Yes, I agree. I didn’t realise i’d given the impression I didn’t - my only complaint was that you seemed to give the impression that belief was a matter of first abstract belief, followed by a defining of the object of belief, which I’d disagree with.
Exactly right. Quite the contrary; I’ve emphasized that there are significant disagreements, but that none of these are inherent to the nature of theism.
No offense, Voyager, but in light of your caustic remark, I think you should be more cautious about telling people to “Get your story straight, okay?”
Ahem! Is that anything like telling people “it’s foolish to think otherwise” ?
Not even remotely similar. The situation you cited is a matter of simple disagreement between you and me. This is vastly different from Voyager’s allegation that I said theists “agree on everything.” Not only is this unsubstantiated, it’s also directly contradicted by a great many of my statements in this thread.
Personally, I’m willing to grant that atheism does not consistute a person’s entire worldview. I’m willing to modify my statement, for the sake of precision. By the same token though, religion does not constitute the entirety of a religious person’s worldview either.
So either way you cut it, it’s inaccurate to say that religious beliefs are a worldview but atheism isn’t. (Remember, this was all sparked by Meatros’s remark, “The difference is, of course, that atheism isn’t a worldview.” Either religion and atheism are both worldviews, or – more precisely – they’re both part of one’s worldview.)
No, though it could be, it doesn’t have to be. It was more of a point to the OP that theists beleive in ‘God’ or ‘gods’ and it doesn’t matter if they don’t beleive in a particular ‘god’
Lets just say I disagree totally and completely your statement. I am unable to prove it to your satisfaction, that is reserved for God.
The thing is, you are trying to make it seem as though atheism and religion are equal in terms of what they bring to a ‘worldview’. I’d argue that religion often provides much more to a worldview then atheism. In otherwords, people often get their morality, their world ‘history’ (not to mention cosmology, geology, etc), and sometimes even their epistemology (at least supposedly) from religion. Keep in mind, I’m not saying this is the case with every religion.
The same can’t be said for atheism (at all). Atheism isn’t even a positive statement, it’s a negation. So while you could (at least theoretically) get a lot of information from someone’s statement that they are a Calvinist, you could not get anywhere near an equal amount of evidence from someone saying they are an atheist.
So while religion doesn’t necessarily constitute a worldview (I argue that it could constitute a worldview), it certainly does have a lot to say in regards to a person’s worldview (at least in regards to the major religions). The same isn’t the case for atheism.
Just to highlight this a bit; What, in your view, does atheism actually contribute to a person’s worldview (positively that is). All I can think is that atheism just stipulates that god/gods do not exist. Outside of that, what does it contribute to a person’s worldview?
You make it sound as though atheism contributes 90 percent of a person’s worldview (again, that’s how your statement reads), whereas I don’t see how it could contribute much of anything to a person’s worldview. Again, I don’t think the same is the case with religion (depending on the religion, of course).
How gracious that you would admit some reality to shine in, but I’m afraid it’s not quite enough to see daylight.
Irrelevant: religious beliefs and religious believers do in fact, derive very specific worldviews from their religion, even if they additionally have views on toothpaste that aren’t informed by their religion. In contrast, there is no particular reason why an atheist should even know or care that they are an atheist, much less have it make any sense to say that their worldview is a particular “atheist” sect take on things. Their lives and ideas can, as it were, be simply consist of “all toothpaste”: i.e. all the non-religious beliefs that a religious person has… and nothing additionally.
It’s perfectly accurate. The problem is your backwards way of seeing the universe all through the lens of your own beliefs. To you, your sort of belief is simply so important, so fundamental, so impossible to see beyond that it’s not possible that people simply to not share them: they must actively put some sort of time and effort into not sharing them. But that’s simply not the case. Non-believers in YOUR worldview do not have any reason or cause to share any sort of common worldview amongst themselves, and even if they do, it’s most certainly not an agreement that comes about because they don’t share your worldview.
Atheism is a word we use as shorthand to refer to a group of folks who aren’t theists. It tells us nothing about common views or opinions. To be fair, just plain “religion” is almost as vague as that, but religion MUST at least have SOME affirmative meaning (to be useful as a word at all), and regardless we all generally have some specific sorts of religious doctrines in mind when we do talk of it. Atheism or non-belief, on the other hand, isn’t even that.
Just out of curiosity, would you extend the same courtesy to people who don’t believe Elvis is still alive?
Call me a fool and an eternal optimist, but I keep thinking that if I simplify it enough, the theists on this board will end up understanding and not misrepresenting what I said in my OP.
Is this simple enough?
Christians say that a trinitarian God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son to die on a cross to redeem fallen humanity so that anyone who believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. They do not recognize Mohammed as a prophet of the Koran as a book inspired of God.
Muslims say that a unitary God has never had a son, that Jesus was a human prophet of God, that Jesus did not die on the cross, that Mohammed is the final and perfect revelation, the “seal of the prophets”, and that salvation is attained by believing the Koran and accepting Islam.
These propositions cannot both be right.
A Muslim and a Christian are both criticizing Dawkins for his atheism. If Dawkins were to be convinced to abandon his atheism and accept the “truth”, which truth is he supposed to accept?
The question I wanted to ask, which did not get on TV, could be rephrased as “If you guys want Dawkins (and by extension other atheists) to believe in the “truth”, whose truth do you want him to believe in? Because some of the most basic ideas about God that you guys hold to be the truth are mutually contradictory.”
I swear, if I keep this up I will eventually have an explanation that, in the immortal words of St. Anselm, “even a fool would understand”.
God is three persons. One person became his son in human form and died to save humanity. The Koran is NOT a book from God.
God is one person. God never had a son. Humanity needs to believe in the Koran and Islam to be saved, because these are the revelation of God.
Is there anyone out there who denies that these are mutually contradictory statements? That they can both be wrong if there is no God, but that they cannot both be right?
Muslims worship a God who is one person only, who never begat a son in human or any other form, and who chose to send his final and complete revelation to an Arab named Mohammed, so that he could write the Koran and lead all of humanity to submit to and accept its truth and thus achieve salvation. This all happened around 1400 years ago.
Christians worship a God made up of three persons, one of whom became a human being (but still remained God) by being conceived without sexual intercourse in a human female, who then died on a cross to atone for the sins of humanity and allow them to attain salvation. This God never contacted Mohammed and the Koran is NOT a holy book inspired by God. This all hapened around 2000 years ago.
Now, either the Gods described above are two different Gods, or else this is what happened. Two thousand years ago the Christian God did all the stuff described above and figured that humanity was now saved. But then sometime about 600 years later, he decided that Jesus was NOT his son (“Now that I think about it, Mary was awful friendly with that Roman Centurion, and everybody says Jesus didn’t look anything like me.”)
So God the Father killed off the other two persons and became a unitary God, and contacted Mohammed, to whom he dictated the Koran, which clearly states Jesus is NOT his son. He then told Mohammed to tell all of humanity that if it wished to be saved, it would have to obey the Koran and submit to Islam.
Of course, there is the third theory that God does not exist at all and that all of this stuff is bullshit thought up by religious charlatans 2000 and 1400 years ago. 
Actually, you are wrong. Look here for the original definition, which I cut and pasted (and italicized.)
Until we can agree what constitutes capitalization, I suspect we are doomed to disagree on more complex issues.
Or, there’s the fourth theory: that there is one God, and Christians and Muslims have both (along with Hindus and Jews) got some of the details of his nature wrong. Not surprisingly, Him being infinite and unknowable, and stuff.
I think the “climbing different sides of the same mountain” analogy works perfectly well. Just because different theistic groups are taking different routes is not proof that the mountain doesn’t exist.
Absolutely. I’d consider that to be part of their worldview, but not its entirety.
Once again though, I think there’s a big difference between belief in a living Elvis (or Bigfoot) and belief in a deity. Believing in Bigfoot is unlikely to have any significant impact on one’s life, just as believing that Elvis is alive is unlikely to impact one’s life significantly. In contrast, belief or disbelief in a deity is much more likely to color one’s values and one’s decisions in life.
I disagree. Even with general belief/disbelief, I don’t see it as necessitating much ‘color’ to one’s values or decisions in life. I can’t see how Deism would effect a person’s worldview more then believing in bigfoot - which says nothing about religions that go further then deism.
So, for some religions (is Deism a religion?) belief isn’t much of a factor in regards to one’s worldview - but I’d say that the major religions do effect a person’s worldview. They generally touch on morality, epistemology, history, etc, etc. Atheism doesn’t touch on these points though.
Which is to say, I’m not seeing what you are talking about, so can you further explain? For instance, I don’t see how atheism would touch a person’s morals, epistemology, view of history, cosmology, etc.
No: BELIEF is likely to color one’s values and decisions. NOT believing in a deity is more than likely to have no effect whatsoever.
When was the last time that NOT being an Athenian played into your political worldview?
Or, to put it differently, you could get a lot of information from someone’s statement that they are a Calvinist(perhaps enough to determine what some of their worldview is), but how much information could you get from a someone’s statement that they are not a Calvinist?
I am an atheist. I have not seen any evidence that indicates that a god exists.
- What is my moral worldview?
- What is my social worldview?
- What is my political worldview?
It really wasn’t just a disagreement between you and me. Plenty of people chimed in to tell you you were mistaken.It’s great that you are willing to modify your position. IMHO they are not vastly different. Perhaps you could have admitted your own mistake before criticizing someone else’s. YMMV