Happy Atheist Forum

It takes faith to believe in Atheism as much as it takes to believe in Christianity !(maybe one is harder than the other )
Does that make Atheism a religion ?

How much faith does it take for you to not believe in Zeus?  How much faith does it take for you to not believe in evolution?  Think of something you don't believe in and then think about how much (or little) faith it takes for you to not believe in it.  

It takes as little faith for an Atheist to not believe in Yahweh as it takes for you to not believe in Thor.

Quote from: "louisyeah"It takes faith to believe in Atheism as much as it takes to believe in Christianity !(maybe one is harder than the other )
Does that make Atheism a religion ?

Atheism is not a belief. It is a lack of belief. Thus, no faith is required.

Quote from: "louisyeah"It takes faith to believe in Atheism as much as it takes to believe in Christianity !(maybe one is harder than the other )
Does that make Atheism a religion ?

Atheism has no faith. None.

Atheism is not a religion because it does not meet a single requirement for one. Thank goodness.

Answer this question for me: why is it so important/interesting to you that atheism should be a religion or require faith?


(note the lowercase 'a' in 'atheism', we don't capitalize it because it isn't a religion)




(whereas I don't capitalize 'christianity' either because I don't recognize its alleged authority)

Quote from: "louisyeah"It takes faith to believe in Atheism as much as it takes to believe in Christianity !(maybe one is harder than the other )
Does that make Atheism a religion ?

Why do you care? Surly it's of no concern to you what atheists think as we're wrong from your perspective right?
I don't care what you believe, as long as you keep it to yourself.

Quote from: "louisyeah"It takes faith to believe in Atheism as much as it takes to believe in Christianity !(maybe one is harder than the other )
Does that make Atheism a religion ?

No, it takes faith to believe in something and it takes no faith to not believe in something.
No. Is theism a religion?

Quote from: "JillSwift"Atheism is not a belief. It is a lack of belief. Thus, no faith is required.

That right there is how I'd put it.

When a person says they have faith in you that you will succeed in some sort of task, that "faith" is not the same type of faith as faith in some ancient person flying on a carpet or withering fig trees or rising from being dead for 3 days.
Having faith in a doctor curing you of some awful, but curable sickness is not the same as praying to some god to be cured.

Every one of us agnostics and atheists have been chided for "our faith" in things, for our hypocrisy for having faith in the universe and denying that we have a faith in the non-existence of God. That theistic argument is specious and it really pisses me off...*grinnin*. Religious faith is the adversary to rationalism. Most times there is an implication that it is in some way a good thing, but it isn't because belief is necessary for action. With no beliefs, man cannot function.

There is a difference between belief and faith, I think. If I were to say I believe there is no God, it is not a faith, it is a belief. I believe thousands of other things with varying degrees of resistance to changing my opinion. I believe that matter does not normally come into existence in my everyday life but I also believe that particle physicists observe pairs of particles appearing out of the vacuum.

The faith defines the cult.  Christianity and other faith based beliefs systems is not a belief, it is a faith in my opinion. It requires no proof (proof implies doubt, doubt is a sin, faith is a virtue). It needs no evidence to support it.

Quote from: "Mark Schnitzius"If atheism is a religion, then bald is a hair color.

Link (http://thinkexist.com/quotation/if_atheism_is_a_religion-then_bald_is_a_hair/161013.html)

"Atheism is a religion, like not collecting stamps is a hobby"

I think Christians and the like want to prove atheism is faith based, so as to be able to turn arguments of the form "You don't use evidence to form your beliefs, your conclusions are not based on reality" against us, if atheism were based on faith, this would be valid, unfortunately for them, atheism is not.

Im interested on what you guys think Im not against u but not for you. Most of you have read the Bible so you guys know what we believe so Im interested to try and see your point of view as a person and not as a Christian . How did things come to existence ?

No one really knows for sure how things got here.  There are many theories and ideas, some having more validity than others.
As for me personally, I'm more of a big bang kinda person.  The quantum physics used to explain the theory make sense to me.  But I'm also ok with not knowing for certain how it all began, it's just something us humans haven't figured out yet.

Quote from: "Bombt"How did things come to existence ?

I don't assume "things" ever did "come to existence"; maybe everything has always been around, in various forms, before taking on the form of what we see now. I don't presume to know, nor do I think I'm really intelligent enough to figure it out. Smarter people than I have come up with some very probable answers and that's fine with me, as it doesn't affect my life one way or the other.

I am intelligent enough to think about gods, though (as everyone must be; it isn't complicated), and I've found nothing to even suggest there might be any; not even a good enough reason to wonder if there could be. If I give it any thought at all, it's to wonder how other people become so convinced of it; mainly because I'm interested it how people think, but also because it's frustrating to see them repeatedly fail to fully comprehend non-belief or fail to examine their own belief as critically as they do others'. I mean, I can understand being comfortable with uncertainty, "I don't know, so I have no answer", but I don't get how one can be comfortable continually asserting something wrong, just because they didn't want to check to make sure - especially after it's been explicitly pointed out to them using the same solid, rational arguments they would have accepted for anything else.

Quote from: "Bombt"Im interested on what you guys think Im not against u but not for you. Most of you have read the Bible so you guys know what we believe so Im interested to try and see your point of view as a person and not as a Christian . How did things come to existence ?

I've read parts of the bible, but I was never religious so I don't have intimate knowledge of how a religious person thinks.  Honestly, I don't understand religious thinking at all sometimes, but I do try to understand it.  As someone who was never seriously told things came into existence via a creation story, I'm pretty comfortable with saying 'I don't know' when asked that question, because I don't.  I don't think anyone does, not yet, and it's possible that we never will know.  I know that the question is very complicated and that in order for me to be in a position to even feel comfortable supposing an answer, I would have to really dedicate my time to learning about the vast and ever changing complexity of space.  That's not to say that supposing an answer is bad, it's just not something I personally feel comfortable doing about this specific subject given my level of education about it.

The thing that always surprises me is that my response - I don't know - is often poorly received by religious people.  I don't know the specifics of how things came to existence, but I'm also not comfortable even assuming that 'things' even had a beginning.  There's no reason (that I know of) to assume that just because planets and people and stars and a lot of other things have a beginning and an end, that everything has a beginning and an end.

Quote from: "Bombt"Im interested on what you guys think Im not against u but not for you.

Then it's worth bearing in mind that you'll get a unique answer from each of us as the only common link between atheists is that as there is no supernatural driver behind what we experience. The universe is what it is through natural processes, none of which have an understanding of why they do what they do. There is no organiser as such.

Quote from: "Bombt"Most of you have read the Bible so you guys know what we believe so Im interested to try and see your point of view as a person and not as a Christian . How did things come to existence ?

Contrary to my current forum rank I have not read the bible. I marvel at the detail to which some people have studied it. I have however been fascinated by various scientific areas of research all my life. In particular biology which was my absolute favourite subject at school I have read many books in the areas of evolution and palaeontology. I went through a phase of interest in particle physics and devoured books in that area. I read lots of science fiction and as I like writing I started getting books on cosmology and astronomy. Reading Universe (http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Roger-Freedman/dp/142923153X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275941048&sr=8-1) 7th edition was a mind expanding experience. So I'm not a scientist, but I understand science, its processes, flaws and results.

Can you expand on 'How things come into existence?' please. It's rather a broad topic and as such liable to get very complicated very quickly  

Quote from: "Bombt"It takes faith to believe in Atheism as much as it takes to believe in Christianity !(maybe one is harder than the other )
Does that make Atheism a religion ?

No. I don't believe in anything. If someone were to prove there was a god, nothing would change for me. I would simply be titled an anti-theist instead of an atheist. Atheist simply means I think that more than likely there is not a god. But that thought process contains nothing that you would call faith or belief. Faith is something you just know in your heart in spite of the absence of evidence. I don't just know there is no god. Now, I think science shows that there isn't, but that's not something I truly believe in the absence of evidence. I am looking at the evidence and making a conclusion.

First of all, Christianity is the belief in god, Jesus, and the holy spirit, the trinity.  Atheism, is the lack of belief in any deity, period.  We also lack a belief in the tooth fairy, santa claus, and the easter bunny.

I think that there are perhaps levels of atheism, some call it agnosticism, others may call it something else.  That's kind of the beauty of atheism, there is no central doctrine, no bible, no leader, and in many cases no real structure at all to atheism.  Most, and I'll go out on the limb here, atheist do not believe in an afterlife, in creationism, or in a central deity.  We recognize that if ONE religion is false, then they all are false.  There is NOTHING that proves one religion is the TRUE religion.

As Dawkins said, and I paraphrase, we are all atheists, believers in any one religion do not believe that the gods of any other religions are real, atheists just take it one god further.

Atheist, unlike theists, are open to the possibility of changing our minds.  IF, and there is great doubt that it will ever happen, someone does prove in the existence of a god, atheists will certain acknowledge that god.  Will we worship him/her, is up for debate, but surely we will acknowledge.  Now, I have a very good friend who is a relatively famous Theologian, who told me in a letter, "If tomorrow you provide me with absolute proof that there is no god, I will still chose to believe in my god.  For to me, it is a matter of having faith in faith.  In other words, it comforts me to believe, therefore, I will continue to rely on the comfort of my god."