So the third time I attended my church, one of the guys sidled up to me after service and casually mentioned that he doesn’t really believe in this God stuff, but he really likes the people and community. He wasn’t coming because he was being dragged by a spouse - his wife is a Catholic who attends a different church. This person was a very faithful member of the congregation. He attends almost every week and is on the membership rolls (probably gives money to the church as well). I found that he likely wasn’t the only one in my (very liberal) Lutheran congregation who felt this way (though it is a distinct minority). And some of those were folks who didn’t believe in God, but thought we should follow the lessons of Jesus.
So I ran into a curious phenomenon, the Atheistic Christian. Though I’m sure there are members of both parties that would disavow them from admittance.
Most of the people I know that go to church do so out of a sense of community. People treat you pretty well, usually, most people are trying to be on their best behavior. That’s where their friends are. That’s also where quite a bit of networking for businesses goes on.
Well, you can’t swing a cat without hitting someone who claims to be a Christian, but whose every action shows that he either never read the Bible, or he cherry-picked it for permission to do what he wanted to do anyway.
One of the “stupid Republican” threads just had a story about a doctor who quotes Jesus to support his goal of killing the ACA:
“Just like Jesus said, ‘The poor will always be with us,’” he said. “There is a group of people that just don’t want health care and aren’t going to take care of themselves.”
Pressed on that point, Marshall shrugged.
“Just, like, homeless people. … I think just morally, spiritually, socially, [some people] just don’t want health care,” he said.
Etymology may explain the origin of a term, but it fails to describe its function. And, in language, the use gives the norm. Take the word ‘hussy’, for instance. According to dictionary.com, ‘hussy’ means 1. a brazen or immoral woman or 2. a mischievous, impudent, or ill-behaved girl. Since the word ‘hussy’ comes from ‘housewife’, one can see that the meaning of a word can change dramatically throughout the ages. Yet, some semantic connection remains.
‘Atheist’ is an international term. If I uttered the word ‘atheist’ in the presence of a German, a Russian and a Turkish in a bar in Paris, they would all know what I mean, including the bartender. And because it is used in social interactions, language is influenced by social conventions. The result is that, across the world, an atheist is regarded the same as a non-believer or a non-religious person.
Of course it would be a lot more rigorous to refer to a person who does not believe in any deity, divine level of reality, spiritual ‘force’ or ‘energy’ as a materialist. But if I used this term with the aforementioned bar buddies, I would have a lot of explaining to do before they understand what I mean.
When it comes to Dawkins, he also argues (convincingly, IMHO), that the probability is vanishingly small. That there almost certainly is no god, but not that certainly there is none.
It’s interesting that the question, “Do you believe in God?”, is framed in such a way as to assume that there is just one deity even up for consideration and that if the answer is “Yes” then beliefs of both sides will pretty much be copacetic.
When you hear “Do you believe in god?” it just about always refers to jehovallah and some form of abrahamica. In other cultures, and from other religions, the question of what you believe will generally be framed differently. So, not really all that “interesting”, if you are not overthinking it.
It seems to me that you did more than state a fact. You made the claim that “Theism rather more addresses religion than god”. Where are you getting that from? Every definition of Theism that I can find seems to agree that it is the belief in the existence of deities, while Atheism is the lack of such a belief. So Theism first and foremost addresses god(s) and addresses religion only insofar as religions commonly postulate the existence of at least one god.
Didn’t the U.S. Founders get embroiled in this contention?
Didn’t some claim to be deists rather than theists?
And that is the distinction I was attempting to make.
By now YOUR definition, theism is belief; an INternal state of mind. But wouldn’t god be also external, and eternal?
You can’t distinguish between:
the existence of god, and
belief in the existence of god?
I would consider that agnosticism; a lack of belief.
My understanding about the way the word “atheist” is used in contemporary English is to designate an affirmative disbelief.
Atheism is an assertion of state of mind, belief / disbelief.
Agnosticism is merely a confession of ignorance. It’s the contrast between belief vs knowledge.
Why don’t you look closer at what I wrote? I said Your dictionary definition of “atheist” isn’t exactly backing up your claim “theism rather more addresses religion than god.”
Asking me to look closer at the fifth entry for “ism” doesn’t take away from my point. Your cherry picked usage of -ism does not help to define “theism” as relating to more about religion than god. Words are most accurately defined by how the public uses them; not by cherry picking a dictionary definition of a suffix used within that word.
Did they? I don’t know, and I don’t see how this is relevant here. The deist philosophy states that god(s) do not interfere with our world. This is not the concept we are debating here.
That depends on how you define belief. An example:
I have no way of knowing with 100% certainty whether Antarctica exists. But the evidence available to me leads me to conclude that it does.
Also I have no way of knowing with 100% certainty whether gods do exist. But the evidence available to me leads me to conclude that they don’t.
Since in both cases I cannot be 100% sure, you may call my conclusions a “belief”. But I would disagree with you. Because the people, who *believe *in god(s) usually do not simply interpret the evidence differently, coming to a different conclusion. Instead they explicitly do not require evidence in the first place. Such is the nature of faith, and that is why I disagree when people claim that atheism was simply a different kind of faith.
Common (mis)use can and does modify the meaning of words over time.
“Celibate” originally meant unmarried. But the prudish euphemistic meaning has overtaken the formal definition.
So following your valid point; which of the two of us is the more guilty for participating to problem you’ve defined:
Reductio ad absurdum:
How can a (dis)believer reject ALL notions of ALL gods, without a definition that covers them all?
If humans were created by a big bang, and evolution, and god is our creator, then wouldn’t our creator be a big bang, and evolution?
If so, how could we deny our creator / god; unless our definition is specific enough to designate that?
You’re contesting the distinction.
I don’t think distinguishing between religion and god is immaterial over 130 posts into this topic.
But if you do you’re welcome to ignore it. You think brow-beating me will unring the bell?
There is no burden of disproof. Let’s wait until the first shred of evidence appears. So far, nada.
I understand the concept of the Jim Cary / The Truman Show scale of conspiracy.
I believe one would need an EXCEEDINGLY inflated self-assessment to believe that an entire planet, over 7 billion humans would tailor their lives to conspire against them for no obvious gain.
I’m not a metallurgist.
I’m not an automotive engineer.
I’m not a physicist.
But I’m not overly alarmed to climb into my comfortable modern car, and careen to the store in it at 15 MPH over the posted speed limit.
I’ve been pulling shenanigans like this in automobiles, watercraft, and aircraft for half a century.
Still alive. Perhaps there’s something to it.
An atheist does not have to reject notions. He just has to be without belief in the existence of any gods.
Yes, how ‘god’ is defined is relevant, but this has nothing to do with the discussion I’m having with you. We are discussing your claim that “theism rather more addresses religion than god.”
And no, our “creator” would not be a big bang and evolution. Atheists generally don’t claim that humans were “created” by evolution or the Big Bang.
He didn’t brow beat you. And he’s right. Your attempt to answer Hiker’s question to you with questions regarding the Founders didn’t answer his question at at all and was off-topic.
Some FF didn’t claim to be deists rather than theists; they just claimed to be deists. Deists are a type of theist…and this has NOTHING to do with the claim you made that Hiker is trying to discuss with you.