A Possible New Way of Classifying Atheists/Agnostics

[einbert]

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Think bookies making football lines.

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Wow, good post. You got your intentions across to me, although I had to do some work to actually interpret the text into the appropriate ideas. I'm going to try to learn from your brevity and maybe by me following suit we can actually get somewhere.


Maybe you're putting too much weight on the sermon and too little weight on the reception.

[David Sklansky]

"Maybe you're putting too much weight on the sermon and too little weight on the reception."

I would thank you back for your brevity except I am not sure I understand what you are saying.

[mosquito]

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"Maybe you're putting too much weight on the sermon and too little weight on the reception."

I would thank you back for your brevity except I am not sure I understand what you are saying.

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I'm hoping that's sarcasm....lol...and not irony.

[Shandrax]

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But religious people seem to think that all non believers have a hidden reason. They want to be God. They don't want some being with authority over them.

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I am atheist and it has nothing to do with my desire to be my own God or something of that sort. I have simply come to the conclusion that God is nothing but a placeholder for the unknown.

Whenever you ask a question about nature, eventually some scientist will discover an answer (sooner or later). In the old days when science was developed well enough, they didn't get answers so they thought the reason was some sort of God.

Lot's of Gods got busted by scientists over the years, like the God of Thunder and similar "guys". It is only a matter of time until the "rest of them" will get busted also.

Another reason for me being atheist is that I don't worry about my own death. I don't like it, but I have accepted it as part of my imperfect existance. I don't need someone telling me nice stories about "life" after death. All I need is the confidence that my death will happen fast and without too much pain, which I don't have yet. That's why I consider committing suicide once I get informed about my inevitable near death - cancer or something. Not sure about details though, because this is something I like to push aside for now.

I guess I am an atheist and a fatalist at the same time, but I can live with it.

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This next idea, I fear, has also probably been discussed before. But in case it hasn't, we'll name it after me.

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No, I've read it before, and further, it's fairly obvious. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

Your classification into Christian and Jew needs to be refined or perhaps abandoned, because it's useless as it stands given the number of sects, family practices, differing childhood experiences, and beliefs ranging from near agnostic to fundamentalist in both groups.

At one end is a Jehovah's Witness conversion, which is incredibly painful. A person has to escape a lifelong, heavy childhood indoctrination, a heavy concentration of believers in their social network, a lack of education about evolution and other 'anti-God' topics, and excommunication from family and friends if they choose to not believe.

At the other is a middle class liberal Christian who was well educated at a secular school and went to Church only twice a year as a child. Many of these people believe that as long as you're "good" you go to heaven. So there's very little anguish involved, perhaps less than a Jewish person (who sometimes have strong family based religious beliefs).

So I fail to see the distinction between Christian and Jew. Individual circumstances and experiences seem to far outweigh this general distinction. Apart from that, your point is a good one IMO.

[sexdrugsmoney]

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I hate it when I come up with an idea that I hope may be original and it turns out not to be. Such was the case with my idea that God can't see the future. Turns out some guy named Boyd develeped a similar theory and its called Neotheism. So I'm done with that subject.

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"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be;
and that which is done is that which shall be done:
and there is no new thing under the sun." - Ecclesiastes 1:9

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This next idea, I fear, has also probably been discussed before. But in case it hasn't, we'll name it after me.

I have often been perplexed by the degree of certainty Not Ready and others have about the motives of non believers. They can't seem to accept that many of them simply gradually came to not believe based on things they have learned. And how it doesn't fit in with a personal God. One who cares about humans and sometimes intervenes in our life and answers prayers. In my case my non belief stems from factors including my knowledge of gambling, magic, physics, astronomy, logic, and probability. How they all tie in I have not yet fully explained. Maybe someday.

But religious people seem to think that all non believers have a hidden reason. They want to be God. They don't want some being with authority over them. They want to be more sexually promiscuous. They want to fit into the academic community. etc. etc. Those reasons may be conscious or subconscious. But I am quite sure those things don't apply to me because I can remember specifically each time I became more skeptical. It always occurred when I was reading or thinking about something. And that something was NEVER in regards to religion. Only later on did I realize that the knowledge I gained was another "nail in the coffin" Surely many other people came to that non belief in a similar fashion.

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Wow what a concept, you want to be God? Who would've thought?

Wake up David, we all want to be God, only a stupid man wants to bow down to something higher than himself.

A smart man though realizes that he is not God; he doesn't have complete power over his life, this world, or death.

The smart man therefore bows down to one he percieves is God (hopefully after a little research - calculated bet) where the idiot rejects out of stubborness because he "doesn't like the rules of the game". (ie- Taking your ball and going home)

Time is short on this earth, the next breath isn't guarranteed, wager while ye may. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

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Anyway in pondering recently how I became more and more skeptical, it occurred to me that my skepticism was not accompanied by psychological anguish (except one time at a funeral). And I realized why. It is because I was born Jewish.

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Thank God, we may finally get some insight into Sklansky's childhood. *reads on*

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The fact is that children of Jewish families have to traverse less psychological roadblocks to come to the conclusion that the Judeo Christian God probably does not exist. There are two obvious reasons. The first is that they don't have the guilt and anguish associated with giving up a belief in Jesus. They have been taught all their life that he was just a man and that to believe otherwise is not only blasphemous (or is it heretical?) but just plain stupid. Thus it is not as lengthy a journey from belief to non belief to someone who is brought up Jewish as it would be to someone brought up Christian.

Secondly, is the perhaps even more important point that Jews do not believe that non believers are doomed, as long as they are righteous people. Which obviously again makes it that much easier to accept non belief if your brain points you in that direction.

The bottom line is that there is less reason to suspect an agnostic of Jewish descent to have psychological issues in his decision to not believe. There is not nearly as great an implication for that person in that decison. And it is more reasonable to assume his non belief comes strictly from scientific type thought than from emotion (eg. "there can't be God because he allows tsunamis").

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Nope, disappointing. (re: Sklansky childhood - "What no dreidels?")

I also fail to see how "there can't be God because he allows tsunamis" is an argument against God.

Me thinks people who use this line of thinking have grown up in a nice normal white suburban household and can't fathom the idea of "bad things in the world" contrast to someone who has grown up in a low socio economic area around drugs and violence who knows life can get pretty dark, therefore a dark God at times and a dark afterlife follows the rule of pessimism - "things can always get worse".

Furthermore why are people always putting God into a 'box' of things he can and can't do and things he can and can't be.

There's so much we don't know and so many infinite possibilities it's extremely naive to believe one can understand God fully within our tiny brains and tiny life experience.

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Christians on the other hand have a more tortuous road on their way to non belief. There are more terrible implications to such thoughts than there is to one raised Jewish. But I'm not sure what this means. On one hand it helps lend credence to Not Ready's theories since moving from Christian to atheist is so much of a bigger deal that we can suspect some sort of psychological pathology is at work to propel someone that far from his origins. On the other hand, those Christians who can show there wasn't a psycholgical component to their conversion to non belief, but rather merely an intellectual and scientific component, should perhaps be taken even more seriously than their Jewish counterparts. They reached their conclusions in spite of what they were taught were bigger risks. Far bigger risks.

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I'm not really sure about this one, though I would think the instance of angst towards former religion is higher than a Jew leaving Judaism.

Maybe this is because Christians who become atheists have alot of psychological issues that need to be addressed. (ie- bagagge)

Perhaps they are secretly scared of the choice they have made if they are wrong, and have to spend their time proving to themselves that athiesm is right and like the community of athiests like them who pull various verses here and there from the bible to appease themselves?

Or perhaps they just feel cheated that they bought into something like that in the first place and seek revenge?

Who knows?

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This post does not have any final conclusion. I just thought it might be useful to classify nonbelievers into the camps of ex Jews and ex Christians (obviously there are other categories as well) and to get a thread going about the subject. The Sklansky Atheist Phylum.

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Stop naming stuff after yourself David, you're just a shmuck who wrote a couple of well recieved books about cards. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

Cheers,
SDM

[hurlyburly]

I'm not a smart man, so I didn't come to the conclusion that there was no god after reaching a certain level of education. My parents were Catholic, and tried to raise me Catholic, but it never took. I went through the motions, acted like I was praying, followed most of the rules and did what I thought was expected. I got into a lot of trouble early asking questions that nuns couldn't answer regarding faith and prayer and why we need churches if God is everywhere from the time I was 6.

I never knew what to make of Jesus or the Holy Spirit. I understood the message, but it never gelled with me why he would come before God if he was his son. Yeah, it was great that he died for our sins (at that time the message was that he paid for the original sin), but it just didn't seem right that he came before God to people when he should have brought everyone closer to Him. Once again, something I picked up on when I was <10.

All that time I was trying to believe, but he just wasn't there. It wasn't rejection as much as trying to hug a vacuum.

For a while I thought maybe it was Catholicism that was my problem, but other Christianity didn't appeal to me either. I don't feel evil, haven't done very many things that might be considered evil, and if I do something I think is wrong, my conscience rears up and won't let me get away with it (right now I'm trying to figure out what to do about missing jury duty, it was right after Katrina and things were a little crazy, and I forgot to call before my date and I'm scared to call now because I might try to lie my way out).

Anyway, I'm atheist. I'm not angry, don't feel fooled or cheated or betrayed. I understand why people believe (or think they do), and if given a choice in the matter, I'd like to believe that there's a kindly fellow with a nice cheese tray waiting to hang out with me when I die, but I don't and I can't.

So where do I fit in, David?

[VarlosZ]

Two basic criticisms for Mr. Sklansky:

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But religious people seem to think that all non believers have a hidden reason. They want to be God. They don't want some being with authority over them. They want to be more sexually promiscuous. They want to fit into the academic community. etc. etc. Those reasons may be conscious or subconscious. But I am quite sure those things don't apply to me because I can remember specifically each time I became more skeptical. It always occurred when I was reading or thinking about something. And that something was NEVER in regards to religion.

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I don't see the relevance. You have no way of knowing whether your subconscious drove you to find certain ideas relevant to the existence/non-existence of God, nor can you know if you subconsciously saw such connections and were therefore biased in favor of these ideas. You can't accurately gauge your level of bias for the same reason you can't see your eyeballs.

In short, I think that you vastly overestimate the degree to which logical thought is independent of subconscious bias, and also the degree to which we can identify and isolate our own biases.

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The fact is that children of Jewish families have to traverse less psychological roadblocks to come to the conclusion that the Judeo Christian God probably does not exist. There are two obvious reasons. The first is that they don't have the guilt and anguish associated with giving up a belief in Jesus.

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Why is giving up belief in Jesus any more difficult than giving up belief in the personal God of the Old Testament?

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Secondly, is the perhaps even more important point that Jews do not believe that non believers are doomed, as long as they are righteous people.

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But if you come not to believe in God, then punishment of non-believers is a moot point. Besides, an aversion to the idea of damnation for righteous unbelievers could actually be an incentive for the renunciation of faith.


Obviously, I think your Christian/Jewish dichotomy is weak. A much stronger one, I believe, would be a religious/irreligious distinction. Someone from a religious Jewish family has far more to overcome on the way to agnosticism, both psychologically and socially, than someone from a secular Christian family. It may be that your theory is inadvertantly correct because, on balance, Christians are more "religious" than Jews, but I can't really speak to that.

[RJT]

David,

Bravo, good post. And I thank God (others can thank anyone they want) that I no longer have to respond to what you thought was an original idea. I wasn’t relishing putting a retort together. Whew!

I also thank God he gave us Catholics confession – I get to have the lap dances, then wipe the slate clean on Saturdays. We talked about this – I am joking – not about that lap dances, the confession part – doesn’t quite work that way, but it does work.


Another unique concept you might want to explore: You seem not to have Jewish Guilt. You seem unique there (I could be wrong, might be common). Go for it man. Teach the Jews about no guilt. Then proceed to teach us Catholics about not having Catholic guilt.

Sklansky on guiltless lap dances.


Here’s the deal:

Don’t most addicts need to replace their addiction with something else? I know when I gave up cigars for 2 months – I tried to keep busy with other things, to take my mind off of it – the physical part was easy. You come up with something to replace my God and I’ll seriously consider the offer. Instead of trying to uniquely negate religions – especially mine, don’t f with Jesus (not only am I Catholic, I am Italian decent) - come up with a good alternative. I think that should be much easier for you anyway.

RJT

[Cyrus]

I hate to break it to you, but Jewish religion promotes the idea of a chosen people far more sharply than Christianity ever did!

Christian religious leaders, throughout History, have been indeed extremely severe and brutal, but the religion does not consider non-Christians to be in any way inferior to Christians -- only "deluded", "led astray" or "idololatres". In other words, the non-believers can and must be saved, while their lives are not considered as totally insignificant when compared to Christians'. Even in terms of extreme Christian fundamentalism. On the other hand, Jewish religion promotes the concept of a superior people, whose lives and work carry "infinitely more" signigicant value than the non-Jews. I'm saying that being Jew, if you are a true believer in the Juewish fath, is to belong.

Therefore, your thesis that being born and raised Jewish has enabled you to distance yourself from the idea of a God more easily than a "Jesus-loving" Christian is problematic: While Christians love Jesus, Jews are given an extremely strong and protective religion! In a free and informed choice between Obedience (Jesus love) versus Safety (Chosen People), I'd lay odds that people would rather stick with the latter.

To take in the worldview of Jewish religion, and particularly as canonised and practiced by Jewish fundamentalists, one should study the subject more carefully. (Start with the book by Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky.)