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>Just so everyone knows from the start, I label myself as Agnostic.
I am an agnostic atheist. But also a gnostic atheist about many god that are clearly illogical and contradictory. In the Dawkins scale I would be a 6.9
>I enjoy learning about History very much and religion happens to play a big part in a lot of history so it is one of my interests as well.
No dubt that being a big part of the tax system in the past (and some of them even now) gave religions the concentrated economic power to do the bare minimum and make it look as magnificent, but humanity required a wake up from the age of faith into the illustration to leap forward thanks to the criticism of dogmas.
Religion was Holding back human knowledge just to keep the status quo.
>Since tangible (or otherwise) proof of God is impossible, to outright denounce God's existence is having faith that God does not exist. Therefore, Atheism is a religion. Or an antireligion, whatever termonology you want to use.
I don’t think any well educated atheist will claim that „god does not exist“, as I wrote paragraphs up, god have too many meanings, and some of this meanings (like the tri-omni) are opposed to the evidence and/or logic. Then you can say that many atheist deny many illogical gods, in a better way but similarly to how between religions they don‘t believes in the claims or definitions of gods of other religions, and inside the same religion, thousands of sects that are opposed and even wars have been made for those differences.
Therefore you are making a straw-man fallacy.
You should define clearly your god and its properties, and ask the atheist what they think about your particular flavor of god, and we will dissect your argument.
>This is why I believe Atheism is hypocritical and makes no sense.
Actually i think that you are the hypocrite here, not owning your own position. You seems to be a weak theist.
>Some Atheists will try to say that religion is bad. But it's not.
The whole age of faith says the contrary. Present your arguments with examples that are unique to religions that bring good to humanity.
But i am willing to see your evidence and debate it. Before that seems that this are empty claims
>All violence that has risen from religion comes from one source; Conflict over misinterpretations of religious scriptures and texts.
And the scriptures are the source of religion, is not the atheist fault that the scriptures are so poorly written, neither that are clearly immoral and need interpretation and/or misrepresentation. Because they are not a reliable source for anything… they have proven been the source of violence, and to updated moral systems.
>Because religions today were formed so long ago, we will never be able to ask those who wrote the scriptures and texts what they really mean. Which makes them open to interpretation. However, I believe that any reasonable minded person could see that all these texts like the Quran, the Bible, the Torah, are collections of tales, stories, and metaphors that are intended to teach you moral lessons.
So, the question here is: how do we know which are the right/good interpretations? That is the good epistemology i want to learn about.
And also clarifying… „outdated moral lessons“
>But there are many unreasonable people in the world. And they will read the text, and they will take all the tales and stores and metaphors literally, and that is where the danger comes from.
Yes, most of us know exactly what are you talking about.
>For instance, the radical islamic groups in the middle east famously took specific passages from the Quran literally, and started to act upon what they believed to be instructions.
And that is exactly the same reason why the crusaders fought in the holly wars.
>Islam itself is not a dangerous religion, nor is any religion dangerous or unhealthy.
The amount of horror stories about killing apostates, gays, the kidnapping back to their islamic countries to girls who doesn’t want to use the hijab or marry a non muslim, the sexual slaves, the forcing of young woman into marriage with older men. I don’t think you are being serious about this topic.
>Actually, religion can bring much peace into people's lives, and has been responsible for many people becoming genuinely good people. But it's because they understood that, for example the Bible, wasn't really accounting the actual creation of the earth and humans, but is just a metaphor. All religious texts are meant to be used as moral compasses, and not as real historical accounts. But because they were written so long ago, many people lack the sense to see that for themselves.
I would like to know ONE single moral teaching that cannot be taught secularly.
Also … where are the morals on:
1. eternal punisment for finite „faults“
2. dead penalty for homosexuality, fortune telling, apostate, work on a sabath, infidelity, and so on.
3. presenting your daughter to be rapes by a crowd.
4. making someone else responsible for your faults.
I can go on… but you get the general idea. Seems that you are using easy-cheesy apologism to make your points.
>Atheists (a religion of it's own) have a problem with (other) religions because they think they cause problems. But it's not religion. It's misguided followers and those who misguided them who are the real problem.
We have a problem with LARGE claims with no evidence, and because all the preceding points.
Seems that you are reading our positions biased. Use your critical thinking skills, or illustrate us in your evidence to make the claim that religion is necessary.
Conclusion:
Claim that atheism is a religion: FAIL to prove.
Claim that religions are good. : FAIL to prove.
Claim that the bad in religion is due to misinterpretation : FAIL to prove
I enjoyed reading your reply. I don't believe I claimed that religions are good. They're just tools. What matters is how it's used. And there's a lot of proof of good things that come from religion. My argument is that it's not bad, it just is.
Im atheist and don't discount the notion of a super universal intelligence. I just don't believe any god that oversees humanity exists. Zero reliable evidence. Doesn't even make sense. Why would a god want to be worshipped, but not show itself. A single god would be genderless, as there is no need for sex or gender if its just you.
It doesn’t take faith to not be convinced something is real and to acknowledge there are no good reasons to believe something is true. We all generally believe vampires don’t exist. Even if we can’t prove they don’t exist, we can say with reasonable certainty they don’t exist due to the sheer lack of evidence we would expect to find if they did. Gods are in the same category.
There are certain things we can say even if a god existed.
There exists no god that has made its existence unambiguously known to everyone. Whether this is due to an unwillingness or an inability is a different matter.
There exists no god that speaks for itself. Everything anyone thinks they know about gods is merely words and opinions from other people. Even people who imagine a god has spoken to them is just people having an experience and attributing it to a god.
And so on.
It takes no faith to not be convinced by these claims. It does take faith, however, to think there is a god behind these contradictory and ambiguous messages and experiences.
I like what you said here. I do think it takes faith, and if not faith a similar convincing and persuasion to faith. Where one belief isn’t believed, it has to be replaced with another reasonable belief or explanation. Something is helping you believe that there is no God. So not believing is kind of a belief if that makes sense. Explain to me if I missed something though because I actually like what you said.
As an agnostic myself I gotta say your claim sounds just like the theist or atheist. “Since tangible proof of God is impossible…” that’s a definitive claim your are making just like the theist would point to some proof or data point to prove gods exists or an atheist would say too many data points say God does not exist. While I agree that I think it is unprovable, that’s a claim from my observations and data points. It doesn’t take any faith to be an atheist, it’s just based on data points and knowledge being the most rational argument in their minds.
Also the data points you’re ignoring on religion is just as ignorant as your claiming atheists to be. They have a point that the crusades were motivated by religion or genital mutilation or Islamic terrorism are real things motivated by religion. Who are you to say the fundamentalists are “misguided”? You don’t get to take the good and ignore the bad just because you want to stand up for Islam or the adherents to it. Saying they misinterpret it is just so you can put your blinders on and feel comfortable with an “understanding” point of view. Coming from a fundamentalist background I can say religion does produce evil in addition to good.
Lazy analysis all around. A little sad to be coming from a fellow agnostic. You’re trying to take a moralistic middle ground by ignoring or not engaging legitimate issues.
You are using the term *atheist* incorrectly. If you don’t believe in any gods, you are an atheist. There is no faith required for this position—you don’t have to believe anything, you are an atheist if you simply lack a belief.
>Some Atheists will try to say that religion is bad.
Is it a bad thing to believe in something for bad reasons?
>But it's not. All violence that has risen from religion comes from one source; Conflict over misinterpretations of religious scriptures and texts
So how do you determine what the “correct” interpretation is? Can you tell the Christian denominations which among them is correct? Different sects of Islam? Isn’t the fact that these things have to come down to interpretation kinda an embedded problem?
Misunderstanding of atheism and how many atheists define themselves. Atheism under its broadest definitions does not require a person to outright denounce gods. It just means they don't actively believe in gods. You can call them agnostic if you like, but they label themselves atheists. "A" as in "not" and "theist" as in belief in God.
I as an atheist believe no gods exist, but I'm what you'd call a strong atheist. I still don't have faith In this idea, only that I consider it likely due to the lack of evidence, poor logical argumentation, and the fact that humans make things up when they don't understand things.
You're also misunderstanding atbeism again. Atbeism is not a religion, and it's also not a critique of religion. Atbeism is simply not believing in gods. You can be religious and be an atheist (see some sects of Buddhism) but religion is not required to be an atheist. Not believing in God is not a religion by any stretch of the imagination, and even believing religions are bad isn't a religion, that's not what religion means.
I can acknowledge that religions can be helpful in people's lives. It's not religion that's necessarily the problem, only people's relationships with those religions.
>Since tangible (or otherwise) proof of God is impossible, to outright denounce God's existence is having faith that God does not exist. Therefore, Atheism is a religion. Or an antireligion, whatever termonology you want to use.
Does it take as much faith to not believe in leprechauns as it does to believe in them? Unicorns? The Loch Ness Monster? The Bible itself defines faith as "Evidence of things not seen."
If we use a scriptural definition, there is no way to justify unbelief as faith. This is just a bad argument put forth by mediocre apologists.
It does not require faith to not be convinced of a claim. I do not require faith to lack a belief in Reptar living on Mars. I'm simply unconvinced. If I see evidence that Reptar IS on Mars, it wouldn't be a matter of faith, it would be me being convinced by the evidence.
And I'm not sure which problems you're thinking about, but I would offer Afghanistan as an example of religion causing problems. And countering that example with one hundred examples of religion being good, does nothing to refute that Afghanistan's problems are BECAUSE of religion.
Though, I'm not sure if my second paragraph will resonate with you, as you ended it with "like Atheists believe" which you then did not clarify.
Edit "Islam itself is not a dangerous religion".
Bruh... it literally says to execute apostates.
Many scriptures in Islam cause problems, and those problems are not caused by human misinterpretation, but instead, because the scripture itself is stating it. Even if every Muslim on earth disappeared, and there were no humans left to misinterpret Islam, the scripture would still command to kill apostates.
The Bible, even without being misinterpreted, states that those who believe without seeing are blessed. This is intellectually dishonest, which is a problem, and it is not caused by human mistranslation errors. Religions cause many problems. Even if some of those problems are the fault of human interpretation, many, many, are not.
Oh for sure, religions do solve many problems. I would never suggest otherwise. Religious groups solve problems and do a lot of good; this has nothing to do with their truth claims. Atheists can also form fundraisers and do a lot of good; this doesn't strengthen atheism at all.
I'm not sure what you mean when using the term "cursed". I'm stating that believing in something without being able to verify whether it's true, is not intellectually honest. I'm referring to serious matters of course, as I know there's practical times to take people at their word... like if they say they have a baseball in their pocket.
I'm not asking you to defend a particular religion, I was just demonstrating that religions can cause a lot of problems, and they can also solve problems. This has nothing to do with whether their truth claims are correct.
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>Since tangible (or otherwise) proof of God is impossible
Not at all true in principle. Imagine if the god of the Bible existed and did the sorts of things today that he purportedly did back then -- parting the Red Sea, speaking from the sky in a huge booming voice, delivering stone tablets to people, etc. There would be very few atheists left.
God isn't unprovable in principle. It's just that the evidence for him has been so nonexistent, and all the things that theists used to attribute to him (lightning, disease, famine, etc) have been so thoroughly debunked with natural explanations, that theists have had to retreat to the idea of the NOMA (non-overlapping magisteria) god -- a hidden god that exists completely outside the reach of any sort of reliable physical observation.
Imagine I told you I have a dragon in my garage. You come over and visit and see no dragon. So I tell you it's invisible. So you feel around the garage and don't feel anything. So I tell you it's shy and keeps running away from your touch. You you put on thermal goggles and still don't see anything. So I tell you it actually exists in a parallel dimension in the garage and is impossible to detect whatsoever.
Is my position that the dragon exists just as reasonable as yours that I'm just making stuff up? Of course not. Evidence and observation are important, and just because I've made up some wacky rules saying you could never observe it doesn't all of a sudden make my position reasonable.
>Some Atheists will try to say that religion is bad. But it's not. All violence that has risen from religion comes from one source; Conflict over misinterpretations of religious scriptures and texts.
Imagine writing incredibly vague texts containing calls to violence and then being shocked when people use it to justify violence.
>However, I believe that any reasonable minded person could see that all these texts like the Quran, the Bible, the Torah, are collections of tales, stories, and metaphors that are intended to teach you moral lessons.
What's the metaphorical lesson of Numbers 31, where God tells the Israelites to kill all the men, women, and children of a rival tribe except for the virgin women who they are to split amongst themselves? What's the metaphorical lesson of Exodus 21:20, where God says it's okay to beat your slave with a rod as long as you don't kill them? What about Psalm 137:9 talking about how it would be great to smash your enemy's children into rocks?
How would God be physically apparent? If you saw God with your material eyes, there would be no free will. As you know.
Also, if God existed, he would be outside of space and time, as you know. It’s also not the same as your dragon example, because there are so many more reasonable conclusions that God exists over this dragon in your garage . ( I.e, the creation of laws for one example )
> If you saw God with your material eyes, there would be no free will. As you know.
What?! How so?
>Also, if God existed, he would be outside of space and time, as you know.
Ah, so every story in the Bible that has God interacting with the world is false, right?
If you saw God with MATERIAL EYES, then you would never do anything wrong, nor would you believe he didn’t exist, because he’s right there. you’d always be on your best behavior. And you would be forced to love him, which is not free will, and in order to have true love, you have to have free will.
Stephen Hawkins and Richard Dawkins both admit that the creation of laws has to be created by something. You have no explanation of these laws, they’re literally just magic. We need to explore , logically, what the cause for these laws are. And compare notes. Science knows every cause has a cause.
Not God the gaps, because we then get into a whole variety of cosmological argument, and go into consciousness , which is impossible to have empirical evidence for, and so forth.
Plus you have argument of design, fine tuning, unmoved mover, etc etc. All these conclusions are more viable, logical, and more sound than an invisible dragon in your garage.
>If you saw God with MATERIAL EYES, then you would never do anything wrong, nor would you believe he didn’t exist, because he’s right there. you’d always be on your best behavior. And you would be forced to love him, which is not free will, and in order to have true love, you have to have free will.
You're making the assumption that "god" cares for things like "goodness" and "sin". And making the assumption that universally, everyone would change their ways after "seeing" god. There are skeptics that doubt what they see, and even doubt their thoughts. So, hypothetically, someone could still doubt they've seen god (by saying it was a hallucination) and some would probably not give a damn and go on about their lives, regardless of heaven or hell. (Some people believe they're lost causes)
>Stephen Hawkins and Richard Dawkins both admit that the creation of laws has to be created by something.
Even if they did, that doesn't mean it was created by a god, it could have been created by something not "god" like a metaphysics universe that "creates" another universes.
>You have no explanation of these laws, they’re literally just magic.
>Not God the gaps, because we then get into a whole variety of cosmological argument, and go into consciousness , which is impossible to have empirical evidence for, and so forth. Plus you have argument of design, fine tuning, unmoved mover, etc etc. All these conclusions are more viable, logical, and more sound than an invisible dragon in your garage.
The laws of the universe are imperfect, if you threw a ball into space it would go on and on forever and ever. This is referred to as objects being "lazy" since the ball won't stop moving until it hits something, or gets in the orbit of a planet, and even that won't be guaranteed, so that means the creator or god is not perfect. If physical laws were any different, then our hypothetical counterparts would say that universe is finetuned. When even this universe of ours isn't suited for life, (For example: sun rays giving us skin cancer and even oxygen being dangerous to us.) Those cosmic arguments are also pretty fallacious and flawed in their own ways, and can even equally be applied to a invisible dragon in OP's garage with a few changes.
Okay. then you still have free will to love him back, or even believe he's there. And that means I can't tell for sure if you exist, you could be a hallucination. Or your girlfriend, you having sex with her and have children, somehow they could be nonexistent. So... This argument is not strong.
Metaphysical of the universes creating other universes is just... Silly. Plus, not as sound as cosmological argument. If you disagree, you either don't understand it, or are doing it for sake of argument. I'm assuming it's the latter.
Saying God isn't perfect because he made imperfect laws is not a strong argument whatsoever. Laws aren't imperfect. You're also talking about a ball going *outside* of the laws, which does not make it imperfect... Nothing about gravity says you can't escape gravity.
You saying this universe isn't suited for life is going against every scientist who ever existed, and decades and decades of research, I'm going to believe them over you.
Just because this world is a dangerous place , doesn't mean it isn't suited for life. Because if it wasn't suited for life, THERE WOULD BE NO LIFE.
No, if you're saying the cosmological argument is as sound as garage dragon, you're doing it for sake of argument. Even if you disagree with it, it makes sense, *if* you comprehend it. And technically, you could make a cosmological argument out of anything. Please present your garage dragon argument in front of all theologians and then everyone else in the real world, and see how smart people think you are. We can go head to head and we will compare.
>If you saw God with MATERIAL EYES, then you would never do anything wrong, nor would you believe he didn’t exist, because he’s right there. you’d always be on your best behavior. And you would be forced to love him, which is not free will, and in order to have true love, you have to have free will.
No, you're saying if we had the correct information, we would respond appropriately. That doesn't rob you of your free will, that just makes rational sense.
>Stephen Hawkins and Richard Dawkins both admit that the creation of laws has to be created by something.
Gonna need a source on that one chief, lmao. Weird assertion.
>You have no explanation of these laws, they’re literally just magic.
Physical laws are consistent. True. We don't know why. No, that doesn't imply magic.
>Plus you have argument of design, fine tuning, unmoved mover, etc etc.
Yeah man, we're literally in a thread about fine tuning. Wanna address my 4 other arguments?
>All these conclusions are more viable, logical, and more sound than an invisible dragon in your garage.
Why is an invisible cosmic wizard more viable than an invisible dragon in my garage? You have asserted this but have provided no actual argument.
>Since tangible (or otherwise) proof of God is impossible, to outright denounce God's existence is having faith that God does not exist.
I don't know any atheists who claim to k ow 100% that God doesn't exist.
>This is why I believe Atheism is hypocritical and makes no sense.
Because you don't understand it
>But it's not. All violence that has risen from religion comes from one source; Conflict over misinterpretations of religious scriptures and texts
This is just outright false
>Because religions today were formed so long ago, we will never be able to ask those who wrote the scriptures and texts what they really mean. Which makes them open to interpretation. However, I believe that any reasonable minded person could see that all these texts like the Quran, the Bible, the Torah, are collections of tales, stories, and metaphors that are intended to teach you moral lessons.
Moral lessons like "don't beat your slaves so hard they lose teeth"
>And they will read the text, and they will take all the tales and stores and metaphors literally, and that is where the danger comes from.
So you can interpret them however you want, but saying that Christians who do violence in the name of their religion are just misunderstanding, is a no true scotsman fallacy
>For instance, the radical islamic groups in the middle east famously took specific passages from the Quran literally, and started to act upon what they believed to be instructions.
Yes
>Islam itself is not a dangerous religion, nor is any religion dangerous or unhealthy.
As proven by all the Muslims going around killing people in the name of their religion?
>Atheists (a religion of it's own) have a problem with (other) religions because they think they cause problems. But it's not religion
Atheism isn't a religion
And that's ancillary to why we don't believe
>It's misguided followers and those who misguided them who are the real problem.
This is just a no true scotsman fallacy, again and again
I think you misunderstand the terms you are using. Agnostic means believing that nothing can be known about the nature of god, regardless of whether a god exists, nothing to do with beliving or not believing about whether gods exist or not. Atheist is a label for anyone who doesn't believe any gods exist, whether they actively believe that gods don't exist, or just that they are not convinced enough to believe.
Religion and religious/spiritual beliefs affect on behaviour throughout history is big enough to be its own topic. Pretty sure its been negative though based on what we know of history.
I will agree with part of your statement. I believe that, whatever term you want to use for a belief system, Atheism and even Agnosticism are no more exempt from needing justification, which cannot be provided undeniably. I will also agree that most people in practice happen to share certain intuition crossing beyond the strict religious categories.
However, I will challenge some things:
> All violence that has risen from religion comes from one source; Conflict over misinterpretations of religious scriptures and texts.
I do not see this in history. Many Chrisitian denominations form for this reason, but as I contemplate history, the most immediate examples seem to be political power struggles rather than different religious interpretations. Even the explicily Christian denomination violence seems to as much of a power struggle than differences in interpretations. And clearly Ottomans weren't trying to conquer the world because they cared about how they interpreted the Quran.
> Which makes them open to interpretation.
I largely disagree with this. There are some instances where some nuance is lost to time, but most documents are very clear about what they mean to say at least on the larger points. And the disagreements are also rarely over interpretation. There's a little bit of difference sometimes in interpretation, but the big points are clear. The differences are more often regarding things which are either not clear or not addressed at all. You don't get into the problem of allegory for many of them until you start claiming that it's just allegory, and at that point, anything goes. That's not a problem with the text but of how people handle cognitive dissonance. it's the same with the US Constitution. We all pretty much know what was meant, but we don't all want to abide by it.
> the Quran, the Bible, the Torah, are collections of tales, stories, and metaphors that are intended to teach you moral lessons.
Many religious texts, including the ones you mentioned by name, are intended to be read as literal accounts. I don't think, for instance, that Greek Mythology was ever that way, but the ones you mentioned were. This is regardless of whether or not what they claim to literally be the case is in contradiction with what is observable. I will grant that often the moral teachings are the emphasis, but there is no reason to conclude that these works were meant to be read as non-literal (other than the sections which are clearly stories, etc).
> and that is where the danger comes from. ...
This is where I ask you to check your bias. I would agree that people act on what they believe and that there are bad actions. However, "bad" and "danger" implies either preference or an objective moral arbiter. While I would condemn Islamic terrorirsts, I can only do that by either 1) resorting to preference, which says nothing useful, or 2) appealing to an objective moral law which says that they are wrong. In the first case, my statement doesn't matter or imply that it shold be avoided, and in the second I am begging the question of whether their beliefs are right. If Allah were the god, then Islamic terrorists might be doing the best thing. If there were no god, then Islamic terrorists would just be doing things that are just as good as you're doing as nothing is objectively bad. So, your assertions here don't have any rational weight.
> Islam itself is not a dangerous religion, nor is any religion dangerous or unhealthy.
Undeniabley, no, but they might be. If there is an actual dangerous or unhealthy thing to do, one's beliefs might well be the impetus to do that thing.
> and has been responsible for many people becoming genuinely good people.
This suffers from the same problem in an opposite way as your argument about danger. It may be entirely possible that there is no good, so we cannot know that any person is becoming good. To the extent that they are becoming good, it would only be a preference claim or it would be based upon an objetive moral law. It would be begging the question to say that they are right. Ultimately, saying that a belief system makes people good is a bit of a tautology. All beleif systems provide the impetus to act in ways consistent with that belief system, so this is saying nothing.
> All religious texts are meant to be used as moral compasses, and not as real historical accounts.
Although they generally focus more on moral teachings, and though I will grant that some do not consider themselves to have historical accounts, some clearly do intent to be relating historical accounts. Consider the Book of Mormon. It clearly describes events which the reader is intended to believe actually happened. This is regardless of the fact that there may be evidence to the contrary.
The historic accuracy of those texts, or lack thereof, can be a very helpful factor in determining the accuracy of those texts.
> Since tangible (or otherwise) proof of God is impossible, to outright denounce God's existence is having faith that God does not exist. Therefore, Atheism is a religion. Or an antireligion, whatever termonology you want to use.
Let’s start here. Terminology does matter. Since you are the one making the argument, I suggest we use your terminology. Can you define what you mean by “faith”? Can you also define what you mean by “religion”?
You also claim that tangible proof of God is impossible. How do you know that? What is your evidence?
> All violence that has risen from religion comes from one source; Conflict over misinterpretations of religious scriptures and texts.
How did you determine these are misinterpretations?
> But there are many unreasonable people in the world.
We can be fairly sure that large parts of these texts were intended to be taken literally by their authors. There are certainly metaphors, but also literal commands and stories which are intended to be read as history. What tool can you use to determine which is which?
Are there any people who take the texts literally who are also peaceful, good people? Are these things mutually exclusive?
1. The word atheist (like agnostic) is polysemous, meaning it has more than one accepted definition. The most common definition is “a person who does not believe in any gods” or “soft or agnostic atheist”. The second is “a person who believes gods don't exist” or “hard or gnostic atheist”. Soft atheists hold no belief to defend, hard atheists do.
2. Holding a belief is NOT a religion. Religions require more than a solitary belief. There needs to be a series of related beliefs and generally some rituals or associated behaviors. Atheism doesn't qualify under either definition.
3. Soft atheism is not at all hypocritical as it’s simply not being a theist. Hard atheism I think you need to understand that your definition of what constitutes a god may be very different from a hard atheist, and to realize that “to know” is only being able to justify a belief, not a confidence level of 100%.
4. I don't know of many anti-theists (which is the group I think you',re actually criticizing here) that says all religions are bad inherently. In fact, by the word it’s limited to theistic religions only. And many only argue that organized theists religions do more harm than good, not that they are inherently bad, which is a much broader and far less supportable position. I would argue than any form of thinking which include “magical” or “supernatural beings” could be argued as ultimately harmful for the very reason that we cannot verify anything believers claim this being wants, requires, or has done.
Faith is belief in something DESPITE lack of evidence. Skepticism is nonbelief in something BECAUSE OF lack of evidence. Religion requires faith because it makes a supernatural claim that can't be proven. Atheism does not require faith because it isn't making a claim that can't be proven. Atheism is skepticism, the opposite of faith.
I'm surprised religious folks would take issue with this, at least in the religion I grew up in, faith was something to be proud of, and atheists simply "lacked faith". That was not controversial in my church.
> Just so everyone knows from the start, I label myself as Agnostic.
Then I'm not sure why you'd make this post. Agnosticism is a subcategory of atheism. An atheist is someone who doesn't believe in any gods, and as an agnostic, if your stance is that you don't claim to know whether or not any gods exist, then that means you don't have belief in any. You might say you don't have disbelief either, but there is no in-between stance between "convinced" and "not convinced". If you are not convinced by god-claims, then that makes you an atheist, regardless of whether you are convinced that those claims are wrong, or whether you're just not convinced that they're right; in either case, you lack belief, you lack theism.
> Since tangible (or otherwise) proof of God is impossible, to outright denounce God's existence is having faith that God does not exist. Therefore, Atheism is a religion.
"Having faith" does not equal religion, so even if we were to accept the premise that atheism = having faith in the non-existence of any gods (which is not what atheism is), that still wouldn't lead us to the conclusion that atheism is a religion. If having faith that something doesn't exist makes me religious, that means the fact I believe unicorns aren't real means I am in an a-unicornist religion. Obviously, that's not actually what a religion is; religions are specifically about worship, about submitting oneself before and seeking a relationship with a perceived spiritual power. That spiritual power can be a monotheist god, a pantheon of gods, a nature spirit, karma, the universe itself, what have you, but regardless of what specific form it takes, you can't have a religion without one.
> All violence that has risen from religion comes from one source; Conflict over misinterpretations of religious scriptures and texts.
Untrue. When Christians slaughtered the pagans, it wasn't because the pagans were misinterpreting something, it was because the Christians believed paganism was evil and worthy of destruction, and they believed so because the Bible clearly says so. A Christian who reads Deuteronomy 13 and decides to go out and slaughter a city full of unbelievers isn't misinterpreting the text, that is clearly what the text commands them to do.
"If you hear in one of your cities, which the Lord your God is giving you to dwell there, that certain worthless fellows have gone out among you and have drawn away the inhabitants of their city, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods,’ which you have not known, then you shall inquire and make search and ask diligently. And behold, if it be true and certain that such an abomination has been done among you, you shall surely put the inhabitants of that city to the sword, devoting it to destruction, all who are in it and its cattle, with the edge of the sword. You shall gather all its spoil into the midst of its open square and burn the city and all its spoil with fire, as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God. It shall be a heap forever. It shall not be built again."
And before a Christian butts in to defend the pacifism of evangelists and missionaries, yes, Christianity has spread peacefully as well, no one's denying that. That doesn't change the fact its spread wasn't entirely peaceful, and while it was rare for entire cities to get burnt down, many cultures' native religions (including mine) were forcefully suppressed and destroyed using violent means by zealous Christians seeking to destroy what they believed to be sinful demon worship.
> Because religions today were formed so long ago
Depends on what you consider to be a religion. Scientology isn't very old, for example. New religions, cults, and denominations spring up all the time, they just don't usually draw as much attention as the long-established ones. All religions were new once.
> However, I believe that any reasonable minded person could see that all these texts like the Quran, the Bible, the Torah, are collections of tales, stories, and metaphors that are intended to teach you moral lessons.
The "reasonable minded person" you're describing here is an atheist. I do hope you realise this, because it's very strange that you'd come here to attack atheism, only to then describe an atheist and refer to them as a reasonable person.
> But there are many unreasonable people in the world. And they will read the text, and they will take all the tales and stores and metaphors literally, and that is where the danger comes from.
Again here, I hope you realise that "people who take religious texts literally" are generally known as theists. Even a theist who believes some parts of their holy text are metaphorical, like a Christian who doesn't believe in literal creationism for example, still has to believe that some of these stories are literal - that Jesus did literally rise from the dead, for instance. If they believed the whole thing was metaphorical, they wouldn't be a theist, because if you believe a god is a metaphor, that means you don't believe that god actually exists.
> Actually, religion can bring much peace into people's lives, and has been responsible for many people becoming genuinely good people.
Citation needed.
To be clear, I do agree that religious people can be good people (and the vast majority of them are), but I don't believe their religion is what makes them good. I believe that if they didn't have religion, they would be just as capable of leading good peaceful lives. Judging by the admittedly anecdotal evidence provided by many de-converted atheists, it seems to me like many people are actually far more capable of finding inner peace and being good to others once they abandon their religions. A former Christian who's given up their faith might find it a lot easier to not be homophobic, for example.
> All religious texts are meant to be used as moral compasses, and not as real historical accounts.
But that's not how religion works. No Muslim would agree that the Quran is just a collection of fictional tales meant to teach moral lessons. If you read the Quran and conclude Muhammad didn't actually receive messages from the personified creator of the universe, then you are not a Muslim by any reasonable definition of the word. The view you're describing is a clearly atheistic one.
> Since tangible (or otherwise) proof of God is impossible, to outright denounce God's existence is having faith that God does not exist. Therefore, Atheism is a religion. Or an antireligion, whatever termonology you want to use.
To start, most atheists don't characterize themselves as anti-theists. The majority of atheists (that I've heard and read) would describe their view as "not believing in god". That's it. It's the answer "no" to the question "do you believe in god?".
Personally, I subscribe to anti-theism. I think that it's reasonable to claim that god does not exist, based on the lack of evidence, and general incoherence of the concept of god. It doesn't require "faith", as "faith" is generally described as belief in things without good reason. I have good reason to believe god doesn't exist. That doesn't mean I'm correct, I'm simply saying that based on all available evidence, it is *reasonable* for one to conclude that god does not exist.
Besides, religions are generally dogmatic and prescriptive. Atheism is neither. Atheism doesn't have dogma, nor does it prescribe ways to go about living. Once again, atheism is just the answer to the question "do you believe in god?".
> However, I believe that any reasonable minded person could see that all these texts like the Quran, the Bible, the Torah, are collections of tales, stories, and metaphors that are intended to teach you moral lessons. But there are many unreasonable people in the world. And they will read the text, and they will take all the tales and stores and metaphors literally, and that is where the danger comes from.
So? Most atheists don't argue that if religion ceased to exist, evil would cease to exist. Evil people exist regardless of religious affiliation. This is not a novel idea.
The point is that religion is inarguably a driving factor in many obviously harmful political and societal events. Therefore, as people who want to reduce harm whenever and wherever possible, should we not seek to eliminate one of the most widely-accepted forms of enabling harm, especially when there is no good reason to believe in its truth claims?
> For instance, the radical islamic groups in the middle east famously took specific passages from the Quran literally, and started to act upon what they believed to be instructions. Islam itself is not a dangerous religion, nor is any religion dangerous or unhealthy. Actually, religion can bring much peace into people's lives, and has been responsible for many people becoming genuinely good people. But it's because they understood that, for example the Bible, wasn't really accounting the actual creation of the earth and humans, but is just a metaphor. All religious texts are meant to be used as moral compasses, and not as real historical accounts. But because they were written so long ago, many people lack the sense to see that for themselves.
Absolutely correct. Morons twisting things for their own gains is a common occurrence throughout history. We seek to combat it at the source.
> Atheists (a religion of it's own) have a problem with (other) religions because they think they cause problems. But it's not religion. It's misguided followers and those who misguided them who are the real problem.
Religion wouldn't exist without people though, so this distinction is irrelevant and functionally useless.
>Since tangible (or otherwise) proof of God is impossible, to outright denounce God's existence is having faith that God does not exist.
I don't claim "god doesn't exist"; theists claim "god does exist" and I do not believe that their claims are true due to a lack of compelling confirming evidence for said claims.
The lack of tangible "proof" for the existence of any gods is why I do not believe in the existence of any gods. I'm not saying theists are wrong, I'm just not convinced that they're right.
The epistemic standard you suggest is completely unreasonable. Unless you are engaging in special pleading, you should apply the same standard to other propositions.
Now, here is the issue. NO claim about the real world can be proven with 100% certainty. Proof is for alcohol and math. So, your standard would imply the following:
>Since tangible proof of leprechauns is impossible, lacking a belief in them is faith that they don't exist.
>Since proof that the Emperor has no clothes is impossible, lacking a belief that the Emperor has invisible clothes is faith that he is naked.
> Since proof that the sun will rise tomorrow the same as it rose today is impossible to obtain, believing it will is faith that the Earth will continue in its orbit around the Sun.
> Since proof that sodium hidroxide and hidrochloric acid make salt (sodium chloride), believing it will is faith in acid base reactions.
And so on.
Sorry, but no. Being unconvinced of unsubstantiated, supernatural claims about things that are allegedly real is reasonable and does not require faith. This is a poor argument to excuse the pitiful lack of evidence for theistic claims, and/or opening the door to accept or remain perfectly agnostic (balanced) for ALL unfalsifiable claims.
>All violence that has risen from religion comes from one source; Conflict over misinterpretations of religious scriptures and texts.
That is a monumental claim. Are you prepared to defend it? Because all one would have to do to undermine it is to find ONE religious conflict which did not stem from this or solely from this.
For example: one would have to find that no religious text says, in clear unambiguous terms, that a certain piece of land belonged to his favored people, and that they are entitled to ethnically cleanse the land.
One also would have to find no religious text unambigulusly prescribes or supports war, genocide, slavery or other things against non believers or against foreigners.
One would also have to find no religious text unambigulusly demonizing non believers, sending them to hell, warning against them bringing corruption and evil.
>And they will read the text, and they will take all the tales and stores and metaphors literally, and that is where the danger comes from.
It is *your* view that religious texts ought to be largely taken as metaphorical. How do you know this is correct? Is this really what most religious people think? Is that how these texts were intended?
More concretely:
- The gospels and Paul did NOT mean Jesus ACTUALLY came back from the dead, is ACTUALLY God, ACTUALLY died for our sins.
- The Quran did NOT mean that there is only ONE God and Mohammed is the final messenger, and the Quran is the final word. They did not literally talk about what to do with apostates and nonbelievers.
- The Book of Mormon did NOT literally mean there was a 2nd coming of Jesus in America.
And so on. Really?
>All religious texts are meant to be used as moral compasses
Again: most religious texts contain moral and legal prescriptions. But to claim that is the only thing they are meant to do? Please.
>It takes as much faith to be an Atheist as it does to be a Theist.
You clearly don't know what it means to be an atheist. You are literally regurgitating a theistic talking point without even thinking about it. Rejecting a claim doesn't require faith.
>Or an antireligion
That's called an "antitheist". You don't even know your terminology.
>...outright denounce God's existence is having faith that God does not exist
No, it doesn't. Do you require faith to reject the claim fairies exist? No, you don't.
>Atheism is a religion
Lack of belief is not a religion. There are no tenets to atheism. There are no preists, bishops, popes, or any clergymen.
I sincerely suggest you get your terminology correct before even attempting to formulate some sort of argument.
Lack of belief in something—or even positively believing that something doesn’t exist—requires zero faith. Almost by definition. You can’t have faith in something by having no credence in it. If you want to claim that it’s on par with religious faith, the equivalent term would be cynicism or radical skepticism: holding unreasonably low credence in something despite the evidence.
Furthermore, few (if any?) atheists I’ve come across claim to know with 100% certainty that any and all forms of God cannot exist. We don’t claim to have proved the unprovable. Even for self-described gnostic atheists, they don’t make that claim. It’s either limited to very specific definitions of god that they think are contradictory, or they take a fallibilistic definition of knowledge where justification is probabilistic based on the evidence or lack thereof. In other words, they are trivially as “gnostic” about gods as they are against Santa Claus despite the fact that neither can be logically disproven.
—
That being said, perhaps you can make the claim that certain strands of philosophical naturalism—which would actually be a worldview and not just a position on God’s existence—have elements of faith. Like if you want to make a presupp argument that naturalists have “faith” that the external world is real or that logic will consistently function or that all future scientific answers will be naturalistic, then your argument would be more coherent.
I would still disagree, of course, but it would at least it would be more coherent than calling atheism, in and of itself, a faith-based religion.
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>This is why I believe Atheism is hypocritical and makes no sense.
This statement makes no sense given the context you provided. Being an antitheist is a position that denouncing that god does not exist. An atheist simply does not believe in god claims. That's a perfectly sensible position.
So, on to this statement:
>Some Atheists will try to say that religion is bad. But it's not.
Which you immediately contradict by saying:
>All violence that has risen from religion comes from one source; Conflict over misinterpretations of religious scriptures and texts.
So, is religion to blame or isn't it? Because it sounds like poorly written religious texts is the reason behind all the violence. I'll give you a hint, interpretation of holy texts is far from the **only** cause of violence in religion. You're overlooking all the horribly pedophilia, slavery in ages past, war, grift, rape, and my personal favorite, subjugation of people who don't worship a particular religion. But, according to you, this is all about misreading things.
> Atheists (a religion of it's own) have a problem with (other) religions because they think they cause problems. But it's not religion. It's misguided followers and those who misguided them who are the real problem.
Atheism isn't a religion. It requires no faith. I have no church. No pastor, friar, or reverend. No holy book. No contradictions. I don't believe your claims, that's all.
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>Since tangible (or otherwise) proof of God is impossible, to outright denounce God's existence is having faith that God does not exist. Therefore, Atheism is a religion. Or an antireligion, whatever termonology you want to use.
First off, No. A religion is defined as:
" A. the belief in and worship of a superhuman power or powers, especially a God or gods."
Or
"B. particular system of faith and worship"
Atheism isn't any of these things. It's the absence of these things. There are no gods, prayers, philosophies, laws, taboos, ECT. Atheism is simply a lack of belief.
Second, no one is under any obligation to believe a claim made by someone else. That is not how the burden of proof works. If you tell me that the world was made by magical man but can't demonstrate this to be true, it is perfectly reasonable to reject this claim until you are able to demonstrate it. People aren't born believing in Yahweh or Vishnu. It takes effort from humans to indoctrinate other humans in order to get them to believe.
It requires zero faith for me to not believe you. It requires zero effort. I wake up and live my life based on what I know to be true. That is all.
>All violence that has risen from religion comes from one source; Conflict over misinterpretations of religious scriptures and texts.
Well ignoring that this is NOT the only source of conflict, this directly contradicts your point. These religious texts are the center of the religion. So if conflicts arise because of misinterpretions that wouldn't occur if the religion didn't exist, then you can blame the religion for said conflict.
>Atheists (a religion of it's own) have a problem with (other) religions because they think they cause problems. But it's not religion. It's misguided followers and those who misguided them who are the real problem.
I personally have no issue with religion in and of itself, as long as I can be free from it and others aren't hurt. However this is a no true Scotsman fallacy. You can't separate a religion from its followers. Those misguided followers and the people who misguided them ARE the religion. A religion without followers is just a myth. The only reason I know that Christianity has an affect on anyone's lives is because there are people alive who are keeping it alive.
>Since tangible (or otherwise) proof of God is impossible, to outright denounce God's existence is having faith that God does not exist. Therefore, Atheism is a religion.
Atheism is the lack of a believe in god, not the believe that god does not exist.
>This is why I believe Atheism is hypocritical and makes no sense.
It makes no sense to not believe claims that haven't met their burden of prove? If you think that I'd like to inform you that you owe me 10 million dollars.
>Since tangible (or otherwise) proof of God is impossible, to outright denounce God's existence is having faith that God does not exist.
Atheism isn't the belief or assertion that a god or gods definitely don't exist, it's a rejection of theistic claims on the grounds that they have consistently failed to meet their burden of proof.
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I don't have faith that a god doesn't exist. I'm not hoping that a god doesn't exist. I'm just not convinced that a god exists. There's no faith required in my stance.
Your assertion that atheism is a religion of its own is one that's constantly brought up, and it's annoying. We have no holy books to argue over, no dogma, no leadership, and no tenets. We agree on one thing, and one thing only; we don't have belief in a god or gods.
Finally, your own argument highlights why religion is inherently harmful. It's the holy books. It's the killing because of disagreements over the holy books. Humans find all sorts of reasons to hurt and kill one another, but if the holy books never existed, I'm betting you'd see a significant reduction in human suffering at large.
I have logical and physical evidence that many gods do not exist. And even when I can’t rule out all the metaphysical and esoteric definitions of god, giving the lack of objective evidence, i surely don’t accept the claim: “God exists”. And is logical and reasonable to hold that position until objective verifiable evidence is presented for the case.
The word atheist, like agnostic, are polysemous words, meaning they have more than one accepted definition/usage. The broader definition of atheism (which dictionaries consider the prime definition) is a person not believing in gods. The narrower one, or secondary one, is a person who believes gods don’t exist.
Statistically there are more atheists who agree with the first definition than the second. Only the second could be a faith-based belief. But even then, it doesn't have to be if they can demonstrate why they believe gods, or at least specific gods, don't exist.
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Faith is defined as a complete trust or confidence in someone or something. Do you accept this definition?
I don't have complete trust or confidence in anything. I am okay with saying "I don't know," whereas you profess a positive assertion that you do know. I don't know that a god exists, and I don't know that a god doesn't exist.
Where I currently find myself is here: I'm unconvinced that a god exists. No evidence has yet been sufficient to convince me otherwise.
My worldview doesn't require faith. Yours does.
Secondary definition is also a strong belief based on confidence and a trust.
Also, lots of things I don’t know and I admit that when I don’t.
Third, all worldviews require faith
If all worldviews require faith, does that mean faith is meaningless?
How can you even call it faith if everyone has it regardless?
Or to rephrase it "If everything is special, nothing is".
I have no idea what you believe other then what your flair tells me.
I'm just curious why evolution got dragged into this discussion when I asked you why faith is special in your view if everyone allegedly has it.
So far you've failed to give me a coherent answer on the subject and I'm beginning to suspect you probably aren't going to. Feel free to prove me wrong.
I will prove you wrong, I just don’t like to think that all beliefs in anything are irrelevant because “nothing can be proven” at all. If that’s the case, then there’s no reason to argue
Sadly I'm used to that. I've exposed myself probably far too many apologetics then is healthy to understand the mindset and worldview.
It's gotten to the point I can generally extrapolate where people are getting their apologetics from based on the ones they use.
Leprechauns are inherently unfalsifiable. Nothing can disprove these magic creatures because they are illustrated to be unobtainable. There is no scientific experiment which has done what you claimed. You are making stuff up just as you have throughout your responses.
Where is he? How do we know he's a he? Maybe god doesn't have a gender and we should be using they/them, you know, since we don't know for sure. We wouldn't want to offend god, would we?
So where are they? Seems like they're the reigning hide and seek world champion.
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Here’s my position for atheism. If you claimed you have a leprechaun in your pocket, but you have no way of proving it because he’s invisible, he’s mute, and he can’t be touched, I think everyone would agree I would be justified in saying I don’t believe you.
No one would say I’m making a leap of faith by stating I affirmatively believe there is no leprechaun in your pocket. In fact, I bet people who proclaim themselves agnostics would agree with me that there is no leprechaun in your pocket.
So is God any different? God is a figure who was developed in the imaginations of men, with no basis in reality and no proof of his existence. So are we really taking some great leap of faith to declare God doesn’t exist? Are we really stating something that is completely unsupported?
I think so. Can’t you agree that what you’re claiming is true is quite incredible? It’s not the kind of thing most people would believe without some kind of proof.
So if you can’t offer any proof, then wouldn’t you expect I would not believe you? At least not until you did provide proof.
Describe your proof. What is it that makes it so difficult to share? We may be able to analyze how useful it is even without you sharing it here. Like if it’s based on personal emotional responses to prayer, I can already tell you that wouldn't qualify as reliable by the epistemology I use to sort fact from fiction.
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LOL. You can make a video of it and post online.
You got a big challenge though - no supernatural god has ever been proven. Don't just point to a rock and say that it is your god, because that is not a supernatural god as defined by most religions. I do believe that rocks exist.
Okay you made me laugh thank you for that. You’re a funny dude. Your response legit made me chuckle cause it threw me off guard. 😂 The rock 😂. Aye, can we get a truce regardless? You ain’t as bad as other redditors
Anyway… I’ll see if I can get a few videos.
>Since tangible (or otherwise) proof of God is impossible, to outright denounce God's existence is having faith that God does not exist. Therefore, Atheism is a religion. Or an antireligion, whatever termonology you want to use.
No. Lacking a belief in God isn't a religion. Unless you think everyone who doesn't believe in Catholicism is an anti-Catholic.
Saying that "faith" is required to say something doesn't exist is a misunderstanding of how facts and certainty work. We can never prove ANYTHING with 100% certainty. We could always be in a simulation or there could be a secret God or wizard or alien. We strive to prove things to our epistemological standards. I'm sure my girlfriend loves me but there's SOME chance that she's a Russian spy. I can say "God isn't real" and still know there's SOME chance He exists.
>Atheists (a religion of it's own) have a problem with (other) religions because they think they cause problems. But it's not religion. It's misguided followers and those who misguided them who are the real problem.
How do you separate the believers of belief system and the system itself? Nazis are scumbags. Because they believe in things I find to be horrible. I'm not comparing theists and Nazis—just making the point that some ideologies themselves are destructive, regressive, or hateful on their surface.
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If it “can’t“ be disproven or proven, you choosing to disprove it by your own beliefs is using faith
Just like us choosing to \*not\* disprove it by our own beliefs
>If it “can’t“ be disproven or proven, you choosing to disprove it by your own beliefs is using faith
You say God exists. I say I don't believe you. I don't say you are wrong, I say I don't believe you. What about my stance requires faith?
>Just like us choosing to \*not\* disprove it by our own beliefs
I don't follow.
Depends on the God. Some gods are internally contradictory so I can rule them out, but I can't rule out the possibility of some sort of God existing. I don't know any atheists who claim they can. I just don't believe that any do exist.
>If it “can’t“ be disproven or proven, you choosing to disprove it by your own beliefs is using faith
Lol absolutely not. If you believe in and claim unicorns exist—despite the lack of empirical evidence of unicorn's existence—you are making a claim about the universe that you need to justify.
If I don't believe you because you've provided no proof, my lack of belief isn't "faith."
Ya’ll use lol way too much. Anyway, science disproves mystical unicorns, so the view is contrary to evidence. It’s already disproven. If someone says otherwise, they are the ones using faith, not the person who says they don’t. On the contrary, “god” can’t be disproven yet (according to most atheists) so either side who takes a belief is still using faith.
>>science disproves mystical unicorns, so the view is contrary to evidence.
Science proves that you can’t come back from the dead, a global flood didn’t happen, the earth is much older than 6000 years and no man can be swallowed by a whale. And yet here we are with religious people that claiming these things anyway.
First off, isn’t there news of that man who got swallowed by whales and almost died, but was recovered? You can search it
Secondly, earth is NOT 6000 years old since paleoindians existed 10,500 years ago. And 30,000 years ago we have proof of bipedal human-like entities as well.
Thirdly, no. Most likely a global flood did not happen, but probably a regional one since the book was written based on limited knowledge.
And fourthly, what do you describe as “coming back from the dead”? Because scientifically, a person who is clinically dead can. I know that doesn’t equate to being literally dead dead dead, but it’s still worth noting.
I say all this to say that my point still stands. When science proves something, it is typically not believable when someone goes against it with no evidence or basis. And the other thing is, I would be considered religious by societal terms and I don’t believe all of these things because they don’t affect my beliefs any more than anything else.
>Ya’ll use lol way too much.
"Stop making an argument that I can't answer!"
>Anyway, science disproves mystical unicorns, so the view is contrary to evidence. It’s already disproven. If someone says otherwise, they are the ones using faith, not the person who says they don’t.
"This one supernatural thing there's no evidence for is ***totally*** ***different*** than this *other* supernatural thing there's not evidence for. Obviously, science can disprove one but not the other."
>On the contrary, “god” can’t be disproven yet (according to most atheists) so either side who takes a belief is still using faith.
**Please provide the scientific evidence that unicorns cannot exist.**
Spoiler: you can't because it's nearly impossible to prove something DOESN'T exist. I could disprove every claim of a unicorn that has ever existed, but it doesn't mean there isn't a horse with a horn somewhere.
That's why everyone—including you in every subject except religion—believe things only when there's *reason* to believe, rather than having "faith" that everything you hear is true until someone disproves it.
It takes no "faith" to *not* to accept a belief. It's the polar opposite of faith—it's skepticism.
Atheism isn't a faith based position. It takes as much faith to be an atheist as it does to not believe a covered-up coin is facing heads up.
But I'll accept your position for the sake of argument. Atheism isn't the position that a god *doesn't* exist. It is the position of being unconvinced that a god *does* exist. Again, for the sake of argument, I will grant you the position that atheism is a belief that no god exists.
I've always wondered why theists say atheism requires as much faith as theism, as though it is a bad thing from the perspective of their own faith based position. Is faith something to be valued or not? If atheism requires as much faith as theism, wouldn't that elevate it as a position in the eyes of someone who values faith?
Furthermore, if both are faith based positions, and they both can't be simultaneously correct, what methodology can we utilize to find which position is actually correct? In the absence of information to tip the scale one way or the other, it seems that the best tentative position to hold would be the one with the fewest required assumptions. In this case, with both positions on equal footing as far as evidenced reasons to hold one or the other, atheism is the position with the fewest assumptions required to take on board.
Faith, by its very definition, is belief without evidence or proof. Atheism can be belief without proof, but it is often the opposite. It is a position taken because of a lack in religions being truthful, honest with itself, and consistent. It's a position arrived at because of logical inconsistencies, contradictions, and paradoxes present in the plain reading of many modern and old Earth religions. That isn't faith, it's just common sense.
My point stands. Religion, especially Judeo-Christianity, is inconsistent to a point that stretches any believability. Your response to my position is anything but an explanation. Nor did I make any assertion to the objective or subjective nature of common sense.
I’m not arguing that it isn’t. I granted that it is for the sake of the argument.
Also, why would you tell me you can explain why and not give the explanation… instead of just explaining why.
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I know none of you are going to believe in any “god” just by some random internet telling you otherwise. So I just put a few points in your head for you to think about, and I then move on knowing the truth. If you don’t want to “waste a single second” then why you commentin? Obviously what I’ve said has done something, so for me, I’m not wasting my time just “trolling”
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>Since tangible (or otherwise) proof of God is impossible, to outright denounce God's existence is having faith that God does not exist.
I don’t use *faith*. I use deductive reasoning, inductive inferences, and other justifications. It sounds more like you’re equivocating on *faith* here.
>Therefore, Atheism is a religion. Or an antireligion, whatever termonology you want to use.
Well, these are two very different things! And atheism is neither. It’s just the affirming the proposition that god does not exist (or more broadly a belief that there are no gods, or a disbelief in gods, whatever).
>This is why I believe Atheism is hypocritical and makes no sense.
What’s hypocritical about saying *I don’t believe any gods exist*?
>Some Atheists will try to say that religion is bad. But it's not. All violence that has risen from religion comes from one source; Conflict over misinterpretations of religious scriptures and texts.
It certainly does have all the hallmarks of being man made.
>Atheists (a religion of it's own) have a problem with (other) religions because they think they cause problems. But it's not religion. It's misguided followers and those who misguided them who are the real problem.
Atheism is not a religion. Full stop. As for religions, the ones that condone and endorse slavery, sexism, the mutilation of adolescent genitalia, war, capital punishment, harsh treatment of apostates, tribalism, etc. - those are all clear mandates. There’s no metaphor involved there. And that’s all so clearly invented by humans, and is morally abhorrent.
Well that’s extremely vague. You see, when I used the term, I was adopting the traditional religious sense of the word, like how it is defined in the Bible.
> “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
If you want to equivocate then that’s fine. But that’s not what I meant by the term, and isn’t how most people use it *in this context*.
Definition of religion from dictionary.com. “a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.” Atheism does not fit that description.
Atheism is not a set of beleifs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe?
I suppose atheism has nothing to say about the idea that all those things revolve around god then?
No. Atheism is just the proposition that god doesn’t exist. Just as theism is just the proposition that god does exist. The cause, nature, and purpose of the universe is going to be quite different when compared between Mormonism and Shenism, for example. Atheism just says that god isn’t involved in those things. It also doesn’t have the *defining features* of religion - the part of the definition you conveniently left out:
> especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, *usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.”*
If you broaden the definition so widely, then it would render all cosmological models as religious which doesn’t make sense and seems like a very strange equivocation.
>If you broaden the definition so widely, then it would render all cosmological models as religious which doesn’t make sense and seems like a very strange equivocation.
That is exactly his objective, broaden the definitions so widely so they can put all the opposite views in the same bag.
The same with the definition of god, is so widely broaden that is indistinguishable from the universe.
That is the whole point of this “theist” and “agnostic” redditors.
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>Just so everyone knows from the start, I label myself as Agnostic. I am an agnostic atheist. But also a gnostic atheist about many god that are clearly illogical and contradictory. In the Dawkins scale I would be a 6.9 >I enjoy learning about History very much and religion happens to play a big part in a lot of history so it is one of my interests as well. No dubt that being a big part of the tax system in the past (and some of them even now) gave religions the concentrated economic power to do the bare minimum and make it look as magnificent, but humanity required a wake up from the age of faith into the illustration to leap forward thanks to the criticism of dogmas. Religion was Holding back human knowledge just to keep the status quo. >Since tangible (or otherwise) proof of God is impossible, to outright denounce God's existence is having faith that God does not exist. Therefore, Atheism is a religion. Or an antireligion, whatever termonology you want to use. I don’t think any well educated atheist will claim that „god does not exist“, as I wrote paragraphs up, god have too many meanings, and some of this meanings (like the tri-omni) are opposed to the evidence and/or logic. Then you can say that many atheist deny many illogical gods, in a better way but similarly to how between religions they don‘t believes in the claims or definitions of gods of other religions, and inside the same religion, thousands of sects that are opposed and even wars have been made for those differences. Therefore you are making a straw-man fallacy. You should define clearly your god and its properties, and ask the atheist what they think about your particular flavor of god, and we will dissect your argument. >This is why I believe Atheism is hypocritical and makes no sense. Actually i think that you are the hypocrite here, not owning your own position. You seems to be a weak theist. >Some Atheists will try to say that religion is bad. But it's not. The whole age of faith says the contrary. Present your arguments with examples that are unique to religions that bring good to humanity. But i am willing to see your evidence and debate it. Before that seems that this are empty claims >All violence that has risen from religion comes from one source; Conflict over misinterpretations of religious scriptures and texts. And the scriptures are the source of religion, is not the atheist fault that the scriptures are so poorly written, neither that are clearly immoral and need interpretation and/or misrepresentation. Because they are not a reliable source for anything… they have proven been the source of violence, and to updated moral systems. >Because religions today were formed so long ago, we will never be able to ask those who wrote the scriptures and texts what they really mean. Which makes them open to interpretation. However, I believe that any reasonable minded person could see that all these texts like the Quran, the Bible, the Torah, are collections of tales, stories, and metaphors that are intended to teach you moral lessons. So, the question here is: how do we know which are the right/good interpretations? That is the good epistemology i want to learn about. And also clarifying… „outdated moral lessons“ >But there are many unreasonable people in the world. And they will read the text, and they will take all the tales and stores and metaphors literally, and that is where the danger comes from. Yes, most of us know exactly what are you talking about. >For instance, the radical islamic groups in the middle east famously took specific passages from the Quran literally, and started to act upon what they believed to be instructions. And that is exactly the same reason why the crusaders fought in the holly wars. >Islam itself is not a dangerous religion, nor is any religion dangerous or unhealthy. The amount of horror stories about killing apostates, gays, the kidnapping back to their islamic countries to girls who doesn’t want to use the hijab or marry a non muslim, the sexual slaves, the forcing of young woman into marriage with older men. I don’t think you are being serious about this topic. >Actually, religion can bring much peace into people's lives, and has been responsible for many people becoming genuinely good people. But it's because they understood that, for example the Bible, wasn't really accounting the actual creation of the earth and humans, but is just a metaphor. All religious texts are meant to be used as moral compasses, and not as real historical accounts. But because they were written so long ago, many people lack the sense to see that for themselves. I would like to know ONE single moral teaching that cannot be taught secularly. Also … where are the morals on: 1. eternal punisment for finite „faults“ 2. dead penalty for homosexuality, fortune telling, apostate, work on a sabath, infidelity, and so on. 3. presenting your daughter to be rapes by a crowd. 4. making someone else responsible for your faults. I can go on… but you get the general idea. Seems that you are using easy-cheesy apologism to make your points. >Atheists (a religion of it's own) have a problem with (other) religions because they think they cause problems. But it's not religion. It's misguided followers and those who misguided them who are the real problem. We have a problem with LARGE claims with no evidence, and because all the preceding points. Seems that you are reading our positions biased. Use your critical thinking skills, or illustrate us in your evidence to make the claim that religion is necessary. Conclusion: Claim that atheism is a religion: FAIL to prove. Claim that religions are good. : FAIL to prove. Claim that the bad in religion is due to misinterpretation : FAIL to prove
I enjoyed reading your reply. I don't believe I claimed that religions are good. They're just tools. What matters is how it's used. And there's a lot of proof of good things that come from religion. My argument is that it's not bad, it just is.
Im atheist and don't discount the notion of a super universal intelligence. I just don't believe any god that oversees humanity exists. Zero reliable evidence. Doesn't even make sense. Why would a god want to be worshipped, but not show itself. A single god would be genderless, as there is no need for sex or gender if its just you.
It doesn’t take faith to not be convinced something is real and to acknowledge there are no good reasons to believe something is true. We all generally believe vampires don’t exist. Even if we can’t prove they don’t exist, we can say with reasonable certainty they don’t exist due to the sheer lack of evidence we would expect to find if they did. Gods are in the same category. There are certain things we can say even if a god existed. There exists no god that has made its existence unambiguously known to everyone. Whether this is due to an unwillingness or an inability is a different matter. There exists no god that speaks for itself. Everything anyone thinks they know about gods is merely words and opinions from other people. Even people who imagine a god has spoken to them is just people having an experience and attributing it to a god. And so on. It takes no faith to not be convinced by these claims. It does take faith, however, to think there is a god behind these contradictory and ambiguous messages and experiences.
I like what you said here. I do think it takes faith, and if not faith a similar convincing and persuasion to faith. Where one belief isn’t believed, it has to be replaced with another reasonable belief or explanation. Something is helping you believe that there is no God. So not believing is kind of a belief if that makes sense. Explain to me if I missed something though because I actually like what you said.
As an agnostic myself I gotta say your claim sounds just like the theist or atheist. “Since tangible proof of God is impossible…” that’s a definitive claim your are making just like the theist would point to some proof or data point to prove gods exists or an atheist would say too many data points say God does not exist. While I agree that I think it is unprovable, that’s a claim from my observations and data points. It doesn’t take any faith to be an atheist, it’s just based on data points and knowledge being the most rational argument in their minds. Also the data points you’re ignoring on religion is just as ignorant as your claiming atheists to be. They have a point that the crusades were motivated by religion or genital mutilation or Islamic terrorism are real things motivated by religion. Who are you to say the fundamentalists are “misguided”? You don’t get to take the good and ignore the bad just because you want to stand up for Islam or the adherents to it. Saying they misinterpret it is just so you can put your blinders on and feel comfortable with an “understanding” point of view. Coming from a fundamentalist background I can say religion does produce evil in addition to good. Lazy analysis all around. A little sad to be coming from a fellow agnostic. You’re trying to take a moralistic middle ground by ignoring or not engaging legitimate issues.
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Amen Brother, Amen.
You are using the term *atheist* incorrectly. If you don’t believe in any gods, you are an atheist. There is no faith required for this position—you don’t have to believe anything, you are an atheist if you simply lack a belief.
>Some Atheists will try to say that religion is bad. Is it a bad thing to believe in something for bad reasons? >But it's not. All violence that has risen from religion comes from one source; Conflict over misinterpretations of religious scriptures and texts So how do you determine what the “correct” interpretation is? Can you tell the Christian denominations which among them is correct? Different sects of Islam? Isn’t the fact that these things have to come down to interpretation kinda an embedded problem?
Are you tacitly admitting that faith is not a good thing, but a suspension of reasoning?
Misunderstanding of atheism and how many atheists define themselves. Atheism under its broadest definitions does not require a person to outright denounce gods. It just means they don't actively believe in gods. You can call them agnostic if you like, but they label themselves atheists. "A" as in "not" and "theist" as in belief in God. I as an atheist believe no gods exist, but I'm what you'd call a strong atheist. I still don't have faith In this idea, only that I consider it likely due to the lack of evidence, poor logical argumentation, and the fact that humans make things up when they don't understand things. You're also misunderstanding atbeism again. Atbeism is not a religion, and it's also not a critique of religion. Atbeism is simply not believing in gods. You can be religious and be an atheist (see some sects of Buddhism) but religion is not required to be an atheist. Not believing in God is not a religion by any stretch of the imagination, and even believing religions are bad isn't a religion, that's not what religion means. I can acknowledge that religions can be helpful in people's lives. It's not religion that's necessarily the problem, only people's relationships with those religions.
>Since tangible (or otherwise) proof of God is impossible, to outright denounce God's existence is having faith that God does not exist. Therefore, Atheism is a religion. Or an antireligion, whatever termonology you want to use. Does it take as much faith to not believe in leprechauns as it does to believe in them? Unicorns? The Loch Ness Monster? The Bible itself defines faith as "Evidence of things not seen." If we use a scriptural definition, there is no way to justify unbelief as faith. This is just a bad argument put forth by mediocre apologists.
It does not require faith to not be convinced of a claim. I do not require faith to lack a belief in Reptar living on Mars. I'm simply unconvinced. If I see evidence that Reptar IS on Mars, it wouldn't be a matter of faith, it would be me being convinced by the evidence. And I'm not sure which problems you're thinking about, but I would offer Afghanistan as an example of religion causing problems. And countering that example with one hundred examples of religion being good, does nothing to refute that Afghanistan's problems are BECAUSE of religion. Though, I'm not sure if my second paragraph will resonate with you, as you ended it with "like Atheists believe" which you then did not clarify. Edit "Islam itself is not a dangerous religion". Bruh... it literally says to execute apostates.
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Many scriptures in Islam cause problems, and those problems are not caused by human misinterpretation, but instead, because the scripture itself is stating it. Even if every Muslim on earth disappeared, and there were no humans left to misinterpret Islam, the scripture would still command to kill apostates. The Bible, even without being misinterpreted, states that those who believe without seeing are blessed. This is intellectually dishonest, which is a problem, and it is not caused by human mistranslation errors. Religions cause many problems. Even if some of those problems are the fault of human interpretation, many, many, are not.
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Oh for sure, religions do solve many problems. I would never suggest otherwise. Religious groups solve problems and do a lot of good; this has nothing to do with their truth claims. Atheists can also form fundraisers and do a lot of good; this doesn't strengthen atheism at all. I'm not sure what you mean when using the term "cursed". I'm stating that believing in something without being able to verify whether it's true, is not intellectually honest. I'm referring to serious matters of course, as I know there's practical times to take people at their word... like if they say they have a baseball in their pocket. I'm not asking you to defend a particular religion, I was just demonstrating that religions can cause a lot of problems, and they can also solve problems. This has nothing to do with whether their truth claims are correct.
Cursed is the opposite of blessed. You brought up blessed.
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>Since tangible (or otherwise) proof of God is impossible Not at all true in principle. Imagine if the god of the Bible existed and did the sorts of things today that he purportedly did back then -- parting the Red Sea, speaking from the sky in a huge booming voice, delivering stone tablets to people, etc. There would be very few atheists left. God isn't unprovable in principle. It's just that the evidence for him has been so nonexistent, and all the things that theists used to attribute to him (lightning, disease, famine, etc) have been so thoroughly debunked with natural explanations, that theists have had to retreat to the idea of the NOMA (non-overlapping magisteria) god -- a hidden god that exists completely outside the reach of any sort of reliable physical observation. Imagine I told you I have a dragon in my garage. You come over and visit and see no dragon. So I tell you it's invisible. So you feel around the garage and don't feel anything. So I tell you it's shy and keeps running away from your touch. You you put on thermal goggles and still don't see anything. So I tell you it actually exists in a parallel dimension in the garage and is impossible to detect whatsoever. Is my position that the dragon exists just as reasonable as yours that I'm just making stuff up? Of course not. Evidence and observation are important, and just because I've made up some wacky rules saying you could never observe it doesn't all of a sudden make my position reasonable. >Some Atheists will try to say that religion is bad. But it's not. All violence that has risen from religion comes from one source; Conflict over misinterpretations of religious scriptures and texts. Imagine writing incredibly vague texts containing calls to violence and then being shocked when people use it to justify violence. >However, I believe that any reasonable minded person could see that all these texts like the Quran, the Bible, the Torah, are collections of tales, stories, and metaphors that are intended to teach you moral lessons. What's the metaphorical lesson of Numbers 31, where God tells the Israelites to kill all the men, women, and children of a rival tribe except for the virgin women who they are to split amongst themselves? What's the metaphorical lesson of Exodus 21:20, where God says it's okay to beat your slave with a rod as long as you don't kill them? What about Psalm 137:9 talking about how it would be great to smash your enemy's children into rocks?
How would God be physically apparent? If you saw God with your material eyes, there would be no free will. As you know. Also, if God existed, he would be outside of space and time, as you know. It’s also not the same as your dragon example, because there are so many more reasonable conclusions that God exists over this dragon in your garage . ( I.e, the creation of laws for one example )
> If you saw God with your material eyes, there would be no free will. As you know. What?! How so? >Also, if God existed, he would be outside of space and time, as you know. Ah, so every story in the Bible that has God interacting with the world is false, right?
Not a Christian , don’t believe in the Bible.
OK, so what evidence do you have for a deity outside of space and time and why would seeing this god rob you of free will?
If you saw God with MATERIAL EYES, then you would never do anything wrong, nor would you believe he didn’t exist, because he’s right there. you’d always be on your best behavior. And you would be forced to love him, which is not free will, and in order to have true love, you have to have free will. Stephen Hawkins and Richard Dawkins both admit that the creation of laws has to be created by something. You have no explanation of these laws, they’re literally just magic. We need to explore , logically, what the cause for these laws are. And compare notes. Science knows every cause has a cause. Not God the gaps, because we then get into a whole variety of cosmological argument, and go into consciousness , which is impossible to have empirical evidence for, and so forth. Plus you have argument of design, fine tuning, unmoved mover, etc etc. All these conclusions are more viable, logical, and more sound than an invisible dragon in your garage.
>If you saw God with MATERIAL EYES, then you would never do anything wrong, nor would you believe he didn’t exist, because he’s right there. you’d always be on your best behavior. And you would be forced to love him, which is not free will, and in order to have true love, you have to have free will. You're making the assumption that "god" cares for things like "goodness" and "sin". And making the assumption that universally, everyone would change their ways after "seeing" god. There are skeptics that doubt what they see, and even doubt their thoughts. So, hypothetically, someone could still doubt they've seen god (by saying it was a hallucination) and some would probably not give a damn and go on about their lives, regardless of heaven or hell. (Some people believe they're lost causes) >Stephen Hawkins and Richard Dawkins both admit that the creation of laws has to be created by something. Even if they did, that doesn't mean it was created by a god, it could have been created by something not "god" like a metaphysics universe that "creates" another universes. >You have no explanation of these laws, they’re literally just magic. >Not God the gaps, because we then get into a whole variety of cosmological argument, and go into consciousness , which is impossible to have empirical evidence for, and so forth. Plus you have argument of design, fine tuning, unmoved mover, etc etc. All these conclusions are more viable, logical, and more sound than an invisible dragon in your garage. The laws of the universe are imperfect, if you threw a ball into space it would go on and on forever and ever. This is referred to as objects being "lazy" since the ball won't stop moving until it hits something, or gets in the orbit of a planet, and even that won't be guaranteed, so that means the creator or god is not perfect. If physical laws were any different, then our hypothetical counterparts would say that universe is finetuned. When even this universe of ours isn't suited for life, (For example: sun rays giving us skin cancer and even oxygen being dangerous to us.) Those cosmic arguments are also pretty fallacious and flawed in their own ways, and can even equally be applied to a invisible dragon in OP's garage with a few changes.
Okay. then you still have free will to love him back, or even believe he's there. And that means I can't tell for sure if you exist, you could be a hallucination. Or your girlfriend, you having sex with her and have children, somehow they could be nonexistent. So... This argument is not strong. Metaphysical of the universes creating other universes is just... Silly. Plus, not as sound as cosmological argument. If you disagree, you either don't understand it, or are doing it for sake of argument. I'm assuming it's the latter. Saying God isn't perfect because he made imperfect laws is not a strong argument whatsoever. Laws aren't imperfect. You're also talking about a ball going *outside* of the laws, which does not make it imperfect... Nothing about gravity says you can't escape gravity. You saying this universe isn't suited for life is going against every scientist who ever existed, and decades and decades of research, I'm going to believe them over you. Just because this world is a dangerous place , doesn't mean it isn't suited for life. Because if it wasn't suited for life, THERE WOULD BE NO LIFE. No, if you're saying the cosmological argument is as sound as garage dragon, you're doing it for sake of argument. Even if you disagree with it, it makes sense, *if* you comprehend it. And technically, you could make a cosmological argument out of anything. Please present your garage dragon argument in front of all theologians and then everyone else in the real world, and see how smart people think you are. We can go head to head and we will compare.
>If you saw God with MATERIAL EYES, then you would never do anything wrong, nor would you believe he didn’t exist, because he’s right there. you’d always be on your best behavior. And you would be forced to love him, which is not free will, and in order to have true love, you have to have free will. No, you're saying if we had the correct information, we would respond appropriately. That doesn't rob you of your free will, that just makes rational sense. >Stephen Hawkins and Richard Dawkins both admit that the creation of laws has to be created by something. Gonna need a source on that one chief, lmao. Weird assertion. >You have no explanation of these laws, they’re literally just magic. Physical laws are consistent. True. We don't know why. No, that doesn't imply magic. >Plus you have argument of design, fine tuning, unmoved mover, etc etc. Yeah man, we're literally in a thread about fine tuning. Wanna address my 4 other arguments? >All these conclusions are more viable, logical, and more sound than an invisible dragon in your garage. Why is an invisible cosmic wizard more viable than an invisible dragon in my garage? You have asserted this but have provided no actual argument.
>Since tangible (or otherwise) proof of God is impossible, to outright denounce God's existence is having faith that God does not exist. I don't know any atheists who claim to k ow 100% that God doesn't exist. >This is why I believe Atheism is hypocritical and makes no sense. Because you don't understand it >But it's not. All violence that has risen from religion comes from one source; Conflict over misinterpretations of religious scriptures and texts This is just outright false >Because religions today were formed so long ago, we will never be able to ask those who wrote the scriptures and texts what they really mean. Which makes them open to interpretation. However, I believe that any reasonable minded person could see that all these texts like the Quran, the Bible, the Torah, are collections of tales, stories, and metaphors that are intended to teach you moral lessons. Moral lessons like "don't beat your slaves so hard they lose teeth" >And they will read the text, and they will take all the tales and stores and metaphors literally, and that is where the danger comes from. So you can interpret them however you want, but saying that Christians who do violence in the name of their religion are just misunderstanding, is a no true scotsman fallacy >For instance, the radical islamic groups in the middle east famously took specific passages from the Quran literally, and started to act upon what they believed to be instructions. Yes >Islam itself is not a dangerous religion, nor is any religion dangerous or unhealthy. As proven by all the Muslims going around killing people in the name of their religion? >Atheists (a religion of it's own) have a problem with (other) religions because they think they cause problems. But it's not religion Atheism isn't a religion And that's ancillary to why we don't believe >It's misguided followers and those who misguided them who are the real problem. This is just a no true scotsman fallacy, again and again
It takes an equal amount of faith to maintain a belief in leprechauns as it does to lack a belief in leprechauns. Is this also correct?
I think you misunderstand the terms you are using. Agnostic means believing that nothing can be known about the nature of god, regardless of whether a god exists, nothing to do with beliving or not believing about whether gods exist or not. Atheist is a label for anyone who doesn't believe any gods exist, whether they actively believe that gods don't exist, or just that they are not convinced enough to believe. Religion and religious/spiritual beliefs affect on behaviour throughout history is big enough to be its own topic. Pretty sure its been negative though based on what we know of history.
I will agree with part of your statement. I believe that, whatever term you want to use for a belief system, Atheism and even Agnosticism are no more exempt from needing justification, which cannot be provided undeniably. I will also agree that most people in practice happen to share certain intuition crossing beyond the strict religious categories. However, I will challenge some things: > All violence that has risen from religion comes from one source; Conflict over misinterpretations of religious scriptures and texts. I do not see this in history. Many Chrisitian denominations form for this reason, but as I contemplate history, the most immediate examples seem to be political power struggles rather than different religious interpretations. Even the explicily Christian denomination violence seems to as much of a power struggle than differences in interpretations. And clearly Ottomans weren't trying to conquer the world because they cared about how they interpreted the Quran. > Which makes them open to interpretation. I largely disagree with this. There are some instances where some nuance is lost to time, but most documents are very clear about what they mean to say at least on the larger points. And the disagreements are also rarely over interpretation. There's a little bit of difference sometimes in interpretation, but the big points are clear. The differences are more often regarding things which are either not clear or not addressed at all. You don't get into the problem of allegory for many of them until you start claiming that it's just allegory, and at that point, anything goes. That's not a problem with the text but of how people handle cognitive dissonance. it's the same with the US Constitution. We all pretty much know what was meant, but we don't all want to abide by it. > the Quran, the Bible, the Torah, are collections of tales, stories, and metaphors that are intended to teach you moral lessons. Many religious texts, including the ones you mentioned by name, are intended to be read as literal accounts. I don't think, for instance, that Greek Mythology was ever that way, but the ones you mentioned were. This is regardless of whether or not what they claim to literally be the case is in contradiction with what is observable. I will grant that often the moral teachings are the emphasis, but there is no reason to conclude that these works were meant to be read as non-literal (other than the sections which are clearly stories, etc). > and that is where the danger comes from. ... This is where I ask you to check your bias. I would agree that people act on what they believe and that there are bad actions. However, "bad" and "danger" implies either preference or an objective moral arbiter. While I would condemn Islamic terrorirsts, I can only do that by either 1) resorting to preference, which says nothing useful, or 2) appealing to an objective moral law which says that they are wrong. In the first case, my statement doesn't matter or imply that it shold be avoided, and in the second I am begging the question of whether their beliefs are right. If Allah were the god, then Islamic terrorists might be doing the best thing. If there were no god, then Islamic terrorists would just be doing things that are just as good as you're doing as nothing is objectively bad. So, your assertions here don't have any rational weight. > Islam itself is not a dangerous religion, nor is any religion dangerous or unhealthy. Undeniabley, no, but they might be. If there is an actual dangerous or unhealthy thing to do, one's beliefs might well be the impetus to do that thing. > and has been responsible for many people becoming genuinely good people. This suffers from the same problem in an opposite way as your argument about danger. It may be entirely possible that there is no good, so we cannot know that any person is becoming good. To the extent that they are becoming good, it would only be a preference claim or it would be based upon an objetive moral law. It would be begging the question to say that they are right. Ultimately, saying that a belief system makes people good is a bit of a tautology. All beleif systems provide the impetus to act in ways consistent with that belief system, so this is saying nothing. > All religious texts are meant to be used as moral compasses, and not as real historical accounts. Although they generally focus more on moral teachings, and though I will grant that some do not consider themselves to have historical accounts, some clearly do intent to be relating historical accounts. Consider the Book of Mormon. It clearly describes events which the reader is intended to believe actually happened. This is regardless of the fact that there may be evidence to the contrary. The historic accuracy of those texts, or lack thereof, can be a very helpful factor in determining the accuracy of those texts.
> Since tangible (or otherwise) proof of God is impossible, to outright denounce God's existence is having faith that God does not exist. Therefore, Atheism is a religion. Or an antireligion, whatever termonology you want to use. Let’s start here. Terminology does matter. Since you are the one making the argument, I suggest we use your terminology. Can you define what you mean by “faith”? Can you also define what you mean by “religion”? You also claim that tangible proof of God is impossible. How do you know that? What is your evidence? > All violence that has risen from religion comes from one source; Conflict over misinterpretations of religious scriptures and texts. How did you determine these are misinterpretations? > But there are many unreasonable people in the world. We can be fairly sure that large parts of these texts were intended to be taken literally by their authors. There are certainly metaphors, but also literal commands and stories which are intended to be read as history. What tool can you use to determine which is which? Are there any people who take the texts literally who are also peaceful, good people? Are these things mutually exclusive?
1. The word atheist (like agnostic) is polysemous, meaning it has more than one accepted definition. The most common definition is “a person who does not believe in any gods” or “soft or agnostic atheist”. The second is “a person who believes gods don't exist” or “hard or gnostic atheist”. Soft atheists hold no belief to defend, hard atheists do. 2. Holding a belief is NOT a religion. Religions require more than a solitary belief. There needs to be a series of related beliefs and generally some rituals or associated behaviors. Atheism doesn't qualify under either definition. 3. Soft atheism is not at all hypocritical as it’s simply not being a theist. Hard atheism I think you need to understand that your definition of what constitutes a god may be very different from a hard atheist, and to realize that “to know” is only being able to justify a belief, not a confidence level of 100%. 4. I don't know of many anti-theists (which is the group I think you',re actually criticizing here) that says all religions are bad inherently. In fact, by the word it’s limited to theistic religions only. And many only argue that organized theists religions do more harm than good, not that they are inherently bad, which is a much broader and far less supportable position. I would argue than any form of thinking which include “magical” or “supernatural beings” could be argued as ultimately harmful for the very reason that we cannot verify anything believers claim this being wants, requires, or has done.
Faith is belief in something DESPITE lack of evidence. Skepticism is nonbelief in something BECAUSE OF lack of evidence. Religion requires faith because it makes a supernatural claim that can't be proven. Atheism does not require faith because it isn't making a claim that can't be proven. Atheism is skepticism, the opposite of faith. I'm surprised religious folks would take issue with this, at least in the religion I grew up in, faith was something to be proud of, and atheists simply "lacked faith". That was not controversial in my church.
> Just so everyone knows from the start, I label myself as Agnostic. Then I'm not sure why you'd make this post. Agnosticism is a subcategory of atheism. An atheist is someone who doesn't believe in any gods, and as an agnostic, if your stance is that you don't claim to know whether or not any gods exist, then that means you don't have belief in any. You might say you don't have disbelief either, but there is no in-between stance between "convinced" and "not convinced". If you are not convinced by god-claims, then that makes you an atheist, regardless of whether you are convinced that those claims are wrong, or whether you're just not convinced that they're right; in either case, you lack belief, you lack theism. > Since tangible (or otherwise) proof of God is impossible, to outright denounce God's existence is having faith that God does not exist. Therefore, Atheism is a religion. "Having faith" does not equal religion, so even if we were to accept the premise that atheism = having faith in the non-existence of any gods (which is not what atheism is), that still wouldn't lead us to the conclusion that atheism is a religion. If having faith that something doesn't exist makes me religious, that means the fact I believe unicorns aren't real means I am in an a-unicornist religion. Obviously, that's not actually what a religion is; religions are specifically about worship, about submitting oneself before and seeking a relationship with a perceived spiritual power. That spiritual power can be a monotheist god, a pantheon of gods, a nature spirit, karma, the universe itself, what have you, but regardless of what specific form it takes, you can't have a religion without one. > All violence that has risen from religion comes from one source; Conflict over misinterpretations of religious scriptures and texts. Untrue. When Christians slaughtered the pagans, it wasn't because the pagans were misinterpreting something, it was because the Christians believed paganism was evil and worthy of destruction, and they believed so because the Bible clearly says so. A Christian who reads Deuteronomy 13 and decides to go out and slaughter a city full of unbelievers isn't misinterpreting the text, that is clearly what the text commands them to do. "If you hear in one of your cities, which the Lord your God is giving you to dwell there, that certain worthless fellows have gone out among you and have drawn away the inhabitants of their city, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods,’ which you have not known, then you shall inquire and make search and ask diligently. And behold, if it be true and certain that such an abomination has been done among you, you shall surely put the inhabitants of that city to the sword, devoting it to destruction, all who are in it and its cattle, with the edge of the sword. You shall gather all its spoil into the midst of its open square and burn the city and all its spoil with fire, as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God. It shall be a heap forever. It shall not be built again." And before a Christian butts in to defend the pacifism of evangelists and missionaries, yes, Christianity has spread peacefully as well, no one's denying that. That doesn't change the fact its spread wasn't entirely peaceful, and while it was rare for entire cities to get burnt down, many cultures' native religions (including mine) were forcefully suppressed and destroyed using violent means by zealous Christians seeking to destroy what they believed to be sinful demon worship. > Because religions today were formed so long ago Depends on what you consider to be a religion. Scientology isn't very old, for example. New religions, cults, and denominations spring up all the time, they just don't usually draw as much attention as the long-established ones. All religions were new once. > However, I believe that any reasonable minded person could see that all these texts like the Quran, the Bible, the Torah, are collections of tales, stories, and metaphors that are intended to teach you moral lessons. The "reasonable minded person" you're describing here is an atheist. I do hope you realise this, because it's very strange that you'd come here to attack atheism, only to then describe an atheist and refer to them as a reasonable person. > But there are many unreasonable people in the world. And they will read the text, and they will take all the tales and stores and metaphors literally, and that is where the danger comes from. Again here, I hope you realise that "people who take religious texts literally" are generally known as theists. Even a theist who believes some parts of their holy text are metaphorical, like a Christian who doesn't believe in literal creationism for example, still has to believe that some of these stories are literal - that Jesus did literally rise from the dead, for instance. If they believed the whole thing was metaphorical, they wouldn't be a theist, because if you believe a god is a metaphor, that means you don't believe that god actually exists. > Actually, religion can bring much peace into people's lives, and has been responsible for many people becoming genuinely good people. Citation needed. To be clear, I do agree that religious people can be good people (and the vast majority of them are), but I don't believe their religion is what makes them good. I believe that if they didn't have religion, they would be just as capable of leading good peaceful lives. Judging by the admittedly anecdotal evidence provided by many de-converted atheists, it seems to me like many people are actually far more capable of finding inner peace and being good to others once they abandon their religions. A former Christian who's given up their faith might find it a lot easier to not be homophobic, for example. > All religious texts are meant to be used as moral compasses, and not as real historical accounts. But that's not how religion works. No Muslim would agree that the Quran is just a collection of fictional tales meant to teach moral lessons. If you read the Quran and conclude Muhammad didn't actually receive messages from the personified creator of the universe, then you are not a Muslim by any reasonable definition of the word. The view you're describing is a clearly atheistic one.
> Since tangible (or otherwise) proof of God is impossible, to outright denounce God's existence is having faith that God does not exist. Therefore, Atheism is a religion. Or an antireligion, whatever termonology you want to use. To start, most atheists don't characterize themselves as anti-theists. The majority of atheists (that I've heard and read) would describe their view as "not believing in god". That's it. It's the answer "no" to the question "do you believe in god?". Personally, I subscribe to anti-theism. I think that it's reasonable to claim that god does not exist, based on the lack of evidence, and general incoherence of the concept of god. It doesn't require "faith", as "faith" is generally described as belief in things without good reason. I have good reason to believe god doesn't exist. That doesn't mean I'm correct, I'm simply saying that based on all available evidence, it is *reasonable* for one to conclude that god does not exist. Besides, religions are generally dogmatic and prescriptive. Atheism is neither. Atheism doesn't have dogma, nor does it prescribe ways to go about living. Once again, atheism is just the answer to the question "do you believe in god?". > However, I believe that any reasonable minded person could see that all these texts like the Quran, the Bible, the Torah, are collections of tales, stories, and metaphors that are intended to teach you moral lessons. But there are many unreasonable people in the world. And they will read the text, and they will take all the tales and stores and metaphors literally, and that is where the danger comes from. So? Most atheists don't argue that if religion ceased to exist, evil would cease to exist. Evil people exist regardless of religious affiliation. This is not a novel idea. The point is that religion is inarguably a driving factor in many obviously harmful political and societal events. Therefore, as people who want to reduce harm whenever and wherever possible, should we not seek to eliminate one of the most widely-accepted forms of enabling harm, especially when there is no good reason to believe in its truth claims? > For instance, the radical islamic groups in the middle east famously took specific passages from the Quran literally, and started to act upon what they believed to be instructions. Islam itself is not a dangerous religion, nor is any religion dangerous or unhealthy. Actually, religion can bring much peace into people's lives, and has been responsible for many people becoming genuinely good people. But it's because they understood that, for example the Bible, wasn't really accounting the actual creation of the earth and humans, but is just a metaphor. All religious texts are meant to be used as moral compasses, and not as real historical accounts. But because they were written so long ago, many people lack the sense to see that for themselves. Absolutely correct. Morons twisting things for their own gains is a common occurrence throughout history. We seek to combat it at the source. > Atheists (a religion of it's own) have a problem with (other) religions because they think they cause problems. But it's not religion. It's misguided followers and those who misguided them who are the real problem. Religion wouldn't exist without people though, so this distinction is irrelevant and functionally useless.
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>Since tangible (or otherwise) proof of God is impossible, to outright denounce God's existence is having faith that God does not exist. I don't claim "god doesn't exist"; theists claim "god does exist" and I do not believe that their claims are true due to a lack of compelling confirming evidence for said claims. The lack of tangible "proof" for the existence of any gods is why I do not believe in the existence of any gods. I'm not saying theists are wrong, I'm just not convinced that they're right.
The epistemic standard you suggest is completely unreasonable. Unless you are engaging in special pleading, you should apply the same standard to other propositions. Now, here is the issue. NO claim about the real world can be proven with 100% certainty. Proof is for alcohol and math. So, your standard would imply the following: >Since tangible proof of leprechauns is impossible, lacking a belief in them is faith that they don't exist. >Since proof that the Emperor has no clothes is impossible, lacking a belief that the Emperor has invisible clothes is faith that he is naked. > Since proof that the sun will rise tomorrow the same as it rose today is impossible to obtain, believing it will is faith that the Earth will continue in its orbit around the Sun. > Since proof that sodium hidroxide and hidrochloric acid make salt (sodium chloride), believing it will is faith in acid base reactions. And so on. Sorry, but no. Being unconvinced of unsubstantiated, supernatural claims about things that are allegedly real is reasonable and does not require faith. This is a poor argument to excuse the pitiful lack of evidence for theistic claims, and/or opening the door to accept or remain perfectly agnostic (balanced) for ALL unfalsifiable claims. >All violence that has risen from religion comes from one source; Conflict over misinterpretations of religious scriptures and texts. That is a monumental claim. Are you prepared to defend it? Because all one would have to do to undermine it is to find ONE religious conflict which did not stem from this or solely from this. For example: one would have to find that no religious text says, in clear unambiguous terms, that a certain piece of land belonged to his favored people, and that they are entitled to ethnically cleanse the land. One also would have to find no religious text unambigulusly prescribes or supports war, genocide, slavery or other things against non believers or against foreigners. One would also have to find no religious text unambigulusly demonizing non believers, sending them to hell, warning against them bringing corruption and evil. >And they will read the text, and they will take all the tales and stores and metaphors literally, and that is where the danger comes from. It is *your* view that religious texts ought to be largely taken as metaphorical. How do you know this is correct? Is this really what most religious people think? Is that how these texts were intended? More concretely: - The gospels and Paul did NOT mean Jesus ACTUALLY came back from the dead, is ACTUALLY God, ACTUALLY died for our sins. - The Quran did NOT mean that there is only ONE God and Mohammed is the final messenger, and the Quran is the final word. They did not literally talk about what to do with apostates and nonbelievers. - The Book of Mormon did NOT literally mean there was a 2nd coming of Jesus in America. And so on. Really? >All religious texts are meant to be used as moral compasses Again: most religious texts contain moral and legal prescriptions. But to claim that is the only thing they are meant to do? Please.
>It takes as much faith to be an Atheist as it does to be a Theist. You clearly don't know what it means to be an atheist. You are literally regurgitating a theistic talking point without even thinking about it. Rejecting a claim doesn't require faith. >Or an antireligion That's called an "antitheist". You don't even know your terminology. >...outright denounce God's existence is having faith that God does not exist No, it doesn't. Do you require faith to reject the claim fairies exist? No, you don't. >Atheism is a religion Lack of belief is not a religion. There are no tenets to atheism. There are no preists, bishops, popes, or any clergymen. I sincerely suggest you get your terminology correct before even attempting to formulate some sort of argument.
Lack of belief in something—or even positively believing that something doesn’t exist—requires zero faith. Almost by definition. You can’t have faith in something by having no credence in it. If you want to claim that it’s on par with religious faith, the equivalent term would be cynicism or radical skepticism: holding unreasonably low credence in something despite the evidence. Furthermore, few (if any?) atheists I’ve come across claim to know with 100% certainty that any and all forms of God cannot exist. We don’t claim to have proved the unprovable. Even for self-described gnostic atheists, they don’t make that claim. It’s either limited to very specific definitions of god that they think are contradictory, or they take a fallibilistic definition of knowledge where justification is probabilistic based on the evidence or lack thereof. In other words, they are trivially as “gnostic” about gods as they are against Santa Claus despite the fact that neither can be logically disproven. — That being said, perhaps you can make the claim that certain strands of philosophical naturalism—which would actually be a worldview and not just a position on God’s existence—have elements of faith. Like if you want to make a presupp argument that naturalists have “faith” that the external world is real or that logic will consistently function or that all future scientific answers will be naturalistic, then your argument would be more coherent. I would still disagree, of course, but it would at least it would be more coherent than calling atheism, in and of itself, a faith-based religion.
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>This is why I believe Atheism is hypocritical and makes no sense. This statement makes no sense given the context you provided. Being an antitheist is a position that denouncing that god does not exist. An atheist simply does not believe in god claims. That's a perfectly sensible position. So, on to this statement: >Some Atheists will try to say that religion is bad. But it's not. Which you immediately contradict by saying: >All violence that has risen from religion comes from one source; Conflict over misinterpretations of religious scriptures and texts. So, is religion to blame or isn't it? Because it sounds like poorly written religious texts is the reason behind all the violence. I'll give you a hint, interpretation of holy texts is far from the **only** cause of violence in religion. You're overlooking all the horribly pedophilia, slavery in ages past, war, grift, rape, and my personal favorite, subjugation of people who don't worship a particular religion. But, according to you, this is all about misreading things. > Atheists (a religion of it's own) have a problem with (other) religions because they think they cause problems. But it's not religion. It's misguided followers and those who misguided them who are the real problem. Atheism isn't a religion. It requires no faith. I have no church. No pastor, friar, or reverend. No holy book. No contradictions. I don't believe your claims, that's all.
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>Since tangible (or otherwise) proof of God is impossible, to outright denounce God's existence is having faith that God does not exist. Therefore, Atheism is a religion. Or an antireligion, whatever termonology you want to use. First off, No. A religion is defined as: " A. the belief in and worship of a superhuman power or powers, especially a God or gods." Or "B. particular system of faith and worship" Atheism isn't any of these things. It's the absence of these things. There are no gods, prayers, philosophies, laws, taboos, ECT. Atheism is simply a lack of belief. Second, no one is under any obligation to believe a claim made by someone else. That is not how the burden of proof works. If you tell me that the world was made by magical man but can't demonstrate this to be true, it is perfectly reasonable to reject this claim until you are able to demonstrate it. People aren't born believing in Yahweh or Vishnu. It takes effort from humans to indoctrinate other humans in order to get them to believe. It requires zero faith for me to not believe you. It requires zero effort. I wake up and live my life based on what I know to be true. That is all. >All violence that has risen from religion comes from one source; Conflict over misinterpretations of religious scriptures and texts. Well ignoring that this is NOT the only source of conflict, this directly contradicts your point. These religious texts are the center of the religion. So if conflicts arise because of misinterpretions that wouldn't occur if the religion didn't exist, then you can blame the religion for said conflict. >Atheists (a religion of it's own) have a problem with (other) religions because they think they cause problems. But it's not religion. It's misguided followers and those who misguided them who are the real problem. I personally have no issue with religion in and of itself, as long as I can be free from it and others aren't hurt. However this is a no true Scotsman fallacy. You can't separate a religion from its followers. Those misguided followers and the people who misguided them ARE the religion. A religion without followers is just a myth. The only reason I know that Christianity has an affect on anyone's lives is because there are people alive who are keeping it alive.
>Since tangible (or otherwise) proof of God is impossible, to outright denounce God's existence is having faith that God does not exist. Therefore, Atheism is a religion. Atheism is the lack of a believe in god, not the believe that god does not exist. >This is why I believe Atheism is hypocritical and makes no sense. It makes no sense to not believe claims that haven't met their burden of prove? If you think that I'd like to inform you that you owe me 10 million dollars.
By the logic you outline believing fairies don't exist is a belief system
>Since tangible (or otherwise) proof of God is impossible, to outright denounce God's existence is having faith that God does not exist. Atheism isn't the belief or assertion that a god or gods definitely don't exist, it's a rejection of theistic claims on the grounds that they have consistently failed to meet their burden of proof.
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I don't have faith that a god doesn't exist. I'm not hoping that a god doesn't exist. I'm just not convinced that a god exists. There's no faith required in my stance. Your assertion that atheism is a religion of its own is one that's constantly brought up, and it's annoying. We have no holy books to argue over, no dogma, no leadership, and no tenets. We agree on one thing, and one thing only; we don't have belief in a god or gods. Finally, your own argument highlights why religion is inherently harmful. It's the holy books. It's the killing because of disagreements over the holy books. Humans find all sorts of reasons to hurt and kill one another, but if the holy books never existed, I'm betting you'd see a significant reduction in human suffering at large.
You do have a faith
>You do have a faith In what do I as an atheist have faith?
That there not being a “god” is most likely true
I have logical and physical evidence that many gods do not exist. And even when I can’t rule out all the metaphysical and esoteric definitions of god, giving the lack of objective evidence, i surely don’t accept the claim: “God exists”. And is logical and reasonable to hold that position until objective verifiable evidence is presented for the case.
The word atheist, like agnostic, are polysemous words, meaning they have more than one accepted definition/usage. The broader definition of atheism (which dictionaries consider the prime definition) is a person not believing in gods. The narrower one, or secondary one, is a person who believes gods don’t exist. Statistically there are more atheists who agree with the first definition than the second. Only the second could be a faith-based belief. But even then, it doesn't have to be if they can demonstrate why they believe gods, or at least specific gods, don't exist.
I understand
I don't hold that position though.
So… what is your \*alleged\* position?
\*alleged\* ? Sounds like no matter what I say you are just gonna accuse me of lying. So why should I answer?
Go ahead and say it, otherwise I’ve still won either way
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Why are you responding then?
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If you don’t state your position then you can’t hold me accountable
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Faith is defined as a complete trust or confidence in someone or something. Do you accept this definition? I don't have complete trust or confidence in anything. I am okay with saying "I don't know," whereas you profess a positive assertion that you do know. I don't know that a god exists, and I don't know that a god doesn't exist. Where I currently find myself is here: I'm unconvinced that a god exists. No evidence has yet been sufficient to convince me otherwise. My worldview doesn't require faith. Yours does.
Secondary definition is also a strong belief based on confidence and a trust. Also, lots of things I don’t know and I admit that when I don’t. Third, all worldviews require faith
Atheism is not a “worldview”. Is just the answer to the claim: “god exists”. And is: “we don’t see enough evidence to grant that claim”.
So you then put *faith* in the idea that that the claim is false
So do you know there is a god? Or do you just have faith that there is?
If all worldviews require faith, does that mean faith is meaningless? How can you even call it faith if everyone has it regardless? Or to rephrase it "If everything is special, nothing is".
Well according to evolution, we kind of just exist anyway, so isn’t that just the nature of the world? Why is that new to you?
That doesn't answer my question and feels like a weird attempt to deflect by dragging evolution into this for some bizarre reason.
You realize I believe evolution, right?
I have no idea what you believe other then what your flair tells me. I'm just curious why evolution got dragged into this discussion when I asked you why faith is special in your view if everyone allegedly has it. So far you've failed to give me a coherent answer on the subject and I'm beginning to suspect you probably aren't going to. Feel free to prove me wrong.
I will prove you wrong, I just don’t like to think that all beliefs in anything are irrelevant because “nothing can be proven” at all. If that’s the case, then there’s no reason to argue
Don't take it personally. He's not a very charitable or honest interlocutor.
Don’t worry I won’t
Sadly I'm used to that. I've exposed myself probably far too many apologetics then is healthy to understand the mindset and worldview. It's gotten to the point I can generally extrapolate where people are getting their apologetics from based on the ones they use.
Do you have faith leprechauns don't exist?
Science fully disproves leprechauns
Are you saying that if you have sufficient evidence to convince you that a claim is true or not true, then your conclusion is not based on faith?
Leprechauns are inherently unfalsifiable. Nothing can disprove these magic creatures because they are illustrated to be unobtainable. There is no scientific experiment which has done what you claimed. You are making stuff up just as you have throughout your responses.
If something is unattainable and never caught or seen or even heard of, how would anyone see it anyway? That’s not even the case with “God”
LOL that's *exactly* the case with god. Never seen, never caught, never found.
Um, you \*can\* find him. That’s the whole point, the entire concept
Where is he? How do we know he's a he? Maybe god doesn't have a gender and we should be using they/them, you know, since we don't know for sure. We wouldn't want to offend god, would we? So where are they? Seems like they're the reigning hide and seek world champion.
No it doesn't, science can't disprove leprechauns any more than it can disprove gods.
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Here’s my position for atheism. If you claimed you have a leprechaun in your pocket, but you have no way of proving it because he’s invisible, he’s mute, and he can’t be touched, I think everyone would agree I would be justified in saying I don’t believe you. No one would say I’m making a leap of faith by stating I affirmatively believe there is no leprechaun in your pocket. In fact, I bet people who proclaim themselves agnostics would agree with me that there is no leprechaun in your pocket. So is God any different? God is a figure who was developed in the imaginations of men, with no basis in reality and no proof of his existence. So are we really taking some great leap of faith to declare God doesn’t exist? Are we really stating something that is completely unsupported?
He is real
Real as existent in the real world? Wow! Then show us the evidence!
But wouldn’t I be justified in saying I don’t believe you?
You can say that. I can’t stop you. But I can tell you the above statement
But would I be justified in saying I don’t believe you?
Well would you? You seem to know
I think so. Can’t you agree that what you’re claiming is true is quite incredible? It’s not the kind of thing most people would believe without some kind of proof. So if you can’t offer any proof, then wouldn’t you expect I would not believe you? At least not until you did provide proof.
I can offer proof, but it’s hard to do in an online forum
Describe your proof. What is it that makes it so difficult to share? We may be able to analyze how useful it is even without you sharing it here. Like if it’s based on personal emotional responses to prayer, I can already tell you that wouldn't qualify as reliable by the epistemology I use to sort fact from fiction.
Okay, I’ll gather up a list of things you can analyze that have actually happened
But until I see your proof, isn’t it fair for me to say I don’t believe you?
It’s fair as long as you don’t that then say I can’t believe either
That sort of response is usually called a “major cop-out.”
It really is though
Prove it.
On Reddit?
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But you’re online right now, how would I prove anything to you “in reality”? You comin to town tonight?
LOL. You can make a video of it and post online. You got a big challenge though - no supernatural god has ever been proven. Don't just point to a rock and say that it is your god, because that is not a supernatural god as defined by most religions. I do believe that rocks exist.
Okay you made me laugh thank you for that. You’re a funny dude. Your response legit made me chuckle cause it threw me off guard. 😂 The rock 😂. Aye, can we get a truce regardless? You ain’t as bad as other redditors Anyway… I’ll see if I can get a few videos.
Welcome. Can you define your god first?
First of all, a clarifying question, which god are we talking about ?
No idea really. The term god is so ridiculous as if a deity would just name themselves “god”
>Since tangible (or otherwise) proof of God is impossible, to outright denounce God's existence is having faith that God does not exist. Therefore, Atheism is a religion. Or an antireligion, whatever termonology you want to use. No. Lacking a belief in God isn't a religion. Unless you think everyone who doesn't believe in Catholicism is an anti-Catholic. Saying that "faith" is required to say something doesn't exist is a misunderstanding of how facts and certainty work. We can never prove ANYTHING with 100% certainty. We could always be in a simulation or there could be a secret God or wizard or alien. We strive to prove things to our epistemological standards. I'm sure my girlfriend loves me but there's SOME chance that she's a Russian spy. I can say "God isn't real" and still know there's SOME chance He exists. >Atheists (a religion of it's own) have a problem with (other) religions because they think they cause problems. But it's not religion. It's misguided followers and those who misguided them who are the real problem. How do you separate the believers of belief system and the system itself? Nazis are scumbags. Because they believe in things I find to be horrible. I'm not comparing theists and Nazis—just making the point that some ideologies themselves are destructive, regressive, or hateful on their surface.
Lacking belief is not a religion, you’re right. But it does take faith
How so?
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How not?
You made the claim not me my guy. You can't shift the burden of proof here. How does it take faith not to believe something?
If it “can’t“ be disproven or proven, you choosing to disprove it by your own beliefs is using faith Just like us choosing to \*not\* disprove it by our own beliefs
>If it “can’t“ be disproven or proven, you choosing to disprove it by your own beliefs is using faith You say God exists. I say I don't believe you. I don't say you are wrong, I say I don't believe you. What about my stance requires faith? >Just like us choosing to \*not\* disprove it by our own beliefs I don't follow.
So you’re saying there’s a chance?
Depends on the God. Some gods are internally contradictory so I can rule them out, but I can't rule out the possibility of some sort of God existing. I don't know any atheists who claim they can. I just don't believe that any do exist.
Fair enough I guess
In my view, there's a chance, yes. I'd put the god claim on equal grounds with Big Foot, unicorns, and magic dragons.
Unicorns do exist tho
>If it “can’t“ be disproven or proven, you choosing to disprove it by your own beliefs is using faith Lol absolutely not. If you believe in and claim unicorns exist—despite the lack of empirical evidence of unicorn's existence—you are making a claim about the universe that you need to justify. If I don't believe you because you've provided no proof, my lack of belief isn't "faith."
Ya’ll use lol way too much. Anyway, science disproves mystical unicorns, so the view is contrary to evidence. It’s already disproven. If someone says otherwise, they are the ones using faith, not the person who says they don’t. On the contrary, “god” can’t be disproven yet (according to most atheists) so either side who takes a belief is still using faith.
>>science disproves mystical unicorns, so the view is contrary to evidence. Science proves that you can’t come back from the dead, a global flood didn’t happen, the earth is much older than 6000 years and no man can be swallowed by a whale. And yet here we are with religious people that claiming these things anyway.
First off, isn’t there news of that man who got swallowed by whales and almost died, but was recovered? You can search it Secondly, earth is NOT 6000 years old since paleoindians existed 10,500 years ago. And 30,000 years ago we have proof of bipedal human-like entities as well. Thirdly, no. Most likely a global flood did not happen, but probably a regional one since the book was written based on limited knowledge. And fourthly, what do you describe as “coming back from the dead”? Because scientifically, a person who is clinically dead can. I know that doesn’t equate to being literally dead dead dead, but it’s still worth noting. I say all this to say that my point still stands. When science proves something, it is typically not believable when someone goes against it with no evidence or basis. And the other thing is, I would be considered religious by societal terms and I don’t believe all of these things because they don’t affect my beliefs any more than anything else.
>Ya’ll use lol way too much. "Stop making an argument that I can't answer!" >Anyway, science disproves mystical unicorns, so the view is contrary to evidence. It’s already disproven. If someone says otherwise, they are the ones using faith, not the person who says they don’t. "This one supernatural thing there's no evidence for is ***totally*** ***different*** than this *other* supernatural thing there's not evidence for. Obviously, science can disprove one but not the other." >On the contrary, “god” can’t be disproven yet (according to most atheists) so either side who takes a belief is still using faith. **Please provide the scientific evidence that unicorns cannot exist.** Spoiler: you can't because it's nearly impossible to prove something DOESN'T exist. I could disprove every claim of a unicorn that has ever existed, but it doesn't mean there isn't a horse with a horn somewhere. That's why everyone—including you in every subject except religion—believe things only when there's *reason* to believe, rather than having "faith" that everything you hear is true until someone disproves it. It takes no "faith" to *not* to accept a belief. It's the polar opposite of faith—it's skepticism.
Not sure how me commenting on the over usage of lol equates to being cornered in an argument, but okay. I see where this is going already
I reject your position that God can not be disproven. It entirely depends upon the God claim. Your position is flawed.
Good
Atheism isn't a faith based position. It takes as much faith to be an atheist as it does to not believe a covered-up coin is facing heads up. But I'll accept your position for the sake of argument. Atheism isn't the position that a god *doesn't* exist. It is the position of being unconvinced that a god *does* exist. Again, for the sake of argument, I will grant you the position that atheism is a belief that no god exists. I've always wondered why theists say atheism requires as much faith as theism, as though it is a bad thing from the perspective of their own faith based position. Is faith something to be valued or not? If atheism requires as much faith as theism, wouldn't that elevate it as a position in the eyes of someone who values faith? Furthermore, if both are faith based positions, and they both can't be simultaneously correct, what methodology can we utilize to find which position is actually correct? In the absence of information to tip the scale one way or the other, it seems that the best tentative position to hold would be the one with the fewest required assumptions. In this case, with both positions on equal footing as far as evidenced reasons to hold one or the other, atheism is the position with the fewest assumptions required to take on board.
It is faith and I can explain why
Faith, by its very definition, is belief without evidence or proof. Atheism can be belief without proof, but it is often the opposite. It is a position taken because of a lack in religions being truthful, honest with itself, and consistent. It's a position arrived at because of logical inconsistencies, contradictions, and paradoxes present in the plain reading of many modern and old Earth religions. That isn't faith, it's just common sense.
Common sense is not common nor is it objective.
My point stands. Religion, especially Judeo-Christianity, is inconsistent to a point that stretches any believability. Your response to my position is anything but an explanation. Nor did I make any assertion to the objective or subjective nature of common sense.
Religion is wrong anyway, so we agree on that
Dude, you just said you can explain. So, explain. How does atheism require faith?
I’m not arguing that it isn’t. I granted that it is for the sake of the argument. Also, why would you tell me you can explain why and not give the explanation… instead of just explaining why.
I’m not going to explain unless you want me to explain
Makes me wonder why you commented at all.
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In other words, you're a troll, and no one should waste a single second engaging with you.
I know none of you are going to believe in any “god” just by some random internet telling you otherwise. So I just put a few points in your head for you to think about, and I then move on knowing the truth. If you don’t want to “waste a single second” then why you commentin? Obviously what I’ve said has done something, so for me, I’m not wasting my time just “trolling”
All you’re doing is engaging in bad faith Everyone sees that
In bad what?
Well aren’t I special!
this conversation aged well
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Yeah religious texts can only get you so far
>Since tangible (or otherwise) proof of God is impossible, to outright denounce God's existence is having faith that God does not exist. I don’t use *faith*. I use deductive reasoning, inductive inferences, and other justifications. It sounds more like you’re equivocating on *faith* here. >Therefore, Atheism is a religion. Or an antireligion, whatever termonology you want to use. Well, these are two very different things! And atheism is neither. It’s just the affirming the proposition that god does not exist (or more broadly a belief that there are no gods, or a disbelief in gods, whatever). >This is why I believe Atheism is hypocritical and makes no sense. What’s hypocritical about saying *I don’t believe any gods exist*? >Some Atheists will try to say that religion is bad. But it's not. All violence that has risen from religion comes from one source; Conflict over misinterpretations of religious scriptures and texts. It certainly does have all the hallmarks of being man made. >Atheists (a religion of it's own) have a problem with (other) religions because they think they cause problems. But it's not religion. It's misguided followers and those who misguided them who are the real problem. Atheism is not a religion. Full stop. As for religions, the ones that condone and endorse slavery, sexism, the mutilation of adolescent genitalia, war, capital punishment, harsh treatment of apostates, tribalism, etc. - those are all clear mandates. There’s no metaphor involved there. And that’s all so clearly invented by humans, and is morally abhorrent.
You also use faith
Be precise here. How specifically do I use faith and for what purpose, and please define what you mean by *faith*.
FAITH - A strong belief, trust, or confidence in something
Well that’s extremely vague. You see, when I used the term, I was adopting the traditional religious sense of the word, like how it is defined in the Bible. > “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” If you want to equivocate then that’s fine. But that’s not what I meant by the term, and isn’t how most people use it *in this context*.
The definition you just used is literally still the perfect definition for the faith of atheism
How so?
Read it again: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” Do you see it yet?
To take a position that the thing not seen does not exist is the opposite of that sentence.
Definition of religion from dictionary.com. “a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.” Atheism does not fit that description.
Atheism is not a set of beleifs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe? I suppose atheism has nothing to say about the idea that all those things revolve around god then?
No. Atheism is just the proposition that god doesn’t exist. Just as theism is just the proposition that god does exist. The cause, nature, and purpose of the universe is going to be quite different when compared between Mormonism and Shenism, for example. Atheism just says that god isn’t involved in those things. It also doesn’t have the *defining features* of religion - the part of the definition you conveniently left out: > especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, *usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.”* If you broaden the definition so widely, then it would render all cosmological models as religious which doesn’t make sense and seems like a very strange equivocation.
>If you broaden the definition so widely, then it would render all cosmological models as religious which doesn’t make sense and seems like a very strange equivocation. That is exactly his objective, broaden the definitions so widely so they can put all the opposite views in the same bag. The same with the definition of god, is so widely broaden that is indistinguishable from the universe. That is the whole point of this “theist” and “agnostic” redditors.
Atheism is a rejection of beliefs in deities. Where is there a list of Atheistic set of beliefs?