Religulous
- Thread starter Syzygys
- Start date
Ah, so now you're being lectured on atheism by Hindus...awesome. So they just get to reinvent it how they wish, and you swallow it whole? Sweet. You're a class act, Scam. I mean, Sam.
They don't get to reinvent it, they've been discussing it for 5000 years.
by the by, classically atheism has always been a claim:
Atheism, as an explicit position, can be either the affirmation of the nonexistence of gods, or the rejection of theism.
The reinvention is the "absence of belief" position which is ontologically unsupportable.
by the by, classically atheism has always been a claim:
Atheism, as an explicit position, can be either the affirmation of the nonexistence of gods, or the rejection of theism.
The reinvention is the "absence of belief" position which is ontologically unsupportable.
Since we aren't in disagreement here, either you didn't get what I was saying or I wasn' t clear enough, which is a distinct possibility. In the case of the latter, accept my apology and allow me to elucidate:
I'm not saying that atheism caused the desire to kill or motivated the atrocities committed by Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot or anyone else who committed such attrocities and happened to be arguably atheist (nor am I arguing that either of these people were or were not atheists).
What I'm saying is that in the absence of religion, human nature is to embrace ideology. And it was ideology that motivated the above historical figures to commit murder.
I would also disagree with S.A.M. that atheism is an ideology but disagree with others that might argue that atheism cannot be an ideology. Furthermore, I would argue that ideology isn't necessarily a bad thing any more than "government" is necessarily a bad thing.
While atheism isn't inherently ideologic, it can be. My daughter is an atheist. Not because she "rejects" a god or "affirms" the non-existence of one. She's an atheist because there is no belief that a god influences her life. She simply wasn't raised to be indoctrinated with such a belief. Nor was she raised to be indoctrinated with a "rejection" or "positive affirmation" in the non-existence. She was born without belief just like everyone else.
That's not to say that, as time goes on she won't embrace the doctrines and beliefs of one or more gods. Or that she won't actively seek to be "anti-religious" or "anti-theistic." Those would be ideologic pursuits.
If she does not reject a god nor affirms the non-existence of one, how is she an atheist? Is that how she defines herself?
Thats a restricted viewpoint too, in my opinion. Does this mean that if Genghis Khan was first a pagan and then embraced Islam, he was first killing people on behalf of Shaministic beliefs and later due to Muslim beliefs? Or is it because he was who he was?
Well put.
She has no belief in gods. Any god. In the same way she has no belief in Enkidu, Marduk, Enlil, Gilgamesh, and many other human constructs that she's not been exposed to. Truly this isn't a point of debate.
How do you know that? If you replaced her with a child of her age who was say, a Muslim child, would you accept that the Muslim child was a theist?
SAM appears to have confused religious upbringing with hereditary traits.
It's an age old fallacy of the religious. I come across this often, where, upon revealing my lack of religious adherence, a person would follow up with the question "then what religion are your parents?" I was caught unawares the first time and answered "Catholic", to receive the retort (much to my consternation) "Then you're Catholic too!". I eventually changed my answer of course.
It's an age old fallacy of the religious. I come across this often, where, upon revealing my lack of religious adherence, a person would follow up with the question "then what religion are your parents?" I was caught unawares the first time and answered "Catholic", to receive the retort (much to my consternation) "Then you're Catholic too!". I eventually changed my answer of course.
Yes...it's you. Religion is not genetic.
Yet I seem to have no trouble supporting it.SAM said:
The problem you theists face here is that you refuse to allow a word for the reality of the situation - there are a lot of people who simply have no belief in a Deity. Many of them not only haven't rejected all Deity as a possibility, they haven't even rejected the nearest one - they simply can't get themselves to actually believe in it. Many have rejected the Deities they have met on grounds of judgment and pragmatic evaluation, while recognizing the possibility of error or some new proposal so far unimagined. Many have no real acquaintanceship with any Deities and might jump on the first one they meet, but haven't yet. There are children, etc. Buddhists etc. These people are not agnostic or otherwise undecided, the word "non-theist" is rejected by theists as well as everyone else, and the word "atheist" - especially as an adjective - fits like a glove.
Meanwhile, the atheistic people of the world have no ideology in common. Atheism itself is not an ideology, obviously - not even the simplest of statements are held dogmatically true by all atheists ("There is no God", for example).
So I share only a few ideological stances with Bill Maher, for example. We are both atheist, both civilian. Is "civilian" an ideology, in the world of the Islamic theists ?
Thanks for the clarification!
That is certainly clearer and I am sympathetic to your position, but I feel you are over estimating the sophistication of their motives. Given the purges that they each did of the more idealistic members of their own parties (such as the night of the long knives) I think it is clear that the ideologies were merely expedient means and no more.
I can't quite be an atheist because I feel it is just more special pleading by the theists for their "gods." I'm not an aunicornist or an atoothfairyist. Their notion of god isn't important enough to merit special treatment.
That is exactly what I've been trying to say all along. Theists want atheists to be painted into a corner neatly, but the truth is that you can't. Because they have faith, they can't imagine a person that doesn't; they just can't wrap their minds around it, so they'll paint atheism as a belief system, when in fact it most certainly isn't.
I think we all need to understand that the last person who should be trying to define atheism is a theist. It is an impossible task for them.
That can be said for theists as well. There are clusters of people with some similarity in ideology, but not only between pagans to Buddhists to Muslims to Christians, but also within Muslims, Christians, pagans, Buddhists, you'll find the same diversity that you'll find in atheists.
Or do you think your individual ideology is unique only to you?