What are your main beefs w/ Atheism?

[Mosier]

I just realized I’m a jackass atheist, of the variety that Liberal says “believes there is no god” instead of “does not believe there is a god”.

[Kimstu]

@Mosier

I just realized I’m a jackass atheist, of the variety that Liberal says “believes there is no god” instead of “does not believe there is a god”.

So’m I, but what’s “jackass” about it?

Yes, I think it’s jackassy to be an “evangelical” proselytizing “hard” atheist who goes around sneering at everybody who doesn’t believe the same as you do. But it’s jackassy to be that kind of theist too.

[Uzi]

@Mosier

I just realized I’m a jackass atheist, of the variety that Liberal says “believes there is no god” instead of “does not believe there is a god”.

Bah. I believe that Charlie the Tuna isn’t sitting in my living room at home watching my TV, too. Am I a jackass for believing this?

[Zoe]

AHunter3, I am so grateful that you continue to teach here. (Post 48)

Thank goodness for atheists like Miller who speak up when the psycho-atheists are hunting for fresh meat. It’s good to be reminded that that kind of viciousness has nothing to do with atheism and everything to do with being unbalanced.

Atheism doesn’t bother me at all and I support some of their legal challenges.

Martin Hyde: Essentially I define sex as: The union of the sex organs of two sexually reproducing animals for insemination and subsequent internal fertilization.

If an infertile woman was inseminated in the usual way by a man who was not her husband, and her priest asked her if she had had sex with anyone besides her husband, would she be telling the truth if she said no?

IntelSoldier: F) Not so much the drive to teach our kids immorality in our schools, but that they want me to pay for it. “Go get your own school if you want to teach religion!”? We’ve done that already. Now please stop taking my taxes to pay for your school.

I taught high school for twenty years. There is no drive to teach kids immorality. That would be self-defeating, wouldn’t it? Stop taking your taxes? You took my taxes when you had those damned forced Bible readings and evangelical ministers coming to school to bring salvation to the students. I had to sit through that with the kids. That visiting televangelist made me want to vomit.

But even worse, you take my taxes to kill thousands upon thousands of people in a war I don’t believe in no matter what you say.. We are more than even.

[Liberal]

@Kimstu

(BTW, Lib, is your symbolic notation maybe backwards there? Doesn’t “~BG” mean “not belief in God” and “B~G” “belief in not God”? Wouldn’t the first be “soft” and the second “hard”, by your terminology?)

:smack: Yes.

[Princhester]

@Kimstu

As a lifelong and contented atheist, my main (in fact, my only) real beef with atheism is that I feel it provides insufficient spiritual scope for gratitude and veneration.

No, my main beef with it, again as an atheist, is the lack of opportunity for worship of me that it entails. Clearly, the way to true happiness is to have the access to wealth, power and sex that being worshipped, or standing between those who worship and what they worship, brings. All that is required is to have charisma, the smarts to keep making up the excuses, and an ability to believe (or at least an ability to fake it).

Unfortunately, I just can’t bring myself to believe, or fake it. It’s so frustrating. I’m so close. There’s just a lack of belief standing between me, millions of dollars, godlike power and access to other… errr… benefits. Well, that plus there’s the charisma and smarts problem.

[Kimstu]

@Liberal

:smack: Yes.

Whew, then I’m not crazy, or at least I was having a lucid moment when I posted that. Thanks.

@panache45

I’ve gotta be the only virgin who’s experienced orgasm (both my own and others’) with about 2500 people.

Oookay, at the risk of being pruriently inquisitive and hijacking the thread back to sex, I think we need the backstory on this one too.

I mean, at the rate of one sexual partner a day, that would work out to nearly seven continuous years of what Martin Hyde calls “sexually stimulating acts” without ever having the same partner twice. I don’t mean to pry, but ?

[kaylasdad99]

@Martin Hyde

So yes, I don’t actually consider said union when there is the presence of any form of birth control to be sex, either.

That’s really odd. One of the first things the gynecologist did when he confirmed kaylasmom’s pregnancy back in 1995 was remove her IUD.

The second was to send us over for a sonogram to make sure the embryo was still present.

I guess the third should have been to notify the National Enquirer of a case of human parthenogenesis.

[Princhester]

@IntelSoldier

C) On “I’m right and you’re wrong”: I’m not trying to get you to agree with me (in this thread). I’m trying to show you why it’s so annoying when atheists say we’re wrong for believing we’re the only right ones. If I was trying to convert you, I’d be saying things about the proof of Christ, but I’m not. I just want to show that my argument is at least a position that *could * be proven.

You appear to be making muddled reference to a particular point atheists often make. The problem seems to be not the point as it is usually made, but your misunderstanding of it.

You are quite correct that there is no inherent lack of logic in the possibility that you may belong to the one true and correct religion, while all others are false.

But that is not the point that most atheists make in this respect. The argument is not:

1/ different religions posit different gods,
2/ you consider most of them to be false
3/ therefore your god is false too.

The argument is:

1/ different religions posit different gods
2/ you consider most of them to be false
3/ there is no more evidence for those gods than your own
4/ what reason is there to believe in your god?

The difference is subtle but very important.

[tagos]

@Thudlow Boink

Those aren’t beefs with atheism.

It’s an long parade of straw men that doesn’t merit a response.

[madmonk28]

@Uzi

Haven’t you heard? Martin Hyde is, in fact, Bill Clinton!
I hate the term ‘Atheist’. How can I be against something that isn’t there? A better word for what I am is ‘Adelusional’. Call me that all you want.

I’ve decide that from now on, I’m going to be known as an apatheist: I don’t know if there is a god and I don’t particularly care.

[LOUIS_CYPHERE]

@IntelSoldier

E) The claim that it’s a big organization to get money. Riiight. 'cause, you know, priests are so rich and everything. I’ve never seen a priest driving a 'vette.

Does Intel still stand for intelligence in your neck-of-the-woods? A priest in a
Corvette ? To be honest {which does bedevil my spirit!}, I have not, but I have
seen a pope in a significantly more expensive car. To think, the lives of your
countrymen are in the likes of your hands. If I was not the devil it would be scary!

[Uzi]

@madmonk28

I’ve decide that from now on, I’m going to be known as an apatheist: I don’t know if there is a god and I don’t particularly care.

And thus we go through the division that Christianity went through hundreds of year ago. Oops, skipped a step, “Heretic! Blasphemer! Burn them!”.

[Pushkin]

@Liberal

My only beef is with those who fail to distinguish between hard atheists (~BG) and soft atheists (B~G)

That’s my only beef, atheism has a simple meaning, all this hard and soft nonsense seems like, well, nonsense. There are people of hard and soft (fundamentalist and moderate) religious persuasion, because there are many traditions and interpretations that can be followed or not. With atheism, what is there? A lack of belief, how can there be a strong or soft lack of something? Surely if it doesn’t exist, it has no definable properties!

[JThunder]

@Thudlow Boink

Those aren’t beefs with atheism. They’re beefs with people who take issue with Christianity.

And yet, in that same thread, the actions of Christians – even those in the extreme minority – were taken to be reflections of Christianity itself.

[the_PC_apeman]

@AHunter3

…
There’s another swimmer here who says everything in the swimming pool is a consequence of TIME, can you believe that?

Sounds like you’ve got the world knocked down into a plastic box.

[Jackmannii]

@Kimstu

(BTW, Lib, is your symbolic notation maybe backwards there?

The logic is flawed as well.

What is meant in this instance by “hard” atheism is simply aggressive promotion of an antireligious viewpoint. Calling it as a “belief” akin to religious beliefs, is comparable to creationists snidely referring to evolution as a religion.

[Revenant_Threshold]

@JThunder

And yet, in that same thread, the actions of Christians – even those in the extreme minority – were taken to be reflections of Christianity itself.

I don’t think that works, though I see what you’re getting at. The extreme minority of Christians are a subset of Christianity as a whole. But the subset in this thread isn’t “anti-Christian atheists” it’s “anti-Christian people”, who aren’t a subset of atheists as a whole.

[MrDibble]

@panache45

Yeah, me too. I’ve gotta be the only virgin who’s experienced orgasm (both my own and others’) with about 2500 people.

:eek:
Do you…do you do it for a living or something? Or are you counting porn watched? I just can’t imagine enough people finding me attractive enough in my lifetime.

[Liberal]

@Jackmannii

What is meant in this instance by “hard” atheism is simply aggressive promotion of an antireligious viewpoint. Calling it as a “belief” akin to religious beliefs, is comparable to creationists snidely referring to evolution as a religion.

“I believe God does not exist” asserts that you have a belief. “I do not believe God exists” asserts that you do not have a belief. If you intend to argue against this point, inquiring minds would like to know.