Atheism. What are your thoughts?

AtheistAlan said:

Who is "they"? What proof do you have that "they" exist? Also, what right does anyone have to judge me?

And before you say that you know because of the Holy Bible, note that with that reasoning, Batman exist because it says so in the Batman comic books.

-Atheist Alan

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They is someone like me who asked you who converted you. And you said you converted yourself.

So when they ask you why you do not believe in God, you have no one to blame but yourself. Is this correct?

AtheistAlan said:

Who said what about you? He commented that you are deconstructing me and my atheism, not bringing up concepts or notions you have about atheism.

Not that I mind any of the above, it is just not the topic of this thread.

-Atheist Alan

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what right does anyone have to judge me? -Atheist Alan

I do not see any evidence nor proof of it...do you...if so ...show me.

AtheistAlan said:

Blame, why would there be blame? Do you feel that atheist are terrible, immoral people?

-Atheist Alan

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So when they ask you why you do not believe in God, you and you alone are responsible for it. Is this correct?

This is a yes I am ...No I am not answer.

AtheistAlan said:

Proof of what, exactly? It makes it easier when you quote text.

Do you mean proof of atheism? Proof for or against God? Please explain.

-Atheist Alan

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Forget that...it was about what he said about me.

You know that anyway.

LiveInMercyAndTruth said:

So when they ask you why you do not believe in God, you and you alone are responsible for it. Is this correct?

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This is what I want to know.

Yes or no?

AtheistAlan said:

I stated that I am responsible for my own actions, and I am the one that converted myself. I apologize if I am not being clear.

Yes.

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That's all I wanted to know..If I think of anything else I will let you know.

Thank you.

LiveInMercyAndTruth said:

This is what I want to know.

Yes or no?

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A reasoned person won´t give you a yes or no answer when you ask a loaded question.

Asvin said:

Knowing that a God exists, would you attempt to know God better, despite lack of evidence of God's existence?

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If there was a lack of evidence for gods, how would I know that those gods exist?

Also, do you think an evil God would make us the way we are?

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Yes, of course.

drjean said:

But they are still included under the tenets of the Buddhist faith, the religion of the Buddhists, are they not?

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Yep, they're Buddhists who are atheists. As I understand it, at least in some forms of Buddhism gods are considered at best irrelevant to the important questions of life, so some believe, others don't. In any case, these atheist Buddhists are way different than the straw-man you're trying to build of all atheists.

Atheism isn't a religion, it's just a lack of a particular belief. This lack can be found in people who believe all sorts of different things. Republican atheists, objectivity atheists, socialist atheists, spiritual atheists, naturalist atheists, Taoist atheists, Shinto atheists, etc, etc, etc. The only thing these groups have in common is that they lack belief in a god. You simply can't conclude anything else from them being atheist.

I'm sure what I posted shows that atheists do, indeed, have more in common than their lack of belief in a god outside of themselves.

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You posted a list which wrongly tried to attribute various traits to atheists that not all of them share.

Even so, wouldn't their commonality of a belief that they are the "higher power" in their lives also fit into the parameters of religion? I think so.

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It would, if all of them actually believed this. But you've highlighted yet another thing that atheists disagree on.

LiveInMercyAndTruth said:

So when they ask you why you did not believe in God, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Is this correct?

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Nope. An honest person can't lie to themselves and pretend there's a reason to believe in gods. In this case, it's not the non-believer's "fault" but instead the "fault" of reality being the way it is.

KCfromNC said:

If there was a lack of evidence for gods, how would I know that those gods exist?

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Sorry. My question was malformed! I meant to say : Despite lack of scientific evidence!

KCfromNC said:

Nope. An honest person can't lie to themselves and pretend there's a reason to believe in gods. In this case, it's not the non-believer's "fault" but instead the "fault" of reality being the way it is.

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I've come to believe that those claiming atheism is a religion are either threatened by the thought of someone living happily without religion, and therefore have to classify it as such, or have a willful ignorance of working definitions.

You don't have to "believe" in evolution, the Big Bang, read Dawkins or Darwin or Hitchens or any so-called "atheist books" in order to be an atheist. All you have to do is say, "I don't believe god(s) exist." The end. There simply isn't anything else to it than that. Sure, there are communist atheists, Buddhist atheists, and everything else KC mentioned. But saying this is symptomatic of religion is to clump Protestants with Catholics, or Christians with Islam, or Taoists with Deists. By the same "atheism is a religion because X, Y, and Z atheists do have some form of religion," then all Christians people must believe exactly the same thing, right? Except that's not the way it is. In fact, it's the exact opposite of the way it is. Some Christians believe accepting Christ is enough. Others, like the Church of Christ where I was raised, believe you HAVE to be a member of the Church of Christ to get into Heaven. Sorry, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Lutherans, Anabaptists, Pentecostals, Catholics, and so on. But being Christians does not necessarily mean you believe this, just as being an atheist does not necessarily mean you subscribe to the beliefs of X, Y, and Z.

Just because elephants are gray does not mean all gray things are elephants. I know it, and everyone reading this post knows it. Not all Christians adhere to what the Church of Christ preaches, and we plain atheists don't necessarily subscribe to the beliefs of other atheist groups or organizations just because we are atheists.

Yet no matter how many times this is explained, staunch "atheism has to be a religion!" advocates seem to never falter from their comfort zone of assuming all peoples have to have religion, no matter what it's called. Sorry, it doesn't work that way. Do Christians make their atheism of Zeus a religion? If atheism is a religion, does that mean Christians hold many religions, as they disbelief in the existence of gods all except theirs? Of course not. Nor does my disbelief in Zeus constitute a religion anymore than my disbelief of the Christian deities.