Again, atheism is not a belief, nor is it spiritual, and I would consider agnosticism quasi-spiritualistic at most.
No…it’s not backwards. One has to prove their worth. I prove my worth as an employee, god proves his worth as worshippable (my employee, per se). It doesn’t make sense to worship something that doesn’t make its existence known any more than it would make sense for Children’s Memorial to hire me as a neurosurgeon.
Maybe he thinks that not only has he demonstrated his worth (by creating the universe & us), but that this is also sufficient to prove his existance.
I actually agree with everything you’ve said, but you’re not really contradicting my thesis, unless I’m just not seeing it, which is that critical thinking is suppressed by religious belief; the more devout the more suppression.
It is a huge leap to say “Because the stars, therefore Jehovah.”
I think you overstate the level of atheist belief. It is perfectly possible for an atheist to be a spiritualist, and believe in life after death. I think some forms of Buddhism may count as atheism with a spiritual component. In our society, there is a strong correlation between seeing no evidence for a god and no evidence for life after death - but this isn’t a requirement of atheism at all. Atheists don’t even have to have a logical reason for lack of belief. There is no atheist church, and no atheist creed, and no uniform set of ethics. It’s not surprising that those who are confused about this (like our friend) consider atheism in any way a religion.
Just trying to look at it from his perspective, not mine.
The terms “atheist” and “agnostic” have gone through some definition dispute in recent years. I should clarify that the definition of “agnostic” that I use is that the existence of god is unknowable. I understand that concept (and used to subscribe to it). However, at this point in my life, I think the existence of god IS knowable. I believe that any *mystical unknowability * is a humanly-conceived attribute because some people couldn’t reconcile the apparent non-existence with their desire for a god. I think it’s ok to say “I don’t have the answer and I’m withholding judgement until I have more evidence.”
My definition of “atheist” is a person who does not believe god exists (as opposed to a person who says ‘god doesn’t exist’). That’s not to say it’s an impossibility (what* is*?). It just means there is absolutely no logical reason to believe one exists. Should evidence present itself, I’ll be the first one to acknowledge it.
Nah. It has much more to do with the type of (local) society one inhabits than it does with the qualities of one’s devotion. I know a lot of extremely devout Jesuits and Franciscans, and a handful of Dominicans, and none of them have ever attempted to suppress doubt or questioning. (Well, one of the Franciscans did, but he was a bit odd.)
There are social structures that inhibit doubt and questioning, but they are not directly related to the form or depth of one’s faith.
Hmm… I wonder if any statistics exist illustrating the percentage of those who were “born into” an absence of religious faith but ultimately, through exposure, became adherents. I suspect the number would be surprisingly high.
We’ll have to disagree on this one as I contend those people were never atheists, but agnostics.
Which common usage is vastly frustrating to me.
I am a strong enough agnostic that I cannot comprehend why people get so incensed about the question of whether there are gods or not – I consider it utterly unknowable and thus fundamentally irrelevant, and thus spending cycles about it is like spending vast time and effort debating how many invisible pink unicorns can dance on the head of a pin.
The structure I happen to use in my day-to-day life is theistic. Whether those systems are directed at actual gods, metaphorical structures, Jungian archetypes, personifications of impulses in the unconscious, or delusions I happen to find useful I don’t know; depending on the day, I may ‘believe’ any or all of these, or others I’m not thinking of at the moment.
I just don’t put that much weight on the question of belief. (One reason I’ve always preferred orthopraxic religion to orthodoxic.)
I would expect the number of people born into a non-believing family who later became believers to be quite low and am not sure why you would believe otherwise.
What is this, some sort of inverted Christian Fundamentalism where anyone who becomes apostate after conversion was never “really” converted? The number is rather small, so I am not going to draw any statistical conclusions, but if a person claims that they have no belief in (a) god, I am going to take them at their word and not haggle over whether I can smash them into one category hole or another. They did not claim to be unsure of God or unable to know God; they claimed that there was no God and, after a few years, claimed that they had decided that God did, indeed, exist after all.
Pardon my ignorance: what does “orthopraxic” mean? I just looked up “orthopraxy” and the only definition I could find is:
So training = brainwashing? What an unusual definition.
You’re right, I stand corrected. Not believing in a god/gods does not necessarially preclude a person from believing in any other supernatural or spiritual thing. Just another confusion of nomenclature I suppose, and who uses what word to mean what.
My point still stands, even if my example wasn’t the best, that just because something is a fundamental spiritual question for one person doesn’t mean that everyone shares that question, or that everyone’s answer to a question must be spiritual and belief- based just because another person’s answer happens to be.
Yes, “training” as used in that verse can include “brainwashing” (to the extent both “training” and “brainwashing” refer to inculcating religious beliefs in children).
One word is pejorative, the other is not, but they both mean the same thing in that context.
Yep, did read the thread, thanks for asking. Perhaps you’re referring to your statements here:
and this:
Here’s the thing. “Spiritual beliefs” are not synonymous with “physical tenets.” I’m not sure exactly what you mean by physical tenets, but most people, religious and non-religious alike, draw a line between the physical realm and the spiritual.
So, when talking about religion and spirituality, most people speak of their belief and/or faith as being a very separate kind of belief than their belief that the pizza they ate today was tasty, or their belief that 1+1=2.
We tend to not operate on a metaphysical level of debate, and certainly in a practical sense it doesn’t work.
You can say (and, in an intellectual practice I might agree) that all of existance is belief, and all such beliefs are equally valid interpretations of existance. But how is that meaningful. How can you use that perspective to reconcile your beliefs about the world with others’ beliefs? At some point, we all must agree on some givens (blue is a unique color based upon the wavelength of light reflected or emitted from an object), so that we can communicate and live together. That’s where the difference between what “is” and what we believe comes in.
Certainly there are beliefs about the world that are just wrong. Certainly there must be a way for an individual to judge whether a belief has merit or not. Certainly that way must hold true for all people. Certainly belief in a given thing by one person does not automatically require other people to develop a belief about not believing in said thing.
Yes I read the thread. I feel like the Invisible Pink Unicorn argument gets shot down constantly because it’s somehow not the same as the Judeo-Christian God, and tortured logic is used to write-off arguments for the existance of all other divine/mythical beings and to insist that somehow God’s existance follows logically from some premise or other, while all of the others are just silly.
Of course I understand and agree that children of parents who adhere to no mythological belief system will themselves, at least initially, adhere to none. After all, when you’re a child Mommy and Daddy are gods to you, and they have the answers to everything in your world. However, I don’t believe someone can become atheistic through peer pressure. I just don’t see adherence to a faith based system being lost so cavalierly.
I’m sorry, but I discount your contention because I simply don’t believe that real atheists can become believers. …of course then can eat quiche if they desire, but why oh why would they. Have you actually tried quiche? The horror. 
Hah! So we do agree on something. Extra kudos for your admiration of the great Sam Harris.
I disagree here. Atheism is not a system of beliefs.
I agree with this statement.
I would love that.
NP. I’ve been known to be swept by emotion a time or ten thousand myself.
Yeah, but it’s probably neap.
Etymologically, “straight/correct practice”. An orthopraxic religion defines membership validity by correct action, where an orthodoxic one by correct belief. (This isn’t entirely tidy, as belief and action can be and often are tightly intertwined, but where the weight goes matters in some ways.)
It’s the “faith versus works” question, basically.
You’re assuming he created it based on christian conceptions. I have nothing to base that assumption on. I have to see something that makes sense when we’re talking about something as big as the universe. The Big Bang is more believeable because it’s based on science. It makes logical sense with regard to what we know about our universe at this point. It is a constantly changing thing. New information is discovered and processed all the time. The religious approach doesn’t allow for another possibility and automatically discounts any new evidence we discover.