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"Which ones, if any, are you atheistic about?"
i doubt that he can answer this..lol
john 6IX are you a non believer of other gods?
tell us why you don't believe and that's the reason why we don't believe in yours.
period.
if you'll just pass this question you're a lying piece of crap.
How is that a difficult question to answer? It's self-evident that if I'm Christian, I'm not Hindu. So no, I don't believe in other gods in a very direct and straightforward way. Not in a "I lack belief" sort of way. I simply don't agree with their narrative and I agree with Christianity.
You can't be "atheistic" to a specific god, since the term is all encompassing. All you need is belief in one god and you're not an atheist. Rejection of Thor but acceptance of Zeus is not compatible with atheism.
"You can't be "atheistic" to a specific god"
i'm not disbelieving in just one god, i don't believe in all of them, tell me why your god is more powerful than others?and why should i and others believe in it?
i doubt that you can answer it.
don't give me something that came from a primitive illiterate book or i'll slap you with my flip flop
I don't really care to convince you, nor have I tried. Some I reject because they don't make sense, others I reject because I felt like rejecting them, and the rest I reject by default since two opposing religions can't both be right, and I'm already Christian.
It doesn't sound like you have a purpose to these questions. At least it's not clear and doesn't tie in with the OP.
so you don't have any choice then cause your parents raised you as a christian..and you're afraid that your parents will shun you if you'll leave your religion and go on other beliefs right?
fair enough...
carry on
Lol that's exactly right.
see..now we agreed on something, i'll give you an agree button on that, sorry but im the one responsible pressing your disagree button.
every time you comment.
sorry bruh. im just being honest
It's not called the agree button. It's called the confirmation bias button.
John 6IX Breezy,
The Bible has a lot of stories in which people were not atheists but they didn't believe in Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews and the God of the armies. They were murdered as a consequence. So why do you, an apparent non-Hebrew living in the 21st Century, believe in an ancient ethnocentric Middle Eastern Jewish religious deity? Are you afraid of being murdered like so many others because they wanted to believe in their own imaginary deities? Heck, even the Bible says that people shouldn't believe in Jewish fairy tales.
Yes, the idea of being murdered does keep me up at night.
No not doubts Breezy, I question everything including my own views. I apply the same rigorous standards to my views as I do to others. I think you are using the wrong word.
Most atheists I know are always questioning their own assumptions, That doesnt equal doubts it means we are open to new evidence. Something that religionists are not.
"I apply the same rigorous standards to my views as I do to others."
Ok, unpack that for me then. In what rigorous ways have you questioned your atheism?
LOL, here we go with Breezy's tautological inexactitudes. You do love word games.
When I claim to an atheist it is the absence of belief in a god or gods. One cannot question an absence.
Should I make claims for historical events I question my proofs. New evidence comes to light all the time, especially in archaeology and palaeontology. I spend an inordinate amount of time in research and double check so that I have the citations to hand.
Sometimes the interpretations of the events have changed because of new or extra evidence to discount the previous theory.
That is what having a questioning mind is about.
Regarding religion, specifically christianity; In my teens, I commenced a 15 year journey of discovery, spent times with people who became my friends for example, Greek Orthodox Priest, RC priest on the marriage tribunal who taught me origin of "Mary Mary quite contrary" and the savage game of croquet, I spent times in Benedictine Monasteries on retreat where I met probably the "holiest" person on this earth. I read the histories, the gospels, all of them including Thomas and the surviving fragments of Mary and Judas. I read the history of christianity in all its gore and inhumanity. I discussed anthropology and the origins of faith with Professor Evans-Pritchard. All the time I was questioning my assumptions and inhaling the opposite view to my conclusions. I travelled the globe.
All the "faithful" with only one exception are terrified of questioning their assumptions and are rigid. New evidence is a threat to their established belief..
Nowadays I question myself every day in my writing and my presence on this forum, without questioning, the basis for my conclusions regarding the non existence of a deity or deities, I am but one of the faithful followers of an "ism"
In my experience the vast majority of atheists are "seekers" and question their own conclusions with the same critical vigour they reject the blindfolded faith of others.
Religion makes powerful assertions, in order to sow doubts in the minds of the common peasants. Did I pay enough tithe to guarantee I will go to heaven? Did it hear my prays, and actually do anything? Yes, Christians have doubts, where fear and uncertainty dominate.
I don't doubt that I'm an atheist. Not even a little. Never had any woo woo beliefs to begin with.
Like someone who never used heroin... I don't even think about it.
But I speak for myself and no-one else.
Aposteriori Unum,
It's those damn vowels. Even when a word is spelled correctly it can have a completely different meaning than an almost identical word with the same letters. We don't want to get the idea that you're a monk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/heroine
Just a typo
Aposteriori Unum,
Typos are fun. When people point them out it shows that they're reading your every word very carefully.
Look at what happens when atypo is made in a simple three-letter word =
1. bat
2. bet
3. bit
4. bot
5. but
As a Christian, I'm guessing you see doubt as a binary thing, in the sense that doubting atheism naturally means wondering if Christianity might be true after all.
It isn't like that for me. Atheism is my default setting, and there's no preferred fall-back position. Christianity for me is just one of countless competing mythologies. It's also one of the least convincing and least attractive in my opinion. In the unlikely event that I become infected with religion again, I'd have to go shopping for the right one.
I may have had doubts 50 years ago. That's only human after a childhood filled with indoctrination. Those doubts have long since gone.
@ Algebe
Succinct and easy to read. Thank you for ordering my thoughts. *applause*
This is the kind of answer I'm looking for from people.
Though I'm not saying its binary in the sense that Christianity is the alternative. But it might be binary in the general theistic sense, that there might be something out there rather than nothing. Basically my question is derived from something C. S. Lewis said; "Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable."
I've never been atheist, so I don't know what things are like on that side of the fence.
"I've never been atheist, so I don't know what things are like on that side of the fence." That's why you asked the wrong question. Atheists don't doubt their absence of belief without evidence.
Doubt is born of a closed mind yet knowing there is a better idea just outside that box.
No conclusions without evidence are the meat and potatoes of an atheists daily existence. Atheists are in a permanent state of doubt over spurious claims by the religious, but not the absence of evidence.
@John 61X Breezy: "I've never been atheist, so I don't know what things are like on that side of the fence."
It's not a fence. It's a book.
Our lives are like books. As we go through childhood, our parents, teachers, preachers, etc., scribble all kinds of stuff on the first few pages of our books. As we become adults and start to write our own pages, we tend to refer back to those early pages for guidance. As an atheist, I made a conscious decision to erase all the stuff about religion from my book, and then I looked around at various religions with the mind of adult. I found nothing worth writing down.
"I made a conscious decision to erase all the stuff about religion from my book"
Right, well I guess to go with that analogy. I actually used to keep a diary when I was younger. Then a few years after I stopped, I was embarrassed and threw it away. Now that I'm older I regret having done that.
As I see it, we have two options. Either we take a laid back approach, in which we make no decisions and form no opinions, and therefore never have any doubts. Or we do make a decision, we do form opinions, and then have to wonder if they're right. In your case, if erasing those pages was a decision, then it comes with some degree of doubt. It doesn't have to be crippling doubt, but just a pause in the background.
@John 61X Breezy: "just a pause in the background."
Maybe. But whenever I felt the slightest tinge of doubt, I could always count on the church to help. I'd hear a theologian droning on about some arcane point of doctrine, or see a money-grubbing televangelist milking the gullible, or read about yet another child-molesting priest.
Now all doubt has gone. It's all just too far-fetched. It'd be easier to believe in Mickey Mouse or Darth Vader.
Doubts do seem to be experience or time-sensitive; they come with an expiration date.
"I've never been atheist, so I don't know what things are like on that side of the fence."
That's easy how do you feel about Thor being fictional? Well that's how I feel about Jesus not being a deity, and all the rest of course. Once you stop trying to square the wheel a whole lot of cognitive dissonance disappears. I'll tell you something else, once you start looking at religious apologetics critically they all unravel fairly quickly.
"As I see it, we have two options. Either we take a laid back approach, in which we make no decisions and form no opinions, and therefore never have any doubts. Or we do make a decision, we do form opinions, and then have to wonder if they're right."
There is the third option Breezy; Make informed decisions, have intelligently informed opinions, backed by corroborated evidence and be open to being convinced otherwise.
Option 3 describes most of the atheists here, even crusty old Mykcob.
Option 3 is redundant and implied.
Not plain in your post.
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