Yep, agree totally.
What exactly is atheism? (offshoot of same sex thread)
- Thread starter Monkey Turned Wolf
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Yep, agree totally.
celtic_crippler
Senior Master
How is that remotely related or pertinent to anything I've posted?
Well… Oh yeah? Bacon!
It was a while ago, but you posted the following where it appeared you attempted to connect martyrdom with the 'good without god' ads.
You seem interested in this topic, what are your thoughts? What is your background if you don't mind me asking?
celtic_crippler
Senior Master
Ah... the point was that people of religion aren’t the only one’s good at playing the martyr. Many self professed atheists would sooner die than change their beliefs and now they have formed a union (a church) with which to share their message with the world. LOL
I personally feel that spirituality is a uniquely personal journey that one must take on their own and those that try to push their religious agenda (be it in favor of a God or against) are merely attempting to seek justification for their beliefs.
Either that or they have a political agenda which is dangerous.
It's fairly simple. We're really not that different from you. You know how, as a Lutheran, you don't believe in Odin, Isis, Demeter, Ganesh, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or hundreds of other deities? We just disbelieve in one more deity than you do. Statistically speaking, we only disbelieve about .01% more than you do.
That's about all the commonality you'll find among atheists. Some atheists are former believers, some are not. Some feel that religion has something to offer on questions of morality, some do not. A small minority are actively opposed to religion, but for most it just isn't something that we see any particular reason to believe in, any more than we have reason to believe in purple unicorns who live on Mars.
CC said: "I personally feel that spirituality is a uniquely personal journey that one must take on their own and those that try to push their religious agenda (be it in favour of a God or against) are merely attempting to seek justification for their beliefs."
I concur. I have no problem with anyone having spiritual beliefs that, in the end for most faiths, boil down to "Be nice to each other". When it gets to "Except for those over there because they don't believe the same as us" I have a problem but for most ordinary people that is not the situation that ever arises. My objections lie in the actions of the hierarchies in control of the power of organised religions rather than with the individuals who hold faith.
For decades I was an agnostic, willing to be swayed either way on the God(s) Question if a good argument or, lord above {}, some proof came along. These days I classify myself as atheist, having had enough of the origin of the universe and of life explained rationally for me not to require a 'God of the Gaps' to fill in where reason and experimentation have not yet reached. Similarly, again with the "for me" proviso, I do not have a need for a religion or a deity to encourage and enforce my innate drive to be morally 'good' rather than 'evil'.
So, what I 'believe in' as an atheist would not be all that distinguishable from what some other (hopefully) essentially good person believes who also happens to believe in a creator deity. Mankind is capable of both great compassion and great vileness, great creativity and great destruction, nobility and baseness are within most of us simultaneously and which holds sway over a person is a matter of conscience, empathy and self-awareness.
I concur. I have no problem with anyone having spiritual beliefs that, in the end for most faiths, boil down to "Be nice to each other". When it gets to "Except for those over there because they don't believe the same as us" I have a problem but for most ordinary people that is not the situation that ever arises. My objections lie in the actions of the hierarchies in control of the power of organised religions rather than with the individuals who hold faith.
For decades I was an agnostic, willing to be swayed either way on the God(s) Question if a good argument or, lord above {
}, some proof came along. These days I classify myself as atheist, having had enough of the origin of the universe and of life explained rationally for me not to require a 'God of the Gaps' to fill in where reason and experimentation have not yet reached. Similarly, again with the "for me" proviso, I do not have a need for a religion or a deity to encourage and enforce my innate drive to be morally 'good' rather than 'evil'.So, what I 'believe in' as an atheist would not be all that distinguishable from what some other (hopefully) essentially good person believes who also happens to believe in a creator deity. Mankind is capable of both great compassion and great vileness, great creativity and great destruction, nobility and baseness are within most of us simultaneously and which holds sway over a person is a matter of conscience, empathy and self-awareness.
Where do you keep running in to these fringe atheists that are nothing like the ones I know? All the ones I know change their understanding of the world based on the changing evidence available. Seems more much more rational and less dangerous than relying on mystical writings or behaving in ways demanded of Zeus or any other equivalents.
You seem to have confused atheists with evangelical crusaders against religion. As a guess, I'd say no more than 1 in 1000 of the former fall into the latter category.
BTW - if you know someone who is blaming God for something that happened to them, then they aren't an atheist. How can you blame someone who you don't believe exists? Getting angry at God for ones tribulations is the province of believers. (Some atheists may blame the human representatives of a religion for their words and actions, but that is a very different thing.)
Xue Sheng
All weight is underside
actually I think it would be an Anti-evangelical crusaders against religion becasue I think an evangelical crusaders against religion would be an awfully confused person
punisher73
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For me the easiest way I have defined them is...
Religion/Spiritual: There is something eternal about us and where we came from
Agnostic: There MAY be something eternal about us and where we came from, we just don't know
Atheist: There is nothing eternal about us or where we came from, we are a biological product and will end as such
Like ALL beliefs, you will have some that come through the choice by different roads; whether through their own introspection and study or through a bad experience and will take the opposite belief as a defense mechanism of sorts. You will also have some that keep their beliefs to themselves or share when asked and you will have those that think that EVERYONE must think the same way that they do. You can't really label the behavior of the belief system in these cases.
Religion/Spiritual: There is something eternal about us and where we came from
Agnostic: There MAY be something eternal about us and where we came from, we just don't know
Atheist: There is nothing eternal about us or where we came from, we are a biological product and will end as such
Like ALL beliefs, you will have some that come through the choice by different roads; whether through their own introspection and study or through a bad experience and will take the opposite belief as a defense mechanism of sorts. You will also have some that keep their beliefs to themselves or share when asked and you will have those that think that EVERYONE must think the same way that they do. You can't really label the behavior of the belief system in these cases.
Atheism isn't a belief. :ultracool
I'm an athiest. When I was in college I was a lot more vocal about it than I am now, nowadays it is pretty much live and let live, unless I see harm from the practice, and most of the time I don't. My mother-in-law is a now-retired Episcopalian minister, we get along just fine.
My parents weren't particularly religious, my mom was raised Shinto-Buddhist but pretty much dropped it when she came to the States, my dad was a "bad" Jew, and played pool rather than going to Hebrew school so never got a bar-mitzvah. Both are incredibly moral people. They raised me on morals not based on a specific religous guideline, but rather very much by the Golden Rule, you know something like "therefore all things whatsoever would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them". They never told me to believe in a god or not to, they even sent me to some Christian denominations Sunday school and church so I could get the experience.
I raise my kids the same way, my wife isn't very religious, but I think she enjoys the community of the Church, so she still participates and my son goes to Church with my mother-in-law. My son has been making some pretty funny comparisons between God and superheroes, I have sort of struggled on how to respond to that.
My parents weren't particularly religious, my mom was raised Shinto-Buddhist but pretty much dropped it when she came to the States, my dad was a "bad" Jew, and played pool rather than going to Hebrew school so never got a bar-mitzvah. Both are incredibly moral people. They raised me on morals not based on a specific religous guideline, but rather very much by the Golden Rule, you know something like "therefore all things whatsoever would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them". They never told me to believe in a god or not to, they even sent me to some Christian denominations Sunday school and church so I could get the experience.
I raise my kids the same way, my wife isn't very religious, but I think she enjoys the community of the Church, so she still participates and my son goes to Church with my mother-in-law. My son has been making some pretty funny comparisons between God and superheroes, I have sort of struggled on how to respond to that.
Can you elaborate on this? From what I've read in your posts here on MT, you are fairly judgmental. Not that I think there is anything wrong with that, I like having differing opinion to the people around me. But you also seem to like the confrontational side of things as well, so what you type is not necessarily what your thinking.
Your belief is internal based?
(MT is a good forum for discussion, it gets heated, but people don't generally troll, or get offended.)
I'm an athiest. When I was in college I was a lot more vocal about it than I am now, nowadays it is pretty much live and let live, unless I see harm from the practice, and most of the time I don't. My mother-in-law is a now-retired Episcopalian minister, we get along just fine.
My parents weren't particularly religious, my mom was raised Shinto-Buddhist but pretty much dropped it when she came to the States, my dad was a "bad" Jew, and played pool rather than going to Hebrew school so never got a bar-mitzvah. Both are incredibly moral people. They raised me on morals not based on a specific religous guideline, but rather very much by the Golden Rule, you know something like "therefore all things whatsoever would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them". They never told me to believe in a god or not to, they even sent me to some Christian denominations Sunday school and church so I could get the experience.
I raise my kids the same way, my wife isn't very religious, but I think she enjoys the community of the Church, so she still participates and my son goes to Church with my mother-in-law. My son has been making some pretty funny comparisons between God and superheroes, I have sort of struggled on how to respond to that.
Nice, my older son plays with children from Jewish, Christian and Buddhist background at school. (International School, and "non-believers")
He comes home and asks many questions about the gods, the kids between them really like the idea of living through re-incarnation, hanukkah, Christmas and living in nirvana. I tell him about what I know of the faiths, and he tells me a lot. When he asks me if I believe in god I tell him. But I also tell him to think for himself and find whats right for him.
I'm an athiest. When I was in college I was a lot more vocal about it than I am now, nowadays it is pretty much live and let live, unless I see harm from the practice, and most of the time I don't. My mother-in-law is a now-retired Episcopalian minister, we get along just fine.
My parents weren't particularly religious, my mom was raised Shinto-Buddhist but pretty much dropped it when she came to the States, my dad was a "bad" Jew, and played pool rather than going to Hebrew school so never got a bar-mitzvah. Both are incredibly moral people. They raised me on morals not based on a specific religous guideline, but rather very much by the Golden Rule, you know something like "therefore all things whatsoever would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them". They never told me to believe in a god or not to, they even sent me to some Christian denominations Sunday school and church so I could get the experience.
I raise my kids the same way, my wife isn't very religious, but I think she enjoys the community of the Church, so she still participates and my son goes to Church with my mother-in-law. My son has been making some pretty funny comparisons between God and superheroes, I have sort of struggled on how to respond to that.
Being Jewish complicates things as you can have athiest jews, agnostic Jews and even Catholic, Buddhist or any other religious Jews,all of which I've known of. Being Jewish is also a racial grouping, legally recognised in many countries including mine. We just like to complicate things.
On a personal note, Jews get their Bar Mitzvah when they reach 13, there isn't any requirement for a ceremony (many people like one), the rights and obligations are automatically conferred on reaching 13. However if your father felt he wanted a ceremony he still can. A Bar Mitzvah isn't the point of what you called Hebrew school, it's not a graduation or anything like that.
At this point I don't think he really cares. Actually in talking with my grandmother (his mother), it is apparent that her education on the Jewish faith wasn't exactly thorough either. Her explanation of the Passover was sort of hilarious as was her explanation of why potato pancakes were a traditional Hannukah food.
I didn't realize that the Bar Mitzvah happened without the ceremony, mostly I associate the parties that accompanied my (several) friend's Bar Mitzvahs with the first several times I danced with a girl and all the confusion that that brings.
celtic_crippler
Senior Master
I'm definately opinionated. I've never denied that.
One can not prove or disprove the existance of God at this point in time. Therefore, it requires faith. Either faith that there is a higher intelligence or faith that there is not.
Many people have doubts; therefore, they seek justification for their beliefs. Often by seeking others with simlar beliefs or by attempting to convert others to their particular belief system.
Understand?
