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Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
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I am an atheist because I don't have any reason to believe in a god.
I don't believe in fairytales, easter bunnies, santa clause, the tooth fairy either.
To just say that there could be a god is not enough. I could say that there could be a magic dragon as well.
Why should I give any weight to a god theory any consideration to a possibility to there being a god, just because people believe in a myth? Do people believe in the ancient Greek gods? No, we know that they are myths. Take the myth of Cyclops. The ancient Greeks found the skull of a mammoth. They didn't know what it was. They could easily see it was bone from a long-dead living being. They needed an explanation so they made up the story of Cyclops. For centuries Greeks believed there was a 1 eyed giant that lived. They made up all manner of stories surrounding this myth. If they had only dug a little deeper they would have found the entire skeleton.
I don't give weight to myths. I need REAL evidence, not hearsay 3rd hand testimony, arbitrary letters written centuries after the fact based on word of mouth stories.
The fact is that for over 2000 years christians have been apologizing for old stories that originated out of ignorance and word of mouth camp stories. They have continually altered these stories to fit a political narrative. They have NEVER provided any concrete evidence of a god or a connection of that god with any real event. Finally, in the 3rd century, they compiled a political outline that they call the new testament. Over the years they have added edited and modified this collection of allegorical stories. They haven't corroborated any of those stories by independent means.
So I am an atheist, NOT an agnostic!
How are you defining atheists and agnostics?
Atheism and agnosticism are not mutually exclusive.
If they are not mutually exclusive then they can overlap, as Sapporo suggested. If such is the case, is the overlap optional or mandatory? Can you be atheist without being gnostic or agnostic, short of just refusing to answer?
Of course they can overlap, whoever suggested otherwise?
"If such is the case, is the overlap optional or mandatory?"
I don't understand what you mean sorry? Atheism is the lack of belief in a deity or deities, agnosticism is a position about whether something can be known or not about a deity. Agnosticism isn't a statement of doubt, or as a lot of theists seems to think a claim that the existence of a deity is a 50/50 premise.
"Can you be atheist without being gnostic or agnostic, short of just refusing to answer?
Whether anyone is agnostic or not on a claim about a deity would depend on how that deity is defined. One can disbelieve a claim independently of whether anything can be known about the thing being claimed. Again if someone claimed there as an invisible unicorn in front of you that was undetectable in any empirical way, I'd not believe the claim without evidence commensurate to the claim. I would however have to be agnostic about it until some definition was offered that allowed me to 'know' something about it's nature or existence.
If they overlap, can you be theist/atheist without being gnostinc/agnostic? Ketchup and fries can overlap, but clearly I can have one without the other. In contrast, the chart provided by Sapporo makes the overlap mandatory. If you're atheist, you're also gnostic or agnostic by default (with the exception of implicit or ignorance-based atheism).
Do you agree with the mandatory overlap or not?
Funny you would say that, my niece was sitting next to me when I was reading the thread so I asked her if it was a duck or a rabbit. She said it was neither, and that it was probably an image of graphite and paper.
FYI: use <cite> and </cite> for italics.
for italics
I didn't know that. Thanks
Is there a reference somewhere for these things?
Text formatting: I should write a more formal guide; but there is some useful information in this post, and some more in other posts in that same thread.
I guess I would be kind of both, an Atheist /Agnostic
Always willing to consider new, solid evidence though.
A/theist and / or a/gnostic....about which god?
All of them, otherwise you'd be theist.
So, you think all gods exist?
No, I think only one exists, that's why I'm theist.
Wikitionary does give an 'uncommon' definition of atheist:
1. A person who does not believe in deities.
[1a] (narrowly) A person who believes that no deities exist (especially, one who has no other religious belief).
[1b] (broadly) A person who rejects belief that any deities exist (whether or not that person believes that deities do not exist).
[1c] (loosely) A person who has no belief in any deities, such as a person who has no concept of deities.
2. (uncommon) A person who does not believe in a particular deity (or any deity in a particular pantheon), notwithstanding that they may believe in another deity
John 6IX Breezy,
Why do you believe in Yahweh, the ethnocentric God of the Hebrews and the God of the armies, when you are not a Hebrew and you are not in an army?
Well then you're not just a theist, you're also a monotheist. You see how that works, as this doesn't stop you being a theist. Just as an atheist remains an atheist even if they are an agnostic.
Atheist or Agnostic
The Japanese have a legend about a hero, Momo-Taro (Peach Man), who was supposedly found as a baby in the middle of a large peach. I've eaten a few peaches in my life, but never once have I found a baby in one. I haven't seen all the peaches in the world, so I can't know for sure, but based on experience and commonsense, I've adopted an atheistic stance on babies in peaches.
I have the same view on babies in virgins.
But I think there are three questions to answer.
1. What is a god?
2. Is there a god?
3. If there is a god, so what?
The answer to one is an entity that can do magic. As Arthur C. Clarke said, :Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I can accept that there may be entities in the universe with abilities that we can't even imagine. That doesn't make them gods. Look at Q, for example.
Is there a god? For millennia priests have been making up excuses for why god doesn't make itself obvious to us. God is always "in light inaccessible hid from our eyes" or "working in mysterious ways." How convenient for the priests. After several millennia of no-shows, I think we can conclude on the basis of logic and probabilities that Elvis was never in the building.
If there is a god, so what? Assuming that there is an omnipotent, omniscient being in control of the universe, what does it want from me? Does he want to sing and pray, fire up a barbecue, kill some infidels? Why would it even care? There's no evidence anywhere that this being has ever changed a single atom in this world.
And that's why I'm an atheist.
Overall I think this is fine.
Although I don't think your first question/answer makes sense. You said a god is an entity that can do magic, then defined magic as an advanced technology, but concluded that advanced technology doesn't make you a god. So then your answer is wrong, god isn't an entity that can do magic.
@John 61X Breezy: "defined magic as an advanced technology"
No. The quote I used said that magic was indistinguishable from advanced technology. So my smartphone would have seemed like magic to my grandfather, but obviously it isn't magic, and I'm not a god when I use it.
Gotcha, now just for clarification. When you said I haven't seen all the peaches in the world, so I can't know for sure, but based on experience and commonsense, I've adopted an atheistic stance on babies in peaches, what did you mean by an atheistic stance?
@John 61X Breezy: "an atheistic stance?"
I am 100% certain that are no peaches or virgins with babies in them.
(I wouldn't regard a woman who'd undergone in vitro fertilization and implantation of a fetus as a virgin.)
So what are your thoughts on the atheistic stance signifying a lack of belief in peaches with babies in them?
@John 61X Breezy: "lack of belief"
Same thing, isn't it?
Doesn't sound like it. A child can lack any political beliefs, namely because they've never heard of politics. But an adult which believes there's no such thing as politics, and no babies inside peaches, can't really claim to lack a belief.
Then through a combination of logic and experience, I have reached a position of 100% certainty that there are no babies in peaches or virgins.
That's fine. I'm just wondering what you think of atheists that say they lack belief but nothing further.
I understand what they mean. Since belief seems to be default position, it's a difficult concept to express without using a negative. The word "atheist" itself is a negative. And when you use a negative, you're allowing the other side to define you.
Perhaps they should say they are free of belief.
Free of belief does sound better, but that tends to be associated with agnosticism does it not? When a regular person says they're agnostic, you get the notion that they don't believe anything, but they don't necessarily reject anything either. They're the Switzerland of belief.
@John 61X Breezy: "but they don't necessarily reject anything either."
Since gods exist solely on the strength of people's belief, I think having no belief is equivalent to saying that there are no gods. I'm not neutral on that, so I'm not Switzerland. I hate fondue, yodeling, and secret bank accounts for dictators.
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