If you’re not taking part in debates that assume everyone knows what they mean by “God”, and that whatever that is, is a coherent concept, then you don’t really have a need to buy into one, do you? The names are just convenient labels for debate sides.
No, but I assume you, at a minimum to call yourself that, claim not to believe in god/gods.
I don’t “not believe” in incoherent concepts, I call them out as incoherent.
Apparently yes, there is.
Don’t tell me what I do or don’t not believe, please.
I don’t not believe in gods. Does that make me a theist?
I’m well aware.
No. It’s not “not belief”, it’s “belief not”. Rocks and trees aren’t atheists.
No. Non-theism because the very idea of deity put forward is incoherent is not the same thing as being an atheist because of, say, the Problem of Evil or the Problem of Shoddy Design.It’s a different category of argument from the atheist one.
So whether a theistic worldview is depressing, or comforting, or invigorating, or scary, or joyful, or… is going to depend on what God the theist believes in, and what they believe about that God.
Some atheists come to atheism by rejecting or relinquishing belief in a formerly-held theistic worldview. Whether they feel depression or liberation or grief or joy or relief or nothing much at all about that rejection is going to depend on how they feel about the God they rejected.
whose to say there isn’t a non-christian based afterlife that’s more awesome than heaven? why cant there be something after death that isn’t religion based?
No, it appears to be something you have assumed without evidence: that that is what I mean when I say “God”.
Calling God an entity is an oversimplification that misrepresents. It would be far closer (and less of an oversimplification) to say that God is an abstraction. Benevolence, as I think you mean it, isn’t relevant to my notion of what an atheist worldview would constitute.
I would find it depressing to think that we were all created by a god just so there would be someone to worship him, and the purpose of our lives would be to live up to his arbitrary code of behavior, and he loves us all but will send us to hell if we don’t do what he wants, and even the people that believe in him do not agree on just what does he want, and there is no reason to believe any of this whatsoever except what certain people invent in their heads and sometimes write down.
When I was a child, I had parents who were pretty much absent, bordering on negligent. I grew up knowing they were indifferent to pretty much everything that happened to me but that exceptions would be made for my behavior so punishment was on the table but pretty much never any reward. That’s pretty much how I see theism and I find THAT depressing.
On the other hand, I know myself to be an integral part of a vast and complicated system of matter and energy, a little wave form that pleases itself to think itself a discrete being for a period of time and that when I die my matter will be incorporated into other beings and systems, as will my energy. The only “I” that will cease to exist is my temporary belief that I’m a unique individual but the rest of me will go on endlessly becoming part of other systems and beings in perpetuity and I find that to be as far from depressing as it’s possible to get. I am infinite and undying–heck, that kinda makes me a bit godlike myself, right? I have always been and always will be and I’m a part of everything and am therefore never alone. Nope, not depressing.
I don’t have any belief in a god or gods. I’ve never had a belief, I’ve never been convinced by any evidence of gods that I’m aware of and of course cannot have any belief in those gods that I haven’t heard about, I’m not a theist, I’m an a-theist. Not sure how clear you want it to be.
feel free to do so, as long as you remain without a belief in that incoherent concept you are “a-whateverthatconceptis”
I’m not telling you, you are telling me. you are an atheist by any reasonable interpretation of the word. Certainly in the way that I use it and I suspect by most others. Not sure why you are so against using a word that…as many have already said, tells us nothing about a person other that the fact that they have no belief in a god.
You say you aren’t a theist so I’ll take you at your word, you are an “a-theist”
rocks and trees aren’t capable of taking any position on matters of belief so they fall outside of this discussion but certainly they have exactly the same amount of belief in a god that you or I do.
No, there is no functional difference. Not having a belief in a god or gods, for whatever reason, means you are an atheist. You can use “non-theist” in whatever special way you choose but you are, and I will describe you as, an atheist. The non-theist is something you are adding on top and it seems to me that you are applying it only towards those gods that have adequately defined for you. You are of course free to do that. You remain an atheist in general as well as a non-theist with regards to specific gods.
I think you are hung up on the word for some reason I can’t fathom, perhaps it carries too many negative connotations in your society.
When someone talks about positive atheism, you know he is either an idiot or constructing a strawman. Positive atheists are scarcer than hen’s teeth in the real world. I don’t remember even a single Doper with this position. In 45 years of discussing religion on line I remember maybe one person who made that claim, and he was denounced by atheists, not theists. I’ve been listening to a lot of atheist YouTube videos, and their hosts - to a person - specifically deny being positive atheists.
As an atheist I leave it to theists to tell me what gods they believe in, so I can not believe in them. Lack of belief in any god is the default (which should be obvious) and I can give reasons I don’t believe in specific ones.
There are some gods, like tri-omni ones, which are logically self-contradictory, so it is easy to not believe in them, and i n fact to state they don’t exist. I don’t know if they count as incoherent to you. There are gods like the Greek gods which are not logically contradictory, and for whom the problem of evil doesn’t exist since they make no claim of omnibenevolence. We can not believe in them due to lack of evidence, but they are hardly incoherent.
Not playing says nothing about belief or lack of belief. Tom Paine was not an atheist, since he believed in a deistic universe creating god. Just not the Western one.
Your link mentions pink unicorns, I missed the concept of them being invisible. IPUs are logically self-contradictory and I’d accept them being called incoherent. Which is a good reason to not believe in them, or do you think we should just not discuss them?
Atheism is definitely not depressing to me. When I see horrible things happen in the world, like tornadoes and tsunamis, I’m sad, but not as sad as if I thought there was a god who supposedly loves us either letting these things happen or causing them.
As for life after death, I agree that I don’t want to be around to watch the last proton decay, but more immediately the news is depressing enough already. I don’t want to watch the impact of global warming from heaven.
Me: You want to do something about that, God?
God: Screw 'em.
Anyhow, an afterlife without books, movies, jigsaw puzzles and sex is not one I want any part of.
Carl Sagan put it neatly when he said that we are all made of star-stuff. How true and how amazing. Our atoms forged and re-forged in the cores of a billion suns. It is poetic and awe-inspiring in a way that a magic being can’t match.
The desire to believe a caring diety created existence despite the fact that that hypothesis isn’t remotely supported by the evidence. Plus the problem of evil, trying to invent a reason a loving and powerful God allows evil and always ending up empty handed.
Atheism can be depressing. The reality of natural selection can be overwhelming at times. Just accepting that natural selection invented evil and pain and is totally amoral, and that there is no overarching plan. It’s all just random.
But I think the view is also very heroic. Humans are risen monkeys. We’ve risen from bacteria to become animals that can think and we use our tools to help each other many times. We invent medicines, rockets, computers, human rights documents, etc. I’m sure one day we will be an immortal, interstellar species. It’s a very heroic thing seeing humanity rise above the ignorance and pain of biology.
Not in the slightest, if I wasn’t already an atheist, two personal experiences would have pushed me that way anyway;
1; Dad, a well respected deacon at the local church falling victim to undiagnosed Lyme Disease, progressing to chronic Lyme, turning a healthy outdoorsman into a bedridden invalid and then into a fatal coma
2; my cousin, a preacher at his local church losing EVERYTHING he owned, and their beloved Great Dane to a house fire, a house fire that occurred WHILE THEY WERE AT CHURCH!
You’d think a supposed “supreme” being would take better care of his employees/ spokespeople
No, but the two are often wrongly conflated. Atheism is merely about whether one holds a belief or not. Agnosticism relates to not thinking it is possible to know anything about god. An atheist might be described as an agnostic, Indeed you can be a theist agnostic as well.