Are Atheists More Religious Now?

[RosaRubicondior]

In my experience, theists who accuse atheists of being closed minded seem to think that open mindedness means agreeing with them that they are right and nothing could possibly contradict them.

Atheists have looked at your beliefs, probably in far more detail than you ever have, and have concluded that there is no basis in fact or logic for them.  If you were to open your mind to the possibility that the label your parents pinned on you as a child, and the stories and books they told you were gospel truth, might possibly have been wrong, you might have come to the same conclusion as we did.  

I can only assume it's the fear of punishment for merely questioning these handed down beliefs that is preventing you from a rational appraisal of them.  Phobias do that to people.  Trying to feel better about yourself by denigrating others will not change the world, though no doubt it will reinforce the delusion which you seem to need reinforcing at every oportunity, as though, deep down, you know it's got no basis in fact or logic but are afraid it just might have.

[Edward the Theist]

The biggest difference is than instead of me having someone to symbolically blame for my actions (the Pastor told me to do it) or something like a holy book (the Bible said it was OK), all my actions (good, neutral and bad) are completely of my own volition with no one to blame but myself.

Reading your quote makes me think of something about religion and morality--why must they go together? Is it because there's no other way to make sense of morality? If you are good because you choose to be good without any external boss making you be good, then you are better than the Christian who has their morality prescribed to them. If one has to be told to do something, or forced to do something, where's the morality?

I must admit, I, myself, have no particular religion, and my view of God is so off from the Christians, that I'd probably be considered by them to be an atheist. Nonetheless, I do feel that consciousness is a force that exists external to central nervous systems, and I believe the psychological construct of God (whom I call, Father) is my way of manifesting that consciousness to a greater degree, here in the physical world. Of course, I am a monist, so I believe everything is God, for lack of a better term. Thus, one could say all I believe in is God, it's the inherent reality of everything else I doubt. That kind of makes me an atheist and a theist at the same time.

Okay, I'm going to try to multi-quote.  :bananacolor:
I hope your right, Thumpalumpacus, because that's what I want to do. I have come across some interesting philosophical notions lately, and I want a chance to debate them. I almost think debating the existence of God is worthless. I mean, no matter how hard I try in such debates, I can never get passed first base, which is to agree on a definition of God. Atheists say they don't believe in God, but they don't define God. Christians say they believe in God, but they can't describe what He is like, other than in vague terms.

Well as you have already found out this isn't one of 'Most atheist forums' and that is one of the great attractions of this place for me. Living where I do the nearest I get to debate theism is to watch the TV and have the debating done for me. I joined RDF for a number of reasons one of which was the opportunity to discuss theism with theist. But it didn't turn out that way.

You lost me with some of your acronyms. What's RDF?
I do agree with you that, so far, this forum seems to be different. I'm wondering if it's an older crowd. The last group I was in was a younger crowd and so it seemed like with them atheism was a fundamentalistic religion. But then that's how younger people are, anyway about everything--very black and white. Even if they are middle of the road, they tend to be militantly, fundamentalistically middle of the road.

So, maybe this is an older crowd, or maybe I'm wrong about younger people and it was just that particular group. Either way, this group seems to be a more comfortable fit.

I'll debate until you are blue in the face if you like, as long as you take my views to be my own, and not representative of any other atheists. As for The Who quote, an atheist couldn't be anybody's boss in the name of atheism. We don't have a leader, a holy book, or dogma. As stated above atheism is just the lack of belief in the god myth.

Ah, but it's in how you define that God-myth. Because you don't just throw out God, you throw out anything that isn't either prescribed by the "scientific community" or immediately apparent to your five physical senses. I have yet to encounter an atheist who wants to speculate what conditions were like prior to the big bang, and yet because current scientific theory says there was a big bang, I don't find atheists who believe in a steady-state universe. All I find is closed minds on that subject--and that's the forerunner of religion.

Evolution and chaos/natural selection have problems. One of the biggest is the vast amount of time needed for life to evolve into what we see around us, and even more is the absolutely ridiculous odds of a single cell ever evolving in the first place from organic chemicals--and then surviving to evolve! Atheists just tend to believe it and ignore the problems--that's the forerunner of religion.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with evolution, but I have to add another ingredient to make it work and that's a kind of primordial consciousness--something, anything, with some kind of volition and the ability to shape the natural world. Is that God? I don't know, I don't really even care. God, for me, is a psychological construct I have created over the course of my life.

What I'm saying is that to be an atheist, by todays common definition, you have to turn your back on so many things that you might as well just build a church and call it the First Church of Atheism. Because you say you don't believe in God, but you do nothing other than to disprove the primitive notion of the Christian God. Well, of course there's no man sitting on a thrown in a separate dimension called heaven where the streets are gold and there are mansions everywhere. Besides I think that's called Beverly Hills, California.

Atheists appear science-minded and intellectual when they are doubting the Christian god, but they seem fundamentalistic when they turn there back on the very contradictions strict atheism creates.

[Edward the Theist]

I often hear the term "atheist leaders" but I don't know who that's supposed to mean.  Are there atheist leaders?  There are guys who write books, Dawkins being the most popular right now, but they're hardly leaders.  They do make money off of atheism, but are they not supposed to try to make the best living they can just like everyone else?  I guess I'm not sure why you are drawing these particular parallels and who you're drawing them to.

I agree with that, now. I can see that. Good point.

In my experience, theists who accuse atheists of being closed minded seem to think that open mindedness means agreeing with them that they are right and nothing could possibly contradict them.

Atheists have looked at your beliefs, probably in far more detail than you ever have,

I highly doubt that, unless you know what veridican philosophy entails, and since there are only two people in the world who consider themselves, "veridicans," and since I invented it, I doubt atheists have looked at my beliefs in far more detail than I have. Religiously, I believe two things: God is monistic in nature, and the human purpose is to become Christ (Christ being God conscious of Himself from within His creation). That being the case, I have pretty much shelved the religious aspects of veridicanism and adopted a more philosophical/mathmatical approach to what I now call veridican cosmology.

But since I have been making sweeping generalizations about atheists, I suppose it's only fair that you get to make a sweeping generalization or two.


 

and have concluded that there is no basis in fact or logic for them. If you were to open your mind to the possibility that the label your parents pinned on you as a child, and the stories and books they told you were gospel truth, might possibly have been wrong, you might have come to the same conclusion as we did.

Or, maybe what I found was that the stories were much more abstract and symbolic and reveal deep mysteries to those who have it within them to study them outside the light of traditional religion. Maybe atheism is an overreaction. Case in point: Christians don't believe we can become Christ. They believe we can be Christ-like, or that we can follow Christ, but not be Christ. Yet Jesus said on two occasions to eat his body and drink his blood. Why? Well, let me ask you this. You used to be a tiny baby. Now you are a completely different physical body. What is the substance of your adult body? Quite simply it is the food you ate. We become what we eat and what we eat becomes us. We are to be Christ. Once that is realized, it opens up the whole gospel in a new light. Especially when Jesus says, "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father." But that's for another discussion.

So, I would say I've moved beyond the theology of my youth. How about you? Oh, right, you just threw everything out, and when people ask you to explain the impact of Jesus Christ on the world, you just say he never existed, right?

I can only assume it's the fear of punishment for merely questioning these handed down beliefs that is preventing you from a rational appraisal of them. Phobias do that to people. Trying to feel better about yourself by denigrating others will not change the world, though no doubt it will reinforce the delusion which you seem to need reinforcing at every oportunity, as though, deep down, you know it's got no basis in fact or logic but are afraid it just might have.

Every religion has its hypocrites, apparently. You say, "Trying to feel better about yourself by denigrating others will not change the world..." Then you call me delusional, you say that my personal religion has been studied by atheists and discredited. You make me feel retarded by suggesting I have an infantile fear of punishment, and you insinuate that I am a phobic personality. Hell, I've never even met you. But you see, that's what religion does to people. It allows them to sin, and preach morality at the same time. It really doesn't matter whether you call the religion atheism or Christianity.

As for facing reality: I'm one of the rarest people I know. I look in the mirror, and I know I am not a good person. So, fear punishment...yes, because I deserve it so much. Most people I know think they're "pretty good people." I never think that way about myself--ever. I suppose that's why my God has protected me so much throughout my life and prevented me from reaping the consequences of what I have sown.

Do you think that's a low self-image?

[humblesmurph]

Edward, there may have been a first cause, you call it god, cool.  I believe there was a first spark that turned simple compounds into living things, you call it god, cool.  There may be some unifying energy or strand that runs through all of existence, again, if you want to call it god, cool.  It would seem to me that by your definition I'm not really an atheist, I just don't use the word god to describe these entities.  

When I say I don't believe in god I mean a singular, all powerful being--that designed the universe--that I can pray to-- that I can please--that I can make angry.

[Davin]

If you are good because you choose to be good without any external boss making you be good, then you are better than the Christian who has their morality prescribed to them.

For some people prescribed morality is better for them than figuring things out for themselves, does that make them better or worse people? I don't think it does in itself, but I think that those who take the time to think of the consequences of their actions are at least better in the area of morality than those that don't.

If one has to be told to do something, or forced to do something, where's the morality?

It's still the person's choice to blindly follow someone, so the morality is in whether the person should seek the answer themselves or just follow what someone else says.

Atheists say they don't believe in God, but they don't define God.

There's a perfectly rational reason for this: one can't be expected to come up with every infinitely possible version of every possible god to say that they don't believe in any of them. It's far more reasonable for time, sanity and reality to wait for someone to provide evidence of their positive claim.

It's like if I just randomly believed that there are now hologram traps everywhere and I must be careful where I step or I'll fall into a pit covered by one. If I started telling other people that there are random hologram pit traps everywhere I should hope that they would ask for evidence that at least there are holograms that can do such a thing and/or a pit that I had found covered by a hologram. Otherwise why would everyone start testing out every step they make to make sure its solid ground if there's no evidence that the hologram covered pits even exist?

[Thumpalumpacus]

Reading your quote makes me think of something about religion and morality--why must they go together? Is it because there's no other way to make sense of morality? If you are good because you choose to be good without any external boss making you be good, then you are better than the Christian who has their morality prescribed to them. If one has to be told to do something, or forced to do something, where's the morality?

The essential question is here is whether morality is intrinsic or extrinsic to any god(s).  If intrinsic, then morality is inherently relative (to the whim of the god).  If extrinsic, it means that any extant god(s) are not the ultimate arbiters.

I hope your right, Thumpalumpacus, because that's what I want to do. I have come across some interesting philosophical notions lately, and I want a chance to debate them. I almost think debating the existence of God is worthless. I mean, no matter how hard I try in such debates, I can never get passed first base, which is to agree on a definition of God. Atheists say they don't believe in God, but they don't define God. Christians say they believe in God, but they can't describe what He is like, other than in vague terms.

For what it's worth, I don't see that as an atheist, I need to define god.  I see only that I need to determine whether I have faith in unsupported claims or not.

I do agree with you that, so far, this forum seems to be different. I'm wondering if it's an older crowd. The last group I was in was a younger crowd and so it seemed like with them atheism was a fundamentalistic religion. But then that's how younger people are, anyway about everything--very black and white. Even if they are middle of the road, they tend to be militantly, fundamentalistically middle of the road.

It is true that younger people tend to have more energy.  However, I think you're kind of painting with too broad a brush about openness.  It's been my experience that the older the person, the more set in their ways, and the less amenable to correction, they become.

Ah, but it's in how you define that God-myth. Because you don't just throw out God, you throw out anything that isn't either prescribed by the "scientific community" or immediately apparent to your five physical senses. I have yet to encounter an atheist who wants to speculate what conditions were like prior to the big bang, and yet because current scientific theory says there was a big bang, I don't find atheists who believe in a steady-state universe. All I find is closed minds on that subject--and that's the forerunner of religion.

I'll be happy to speculate.  I don't think my speculations have any particular utility, though, given the close limits on my knowledge in the field of cosmology.

Evolution and chaos/natural selection have problems. One of the biggest is the vast amount of time needed for life to evolve into what we see around us, and even more is the absolutely ridiculous odds of a single cell ever evolving in the first place from organic chemicals--and then surviving to evolve! Atheists just tend to believe it and ignore the problems--that's the forerunner of religion.

Would you please detail these problems?  The Earth has been around for 4.6-4.8 billion years; life, for 3.8 billion and perhaps more.  Also, saying "single cell" is misleading, because in a primordial earth, chemical reactions are occurring amongst quadrillions of molecules per second.  

Don't get me wrong, I agree with evolution, but I have to add another ingredient to make it work and that's a kind of primordial consciousness--something, anything, with some kind of volition and the ability to shape the natural world. Is that God? I don't know, I don't really even care. God, for me, is a psychological construct I have created over the course of my life.

Very well.  I don't see either the need or the utility of adding an unnecessary proposition here.

What I'm saying is that to be an atheist, by todays common definition, you have to turn your back on so many things that you might as well just build a church and call it the First Church of Atheism.

Nonsense.  The only thing an atheist rejects is faith.  For that reason, calling it a church is most inappropriate.

Because you say you don't believe in God, but you do nothing other than to disprove the primitive notion of the Christian God. Well, of course there's no man sitting on a thrown in a separate dimension called heaven where the streets are gold and there are mansions everywhere. Besides I think that's called Beverly Hills, California.

Neatly played, but in all seriousness, I don't "disprove" anything.  I ask for evidence, because I lack faith.  Those who don't present evidence have no right to expect their ideas to be entertained; and the more far-fetched the idea, the more powerful -- and clear -- the evidence must be.

Also, at this point, I notice you yourself engaging in that which you castigate in other theists: defining god so broadly as to be a useless definition.

Atheists appear science-minded and intellectual when they are doubting the Christian god, but they seem fundamentalistic when they turn there back on the very contradictions strict atheism creates.

Perhaps your first use of the word "atheists" ought to have the qualifier the second usage bears.  Not nearly all atheists are "strict" atheists.

[i_am_i]

Atheists say they don't believe in God, but they don't define God.

I'll give you my definition of God: an idea fabricated by primitive humans to explain nature.

[Tank]

Richard Dawkins Forum = RDF

[Tank]

Atheists say they don't believe in God, but they don't define God.

I'll give you my definition of God: an idea fabricated by primitive humans to explain nature.

I agree with i_am_i and expanded a bit on a thought along those lines, for want of a better term God in The ghost in the machine.

God was the creation of human frailty and fear, in particular the fear of the perceived but not understood and the unconscious ramblings of the mind. At the dawn of human awareness came the moment of knowledge without understanding. Humans have evolved into cause and effect machines, we see cause we infer effect, we see effect and we infer cause. It's the way we evolved as the ability to second guess our prey and/or predictors is a huge evolutionary advantage. But with this ability came the cost of cognitive dissonance when a cause is seen or an effect is observed we are evolved to balance that equation. And every night unconsciousness came, not in a comfortable bed in a secure home, but surrounded by predators out in the open. And there were dreams and nightmares, the unexplained visions, an affect of what? What caused the visions seen at night that were good or bad, heaven or hell? So our ancestors had knowledge, they could see the Sun rise, they had effect but no cause, they did not understand why the Sun rose, a psychologically intolerable situation. They knew their dreams, visions of beauty and fear, an effect with no cause. So they balanced the equation with superstition and called it God. God is the filler in the cracks of our evolved mind.

[Squid]

I'll be completely honest here....I didn't read the entire thread and I may be straying from where the conversation has gone.  If I have, well this will be just a fun road bump of a post.  So, is atheism becoming "more" religious?

Well, I never really saw atheism itself as a religion or religious but that would depend on how you utilize the word.  If you mean to utilize it in comparison to religions such as Christianity, Judiasm and the like then, no I would say it isn't.  However, if you use the word meaning something that people who hold a common interest on come together and discuss, interact and hold events surrounding this interest, then I'd say yes but that also means that Trekkies, Star Wars geeks and Comic nerds would be considered religious as well.

If we look at it using a different operative word like "active" - are atheists more active now then I'd say yes.  You can see more atheists groups that are public and the internet and other modern technologies have made it easier to connect and organize with other like-minded people.  But I wouldn't equate organized atheists to religions, not because I hate religions or anything like that but I use the concept of religions that F.C. Wallace proposed, defining them as:

...a set of rituals, rationalized by myth, which mobilizes supernatural powers for the purpose of achieving or preventing transformations of state in man and nature

Wallace, A.F.C. quoted in Haviland, W. (1999). Cultural Anthropology (9th ed.). Orlando: Harcourt Brace.

That differentiates the concept we think of as religions such as the ones I mentioned earlier from organizations such as particular groups of common interest or even things like fraternal orders and such.  When I hear someone refer to a group as religious then I would think that means showing the characteristics of a religion.  Usage of terms has been such a barrier to discussions like this, I think, because people are discussing two different things and don't even realize it.

[Thumpalumpacus]

That's a great definition, thanks.

[Edward the Theist]

Would you please detail these problems?  The Earth has been around for 4.6-4.8 billion years; life, for 3.8 billion and perhaps more.  Also, saying "single cell" is misleading, because in a primordial earth, chemical reactions are occurring amongst quadrillions of molecules per second.  

I am in no way a new earth creationist, but I don't see how those claims can be substantiated. I'm thinking about it, and I can't, for the life of me imagine how any science or scientist could determine the age of the earth. I mean really. Maybe it's a lot younger. Maybe it's nearly as old as the universe. The idea that it has rotated around the sun 4.6-4.8 billion times and that life started 3.8 billion years ago--I think those are just made up numbers. What if an asteroid that eventually became the earth was moving through the Milky way for 100 billion years?

Like I said, I'm not a creationist, but I can't imagine it is possible to date our planet that way. I mean, what assumptions were made to give a date so precisely, a difference of .2 billion years? It's starting to sound a lot like faith to me, and it's starting to sound about as credible as using the generations in the bible to date the earth.

[Edward the Theist]

God. God is the filler in the cracks of our evolved mind.

I read what you wrote, and I agree that God is often used as a gap-filler. But there are lingering questions. The deepest, in my opinion being why does anything exist at all, and why does the evolution of man seem to be racing towards some higher state of being (e.g., via technology) when it really does nothing for our survival as a species. For that matter, why would a species even know to survive, or desire it?

I'm not saying the answer to all of this is God. I'm only saying that blind chance and natural selection doesn't quite seem to cover it all.

[Edward the Theist]

I'll be completely honest here....I didn't read the entire thread and I may be straying from where the conversation has gone.  If I have, well this will be just a fun road bump of a post.  So, is atheism becoming "more" religious?

Well, I never really saw atheism itself as a religion or religious but that would depend on how you utilize the word.  If you mean to utilize it in comparison to religions such as Christianity, Judiasm and the like then, no I would say it isn't.  However, if you use the word meaning something that people who hold a common interest on come together and discuss, interact and hold events surrounding this interest, then I'd say yes but that also means that Trekkies, Star Wars geeks and Comic nerds would be considered religious as well.

If we look at it using a different operative word like "active" - are atheists more active now then I'd say yes.  You can see more atheists groups that are public and the internet and other modern technologies have made it easier to connect and organize with other like-minded people.  But I wouldn't equate organized atheists to religions, not because I hate religions or anything like that but I use the concept of religions that F.C. Wallace proposed, defining them as:

...a set of rituals, rationalized by myth, which mobilizes supernatural powers for the purpose of achieving or preventing transformations of state in man and nature

Wallace, A.F.C. quoted in Haviland, W. (1999). Cultural Anthropology (9th ed.). Orlando: Harcourt Brace.

That differentiates the concept we think of as religions such as the ones I mentioned earlier from organizations such as particular groups of common interest or even things like fraternal orders and such.  When I hear someone refer to a group as religious then I would think that means showing the characteristics of a religion.  Usage of terms has been such a barrier to discussions like this, I think, because people are discussing two different things and don't even realize it.

Acutally, I can't argue with what you said or the quote you used from F.C. Wallace. I mean, you basically answered the question of this post, in my opinion. But maybe religion shoud be defined merely as faith in spite of reason. If that's the case then many atheists would be included, along with some trekkies, and others.

I wrote a paper (for which I was banned from a previous group) that gave three rationales for why I believe consciousness exists external to central nervous systems. In all three examples, I have either seen, or experienced, or logically concluded that it is the case the consciousness is external. That's reason--even if I'm ultimately wrong. Faith would be simply assuming consciousness was external because I wanted it to be so. I would have faith in that conclusion in that case.

Atheists often have a great deal of faith. They assume, for instance, that evolution is the reason for everything, and yet there's yet to be found a way that life could have started on this planet. They assume the big bang happened, but as I have recently found out, there are problems with the red shift theory that make it unlikely to be true (search: red shift and binary star problem). We assume the standard model of quantum mechanics, but the as of yet undiscovered Higgs boson is the key to it. If it doesn't exist, the standard model is essentially wadded up and thrown in the garbage. But all this agnosticism ends up getting mixed with a little faith to end up atheism. Because if one thing is a fact I have observed in my dealings with atheists, they don't want God to exist.

Hence, the religion of atheism--perhaps.

[i_am_i]

Because if one thing is a fact I have observed in my dealings with atheists, they don't want God to exist.

Now you're projecting. The truth is that you very badly want God to exist, so you've made up an assortment of reasons for God to exist.

Let me ask you something. How did you hear of this God you're talking about? Did someone tell you about it and you believed what they had to say? Did you read it in the Bible? How?