Fellow atheists, come say hello! (theists welcome too!

Howdy all!

I'm fairly new around here, and I'm just wondering which active users are fellow atheists. You might be thinking, what is an atheist? In the most general sense, it's someone who rejects belief in deities (gods), but doesn't necessarily claim that they definitely don't exist. Confused? Here's an excellent video that explains it!

To make this thread more interesting, I'm happy for theists to come in, say hello, and ask questions. But please, no trolling, no aggressiveness, and no debates from anyone - these will be reported. Think of this thread as a friendly place to question and understand more about the atheist position, and vice versa!

Posting of especially noteworthy links to objective logic/reason resources, particularly interesting or fun ones, is also encouraged.

Glitch said:

In the most general sense, it's someone who rejects belief in deities (gods), but doesn't necessarily claim that they definitely don't exist.

Click to expand...

Interesting. I always thought these were the agnostics. Learned something today already.

Now I need to learn what agnosticism is ...

nuclearblast said:

Now I need to learn what agnosticism is ...

Click to expand...

The video I linked explains it.

Glitch said:

The video I linked explains it.

Click to expand...

OK ... I'll stop my Tomorrowland video, and watch it now.

EDIT: Well, I stopped where the "false beliefs" and "flawed black and white thinking" part began.

Have a nice day Sir.

nuclearblast said:

OK ... I'll stop my Tomorrowland video, and watch it now.

EDIT: Well, I stopped where the "false beliefs" and "flawed black and white thinking" part began.

Have a nice day Sir.

Click to expand...

The agnosticism bit is literally the sentence after that one.

I would love to see this thread evolve into a free and healthy discourse in comparative theological/belief systems. One of my passions. Subscribed.

Deleted

Please, no walls of text. Link to the page you copied+pasted from instead and add your own opinion/views to make it relevant to the thread. Otherwise what's the point?

Edit: Now removed. Thanks!

I would like to respectfully submit a video, which IMO explains in a more succinct way what Agnosticism is, and according to this video, I was right. An Agnostic does not believe or disbelieve in deities. While an Atheist and a Theist, disbelieve and believe, respectively.

nuclearblast said:

I would like to respectfully submit a video, which IMO explains in a more succinct way what Agnosticism is, and according to this video, I was right. An Agnostic does not believe or disbelieve in deities. While an Atheist and a Theist, disbelieve and believe, respectively.

Click to expand...

It can be hard to nail down a definition that everyone is happy with, so for the purpose of this thread, I'm taking the definition posed in the video I linked and Wikipedia (where I'm then known as a 'soft explicit atheist'). The semantics of atheism is something that would require another thread of content in of itself, which I don't think is particularly useful here.

I am an agnostic, main reason being there are many religions & they are mutually exclusive - all saying different things.
The religion "chosen" 9 times out of 10 seems to be based upon parochial factors such as family, society & geography.
On balance is religion a good or bad thing for humanity... are we better off with or without it? I am unsure....

zygalski said:

I am an agnostic, main reason being there are many religions & they are mutually exclusive - all saying different things.

Click to expand...

I am not sure if I agree with this. IMO, what changes things is the way they are interpreted by PEOPLE. At least AFAIK, all religions promote the same values, loving one another, etc ... All, without exception. The problem starts when some people start to twist things ( please note I'm not talking about you ).

I said in the other thread, I have never read the Bible, except for the Revelation book, but I have read huge amounts of info about religion, and to me they all seem very similar in their essence. The problem is that we aren't nearly intelligent enough to fully understand it.

Just mis dos centavos.

zygalski said:

I am an agnostic, main reason being there are many religions & they are mutually exclusive - all saying different things.
The religion "chosen" 9 times out of 10 seems to be based upon parochial factors such as family, society & geography.
On balance is religion a good or bad thing for humanity... are we better off with or without it? I am unsure....

Click to expand...

I think Matt Dillahunty has the best view on this.

"I want to believe as many true things, and as few false things, as possible."

Religion, with or without a god, limits what you're willing to consider. I personally think that that's detrimental to an open mind, but I can't claim to know for sure that the world would be a better place without it. Without myth and superstition in general? I'm willing to bet that it'd be at least a bit better.

Religion does some good though. For some people it provides a moral framework. It also provides comfort to many in times of need. Whether or not this comfort is based upon a false premise or not is largely irrelevant if someone feels they benefit from it.

nuclearblast said:

I am not sure if I agree with this. IMO, what changes things is the way they are interpreted by PEOPLE. At least AFAIK, all religions promote the same values, loving one another, etc ... All, without exception. The problem starts when some people start to twist things ( please note I'm not talking about you ).

I said in the other thread, I have never read the Bible, except for the Revelation book, but I have read huge amounts of info about religion, and to me they all seem very similar in their essence. The problem is that we aren't nearly intelligent enough to fully understand it.

Just mis dos centavos.

Click to expand...

They promote the ethics of the time. Some ethics are easy to derive, and that's why we still see good in religious texts, and some take a while. That's why the Bible explicitly promotes slavery - it was simply the norm back then. We've been able to rationalise it away since then.

zygalski said:

Religion does some good though. For some people it provides a moral framework. It also provides comfort to many in times of need. Whether or not this comfort is based upon a false premise or not is largely irrelevant if someone feels they benefit from it.

Click to expand...

But in the same breath, there are those who dismiss the 'bad bits' of the bible because it's 'no longer relevant'. That relevancy is determined by a moral framework outside of the bible.

Glitch said:

It can be hard to nail down a definition that everyone is happy with, so for the purpose of this thread, I'm taking the definition posed in the video I linked and Wikipedia (where I'm then known as a 'soft explicit atheist'). The semantics of atheism is something that would require another thread of content in of itself, which I don't think is particularly useful here.

Click to expand...

I think the semantic debate is pretty useful. If we don't all agree on what the key words mean, how can we have a discussion? That said, it looks like there is a fairly wide consensus that an atheist is "a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods." I love it: atheists have a big tent! Anyway, I guess we just have to accept that there are a wide variety of atheists (just as there is a wide variety of believers).
Given that we have the term "pantheist," I have long thought that we need to have another term: "panatheist," which matches (in my mind) what OP is describing.
Sadly, it has not caught on and I appear to be the only person who uses this made-up word.
Update: even worse, after a Google search, I have discovered that it has caught on, but no one uses it they way I want them to.

I give up ...

DrAwkward said:

I think the semantic debate is pretty useful. If we don't all agree on what the key words mean, how can we have a discussion?

Click to expand...

Which is why I locked down the definition myself. Now everyone is clear about what it means, even if they don't necessarily agree. In practise, the vast majority of atheists go by the definition I stated.

Glitch said:

They promote the ethics of the time. Some ethics are easy to derive, and that's why we still see good in religious texts, and some take a while. That's why the Bible explicitly promotes slavery - it was simply the norm back then. We've been able to rationalise it away since then.

Click to expand...

Classic example of distorting things ... How exactly does the Bible promote slavery? AFAIK what happened was that His own people were enslaved in Egypt, and the Bible says:


[The LORD] said to Abram, "You must know that your offspring will be strangers in a land that is not theirs; [the inhabitants of that land] will enslave them and oppress them for 400 years." (Gen 15:13)

But, as I said, I have never read the Bible, btw ... have you? If I'm missing something let me know.

nuclearblast said:

Classic example of distorting things ... How exactly does the Bible promote slavery? AFAIK what happened was that His own people were enslaved in Egypt, and the Bible says:


[The LORD] said to Abram, "You must know that your offspring will be strangers in a land that is not theirs; [the inhabitants of that land] will enslave them and oppress them for 400 years." (Gen 15:13)

But, as I said, I have never read the Bible, btw ... have you? If I'm missing something let me know.

Click to expand...

I have, I was brought up as a Christian. Perhaps 'promote' is too strong a word, but it definitely had little issue with it in practise. There are far more references to slaves (known as 'servants' in the King James version) in both old and new testaments. Here's one collection, I can't remember where I put my copy of the bible to double check it right now.