing about the nature of God. As I say above, many thought such writing should be paradoxical, and intentionally defy logic and reason - the idea was that the literature was poetic, and was to be a meditation on God.

Did humanity think God up out of nowhere? Or did humanity conceive the concept God for something just as we conceived of 'foot' for a part of our anatomy?

And here's something else to consider - does the label 'god' matter at all? Or is 'god' the product of a particular tradition of explaining some universal experience, which other traditions have expressed in different ways corresponding to their peculiar cultural circumstances?

Very interesting topic with a massive influence on humanity. Some would say the value is in the paradox, others would deny that such a paradox exists.

Man has had some sort of spiritual perspective ever since he became recognizable as modern man

Its just that I believe humanity would not exist without logic so why deny that virtue to the paradox.

What people believe heaven to be the place where only the soul or spirit is passed on to obviously does not hold any content of logic so again my point becomes obsolete.

Yes its very hypocritical. Any influence God has displayed in the bible seems to need logic to perceive, because perception of our conscious nature requires some form of logic, intuition right? So I automatically eliminate Gods construed by religion because a religion's goal is primarily based upon logic, just irrational a lot of the time.

Again, my view on what is credible is what makes sense or can make sense, what can be perceived, what is logical.

I think being awake implies logic and intellect, not blind faith. But obviously if the majority of humanity has a faith that they hold themselves too then I must be wrong somewhere

I suppose conceiving God in this manner puts one at ease better than logic which is a purpose of God. Perhaps its just better not to think about it then instead of going down a false path.

Yes but God is just a symbol, a container to contents that we can conceive and maintain enclosed within ourselves without the dependence of an extra moral frame. Although, in this light, I guess it would be nice to have the comfort an outer pillow like God around one's own moral titanium box.

Well I believe God is a product of experience, like a way of balancing the hardships experience can have, an opposite to experience being that God is transcendent in a way.

The value is definitely in the paradox, I mean in a very twisted sense viewing God through logic makes its purpose easier to understand.

Yes but spiritual perspectives are there for explaining the transcendent.

The matter has little to do with comfort. Consider some western notions of Satan - no comfort in such a being.

On the contrary, there is a comfort that is very real to many people - the comfort of elitism. The comfort of "I am one of the people chosen for heaven - everyone else is going to hell". In that context, Satan can be quite a comforting thought.

Of course, this only works if you have no friends outside your own religion, and can backfire with tremendous force in that case. But if one imagines the much more religiously divided Western society in which these ideas first took real hold, the ingenuity of the notion is uncanny.

I'm not familiar with any theologian who promoted such an idea. In western Christianity, Satan becomes an evil caricature of the earlier character. There's little comfort in a vile being trying to corrupt the soul of those bound for heaven.