Baraka_Guru

I've noticed in other threads that when we get on the topic of atheism, we sometimes come across a problem of identity. The problem, some claim, is that it's awkward identifying with something you aren't.

Atheism comes from the Greek a- ‘without’ + theos ‘god.’ This means an atheist is "one without god." The problem? Well, an atheist is one without a heck of a lot of other things as well.

The following video addresses this problem quite well:

• What are your thoughts on the core idea here?
• If you consider yourself an atheist, would you consider calling yourself a P.E.A.R.L.ist (pearlist) instead?

I don't think this video necessarily presents anything new, but it's nice to see the idea of a positive identification of the non-religious packaged and presented this way. I think many of us have thought these ideas at different times, but now that they're strung together, it seems to make more sense.

It's enjoyable enough to watch. I'm not sure if I'll ever call myself a pearlist, but I'm not one to really call myself anything, really. Whenever I do, it feels awkward.

What about you?

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

telekinetic

Long video is long, and I'll watch it when I get the time, but I think I get the basic gist of it, and I'd rather be called a rationalist if I needed to be called anything.

I don't like the 'not collecting stamps is a hobby' anecdote as much as my signature, because it leaves you open for the 'well if you watch and make videos about not collecting stamps, and post articles about how stupid stamp collectors are, and join newsfeeds for non-collectors, then yes, not collecting stamps IS your hobby'...ie, an overly literal parsing. TV station analogy has fewer obvious comebacks.

__________________
twisted no more

Willravel

You could call a non-Jew a gentile. You could call a non-white a minority. Terms describing what one is not are common. Atheist isn't necessarily one of these terms, though. From my experience, an atheist disbelieves the existence of god. It isn't simply "this person isn't religious", it's "this person does not currently recognize the existence of god". There's a big difference there. I think nonreligious is the term of exclusion in play, not atheist.

boink

sounds reasonable to me.

__________________
when you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer. Superstition ain't the way.

InfiniteWisdom

Excellent point by the poster of this. Also you managed to interest me even more by playing a video by thunderf00t one of my favorite subscriptions on youtube.

I don't mind being called an atheist because in the literal translation it is true. I am without god, I do not believe in god, etc. On the other hand based on this video I also would not mind the definition of pearlist. However in regular conversations most people would not know what I am talking about and having to re-explain it or define it in all threads would be annoying. I suppose I could sig it eh?

That said I also am fine with having no specific label or identity. I would rather just be, and argue my points as they come. I never did like labels, stereotypes, or preconceived notions.

__________________
Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion. ~ Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate in physics

Zeraph

We should just be called empiricists and be done with it.

xuvio38

~~~~~

Lindy

When I flirted with atheism a few years ago I had a friend (briefly SO) who made a distinction, in that he called someone an adietist (one who denied the existence of God, the diety (with a capital G) as distinct from an atheist as one who saw no value in ANY religion or faith.
Thus, some buddhists could be described as adietists though not atheists.
My personal experience is that most atheists could be described as apathetics, in that the really don't care and don't want to be bothered. Although some feel quite strongly about it. Perhaps militantly apathetic.

Lindy

Charlatan

I use the term Atheist as a short hand explanation for those who need it. Otherwise, I don't think about it in terms of what I am not. I just get on with life.

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

braisler

I don't know. I consider this argument semantic. While I am not defined by being an atheist, I do self identify as an atheist when the topic of religion comes up.

Rather than calling other people who are religious that they are FSM rejectionists, I'll sometimes tell them that they are atheists too... they reject all other gods/religions other than they one god that they do subscribe to. Believe it or not, this phrasing has made more than one person take pause and think on the issue for half a minute. Sometimes they'll chuckle, sometimes they'll frown, but at least they are thinking about the myriad different belief systems that exists and how each and every one of those systems holds all of the others as false.

The short version of this is, "Sure, you're an atheist too, I just believe in one less god than you do."

Cynosure

Charlatan

+1

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

sprocket

My worldview tends to wander closest to metaphysical naturalism... but I usually just say "atheist", "agnostic", or "secular humanist" depending on the audience.

But given that, by default, most people you are likely to encounter in this world are actually theists... I think it might make some sense to identify with a term that describes the absence of that condition.

__________________
Remember, wherever you go... there you are.

Halanna

I think the hardest part is everyone is expected to classify their thoughts/feelings on a God, religion, organized religion, spirituality or whatever. There are X number of names, and every single person is expected to choose one to explain their religious viewpoints (or lack thereof).

Whenever I'm asked, or questioned I just smile sweetly and say, "I prefer to keep my spirituality private, but thanks for asking."

If they keep pressing, I say, "I'd prefer not to get into a theological discussion right now, I don't have the time."

Surprisingly, 9 times out of 10 the word "theological" stops them because they aren't sure what it means.

Personally, it's easier for me to just side-step the issue than to justify my perceived label.

Baraka_Guru

Ha, that's funny. I've never tried that, but I've considered it.

I think I'd might even take it further by asking, "Is your line of questioning intended as theological or philosophical? Have you read Hume?" I'm sure that would discourage enough people from pressing much further.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

roachboy

you never know, baraka. you never know who you'll run into. there's a secret army of humeans that deploys in publick houses like spiders in traps waiting for people like you to walk in.

personally, i think the most interesting aspect of xtianity is nominalism. if there is some god out there, we can't know, nor can we know anything about it because finite understanding has no access to the infinite, which is an empty category, a hole designated by a word. a consequence of this is that questions concerning what might or might not be Out There become uninteresting. the world around is very big very complex and often quite beautiful. i think about that, and how people make worlds and make their own worlds. what they imagine a god to be as nothing more than an effect of these processes. and of course my positions are nothing more than effects of my own processes. but i like them better.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Willravel

One might say that we're all humeans, roach... like some sort of humean race.

Halanna

That is golden! I'm going to have to try that. With as much asperity as possible of course.

Grasshopper Green

I love this. I usually try to explain that I am agnostic, but usually anyone who asks about my religious views doesn't know what agnostic means. I may have to try this next time I'm asked.

__________________
"They say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings; steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king"

Formerly Medusa

Polar

"that's interesting, because you're throwing out there that you are involved in a group of violent, sexually abusive murderers" -- Matthew Vita


-- Ah yes, the old, "label-an-entire-group-by-the-actions-of-their-fringe" tripe. Intellectual laziness.






An article I came across just today.
Whether you agree with it or not, it's an interesting read:



"Atheists: No God, no reason, just whining"

by Charlotte Allen

I can't stand atheists -- but it's not because they don't believe in God. It's because they're crashing bores.

Other people, most recently the British cultural critic Terry Eagleton in his new book, "Faith, Reason, and Revolution," take to task such superstar nonbelievers as Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins ("The God Delusion") and political journalist Christopher Hitchens ("God Is Not Great") for indulging in a philosophically primitive opposition of faith and reason that assumes that if science can't prove something, it doesn't exist.

My problem with atheists is their tiresome -- and way old -- insistence that they are being oppressed and their fixation with the fine points of Christianity. What -- did their Sunday school teachers flog their behinds with a Bible when they were kids?

Read Dawkins, or Hitchens, or the works of fellow atheists Sam Harris ("The End of Faith") and Daniel Dennett ("Breaking the Spell"), or visit an atheist website or blog (there are zillions of them, bearing such titles as "God Is for Suckers," "God Is Imaginary" and "God Is Pretend"), and your eyes will glaze over as you peruse -- again and again -- the obsessively tiny range of topics around which atheists circle like water in a drain.

First off, there's atheist victimology: Boohoo, everybody hates us 'cuz we don't believe in God. Although a recent Pew Forum survey on religion found that 16% of Americans describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated, only 1.6% call themselves atheists, with another 2.4% weighing in as agnostics (a group despised as wishy-washy by atheists). You or I might attribute the low numbers to atheists' failure to win converts to their unbelief, but atheists say the problem is persecution so relentless that it drives tens of millions of God-deniers into a closet of feigned faith, like gays before Stonewall.

In his online "Atheist Manifesto," Harris writes that "no person, whatever his or her qualifications, can seek public office in the United States without pretending to be certain that ... God exists." The evidence? Antique clauses in the constitutions of six -- count 'em -- states barring atheists from office.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled such provisions unenforceable nearly 50 years ago, but that doesn't stop atheists from bewailing that they have to hide their Godlessness from friends, relatives, employers and potential dates. One representative of the pity-poor-me school of atheism, Kathleen Goodman, writing in January for the Chronicle of Higher Education, went so far as to promote affirmative action for atheists on college campuses: specially designated, college-subsidized "safe spaces" for them to express their views.

Maybe atheists wouldn't be so unpopular if they stopped beating the drum until the hide splits on their second-favorite topic: How stupid people are who believe in God. This is a favorite Dawkins theme. In a recent interview with Trina Hoaks, the atheist blogger for the Examiner.com website, Dawkins described religious believers as follows: "They feel uneducated, which they are; often rather stupid, which they are; inferior, which they are; and paranoid about pointy-headed intellectuals from the East Coast looking down on them, which, with some justification, they do." Thanks, Richard!

Dennett likes to call atheists "the Brights," in contrast to everybody else, who obviously aren't so bright. In a 2006 essay describing his brush with death after a heart operation, Dennett wrote these thoughts about his religious friends who told him they were praying for his recovery: "Thanks, I appreciate it, but did you also sacrifice a goat?" With friends like Daniel Dennett, you don't need enemies.

Then there's P.Z. Myers, biology professor at the University of Minnesota's Morris campus, whose blog, Pharyngula, is supposedly about Myers' field, evolutionary biology, but is actually about his fanatical propensity to label religious believers as "idiots," "morons," "loony" or "imbecilic" in nearly every post. The university deactivated its link to Myers' blog in July after he posted a photo of a consecrated host from a Mass that he had pierced with a rusty nail and thrown into the garbage ("I hope Jesus' tetanus shots are up to date") in an effort to prove that Catholicism is bunk -- or something.

Myers' blog exemplifies atheists' frenzied fascination with Christianity and the Bible. Atheist website after atheist website insists that Jesus either didn't exist or "was a jerk" (in the words of one blogger) because he didn't eliminate smallpox or world poverty. At the American Atheists website, a writer complains that God "set up" Adam and Eve, knowing in advance that they would eat the forbidden fruit. A blogger on A Is for Atheist has been going through the Bible chapter by chapter and verse by verse in order to prove its "insanity" (he or she had gotten up to the Book of Joshua when I last looked).

Another topic that atheists beat like the hammer on the anvil in the old Anacin commercials is Darwinism versus creationism. Maybe Darwin-o-mania stems from the fact that this year marks the bicentennial of Charles Darwin's birth in 1809, but haven't atheists heard that many religious people (including the late Pope John Paul II) don't have a problem with evolution but, rather, regard it as God's way of letting his living creation unfold? Furthermore, even if human nature as we know it is a matter of lucky adaptations, how exactly does that disprove the existence of God?

And then there's the question of why atheists are so intent on trying to prove that God not only doesn't exist but is evil to boot. Dawkins, writing in "The God Delusion," accuses the deity of being a "petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak" as well as a "misogynistic, homophobic, racist ... bully." If there is no God -- and you'd be way beyond stupid to think differently -- why does it matter whether he's good or evil?

The problem with atheists -- and what makes them such excruciating snoozes -- is that few of them are interested in making serious metaphysical or epistemological arguments against God's existence, or in taking on the serious arguments that theologians have made attempting to reconcile, say, God's omniscience with free will or God's goodness with human suffering. Atheists seem to assume that the whole idea of God is a ridiculous absurdity, the "flying spaghetti monster" of atheists' typically lame jokes. They think that lobbing a few Gaza-style rockets accusing God of failing to create a world more to their liking ("If there's a God, why aren't I rich?" "If there's a God, why didn't he give me two heads so I could sleep with one head while I get some work done with the other?") will suffice to knock down the entire edifice of belief.

What primarily seems to motivate atheists isn't rationalism but anger -- anger that the world isn't perfect, that someone forced them to go to church as children, that the Bible contains apparent contradictions, that human beings can be hypocrites and commit crimes in the name of faith. The vitriol is extraordinary. Hitchens thinks that "religion spoils everything." Dawkins contends that raising one's offspring in one's religion constitutes child abuse. Harris argues that it "may be ethical to kill people" on the basis of their beliefs. The perennial atheist litigant Michael Newdow sued (unsuccessfully) to bar President Obama from uttering the words "so help me God" when he took his oath of office.

What atheists don't seem to realize is that even for believers, faith is never easy in this world of injustice, pain and delusion. Even for believers, God exists just beyond the scrim of the senses. So, atheists, how about losing the tired sarcasm and boring self-pity and engaging believers seriously?

Willravel

Charlotte Allen should try being an atheist for a week.

filtherton

I thought that we were all atheists, you know, some of us just believe in one less god than others.

Willravel

That's a good argument in some circumstances, but there are different consequences for not believing in Ba'al and the Judeo-Christian god in our society. I'm not convinced that she quite understands those consequences. If she were living in a society where the majority worshipped Ba'al, I suspect her experience would differ from her experience believing in the same thing as the majority. Then again, it's possible that in such a society she may have chosen to believe in Ba'al.

Lindy

I think that a case could be made for atheism itself being a religion. There are certainly plenty of proselytizing evangelistic atheists in the world.

Lindy

Willravel

Some atheists are very devoted to their particular philosophy, but more often than not they aren't acting on the kind of faith you might see in a religious person. They're acting on a faith in science and logic, observable and demonstrative evidence being used to establish the best truth available. With any new evidence, the truth changes and is more correct than the previous. It's about new information being factored in as soon as it can be verified.

If your belief in god is fed by the Bible, for example, there's not a lot of new information you're going to get after reading the books cover to cover a few times. Sure, you can discover new interpretations and perspectives on scripture, but it's not so much new as it is simply the same information from a different angle.

Neither of these points are necessarily bad or good, neither are intrinsically harmful or beneficial, though. That took me a while to figure out as I was going through my more militant atheist phase.

Lindy

I thought of this thread yesterday when I was looking for a book on Amazon.com, and the category was "nonfiction." Identifying it by what it wasn't.

Lindy

Baraka_Guru

Ha, good one. I'll suggest, however, that "non-fiction" isn't a proper category. It's more of a classification. Proper categories include: religion, philosophy, self-help, business, etc.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Skitto

So, after "I think therefore I am" is "I am God"?

What's after that?
Will there be a revolution effort or apathy? I figure we've lost too many Gods already... ^L^

__________________
Yeah, well, you're just that awesome, I guess. It's not like I guessed so anyways.

shakran

Turn it on it's ear, and you can see how this concept is kind of silly. True, "atheist" indicates "does not believe in a supernatural deity." But if the question is whether or not you believe in a supernatural deity, or what religion you are, the easiest answer, and one that everyone understands, is "I am an atheist."

Just as we would not call a Christian a "Flying Spaghetti Monster Rejectionist," because such an answer is needlessly long as well as imparting less information than we want, I would not call an atheist a "pearlist," because I would then have to sit there explaining what a pearlist is, all to reach the inevitable followup question "so. . .you're saying he doesn't believe in a god?" to which the answer is "yes," at which point I may as well have said that in the first place.

Additionally, atheism IS a belief, not a lack of belief. The atheist /believes/ that there is no god. He has no proof, any more than the theist has proof of whatever god he happens to believe in, because you can't prove a conceptual negative. The closest classification we have for someone that has no belief would be strong-agnostic, which is someone who only believes that he does not know whether or not there is a god, and who believes that there is no way for mankind to find out.

What it all boils down to is the same problem inherent with political correctness. In attempting to "clarify" language so that no one can possibly get offended, political correctness left us with saying things like "he or she," "sanitation engineer," "differently-abled" (euphemism for "disabled," and a lie. If someone can't walk, they are not "differently" abled, they are "dis" abled),

In short, we have a bunch of people running around trying to de-clarify language in the name of, in the case of political correctness, the unreachable and foolish goal of not ever offending anyone, and in the case of this. . .Pearlist. . Well, I really don't know what his goal is. An atheist and whatever he says he is this week are two different things. An atheist is someone who does not believe in a god. That's it. No more.

His Pearlist invention requires not only the apparent lack of belief in a god (though there is room for debate there), but also the belief in and understanding of science and the scientific method. So even though Pearlism is apparently built upon atheism, it is quite different from atheism, just as Christianity is different from Judaism even though the former is built upon the latter.

Lindy

Well said, shakran.

Lindy

Zyr

I don't agree. You can come to a conclusion with enough evidence, even if none of it is conclusive. All scientific theories are based on this, that every time it has been tested, it has come up true. While it would be ideal if more things worked on deductive reasoning (If A is true, then B is true. A is true. Therefore B is true), science is based on inductive reasoning (Every time I have seen a swan, it was white. Therefore, I conclude, all swans are white). Scientific theories are "true" on the basis that every time they tested it, it made a correct prediction, and that therefore, it is reasonable to use it to make predictions you might rely on.

There is always more tests to do (There are black swans in New Zealand). To say "There is no God", at least when I say it, is to say "Every single time my hypothesis 'There is no God' has made a prediction on the outcome of something, it has been correct". As soon as something is presented to me, that is inconsistent with that theory, the theory needs to be changed.

I don't "believe" there is no God, I "know" there is no God, with the same certainty I "know" the sun will rise tomorrow.

And there will be those who say "then you're not an atheist, you're agnostic". But really, labels are really rather personal things. You apply labels to others, to organise things in you mind. If I explain what I think, and you label me an agnostic, and I label myself an atheist, it doesn't matter, as long as you're consistent, you'll conclude the correct things about me, it's only when trying to express your label to others that confusion sets in.

As for pearlist... well the same thing applies. I'd never heard the term before now, so it made no sense. Atheist, on the other hand, leads me to a series of conclusions that are generally right about the person who is labelled as such, even if the label itself doesn't make sense.

__________________
"Oh, irony! Oh, no, no, we don't get that here. See, uh, people ski topless here while smoking dope, so irony's not really a high priority. We haven't had any irony here since about, uh, '83 when I was the only practitioner of it, and I stopped because I was tired of being stared at."

Omnia mutantu, nos et mutamur in illis.
All things change, and we change with them.
- Neil Gaiman, Marvel 1602

shakran

You're using some twists of logic to make it sound as though "know" and "believe" are the same thing. You suggest "knowing" there is no God in the same sense that you "know" an event which has occurred, and been observed to occur, steadily for millenia.

You have ample evidence that the sun will rise tomorrow. You have no evidence that there is, or is not, a god. Atheism requires a belief-without-facts, just as religion does. You can make logical conclusions based upon what you think you know about the way the universe works, and you're probably right.

It is this statement that I think is incorrect. How do you scientifically test a hypothesis that something does not exist? It's not possible, as you pointed out earlier. You can prove that something does not exist in a certain location - "I assembled a team to do a blanket search of all of Central Park and found no green swans, therefore a green swan does not exist in Central Park," and you can even theoretically do it with much effort and a whole lot of people for the entire planet. But you can't prove that there isn't a green swan swimming in a methane pool on some distant planet in Alpha Centauri.

Additionally, your proposal - that we inductively reason there is no God because our hypothesis is proven correct, assumes the hypothesis makes sense in the first place. The hypothesis must, if we follow most religions, read something like "It is absolutely impossible that there is an invisible, undetectable, all powerful being who today leaves no evidence of his existence, and who's only recorded interaction with mankind happened over 2,000 years ago when recordkeeping was suspect at best."

The very nature of such a hypothesis makes it completely impossible to test scientifically. If something is undetectable, then claiming it doesn't exist simply because you can't detect it is bad science.

At any rate, at the end of the day there is alot more evidence pointing to the certainty of the sun rising than there is pointing to the certainty of the lack of a supernatural omnipotent invisible being.

tisonlyi

"Nonfiction"

You were looking for a book on atheism?

*sniggers*

My 'atheism' is simply that there's no description of the known universe and my place in it that hasn't been best described by the observable. Empiricism. 'Best' meaning the most accurate in action, most in accordance with how things appear, most beautiful in aesthetic and most satisfying in totality.

That's not what I 'believe', because there's no jump from what I can verify.

Atheism is what I 'accept'.

(Technically agnosticism, but in practise i live without a deity. Atheist.)

PEARList? more like LIORLOPEan Limited Induction Of Reasoned Logic Over Physical Evidence.

Not so snappy.

__________________
"I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." - Winston Churchill, 1937 --{ORLY?}--

Zyr

I don't see any problem with a theory being a negative, nor proving it. That is to say, I see the same problem with proving it as with anything else.

If !A (not A) is true, then A is false. Any negative statement can be expressed as a positive, if a convoluted one (A is false, that is to say, every single possible set of variable could be true, except those sets in which A is true).

You did hit the nail on the head though, I was in a round about way saying that knowing and believing are the same thing. I'm of the school of thought (and it's been so long, I've forgotten what it's called) that you can't ever know anything absolutely (except that I exist, as the bomb rightly points out). As such, using the word "know" means "I really really really think this is correct", that on a scale of certainty, it has passed a threshold.

This illustrates my point nicely, however. We have our own understanding of what words mean. If I say I know something, and explain what I mean, you might think to yourself "ok, so he actually means he 'believes' that". If I say I'm an atheist, and explain what I mean by that, you might label me an Agnostic in your mind.

The point of language is to communicate efficiently. If I tell someone I'm an Atheist who knows there is no God, I think they'll jump to the conclusion about me, that is closer to the truth, than what they would if I said something else.

Think about what you thought of the first person to call themselves a Pearlist. What conclusion did you jump to? Probably not the right one, and they probably had to explain themselves. That's not communicating efficiently.

__________________
"Oh, irony! Oh, no, no, we don't get that here. See, uh, people ski topless here while smoking dope, so irony's not really a high priority. We haven't had any irony here since about, uh, '83 when I was the only practitioner of it, and I stopped because I was tired of being stared at."

Omnia mutantu, nos et mutamur in illis.
All things change, and we change with them.
- Neil Gaiman, Marvel 1602

Ourcrazymodern?

jESUS LOVES ME.

THE LAST TIME i WAS AT MY LOCAL CONVENIENCE STORE, i HEARD THIS NO LESS THAN EIGHT TIMES.

(Hell, I ain't gonna say that where God can't hear it!)

__________________
BE JUST AND FEAR NOT

Gebbinn

I consider myself an agnostic christian. I believe there is a god, but I dont believe in religion.

That being said, I have a problem with those atheists who trump themselves up as some intellectual superior simply because they have come to the rationale that because they cannot prove the existence of something, it does not exist. These types then go one step further and look down their noses with smug harrumphs at anyone who would dare to have an opposing viewpoint. To assume that I, or anyone who chooses to believe in that which cannot be proven is intellectually inferior is by its very nature showing these types to be the least tolerant of all. "The loudest voices against intolerance are themselves the most intolerant." (Andrew Wilkow)

As a christian, I accept all people, all races, colors, creeds and religions for who they are, and what they believe. Though I may, and often will, try to persuade you to my way of thinking, I will accept your rejection of my beliefs, and congratulate you for having faith of your own. Whether your faith is in a different religion, a different deity, or faith in the lack of any deity, it is still your faith.

Saying Atheism is a religion is inaccurate, to say that it is a faith seems to me to be the more correct way of saying it. After all, you cannot prove to me, or to anyone else, that God does not in fact exist, therefore your belief is based in faith, rather than fact. As a faith, you are welcome to your belief, and I support you wholeheartedly in that belief. I will defend your right to that belief, and I will defend your right to persuade others to your way of thinking as well. At the same time, I expect... no I demand that you grant me the exact same privileges.


\diatribe

__________________
There are 10 types of people in this world... Those who understand Binary and those who dont.
I aim to please.. to bad for you I am a horrible shot.
Every time you open your mouth, stupid comes out.

Willravel

If I may, that means you're a theist, not agnostic. If you were agnostic, you would probably post something more like, "I don't know if God exists or not, but I don't believe in religion." Not to nitpick or anything, just for the sake of clarification.
There are some very ego-driven atheists out there (many of whom are new to atheism) that might believe themselves to be intellectually superior to all theists and agnostics, but as someone involved in the community for many years I can tell you with confidence that most of us only look down our noses at the fundamentalists, the people that act or speak very foolishly or with hatred using their religion as an excuse.

If any atheist simply looks down his or her nose at you for believing in god, send them my way.
I'm glad you're so open minded, but many religious people aren't this way. Just as I'm willing to admit that some of my fellow atheists can be militant (even I was militant once upon a time), you should bear in mind that many of your religious brothers and sisters bring a lot of hatred and bias to the table, especially toward atheists. Granted, it's rare to burn atheists at the stake nowadays, but being an atheist is still considered to be extremely taboo most places.

Gebbinn

Technically correct, but as has been pointed out in different circumstances in this very post, you say tomatoe, I say tomawwto.


Excellent point, and one I meant to include, but as I wrote I lost it in the moment. Absolutely there are religious people who are intolerant of anyone who doesn't believe their beliefs, and I would even go so far as to say that the number of intolerant religious types vastly outweighs the intolerant atheist types. I would like to take all of the above out behind the proverbial barn and teach them a thing or two about tolerance.

__________________
There are 10 types of people in this world... Those who understand Binary and those who dont.
I aim to please.. to bad for you I am a horrible shot.
Every time you open your mouth, stupid comes out.

Willravel

Amen to that!

bwfeelgood

Atheist,religious...labels that can be very misleading

I used to consider myself a atheist.A person who questions any god is a good thing.Questions demand answers,so people open their minds,technology speeds up and the next step should be evolution,the improvement of life.
But we make so many fucking bombs.


Sad but true.