The Glade 4.0

This makes no sense whatsoever. None of those have anything to do with the existance or not of anything supernatural. It's just an excuse for atheism to have special status as "not a religion, but entitled to treated as one when it's beneficial."

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

A religion can be many different things. It can be complex and convoluted and misunderstood....or it can be simple and straight forward. It's really just a means to an end. A religion can be a set of beliefs and not necessarily have anything to do with a God or a set of ethics handed down from generation to generation. Donning the robe and speaking Latin is a little goofy, but so is Christianity. It's a placebo effect. If it works, though...great. I guess.

I have to wonder if this "Kagin" guy is just stupid or he's having too much fun making fun of religions.



That's agnosticism. True atheism asserts that there is no God and there is no question about it.

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Ron Paul 2012

Belief systems based on faith on practiced. Atheism is no exception. The fact that you cannot accept that the beliefs are based on faith; that you get irate and defensive when said faith is indicated; that you feel the need to belittle those who point out that said atheism requires an active disbelief indicates to me you feel your beliefs are being challenged or threatened. You are, as the following quote demonstrates, doing precisely what I said:You are making a No True Scotsman fallacy. Nevermind that Richard Dawkins started a summer camp to teach atheism, right? Nevermind that Dawkins and Hitchens and the other New Atheists, as they call themselves, spend a lot of time in the public arena discussing the "evils" of religion; the "atrocities" of belief systems ... and doing so selectively. I mean, of course, they'll attack the Crusades and the Salem Witch Trials and the Inquisition, but they always forget to mention the horrors of the two officially atheist nations in world History.

But, you keep clinging to this idea that you know what atheism is and only you know what it is among the posters here. And then you think about that behavior and think about someone else, because you are acting just like him.

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More than this, any time incidents like the OP or any of Dawkins's escapades are pointed out, we hear the loud objection that "well, not all atheists do that stuff. No one appointed them to speak for all atheists. I don't associate with them, and I'm an atheist, so therefore you can't call atheism in general a religion."

But, when we're talking about other religions, especially Christianity, it suddenly becomes legitimate to generalize the errors of any group of Christians to any others, regardless of differences in time, place, or denomination.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... eists.html



So rational scepticism, moral philosophy and evolutionary biology is now synonymous with atheism? Those are not religious topics. Like I said, retarded.



Sure they do, just like anyone else who's trying to get their viewpoint forwarded. Just like you do here on the Glade, along with every single other poster. That does not make them religious.

But as always, I'm completely wasting my time here. No one is interested in anyone elses viewpoints or has any respect for them. Myself included Nitefox. I think I'm finally done here.

Aizle:

Curious how you selected your information about Dawkin's camp. I mean, seriously, where's the You Tube clip where he said it was high time the Atheists had their own summer camp? I get that you don't like the word religion; I get, in point of fact, that you have little respect for people of any faith. What I cannot tolerate, indeed will not tolerate, is your refusal to acknowledge the following:

Active disbelief in the absence of evidence for or against the existence of any gods or god is irrational. It is not rational skepticism: it is a faith based decision.

It's quite that simple. But, you can keep calling me retarded for presenting a rational and logical argument. You can keep calling me retarded for pointing out you have chosen to believe something without any evidence that belief is true. You can keep calling me retarded for pointing out that there are advocates and evangelists of atheism in the media and public sphere. And I will simply point out that the only difference between you and a now departed poster is that he at least had the integrity to admit his belief took an act of faith.

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What you fail to understand is that lack of belief is not an active state, it's a passive state. Until you understand that, then there really isn't anything for us to discuss.

Lack of belief is not active disbelief. Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with the definition of atheism as it is currently employed.SO ....

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No one is going to understand it because it isn't true. There is no such thing as "lack of" belief.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Once you are exposed to a belief, and you choose not to agree with it, then you are countering with your own belief. The only way for Aizle to be correct is for a person to not be exposed to religious concepts.

You guys are making this more complex than it is. It really boils down to non of the "evidence" that has been provided thus far for the existance of any god (not just the Judeo/Christian variety) has been compelling in the least.

So you think it is just chance that you are a human instead of part of a star? Seriously?

And yet, Aizle, as has been pointed out dozens of times to you, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

In a binary world, this would make sense. In the real world, this an absurd comment.

I believe that Lex is a waste of space that provides no discernible benefit with continued existence. Someone unfamiliar with Lex that just read that statement can either believe me, decide I'm wrong, or more reasonable, decide they don't have enough information to form their own belief.

That's not what the argument is about. We're discussing the epistemological difference between:

"There is insufficient evidence to support a positive, rational belief in the existence of God" (= agnosticism, lit. "not known")

vs.

"I positively believe that God does not exist." (= atheism, lit. "no god")

There is a distinct epistemological difference there that you don't seem to be grasping. Agnosticism is as rational as anything, supposing that there really isn't sufficient evidence to logically establish the existence of God. Atheism, on the other hand, is an irrational belief unless you can establish that there is rational evidence proving the non-existence of God. Which, incidentally, is not a logical fallacy. Contrary to popular belief, it is entirely possible to prove a negative. Proofs of impossibility are relatively common in mathematics, for instance.

Of course, a person can be agnostic and yet still believe (personally) that God probably does not exist, but this is quite different from believing that we know God does not exist.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

How am I making it more complex than it really is. I've posted the current and active definition of the word atheism. I've posted the current and active definition of the word disbelief so that you can see you are operating from some non-standard position. That said, you should frame your statements more carefully:According to whose standards is the above statement true? Yours? Some independent panel of sufficiently qualified individuals (whatever that means) charged with determining the existence or non-existence of some deity or pantheon of deities? That said, your first statement is poisoning the well, and it's a rather bad attempt at that: the person who is using unaccepted definitions and bare assertions is yourself.

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You are correct, there is a difference between the two.

Your last sentence is what I've described my beliefs to be countless times on these forums. Based on my observations and review of the "evidence" I believe it's quite likely that god doesn't exist. Atheism does not claim to know that god doesn't exist. And every single atheist that I've ever met would be open to changing their views if actual credible evidence was provided. Even Dawkin has stated that he's just reviewing the evidence. The issue is that there hasn't been any evidence that doesn't require a huge leap of faith to believe.

Since you seem to have some issue with the dictionary, Aizle ...

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Nothing I've stated conflicts with those definitions Khross.

I reject the "evidence" that has been submitted for the existance of a god, so therefore I don't believe that ones exists.

Really? Because you're pretty adamant in rejecting the notion that atheism is an irrational belief based on faith in an assumption of your own choosing.On what grounds do you reject that evidence?

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How many times are you going to misspell "existence"?

No Khross, I'm rejecting what you are trying to define atheism as. That's your problem, not mine.

Additionally I'm not going to re-justify myself or my decisions to you. I've done that several times over the life of this board and been beaten up for my efforts each time.

I know people claim that, and don't really disagree, it's only that the wiki entry on "Atheism" seemed to contradict that there is an assertion inherit in atheism...



To me, the belief that deities don't exist is different than an absence of belief that they do. The only example I can come up with to describe my opinion would be this: It's not that I disagree, it's that I don't know enough about how folks go about defining such things to argue the point.

To disagree is different than to admit a lack of a position on the subject.

However, I WOULD argue that an "assertion" is a positive act as opposed to "absence of belief", which is .. well, more like the "Huh? I don't know... never thought about it much" behavior. I can't even call it a "passive" act, really, 'cause it's not an act.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Taskiss:

I've posted the official dictionary definition of atheism in this thread three times now. It's not a difficult concept to grasp. I will, however, post it again, since the plain text definition of the word seems somehow inaccessible to the posters here.
Semantically speaking, it is the word "disbelief" that is key and what separates "atheism" from "agnosticism" in contemporary language. "Disbelief" is "positive unbelief"; that is to say, it is the willful choice NOT to believe. Aizle, for some reason, cannot grasp that said choice is neither rational nor based in any fact contained within our collective knowledge. Consequently, it is an act of faith, that is an act of personal belief, and a choice. It is not something dependent upon evidence, because there exists as much evidence for a god or gods as against.

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Khross, I think you're not being fair to Aizle. What Aizle can't grasp is not that disbelief is an act of faith; it's that despite what he claims and all the cool kids tell him, he's an agnostic, not an atheist.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades