Can atheists be sports fans?

[The Magic Pudding]

I would have liked to have caught some of that Christian martyr action at the Colosseum.
It may have been predetermined the lion would make a meal of the believers, but it doesn't matter, it would still be entertaining.

[elliebean]

In this case, we have plenty going on determinism, free will, and sports, even though we all know you're not really interested in talking about sports, just determinism.

He's not interested in talking about that either, as far as I can tell.

[hackenslash]

Choice or determinism?  Most atheists (choose to) believe in the latter,

Err, what? On what evidence do you base this conclusion? I suggest that this is just another case of made-up crap designed to support a vacuous position concerning the existence of a deity. Atheism is nothing more than an absence of belief in a deity. There are no applications of this absence of belief to the real world.

As it happens, though, most of the atheists I know are scientifically literate, and are perfectly aware that determinism, or at least Laplacian determinism, is utterly falsified by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which is an empirically established principle, rendering 'belief' superfluous and irrelevant.

In reality, the idea that atheists believe in determinism is a strawman caricature of an argument against the coexistence of an omniscient entity and free will. In other words, if your omniscient magic man exists, the free will cannot, and the universe is deterministic. In light of the fact that atheists, by definition, don't actually believe that this celestial peeping-tom has any basis in reality, your caricature is refuted.

For my part, I think that free will is an illusion, but that doesn't mean that the universe is actually deterministic, just that there are things that affect our decisions that we are not even aware of, much less able to counter to the degree that we actually have complete freedom to make decisions unconstrained.

which has a number of somewhat depressing consequences.  Criminals are imprisoned for just being poor slobs caught under determinism's raincloud.  Who you marry, divorce, and remarry are all part of the cosmic deterministic plan.  Your family member's (or your own) drug addiction was in the cards from the day you were born.

And perhaps most chilling of all, atheists can't be sports fans!  A Super Bowl win or loss has nothing to do with the coach in the booth calling play A or B, nor the quarterback throwing the pass to Snoggs or Scroggs.  Nervous about the game winning field goal?  Why, it's not up to the kicker's choice anyway!  Choice doesn't exist, remember?  Every sporting event is just a roll of a billion sided die, the result of trillions of microcausal events.

Any sports fans out there?

And the rest of this fatuous guff is predicated on your above strawman, rendering it fallacious, as has been demonstrated.

I am certainly a sports fan, being a massive fan of the greatest football (round ball. You know, the one that is actually played with the feet, as opposed to 'handegg') team in the world. My personal position is one of enjoying watching skilled individuals operating as teams. I also enjoy the cut and thrust of a championship season, such as the Premiership, in which every result affects the outcome of the season, but this is secondary.

[Tom62]

I am certainly a sports fan, being a massive fan of the greatest football (round ball. You know, the one that is actually played with the feet, as opposed to 'handegg') team in the world. My personal position is one of enjoying watching skilled individuals operating as teams. I also enjoy the cut and thrust of a championship season, such as the Premiership, in which every result affects the outcome of the season, but this is secondary.

I agree with you, PSV Einhoven is indeed the greatest football team in the world   . Just kiddin', in my heart I'm still an AJAX, Amsterdam (who are playing rather badly this season) fan.

[dloubet]

Since the universe accommodates a heavy bombardment of true random events, it cannot be deterministic. But our decision-making is mechanical.

What this means is yes, we're meat-robots, no, the future is not written in stone.

Robots can be sports fans. We see it all around us.

A more interesting question would be: Should theist athletes who pray to their god to affect the outcome of their sporting event be called cheaters?

[hackenslash]

I agree with you, PSV Einhoven is indeed the greatest football team in the world   . Just kiddin', in my heart I'm still an AJAX, Amsterdam (who are playing rather badly this season) fan.

I'm a Manchester United fan. My team have also been playing rather poorly for the majority of the season, yet still undefeated in the league, and now playing much better.

[McQ]

I agree with you, PSV Einhoven is indeed the greatest football team in the world   . Just kiddin', in my heart I'm still an AJAX, Amsterdam (who are playing rather badly this season) fan.

I'm a Manchester United fan. My team have also been playing rather poorly for the majority of the season, yet still undefeated in the league, and now playing much better.

Love the term hand egg for American football! And I have two major Manchester United fans in my house.

[Tom62]

I agree with you, PSV Einhoven is indeed the greatest football team in the world   . Just kiddin', in my heart I'm still an AJAX, Amsterdam (who are playing rather badly this season) fan.

I'm a Manchester United fan. My team have also been playing rather poorly for the majority of the season, yet still undefeated in the league, and now playing much better.

I'm a fan of Edwin van der Sar, so I guest that makes me a Manchester United fan as well.