Sure. But but a lot of people have no faith but arent atheists. They just dont care.
As pointed out, Buddhism runs a gamut from Philosophy to true religion.
You said it better than I could have, thank you.
Buddhism is a religion. The content of that religion varies considerably, but is effectively based on a system of beliefs, namely (from the Wiki),
- dukkha (‘not being at ease’, “suffering,”[note 1] from dush-stha, “standing unstable,”[3][4][5][6]) is an innate characteristic of the perpetual cycle (samsara, lit. ‘wandering’) of grasping at things, ideas and habits;[web 2][7][8]
- samudaya (origin, arising, combination; “cause”): dukkha (unease) arises simultaneously with taṇhā ("craving, desire or attachment, lit. ‘thirst’).[web 3][9][10][note 2][12]
- nirodha (cessation, ending, confinement): dukkha can be ended or contained by the confinement[11][12] or letting go of this taṇhā;[13][14][15][16]
- marga (path, Noble Eightfold Path) is the path leading to the confinement of tanha and dukkha.[17][18][19]
Put into plain language, suffering is the universal experience of all beings, suffering exists because we can’t have the things we desire, there is a way to end suffering, and that is through the extinction of desire through the Eightfold Path.
Those are not objective facts, they are articles of faith.
I think people can have philosophical ideas derived from Buddhist ideas, indeed there are entire therapeutic modalities designed around Buddhist concepts, but Buddhism is a religion.
As far as the Eightfold Path goes, it’s rarely the subject of Zen practice, Zen practice is almost entirely about meditation, which is why I couldn’t tell you off the top of my head what those eight things are. Also, I’m a shitty Buddhist.
I think people have some fuzzy ideas about what Buddhism means and it’s considered a nice peaceful religion, which is okay, I guess. But it’s still a belief system based on articles of faith. And that belief system has harmed some people. Any religion in the wrong hands can be damaging.
It’s cool that there is a lot of science now supporting a lot of Buddhist ideas (“Why Buddhism is True” is a neat evo-psych book about this), but it’s still a faith.
I’m sorry, but you’re really wrong about that. Civil marriage is easy, be it man/woman, man/man or woman/woman. Just call your town hall, set a date, provide the obligatory documents (which can be the hardest part) and you’re good to go. Church marriages nowadays are mostly just an afterthought and done out of tradition. And you can’t get legally married in a church or any other temple, only civil marriage counts.
I can easily imagine though that your daughter and her husband married in the USA because there was less bureaucracy than here, especially if the bride isn’t a German citizen.
No, that’s not the same thing. Agnosticism is the idea that the existence of a god or gods is unknown or unknowable. (It’s in the name: " from Ancient Greek ἀ- (a-) ‘without’, and γνῶσις (gnōsis) ‘knowledge’ - quoted from Wikipedia). In popular usage, it has come to mean what is properly called “negative atheism” or “apatheism”, but as @Voyager points out in post #255, agnosticism and atheism are orthogonal. You can be an agnostic atheist, or even an agnostic theist - in fact, I’d argue that some devout Christian mystics like St. John of the Cross or St. Theresa of Avila were agnostic, in that their faith did not rest on any rational basis but purely a perceived experience of the divine.
And that is what is called “positive” or “strong” atheism, and, like @Voyager, I’ve never come across an atheist who actually believed it. Most of us are “weak” atheists - there’s simply not enough good evidence to support the hypothesis that a supernatural god exists. The difference between “I believe God doesn’t exist” and “I don’t believe God exists” is subtle but important; one is a belief system, and the other is not.
What do you mean by town hall? I was not implying that it was difficult to get married outside of a church, just that the venues were limited. When I was getting a copy of my daughter’s marriage license at the county office, two people got married two counters down the hall from me. They were just as married as if they had done it in a church, but it would be limiting if that’s the only place they could be married. My daughter got married in a city park, my other in the backyard of a B&B, and we got married in Pennsylvania where the couple needs just a witness and no officiant. (Old Quaker customs.)
So I may have expressed myself poorly.
Seriously? Spend two minutes in r/atheism. I couldn’t stand the place. I have met people like that everywhere on the Internet. Some of the most public figures associated with atheism are like that. There are so many of them that whenever the subject comes up in person, I always feel compelled to say, “I am atheist, not anti-theist.”
Well sorry, I misunderstood, I thought you meant that getting a civil marriage is difficult. And yes, a civil marriage is usually done at the town hall, at the “Standesamt” (bureau of vital statistics. Don’t know if this is the correct term, but that’s all I got from dict.leo.org) to be precise, and that’s usually not a very romantic place and setting, I concur. Some municipalities offer civil weddings at special places and attractions like castles, but that is the exception. Most people make up for the sober wedding at the Standesamt with a big celebration at a more beautiful place.
I don’t think this statement is accurate, either. There are plenty of Jewish Dopers who could tell you that you don’t have to believe in God to practice Judaism (Jewish Dopers, please correct me if I’m wrong, but this is my understanding from reading years of threads like this one; Judaism is orthopraxic, rather than orthodox.)
For that matter, a good handful of Episcopalians I know, including a woman finishing up her last year in seminary, have told me the same. Religion is about ritual, community, social bonding. Belief is merely one strain of that.
It’s probably a topic for a separate thread, but I suspect that a lot of my fellow atheists have an overly narrow definition of “faith”. Faith isn’t necessarily wholeheartedly believing that a loving God exists; for the Episcopalians in my parents’ church, it’s about acting as if he or she does. Their pastor, a very intelligent woman, talks about the distinction between worshipping Jesus and following him. I suspect this is also true for liberal Christians like @Ulfreida. Which would explain her frustration at online atheists who sneer at every and all expressions of faith.
But we don’t sneer at faith (at least not in this thread), we just find it frustrating that us having no faith is disclaimed, against our own better knowledge.
By whether I want to live in the world in which that’s the sort of decision people make.
I am, of course, living in a world in which a lot of people make decisions I consider immoral. Therefore I have lots of examples of the results.
I suspect this is also true.
That’s the weirdest definition of religion I think I’ve ever heard.
I think there’s plenty of evidence that there are no gods in the sense in which most people use the word “god”.
I don’t think that that provides evidence that all people who believe in any religion are fools. There may well be good reasons why humans often believe things that aren’t true.
I also think there’s plenty of evidence that ridiculing and attacking people because of their religious beliefs does no good and often does considerable harm. (Also, that it’s very often done by people who do have religious beliefs; just beliefs that are different – sometimes minutely – from the beliefs they’re ridiculing and attacking others for having.)
They may be deluded but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re foolish. The delusion serves a purpose – most likely multiple purposes.
This is unfortunately true.
And so is this.
Seriously? I don’t know of anyone that goes there-I certainly don’t.
This is a “no true atheist” fallacy. The vast majority of atheists believe in no gods, and that’s it. They don’t try to "convert"others. They just don’t care. Most are also agnostic, and admit that it’s possible (although unlikely) that something exists that meets the common definition of “god”, they just don’t think it has any relevance to them or their lives, even if it does exist.
Me neither. Why the hell would i want to talk about the absence of gods in the world? Why would anyone?
No, there is no solid evidence there is such a thing. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
I got town hall correctly from what you said. In San Francisco, by the way, getting married in City Hall (which is very nice) is the cool thing to do.
A castle wouldn’t have worked for them, btw. After his parents got divorced, his father spent their weekends together going to every castle in southern Germany. He is sock of castles!
Glad we’re in agreement again.
Not much on this board, no; but there are plenty of places on the interwebz - the comments section of Only Sky, for example - where all Christians are spoken of as deluded, weak-minded fools.
That said, as Czarcasm and others have pointed out, angry atheists are usually pushing back against attempts to impose Christianity or Christian values in the public space.
Except if you look for evidence enough, and can’t find any, it does become evidence of absence.
The ivory billed woodpecker is considered to be “probably extinct”. The evidence that it’s probably extinct is that no one has seen one for a long time.
The evidence of extinction isn’t yet conclusive, partly because people really want it to still exist, and partly because what’s left of it’s potential habitat isn’t terribly accessible. But if there evidence of extinction? Yes there is. And that evidence is the absence of evidence it exists.
This is true in many other areas. It’s true that, for example, an essay that doesn’t provide evidence that something exists is generally not evidence that the thing doesn’t exist. But when evidence of existence is sought and not found, at some point it becomes evidence of non-existence.
I’m sure you know that, but the internet and social media attracts and aggregates expressions of extremist views, sadly. I’ve never met such a person in real life.
I think that’s a characteristic feature of many American atheists, who come from fundamental religious backgrounds and freed themselves from religion later in life, and now have the same fervorous attitude against Christianity (and especially Christianity) they learned to have for religion in their upbringing. Here, most atheists are just apathetic about religion, don’t think much about it and mind their own business, just like their religious fellow citizens. Religious/Anti-religious zealotry is very scarce here. Both German Protestantism and Catholicism are very vanilla and liberal, compared to the rest of the world. Evangelistic christians are a fringe group, and everybody else thinks they are weird or crazy.
There are contradictions in what happens in actual practice to what would happen if the specific gods were constituted in the fashion their believers say they are.
In addition, I’m quite confident that the absence of evidence of a living elephant in my house is evidence that there is no such elephant in my house. If there were one here, it would be pretty damn obvious.
I think any more of this would be a hijack of this thread.
I will grant that there’s no way to prove that this entire universe isn’t a bad dream in the mind of some intelligence. But I don’t think there are many atheists saying otherwise.
I don’t think that’s the primary reason for many. Adherents of certain types of Christianity are currently, in the USA, trying to adjust the laws of the country to prohibit behavior based on the tenets of their specific sects of religion – and have been having some considerable success. This is for many people an active threat to themselves and/or members of their immediate circle; and is threatening behavior also to some to whom that doesn’t apply.
Not all of those people are atheists, of course. Many people who are opposed to attempts to impose specific religious beliefs in the public space are theists, of various sorts, including Christians.
But the attempts, in the current USA, are very real; and sometimes successful. If that’s not true in your area, of any religion – be thankful.
Yes, that’s not the case, and I’m very thankful for that. Given their ever dwindling importance and relevance in German society, the Churches still have too much political influence, but they are just another lobby group among bigger fishes like the industry and other actors, and they have lost a lot of influence in law-making during the last decades. For instance, the Catholic Church hardly made a beep when same-sex marriage was introduced in 2017, by an administration led by the CDU (Christian Democratic Union)! The Protestant Church welcomed the law.