Hello, my name is Tyler and I am planning on moving to Puerto Maldonado, Peru to become an "Atheist Missionary"
There is a home down there for children that were taken from bad situations and stuff like that, and i want to go help out. Right now it is being run by my aunt, uncle and their kids (Hardcore Religious) and the main reason i want to do this is to help others and for the experiences i will have, but i think it will be a great opportunity for people to realize that being an atheist doesn't make you a bad person and going to church every Sunday doesn't make you a good person.
I'm planning on making a Facebook page and a twitter account to keep people updated as well as post atheist related content and
I'm wondering if fellow atheists from this forum would be interested in following me/ supporting me?
If people would just reply Yes or No so i can get some numbers and see if it makes sense to make the accounts.
I'm not sure if this is considered promoting because i am not selling anything but if this isn't allowed i will delete it.
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I think the atheists are a bit over-wrought with theists, and looking to get physical, when doing nothing at all is probably best.
Personally, I do not see the return on an activist approach. Atheism will spread on its own (naturally) and ultimately supplant all god-fearing belief systems. Time will serve it well. In the meantime...
What does the atheist want? It should not matter to him that the world subscribes to any kind of god-fearing belief system so why be bothered by it? The atheist should not be giving any thought at all to converting the world of believers into believers of nothing, if nothing is the goal. We already have that. We believe in nothing and dissuading people of their belief systems is a form of something we simply don't care about one way or another. True atheists don't.
Nothing - We do not believe humanity has a purpose for existence insofar as we do not believe our existence was purposely rendered. We only believe that we are the product of a cosmic chemical crapshoot. We are happenstance skidmarks in the shorts of some galactic britches; anything but the work of a god. We are not accepting of the quick here-and-now god answer. We are willing to wait for the facts to emerge and comfortable knowing we may never know. We know we are finite and, though we may want to live forever, we know mortality is our fate with the reward of nothing at the end. We are comfortable with nothing.
If we are comfortable with nothing, then why do we want something when that something is the absence of a god? We already have that form of nothing. The answer is we want everyone else to subscribe to it as well. That smacks of religious zealotry. Misery loves company. That's all. We see people who are happy with their belief systems. That can and does mess with out sensibilities of the cosmology we've come to accept. That's the rub.
I do not want to go around telling people who need to know their lives have purpose that they don't. There is no comfort for me in that kind of activist persuasion. Fundamentally, I see it as flawed and perhaps an act of terrorism greater than any god-fearing fundamentalist can wreak upon his fellow god-fearing foe. To conjure up a purposeful life of spreading that kind of sorrow amongst people who are otherwise fragile without their gods is not what I would call missionary work. I would take no joy from it.
I realize belief systems and their gospel spreading desciples, for example, probably don't see the arrogance of their ways. They probably see only reward in spreading the "word". Do not use it to model some lashed-up bootlegging of atheism to a world that cannot accept a no-god premise for life. You'll probably disappear mysteriously in some far off jungle never to be heard from again.
This atheist stuff is fundamentally flawed ton a god-fearing world. Until it is recognized as a truth it will remain taboo.
You lost me at "a true atheist." There is no such thing as a "true" atheist or a fake atheist. If you believe in a god, you are a theist. If you are not a theist, you are an atheist, as true as it gets. You can be an atheist and feel the need to convert everyone else. You can be an atheist and believe in ghosts, homeopathy, voodoo, and every other type of woo that you come upon, as long as it isn't a god. You can be an atheist and your only reason be that you hate the idea of a god (I happen to think that's a stupid reason), but you're still an atheist.
To the OP, I am a humanist. I think helping people is a good thing. If you want to help people, that is a wonderful thing. If you are helping in the name of humanism and showing people, who might otherwise not know, that people can be good without God, that's great too. Just make sure you aren't putting yourself in any danger, or altering your life irreversibly if there is a chance that something might go wrong. Helping other people is important, but taking care of yourself comes first.
So to summarize - Because I'm an atheist I shouldn't help people & I'm a terrorist?
If anyone is interested in following my journey this is my twitter, it is just getting started and I'm setting everything up.
twitter.com/HelpfulAtheist_
I think it is very good of you to want to help and to actually go ahead and do it.
But I think you are perceived as a misguided person, because of the use of the word "missionary". It sends the wrong message.
It sounds like you want to go out there and trick people into some form of religion:
* "A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service"
* "a person sent by a church into an area to carry on evangelism or other activities, as educational or hospital work."
I can't come up with a better word for it either. I looked up synonyms for the word missionary, but that didn't help much:
clergy
evangelist
messenger
pastor
preacher
teacher
apostle
converter
herald
minister
missioner
promoter
propagandist
revivalist
clergyperson
proselytizer
It's a shame the word has such a religious connotation. It seems reasonable that a mission could just as easily be to help people in the name of humanism as a mission to convert religious followers.
I agree.
And in this case, when used with the word "Atheist", that is by itself consistently misunderstood, the risk of misinterpretation is way too high.