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atheists

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Paul98 said:
You totally missed the point.
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Not, not really.
On the first read through, I never saw a particular point jump out at me. Regardless, I chose to respond to a specific portion.

Oh, and the you's were generic, not directly referring to you in particular.

and... that post was kind of trollish.
 
destrekor said:
Not, not really.
On the first read through, I never saw a particular point jump out at me. Regardless, I chose to respond to a specific portion.

Oh, and the you's were generic, not directly referring to you in particular.

and... that post was kind of trollish.
Click to expand...

Trolling... in a religious thread... you don't say?
 
Not to re-stir the pot, but I do partially side with MotionMan, but there are some semmantical details where I disagree with him.

Atheism is a metaphysical belief. There will likely never be a way to truly disprove the existence of God by repeatable experiment (unless we find a Babel Fish), thus any and all statements about the existence of God remain outside the realm of physical observation (the very definition of metaphysics).

That said, religion is more than metaphysics. Religion is a combination of theology, mythology (or scripture, depending on your view of it), ritual, and tradition. Believing in God alone would not make me a Catholic. However, it is possible to go to church, participate in services, be an upstanding member of the congregation, but still privately not believe in a God (many will disagree with me on this, but I will contend that there are more people like this than you think, for reasons I will discuss below).

I consider myself an agnostic, though I think most would hear me explain my views and proclaim me atheist. The burden of proof is on the one making the claim of existence. To paraphrase Bertrand Russell, I can proclaim that there is a teapot floating between the Earth and the Moon. Chances are, you won't be able to explicitly refute me, but you would have no substantial reason to believe me, either, even if I pointed to an entire book written about the features of said teapot. The question of the teapot, then, becomes somewhat irrelevant: I will never encounter said teapot, and will never be able to measure it's effect on my life, so why would I care about it?

To make things more confusing, though, I am the member of a synagogue, and go to services weekly. Although I have no reason to believe in the existence of a God, the ritual, the community, and the ability to abstract a few hours from the normal pace of life are all extremely appealing to me. (It is also fair to comment that founder of my particular branch of Judaism was himself something of an atheist.) I am certainly not alone, either. I've been told by Orthodox Jews and various varieties of Christians that they hold an essentially agnostic worldview, but continue to find the community of religion appealing. Perhaps someday groups of athiests and angostics will be able to incorporate some of those more attractive traits of religion, but more likely is that you'll find more religions where a strictly gnostic view of God is unnecessary for participation.
 
Wingznut said:
I wonder if a good study has actually ever been done, to see if the ratios of convicted criminals' religious beliefs is any different than typical society.

I would bet it's no different.
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I disagree.

I think that more intelligent people are less likely to consider themselves religious.

I think that people who commit crimes, especially the ones that get caught, are often less intelligent.

Therefore, my hypothesis is that there is a higher concentration of religion inside of prison vs outside of prison.
 
BurnItDwn said:
I disagree.

I think that more intelligent people are less likely to consider themselves religious.

I think that people who commit crimes, especially the ones that get caught, are often less intelligent.

Therefore, my hypothesis is that there is a higher concentration of religion inside of prison vs outside of prison.
Click to expand...

Ninety-nine percent of everything that goes on in most Christian churches has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual religion. Intelligent people all notice this sooner or later, and they conclude that the entire one hundred percent is bullshit, which is why atheism is connected with being intelligent in people's minds.
 
MotionMan said:
You are incorrect. I could not have been corrected since I was never wrong.
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Feel free to address my corrections to your silly claims and demonstrate that the above actually has any kind of connection to reality. They're still there heretofore unacknowledged by you.
 
MotionMan said:
It is a belief about the metaphysical.
Click to expand...
Wrong.

Atheism is simply not theism. Where theism is an inclusion of the belief "a god exists" among a given set of beliefs, atheism is therefore the exclusion of that belief. It is not the inclusion of some other belief.
 
crashtestdummy said:
Not to re-stir the pot, but I do partially side with MotionMan, but there are some semmantical details where I disagree with him.

Atheism is a metaphysical belief. There will likely never be a way to truly disprove the existence of God by repeatable experiment (unless we find a Babel Fish), thus any and all statements about the existence of God remain outside the realm of physical observation (the very definition of metaphysics).

That said, religion is more than metaphysics. Religion is a combination of theology, mythology (or scripture, depending on your view of it), ritual, and tradition. Believing in God alone would not make me a Catholic. However, it is possible to go to church, participate in services, be an upstanding member of the congregation, but still privately not believe in a God (many will disagree with me on this, but I will contend that there are more people like this than you think, for reasons I will discuss below).

I consider myself an agnostic, though I think most would hear me explain my views and proclaim me atheist. The burden of proof is on the one making the claim of existence. To paraphrase Bertrand Russell, I can proclaim that there is a teapot floating between the Earth and the Moon. Chances are, you won't be able to explicitly refute me, but you would have no substantial reason to believe me, either, even if I pointed to an entire book written about the features of said teapot. The question of the teapot, then, becomes somewhat irrelevant: I will never encounter said teapot, and will never be able to measure it's effect on my life, so why would I care about it?

To make things more confusing, though, I am the member of a synagogue, and go to services weekly. Although I have no reason to believe in the existence of a God, the ritual, the community, and the ability to abstract a few hours from the normal pace of life are all extremely appealing to me. (It is also fair to comment that founder of my particular branch of Judaism was himself something of an atheist.) I am certainly not alone, either. I've been told by Orthodox Jews and various varieties of Christians that they hold an essentially agnostic worldview, but continue to find the community of religion appealing. Perhaps someday groups of athiests and angostics will be able to incorporate some of those more attractive traits of religion, but more likely is that you'll find more religions where a strictly gnostic view of God is unnecessary for participation.
Click to expand...

Atheism is a denial of the natural inclination to exercise the metaphysical region of the brain. That is to say, the average Atheist, technically considered Agnostic-Atheist, does not practice "Atheism" in any shape whatsoever, as I have previously proved (google the data yourself if you so wish, I refuse to cite the easily-found information especially with what I have stated is accepted fact in that regard).
A Gnostic-Atheist, I would argue, likely does naturally engage the same faculties involved in those who actively hold faith. Actually, I don't honestly know if a Gnostic-Atheist (GA... :hmm: think our GA was a GA? 😎) actively engages one faculty in particular, which is a region in the brain that is heavily engaged in faith-style thought patterns, and in some ways does provide certain chemical activities that boost the physiological capabilities of your body in various ways. It's a natural hack, in some ways, and is why religion technically can be considered a drug. Without it, us in the even smaller minority -- those of us have the worst case of thought-pattern, who actively have no faith in just about anything, including any not of the supernatural sort -- are in a way crippled compared to the vast majority of mankind, who at least have even a passing trace of that natural hack going on a good bit of the time. It's especially critical in formative years when you're still developing the rest of the body, and I decided any belief was wrong at a fairly early age (somewhere around pre-teen, early-teen), and it turned into a far more stable Agnostic-Atheist mindset as I aged and was exposed to more.

In short, no, Atheism, of the variety most people fall under, is not a metaphysical belief. It is, in fact, the exact opposite: Agnostic-Atheism, the realist's "Atheist" gambit imho (explained in a moment), is the distinct lack of metaphysical belief. Only the religious-like Gnostic-Atheists -- the hardcore types that say, "the existence of any supernatural Deity is a 100% certain impossibility" -- ultimately engage any sort of metaphysical beliefs.

I say, "realist's gambit," to address the ultimate fundamental nature of the Agnostic-Atheist's core thought-pattern, one that is either so remotely present as to almost be non-existent or present with no more than a fairly low weight on the mind: the nagging Agnostic question. It's presence is, by definition, low to start with for the Agnostic-Atheist; a non-Atheist Agnostic, one that is in the middle ground (not considered -Theist or -Atheist) has it in higher percentages; it's a different sort of question/doubt/high-probability belief situation in the Agnostic-Theist camp (one that also "better" engages the beneficial properties of metaphysical beliefs).

Hmm, I guess I never even stated the point of that paragraph. 😀

Ultimately, it's there in some low percentage... "it seems highly unlikely, but is there actually any supernatural afterlife with an ultimate Judge that might just really suck if I hold onto this state of belief?"
The ones who have that question/doubt in a higher percentage are the types that have the deathbed/foxhole repent sessions. If it's barely present, it won't even cross their minds in their death throes.
 
Cerpin Taxt said:
Wrong.

Atheism is simply not theism. Where theism is an inclusion of the belief "a god exists" among a given set of beliefs, atheism is therefore the exclusion of that belief. It is not the inclusion of some other belief.
Click to expand...

Atheism is a belief that no deity exists. Accordingly, it is about the metaphysical and is related to theism (opposite side of the same coin).

MotionMan
 
Cerpin Taxt said:
No, it isn't. Atheism describes the lack of a certain belief. In no logical universe can the absence of a belief be a "metaphysical belief."
Click to expand...

Atheism is not simply a lack of belief in God, it is the assertion that God does not exist. There is a subtle, but important, difference there. You may feel (as do I) that a complete lack of evidence supporting the existence of God makes the question of God's existence entirely uninteresting and irrelevant, but that is not the same as insisting that God does not exist. Negative proclamations are logically no different than positive ones, and require the same burden of proof. To go back to Russell's teapot, it's the difference between saying "I have not interest in your teapot, as you've given me no reason to think about it" and "That teapot cannot possibly exist." The latter would require contrary proof, while the former does not.
 
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