What has god done for you

GhostofMaxwell. said:
Its avoiding nothing! The question is loaded, so can not really be answered by me, for one. But to humour you I will say option 3: I dont know their is a god. But bear in mind that I would also have to answer the same to a loaded question like : Is there a pink elephant waving a magic wand just beyond our perceptible limit of the universe.
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You have not offered one source other than wiki waki to support your definition.
Perhaps I have not been clear; what I am getting at is this
there seems to be this strong tendency(?) among Atheists
to state their ideas as fact 'cuz their minds aren't clouded by beliefs.
Research anyone?

Atheism, pronounced AY thee ihz uhm, is the belief that there is no God. Atheism is the opposite of theism, the belief that God exists. Atheism is also distinguished from agnosticism, a belief which states that human beings do not, and cannot, know whether any gods exist.

Atheists argue that God is never encountered in human experience. They believe that nothing in human experience needs to be explained by the existence of a deity.

Some prominent thinkers have been advocates of atheism. They include Baron Paul d'Holbach and Voltaire of France in the 1700's; Arthur Schopenhauer, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche of Germany in the 1800's; and Bertrand Russell of England and Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre of France in the 1900's.

Contributor: Ivan Soll, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Additional resources

Angeles, Peter A., ed.Critiques of God: Making the Case Against the Belief in God. 1976. Reprint. Prometheus, 1997.
Johnson, B. C.The Atheist Debater's Handbook. Prometheus, 1981.
Martin, Michael.Atheism: A Philosophical Justification. 1990. Reprint. Temple Univ. Pr., 1992.
Smart, J. J. C., and Haldane, J. J.Atheism and Theism. Blackwell, 1996

World Book Multimedia Encyclopedia 2004 Ed. Version 8.2.1

Agnosticism, pronounced ag NOS tuh sihz uhm, is the belief that ultimate questions, especially those about the existence of God, cannot be answered. The term comes from the Greek word agnostos, which means not knowing. It was first used by the British naturalist Thomas Henry Huxley in 1869. Agnosticism reflects the point of view that reason and scientific evidence should be the sole guides to finding truth.

Contributor: Mark Juergensmeyer, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Ibid
 
Tht1Gy! said:
You have not offered one source other than wiki waki to support your definition.
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I never offered any sources. I certainly would never quote wiki, you are thinking of someone else.

Perhaps I have not been clear; what I am getting at is this
there seems to be this strong tendency(?) among Atheists
to state their ideas as fact 'cuz their minds aren't clouded by beliefs.
Research anyone?
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I've never stated my ideas as fact, nor will I.
Atheism, pronounced AY thee ihz uhm, is the belief that there is no God. Atheism is the opposite of theism, the belief that God exists. Atheism is also distinguished from agnosticism, a belief which states that human beings do not, and cannot, know whether any gods exist.
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....By that definition I guess Im agnostic.


Atheists argue that God is never encountered in human experience. They believe that nothing in human experience needs to be explained by the existence of a deity.
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....Going by that definition(the definition I would prefer) Im atheist.
 
You* see previous post

*The collective 'You'.
 
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GhostofMaxwell. said:
I never offered any sources. I certainly would never quote wiki, you are thinking of someone else.


I've never stated my ideas as fact, nor will I.
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That I don't challenge.
I meant the collective "You"
when I tried to fix it I ended up posting the same thing twice.
 
Ya gotta admit, with the time lag thing, all the cross posting is kinda funny. :D
 
BTW, what the hell does ROFLMAO mean? Ya know. that rolly thing.
Thx in advance.
T1G! out.
 
If you really want to get into the literal definition of words, then here is a simple breakdown* of atheism and agnosticism.

a = without; no
theist = belief in god(s)
gnostic = knowledge

Therefore, atheist is literally without belief in god(s), while agnostic is without knowledge, in this case without knowledge of god(s). In the end, I don't care if you call yourself an atheist or an agnostic. The idea that you don't believe in theism is clear enough.

*There may be a linguistic mastermind coming through to clarify or rectify this statement.
 
You see, my concession that humans cannot know beyond doubt that any stated entity does not exists, is a rather weak concession. Its only there at all because logic dictates that you cant prove the nonexistence of anything, you can only prove the existence of something.
 
original said:
If you really want to get into the literal definition of words, then here is a simple breakdown* of atheism and agnosticism.

a = without; no
theist = belief in god(s)
gnostic = knowledge

Therefore, atheist is literally without belief in god(s), while agnostic is without knowledge, in this case without knowledge of god(s). In the end, I don't care if you call yourself an atheist or an agnostic. The idea that you don't believe in theism is clear enough.

*
Click to expand...

Bingo!
 
Encyclopedia of American Religious History, by Edward L. Queen, Stephen R. Prothero, and Gardiner H. Shattuck

"Atheism, literally the absence of belief in God, has always been a minority viewpoint in American culture."

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Chapman Cohen:
President of Britain's National Secular Society and author of numerous works about atheism and freethought, he wrote in Deity and Design that

"Atheism, the absence of belief in gods, is a comparatively late phenomenon in history."

Elsewhere, he also stated:

"If one believes in a god, one is a Theist. If one does not believe in a god, then one is an A-theist — he is without that belief. The distinction between atheism and theism is entirely, exclusively, that of whether one has or has not a belief in God."

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Dan Barker:
A former fundamentalist preacher who has become an activist for atheism, freethought, and the separation of church and state. He wrote in his 1992 book Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist that,

"It turns out that the word atheism means much less than I had thought.
It is merely the lack of theism [...] Basic atheism is not a belief. It is the lack of belief."

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Antony G. N. Flew:
An atheist philosopher from Britain, Flew has written quite a lot on the nature of atheism and theism. In his 1984 book God, Freedom and Immortality, he said that

"The word 'atheism,' however, has in this contention to be construed unusually. Whereas nowadays the usual meaning of 'atheist' in English is 'someone who asserts there is no such being as God,' I want the word to be understood not positively but negatively. I want the originally Greek prefix 'a' to be read in the same way in 'atheist' as it customarily is read in such other Greco-English words as 'amoral,' 'atypical,' and 'asymmetrical'. In this interpretation an atheist becomes: someone who is simply not a theist."

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Michael Martin:
The author of one of the most extensive and detailed books on the philosophy of atheism. He states in Atheism: A Philosophical Introduction that,

"If you look up 'atheism' in the dictionary, you will probably find it defined as the belief that there is no God. Certainly many people understand atheism in this way. Yet many atheists do not, and this is not what the term means if one considers it from the point of view of its Greek roots. In Greek 'a' means 'without' or 'not' and 'theos' means 'god.' From this standpoint an atheist would simply be someone without a belief in God, not necessarily someone who believes that God does not exist. According to its Greek roots, then, atheism is a negative veiew, characterized by the absence of belief in God."

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George Smith:
The author of one of the most popular books about atheism, Atheism: The Case Against God,

"Atheism in its basic form is not a belief: it is the absence of belief. An atheist is not primarily a person who believes that god does not exist; rather, he does not believe in the existence of a god."

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Gordon Stein:
A prolific writer on atheism, humanism, freethought, and philosophy, who described atheism in his An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism:

"The average theologian (there are exceptions, of course) uses 'atheist' to mean a person who denies the existence of a God. Even an atheist would agree that some atheists (a small minority) would fit this definition. However, most atheists would stongly dispute the adequacy of this definition. Rather, they would hold that an atheist is a person without a belief in God. The distinction is small but important. Denying something means that you have knowledge of what it is that you are being asked to affirm, but that you have rejected that particular concept. To be without a belief in God merely means that the term 'god' has no importance or possibly no meaning to you. Belief in God is not a factor in your life. Surely this is quite different from denying the existence of God. Atheism is not a belief as such. It is the lack of belief.

When we examine the components of the word 'atheism,' we can see this distinction more clearly. The word is made up of 'a-' and '-theism.' Theism, we will all agree, is a belief in a God or gods. The prefix 'a-' can mean 'not' (or 'no') or 'without.' If it means 'not,' then we have as an atheist someone who is not a theist (i.e., someone who does not have a belief in a God or gods). If it means 'without,' then an atheist is someone without theism, or without a belief in God."
 
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Sounds like a lot of beating around the bush to deny what is essentially a belief.

Good to know that even atheists have their "interpretation" issues.
 
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