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I just don't believe in a all-powerful god building and running the universe, then setting up multiple flaming hoops for me to jump through for his amusement. Does that mean I can't be an atheist unless I swear to some flowery Moderator cut: deleted creed?
So you believe that you don't know what you believe, or you believe that you don't believe in a deity.
I don't believe that makes you part of a cult, any more than I believe that a statement in which the non-believer says what he or she does believe in makes the non-believer part of a cult.
"I don't know" is not a belief system.
"I know one thing, that I know nothing"
Socrates
Newton explained gravity quite well, but Einstein did as Socrates and found General Relativity to explain gravity.
It seems unlikely that many of the 850 or so people at the Society for Ethical Culture on a recent Saturday night believed that God was still extant. But evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion and possibly the most famous atheist in the world, was not taking any chances. He gave a PowerPoint presentation driving home that religion does not meet any of the standards of basic scientific inquiry, before casually flicking away a few of His last crutches. Doesn’t God provide people some solace? asked an audience member. “Isn’t that a little childish?” Dawkins replied. “Just because something is comforting doesn’t mean it’s true.” Then someone asked about death, and Dawkins quoted Mark Twain: “I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born.”
The room erupted in loud applause. God had definitely left the building—if he were ever here at all. Dawkins and his colleagues had helped to produce a kind of atheist big bang, a new beginning. But what kind of new structures might evolve?
While it may look like something with a lot of clarity, it is basically meaningless. By definition, an atheist is a person who does not believe in any gods. Everything else said on the subject is optional for each and every atheist. They have nothing else in common. No creed. No worldview. No philosophy. Nothing.
While it may look like something with a lot of clarity, it is basically meaningless. By definition, an atheist is a person who does not believe in any gods. Everything else said on the subject is optional for each and every atheist. They have nothing else in common. No creed. No worldview. No philosophy. Nothing.
Clearly that's the way it should be, but it seems too many "atheists" actually want some god-free "religion" in their lives and keep comming up with garbage like "atheist creeds" or atheist clubs that meet on Sunday, hold hands and bond around their mutual non-belief.
Anyone who builds their entire life around their theist OR atheistic beliefs is living a sadly shallow and small-minded existence.
Clearly that's the way it should be, but it seems too many "atheists" actually want some god-free "religion" in their lives and keep comming up with garbage like "atheist creeds" or atheist clubs that meet on Sunday, hold hands and bond around their mutual non-belief.
Anyone who builds their entire life around their theist OR atheistic beliefs is living a sadly shallow and small-minded existence.
I have have to add that a tiny minority of Atheists can be very intolerant of religion. In this sense they can be similar to some Evangelist Christians and their narrow views.
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