When the US officially argues for religious freedom abroad, it maintains that the right to not believe or worship is a part of that. So the thread has gotten one already 
I feel that I should have the constitutionally protected right to get food spicy when I ask for it spicy.
I think everyone should have the right to see their favorite band in concert one time for a reasonable price.
Have you listened to any atheists lately? I’ve heard plenty of them state plainly, “there are no gods.” That’s a claim. You can say that theists need to offer proof, and if they make claims, they do. But that doesn’t let atheists off the hook if they make definitive statements.
And I don’t buy the whole idea that atheism is a “lack of belief in gods.” Back when I took Philosophy in college, that was the definition of an agnostic. Atheists were those who denied the existence of any God or gods. Agnostics were divided into two categories: “Soft agnostics,” who said that they personally did not know whether God exists, and “hard agnostics,” who claimed that it is impossible for anyone to know whether God exists.
That’s a bit of a problem I see with atheists; they like to have it both ways. When it’s convenient for atheism to be a religion, then they want it to be one - like for tax breaks, for example. They also want to go around making definitive claims, but when they are asked for proof on those claims, they retreat to the argument that “atheism isn’t a religion or a belief; it’s just a lack of belief.” Seriously? Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens (well, formerly Hitchens) and the like are going on book tours and speaking at colleges and conferences just to enlighten us on their personal lack of belief?
I believe I have a right to abstain on an opinions concerning the existence of a deity, but reserve the right to express one later on if sufficient evidence is presented. Is that atheism, or agnosticism?
But no one ever said ‘there is no god’ until someone first said ‘there is a god’. It’s simply not possible for atheists to even have existed before that.
To put it more simply (and in a more modern sense). Do you think a single person ever once said “There’s no such thing as a Flying Spaghetti Monster” before 2005. If you’re a pastafarian I can ask you to prove the FSM exists, you can’t ask me to prove he doesn’t.
To paraphrase Richard Dawkins when you make a claim that can’t be proven false (no one can prove god doesn’t exist), it’s up to the people that are making the claim to prove it’s true (believers have to prove God does exist). *
Don’t think of ‘there are no gods’ as a claim, think of it as a request for evidence. Or rather think of it as 'it’s been thousand of years, lets just say I win by default.
How about this. If I tell you that I’m dictating all this to my dog and she’s typing for me and you say ‘no she’s not, you’re typing’ is that a claim? No, it’s just you saying that you don’t believe me. Now, what if I say, “prove it, prove that I’m typing and not my dog”. Well, that’s all we’re doing. Theists made the claim that there’s a god we’re just asking for proof.
*Some interesting reading, really:
It was a silly joke by a bored high school kid that turned out to have some pretty large societal, religious and philosophical impacts.
For the record, this is exactly my position, and it seems to be the majority position among English-speakers who call themselves atheists.
People who use atheist as an insult, of course, demand that it’s a faith-based position, and there are heterodox atheists who claim it is one as well, but I’m pretty sure Joey P and I are in the majority on this one.
Is there five billion dollars in your bank account? How about ten billion? You probably say “no” to both of those statements, and offer your bank statements as proof. However, bank statements can be wrong, so they aren’t definitive proof of anything. On the gripping hand, however, bank statements are amazingly wrong only rarely, so we can reasonably believe that you aren’t a multi-billionaire.
So, is the belief that you’re not richer than most CEOs based on faith or not? If it is, is it the same kind of faith which causes people to claim God does exist?
First, since when do atheists get tax breaks?
Second, working around a faith-ridden bureaucracy has nothing to do with the core of my philosophy. If the only way I can get fair treatment is by abusing language, that’s what I have to do, and holding it against me is dishonest.
Right to die.
This gets my vote.
Atheism. In fact, it’s also pretty close to my own opinion: I don’t believe in the existence of a deity or the supernatural in general in the same way I don’t believe I currently have a million dollars in my bank account. I could be persuaded by sufficient evidence, which, given all evidence I’ve seen thus far, would have to be rather shocking indeed.
(Of course, I don’t have the luxury of abstaining from forming an opinion on the current state of my bank account: I have to have a very definite opinion or else I’m liable to get into serious trouble.)
Perhaps there could be a sliding scale based on type of orgasm. A few handjobs a year could be guaranteed, maybe a blowie every six months, while a large-scale over-the-top full-sex orgasm could be a birthday treat.
Front row seats to the baseball game of my choice at face value, once per year.
I’m all for the stoning, but only 1 per year ?
I’d call that agnosticism.
I guess it depends on your level of hyper-skepticism. If you really reject my bank statement because there’s a slim possibility that it could be wrong, then I would say that your skepticism has reached an unreasonable level.
On the other hand, if I look at a DNA molecule and think that the amount of information contained in that molecule certainly seems to me to indicate an intelligence behind its design, I think that it’s a reasonable conclusion to draw (at least on a prima facie basis) that there actually was a designer involved. Now the atheist would insist (correct me if I’m wrong here) that the DNA molecule arose purely through unguided natural processes. So we have a bit of data in which something appears to a reasonable person (i.e., me :D) to be intelligently designed, but the atheist, says, no it wasn’t. It seems to me in that instance the burden of proof shifts to the atheist.
I’m not sure how faith really enters into that discussion. If we want to speculate about who the aforementioned designer might be, then I could see an element of faith being involved, but on the raw question of whether design was involved, no, I don’t think that’s a faith-oriented question.
Atheists get tax breaks if they form nonprofit corporations for the promotion of atheism, do they not? I’ve even heard of atheist churches - certainly they must get tax breaks. Honestly, if they don’t, they should, in my opinion, on the same basis that religions do.
I don’t think it’s dishonest for atheists to refer to their beliefs as a religion, because that’s what I think it is. It certainly represents a set of beliefs about a higher being, even if the nature of those thoughts is that such a being doesn’t exist. Have all the tax breaks that churches do; I have no problem with that, as long as it’s done honestly.
What bothers me is when atheists then turn around and refer to atheism as a mere “lack of belief.” If that’s what it is, then there’s no point in discussing it, certainly no point in prominent atheists going on book tours and having speaking engagements. Citing a “lack of belief” is virtually meaningless in telling us anything about the real world; it’s nothing more than a statement of your personal psychological condition. To say that you lack belief in God does nothing to tell me (or anyone else) whether God actually exists - all you’ve told us is what your opinion is. Now, you may be a smart person, and I may respect your opinion. I certainly respect your right to your opinion. But an opinion is really all you’ve offered, not a statement or a claim about how the universe really is.
Actually, a-theism doesn’t mean “without belief.” It means “without God (or gods).” The root word is theos in the Greek, which means “god,” not “belief.”
That’s why I advanced the definition of the term the way I did in this thread. Atheism means a belief that no God or gods exist - “without god.” Agnosticism means that the person either doesn’t know whether there is a God (“soft agnosticism”) or thinks that it is impossible for anyone to know whether there is a God (“hard agnosticism”).
I didn’t mean to hijack the thread, honest! People just kept responding to my response…
:o
You want the government to rent a woman for you once a year?
The Absolute Right to Unmitigated, Child-Like JOY at a simple bit of Nature - remember the first time you saw the inside of a milkweed pod?
A giant goldfish swimming under your feet?
Of all the things we gain and lose when we become ‘adults’, I most miss the ability to experience that unmitigated joy found in only the very young.
(as someone who has done the Atheist Definiton game way too many times, but still wants to hijack a thread (also a Constitutional Right in any sane Empire):
Right to Die at a time and place of my choosing. Ideally, the slab of meat would simply vanish, but as it is, there should be government-paid service to clean up any messes.
Closely related: All surplus organs and other body parts (defined as those whose original owners have died) shall be made available at no more than the cost of harvest and transport.
If I want to continue living, there should be no artificial restriction in supply of replacement parts.
A child’s constitutional right to pick any one food item and say “I don’t hafta eat that”, no matter how much the parent says “But it’s good for you!”