Gender: Female Location: at the second star to the right
If you are an atheist...
I have a question for all people who do not believe any religion at all or even the possibility of God.
It seems through the media and message boards like this that atheists are much more likely to insult religious people and stereotype them as stupid and ignorant. Of course, the few atheists I have known have never acted that way, so please understand I am not grouping you together.
But my question is: does it bother you in some way when someone says they are of faith? It just seems like some atheists like to "do us a favor" by telling us how stupid we all are. I suppose that's the equivalent of a missionary going out and trying to convert, but it seems more aggressive. What is your take on people of faith? Do any faiths bother you more than others? What are your takes on Wicca and beliefs that don't really acknowledge a God per se? Just curious on what makes you tick.
i agree with you, i am an atheist and i definitely consider those who believe in religion foolish. it does bother me ecause to me the only lgical position is atheism.
i havent seen the works of "god" in motion and the world really isnt fair which a just god(if there was one mind you) wouldnt allow. i love talking about religion and am an adamant atheist. Mormons bother me the most for 1 reason. they try and convert me my shotgun loves converting mormons. but the religion that bothers me just for being so public and anuisance is christianity.
but what really gets me is people who have blind faith. that is something i cant stand. like for instance latin americans and blacks. no offense but i seriously doubt they comprehend exactly what that religion entails. it seriously pisses me off when someone follows something they were brought up into blindly. i wasnt raised atheist i logically came to that conclusion. my family is jewish, but that seems even less logical than christianity.
as long as religions dont try and convert people i usually dont get too mad
There's other atheists on this board, and none of us (not even all of us) counts as a representative sample of atheist thinking, so take it for what it is: one person's take.
Statements like this: It just seems like some atheists like to "do us a favor" by telling us how stupid we all are. tell me that you're as apt to fall into believing the stereotype as most, despite the 2nd paragraph. So whether or not you'll admit it, I'm assuming that I'm talking to a slightly jaded reception. I could counter with something like, Christians love telling us how we're doomed to hell, or lost from Christ's love, and it would be true for some cases but not he majority. A similarly erroneous stereotype (please understand, I don't agree with the last italizcized statement) but it shows how the thinking can be turned on its head.
I'm of the mind that variety of beliefs have little to do with intelligence, and more to do with exposure to information. The more you look into any religious belief, the more you realize that there's strong support for either side of any argument. Religion is no exception. But my point is not "the more you learn, the less you know." Far from it. Most times, I feel like one side can objectively be found to trump the others. But my point is that there's so much saturation of information on complex religious issues, that any one person is likely to have been "indoctrinated" into one side or the other. Thus, intelligent people intelligently defend all the various religions. Certainly they can't all be right, and I feel like some are very, very wrong...but it's an indictment of the beliefs themselves, not the people who believe them.
Otherwise, I and most atheists are as likely to share our beliefs as anyone else. The fact that we live in a predominantly Christian country, and an overwhelmingly theistic country, means that atheism gets thrown into sharp contrast to it, and thus probably gets more public attention than similar minority religious groups. Since the cultural zeitgeist is so far from atheism, people have a hard time understanding it, and so you get everything from curiosity and mild concern, to outright hostility and damaging stereotypes. It becomes a perpetual cycle as the animosity, misrepresentation, and misunderstanding leads to the so-called "angry atheists" that are paraded around as indicative of the movement, which thus leads to more misunderstanding, which...on and on.
As with many minority causes. Far from painting atheists as martyrs, it's just the cultural norm of not having mainstream acceptance, and that tension manifesting as negativity on both sides. One could say the same of different races and creeds, ethnicities, religious groups like the Wicca you mentioned, feminists, etc. The sterotypes exist....they are based in part upon fact. But they are in the minority of the minority, so to speak....as it is with most causes, where most people tend toward the "middle" while some exist at the extremes of the particular cause.
Gender: Female Location: at the second star to the right
Well, digi, you are at least speaking to a biased person. Obviously if I were an atheist, I probably wouldn't ask the question in the first place, but I wouldn't say that I'm jaded. I just don't like being called stupid by some people. I did say "some" atheists. Most, I feel, live and let live as long as they do not feel pressure on someone to change what they believe. What I cannot understand is the ones who don't, who feel the need to try to disprove every little bit. It doesn't seem to be good enough for those people that one person believes one way and someone else believes something else. It seems like some (not all) can be respectful.
Wow, chickenlover...latin americans and blacks don't understand what their religion means, huh? You have more in common with Joseph Smith's Mormon ideas than you think.
sorry if that sounded racist. howver i live in la and the mojarity of them are uneducated, which is unfortunate. but yes i have met and seen a ton of non educated people with religion not only latin amercicans and blacks. however there is an outstanding majority of them here in los angeles
I sometimes come across as more combative, and don't personally subscribe to the "live and let live" philosophy, but there's a reason for it. I have a hard time attacking people, who are generally good, and have genuinely altruistic reasons for believing what they do. But I see a lot of hatred, negativity, and economic loss as a result of false beliefs...which I would extend not just to many religious beliefs but also paranormal and pseudo-scientific beliefs. So the distinction must be made, for me, between attacking the belief rather than the believer....sometimes it's harder to do than others.
But underlying it is a desire to improve the lives of others by informing them of alternative ideas, and certainly not just to call them stupid (which they usually aren't) or to claim superiority.
And for those who gain great strength through their religion, or use it toward benevolent ends, those people I gladly "let live." My family is Catholic and we don't have problems, so it's not terribly hard to put to practice.
But it's when I see the negative side of faith-based belief rear its head that I am just as angry as the stereotype atheists, because I consider it tragic to see people without access to the right information throwing away their money to quack paranormalists, or lives destroyed because of religious persecution (homosexuals, non-Christians, Islam/Judaism, etc.), or putting untold amounts of faith in a God that will not reap the benefits of a more rational approach to life's problems.
Gender: Male Location: USA, Oklahoma. Pewpy balls.
Re: Re: If you are an atheist...
I feel that the most logical would have to be agnosticism. It is less of a gamble than either full fledged theism or full fledged atheism and it seems to be able to withstand scientific criticism much better than either side.
Honestly, I prayed my little heart out for God to prove he exists. I asked him for signs...angels...anything. To this day, I have gotten basically nothing. If I could get anything other than "hearing" and answer to my prayer, I would dedicate my life to "spreading" the gospel like the vicious Mormons you describe. I was just a child and I genuinely, and with as pure of a heart as can be expected, asked for God to help me believe. I didn't get anything. God says I can just ask him and he will give liberally and upbraid not...so where is my knowledge? This is why I claim to have atheistic sympathies.
Logically, I would say agnosticism is the best choice.
I feel that atheists have to be more viscious because of theistic America. However, argue religion with a Baptists and an Atheist would appear to be rather timid.
well christiananity bothers me more than others, but i only bother people who are fanatics. i mean look at it this way, when somebody tells you they are of different faith do you not atleast think something of them thats negative? i mean if you are hardly religious then no but i've met people who basically tell people they are going to hell because of they're religion. but i usually dont care to know what people believe in the only time i asked somebody was when he didnt stand for oh canada (he was Jahova's witness) and i totally just said cool (and held my mouth from saying something stupid)
and to explain why i hate christanity: gods were created by man to explain (what was then) the unexplainable and beyond they're logic, christanity was created as a tool to control the people, and it worked very well
Gender: Male Location: USA, Oklahoma. Pewpy balls.
Re: Re: Re: Re: If you are an atheist...
Depends on which flavor of Christianity you are talking about. In Mormonism, there is a chance for everyone to make it to heaven...not just a few select individuals or people who were baptized while here on earth.
It bothers me when faith equals "blind guess" or "believe in ****ing ridiculous garbage" as it does with many Religious people. So, I guess, yes, it does bother me.
Threads like these are too polarizing as well. I responded because I didn't want, say, chicken dominating the atheist perspective * to chicken* but wouldn't have said anything otherwise.
Anyway, if a person is angry and a jerk, chances are they'd be that way regardless of their beliefs. The stereotype "angry atheists," in my mind, aren't angry because of atheism, or even as a reaction to theism. They're just overtly combative people.
Same of the evangelists who annoy everyone. But neither group is in the majority of their faith, so it's really creating a false dichotomy to present it as a major schism between the two different ideologies.
I'm going to try and be a semantic smart arse and suggest that EVERYONE is really an agnostic. The definition of agnosticism requires some uncertainty, and I'm pretty sure that even the Pope has had his moments of doubt.
Any way IMO (for what its worth) both sets are as bad as each other. On one side of the coin you have incredibly educated 'believers' such as Wittgenstein, Aquinas, Einstein's, Kant, Pascal and Berkley all presenting good arguments for why belief should be considered.
On the other hand you have numerous angry Evangelicals, who would argue that an Ant could eat its own head, if mentioned in the bible.
On the other hand, there have been numerous educated Atheists, who have also presented mirroring convincing cases, such as Nietche, Sartre and Hume. While others such Richard Dawkins, have spent most of their time Antagonising and Patronising, rather than convincing.
Last edited by Cartesian Doubt on Mar 28th, 2008 at 11:08 PM
What I hate is when people label me an atheist simply because I don't follow or beleive in any religion. There could be an all powerful God, there could be many and of course the most logical for me is there is not. This is just what my human brain tells me as the idea of such a thing existing just seems ridiculous. The closest thing to God is our planet as it created us and all life and essentialy created it's self. I have no problem with any religion and faith is good for motivation and helping people live a good life. I will admit these people who take the word of say the bible or any holy book as fact really annoy me but they can beleive what they want, just keep it away from me.
__________________ Georgia thinks it's some tough-shit and breaks a cease fire, kills many Russian civilians who live in South Ossetia / 'Georgia'. Russia says **** that, we've taken enough shit from Georgia recently, time to show them who they neighbor, and who's citizens are living in their country. So Russia is simply scaring Georgia, showing Georgia that if we wanted to, we could take over your tiny country in a matter of hours, and if we wanted to, we could occupy it for as long as we want.
Not entirely wrong, especially about the "everyone's an agnostic" part (though "agnostic" implies a certain disposition that most don't have, so theist, or atheist is generally better to describe one's beliefs).
Though Einstein wasn't theist. Commonly held myth, but his "God" was equivalent to the wonder and awe that the forces of the universe engender within us....not a personal deity in the Western sense of the word.
As for Dawkins, his very name threatens to derail entire threads, so I tread lightly with him. But after reading a lot of his stuff, I'm always surprised at the negativity directed toward him without specific citations. He's painted as the extremist atheist....but when I read him it always seems like he presents himself much more rationally (and less combative) than one would think based on his rep. Even he himself qualifies his atheism as a version of agnosticism, given the inability we have to objectively "prove" anything. I think the extremist view of him stems mainly from the fact that he's among the world's most well-known atheists, and probably the most well-known. He's a figurehead for the movement, and does constantly advocate atheist thinking...but not at the expense of basic courtesy toward humanity, which many think of him.
i agree with your former points lol im just technically an angry person. however atheism is a hard postion to defend because so many people give you shit for it. i get angry when that happens *shrugs*
i also think your right about dawkins. people assume since he's the leader of atheists so to speak they think he's angry at theists. people definitely make assumptions about atheists. it gets annoying sometimes
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Mar 28th, 2008 07:37 PM
my shotgun loves converting mormons. 
