Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I miss the old atheists. Since when has "atheism" meant "rationalist"? Reason is the enemy of human civilization and is the worst dogma of them all. I am 100% anti-rationalist.
What ever happened to awesome, thinking atheist like Nietzsche?
So you like Nietzsche do you...I particularly like the first quote.
After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Faith: not wanting to know what is true.
Friedrich Nietzsche
In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.
Friedrich Nietzsche
I miss the old atheists. Since when has "atheism" meant "rationalist"? Reason is the enemy of human civilization and is the worst dogma of them all. I am 100% anti-rationalist.
What ever happened to awesome, thinking atheist like Nietzsche?
Mythologies are not explanations usually but are dreams of the public. "Myths are public dreams, dreams are public Myths,"-Joseph Campbell.
I would much rather study the Tao te Ching (ah, what creation Myth is hidden in that one again? I've read several translation and never saw one fairy tale) or the Gnostic poems than measure rat droppings or look at big, ugly balls of gas in space (stars)
I am a human and hence, I choose to study to living, breathing heart of man and not the cold, sterile hand of science.
"The heart has its reason which REASON can never understand"-Blaise Pascal
I can well imagine that you prefer an atheism which was easier to rubbish. It is either dishonest or wooden thinking to insist that what atheism is seen to be has to remain one thing with an immutable definition - in Dictionaries compiled from all sources including hostile Theist ones. If you 'love learning' learn, rather than trying to smear atheism with You Tubes about massacres and mindless robot collectives. That discredits your methods rather than ours:
Atheism does not exist as an idea by itself but is part of all human thinking, as indeed is Theology. As Theology is reasoning pushed through the mincer of religious faith, then atheism, no matter why people may have rejected god -belief, turns out to be a rationalist response to the god- claim just as UFO skepticism turns out to be a rationalist response to UFO claims. Thus they are part of rationalism which, if one values reason and evidence rather than faith -based speculation and mytholgized human delusions, is what should be our global worldview in deciding what is what.
I gave the Tao te ching a chance and you are welcome to it. And Blaise Pascal, despite his undoubted abilities came to realize that, as regards religion, he didn't know what he was talking about.
P.s I'm also tired of your slobbering adulation of Joe Campbell. He had some useful or interesting ideas, but he is not the all - defining word of truth that you seem to take him for, simply because he tells you what you want to hear, it seems.
"In trying to rid the world of one dogma, then, Campbell simply invents a new one. Although he sometimes claims to support an "open," pluralistic approach to religion and morality, he strongly disagrees with those people who don't share his own narrow beliefs. He berates others for being dogmatic, but he himself is often guilty of the same thing."
pps. "I am a human and hence, I choose to study to living, breathing heart of man and not the cold, sterile hand of science."
It's a pump. It's a freakin' blood pump made of muscle. If he wants to study that, it is no more or less than applying the 'sterile hand of science' because saying how awesomely wonderful it is will tell him nothing about it.
But of course he isn't talking about hearts at all. he is, using baloneyisms talking about all the unknown unexplained ways we think and speculate. In which case science or at least reasoning might just tell us more about what we think and why than just going along with the various mythologies we have made up to try to persuade ourselves we understand it.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 07-15-2013 at 05:46 AM..
I can imagine getting a "that's a bogus poll run by fundamentalist Christians!" reply, but that makes no sense. Reason being is simple: why would a "bogus poll run by fundamentalist Christians" put Hindus on top for retention and Buddhists above congregationalists?
And spare me, SPARE ME the old "no real atheist would stop being an atheist" line. That's the good old No True Scotsman Fallacy. Basically it goes like this: two men are having tea, and one adds sugar to his. The other man says "no Scotsman ever has his tea with sugar". The other says "that's not true. I'm a Scotsman and I'm having my tea with sugar." The first man scoffs and says "well, no true Scotsman would have his tea with sugar." No True Scotsman - RationalWiki
How can you say those people who rejected atheism weren't "real" atheists?
For the record, I am not a "born again" Christian. I was raised a deist, became an atheist in high school until I discovered Joseph Campbell and Alan Watts at seventeen. I became a Wiccan at eighteen and three years later converted to Gnostic Christianity....I'm NOT PREACHING, just saying what I have come to and that I am not just another "fundamentalist". I'm a heretic, but even I have to admit the data is sound.
When you add that to the fact that the overall growth of atheism in America is slowing down, it doesn't really paint a rosy picture for the future of atheism. According to the largest survey on religion in America, the "American Religious Identification Survey," (ARIS) atheists have seen a sharp decline in growth: ARIS 2008 | American Religious Identification Survey 2008
Now, "none religious" have seen growth, but majority of them simply aren't interested in organized religion but still believe in some form of higher power. This is revealed by another ARIS survey of None religious people themselves: American Nones: The Profile of the No Religion Population | ARIS 2008
51% believe 100% in either a personal God or an impersonal God.
So, where is atheism headed? Is it still growing despite what the facts say? Wouldn't a belief that atheism is growing and going to take over the world despite what facts say be almost like *gasp!* having faith?
And no, again because it deserves repeating, "none religious" does not always equal "atheist." As I've shown, most none religious people are not Dawkin's Witnesses. Majority believe in something, they just have been turned off to organized religion (and I can't really blame them)
But thanks to conditioning by the likes of Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennet and Harris, so many people think that there are only "tongue speaking fundamentalists" and "atheists" and nothing in between ( Some people call those jokers the "Four Horsemen," but I prefer to those mental midgets as "The Four Unicyclists")
The facts, on the other hand, state differently.
If that is true, are you sure it is that high? 30% atheist? Wow! I thought that a much higher percentage of people, in this country at least (us), became believers.
The American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) 2008 is a random digit dialed (RDD) survey of a nationally representative sample of 54,461 adults. Of those, 7,047 are Nones, or individuals who responded to the question: What is your religion, if any? with “none,” “atheist,” “agnostic,” “secular,” or “humanist.”
Regardless, the question is poorly worded and leading most to a "none" response since atheist, agnostic, secular, and humanist, are not religions. As an atheist, I would have responded to the question "what is your religion?" with a "none" answer, as I'm pretty sure most of those representing the other categories would have as well.
It seems likely that there is a lot of misperception about atheism, irreligion, agnosticism, skepticism, humanism and indeed theism.
The answer is not to say 'It's a mess - just give it up, shut up and go away and let Religion have a clear field once again.' (those who had a religion that didn't fit the one that came to have the dominating authority would regret that, please note and remember) but to understand what these terms signify, how they are used and how they relate.
That is by the way, of course, if indeed the indications that people are not buying into religion and its claims any more, whether or not they just become irreligious Theists or go straight to unbelief, turn out to be correct and there is an atheist avalanche and not just a statistical blip or a short -term Fad.
So the thread does not really matter, since I will continue to think that we are right and we have to do this and, because people want believe that they are talking sense rather than tosh, we are going to win, sooner or later.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I've read several translation and never saw one fairy tale) or the Gnostic poems than measure rat droppings or look at big, ugly balls of gas in space (stars)
