But, then again, some of those who are full of it have gotten rich dispensing it for a fee. See some of them on tv still, usually latte at night or early Sunday mornings. And I suppose if I thought back over the years, I prollie paid for some of it myself. I therefore, respect Dirtbag's claim of being free of it. And I do admire anyone who is unencumbered or feel's they are "free of bullshit". Even though they may, themselves, feel I am full of exactly what they are free of.
And I get the point, who wouldn't? Do not force that bullshit onto anyone, particularly them! Kinda counter productive in the least, and overkill at worse.
Anyway, I am beginning to sound like I am full of bullsh#t, so I will depart.
My wife is an Atheist, and one thing I have learned from her is this: She believes in living and loving - and that is more than many people ever find in their lives.
I don't know if I love the atheist life anymore than I would a life beieving in God, but reason and the evidence at hand make it impossible for me to be anything but an atheist. +1 for The God Delusion.
Honnold is an avid reader, with interests in classic literature,
environmentalism, and economics. When asked about his religious or spiritual views, he described himself as a "militant atheist." [10]
I guess I could be called a committed Atheist, and loving it
as opposed to agnostic
I've been totally into reading books on atheism and the science of God (delusion)
Besides Dawkins, check out:
Victor Stenger, "God, the Folly of Faith", and "God, a Failed Hypothesis"
Micheal Shermer, Loftus, Dan Barker
and check out these mags - The Skeptic, and The Skeptical Inquirer
My experience with the proclaimed and committed atheists in my life – this includes siblings with advanced degrees operating at a world class level in their respective fields –all real solid individuals. Enlightened self interest is how one of my partners describes it. These are People of veracity and above reproach. That said, anything militant is natural suspect in my mind. After all militant is just a catch phrase for fundamentalist reactionary ready to bludgeon anyone and anything that does not kowtow to their strict doctrine – an expected acquiescence if not we will shout louder and longer until you do prime directive – “resistance is futile….” Reciprocity & respect for the process should be foundational in any discussion in my opinion
Thank you to the proclaimed and committed Atheists on ST – even the shrill & whiney ones and you know who you are - for you help to promote ideas and discussions. Strength and encouragement to you all …………. For myself I do not have enough faith to be an atheist – please know I tried. In the end I give thanks to Darwin and praises to Gould! All power to Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris! In part due to your teachings I believe in God
“Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.”
Blaise Pascal
“Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed”
Blaise Pascal
As long as I don't get too narcissistic and see myself as all powerful, and nurture a sense of there being grater forces out there than my big mouth - for instance, Nature - I can still have some sense of there being holy things in the world, like him and her, without getting trapped by or ranting against the mythology.
The only true freedom is to be detached from every preference and to take it all "neat."
Easy to say, impossible to do perfectly, but it can act as a polestar. And that's a powerful tool.
You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.
And at one point you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.
And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.
And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly.
As long as I don't get too narcissistic and see myself as all powerful, and nurture a sense of there being grater forces out there than my big mouth - for instance, Nature - I can still have some sense of there being holy things in the world, like him and her, without getting trapped by or ranting against the mythology.
Why would you blasphemize the word 'holy' while adhering to apparent agnosticism? Pick one belief system or the other.
The only true freedom is to be detached from every preference and to take it all "neat."
So you want it all ways. No obligations? Fine. Don't split hairs if you're a Christian. Either you believe, or you don't. Quit trying to tread the agnostic stupid middle ground.
Easy to say, impossible to do perfectly, but it can act as a polestar. And that's a powerful tool.
Sorry, native Americans have already figured out what JL looks for. And it resembles euro religions on many points. it aint all bad. But its USUALLY those whom accept NO spirits that scream the loudest.
"Now we see how the astronomical evidence supports the biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy."
"There is a strange ring of feeling and emotion in these reactions [of scientists to evidence that the universe had a sudden beginning]. They come from the heart whereas you would expect the judgments to come from the brain. Why? I think part of the answer is that scientists cannot bear the thought of a natural phenomenon which cannot be explained, even with unlimited time and money. There is a kind of religion in science; it is the religion of a person who believes there is order and harmony in the Universe. Every event can be explained in a rational way as the product of some previous event; every effect must have its cause, there is no First Cause. … This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover. When that happens, the scientist has lost control. If he really examined the implications, he would be traumatized."
"Consider the enormity of the problem. Science has proved that the universe exploded into being at a certain moment. It asks: What cause produced this effect? Who or what put the matter or energy into the universe? And science cannot answer these questions, because, according to the astronomers, in the first moments of its existence the Universe was compressed to an extraordinary degree, and consumed by the heat of a fire beyond human imagination. The shock of that instant must have destroyed every particle of evidence that could have yielded a clue to the cause of the great explosion."
"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."
Dr. Robert Jastrow
End Times x Infinity = an infinitely repeating cycle. Or does it?
Ripley's Dis-Believe It or Not:
"No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. this is one nation under God."---George H.W. "Burning" Bush, 1987.
Mr. Rational sez go to Youtube and check out the 8:02 minutes of "Atheist Riddle Solved."
sure Bluey cmon up sometime will go for some chukars. It isnt season yet though.. Stuff opens up in sept through oct. ;-) This was on a very early morning walk.
Learning the scientific origins of earth is much more thrilling than a story that even a 7 year old can comprehend. I see the impermanence of life and know that I truly should live the way I want. I like the intricacies of a vast and old universe.
Overall, its not that I weighed out the pros and cons of either lifestyle and picked accordingly. I picked the most logical, factually based system that I could see. To be truly logically honest, I suppose you should be agnostic... But on the other hand, we should all be agnostic to big foot, mermaids, and other mystical things, because you cannot prove they don't exist. Proving a negative is near impossible.
One last thing, it is nice to be able to look at people of all different religions in the exact same light. All your beliefs are silly, but I will still treat you the same because I was once a believer as well.
bluering, we speak loudly because religion allows so much evil. Also, it promotes dumb theories (i.e. the earth is 12k years old, god made the universe in a week, languages came about as gods punishment for a tall building, two of every animal can fit on a boat etc etc)
THERE IS NO PROOF THAT GOD Exists
Stop saying such stupid crap,
let's see your proof that doesn't exist, just like your God that you say exists, Where is it??
Man up! Show us something!
Talk about Stupid, You Have nothing except calling things you don't understand as stupid
Largo
The issue is Big
It is not a "What Ever"
It means that your Religion is Correct. or a delusion
Every Belief you have about God and spirits, the afterlife, justice, morals, ethics and laws that are being imposed on others
If your religion is delusion, then all your claims of what your religion is doing for you and others is a delusion as well
bluering, we speak loudly because religion allows so much evil. Also, it promotes dumb theories (i.e. the earth is 12k years old, god made the universe in a week, languages came about as gods punishment for a tall building, two of every animal can fit on a boat etc etc)
Religion allows so much evil? So what is the genesis of good, man? If you try to nit-pick the Bible, you have no faith. The Bible is only a record of people's understanding of the past. It's a press report. Doesn't mean the sh#t didn't happen, they just reported what they saw, or were told.
The Gospels were, by all reports, pretty accurate. As for your silly 'built in a week' argument, you have to understand they used different calenders back then. In the Old Testament, why do you think dudes were living to be 800 years old?
If evil does exist, as you say, doesn't there have to be a 'force of good', or God?
A logical person would conclude that evil besets good. What is the genesis of this balance?
proving something doesn't exist is to prove a negative. For example, prove to me without a doubt that you've never murdered someone... You can't. That is why I say it is slightly more logical to be agnostic, but by that argument its just a logical to be agnostic in every other mystical being.
There have been 2,800 unique gods that have been recorded in history. It is part of the human condition to want there to be somebody who takes care of everything. I take it you don't believe in 2, 799 of them so we're nearly the same bluering :D
Here is the reality that converted me from a God believer to an Atheist
The concept of an Afterlife,
If you think about this concept logically, scientifically, or in any other way, you realize that it's impossible, illogical, and completely made up by man for religious purposes.
If there is No afterlife, then Man has no purpose,
and that God has no influence on you this life, nor the next life.
There Is no greater justice, there is no spiritual evolution, there is no goal what so ever, no enlightenment, no escape from the flesh and suffering.
Humans have no purpose, as we all know, we are born, we eat and we die, Just like every other animal. All we can hope for is for our selfish gene to live on, through another human, that is our only purpose, creating more humans
That is the purpose of all life, to create more of the same
There is no higher purpose, No God, and No after life nor reincarnation
All the afterlife nonsense has been made up by man to use as a means of controlling other humans through religion and guilt, and hope for a better life after death.
Bluring, I'm not "trying" to be anything. I'm just not hooked into the entire mental aspect of all of this because it has almost nothing to do with reality.
Reality is the geyser that arises in our awareness. Taking this "neat," without extruding it through beliefs, takes a pretty good set of balls, IME. You make it sound like I waver, like I have some moral imperative to make some definitive statement but the geyser - thar she blows.
Meanwhile Craig is demanding that our mental content - be it truth or delusion - is apparently a bigger deal than the geyser itself - meaning our interpretation is bigger than the shizzle itself. Or maybe our interpretation (truth, belief, delusions, definitive religious statements) IS the shizzle.
That much said, our thoughts and beliefs DO create our reality -so what's a man to do.
Not some geyser of self indulgence in delusional folly that seems to satisfy your spiritual quest
That she blows . . .
The funny thing is that that rant is part of the geyser, and what I think or believe and profess about it, how I quantify or describe or feel about it mean nothing.
Taking it "neat" means taking Bluring just as he is, no preference that he be different.
Fact is, some people struggle mightily with beliefs - that God does nor does not exist. Or whatever.
But most of this is just so much mentalizing. You end up in the same place.
JL
I like that.
I definitely take people neat.
Blue and I have hung out and I adore him - even though politically and
religiously we don't have anything in common at least on paper. But if ya get the confusion and propaganda out of the way many of us agree much more than we realise.
There are a million things I look for in friends.
But mostly that they are just nice people, funny people and cool people.
Blue is a nice person and he is cool and he is funny.
Still these political discussions - they are very serious and shape the future of our country.
We need to be far smarter.
So they do get serious as far as our debating on ST - I rarely talk about this stuff in real life - not even with my kids.
Being an atheist was a progression - for me it was lots of reading and thinking and finally awareness concerning how society developed and how we learned to understand our world and deal with life. If you can look at the big picture concerning human history and many different cultures and religions this entire conversation is very elementary on an academic level.
But you add death to it and it changes - I see death everyday and there are reasons for faith beyond the academic.
We are here and then we are gone - that is something, especially concerning loved ones, that we can and will never understand.
huh? Riley,,, "these discussions shape the future of our country"??? Had no idea supertopo was THAT popular, i better start wearing a Tie when i post! ;-)
huh? Riley,,, "these discussions shape the future of our country"??? Had no idea supertopo was THAT popular, i better start wearing a Tie when i post! ;-)
Not us specifically - but the greater decisions we are talking about are shaping our future all the time.
How we deal with debt, the environment,each other, and how we communicate and think about the world.
If lying, Robber Barron, scum are elected through manipulation and propaganda and destroy the world it greatly shapes our future.
Evil Dictator and Corporation controlled Government or a Governement By The People and for The People.
Whether we are honest, caring, intelligent and rational or wasteful,selfish and ignorant has shaped every society since civilization began.
Global warming, failing oceans, pollution, radioactivity, enough weapons to destroy everything, endangered species, quality of life, etc etc..
It all matters a lot and is being decided in small and large extents every time we vote.
Nothing at all. My parents raised me in a completely religion-free home. They weren't the least-bit anti- religion. They actually never had a word for or against as I recall. Our family just sort of.. ignored it.
Life's a lot simpler in Atheist-land. Live for now since when you die... you're done.
PS: Thanks for the nice post about me on pg1 honey.
I'm in. Was brought up by parents who were deeply religious early in their respective lives and dropped it once they got married in NYC City Hall because each was of a different religion (mom=southern baptist, dad=eastern orthodox) and my dad's side sent death threats to my mom, quite the wake up call. So I was never indoctrinated with religious precepts and revealed truths... And my Sundays were free and clear then and remain so to this day.
My wife was selectively religious when we first met. I have since broken her of that fence-sitting and she fell onto the evil non-believer side with me. However, she did send two of our kids to a Lutheran pre-school where my son began to believe in hell and that god is vengeful. Yikes, had to break him of that.
I can say that the entire Gunkie Gang is now living on the evil side of the fence. More can be learned from the attached video below.
Like the Muppet, I was raised in a household with no religion. It wasn't anti-religion. It wasn't pro-religion. It just wasn't a topic at all.
Bluering asks about what some of us believe and expresses a desire that we take a stand and be a man. (I can't be a man, but I can express my thoughts). I've not been asked, but here goes.
My thought is that I am but a teeny tiny itsy bitsy speck in the face of the universe. Given my near nothingness, how I can expect to know what is real or not in terms of a God or heaven or any of it? Not saying I disbelieve or believe. But I don't feel significant enough to think I could know something so significant.
Recently, I found myself jealous (for lack of better word) of those with strong conviction and assurances that there is an afterlife a God and other positive and reassuring things a religion offers. It may sound trivial to you, but it was the death of Ferne, my parrot. I saw him conceived. I still have the egg he hatched from. I raised him. I have feathers he molted throughout his life. He was (is) my baby as much as any human baby could have been. Possibly more. And he died unexpectedly on New Year's Eve. That pain was (is) indescribable.
A lot of the pain of his death comes from not knowing where he "is". Where is he? How can he just cease? How can that energy that was Ferne - uniquely Ferne - just stop? To think that he was (is) just over/gone is really unbearable.
From this pain, I find great comfort in this quote posted upthread by Wyo guy (forgot your full avatar - sorry):
You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.
I've really looked at it all differently since Ferne's death. I still don't believe that as a tiny speck in the cosmos I can presume to ever know the truth. But man, I want more than anything to know Ferne still is and is well and that I'll see him again.
Just got home. Why would you people promote this thread with atheist spelled wrong in lieu of Khanom's? How sloppy is that! Christians and Muslims (Jews too) must love it. Maybe it's a vast Christian conspiracy!
Maybe I'll start a... I love the Chistian life.
.....
I see you, Crimpers.
Dr. F., there's a time for facts and there is a time for empathy. If you don't get that, just go away for awhile, pause for the cause.
.....
Food for thought: athy... athier... athiest
athy (made-up definition): angry, aggro, mean
an athy atheist :) QT Who's the athiest atheist at super topo? ANS Nobody. They're all very kind, compassionate and friendly, through and through.
One must simply listen to Joseph Campbell's "Power of Myth" in order to realize that all religions are just culturally specific mythology, the same stories repeating over and over that give the recipients answers and structure to the profound mystery we confront.
I'll check in as atheist (non-theist??). Was raised conservative baptist, in a big church in Los Gatos Calif, even went to a small christian college for a year, and worked for a christian outdoor org for years afterward. I was really into it in a cultural practices sort of way- went to church meetings 5 days a week, even ran a bible study at 6 am on Tuesdays during high-school. Wanted to be a missionary -seemed like the best adventure available. After leaving my religion, to keep the peace, I called myself an agnostic till a few years ago, when on reflection I realized I didn't really believe there was any god, and might as well admit it.
The church was a very social place, I loved singing, but its focus on moral conduct was not that important for me as I never got in much trouble. Once I stopped all religious practice such as bible study prayer, worship) I do miss singing- I lost any longing for the church. After leaving my home church, I lost all interest in the bible, religion and got more interested in history, society and culture, subjects my church or other christian friends did not discuss. My church seemed to be very provincial (the only things of interest were a few hundred years around the time of Jesus in Palestine and everything since 1946 in my home town.
I traveled a lot, climbed a lot, and went to school a lot for the next 10 years and got an graduate degree in anthropology, live in the Andes for a couples of years in small villages, and have worked in a University for many years hence.
My biggest doubts about my religion and there being a god sprung from noting (like my mother) that the people in our church were not better people than the catholics , mormons or anyone else on our block. Also, despite fervent prayers, I realized around 18 that god didn't really talk to me , and suddenly the bible seemed to be horribly off topic, a collection of weird old stories in which people seemed desperate to find truths. At bible studies, we practiced something I later learned is hermeneutics, extracting meaning from verses- I learned I didn't need the bible to find meanings or guidance.
Also, I began to see how the people in my church were conflating things like free enterprise and bible ideas (which as far as I could read into the bible leaned more towards spiritual collectivism than free market, nation-state, urban industrialism ). As a group they supported the Vietnam war, and the older people in the church seemed perfectly happy to send off 19 year boys to die on their behalf while they stayed home and made money. I concluded that most of the people in my church were shaped more by the economy and consumer culture than their religious beliefs. And they are were not alone- everyone in the world seems to mix political, economic and spiritual stuff, most of them defending stridently what their parents told them was the truth, while knowing very little about others.
Finally, historical stuff like the disease and the land wars that lead to losing most Native Americans in the first 100 years following the arrival of Europeans was not an event that made any sense with a benevolent new testament god in charge (maybe an old testament god).
Anyway, one day I just let go of the church and religion, and have never looked back (except for friendships). I don't seem to have much need for the supernatural, miss some of the social practices, especially singing together.
The demographics are clear, sell your Bibles and Korans while they still have some value.
Good fiction has a long shelf life but in this case.....
Actually the Old Testament might do okay; plenty of sex, murder and betrayal.
People who identify themselves as atheist, agnostic or no religion by date of birth.
Before 1946 5%
1946 to 1966. 11%
1965 to 1976. 14%
1977 to present 19%
Maybe we would have been better off staying with the Queen. More pomp and circumstance to liven things up, healthcare for all, and 65% of Brits say they are non-religious and 39% don't believe in god.
Some of those thoughts and sensations are even suggestive of popular models for what happens after death. Many people have survived these kinds of experience over the ages so these popular reports are actually what one would expect.
I see no evidence suggesting there is an afterlife so I take it there will be no reunion with loved ones either physical or mental.........but
at death I think it likely we will be thinking about someone we lost. That would be a reunion.
It may sound trivial to you, but it was the death of Ferne, my parrot. I saw him conceived. I still have the egg he hatched from. I raised him. I have feathers he molted throughout his life. He was (is) my baby as much as any human baby could have been. Possibly more. And he died unexpectedly on New Year's Eve. That pain was (is) indescribable
Someone expressed to me, when I joined ST, that everyone liked you, Crimpie, because of your propriety, kindness and good will.
I think he must have included sincerity , in that too.
Re-reading my post it occurred to me probably not everyone understands my "I see you" comment to Crimpers. That's taken from Na' vi (the film, Avatar, all the rage a couple of years ago) more or less meaning, I get it, I get you.
Great testimonials, by Tom and others. Wish it were all under one thread that's spelled correctly, though.
Tom, that's such a worthy, meaningful post you might add it to the other thread, too!
Crimpers, too, of course.
.....
On the other hand, atheist climbers are so increasing in numbers nowadays that eventually we might need two threads, lol - one for those who "love" atheist life or lifestyle, the other for those who merely "like" it. :)
an athy atheist :)
Let us know!