I can’t be an atheist and act as though God exists? Why not?
While atheists don’t (generally) follow a religion, I think it’s safe to say that religion is the basic foundation for our ethical and moral principles. Kind of hard to escape it.
This is what I was thinking of before:
eta: I like the term ‘agnostic atheist’.
No, it’s a leftover defect. It isn’t something that separated us from animals, it is a psychological disease. It drags us down, hampers our species and has an excellent chance of rendering us extinct.
Okay, I think I’ve got you now. :rolleyes:
No, religion causes moral and intellectual corruption; it isn’t a source for morality, it’s largely incompatible with morality. The first step in attaining some kind of useful morality is to ignore or throw out religion. Religion teaches self indulgence, self deception, mindless obedience, and that the world and the people in it don’t matter; only imaginary gods and imaginary souls matter. It warps judgment and teaches that facts are something to be ignored.
None of that is compatible with morality.
expressly: specifically
According to your link, you are either an atheist or a theist. If I’m not one, I’m supposed to be the other. I’m an atheist, but as Implicit pointed out, the term ‘agnostic atheist’ suits me best.
I believe that God, real or not, exists as a force as it’s part of the human psyche at this point in the world. I don’t care if there really is a supernatural deity/ies.
I’m done arguing about your confusion.
No, I did not say that ‘agnostic atheist’ suits you best. Here is my post again, please read it carefully:
The confusion is yours.
That doesn’t change the contradictions you’ve made.
He actually claimed you were an agnostic theist. It’s not easy for anyone to keep up with your claims. Okay, you’re back to being an atheist. Alrighty.
I’ve never met an atheist that would say that gods aren’t part of the psyche. Whether or not I would call that a “force” is another thing.
I’m not the one that’s confused.
If you are going to post part of “The Pirate Song”, at least credit the author.
“That’s my boat my treasure
That is my god freedom
My law, force and wind
My only homeland sea.”
-Joseph Espronceda
Speak for yourself, there is no such thing in my psyche. The downfall of mankind will be this “transparent god” that most cultures speak of. There is not one shred of hard evidence for gods existence. No one else finds this odd?
It seems to me that the reason God is the “only God” has to do with unification. A power divided is very weak, so when you have a bunch of tribes with the same pantheon, but different focus deities and you need to band together to fight off the invaders (note this was a real threat in that region/time period), what do you do? You start implying all the gods in your holy books are super secretly the same god(s). Suddenly you’re not so different, those guys aren’t different because they worship Zeus principally over Hephaestus, we’re all united under the same deity guy, you may like a certain aspect more, but it’s the same guy! Hey, brother! Let’s fight off these bastards!
In some cases, this involves simple syncretism, how every Buddha is secretly a Hindu god, and every Japanese Kami is a Buddha. In other cases, it involves a priest or council going through the holy books and “correcting” them and LITERALLY trying to imply this random mountain god and the storm god are the same person.
After you have one God, there’s no real limiting factor, he just grows and grows in power. He’s no longer The Storm God who fell in love with The Tree Goddess and got betrayed by The God of Weaponry, they’re all the same god, so they can’t in-fight, and so there’s no real reason for them to have foils or weaknesses. Then they basically become a Mary Sue in their holy text and everything spirals out from there.
I didn’t know he went by the English Joseph, but yes, La canción del pirata is a favorite. I’ve used it for Civics before.
The reason religions claim they have the true way and the real god is their god, is to corner the market. If they can convince you , they own you. Why would you convert ?
Untrue. One could be an deist, pantheist, or agnostic. One could never have considered the issue at all.
Buddhist believe in gods, but they also believe that gods won’t help you achieve enlightenment. Buddhist believe in anatman, which means no-self and could easily be translated as no-soul.
Buddhism is a religion. So your broad-brush generalization is false. I don’t think it necessarily applies that well to mainline Christianity or Unitarianism either.
This thread is quickly going to get hijacked by comic book nerds.
Like this:
This reminds me of what happened in the 90’s to the Green Lantern characters. At the time, there were several characters called Green Lantern. In addition to the members of the Green Lantern Corps (a handful of Earth humans and many more alien life forms), there was also an unrelated (well mostly unrelated) character with the same name (he was the original in the comics).
But then, the writers-- well, actually the editor, not the writer-- decided to get rid of the boring old Green Lanterns. They had the main Green Lantern inexplicably become insane and evil so he could go on a killing spree, a consequence of which was that all the other members of the Corps had their power rings lose all power. Many died as they had simply been flying through space. Some were in the middle of storylines redefining their character. Those got cut short. Another had to get a completely different power source, revealing that he had actually been half-alien (the superpowered kind of alien) all this time and never knew!
All of this just so they could introduce a newer “kewl” Green Lantern who was so much “better” (they kept telling us but not showing us) than the earlier Green Lanterns who were now all dead or with new names. Even the completely unrelated character named Green Lantern, the original Green Lantern, had to get a new name “Sentinel” and a gosh-awful costume to go along with it.
Just so their pet Green Lantern could be the bestest Green Lantern ever. (The only way he could be guaranteed to be best is if he was the ONLY one.) And members of the Justice League kept telling him what a great Green Lantern he was, sometimes reassuring him that he was better than the previous main Green Lantern. Even if the new guy’s a petty, property destroying, unintelligent moron. Hey, he likes manga and he draws purty, so who cares what his personality is like?
It’s a common theme. Everybody wants THEIR hero to be the best-est hero ever. Even if that hero’s a god.
In what way?
They pretty much took the opposite tack. Instead of “I’m right! You’re wrong! We’re going to push you out of our society!” they embraced “I’m right. So are you. C’mon into the temple.” What we call Hinduism is actually a pretty large array of different religions that all come under that Hinduism umbrella. They’re like the English language of religions.
Neither imaginary gods nor souls matter in Buddhism: according to Buddhist doctrine, gods won’t help you achieve enlightenment and you won’t achieve enlightenment without understanding that there is no self or soul. And enlightenment is the raison d’etre of Buddhist doctrine.
Your other characterizations were highly dubious, but I went after the low-lying fruit as they were diametrically opposed to one religion’s doctrine. That said, I suspect few preachers would explicitly advance, “…self indulgence, self deception, …and that the world and the people in it don’t matter.” On mindless obedience, the Buddha emphasizes understanding of the doctrine: how that plays out in practice is a separate matter and is something I’m not competent to comment on. As for Catholicism, obedience is indeed emphasized, but methinks the Jesuits are anything but mindless.
I won’t defend fundamentalism though.
Der: I’ll put it another way: religions vary in their toxicity.
Arguably, Christianity was an advance over what preceded it, as it promoted literacy, organized charity and paid lip-service at least to generosity. Lip service is superior than the alternative: pagan attitudes could be rather predatory as reflected in some of Aesop’s fables. Unfortunately, the board lacks sufficient collective knowledge to debate the pros and cons of Christianity as seen from the POV of 150-800 CE. I lack that knowledge as well.
Public schooling (for boys), literacy and charity was mandated pre-Christianity.
//cough
See: Judaism in early Judea & Greek civilization.