Do atheists fancy themselves as nonconformists?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

But just because I as an individual don't believe in god or gods doesn't suggest I need to be anti-religion. By far the vast majority of atheists aren't simply people who don't believe in god(s). They are people who are vitriolic in their opposition to religion, specifically the organized kind, and usually focused on Christianity (perhaps because America has lots of Christians).

There are lots of terms coined by Greeks that have a different usage in English. Most atheists absolutely hate religion with a passion. That's far beyond merely disbelief in god. They hate the institution of religion. But hating religion has nothing to do with being "without god." I can be "without god" and not care at all about what someone else believes.

Most atheists are struggling with spiritual issues and going around in circles because they're trying to find a logical answer for why we exist, and that's not going to happen. Since you brought up greek, think Aristotle, "first cause." Science just gives us an infinite regress to the Big Bang and "undefined" before that, which isn't particularly satisfying to be told there is no first cause. People who believe in god believe god is the first cause. Atheists, they're still not going to find any answers in the rejection of someone else's answer (god).

At least religion tries to answer the question "Why do we exist?" That's what religion really is, an attempt to answer why we exist in something other than a purely materialistic or mechanistic clockwork result of the random collision of trillions of atoms over billions of years. If all we are is a bunch of randomly aggregated atoms it's kind of hard to inject much ultimate meaning in our lives, and we're all looking for meaning, even atheists, even if they don't want to admit it.

It's fun to mock people who bake Jesus Cakes and so forth but atheists tend to attack very easy targets, that is, "religion" in its most insanely literalist, simplistic version, as a set of arbitrary rules of behavior supported by authority figures relying on a false mythology of fairy tales of super powerful supernaturalistic beings. When viewed in that light of course it's easy to make religion look silly.

Go outside and look up at the Milky Way on a really dark evening away from the city lights and as far as I'm concerned that's a miracle. The fact that I as a human being, a small piece of protoplasm, has self awareness and consciousness enough to on some level be aware of my little place in a vastly greater whole, the Universe, where did all this come from? A miracle. Some attribute it to "god" but it doesn't matter what you call it. Let that sink in, calm your mind, remove the rationalizations and intellectualizations and other b.s., and if you're honest with yourself you at least have to give consideration to the possibility that maybe we don't know all the answers, maybe we never can, and maybe we never can get close.

So it's inherently spiritually, psychologically and emotionally unsatisfactory to say "my answer to the miracle of existence is that your belief in a superbeing called god is nonsense." You've refuted the superbeing mythology, perhaps, but you haven't come any closer to answering the fundamental question. Science doesn't satisfactorily answer the question either since it's not meant to answer that question. Science answers "what is" but not "why do we exist"? (Existentially speaking).

That's why I think most atheists come off as angry and frustrated. Refuting someone else's beliefs isn't a belief and doesn't fulfill a human being's emotional/psychological/spiritual need to impose some semblance of order and meaning and understanding on the randomness of the universe.

If life is meaningless then I'll still win the argument by kicking you in the nuts. Since life is meaningless, you can't complain if I kick you in the nuts.

Um....who's the vitriolic one here, PP?

This reminds me of my philosophy classes in college (I am a major). We had to take several introductory classes, of course, along with the more advanced stuff. And of course, in the introductory classes, there was always someone who would make a comment like, "But if God is real and good, HOW could he allow bad stuff to happen?" Always delivered with a look of smugness. You got the sense that they felt that they were the one genius in the room, the vanguard who was able to see past the garbage and actually ask the question no one else had thought of or struggled with.

It was always funny, for me, to see the pained look of the philosophy professors when some such student would begin in on their diatribe. You could see their eyes begin to take on a glazed, slightly somatic look, just waiting for them to go through the lines they had heard a million times before.

Of course, anyone who has taken anything above a basic philosophy class could tell you that, when you start to unravel religious knowledge and really get down into the muck, and really get into the intricacies of it, "You can't prove it" seems almost ridiculously simply to the point of absurdity.

Anyway, the atheists on DCUM remind me of the philosophy 101 kids.

[Anonymous]

Pp who keeps talking about what "most atheists" think and do, be honest... do you know any nonbelievers IRL? Ones who you would feel comfortable talking to? Because if you are really looking to understand, not just troll and call atheists nonconformists/state who you don't care about, you might want to take your inquiries offline and try a human-to-human discussion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oh PP, if an atheist is vitriolic in their opposition to religion it's only because we have watched religion destroy countless lives. There's justification. Heaps and heaps of justification. It's a negative force in the aggregate. Sure, it gave my grandmother peace when she died, but I don't consider that a good enough reason for all the other shit it does.

Drugs destroy lots of lives. You don't call yourself an "Anti Druggite."

Earthquakes destroy lots of lives. You don't call yourself an "Anti Earthquakeite."

Heart disease destroys lots of lives. You don't call yourself an "AntiHeartDiseaseite."

All being an atheist means, according to that greek definition, is that you don't believe in god. NOT that you're opposed to religion generally as held by others due to the destruction you claim it's caused. That's completely different, that's political. Atheists by the precise greek definition shouldn't have any position one way or the other on what other people choose to believe nor any outrage over the damage those beliefs might cause. That's not atheism per se. It is, however, what almost every atheist who bothers to call themselves an atheist actually believes and advocates for--"anti religion."

[Anonymous]

YOUR life might be meaningless without your faith, but that doesn't mean my life without faith is meaningless. I find it sad and uncreative that you have put so much thought and guesswork into defining us, yet you are stuck within the parameters of your faith so it's just more of the same preaching that turns people away from the churches.

+10000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

But just because I as an individual don't believe in god or gods doesn't suggest I need to be anti-religion. By far the vast majority of atheists aren't simply people who don't believe in god(s). They are people who are vitriolic in their opposition to religion, specifically the organized kind, and usually focused on Christianity (perhaps because America has lots of Christians).

There are lots of terms coined by Greeks that have a different usage in English. Most atheists absolutely hate religion with a passion. That's far beyond merely disbelief in god. They hate the institution of religion. But hating religion has nothing to do with being "without god." I can be "without god" and not care at all about what someone else believes.

Most atheists are struggling with spiritual issues and going around in circles because they're trying to find a logical answer for why we exist, and that's not going to happen. Since you brought up greek, think Aristotle, "first cause." Science just gives us an infinite regress to the Big Bang and "undefined" before that, which isn't particularly satisfying to be told there is no first cause. People who believe in god believe god is the first cause. Atheists, they're still not going to find any answers in the rejection of someone else's answer (god).

At least religion tries to answer the question "Why do we exist?" That's what religion really is, an attempt to answer why we exist in something other than a purely materialistic or mechanistic clockwork result of the random collision of trillions of atoms over billions of years. If all we are is a bunch of randomly aggregated atoms it's kind of hard to inject much ultimate meaning in our lives, and we're all looking for meaning, even atheists, even if they don't want to admit it.

It's fun to mock people who bake Jesus Cakes and so forth but atheists tend to attack very easy targets, that is, "religion" in its most insanely literalist, simplistic version, as a set of arbitrary rules of behavior supported by authority figures relying on a false mythology of fairy tales of super powerful supernaturalistic beings. When viewed in that light of course it's easy to make religion look silly.

Go outside and look up at the Milky Way on a really dark evening away from the city lights and as far as I'm concerned that's a miracle. The fact that I as a human being, a small piece of protoplasm, has self awareness and consciousness enough to on some level be aware of my little place in a vastly greater whole, the Universe, where did all this come from? A miracle. Some attribute it to "god" but it doesn't matter what you call it. Let that sink in, calm your mind, remove the rationalizations and intellectualizations and other b.s., and if you're honest with yourself you at least have to give consideration to the possibility that maybe we don't know all the answers, maybe we never can, and maybe we never can get close.

So it's inherently spiritually, psychologically and emotionally unsatisfactory to say "my answer to the miracle of existence is that your belief in a superbeing called god is nonsense." You've refuted the superbeing mythology, perhaps, but you haven't come any closer to answering the fundamental question. Science doesn't satisfactorily answer the question either since it's not meant to answer that question. Science answers "what is" but not "why do we exist"? (Existentially speaking).

That's why I think most atheists come off as angry and frustrated. Refuting someone else's beliefs isn't a belief and doesn't fulfill a human being's emotional/psychological/spiritual need to impose some semblance of order and meaning and understanding on the randomness of the universe.

If life is meaningless then I'll still win the argument by kicking you in the nuts. Since life is meaningless, you can't complain if I kick you in the nuts.

Um....who's the vitriolic one here, PP?

This reminds me of my philosophy classes in college (I am a major). We had to take several introductory classes, of course, along with the more advanced stuff. And of course, in the introductory classes, there was always someone who would make a comment like, "But if God is real and good, HOW could he allow bad stuff to happen?" Always delivered with a look of smugness. You got the sense that they felt that they were the one genius in the room, the vanguard who was able to see past the garbage and actually ask the question no one else had thought of or struggled with.

It was always funny, for me, to see the pained look of the philosophy professors when some such student would begin in on their diatribe. You could see their eyes begin to take on a glazed, slightly somatic look, just waiting for them to go through the lines they had heard a million times before.

Of course, anyone who has taken anything above a basic philosophy class could tell you that, when you start to unravel religious knowledge and really get down into the muck, and really get into the intricacies of it, "You can't prove it" seems almost ridiculously simply to the point of absurdity.

Anyway, the atheists on DCUM remind me of the philosophy 101 kids.

A major fibber, or just a major pain in the arse

[Anonymous]

No, you got Aristotle, or more exactly his follower Saint Thomas Aquinas, wrong. When he spoke of first causes, he meant ontological first causes, not temporal ones. St. Thomas did not think that it was philosophically provable that God did not create the universe from eternity. The Big Bang has nothing to do with it. Descartes claimed to have proven God exists, but his proof was refuted by Kant. Whether Kant's refutation refutes St. Anselm's proof is another matter because Anselm never actually claimed to have proved God's existence, he merely claimed to have proved that it was impossible to believe God does not exist. No one has ever really refuted his argument. Some say Kant did but many philosophers disagree. In any case I'm an atheist. When a very Catholic judge for whom I clerked found out, he said he would have to fire me. He relented, but I always had his animosity even though he said my work was first rate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP: Yes of course atheists fancy themselves non-conformists even if they keep their atheism to themselves. The whole point of labeling onesself "atheist" is to set ones self apart as a discriminated against minority.

There's no need for the label "atheist" if someone doesn't believe in God, because non-belief is an absence. "Atheist" implies someone who doesn't just not believe in God, but is "anti-religion." Atheists contradict their own definition since atheism is a lack of belief, yet most atheists spend an awful lot of time telling other people what they don't believe in.

Boom goes the dynamite. You just summed it all up

Should you not blame the Greeks for coining the term, atheism? It means without god - or gods in the Greeks' case.

So I find it odd that you would blast us for the label we didn't create. Or would you prefer we had the term eliminated from the dictionary?

I think the dynamite was a dud this round.

But just because I as an individual don't believe in god or gods doesn't suggest I need to be anti-religion. By far the vast majority of atheists aren't simply people who don't believe in god(s). They are people who are vitriolic in their opposition to religion, specifically the organized kind, and usually focused on Christianity (perhaps because America has lots of Christians).

There are lots of terms coined by Greeks that have a different usage in English. Most atheists absolutely hate religion with a passion. That's far beyond merely disbelief in god. They hate the institution of religion. But hating religion has nothing to do with being "without god." I can be "without god" and not care at all about what someone else believes.

Most atheists are struggling with spiritual issues and going around in circles because they're trying to find a logical answer for why we exist, and that's not going to happen. Since you brought up greek, think Aristotle, "first cause." Science just gives us an infinite regress to the Big Bang and "undefined" before that, which isn't particularly satisfying to be told there is no first cause. People who believe in god believe god is the first cause. Atheists, they're still not going to find any answers in the rejection of someone else's answer (god).

At least religion tries to answer the question "Why do we exist?" That's what religion really is, an attempt to answer why we exist in something other than a purely materialistic or mechanistic clockwork result of the random collision of trillions of atoms over billions of years. If all we are is a bunch of randomly aggregated atoms it's kind of hard to inject much ultimate meaning in our lives, and we're all looking for meaning, even atheists, even if they don't want to admit it.

It's fun to mock people who bake Jesus Cakes and so forth but atheists tend to attack very easy targets, that is, "religion" in its most insanely literalist, simplistic version, as a set of arbitrary rules of behavior supported by authority figures relying on a false mythology of fairy tales of super powerful supernaturalistic beings. When viewed in that light of course it's easy to make religion look silly.

Go outside and look up at the Milky Way on a really dark evening away from the city lights and as far as I'm concerned that's a miracle. The fact that I as a human being, a small piece of protoplasm, has self awareness and consciousness enough to on some level be aware of my little place in a vastly greater whole, the Universe, where did all this come from? A miracle. Some attribute it to "god" but it doesn't matter what you call it. Let that sink in, calm your mind, remove the rationalizations and intellectualizations and other b.s., and if you're honest with yourself you at least have to give consideration to the possibility that maybe we don't know all the answers, maybe we never can, and maybe we never can get close.

So it's inherently spiritually, psychologically and emotionally unsatisfactory to say "my answer to the miracle of existence is that your belief in a superbeing called god is nonsense." You've refuted the superbeing mythology, perhaps, but you haven't come any closer to answering the fundamental question. Science doesn't satisfactorily answer the question either since it's not meant to answer that question. Science answers "what is" but not "why do we exist"? (Existentially speaking).

That's why I think most atheists come off as angry and frustrated. Refuting someone else's beliefs isn't a belief and doesn't fulfill a human being's emotional/psychological/spiritual need to impose some semblance of order and meaning and understanding on the randomness of the universe.

If life is meaningless then I'll still win the argument by kicking you in the nuts. Since life is meaningless, you can't complain if I kick you in the nuts.

YOUR life might be meaningless without your faith, but that doesn't mean my life without faith is meaningless. I find it sad and uncreative that you have put so much thought and guesswork into defining us, yet you are stuck within the parameters of your faith so it's just more of the same preaching that turns people away from the churches.

But you just contradicted yourself, didn't you?

You claim to have life without faith--whatever you think "faith" means--yet you think your life isn't meaningless.

The "meaning" you think your life supposedly has is just your arbitrary overlay of your mind attempting to recognize patterns whether or not there is actually a pattern to be seen, because on an evolutionary basis, there's survival benefit in pattern recognition skills. But humans often see patterns where none exist at all.

There's no fundamental difference in your claim that you see a "meaning" in your own life, arbitrary defined by yourself, according to patterns you think you see; and that of a religious person who claims to see a "meaning" and "patterns" created by an arbitrary mental construct or organizing principle which the religious person calls "god." They are both equally superstititious or they are not.

You WANT to believe your life is not meaningless, so you declare that it has meaning. "That doesn't mean my life without faith is meaningless." "Meaning" has to come from SOMEWHERE, even if that is faith in what you believe you perceive to be meaningful. Your answer is just as arbitrary, no more and no less, than a religious person's. Your life doesn't have "meaning" just because you say it does, unless you have faith that it does. Because I guarantee you have no "scientific method" to "prove" that your life has "meaning."

Some atheist you turned out to be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pp who keeps talking about what "most atheists" think and do, be honest... do you know any nonbelievers IRL? Ones who you would feel comfortable talking to? Because if you are really looking to understand, not just troll and call atheists nonconformists/state who you don't care about, you might want to take your inquiries offline and try a human-to-human discussion.

A PP here. But the big issue I think is that most atheists aren't 'out', so going solely off the non-believers you are aware of is likely to lead to confirmation bias because of a sampling problem.

I am an atheist. I also go (sporadically) to Church with my family, have a decent level of familiarity with the bible and scripture, and have a lot of respect for the teachings of Christ as a model for how we should live in this world. It's only very recently that I've been comfortable enough to use the label atheist for myself when speaking with others, and I guarantee you that most of my acquaintances if asked would say I was a Christian.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP: Yes of course atheists fancy themselves non-conformists even if they keep their atheism to themselves. The whole point of labeling onesself "atheist" is to set ones self apart as a discriminated against minority.

There's no need for the label "atheist" if someone doesn't believe in God, because non-belief is an absence. "Atheist" implies someone who doesn't just not believe in God, but is "anti-religion." Atheists contradict their own definition since atheism is a lack of belief, yet most atheists spend an awful lot of time telling other people what they don't believe in.

Boom goes the dynamite. You just summed it all up

Should you not blame the Greeks for coining the term, atheism? It means without god - or gods in the Greeks' case.

So I find it odd that you would blast us for the label we didn't create. Or would you prefer we had the term eliminated from the dictionary?

I think the dynamite was a dud this round.

I'll take it up with the people who use their lack of religious beliefs as a cornerstone of their identity. That's what's grating.

We are not going away. And we will continue to remind you of the times you religious folks persecuted us and shamed us, all for our mere refusal to fall into line to worship the same and judge the same way you do. If that is nonconformity, so be it.

Living in the past, and seeking revenge, don't make for a particularly fulfilling life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No, you got Aristotle, or more exactly his follower Saint Thomas Aquinas, wrong. When he spoke of first causes, he meant ontological first causes, not temporal ones. St. Thomas did not think that it was philosophically provable that God did not create the universe from eternity. The Big Bang has nothing to do with it. Descartes claimed to have proven God exists, but his proof was refuted by Kant. Whether Kant's refutation refutes St. Anselm's proof is another matter because Anselm never actually claimed to have proved God's existence, he merely claimed to have proved that it was impossible to believe God does not exist. No one has ever really refuted his argument. Some say Kant did but many philosophers disagree. In any case I'm an atheist. When a very Catholic judge for whom I clerked found out, he said he would have to fire me. He relented, but I always had his animosity even though he said my work was first rate.

Actually based on what you wrote there you can't possibly be an atheist:

1. You stated that St. Anselm proved that it was impossible to believe God does not exist.
2. You stated that you believe that "no one has ever really refused his argument."
3. An atheist is someone who does not believe that God exists.
4. If 1. and 2. are true, then 3. cannot also be true--if St. Anselm proved that it was impossible to believe God does not exist, then St. Anselm proved that no one believes that God does not exist, because it is impossible for anyone to have that belief.
5. If no one can be an atheist, since St. Anselm proved that it is impossible for anyone to believe that God does not exist, then you can not be an atheist, either.

Q.E.D.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm an atheist because I fancy myself smart.

Funny, I find some atheists to be absolute and rigid in their atheism. While many people of faith, at least those who aren't afraid to question their doctrine and faith, have grappled with ambiguity and nuance--to me that requires intelligence.

Of course, there are smart and dumb posters on both sides. There are some atheists here I admire, like the ones exchanging notes on philosophy.

On a more prosaic note, there are two atheists on DCUM who seem just (sorry) dumb, and this pair seems to be responsible for stirring up much of the antagonism towards atheists on DCUM. These two seem to work in tandem, they think the height of sophisticated discussion is to challenge somebody's reading comprehension and call them names, and then when you get irritated they say, "I think I've weakened your faith, huh, huh?" No, you're acting like a 10-year-old and I just want you to get out of the way so I can talk to the adults.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, you got Aristotle, or more exactly his follower Saint Thomas Aquinas, wrong. When he spoke of first causes, he meant ontological first causes, not temporal ones. St. Thomas did not think that it was philosophically provable that God did not create the universe from eternity. The Big Bang has nothing to do with it. Descartes claimed to have proven God exists, but his proof was refuted by Kant. Whether Kant's refutation refutes St. Anselm's proof is another matter because Anselm never actually claimed to have proved God's existence, he merely claimed to have proved that it was impossible to believe God does not exist. No one has ever really refuted his argument. Some say Kant did but many philosophers disagree. In any case I'm an atheist. When a very Catholic judge for whom I clerked found out, he said he would have to fire me. He relented, but I always had his animosity even though he said my work was first rate.

Actually based on what you wrote there you can't possibly be an atheist:

1. You stated that St. Anselm proved that it was impossible to believe God does not exist.
2. You stated that you believe that "no one has ever really refused his argument."
3. An atheist is someone who does not believe that God exists.
4. If 1. and 2. are true, then 3. cannot also be true--if St. Anselm proved that it was impossible to believe God does not exist, then St. Anselm proved that no one believes that God does not exist, because it is impossible for anyone to have that belief.
5. If no one can be an atheist, since St. Anselm proved that it is impossible for anyone to believe that God does not exist, then you can not be an atheist, either.

Q.E.D.

But Anselm's proof proves very little. All it proves is that "that than which nothing greater can be thought" cannot be thought of as not existing. It says nothing regarding whether any religion is true. It does not prove anything about Jesus or Moses. It does not prove that the Bible is true. It really proves very little.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP: Yes of course atheists fancy themselves non-conformists even if they keep their atheism to themselves. The whole point of labeling onesself "atheist" is to set ones self apart as a discriminated against minority.

There's no need for the label "atheist" if someone doesn't believe in God, because non-belief is an absence. "Atheist" implies someone who doesn't just not believe in God, but is "anti-religion." Atheists contradict their own definition since atheism is a lack of belief, yet most atheists spend an awful lot of time telling other people what they don't believe in.

Boom goes the dynamite. You just summed it all up

Should you not blame the Greeks for coining the term, atheism? It means without god - or gods in the Greeks' case.

So I find it odd that you would blast us for the label we didn't create. Or would you prefer we had the term eliminated from the dictionary?

I think the dynamite was a dud this round.

But just because I as an individual don't believe in god or gods doesn't suggest I need to be anti-religion. By far the vast majority of atheists aren't simply people who don't believe in god(s). They are people who are vitriolic in their opposition to religion, specifically the organized kind, and usually focused on Christianity (perhaps because America has lots of Christians).

There are lots of terms coined by Greeks that have a different usage in English. Most atheists absolutely hate religion with a passion. That's far beyond merely disbelief in god. They hate the institution of religion. But hating religion has nothing to do with being "without god." I can be "without god" and not care at all about what someone else believes.

Most atheists are struggling with spiritual issues and going around in circles because they're trying to find a logical answer for why we exist, and that's not going to happen. Since you brought up greek, think Aristotle, "first cause." Science just gives us an infinite regress to the Big Bang and "undefined" before that, which isn't particularly satisfying to be told there is no first cause. People who believe in god believe god is the first cause. Atheists, they're still not going to find any answers in the rejection of someone else's answer (god).

At least religion tries to answer the question "Why do we exist?" That's what religion really is, an attempt to answer why we exist in something other than a purely materialistic or mechanistic clockwork result of the random collision of trillions of atoms over billions of years. If all we are is a bunch of randomly aggregated atoms it's kind of hard to inject much ultimate meaning in our lives, and we're all looking for meaning, even atheists, even if they don't want to admit it.

It's fun to mock people who bake Jesus Cakes and so forth but atheists tend to attack very easy targets, that is, "religion" in its most insanely literalist, simplistic version, as a set of arbitrary rules of behavior supported by authority figures relying on a false mythology of fairy tales of super powerful supernaturalistic beings. When viewed in that light of course it's easy to make religion look silly.

Go outside and look up at the Milky Way on a really dark evening away from the city lights and as far as I'm concerned that's a miracle. The fact that I as a human being, a small piece of protoplasm, has self awareness and consciousness enough to on some level be aware of my little place in a vastly greater whole, the Universe, where did all this come from? A miracle. Some attribute it to "god" but it doesn't matter what you call it. Let that sink in, calm your mind, remove the rationalizations and intellectualizations and other b.s., and if you're honest with yourself you at least have to give consideration to the possibility that maybe we don't know all the answers, maybe we never can, and maybe we never can get close.

So it's inherently spiritually, psychologically and emotionally unsatisfactory to say "my answer to the miracle of existence is that your belief in a superbeing called god is nonsense." You've refuted the superbeing mythology, perhaps, but you haven't come any closer to answering the fundamental question. Science doesn't satisfactorily answer the question either since it's not meant to answer that question. Science answers "what is" but not "why do we exist"? (Existentially speaking).

That's why I think most atheists come off as angry and frustrated. Refuting someone else's beliefs isn't a belief and doesn't fulfill a human being's emotional/psychological/spiritual need to impose some semblance of order and meaning and understanding on the randomness of the universe.

If life is meaningless then I'll still win the argument by kicking you in the nuts. Since life is meaningless, you can't complain if I kick you in the nuts.

YOUR life might be meaningless without your faith, but that doesn't mean my life without faith is meaningless. I find it sad and uncreative that you have put so much thought and guesswork into defining us, yet you are stuck within the parameters of your faith so it's just more of the same preaching that turns people away from the churches.

But you just contradicted yourself, didn't you?

You claim to have life without faith--whatever you think "faith" means--yet you think your life isn't meaningless.

The "meaning" you think your life supposedly has is just your arbitrary overlay of your mind attempting to recognize patterns whether or not there is actually a pattern to be seen, because on an evolutionary basis, there's survival benefit in pattern recognition skills. But humans often see patterns where none exist at all.

There's no fundamental difference in your claim that you see a "meaning" in your own life, arbitrary defined by yourself, according to patterns you think you see; and that of a religious person who claims to see a "meaning" and "patterns" created by an arbitrary mental construct or organizing principle which the religious person calls "god." They are both equally superstititious or they are not.

You WANT to believe your life is not meaningless, so you declare that it has meaning. "That doesn't mean my life without faith is meaningless." "Meaning" has to come from SOMEWHERE, even if that is faith in what you believe you perceive to be meaningful. Your answer is just as arbitrary, no more and no less, than a religious person's. Your life doesn't have "meaning" just because you say it does, unless you have faith that it does. Because I guarantee you have no "scientific method" to "prove" that your life has "meaning."

Some atheist you turned out to be.

You're off topic if you want to talk to me about the arbitrariness of the meanings we assign to life. Sure, I see no difference between what gives your life meaning and what does the same in mine. Both are equally arbitrary. Except that yours is part of a dogma.

My point was, religions like to promote the idea that lack of belief in gods=meaningless life, yet here we atheists are finding meaning in life same as the believing folks. Still going to kick us in the nuts?

[Anonymous]

Wow there's so much judgement and assumption here. It seems like you Christians, DCUM christians at least, certainly not all of them, feel like judging all athiests with the broad brush painted by the loudest and most obnoxious that you see.

Would you like me to judge all Christians by the greedy money hungry evangelical church leaders? Judge all Christians by the Duggars? Judge all Muslims by the terrorists? These are the loudest voices among you so the must represent the majority right?

I am not an atheist to be a non-conformist I am an atheist because I don't believe in God. I think from a technical definition I am probably agnostic because I agree there is no true proof for or against but I think of agnostics as generally 'believing in something but now knowing what.' I understand there is no proof one way or the other, but deep down believe there is nothing. Not a tremendous amount of people in my life know about this. I do not spend time arguing religion with my family members and attempting to rob them of their faith. Their faith brings them great comfort and I'm happy for them that they have it. Why can't you be happy for me that I have found peace with my understanding of the world?

This thread is filled with such aggressive questioning. At the end of the day life is short, do what makes you feel fulfilled and happy and what helps make the world a better place. If we all do that, regardless of what our motivations are (ie, heaven or just because) then we'll all end up alright.

I'm sorry you've had some bad interactions with atheists, most of us have had bad interactions with religious folks. Perhaps we'd all get along better if we simply respected each other and, if curious, started a dialogue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oh PP, if an atheist is vitriolic in their opposition to religion it's only because we have watched religion destroy countless lives. There's justification. Heaps and heaps of justification. It's a negative force in the aggregate. Sure, it gave my grandmother peace when she died, but I don't consider that a good enough reason for all the other shit it does.

With this I agree 100%.