I believe it when someone tells me they’re atheist or Christian or whatever. If they tell me they’re Wiccan or Neo-Pagan or something I assume they’re full of shit. That makes me a bigot, I suppose.
Why wouldnt I believe them?
When atheists say that they don’t believe, I generally believe them. When they say why they don’t believe, I often don’t believe them.
Regards,
Shodan
I’m very curious about this. Do you remember any specifics?
Could you expand on this? What in the “why” do you often have trouble believing?
For example?
I’ve heard people doubt that certain atheists really were atheists because they knew scripture so well. Their rationalle was that they could not possibly know the Word of God thoroughly and not be a Christian in their heart. Best response: smile, and remark on some attractive bird out the window.
I’m making the indirect assumption that if you claim to believe God exists, you are making the incredible claim that God exists. It is incredible in my opinion. I’m not really passing judgement on the belief in incredible things in this case because it is very common, and not a strong indicator of anything else about a person based on the simple statement “I believe in God”. But if there’s an objective basis for judging whether theists are atheists are more honest, that’s about the only factor I can think of that would have any bearing. A person who has a belief in incredible things may not hold to the same concept of “what is and what is not” that I have.
I guess, if you still agree after reading the above.
It is the secondary claim that I’m referring to. I’ve no reason or basis at all to judge the claim of belief in most cases. If it’s the guy who became a Buddhist last month, switched to Kabalah this week, and then next month tells me believes or doesn’t believe in God, I’d distrust him either way. But that’s not the simple statement “I believe in God”.
Well I just tried to find some reason to judge a person’s credibility based on a claim of belief or disbelief. That’s about all I could come up with. Very indirect, and apparently controversial.
I have observed the phenomenon that the OP describes. The folks who don’t believe that the atheist is accurately describing their beliefs are generally stuck in their own worldview filter.
The comparison I make is a sports fan talking to a non-sports fan
Sports-fan, “Who’s your favorite team?”
Non-fan, “Oh, I don’t really follow the game.”
S-F, “Wha…? C’mon, how can you not follow the game?”
N-F, “I just don’t.”
S-F, “I don’t believe you! You must have a favorite team!”
N-F, “Nope.”
It’s really as simple as that.
Sure, this may be a little bit TLDR, but hopefully the extra context gives enough to explain why I have a hard time taking these two specifically at face value. And, again, for the record, these are the only two I can specifically remember getting a different impression on and they’re well out-numbered by all the other atheists I know and all the rest have struck me as sincere, including a few close personal friends of mine. Also, I am still in regular contact with the first but haven’t had contact with the second for several years.
One I remember the specifics for is roughly 60 and his parents basically didn’t want anything to do with raising kids so he was raised in a Catholic boarding school and I recall a few stories about how the nuns physically abused him, but at the same time denies that his childhood was anything other than perfect. I remember one particular conversation when Virginia passed the law for one minute of silence and he and his daughter got REALLY angry about how they were being forced to pray in schools and wanted to stage a protest and all sorts of stuff when, as I recall, all the law said was that students had to be quiet and they could pray if they wanted to. The reaction to that was always very angry, even though I wasn’t even supporting it, my thoughts were just… meh. However, if we talked about more vaguely religious topics, like things about “karma” or golden rule, other sorts of spiritual topics, particularly as it pertained to the biblical teaching, I got the impression that he agreed with it, not in the sense that he had come to the same conclusion separately.
So my general read was that he essentially felt rejected by his parents and had a horrible experience with religion at a young age and basically decided to reject it but still sort of held onto other aspects, particularly since there’s always a lot of anger in his voice whenever God and specifically Catholicism comes up, not to mention that he’s married to a fairly spiritual person that doesn’t really identify with any sort of specific denomonation or even necessarily Christianity.
Another individual a woman who would be in her early 30s now and was born under communism in Eastern Europe and witnessed all of that horrible stuff along with the eventual fall and rise of democracy, but even still pretty terrible conditions in poverty. Her father abandoned her when she was just a young child, but her mom was still pretty strongly Eastern Orthodox Christian. She eventually came over here, put herself through college and grad school. She insisted on doing certain religious things, like participating in important religious ceremonies and traditions. But when the topic would come up, she’d respond fairly angrily about how God doesn’t exist, about how religion is the bane of everything good on this planet, yadda yadda.
The impression I got from her, though, was very different from the first. Having essentially grown up in squallor in the lowest possible class and coming here and making something of herself, she really wanted to do everything she could to be part of what she perceived as the highest social class she could. As in, it was important to her to live in a particular neighborhood because of how that’s where smart, connected, successful people live. It was important to her to mention what school she went to, what clothes she wore, all those sorts of things, because that’s what successful people did. And among that was that, simply put, “this is what smart, educated people think and believe” and had a pretty stereotypical “educated liberal atheist perspective”.
I’m not trying to make a political discussion, it’s just that she would espouse those views then clearly contradict them. For instance, she was very vocally pro gay rights. But then at one point she thought one of her room mates might have been gay and completely flipped out about it. “Oh, I’m all for gay rights out THERE, but I don’t want gays in HERE.” and “I don’t want him having sex with other guys in my house.” and went on about how disgusting and horrible it was. I spent a few hours pointing out how contradictory it was and trying to calm her down. She didn’t actually finally let it go until he eventually got a girlfriend.
There were several other similar situations related to some other political ones, and a few spiritual type ones. One in particular related to prayer, but I can’t really give too much in the way of specifics.
Anyway, my distinct impression was more that she just wanted so badly to fit in with that class, to have those things she saw as being successful, that she essentially convinced herself she had to believe these things, some of which she agreed with, some of which she didn’t. Among those was that her religious traditions, and the implications of those and the beliefs were all really important to her, but just straight up denied that she was religious or that God existed. So I never really believed that she really believed that.
Yes.
I don’t always floss regularly, but it’s not because I’m angry at the Tooth Fairy.
I am an Ignostic agnostic atheist. Therefore, I believe in Ignostic agnostic atheists (well, as at least one.)
An atheist is merely someone who does not believe in God/gods. It does not require proof or even a definitive statement like “God does not exist.” The two are vastly different positions.
Isn’t the fact that atheists believe there is no God a belief system in itself? Since they can’t prove there is no God atheists must have faith that there is no God.
This won’t end well.
I presume when asked you’re not antagonistic about it. Or at least you offer a nice plate of gnocchi.
That’s a mighty watered down definition of ‘belief’ to work with.
Many (not all, obviously) atheists ARE angry at God, many DO hate the Bible, and many ARE angry at Jesus. You need onlyy skim through various SDMB posts to see that.
Others, of course, rarely or never think about God.
Without knowing anything else about you, I’ll accept that you genuinely believe whatever you tell me you believe and that you disbelieve whatever you tell me you disbelieve.
But there’s always a chance your actions or words will lead me to conclude later that you weren’t being wholly honest.
Good grief:smack:, so you don’t believe anyone can not believe in something? Even not believing to you is believing?
I don’t believe in Santa, do I need faith to not believe in Santa?
How about the tooth fairy?
good republicans?
It is a Lack of Faith not a substitution of one faith with another.
I sometimes think that a lot of so-called theists don’t really believe in what they say they believe.
Like, say, a guy who says he believes in God, but then steals or cheats on his wife. He sure doesn’t act as if he thinks God is watching his actions. Instead, he acts as if he can keep his actions secret. But if he believed in a Christian God, he would believe he can’t keep secrets from God.
So, just like he wouldn’t steal from a shopkeeper if he thought the shopkeeper was looking right at him, and just like he wouldn’t grope a woman if he thought his wife was watching, he acts as if he doesn’t think God is watching. It’s not a matter of believing, yet the flesh is weak. But if that were true, he’d be too weak to resist groping women even when his wife was in the room. He’s strong enough to resist temptation when human beings are watching, isn’t he? So when no human beings are watching, he acts as if God isn’t watching either.
Obviously, not all Christians are like this, but an astounding number of them are. They say they believe in Jesus with their mouths, but they don’t act as if they believe in Jesus when no one is looking. So it’s very difficult to not draw the conclusion that they don’t really believe in Jesus.
We have friends like that - who change religions faster than some people change their underwear. I never got the impression that they didn’t believe in God as a concept - they just were pretty uncertain about which God as defined by existing religions was satisfactory. But they did believe.
They also owned a lot of time-shares. They are gullible in more than one way. 
Atheism is a faith system in the same way that baldness is a hair color.