Someone who believes in a god and believes the god to be sadistic is by definition not an atheist. He/she may be anti-theist, misotheist, but not an atheist. So, thinking God is sadistic is not a factor for an atheist.
(I can’t believe I’m posting in this trainwreck of a thread. I did enjoy the quantum physics hijack, though.)
Ok. I don’t think that’s consistent with your previous comments about your beliefs, but I’ll leave it at that. Do you understand most atheists don’t hold those views?
I would not go for Mr. “God is dead” for support in this case.
Pretend I’m a Christian and tell me your real definition of “atheist”, please.
Ok, that’s settled then. People who don’t worship a god they consider evil or unworthy or what-have-you are not atheists, they are misotheists or dystheists.
Is it possible to call oneself an atheist while actually being a misotheist? Sure. But for the purposes of debate, you should assume the other parties are being sincere. Otherwise, you aren’t really debating the ideas, so what’s the point?
Your definition is as good as any. Like I informed you my definition of atheist is still a work in progress.
I don’t understand why it needs so much work. Atheists don’t think any gods exist. That’s it. You can make generalizations about them on other issues, but their views on other issues vary and those issues aren’t a categorical part of being an atheist.
Then quit using the word until you figure out what it means.
What’s wrong with just accepting that atheists don’t believe in god, and nothing more?
Then stop using the words atheist and atheism since it’s impossible for anyone to know what you’re talking about since you don’t have a definition for them.
ETA: Beaten to the punch.
For heaven’s sake, it isn’t that difficult. It just means “Someone who doesn’t believe in God.”
Why?
I can accept that your understanding of atheism may be a “work in progress,” but the definition is really very simple.
Not for pchaos it isn’t.
See, first he must ask his pastor, who isn’t available right now, then he must read at least 20 pages of the bible, to get in the right spiritual state and then he must pray intensely for God to give him a definition.
Do you have a personal definition for every word, or is “atheist” special?
No, he’s got his own definitions for “rational”, “logical” and a few others.
Is your real name Humpty Dumpty? I don’t believe I’ve ever come across someone else with his own personal dictionary. How do you communicate with others?
Heavily paraphrased Steve Martin: When you have a kid, talk wrong. “May I mambo dogface in the banana patch?”
Yep:
I took an ethics class in college where God was not mentioned even once, so god is not required for ethics. And I partially agree about empiricism. A position where harm can be empirically shown might become unethical - for instance smoking near a baby or drinking a lot while pregnant. There might be nothing unethical about these at all if we didn’t know the harm they cause.
But there are also lots of “ought” questions concerning values which aren’t empirical at all. Even ones which claim to be empirical often aren’t since the measurements are not nearly as accurate as they are claimed to be.
I agree, but Czarcasm wants me to accept his and I have because it is as good as any.
OP here again and I apologize for what I started although I have learned two new cool words… Misotheists and Dystheists.
So I would like to ask the people on here who consider themselves REAL atheists as defined by someone who does not believe in “god” (or whatever you want to call it), do you believe that physical matter came out of NOTHING with ABSOLUTELY NO FIRST CAUSE?
Please answer with a simple “yes” if you believe this happened.
If you answer with more than “yes” I doubt if you are a real atheist.
(Something tells me, I am going to regret this post)