There you have me! Not much ranching is done in Brooklyn!Originally Posted by jocky
Richard you are obviously not a farmer. Any self respecting cow worth her salt would object long and loudly to be compared to bacon. What an insult. Mind you the ways of God are inscrutable. Beefburgers, man, beefburgers.
aude sapere
It's something I'd hate to see, and Dawkins has been instrumental in organising it. Luckily, he's a plonker and will never appeal to blokes like you and me, and so far, his best effort is the awful "Brights" idea.Athiest, when I get to heaven, unlikely as that sounds, I am going to look God squarely in the face and say, you dont exist! Once a troublemaker, always a troublemaker.In my view, the position of athiesm is simple, regardless of Hitchens major or Dawkings, we do not believe in the supernatural. Thankfully, there is no such thing as organised athieism.
I think we'd be far better to apply humour than logic.
No.
Atheism is a lack of belief in gods, not an active belief that none exist. It's really quite simple.
You're free to continue arguing that point, but if you wanted to be arguing an actual point as opposed to a strawman of atheism, you should accept that difference.
Go to work, get married, have some kids, pay your taxes, pay your bills, watch your tv, follow fashion, act normal, obey the law and repeat after me: "I am free."
Anon
It really depends what you see the word 'belief' with 'God' to mean.
If you think it means faith, trust, confidence with 'God' then this doesn't necessarily apply to atheism. One does not say 'One has the faith that there is no God' as one wouldn't say 'I believe that I disbelieve', because one simply disbelieves.
However, an atheist may have 'confidence' or 'opinion/conviction' that there is no God, the opposite side to the coin that the a Theist is on, having confidence that there is a God, but does 'confidence' in something really suggest a religious 'belief'? I think it does only with positive claims such as 'the lord is my shepherd'. With negation, religious belief does not apply, and hence an atheist uses 'disbelief', because it is the negative of belief.
Atheism does not follow religious creeds or tenants, beyond the personal, and possibly empirically or logically influenced (or as Atheist has suggested with humour), disbelief in a deity. It is a common mistake for those who adhere to tenants of religion and those that revel in their faith, to see atheism through their religious perspective and refer to it with their rhetoric. Sadly, most definitions and comments on atheism have been penned by theists, it feels natural for a theist to say 'its a belief there is no God', but they would be incorrect.
What's the point of all that? Well...exactly.
Well said!
What's the point?
Only one, and that's why I value your well-composed treatise; the mis-application of definition on atheism just shouldn't happen any longer. A smart, well-read person cannot be ignorant of the world in the 21st century so badly as to make that kind of mistake, so it's done deliberately. I've lost count of the number of times I've made exactly the same point as you, although probably not as eloquently.
Doesn't matter though, you can't change things which refute your argument, docherknow?
You look like the sort of bloke who ought to check out The Blokes' Thread. Jocky's in it, but we have a word limiter on him in there.
Go to work, get married, have some kids, pay your taxes, pay your bills, watch your tv, follow fashion, act normal, obey the law and repeat after me: "I am free."
Anon
There is a big point actually - theists consider (and many atheists) atheism to be a disbelief in said Gods (notably Christian conceptions of God). in that sense, Atheism doesn't exist outside of religion. As it is defined as a negation of the religious assumption of truth.
Atheism is, according to the OED, "Disbelief in, or denial of, the existence of a God" (p.533).
Sloppiness of language, or thinking, or both, equates disbelief with lack of belief. Atheism is belief system. If one does not have a belief or disbelief in the existence of a god then one is agnostic.
Unless one wishes to challenge the OED this settles the matter as to what the term "atheist" means.
aude sapere
I'd gladly challenge the OED.
I'm surprised you'd think that a dictionary meaning lent any validity to a chosen meaning.
Go to work, get married, have some kids, pay your taxes, pay your bills, watch your tv, follow fashion, act normal, obey the law and repeat after me: "I am free."
Anon
It's not a negative, it's a lack of. Having no bananas doesn't usually encourage one to believe that bananas don't exist.
Please don't make me bring out that silly a-philatelist rubbish.....
Go to work, get married, have some kids, pay your taxes, pay your bills, watch your tv, follow fashion, act normal, obey the law and repeat after me: "I am free."
Anon
If there were no religious people, there would be no atheists - you do not need to not believe in something that doesn't exist - the only way to believe in that, is to consider the possibility of it existing - for it to get to the degree of "Atheism" in that sense, there must be a strong opposition to the idea - people aren't non believers in Gravity, for instance - there aren't nongravatists with any real credit. Yet the religious foothold on society causes an obsession with denying something.
Personally, I don't believe in God, that doesn't mean I am an atheist, as atheism is merely another category - by categorizing, you are inventing, to understand the thing inside of a frame of reference, you need to break down the categories, and remove the names. Atheism exists because theism does - check the etymology.
To go with your banana example - lets say someone didn't know that Bananas existed - then he wouldn't need to believe that Bananas didn't exist, they simply, to him, wouldn't exist. Now when applied to an imaginary object, like, for instance, a philosopher's stone - someone outside the culture who conceived of one, I. E., everyone outside of European traditions before the culture exchanges (though even most people today), and most people in the European one anyway, would not need to deny its existence, to them it wouldn't exist.
In that sense, you can only not believe in something, if you can conceive of it to some extent, essentially, if you can name it. Atheism then, exists because people conceptualized the notion of a deity - without the deity, there is no atheism, and there are no arrogant self-centered people running around cocksure and militant, looking to rain on everyone's parade, who cannot post anything that isn't opinionated and plaintiff on public forums. But, then again, there also wouldn't be annoying little preachers who come on and think a public forum is a recruiting ground for converts or an open audience of the Gospel According to Joe Sixpack. I don't know who is worse, to be honest, either way, none of them are really interested in discussing literature, the Bible as literature, or even the societies that form religion, outside of their own sphere of thought, so, ultimately, both are equally as self-centered, silly, and downright boring. Of course though, some people like to also cut up people's posts into half sentences, and give 2-10 word responses to everything, making replying a tedious task (and I am sure that is want to happen to this one too), so I doubt I'll bother replying if that happens, given that it would be better if people, wanting to have a conversation, but recognizing the medium is written, and that there is a bit of time elapsed between each post, could write in paragraphs that take in a whole argument, and then cut it up, in paragraphs again, as that is how written English logically works, rather than cutting here and there where it is seen as fit - such a world would be ideal, but alas, the preachers on both sides are freaking annoying, and will probably have their way (I suspect anally) with this post too.
Last edited by JBI; 08-09-2009 at 06:26 PM.
On what basis, other than it suits your eccentric idea of what atheism is, do you reject the OED as an arbiter of the meaning of an English word?
It is a mark of close-mindedness that when one is faced with evidence from an authoritative source that counters one's beliefs that one rejects such evidence out-of-hand.
So much for even the appearance of rationality on your part.
aude sapere
No.
If there was no religion, we'd all be atheists.
It is that easy.
Alas, I see that I must bring the a-philatelist nonsense. Bananas have ever been an analogy failure since those creationist dummies failed to realise they've been modified by man. An aphilatelist does not collect stamps. He doesn't need to even consider whether stamps are real or whether they exist, he does not collect stamps. An Amzon tribesman who's never heard of a post office is an aphilatelist.
An atheist does not need to ask whether god/s might or might not exist, but if he doesn't actively believe in one or more, he's an atheist. To take it to its silliest end, babies are born atheist, as are puppies, dolphins and aardvarks. Your whole treatise is based on the rather queer notion that one must "know" something to be free of it. Unfortunately, as I don't believe in Zenquiths, Strolgerneufs or Pinklepokins either, I find the idea preposterous.
And I'm sorry about ignoring the rest of your post, but it didn't bear commenting on.
I like the OED, but as far as I'm aware, no organisation has ever been appointed arbiter of English.
If you have evidence to the contrary, please show it.
I'm agnostic on language.
Go to work, get married, have some kids, pay your taxes, pay your bills, watch your tv, follow fashion, act normal, obey the law and repeat after me: "I am free."
Anon
Ignore my previous remark, it was a mistaken attempt at levity.
You do know how dictionaries work? And that words are constantly updated, added and changed in meaning? Dictionaries are one organisation's recording of what a word means at the time the description was written. If OED is the sole arbiter of English, then it would appear that all other dictionaries shouldn't exist.
If I want to know what the definition of "Roman Catholic" is, I go to the RCC, not the OED. If I want to know what an Anglican is, I'd be emailing Rowan Williams.
Seriously, I'm surprised you even asked this question. If you think my idea of what "atheist" means, then a hell of a lot of atheists must be highly eccentric, as the description I've given you time after time is by far the most widely-accepted description of the term.
Here, you manage to call me closed[sic]-minded and say that I reject evidence out of hand in one sentence, which is a pretty neat trick.
Au contraire, and that's why I'm now responding at length.
I am not even slightly closed-minded, and saying that just because I don't agree with your analysis is a bit pointless. I have above explained precisely why a dictionary meaning shouldn't be taken as last authority on the subject, albeit one from an institution as respected as the Oxford Press.
QED.
Go to work, get married, have some kids, pay your taxes, pay your bills, watch your tv, follow fashion, act normal, obey the law and repeat after me: "I am free."
Anon
JBI: I tend to agree with you here, which is why my visits to RT are being infrequent.
Let me stipulate, for the record, that I am near universally anti-doctrine, whether Semitic derived, Eastern, or with the lavishly injected goo of Western gnosticism added in. That said, I am increasingly discontent with hard materialism as a methodology, and don't know where this leaves me, except to be conscious of the narrative, and responsible to and for that narrative as much as I can, like with American Mormonism--which at the very least is fascinating in its story of a survivalist hardline cult rapidly turning 21st century mainstream.
Its founder, Joseph Smith, was an anarchist who declared war on the federal government of the United States; from my study of his biography and from my lay knowledge of mental illness, I suspect he was a borderline psychotic (I did a term paper on him a few years before university). The government policed its members for years, and held the admission of Utah into the union hostage to pressure the LDS into renouncing bigamy.
Today? Mormonism is studied as a western sect gradually assimilating into the mainstream; it is a fairly wealthy church, steadily using its political power to make its orthodoxy felt, and the mainstream media increasingly examines it as a sociological phenomenon, even wondering if the LDS church will *preserve* the American Empire the way Catholicism preserved Rome.
These types of discussions are much more interesting to me over and above zealotry.
Just before Richard and JBI return, I'd like to add a question for them:
Which of the following gods are you agnostic as to the existence thereof?
Osiris
Set
Thor
Zeus
Neptune
Mithras
Baal
Ra
Maui
Papatuanuku
Vishnu
I'll leave the list there for now - as there are too many to list - but if you aren't agnostic about any or all of those gods, I'd appreciate knowing why they're different from gods you are agnostic as their existence.
Go to work, get married, have some kids, pay your taxes, pay your bills, watch your tv, follow fashion, act normal, obey the law and repeat after me: "I am free."
Anon
Ah, the argument Ad Dawkinsum.
You miss the point though. We are talking about the concept of knowledge, and how it ties into dispute. the only way to not believe in something, is to conceptualize it. In that sense, I cannot believe in something I do not know of, since, not knowing of it, I do not know how to not believe in it.
Disbelief comes only when belief is considered. So, someone who doesn't know of these Gods, I. E., someone who hasn't heard of them, most likely isn't "Agnostic" to them if you will, but simply hasn't heard of them. In that sense then, the only reason why you are Atheist to them, is because, quite simply, you realize that they once were believed in.
In that sense, as a discourse, atheism is limited to the existence of theism - to declare yourself an atheist then, you automatically declare yourself as discrediting theism, not believing in a God. So, in other words, You believe/know there is no God, meaning, you are contradicting, rather than "free thinking" and you are just as rooted in the discourse as anyone else.
You try and make the argument that Atheism is some sort of inherent real, but where is the grounding? Was believing in Evolution an inherent real before it was hypothesized? What about the ancient Chinese, were they atheist to the Jewish faith, or were they simply on the other side of the world. You cannot start labeling people to suit your political motivations - you cannot be something, unless you are acknowledged/acknowledge yourself as something -therefore, you cannot be atheist, which, given the definition you dispute because it disagrees with you, would imply a strong need for a conceptualization of a deity to generate such an attitude.
But of course, someone, after this, is going to come in here with another tedious response, wherein, it becomes clear that he only reads what feeds his arguments, and ignores the rest (meanwhile breaking things up into single sentences to try and authoritatively manipulate the context of someone else's post to serve his arrogant discourse) so why should I bother posting?
Lets face it, atheists are just as belief-bound as theists. Some of them think, just because they are obtuse opinionated "Atheists"(or "The Atheists") who somehow are "Above" religion, that they have the right to come here sporting an "I am right you are all idiots" attitude and calling everyone else names for thinking differently, so, when it comes down to it, all the arguments against religion ultimately fail, as, from observation, a belief or disbelief in the religion doesn't a) make one a better person (the argument ad Al-Quedum), b) make one a more open minded person (the argument ad scientificum), or better yet c) make one any more interesting to listen to (no neologisms for this one).
Both of these seem camps are highly influenced by America at any rate - the preacher, in the European tradition, would have been burned to a crisp, whereas today they are given street corners and are allowed to come-a-knocking on my door. The atheist too would have, whereas now they simply follow the preachers in everything, including holding conventions and whatnot. All I know is, when it comes down to it, traditional religious music is far more pleasant to the ear than any of this tedious banter, and, quite simply, sometimes it is enjoyable to experience a culture, and appreciate its history and traditions without perhaps believing in its deities - though one should show respect, assuming there is respect merited.
But no, alas, tedious preachers coming in saying they saw Jesus when they were on the toilet, and annoying atheists coming here saying everyone who disagrees with them is a moron - who is worse tell me? You've (you Atheists) have essentially become what you are criticizing - good job, you ruined it for the rest of us who merely wished to enjoy life without being so god damn uptight.
Last edited by JBI; 08-10-2009 at 10:56 AM.
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