Scientists discover that atheists might not exist, and that’s not a joke

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Jan Ardena said:
There aren't hundreds of Gods. Where did you get such a silly idea.
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From the many, many religions of the planet, each describing a different God or different Gods.
There are gods, and there is God. One God.
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In your opinion. Other religious types believe that there are many Gods. And they have just as much evidence as you do for their belief - so it is just as valid.
That's asking, which water? American, Derbyshire, Portuguese?
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Exactly. And you are claiming "there is only one water - American water. There can only BE one water. Portuguese water does not exist. People who think it does are wrong."
I don't know every single Christian, or Muslim. Do you?
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Nope. But I know a lot of them - enough to know that their description of God is different than yours. And they are just as right.
 
Baldeee said:
Theism is no more a religion than atheism is.
You can have theistic and atheistic religions.
Theism may be at the core of many religions, but I don't see it as being in and of itself a religion.
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Your depiction above and my conception of the religion and a-/theism, while semantically different, are substantially the same.

I truly don't care whether we call theism and atheism both religions or both not-religions. Both are sets of notions having adherents who devoutly aver to their belief system -- be it one that asserts or rejects deities -- is existentially accurate.
  • Dogma
    • Theists --> There is a God.
    • Atheists --> There is no God.
  • Management mechanism
    • Theists --> A Church
    • Atheists --> A government/organ thereof, or a faction/ideology of some stripe
  • Moral/ethical predicate
    • Theists --> What God stipulates/-ed (ostensibly; I'm not so sure theists are particularly good at adhering to "His Word." Seems to me they "cherry pick" and "cherry discard" what they want when it suits them more so than accepting the fact that there are pros and cons to "The Word's" dictates.)
    • Atheists --> Various ethical systems/philosophies arrived at via cognition (ostensibly; I'm not so sure atheists are particularly good at cleaving to a coherent philosophy. Seems to me they "cherry pick" and "cherry discard" what they want when it suits them more so than accepting the fact that there are pros and cons to any given philosophy's dictates.)
  • Essence of one's being
    • Theists --> The soul
    • Atheists --> The mind
Call that religion or call it not-religion, and invent/use some other term...makes no difference to me....Call a duck a cat or call call a duck a dinosaur if one wants, but the beast still waddles, quacks, has feathers and flies.
 
billvon said:
From the many, many religions of the planet, each describing a different God or different Gods.
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I`m not aware of these many descriptions of different Gods (upper-case g), can you provide a few of these differing descriptions?

In your opinion. Other religious types believe that there are many Gods. And they have just as much evidence as you do for their belief - so it is just as valid.
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It may seem like you`ve made, or proven a point because you simply say it the case. But the reality is, you haven`t. I`m not even sure if you`re making sense. So please, once again, provide some information, that we can verify. Give some examples of these different Gods (upper-case g0), then we`ll have a much better understanding of where you`re coming from.
Exactly. And you are claiming "there is only one water - American water. There can only BE one water. Portuguese water does not exist. People who think it does are wrong."
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I`m not claiming there is only ``American water``. I`m showing you that three different contexts of water, doesn`t mean the water is different each time. God can be a billion persons, if God chooses, but God is always One.

Nope. But I know a lot of them - enough to know that their description of God is different than yours. And they are just as right.
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What? About 17, 18 million, or so?
Still not enough for you to know jack, about what they believe. Unless you are talking about the atheist ones.

But once again, please show where Christian, and/or, Muslim theists, have a different description of God, to me.

Thanks in advance for your cooperation.
jan.
 
Xelor said:
Your depiction above and my conception of the religion and a-/theism, while semantically different, are substantially the same.
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No, they're really not.
Religion is something you can do with the belief you have.
But a/theism is separate from religion just as eggs are separate from the matter of baking: yes, you can bake with eggs, and you can bake without eggs, but you don't have to bake.
I truly don't care whether we call theism and atheism both religions or both not-religions.
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Then let's agree to call them not-religions, given that that is what they are.

The rest of your post is duly noted, but irrelevant to what I had raised.
 
Jan Ardena said:
Atheists are simply without God
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Oh I remember the many posts upon your outdated definition of "Atheist" and surprised folk here let this statement slide on by.

Atheists are not without god .... there is no god to be without for a start (its all made up like it or not) but I assume you wont buy that approach...but your use of the word Atheist does not fit the definition or current usage.

But you have drifted back to your incorrect usage which makes you clearly wrong and if wrong on one thing perhaps you are wrong on other matters...like the existence of god...well you are ...there is no god...its made up evidenced by no evidence of god at all...none.
I have hinted in the past there is no god but today I will just come out and say it...there is no god and its all made up.

Further your useage of the word "Atheist" implies that somehow there is a god and that somehow Atheists dont get it which is of course wrong because there simply is no god "to get".

Your choice to use the word "Atheist" as being without god is condecending hinting at an underlying arogance which I find offensive but can and will forgive putting it down to just another negative spin off related to holding unsupportable made up beliefs.

This god stuff ...its all just superstition so if you must say an Atheist is without something it would be more appropriate,indeed more truthful, to say an Atheist is without superstition...but even to do that would not remedy failure to apply current meaning and usage to the word Atheist.


The god thing is a con ... a con man steals your money by telling you a bunch of lies and making promises that can never be kept and then disappears leaving the victim hopeing that one day he, the con man, will come back and deliver on his false promises and that poor victim rather than acknowledge that he has been conned will keep secret his fears that perhaps he was conned maintaining a false belief that "really it must be true" and to his friends defend the con artist with cries that he will return or he is a good guy and I have faith in him..of course all evidence points in the other direction not that the victim sees such to be a problem because he has faith...oh faith that standard barrier held up to sheild the horrors of truth...a good con job basically runs the way outlined.

It would be an interesting exercise to consider the parrallels between a good con job and what religion delivers or more correctly what religion fails to deliver.


My analysis says religion, which includes all and any notion of god, parrallels a good con job perfectly...in fact religion is the best con there is... after all no one comes back from being dead and says "hey I am still dead that life after death promise was a total lie"...
And that con line "god works in mysterious ways" equals "Sorry Mr Conman is in a meeting and cant take your call".

If atheists are without anything they are without gullibility☺


Alex
 
Baldeee said:
No, they're really not.
Religion is something you can do with the belief you have.
But a/theism is separate from religion just as eggs are separate from the matter of baking: yes, you can bake with eggs, and you can bake without eggs, but you don't have to bake.
Then let's agree to call them not-religions, given that that is what they are.

The rest of your post is duly noted, but irrelevant to what I had raised.
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Sure, fine. I'm certainly not going to argue over angels on pinheads.
 
Baldeee said:
So rather than answer the question meaningfully and addressing the issue raised, you just come up with a one-liner that has mere vague allusions to being an answer?
I ask again: what belief is it that you think the atheist holds?
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On the contrary, when you start getting repetitive, uniform one-liners from various atheists to account for the phenomena of god and religion, as they understand the terms, you start to get a picture that is neither vague nor meaningless.

Granted, you could suggest a type of atheism that does not meet that criteria (like an atheism that arises out of the greater ignorance of the norms of society) ... but when you start getting mockery, internet memes, historical references, seminal writings of advocates etc that coalesce the subject, far from just a mere belief, one can indicate the very tools that shape beliefs. Introducing spurious arguments to suggest no belief exists simply adds another layer, so you can then start talking about atheists who believe that no belief is involved with their atheism (and their associated internet memes, seminal writers, etc utilized to coalesce a more stronger belief in that position).

Gawdzilla is a classic case in point.
 
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Gawdzilla Sama said:
Sorry, Charlie, I never believed in any god or gods. There wasn't any reason to do so.
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Yet here you are.
What would you suppose a non stamp collector could call upon to boast about their position? A collection of empty stamp albums?
 
Musika said:
Yet here you are.
What would you suppose a non stamp collector could call upon to boast about their position? A collection of empty stamp albums?
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I have a box of nothing here, you can have it if you pay postage. And "boast" is your problem, I'm just stating a fact. Your butt hurt must really burn.
 
Yazata said:
I make a stronger distinction between philosophy and religion.

Religion is more closely associated to myth than to philosophy in my opinion, where 'myth' doesn't mean 'bullshit', but rather something like 'explanatory account presented as a narrative in the form of a story'. Philosophy is distinguished from that by its attempt to use rational argument and reasoning to justify everything.

For example, religion historically accounted for the origin of everything with creation stories (like the very abbreviated verses at the beginning of Genesis) and by theogonies. The latter were more common and prevailed where different gods and goddesses were associated with (and served as personifications of) different aspects of reality. So the elaborate stories about which gods and goddesses gave birth to others, and what kind of conflicts and strife arose among them, represented early (more or less unconsciously allegorical) attempts to account for how the various aspects of reality relate to one another.

The earliest Greek philosophers in Ionia addressed the same issues, the origin of everything and how various aspects or reality relate and interact, but didn't personify them and tried to relate them using reasonable arguments.

That use of reason to address foundational issues is more of less definitive of philosophy in my view. Science didn't exist yet in ancient Greek times, though trial-and-error craft traditions certainly did. And until the 1800's science was most commonly referred to as 'natural philosophy' (that specialty of philosophy that addressed the natural world, alongside other specialties like logic, epistemology, ethics and aesthetics). So our distinction between philosophy and science is comparatively recent.

Anaximander imagined the original 'stuff' ('arche') of the universe as formlessness (his 'apeiron', 'without boundaries', the 'undefined'). Then he tried to imagine how it might have acquired definition and form (setting in motion the form/matter metaphysics which is still very much alive today, in the form of things like structural realism).

The Pythagoreans (Pythagoras seems to have been an Ionian who moved to southern Italy where his school was influential) used simple mathematics such as numbers as its explanatory principle, where mathematics more or less plays the role of Anaximander's perimeters, shapes and forms, and we still see something of that in theoretical physics today.
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You seem to be exclusively discussing christianity. It has a marked divide from philosophy because it acquired its philosophical content several hundred years later after due to a revivalism of (ancient) southern european culture .... which became even more complicated due to a subsequent cultural backlash from their northern european counterparts (sola scriptura, etc).

IOW this whole narrative of an intellectual divide between philosophy and religion belongs to the cultural landscape of Christianity, not religion.
 
Jan Ardena said:
I`m not aware of these many descriptions of different Gods (upper-case g), can you provide a few of these differing descriptions?
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Sure. Here is one for Vishnu, one of the three Gods that many Hindus worship. I will let you google the other two if you want to.
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Who is Vishnu?
Vishnu is the second god in the Hindu triumvirate (orTrimurti). The triumvirate consists of three gods who are responsible for the creation, upkeep and destruction of the world. The other two gods are Brahma and Shiva.

Brahma is the creator of the universe and Shiva is the destroyer. Vishnu is the preserver and protector of the universe.

His role is to return to the earth in troubled times and restore the balance of good and evil. So far, he has been incarnated nine times, but Hindus believe that he will be reincarnated one last time close to the end of this world.

Vishnu's worshippers, usually called Vaishnava, consider him the greatest god.
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It may seem like you`ve made, or proven a point because you simply say it the case. But the reality is, you haven`t. I`m not even sure if you`re making sense. So please, once again, provide some information, that we can verify. Give some examples of these different Gods (upper-case g0), then we`ll have a much better understanding of where you`re coming from.
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See above.
I'm
not claiming there is only ``American water``. I`m showing you that three different contexts of water, doesn`t mean the water is different each time. God can be a billion persons, if God chooses, but God is always One.
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Unless he is three (Hindus.) Or twelve, as in the case of ancient Greek religion. (To be specific, Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Athena, Ares, Aphrodite, Apollo, Artemis, Hephaestus, Hermes, and Dionysus.)
Still not enough for you to know jack, about what they believe. Unless you are talking about the atheist ones.
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Nope. I am talking about what they believe, which some of them have described to me.

And if you are going to tell me that you understand their faith better than they do, or better than I do after they've explained it to me, I will have a good laugh at your expense.
But once again, please show where Christian, and/or, Muslim theists, have a different description of God, to me.
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Christianity, Judaism and Islam are all monotheistic religions. Almost every other one is polytheistic. And even if you wish very, very hard, they will not go away.
 
Musika said:
A collection of empty stamp albums?
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I had an empty stamp album once but I threw it out when I stopped not collecting stamps.

But what has not collecting stamps got to do with a non existent god.

An Atheist has not been brain washed to include made up nonsence in their reality it is that simple.

But I suspect not allowing the made up stuff elevation to what as you would like, which I see as that of "intellectual" consideration, must be so annoying to you but you fail to appreciate that before we start a discussion about anything there needs to be established some plausible reason why there is any need at all..there is no god if you can disprove that fact please go right ahead...I know I am not playing the game the way you need it to be played but that is the power of keeping it simple...and it is simple..there is no god unless you show otherwise...so lets keep it simple for us little pony folk and start with you providing some indication as to why anyone need accept made up stuff invented by superstitious folk from thousands of years ago is in any way believable and let us keep it simple and by simple I ask what entitles theists to assume their belief should be taken seriously by anyone given they entirely sidestep establishement of some reasonable basis that there is any god.

And object to repetativeness all you want but I certainly wont abandon being repetative.

I just love reminding folk that its all just made up...over and over and the more tiresome they find it the more effective that approach.

And dont come this little pony crap again just because you find you can not accomodate a simple demand to require some evidence that any of this god stuff is anything more than stuff made up thousands of years ago.

Made up I say and you cant prove or even hint that is not a fair and reasonable observation.

And I ask at what age did your brain washing start such that you were encouraged to believe you were capable of thinking yet only fed what to think.

Now dont be upset I am trying to make you look inward and wonder why you hold your beliefs and question if indeed they were ever your beliefs.


Alex
 
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