UY Scuti: Why this need to frame atheism as a kind of religion-by-default, or codified belief system? It isn’t one. You really need to get past this to have a debate. Because despite the fact that you are desperately dancing around stating what your personal beliefs are, nearly everything on your list of points is just your unsupported personal beliefs. Ad they’re neither accurate nor insightful.
At the very least, tell you pals not to murder us until you can figure this out.
Then, it is not my problem. Absence of belief is a commonly accepted definition on various sites, such as the one I have indicated through links.
nm - stating the obvious and probable “junior modding”
So what? I prefer the dictionary to random websites.
It is your problem, because now you are cherry picking sources (and not particularly good sources) to give yourself a leg up.
Again, there’s plenty of belief in an atheist’s worldview: just that there are no gods.
Then go there. You chose to bring this subject to this board and engage these individuals. If you can’t bring yourself to accommodate those who you have requested engage with you, then that’s the height of arrogance.
Replies here are commonly personal beliefs as well, many of whom refuse to acknowledge the obvious, such as the fact that there can’t be as many atheist systems as atheists exists on this planet. If there is a limited number of atheist ideologies, then we can review them and see if they include any of the ideas mentioned in the OP. Refusal to do so is also “telling.”
We need a handbook and a symbol.
Atheism is universal - a universal belief that there are no god(s). All Atheists believe that one thing universally.
Everything after that is window dressing.
The one and only thing atheists have in common is that they have no belief in gods.
There is NO atheist belief system, NO atheist ideology.
Is there an aUnicorn ideology?
An aSanta Claus belief system?
What are the ethical underpinnings of aToothfariests?
You have this idea entrenched and it underlies all your responses. It is false. It’s time to let it go.
Perhaps we should just blow them up and figure it out later.
Would you ask this question of people that are left-handed? If not, why not?
The fact that you would bring up lefties is telling.
Yes, quite sinister.
I see interventions in the thread that prefer surmising things about my person to addressing my plain, straightforward statements. I don’t see how this is rational. But, indeed, the discussion is dragging fruitlessly, and only in part because of myself. I am officially dropping out of it.
Mentioned?
Yes, you “mentioned” them, but you have provided no reason for anyone to accept those claims. I, a theist, recognize that they are wrong, but you have failed to demonstrate why you believe those errors. You have failed to support your beliefs with evidence.
That is not a discussion. You are not engaged in discussion. That is exactly the primnary complaint against your posts–and here you simply demonstrate it, again.
IDEA #1 might be true, but you have provided no reason to believe it.
IDEA #2 is wrong. Aside from a few people who consider Superstrings to be a promising alternative, every non-Fundamentalist believer i know accepts the Big Bang as the probable origin of the universe. Where is the difference?
IDEA #3 is utterly wrong. Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and his Descent of Man are generally accepted among Christians as the best description of the origin of humanity. (The number dips a bit below half in the U.S., but that is compensated by the number of Christians outside the U.S. who are not part of the Fundamentalist movement.) Similar numbers may be found among people of other religions.
IDEA #4 probably starts out correctly that there are differences in belief, but then you get it wrong by declaring what “atheists” believe which might be true of some atheists, but is not true of all.
IDEA #5 Wow. One right. (Although there are also theists who hold a similar belief.)
IDEA #6 is a sweeping declaration of what atheists believe without any supporting evidence.
As long as you simply make declarations that you fail to support, you are going to have no serious discussion beyond people pointing out your glaring errors.
That’s exactly what I thought when I read:
Yikes! “equidistantly endeavor”?
Why is this format so common? “I was having this argument with my extremist friend and he said this about atheists. Help me argue with him!”. Is there some kind of reward these guys get? Is is like counting coup or something?
If you think it’s OK to kill a nihilist because they don’t believe objective morality exists aren’t you kinda proving them right?
The basic premise, why your friends’ friends’ friends should not feel at ease with the idea of killing atheists is quite simply an Orwellian question. If someone is inclined or happy to kill me because my thoughts/feelings do not meet their standards, then I am inclined to preemptively kill or severely disable that person solely because their inclinations appear to me to be dangerously sociopathic or psychopathic. Therewith, we become embroiled in a sort of arms-race of antipathy toward each other, a stand-off, a stare-down. Over ideas. Thought Police.
Ideas should be reasons for us to have dialog, not reasons for us to kill each other. Where ever the first line was drawn, we need to get back to that point and end the hostilities.
Moreover, all of us need to understand and address the underlying factors that create terrorists in the first place. They did not become angry with me for not believing in some deity, their anger was born of some other origin, most likely related to oppression or exploitation (rebel leaders like bin Laden or Castro often gain support by doing favors for the downtrodden, there must be some sort of lesson in that). God was just having a nice cup of tea when it got dragged into this fight, now it is firmly wedged in there and we cannot fix anything until it can be pried loose and set free, as any respectable deity would deserve.
So, to the terrorist and their supporters, I would ask, “what is it that you are really mad about?” Stay on that point until we can figure out how to have a reasonable dialog. Because once we get to the bottom of it, we will find that atheists, as a group, are not what they are mad about.
That’s not true. Being without belief in the existence of any gods is what all atheist have in common. “Lack of” works just fine. One doesn’t need to have a belief that no gods exist to be labeled an atheist.
That’s a relief, because I’ve stopped believing in you.