The most open minded people ever! (believe, reject, Creator, debate)
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I have several friends who are either ATHIEST or AGNOSTIC and they all ARE VERY KIND AND OPEN TO ANYTHING,its amazing!!
They dont laugh at you,MAKE FUN OF SOMETHING YOU LIKE,etc... They are very open and you can bring any subject and they are quite open!!
Could this be because they are not limiting thier thinking to any one religions way of thinking
I think it's more that open-minded people are more likely to question the religious beliefs many of them were raised to have and then end up becoming atheists.
Avienne, I think you're right in most cases, although not all atheists are fun to be around. But on balance you're right. Being nonreligious gives us a head start, anyway.
Even us of different beliefs and cultures other than Christianity and Islam are probably more open-minded or just as open-minded as atheists, I personally believe there is more than one path to follow to the Creator, so I can be very open-minded about others beliefs or non-beliefs...
I'm not so sure about being open-minded to absolutely anything, but not being limited to what one book (the Bible), written by man, says certainly helps in being more open to ideas than others might be.
I hate to interrupt this self-congratulatory love fest . . . but true open-mindedness would acknowledge the "elephant in the room" called "Nature" as God . . . without accepting all the other attributes claimed by others in their various BELIEF systems . . . including the "indifferent, mindless, purposeless" one. But it is NOT open-minded to foreclose the status of God in the face of the undeniable evidence of its Godlike attributes . . . SIMPLY because of the myriad BELIEFS extant. That precludes any atheist from consideration as open-minded . . . agnostics OTOH can be.
Last edited by MysticPhD; 05-02-2010 at 08:21 PM..
I'm an agnostic atheist, and when I saw that you had posted to this thread, I said, "Uh-oh" to myself.
1. Nature is not a 'god' to me.
2. I don't claim to KNOW that there is no god. Being an atheist simply means insufficient evidence to believe in one. And no, that doesn't make me an agnostic rather than an atheist because they are measures of different things.
I'm an agnostic atheist, and when I saw that you had posted to this thread, I said, "Uh-oh" to myself.
1. Nature is not a 'god' to me.
Unfortunately . . . you are not the measure of Godliness. "Nature" is about as Godlike as you get short of the myriad BELIEF systems out there . . . including the atheist "mindless, indifferent, and purposeless" one . . . NONE of them have any proof or possibility of proof (including the atheist one). That makes the rejection of even their own God . . . hardly open-minded.
I hate to interrupt this self-congratulatory love fest . . . but true open-mindedness would acknowledge the "elephant in the room" called "Nature" as God . . . without accepting all the other attributes claimed by others in their various BELIEF systems . . . including the "indifferent, mindless, purposeless" one. But it is NOT open-minded to foreclose the status of God in the face of the undeniable evidence of its Godlike attributes . . . SIMPLY because of the myriad BELIEFS extant. That precludes any atheist from consideration as open-minded . . . agnostics OTOH can be.
Or, it's possible that said atheists looked at the "evidence" and found it lacking, for whatever reason. It isn't "open-minded", either, for you to assume an atheist has "foreclose(d) the status of God" without giving it any thought or consideration first. Do some choose to deny God based on "the myriad beliefs extant"? Sure, I have little doubt that there are some. However, you've decided to lump all atheists together as unthinking regarding this question, which isn't any more intellectually honest than what you're accusing atheists of being.
Again, it is possible that Nature has "Godlike attributes", and yet is not God. It's also possible that atheists have considered the evidence of said "Godlike attributes" and still come to the conclusion that there is no God, or that the presence of aforementioned attributes does not automatically mean Nature=God.
Let me give a crude hypothetical example:
There's undeniable evidence that I possess Michael Jordan-like attributes. I'm tall, physically fit, have a bald head, and am a great dunker. However, anyone who actually watches me play in a basketball game will see that, in addition to the similarities, I also cannot dribble with my left hand, can't make a free throw, can't play defense, and have never scored more than 10 points in a game. After watching me in action, would anyone conclude that I am equal to Michael Jordan, (or, more to our debate point, that I am in fact Michael Jordan himself), just because others have said that I'm "Jordan-like"?
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