Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Atheism is a Religion - Right?

"As an example, YOU are an Atheist toward every God except the Christian God."

Not exactly. You can't simultaneously be an atheist and NOT be one too. It's not a matter of choice, but a matter of total disbelief.


As far as God showing up and the atheists no longer being so, accepting that proof indicates a lack of atheistic belief in my mind - an openness to there being a god, as long as it is shown in a manner of proof that is agreeable.

No it's not. Atheism is just a belief that a specific definition of a god or gods has not met it's burden of proof. It's like "not guilty". You are not saying the guy didn't do it, just that the prosecution hasn't met their burden of proof. Since Atheism is a response to a logical proposition, you position can change as the evidence changes.

Hah! That's hilarious!

What are you going to do? Hedge your bets and follow every religion that turns up? Gonna be a Jew / Muslim / Christian / Buddhist / Taoist / Mormon / Pagan......? Sounds exhausting.

Better hope you don't miss the right one!

Once again you are wrong. Jesus is just the latest of the Rising and Dying Gods that include Baal, Melqart, Adonis, Eshmun, Tammuz, Ra, Osiris, Dionysus, Inanna/Ishtar, Persephone, and Bari among others.

I don't see how atheism is a response to a logical proposition.

It seems to me that the atheist's proposition is "there is no God" and the burden of proof is on the author of the proposition.

How in the world would one "know" there is no God? How can you prove that?

Think about it for a moment. This is what the atheist says: There is no God. Yet, the atheist cannot prove that at all. It is the atheist that fails in this burden of proof.

TF

Atheism is NOT a religion. It is just a person that doesn't care or give a rats ass to what a bunch of feel goods think is important. I don't listen,read,discuss,or waste my time on religion except as long as it took to peck this out,,,fini

[video:youtube]http://southpark.cc.com/clips/152270/abandon-all-hope[/video]

Dear lord.

TF- do you believe in the Easter Bunny? Tooth Fairy? Can you deliver proof they do not, and never did, exist?

Once again, you are just wrong.

"There is not God" is not Atheism, that's Anti-Theism. A true anti-theist position it typically directed toward a specific definition of a god or gods, because without of good definition of what you are disputing, it's probably impossible to prove it does not exist.

Atheism is not a religion.

Clearly, a lot of this thread is muddling around and much of that is because some folks refuse to apply directness and logic (and ownership) to their utterances, which prevents aspects of it from being a serious discussion. cooper57m, it is easy to seek and quote dictionary terms. It is quite something else to take responsibility for that which you write and defend it logically. You may be doing your best, but you failed here.

Your mis-statements, inconsistencies and stretches were clearly cited in my previous post. You refuse to revisit those and defend. Instead, you attempt shallow and decepetive deflection by pretending that I stated the existence of God and somehow inferred that I have and offer such proof. I did no such thing. Intellectual dishonesty smells poorly.
As a personal aside - not addressing Atheism here - I believe that those who cannot muster faith about certain things are missing some genuine and supreme beauty in life.

You also see no reason to believe in science. You call philosophy science and try to cram it down everyone's' throat.

Up until the 18th century, "Natural Philosophy" was considered a branch of philosophy, i.e. the love of Knowledge, but since then it's been separated out into it's own category. Now science is considered a method of perusing knowledge, and well as the knowledge itself. Of course as a presuppositionalist you have no real interest in Knowledge.

As for what I belive regarding science, I have no obligation to believe all of science as a monolithic dogma, like you do with the Christian Religion. As a rational thinker I'm free to follow the evidence. As an example, the evidence for the existence of Dark Matter is pretty good, even if we don't know exactly what it is, however the evidence for String Theory is much weaker, and in my evaluation, does not qualify as a Theory at this time, and I do not believe it has met it's burden of proof at this time.

antelope_sniper,



Is that why I know about novas and fossils?

The truth of the matter is all you've do is read some creationist tripe on the subject, and as a result, you know nothing regarding either subject.

No, believing in something despite irrefutable proof to the contrary is a trait of religion. Atheists deal in proof,or the lack of it. If irrefutable proof were presented, a real atheist would have to believe that proof and the conclusions that derive. I would expect other religions would have issue if the proof showed them to be wrong. You have got it backwards.

CCCC, please defend your belief that those who cannot muster faith are missing some genuine and supreme beauty in life. What specifically do you assume we are missing? Please expand and explain your vague and poorly developed statement. What's the basis of your beliefs; Evidence? Personal observation? Or is it just a "feeling". I don't need to revisit any previous post. I don't need to do anything I don't feel the need to do for you or anyone else. Just as you don't have to provide to me/us the irrefutable proof of an existence of any god. Pick one any one. All I need to do for the purposes of this discussion is to honestly present my view/thoughts on atheism to the best of my ability. I have done that. I see no proof of god, therefore I am an atheist. It's really no more complicated than that. If you have proof, again, please provide it.

However, for fun, I'll take on one of your statements presented as fact to which I disagree.

Your statement: "The only active agent in a faith relationship is the person who holds faith." is incorrect. The holder of the faith is an inactive agent. Like a lock-box, a person has to be instilled with faith and then asked to just hold and keep the faith. The active agents in faith are the ones who feel it is their job to instill faith: the preacher, the rabbi, the priest, the parent etc. The holder of the faith is asked not to be active; not to question that faith. No one is born with a knowledge of religion, religious faith, or the concept of god. It has to be actively taught to them, through stories. Take the 10 commandments, the first commandment is a command to have faith in THE god. A command is active. Writing down commandments and the stories of the bible,or koran are active attempts to instill faith. Preachers use all forms of manipulation such as guilt, promise of eternal life, threats of condemnation, threats of death etc to ensure that people keep and hold onto their faith and to keep coming and filling the plate with $.

"As for what I belive regarding science, I have no obligation to believe all of science as a monolithic dogma, like you do with the Christian Religion"....

One need not believe any monolithic dogma to be a Christian. Christianity is a relationship, not a religion.

I don't know anything about Ringman's relationship with Jesus, but I suspect he has one.

His fixation on the literal truth of biblical words is easy for non-believers to combat, so THAT'S what you zero in on.

A Christian need believe only ONE thing........... that a Risen Jesus offers all humans a path into a Spiritual Dimension while still being alive. Once inside that Spiritual Dimension, all sorts of good things are made available to us IN THIS EARTHLY LIFE.

If the Creator prized intelligence, He would have made it easier for really smart people to believe in Him, and hard for the less gifted in the area of the I.Q.

A just God would make Himself available to ALL on an equal basis, and THAT'S wat we find in the Christian God.

To level the playing field for everybody, His only requirement is a complete abandonment of the human SELF. THAT goes against our very nature,i.e. .... it ain't easy.

Pride of intellect, the most basic manifestation of SELF, is the only barrier to that Spiritual Dimension.[one example of "to whom much is given, much will be required"]

Once that pride is surrendered, and contact with the Almighty is made, the intelligence is transformed into WISDOM.

Yes.
Any atheist who really examined that emotion would conclude that it is without basis and is a useless emotion.

Atheists who feel that emotion and don't outright reject it are unknowingly answering a call from God to move beyond themselves.

Can you explain to me why an atheist would care about anyone beyond their own peer group? Animals have a biological need to survive and have surviving offspring. How/why would an atheist go beyond that? I mean, it would be useless.



And while your at that, tell me about the 500 year old atheist university and the atheist hospital system and all the atheist orphanages.


The reason people who believe in God don't want to die too soon is because only life offers the ability to change and, hopefully, get better. Once you die, you are frozen at what ever level of spiritual maturity you were at when you died. If you die in unrepentant sin, that's where you are frozen.

So, an atheist can justify abortion as simply the return to nothingness. But a Christian understands that a great injustice has been done, possibly condemning the aborted to a stunted eternity. We can only pray that God has other means for them.

TFF