Am I understanding you correctly? You think if an atheist states in the workplace that “atheism is not a belief system”, they deserve to get fired for bigotry?
Got it, the only alternative is that I am either ignorant or lacking in critical thinking because I choose not to discount a feeling that I realize has no effect on the world around me but internally makes me feel better. I am extremely likely to be using that as criteria for all types of things I am not consciously factoring my beliefs into. I am so weak of mind that I can’t tell the difference.
I’m good with that though I must commend your omnipotence to know this beyond a shadow of a doubt. I’d never be able to state such things with such authority because clearly there’s no way you could be wrong and you’re only presenting an opinion of how you feel iwhich of course you then act on. I can clearly see where your knowledge of this certainty which you act on, is clearly knowledge based and not a belief of how definitively every human mind operates so it’s not similar to what I am doing at all.
True, I could make myself commit atrocities but it’d be pretty hard to since I’m not prone to such things. Don’t know what this proves though. I could do it no matter what I believed, absurd or not.
I don’t believe anyone else is making me believe anything since my beliefs are deliberately crafted by me and don’t match any conventional beliefs that I’ve seen though there are bits taken from other beliefs certainly, no one has compelled me to believe any particularly way. I guess I’m like Johnny 5. I told me.
Is it a waste to take a placebo? I’d agree that if your beliefs start affecting your world in a negative fashion then that’s bad. Is it a waste of time believing in something not correct, I really don’t think so. It’s just idle daydreaming that is tailor made to make you feel good. Many people invest time in reading fiction, watching movies, surfing the web. All of these things are wasting time. I don’t see the problem with that.
I can’t answer the last part since the specifics of what I believe are quite open to change and in fact I now look back on some of the things I allowed myself to believe when I was younger and can’t see where I found it appealing but it was.
Of course, I didn’t realize I was simply a mush headed fool who was a danger to myself and others so much that they were compelled, compelled I say, to point this out to me ad nauseum and make me feel bad about myself when really I’m not really sure there was a reason to and I’m not particularly distressed by where it has lead me.
What’s wrong with faith? Depends on what you have faith in. The 19 hijackers on 9/11/01 had “faith” they were doing the right thing. I assume you don’t need to be told what was wrong with that.
Hey, I recognize this as a possibility but I’d consider it a sign of a developing mental condition like alzheimers or dementia before I’d say I’d been always open to it when I know at this point I certainly am not, therefore I’m not sure I can avoid the danger that easily.
Nope, never said specific faiths can’t be harmful or wrong but have been sticking with ones that aren’t acted out on. I’m talking about the kind of faiths that the majority of people have that don’t turn theirs and others life askew.
I’m assuming though that I make decisions that are important based on rationality not my beliefs. I’ve never said, “oh, fire can’t hurt me, I’m protected by the Flying Spaghetti guy” and done something stupid. If I did, I wouldn’t blame my beliefs, I’d blame my mental health.
You can avoid the danger by discounting faith. Easy.
I’ll think you’ll find that atheists are far more likely to be tolerant and unbigoted than religious adherents.
I know I am…hurrah for me!
and do tell, which “stated opinion” would get them fired?
Turn the question around: What good is faith?
Again, which definition of faith are we talking about in this thread? Is it “blind faith” in which no evidence is required to acquire it(and thus no evidence is able to shake it), or is it faith based on previous experience and available evidence?
You’re not talking about different types of faith, you’re talking about different types of people. One Muslim has faith in Islam and crashes a plane into a building and a more “moderate” Muslim may interpret his holy texts differently and choose to not harm himself or others yet pray, fast and teach his kids their Christian friends are going to Hell. The faith isn’t different; their interpretations of what their god commands of them are. His kids, however, may want to fly into a building one day or believe it’s okay to beat his wife and will most likely pass on the same faith virus to his kids.
You’re asking what’s wrong with the kind of faith that doesn’t hurt anyone as if it’s separate from faith that doesn’t. It’s not.
Cite? Seriously, you don’t know that. You think it’s harmless to be raised being told your Jewish friends are going to Hell, God’s watching you whack off, etc?
See this:
and this:
Just a couple examples out of many. That’s faith in action and it’s far from harmless.
That’s great, but plenty of people don’t reject it. They not only believe if you pick the wrong religion you go to Hell, they sometimes succeed in instilling this fear in others. Harmless? Let me guess- you’re not talking about that kind of faith; you’re talking about the kind where you believe there’s someone in the sky watching you but you don’t pass this on to your kids and you never let it affect you negatively, right?
Does it matter? Do you know anyone that believes in the FSM? I can’t answer because I don’t know what sort of beliefs one would have regarding the FSM. Ask a genuine question that actually pertains to people in real life like what the difference is between believing in the Abrahamic God and not having irrational beliefs and I’m sure you’ll get more answers.
As you can see in the responses in this thread, atheists in general wouldn’t give a damn about silly faith based beliefs if they never harmed anyone. But you’re either pretending or mistaken in believing there’s a harmless type of faith that exists in a vacuum. It doesn’t. That’s why we care.
If it’s “blind faith”, count me in as someone who’s tolerant of it, but doesn’t want it to effect my lifestyle, (or anyone else’s lifestyle).
I was JUST outside smoking, and an elderly woman approached me telling me that her husband and son both died of lung cancer. She asked if she could pray for me, I said yes. She then came closer and took my hand and said short prayer.
I really wanted to tell her I was an atheist, just to see what she would think, but I wouldn’t do that to an old woman. She may have been naive, but hey, I’m stupid for smoking. I know she’s lost a lot, I’m sure she takes comfort in “knowing” she’ll see her family again.
It’s an irrational epistemology.
Completely depends on the context. Personally, I don’t care if someone believes that bigfoot exists (I suppose, as long as they aren’t wasting tons of resources on it). It’s fairly harmless. Now, someone believing that their race is superior and that other races should be exterminated, is a belief that I think warrants an attempt to correct the person.
This is typical - whenever someone’s paradigm shift, there is usually a period where they become evangelical about it.
Two reasons - one is the reason above and the second is because people often effect the lives of others based on their religious faith. So, for instance, they would vote for candidates to effect policy based on that religious faith, which would in turn effect the atheist, sometimes extremely negatively.
It’s not that it always hurts, it’s that it can hurt.
Suppose that the faith you are referring to demanded that you killed homosexuals, would you still see it as harmless?
You do realize that if you relied only on faith, both of those faiths (the harmful and the non harmful) are equal, don’t you? Meaning, without criticizing them or trying to find flaws in them, a person would have no recourse in choosing one over the other.
Which is the danger of faith.
All those things are great. But someone who doesn’t understand that fiction is fiction might be in for problems. Plus, as for faith, if I had faith that Jersey Shore was going to become good, I’d be a nitwit.
I didn’t mean wasting time. Even some atheists go to church for the music. I own Beethoven’s Mass and the Magnificat by Bach.
I don’t know where this came from, but if you want to feel good about yourself you should never start programming. It teaches humility, since even though you may have faith you did it right, the code tells you otherwise, sometimes in no uncertain terms and more dangerously through subtle indications of problems.
The OP presents a rather cartoonish and hostile representation of atheists. In my experience, most atheists don’t care if other people have religious beliefs as long as they leave others alone and don’t try to codify their beliefs into law.
As for “faith,” the main problem with it is that it’s completely irrational, which makes it a poor operating system for life. Sometimes irrational beliefs can be benign or harmless, but not always. It’s not a good idea to base your life on arbitrary, irrational beliefs not grounded in any evidence. Such beliefs are unreliable. If you’re driving a car in a strange city, is it better to have a GPS system that tells you where you’re going or is it better to just have “faith” that you will make all the right turns and end up at the right place?
I don’t have any faith in faith.
Faith has the big problem that it does not require evidence. You believe something, but you don’t get (or use) any feedback from the world to see if you are actually right. A lot of faith is actually pretty harmless, but it’s the principle idea to believe something that you have no evidence whatsoever for (and even declaring that this completely unfounded belief is a virtue) that is very dangerous.
The idea that it’s not only not bad, but actually a very good thing to believe something that has no factual basis in reality, that cannot even possibly be falsified by an experiment, is insane! This way, you open you mind to all sorts of things that you won’t question - because you have faith - and some of them are going to be pretty bad ideas from insane people. Like threatening people with hell, denying homosexual people the same rights as heterosexual people, or flying planes in buildings. As soon as you declare parts of your thinking as immune to facts and won’t question them no matter what, you really are in trouble.
Actually, Meatros said it a lot shorter whil i was typing:
Which is exactly the point. If you don’t use the real world to ground your view of the world, you are in a moral free fall.
Oh, and:
The pills are providing a physical effect. They trick the brain into thought patterns that make healing more likely. It’s very real.
Perhaps this just means that the faith of most people is weak? Many religions have things that you should do if you truly believed that most people don’t. Back when I believed in God I certainly didn’t have enough faith to demand that my parents go Kosher. I suspect that most people have a still, small voice in their heads crying out “that’s crazy” when their minister tells them what they should be doing if their faith was strong.