At least that one's easy. AGNOSTICS of course; hardcore atheists think they have it all figured out, while agnostics feel there is more room for experimentation and discovering,

The best are of course the mystically inclined lunatics like myself, that tend to get lost in passion, since they just don't care for anything outside that moment of deep connection with their lover. :excited:

 

You said what I try to say in a much more intelligible way.

 

Here we go with the name calling again. Forget about an intelligent discourse hereafter.

 

Those were hypotheses not supported by the data that subsequently accumulated. Must such ideas had their roots not in science but in religion or philosophy. When the data contradicted them, science abandoned them. That's the way it's supposed to work.

 

To continue in the same vein, I don't "believe" in the existence or non-existence of god. I see no evidence in support of the god hypothesis, and therefore don't adhere to it. I see no evidence in support of the existence of a "soul", and therefore see no reason to "believe" that one exists. When we die, we die, just like every other living organism dies. That's what the evidence shows.

 

Not so. I'm not hostile to religion itself. I'm hostile to many of the things religion causes people to do.

 

No? What about curiousity what lies beyond, all the little joys and tortures of life and the world, life rich of experience and insights, dignified wisdom of old age, overcoming suffering, changing from day to day, feeling the awe of the world, etc. Is really "being young, rich and beautiful" the only merit of being here?

I have my lack of "joie de vivre" occasionally, but I don't need a belief in "God" to overcome it.

Seeing all as an incredible dance of chaos and nonsense, completely mesmerizing and trashing me into tiny atoms is enough to say - hell, I want to see what avaits me next.

 

Science is not always right either. Science abandons it's own theories when it realizes that it's previous theories have exceptions to them as well.

Example:

130 years ago, it was believed that the ether ( a material required for electromagnetic waves to propagate) existed and that the speed of light should depend on the direction of the measurement on the earth. Michelson and Morley built an interferometer that was sensitive enough to detect the shift in velocity, if there was one. The problem was that they always came up with the same velocity. So, Einstein proposed his theory of special relativity which simply stated that the speed of light is a constant that is independent of the frame of reference.

Scientists are not always right either.

 

To blame Christianity for much of anything you have to go back three centuries. The Thirty Years War, which was fought from 1618 to 1638, pretty much drained Christians of the willingness to kill on behalf of their faith. The Spanish Inquisition was not definitely abolished until 1834, but by then it had long since lost its vigor. Since then Europeans, and their descendants in the Western Hemisphere, have found plenty of secular reasons to kill people.

 

There's another five minutes of my life I'll never get back.
Don't know why anyone would question someone's belief in the first place or even try to understand it.

 

Religion requires faith, not evidence.

 

Before the muck really starts flinging about...

the purpose of this thread is genuine curiosity, not to sit here and try to prove each other wrong.
I have often said until someone comes around with irrefutable proof of one belief or another I will keep my options open.


This is a genuine curiosity of mine. I cannot disprove the belief of atheists, nor can I disprove other other belief systems.

A LOT of you need to learn to quietly agree to disagree.

And no I did not know this had already been done on here, nor am I trying to start some argument.
I simply want to know what atheists believe.

And I, for one, am not going to argue with that.

 

There should be a sticky warning that threads like this and US politics are apt to start a good ole down and dirty argument. Like US politics both sides are entrenched and will not move, belief versus science, backed up by faith and proof.
Myself personally, if you can't prove it exists then why should I believe in it, and the burden of proof lies with the theists.

 

Why do theists go for this argument, we know that science is not always right that is why science keeps looking at the same problems and postulating new theories. On the other hand when you theists are proven wrong in your beliefs you dive behind faith and the blind ignorance that brings with it.

 

As an atheist, I do believe in a higher power. I believe in the universe, which is beyond our comprehension. What is a soul? How would you even begin to define it?

 

Interesting.

The atheist point of view is very diverse I see.. but please continue.

 

OK I consider myself an atheist with Wiccan overtones, (Its a fun religion).
However, I do KNOW that life continues in another plane,dimension, universe,box, or whatever, as I have been there, and so have a number of other people I have spoken too.

There are probably 100 books written by survivors of death or by people interviewing them. It is beyond all doubt, and the evidence would certainly convict in a court.

Of course, there are those whose minds would not be changed even about UFO's if one landed on their desk top and a LGM came out speaking Engrish.

 

Would convict them of fraud, perhaps. Since we know what happens to the brain when it's about to cease functioning, and since its behaviour fully explains all these delusions about going to a better place, near-death experiences and everything else, there's no reason to suppose that ANY of them were ever, actually, real experiences.

 

Science is neither right nor wrong, because it's not a collection of claims of truth. Science is a system designed to uncover the truth, and it's never failed anybody yet.

Only the morons who misunderstand it and expect it to uncover 100% of all truth instantly, are dumb enough to claim "science got it wrong" when that doesn't happen.

 

As the most strident atheist on the board, naturally I feel compelled to weigh in.

Your first misconception.

Atheist an agnostic deal with two different things entirely. Words have meanings and if we're going to have any sort of discussion, we need to pay attention to those meanings.

These days, agnostic deals with knowledge and atheist deals with belief. Every one is an agnostic if they're honest with themselves. Even dyed in the wool Christians are agnostics, no matter how much they profess otherwise. It is impossible at this point in time for anyone to truly know whether or not there is a god. It's not a binary position. One can only have a belief.

That brings us to Atheism (and it's opposite, theism). Atheism literally means without god. It's from the Greek.

A person who self-identifies as an agnostic doesn't believe in a higher power, they simply answer 'I don't know'. That is if they're sticking to the actual definition of the word as it's tossed about today. (It used to have other meanings.)

You can then follow up with 'well, what do you believe?' and that's where the rest of it comes in. I am both an agnostic and an atheist. As I explained to CarrieJ a couple of months ago, they deal with two different areas. If you ask me 'is there a god', I will answer I don't know. If you ask me if I believe there is a god, I will answer no, I do not believe there is a god.

No. I think 'soul' is a word people use to describe something that doesn't exist. Taken more literally, your question is a non sequitur. How can I think it is anything physical or substantial if I don't think it exists at all? See what I mean?

While it's often rude to answer a question with a question, I've found in this instance it's the most effective way to make my point. What happened before you were born? I realize you said 'if you believe...' but at some point it usually follows that someone asks the atheist 'what do you think happens when you die' so I figured I'd get it out of the way now.

What do you mean when you say a 'belief in science'. Please explain.

These conclusions were not arrived at by science as we know it today. As Kimiko pointed out, they were based largely on superstition and religious dogma. Actual science as it is practiced today, relying on the scientific method, is relatively new. The Chinese were inventing amazing things when the Romans were still living in thatch houses on the shores of the Mediterranean but they weren't using science as we know it today.

These things were not 'demonstrated' as you claim. They were declared to be so with no actual evidence.

Quite so, you did. Unfortunately for you, this question is not so easily answered. There are no tenants of atheism, no hand book or pamphlets on how to be a right and proper atheist, etc. There are atheists who will tell you that they don't believe in a god, but they are 'spiritual' whatever the fuck that means. They will tell you they believe in ghosts and spirits and other planes of existence were our multidimensional selves frolic about with moon beams and technicolor bunnies. There are atheists who will identify as such but then tell you in the same sentence that they believe in some kind of universal spirit. Answers vary from practical and pragmatic to the patently absurd.

If one wants to be a literal atheist, all one has to do is adopt the belief (since atheism only deals with one's belief, not one's knowledge of the god issue) that there is no reason to assume there is a god and so will not be believing in one any more than people don't believe in the flying spaghetti monster. The only reason this question is significant at all (and how one answers it) is because religion has so ingrained itself in our society that, almost before any other consideration is made, they have to know the answer to that question first. Are you or aren't you.

Well once again, you ask a simple question without a simple answer. Life does not always work on sound bites for your easy consumption. You will be required to use that brain on occasion. You can't ask such a blanket question to all 'atheists' like you would a Catholic or a Jew.

Where to the arts come from (music, creativity, painting, etc.)? It comes from our brains. Some of the earliest known artifacts found from ancient peoples, people living in caves on the coasts in Africa more than 30,000 years ago, before we had any sort of language or more than rudimentary tool making skills, were decorative sea shells. They'd been painted with colored ore deposits and had holes placed in them to wear as jewelry. We make art and decorate ourselves the same reason a peacock has feathers. You ever wondered why even ugly musicians get girls?

Love is a trick of evolution. It's human pair bonding. Human children take a very very long time to reach maturity compared to the rest of our animal cousins. Our massive cortex comes with a heavy price tag. It takes a lot of resources to raise and protect a child from infancy to adulthood. A horse walks right out of the womb. It takes a human child sometimes more than a year before it's able to do more than crawl about on the floor. Our heads are so big that we can't even lift them up for the first several months of our life. In a nutshell, we need protectors. Most people are compelled to look after their young. When a baby cries the brain of a normal person explodes in a cascade of stress hormones designed for one purpose: to make you see to the needs of that child. Over the millennia evolution favored those humans who protected and nurtured their young and the best way to do that is by having extra hands to help out. We can imagine that early on it was quite simple. Men agree to protect and provide food for a woman and in return he gets someone who prepares the food and provides sex and other services. Or something like that.

Do you know why women eat chocolate when they're depressed? Because there is a chemical in chocolate called phenylethylamine which speeds up the production of dopamine in your brain. This is what happens when you feel that rush of intense love and passion in a new relationship. Over time this changes and the chemical change to endorphins which are much more addictive than the dopamine. Oxytocin also plays a strong role in the feelings of 'love'.

So, that is love. Sadly there is nothing spiritual or mystical about it but that doesn't make it less. Unless to you the only way it could be special is because it came from a dictatorial sky fairy.

The beauty of being an atheist, ManBitch, is that when one feels one has been wronged, one does not have to ask 'why me'. The atheist can stare at the unfortunate situation with a fair amount of dispassion and asks 'why not me'?

-S-