You should retake your intro class so you have a grasp of basic terminology.
I don’t care what term someone wants to use. I’m a don’t-believe-in-godist. No amount of redefining a term can actually turn that into a faith, so can the topic move on?
godix, I notice you’re relatively new to the SDMB, so you don’t have any reason to know how many times this subject has been discussed. FWIW, when I started, I would self-identify as “an agnostic or weak atheist, depending on how one defines terms.” After seeing several discussions like this one, I did a fair amount of research and concluded the dominant usage is that one who doesn’t believe in God is an atheist (which is how I now self-indentify), whereas an agnostic is one who believes the question can’t be answered. As in all questions of usage, there’s no right answer. But what I just described seems to be the majority view.
Take another example, astrology. I assume you think astrology is balderdash. Can you prove it? Of course not. Do you say, I don’t know whether astrology is true? I doubt it. What you say, I assume, is that without good reasons to believe it’s true, you don’t. So too with atheism, as the term is generally used these days.
The argument over atheism is pointless because it doesn’t actually address anything of substance. It comes off like an attempt by religionists to argue atheists into saying they hold a position they don’t hold because it’s easier (though not MUCH easier) for them to attack. We are stipulating that it cannot be proven that gods do not exist. I can, however, assert with every confidence that there is no evidence or compelling reason to believe they do.
I’d say a more accurate definition of atheism is that it’s the conclusion you form from the lack of evidence that God exists. And religion is a conclusion you form despite the lack of evidence that God exists.
I don’t believe a person loses faith, they just find what they believed is no longer relevant in their lives. It is like finding a spouse is unfaithful,once you can see the fact of their infidelity, it hurts for awhile, but then you realize they were not the person you thought they were!
It is more than that. Most religions are so self-contradictory and claim such impossible events that they cannot possibly be true. There is absolutely nothing to convince me that any god is anything other than a fiction, simply one of billions of pieces of fiction invented by humanity in in it’s history.
Saying there is no evidence for the non-existence of God only works if you define God as an entity completely aloof from human affairs and without any of the contradictory properties people usually ascribe to him. But since nobody defines God like that (except when they are debating with Athiests 
) all of the evidence, not to mention the history of the Church and human nature, points to non-existence. Or, if you’re being really generous, existence by co-incidence.
I hope that we’re past the arguments about what the word “atheist” should mean. Most people in formal or philosophical settings use that word to mean the lack of belief in any gods. If someone wants to use another definition, then just please identify that you’re doing so ahead of time. It’s a little confusing to do that, because pretty much everyone who identifies as an atheist uses the “lack of belief” definition.
Back to the other point: a lot of this discussion is now about the default position and the burden of proof. As Dio said earlier, the null hypothesis, in other words the default position, has to be that you accept that there are probably no gods, and the claim that gods exist has to have the burden of proof. It just can’t work any other way.
And since there has bee no evidence presented that would justify that we accept the claim, the only defensible position is to reject the claim, and tentatively accept the null hypothesis that there are no gods.
If there is no evidence in favor of a proposition, the default is to assume that the proposition is unproven - not true, not false, unproven.
Think of it like this - is there proof that other intelligent civilizations exist in other galaxies? There is speculation, but no definitive proof either way. Would you agree that the default position is not to assert “there are no other civilizations”?
As far as the question of the OP’s title, I don’t know about the “anyone”. Certainly, many of the more aggressively dogmatic atheists are motivated by a desire to build up their own (often damaged) egos at the expense of others. And sometimes it is a matter of trolling - people trying to stir up trouble as a method of attracting attention to oneself.
Madlyn Murray O’Hair is the quintessential example of this - a person who seemed to base most of her life on an unfortunately successful campaign to be the biggest pain in the ass that she could manage. It rather backfired on her in the end, according to a biography of her that I read. Apparently she hired ex-convicts to work on her farm, since only people desperate for work would put up with her abuse. Unfortunately a couple of the ex-cons got the idea that she was hiding gold coins in a stash somewhere (apparently the way she handled donations to her atheist organization was a bit on the dodgy side) and the ex-cons killed her in an attempt to rob her.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
Regards,
Shodan
Yep, it’s atheists that have the mean streak. Thank you ever so much for this Pit-worthy off-topic slam attempt to hold up Ms. O’Hair as our spokesperson.
Pathetic.
But the concept of “proof” doesn’t apply to science. If there’s enough evidence, we tentatively accept a claim. If there’s not, we tentatively reject it. And let’s be clear: the claim is the idea that there is a god.
Yes, it would be incorrect to assert that, but your simile doesn’t work because no one asserts that there are no gods. At least not formally; in informal language some of us are pretty sure.
On the other hand, we do have decent evidence that leads many people to the idea that there probably are other civilizations, so accepting that other advanced life probably exists is at least a justifiable position. In the case of gods, there seems to be no evidence in that direction.
That is exactly the atheist position, but that does not mean that both options have equal probability. Hypotheses which conflict with observed reality, physical laws and explanatory necessity are not just “unproven,” but are also highly improbable – in the case of sky gods, the improbability is so high that the can be functionally presumed not to exist, just like smurfs can be functionally presumed not to exist.
No one is asserting that gods can’t exist, so this continues to be a straw man approach to attacking atheism. having said that, life on other planets has a much different probability value than sky gods. We already know that it’s possible, so it’s not accurarte or analogous to compare it to the probability of invisible, all powerful sorcerors.
Chortling at the murder of an atheist proves what, exactly?
That Shodan doesn’t really understand the whole *Christian *thing?
With respect, you must realize that the specific word you want to assign to the logical position people are describing here isn’t really that important. You’re not going to get very far trying to convince people that they hold beliefs that they don’t hold. If you’re dead-set on defining “athesim” in the way that most people call “strong atheism,” that’s fine, but that doesn’t mean that everybody is a strong atheist.
That said, I do think the definitions of “atheism” and “agnosticism” you’re operating under are, at least, problematic.
What’s more, simply throwing one’s hands up and saying that there’s no “proof” one way or the other is just avoiding the issue. There isn’t any proof that I’m not a brain in a vat, but there are reasons to take a position on that issue.
Good people are never killed. Jesus died in his sleep.
I think this is true and well-noted. The general idea in many (probably most) situations I’ve found myself in is basically that atheists are supposed to give deference to religious viewpoints basically to the point of admitting that the religious are probably right. Anything less than that is, by many people, seen as almost unforgivably rude. In my experience, even acknowledging the religious viewpoint as equal is insufficient; you have to act as though it’s superior, and obviously so.
Fascinating stuff, but there are still no gods.
You know, in the simplest straightforwardest way you can interpret those words.
Of course, if you think cows are gods, then there are gods. If you think the resin cast of Ganesha sitting on my desk is a god, then there are gods. If you think Harry Potter is real, albeit fictional, then yes, I guess Woden is just as real, so there are gods.
I know Apollo and Kali and Jehovah are not real since they are explicitly fictional characters created by storytellers, and because they have inconsistent attributes. Jehovah can be good or he can be omnipotent, but he can’t be both. He can be the bloke who served me my coffee this morning - in which case, he would be real, and there would be at least one god, good luck to him.
Let us construct a hypothetical god which has no attributes. Would It be real? No. Can I prove that It isn’t real? Yes. We know It would be fictional, since we just invented It. And It wouldn’t be ‘he’ since It doesn’t have any balls. And, let us not forget, this hypothetical god wouldn’t be Allah or the Holy Spirit or Astarte. We know that they are not real because we know that they are fictional and because they have impossibly contradictory attributes ascribed to them.
So let’s just drop the “how can we know” bollocks. We know because that’s what knowing means. Believing in stuff which is made up is the definition of delusional, particularly when you know who made it up, when they did it, why they did it, and that they were completely honest about doing it.
Next week: let’s discuss if pencils and unicorns are real. How can we be sure?
There mere fact that people have to argue like they do here, to create some confusion about the possible existence of their gods, is reasonably good proof that their gods are not real in the way that flat screen TVs are real.
Could you not just imagine god to look like Megan Fox?
Too bad for Shodan if he doesn’t.
Too bad for Christianity if he does.
Oh, certainly for specific individuals it might, though in cases like that you have to weigh how sad their unfulfilled sexual desires make them, versus how sad the loss of belief in an afterlife might make them, then consider how happy they are now with other aspects of their life versus how likely they are to be as an atheist … it’s all quite complicated, and involves lots of assuming we know what’s best for other people.
Consider a 50 year old man who all his life has been attracted to other me, but has resisted it because of his fundamentalist religious upbringing. The loss of his belief might help him finally be at peace with his sexuality. It would also likely end his twenty-year marriage to a woman he does love (even if he is sexually conflicted), awkward relationships with his 10 year old sons, falling-out with his parents and family, social upheaval (most of his friends went to church), etc. etc.
Even operating under atheist assumptions, most of the time, you really can’t say with confidence that someone would be happier or more fulfilled without their faith.
OTOH, a religious believer truly does think he has found the key to eternal bliss, so that he is 100% certain that no matter how happy you are now, you will nonetheless be happier if you have faith. He may be wrong, but under his assumptions he really is acting in your interest, even if he’s doing it in a dickish way.
The aggressive atheist, OTOH, is usually being a dick even in his motives (which is part of why you almost never see them anywhere but on the internet).