Why do some people consider themselves "atheist"?
- Thread starter wynn
- Start date
I went through a patch of tiredness. It is hard to think of it.
And if I gave you an example of what I think was an amazing guess that worked out you would just dismiss it as "not historic".
I am always amazed that Jesus took on the role of the suffering servant and allowed them to crucify him, on the hope that he would be resurrected, and it worked. That is a gamble beyond normal understanding.
I'm not quite sure what you want, but I listen to explanations and I don't understand them either. So I just make up my own.
We make a lots of observations and plenty of guesses in Science.
Quite often one theory is dependent on another but in the end it is guesswork.
But they acknowledge which part is a guess and which part is justified by the evidence.
I am all for change.
Socratic Spelunker
Registered Senior Member
This only works linguistically. Its not impossible to have an entirely atheistic culture. Atheism does not require theism.
Sure, after there was first theism.
You can take a bunch out atheists and ship them off onto a deserted island, and then they will be atheists who are atheists without there being any theists needed.
But in order for them to have become atheists to begin with and come to define themselves as such, there first had to be theists against whom some people form the particular kind of opposition known as "atheism."
Socratic Spelunker
Registered Senior Member
not true. it is conceivable that a culture is founded and exists without ever imagining that there is a bearded man in the sky. In other words, there is nothing about the idea of God that is essential for the founding of a society.
For example, no one believes that there is a giant, 37,529,643 tentacled squid floating through space and will one day devour the moon and replace it with a huge wheel of cheese.
Our non-belief in this idea does not require that some people DO believe it. We do not believe it because its never occurred to us.
In the same way, a lack of belief in God does not require that some people do believe in him.
For example, no one believes that there is a giant, 37,529,643 tentacled squid floating through space and will one day devour the moon and replace it with a huge wheel of cheese.
Our non-belief in this idea does not require that some people DO believe it. We do not believe it because its never occurred to us.
In the same way, a lack of belief in God does not require that some people do believe in him.
@wynn --
Wrong again. All humans are born without any inherent beliefs about any god or gods, therefore we are all technically atheists when we're born and we later learn to be theists(or supernaturalists or whatever). You've succeeded in putting the cart before the horse on this one.
Wrong again. All humans are born without any inherent beliefs about any god or gods, therefore we are all technically atheists when we're born and we later learn to be theists(or supernaturalists or whatever). You've succeeded in putting the cart before the horse on this one.
You are forgetting, your kind of thinking is a minority
There are many killing in this world by people who they say they believe in God. Can you imagine if all humanity would be nonbeliever and with low education.
“ Originally Posted by Arioch
@wynn --
don't agree
don't agree
the problem comes for me by researching a little of our ancient past I have across knowledge that suggests that things are a little more complicated than things appear
while we are in most ways are very sophisticated society , science etc
so was are ancient past
@wynn --
don't agree
don't agree
the problem comes for me by researching a little of our ancient past I have across knowledge that suggests that things are a little more complicated than things appear
while we are in most ways are very sophisticated society , science etc
so was are ancient past
Ah but what gods?
Consider Socrates defending himself against the charge of atheism:
Then, by the gods, Meletus, of whom we are speaking, tell me and the court, in somewhat plainer terms, what you mean! for I do not as yet understand whether you affirm that I teach others to acknowledge some gods, and therefore do believe in gods and am not an entire atheist - this you do not lay to my charge; but only that they are not the same gods which the city recognizes - the charge is that they are different gods. Or, do you mean to say that I am an atheist simply, and a teacher of atheism?
I mean the latter - that you are a complete atheist.
That is an extraordinary statement, Meletus. Why do you say that? Do you mean that I do not believe in the godhead of the sun or moon, which is the common creed of all men?
I assure you, judges, that he does not believe in them; for he says that the sun is stone, and the moon earth.
I mean the latter - that you are a complete atheist.
That is an extraordinary statement, Meletus. Why do you say that? Do you mean that I do not believe in the godhead of the sun or moon, which is the common creed of all men?
I assure you, judges, that he does not believe in them; for he says that the sun is stone, and the moon earth.
So much for the God-gene camp!
So where do supernaturalism or theism come from?
If they are not in the DNA, if they are not real/true, where do they come from?
Delusion? And where does delusion come from?
Delusion does come from religion, it's true, but there was a prime mover of delusion, that lead the innocent and unsuspecting convert into the fallacies of religion in the first place.
That prime mover is simply error--whether combined with naïve or ignorant ideation, superstition, xenophobia, fantasies or even violent ideation, is purely academic.
DNA gives rise to an organ capable of bootstrapping a mind. Unfortunately, a mind can be a terrible thing. It's a huge price to pay for the benefit of outsmarting one's natural competitors. But the suffering (back at the dawn of humankind) was purely mental, barely a scratch on the forces at play during natural selection. So the cost-benefit ratio is acceptable, and that's the legacy of evolution.
Nitrogen yields Jesus, for example.
@wynn --
Not that there ever was much hope for the god-gene camp anyways.
Supernaturalism most likely stems from what appears to be a natural form of dualism on our parts, arising from the illusory mind/body separation produced by our brain's higher functioning. We experience ourselves as two "different" things(and this is reflected in our speech patterns, note how we talk about "our body" in much the same way that we would talk about "our car") without ever realizing that the very separation we experience is a direct side effect of what our brains do to survive(and without ever being viscerally aware of what's going on "beneath" our thoughts).
Theism, of all sorts, is almost certainly an outgrowth of our natural agency detection faculties. At some point in our evolutionary past it became advantageous to assign agency, to assume a being of some sort were the cause, to movements and changes we detected in our environment. In most(if not all) primate species, and in many species associated with humans(i.e. domesticated species) we've discovered heightened agency detection instincts in that they have a rather large tendency to assign agency to events that weren't caused by an agent(such as lightning, or the sun rising).
Over time this tendency likely grew in sophistication as our brains did. In other words, the more we learned and observed the world the more sophisticated the agents we assigned natural phenomenon to became, thus opening the way for the first gods to be invented.
Completely natural and it fits the facts.
Delusion usually comes from some sort of imbalance in the brain. It could be caused by infections, increased cranial pressure putting an extra squeeze on the brain, in fact any number of things(including some of our brains completely natural functions that it performs daily, such as the creation of false memories and the editing of real ones).
Not that there ever was much hope for the god-gene camp anyways.
Supernaturalism most likely stems from what appears to be a natural form of dualism on our parts, arising from the illusory mind/body separation produced by our brain's higher functioning. We experience ourselves as two "different" things(and this is reflected in our speech patterns, note how we talk about "our body" in much the same way that we would talk about "our car") without ever realizing that the very separation we experience is a direct side effect of what our brains do to survive(and without ever being viscerally aware of what's going on "beneath" our thoughts).
Theism, of all sorts, is almost certainly an outgrowth of our natural agency detection faculties. At some point in our evolutionary past it became advantageous to assign agency, to assume a being of some sort were the cause, to movements and changes we detected in our environment. In most(if not all) primate species, and in many species associated with humans(i.e. domesticated species) we've discovered heightened agency detection instincts in that they have a rather large tendency to assign agency to events that weren't caused by an agent(such as lightning, or the sun rising).
Over time this tendency likely grew in sophistication as our brains did. In other words, the more we learned and observed the world the more sophisticated the agents we assigned natural phenomenon to became, thus opening the way for the first gods to be invented.
Completely natural and it fits the facts.
Delusion usually comes from some sort of imbalance in the brain. It could be caused by infections, increased cranial pressure putting an extra squeeze on the brain, in fact any number of things(including some of our brains completely natural functions that it performs daily, such as the creation of false memories and the editing of real ones).