What Are Your Impressions of Atheism

[Sabby]

Once again, could you provide sources for book burnings in the name of Atheism. What you've described is book burnings in the name of Communism. Communists are Atheists, but unless they undertook these actions in the name of doubting a God, then they were motivated by their Communist ideals, which is far more then Godlessness.

[Ironwolf85]

Once again, could you provide sources for book burnings in the name of Atheism. What you've described is book burnings in the name of Communism. Communists are Atheists, but unless they undertook these actions in the name of doubting a God, then they were motivated by their Communist ideals, which is far more then Godlessness.

That's why I also included the French revolution.

But if we're splitting hairs what about all the athiests imprisoned in the middle east for "Causing unrest" or some other ideological reason linked to religion?
By that logic you can't blame Islamic extremists for their imprisonment and must instead blame the government itself.
Then we get into the "No true Scotsman" scenario

[Sabby]

I missed the French Revolution part. I'm not sure how that counts as killing and burning in the name of Atheism either. It seems to me like you're just listing examples of Religious groups being taken down, which isn't the same thing as showing me organized violence by Atheists. The French Revolution was an uprising against the leadership of the time, not a bunch of the Godless taking down the Godly for being Godly.

This isn't splitting hairs, man, you're just not providing what I asked for.

If you're really wanting to show me examples of Atheists persecuting anyone, bringing up the Middle East is not the way to do it. Atheists are persecuted pretty harshly in Muslim countries. Most of the prisoners your referring to are most likely behind bars simply for being Atheists.

[Ironwolf85]

I missed the French Revolution part. I'm not sure how that counts as killing and burning in the name of Atheism either. It seems to me like you're just listing examples of Religious groups being taken down, which isn't the same thing as showing me organized violence by Atheists. The French Revolution was an uprising against the leadership of the time, not a bunch of the Godless taking down the Godly for being Godly.

This isn't splitting hairs, man, you're just not providing what I asked for.

If you're really wanting to show me examples of Atheists persecuting anyone, bringing up the Middle East is not the way to do it. Atheists are persecuted pretty harshly in Muslim countries. Most of the prisoners your referring to are most likely behind bars simply for being Atheists.

And we're back to no true Scotsman.
If a group is avowedly atheist and torches Christian libraries or burns Buddhist monks alive, in the name of their own idology, destroying religion in an area. Does it matter what flag they carry?
If a secular government carries out a campaign of organized brutality to destroy a religion it sees as "Harmful" in the name of "enlightening the peasants" as the USSR did in Mongolia. (destroyed the last remnants of the Arian branch of Christianity which pre-dated the roman church)
Or as Mao did in china (murdering Buddhist monks to destroy their knowledge, dragging their bodies through mud slicked streets and beating the corpses with sticks in the name of destroying religion.)

If I give you a pass on this you have to give me a pass on the crusades which were far more about individual ambition, and the brutal Spanish inquisition which answered only to the king of spain and not the roman church.

[consortium11]

I think one can reasonably call the French Revolution anti-Christian... a large part of the new government's policies (when they took a break from conspiring against each other) was related to dechristianisation; the destruction of churches, the confiscation of Church property, the removal of crosses (including from graveyards) and bells, the legal destruction of all monastic orders (quickly followed by the physical destruction) and a general persecution of priests and other religious figures including a number of massacres and mass executions as well as more "minor" actions (the nuns of Hôtel-Dieu de Paris were subjected to public spankings for example). One of the reasons behind the Revolutionary calender and it's removal of Sundays (instead having three 10 day weeks in a month) was to make it harder for people to go to Church or have mass.

But anti-religion in general?

Whether Jacques Hébert's "Cult of Reason" constitutes a religion or not is a well balanced question and arguably one of the few cases where it may be appropriate to present atheism as a religion but after Hébert was executed (an occupational hazard for revolutionaries in France) Robespierre's "Cult of the Supreme Being" certainly counted as one... it included God, an immortal human soul and was intended to be the state religion of France.

I don't think one can reasonably argue that the Revolution was anti-religion in general when it's most powerful and notable figure put in place a religion of his own.

[Sabby]

No, this isn't No True Scotsman. I don't think you understand what that means, as you're not using it right. I never said 'a real Atheist would never do that', I said that some of the people involved being Atheists is irrelevant. If anything, your making a false equivocation fallacy. The examples you've given me are not of Atheists rising up against and terrorizing Theists. As Consortium explains, it's of people angry at their ruling body, who are Theistic, not of Atheists seeking out and tearing down a Theistic group simply for being Theistic. The reasoning is what is important here.

[Mathim]

In other words, it's systemically easier to be a bigot if you live in a nonsecular society.

Inasmuch as it's easier to get away with not requiring a rational justification for anything, yes. You're not going to see many people be tried for witchcraft (let alone convicted) when people demand hard evidence for everything.

[Ironwolf85]

Inasmuch as it's easier to get away with not requiring a rational justification for anything, yes. You're not going to see many people be tried for witchcraft (let alone convicted) when people demand hard evidence for everything.

Interesting fact: The Hammer of Witches used to test and kill so many was banned by the papacy, the pope of the time even published a paper calling bullshit on it's testing methods, yet became a best seller anyway....

@Sabby nothing exists in a vacuum not even persecution. Likewise you could blame fear of the black death, and the failure of both civic and religious authorities to stop it. For the rise of the Flaglent movement which rabidly persecuted and tortured Jews in Germany driving many into Poland. It's much easier to just say "Oh just Christians attacking jews cuz they are like that." than complicated minutia that drove the events forward.

[Mathim]

Interesting fact: The Hammer of Witches used to test and kill so many was banned by the papacy, the pope of the time even published a paper calling bullshit on it's testing methods, yet became a best seller anyway....

@Sabby nothing exists in a vacuum not even persecution. Likewise you could blame fear of the black death, and the failure of both civic and religious authorities to stop it. For the rise of the Flaglent movement which rabidly persecuted and tortured Jews in Germany driving many into Poland. It's much easier to just say "Oh just Christians attacking jews cuz they are like that." than complicated minutia that drove the events forward.

So in other words, too little, too late, huh? Amazing.

[Ironwolf85]

So in other words, too little, too late, huh? Amazing.

Yeah, sadly that happens a lot in history.

The guy who wrote The Hammer of Witches was a sadistic lecher, the catholic church didn't take his bullshit book seriously. Till peasants started using it to burn people that is.
The pope initially dismissed the book when the writer came to him for papal backing, then lesser bishops rejected it as "terrifying, inaccurate, and full of pagan superstitions used to detect witches". Some Bishiop in northern France signed a copy, then demanded his signature be taken off it when he actually read the thing.
Before Borgia official catholic doctrine proclaimed witches did not exist. Fanatics often overlooked that fact, and in more than one case were brought up on charges of heresy for holding witch trials.

[Cryptic Anomaly]

It's already been said but it really just depends on the individual Atheist, some are fine and just like some religious/spiritual people never talk about their opinions on the topic at all and then you have some who are just as zealous as some religious people are and hold all the same narrow minded beliefs about people who have different beliefs to themselves.

On a side note just as there is not way of proving if God exists, there is also no proving God doesn't exist either, something which Atheists don't always think about. 

[Sethala]

On a side note just as there is not way of proving if God exists, there is also no proving God doesn't exist either, something which Atheists don't always think about.

Can we please stop shifting the burden of proof?  Atheists don't need to prove anything, theists do.  If you don't understand why that is, feel free to read my post on the null hypothesis.  And of course, feel free to point out any holes there might be in my argument.

[Sabby]

On a side note just as there is not way of proving if God exists, there is also no proving God doesn't exist either, something which Atheists don't always think about.

We don't think of that line of reasoning for the same reason we don't think of the "Nah uh!" line of reasoning.

[Hemingway]

On a side note just as there is not way of proving if God exists, there is also no proving God doesn't exist either, something which Atheists don't always think about.

The problem with that is that the possibility of something being true alone isn't very useful. If you're not familiar with it, you should look up the analogy of Russell's teapot.

[Mathim]

It's the stupidest, most childish argument out there. It's not even an argument, or a defense, really, just a statement so obvious that it needn't be said but when you run out of things to say, it's a pitiful last refuge. People should be embarrassed to be caught using that in any kind of defense of faith or other unsubstantiated claims. You can apply that faulty logic to anything out there, hence the birth of the flying spaghetti monster. If anything it just harms the argument because it raises the number of things the whole argument applies to and creates conflict between not just theists and unbelievers, but the different theists who claim theirs is the one true god, or whatever the case may be. Arguing that something can't be disproved just opens a can of worms they'd have been better off leaving unmolested.

[Cryptic Anomaly]

Can we please stop shifting the burden of proof?  Atheists don't need to prove anything, theists do.  If you don't understand why that is, feel free to read my post on the null hypothesis.  And of course, feel free to point out any holes there might be in my argument.

Sounds like Bullshit to me and rather immature, not to mention that you have stacked the whole thing to suit your argument.

We don't think of that line of reasoning for the same reason we don't think of the "Nah uh!" line of reasoning.

The problem with that is that the possibility of something being true alone isn't very useful. If you're not familiar with it, you should look up the analogy of Russell's teapot.

And yet your reasoning to me is just that -  "Nah uh".  I guess you aren't as perfect as you think you are.

It's the stupidest, most childish argument out there. It's not even an argument, or a defense, really, just a statement so obvious that it needn't be said but when you run out of things to say, it's a pitiful last refuge. People should be embarrassed to be caught using that in any kind of defense of faith or other unsubstantiated claims. You can apply that faulty logic to anything out there, hence the birth of the flying spaghetti monster. If anything it just harms the argument because it raises the number of things the whole argument applies to and creates conflict between not just theists and unbelievers, but the different theists who claim theirs is the one true god, or whatever the case may be. Arguing that something can't be disproved just opens a can of worms they'd have been better off leaving unmolested.

And yet it is the argument that Atheists use all the time.

Anyway, thank you for proving my point, some Atheists are indeed just as zealous and aggressively defensive about their beliefs as some religious people are.

I was just attempting to be open minded about the whole topic but I guess that is not wanted here.

[TaintedAndDelish]

Cryptic,

Have a look at this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

Russell's teapot, sometimes called the celestial teapot or cosmic teapot, is an analogy first coined by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) to illustrate that the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person making scientifically unfalsifiable claims rather than shifting the burden of proof to others, specifically in the case of religion. Russell wrote that if he claims that a teapot orbits the Sun somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars, it is nonsensical for him to expect others to believe him on the grounds that they cannot prove him wrong. Russell's teapot is still referred to in discussions concerning the existence of God.


The point is, if you are going to state that something is true, you need to be able to back up what you are saying, otherwise your statement lacks merit. ( Just like Russell's claim about some tea pot floating out in space )

Stating that something is true, not backing it up, and then defending it with "Oh well, you can't prove it's not true" is what gets people all pissy around here. Its not a very productive way to make your point.

[Cryptic Anomaly]

Cryptic,

Have a look at this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

Russell's teapot, sometimes called the celestial teapot or cosmic teapot, is an analogy first coined by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) to illustrate that the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person making scientifically unfalsifiable claims rather than shifting the burden of proof to others, specifically in the case of religion. Russell wrote that if he claims that a teapot orbits the Sun somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars, it is nonsensical for him to expect others to believe him on the grounds that they cannot prove him wrong. Russell's teapot is still referred to in discussions concerning the existence of God.


The point is, if you are going to state that something is true, you need to be able to back up what you are saying, otherwise your statement lacks merit. ( Just like Russell's claim about some tea pot floating out in space )

Stating that something is true, not backing it up, and then defending it with "Oh well, you can't prove it's not true" is what gets people all pissy around here. Its not a very productive way to make your point.

What gets me pissy to use your term, is it seems to be one sided, prove that God doesn't exist. Seriously, you cannot prove that there is no God anymore than you can prove there is one. It seems to me that Atheists like to claim "Burden of Proof" to suit themselves and yet ignore it when it is presented to them.

Scientific rules and thinking really don't apply here as it is a question of "Faith" whether you believe there is a God or you believe there isn't it requires Faith either way.

And really this is not what the thread is about anyway, I just mentioned it as a side note expecting a little more maturity but I seemed to have struck a nerve from Atheists who like to challenge but do not like to be challenged in return.

And I didn't state anything was true either by the way, that was just something people jumped on because they chose to be offended by my comment.

[TaintedAndDelish]

What is faith?

[Cryptic Anomaly]

What is faith?

I am clearly speaking to someone who just likes to argue rather than discuss. Goodbye.

[Sabby]

He asked you a valid question, and you're deflecting it, as you have everyone elses attempts to engage you. You're free to refuse that engagement, but don't do so while also proclaiming yourself the only one willing to have the discussion you've refused. It's incredibly childish.

[Blythe]

Time for a break. This thread will be locked for 24 hours.

Unlocked.

[Cryptic Anomaly]

He asked you a valid question, and you're deflecting it, as you have everyone elses attempts to engage you. You're free to refuse that engagement, but don't do so while also proclaiming yourself the only one willing to have the discussion you've refused. It's incredibly childish.

I was in the process of responding to this when the thread was locked.

Valid question? - No, he did not ask a valid question he was being a wise ass and therefore deserves to be ignored.

Deflecting? - This is why I am walking away, for some reason you can't see that you all have been deflecting my comment (It can't be proven that God does not exist, anymore than it can be proven that God does exist) basically because you can't answer it and that makes you all feel rather unhappy with yourselves. So you attack, you vilify, you condescend and use as much pseudo intellectual bullshit as you can all think of to try and make someone who made a simple comment feel intimidated. Well you failed and made yourselves look like absolute prats.

Childish? - Again we have very ideas of what that means. In short I could see that this discussion was going nowhere fast, the comments and attitude were becoming increasingly hostile and hypocritical, all of you were applying a set of rules against me that you yourselves were not willing to follow. Rather than put up with that, I walked away and will still walk away. If you consider this childish then so be it.

I like to converse with people about all manner of topics and I am ok if people disagree with me but I am not ok with being spoken down to or being disrespected, I feel that you lot are not ok with people who have different opinions and I am definite in my belief that you guys are also not ok with people posing questions that you cannot come up with answers to.

The odd thing is

a/ I didn't care if no one answered.

b/ I would have been totally ok if people had of just put forward their opinions on the matter.

Anyway, I think the amount of religious/atheist threads that get closed down here more than supports what I have just said.

Have fun getting threads locked and Goodbye, this board is not for me.

[Beguile's Mistress]

A quote from a book I'm reading:

"Good things happen.  Evil things happen and in neither physics nor religion is there an explanation."

I'm not expressing an opinion here, merely repeating something interesting I read.

[consortium11]

A quote from a book I'm reading:

"Good things happen.  Evil things happen and in neither physics nor religion is there an explanation."

I'm not expressing an opinion here, merely repeating something interesting I read.

At the risk of derailing the thread and taking us back into territory covered by the last religion thread here, physics may be able to offer an explanation (through determinism) but at the consequence of a complete loss of the very concept of free will.

Religion offers multiple explanations depending on which religion and even which sect of a religion one follows. Whether any of them are convincing is a different matter entirely.