Atheism is retarded...

[Cerril]

Incidentally I used to hold similar beliefs. Specifically, people who said 'God does not exist' were being as stupid as people who said 'God does exist' (I had strong opinions).

The trivial case is that a fairly common definition of an atheist is one who has no positive beliefs in a God, not so much saying 'there is no God,' as 'I have not yet been given sufficient reason to believe in God.' The reason I call this trivial is that most people who argue agnosticism over atheism claim this belief for agnosticism, so I include it only to make it clear that the waters here are quite muddy.

Since then I've definitely come to change my tune though, realizing that it was quite an immature stance. The essence is that it's very easy to say 'The sun will rise tomorrow,' or 'If I jump up, I will come down,' or a number of other things along those lines. It would be entirely reasonable to say that these things will always hold true. So to say 'there is no God' is only another statement along those lines. It's not offering certainty, only a justified belief.

In fact, if an agnostic says 'I have no evidence for the existence of God, yet I live as if the matter is still undecided,' you might ask why he doesn't do the same for any number of other (more widely recognized) fictional creations.

An atheist isn't required to ignore evidence for a god, should it arise, any more than a theist isn't allowed to change his beliefs.

As a last thought, an atheist who says 'I don't believe in God because I've never heard a convincing definition of a God that was worth considering' is also, I would submit, claiming something far from retarded, but still an Atheist.

[AngryCola]

[ QUOTE ]

Sure I can. I can answer, 'I don't know if there is a god.' Pretty simple, really. So far, no one can prove it either way. How does that answer make me an atheist?

[/ QUOTE ]

Exactly.

People who don't get this shouldn't even be allowed to talk about this issue... or live. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[WillyTrailer]

JESUS! (pun intended) Am I the only one who owns a dictionary???

An atheist is one who denies the existence of god/God.

deal with it dude. this is what the word means, nothing more.

An agnostic is one who believes it is impossible to know whether there is a god or who is skeptical about the existence of god.

both atheism and theism require a certain amount of faith. Agnosticism is a way of avoiding faith.

-WT

[WillyTrailer]

[ QUOTE ]
a·the·ist Audio pronunciation of "atheist" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (th-st)
n.

One who disbelieves or denies the existence of God or gods.


an atheist is one who does not believe in god. it doesnt say that they are certain that there isnt a god.



[/ QUOTE ]

be careful here. and next time you get out the dictionary look up the word "disbelieve". It means to reject. So an atheist is not a person who does not believe in god, but rather a person who denies the existence of god.

-WT

[CallMeIshmael]

Several places in the thread, I have chnaged my original statement, to:

Strong/Critical athesism is retarded.

Weak athesim is a valid viewpoint.


This should rectify your comments.

[drudman]

It has nothing to do with who is better than others, or whose views are better than others.

Theists argue that a transcendant God whose existence cannot even by experience be proven probable does in fact exist. Atheists argue that a transcendant God whose non-existence cannot even by experience be proven probable does in fact, not exist. Neither of them are actually expressing actual statements or propositions - any supposed propositions regarding the existence or non-existence of a transcendant God are senseless, i.e. they contain no content. Simply put, they are not propositions, rather they are nonsensical utterances.

Agnostics do not escape either, because their statements of doubt, or whatever you classify their statements as, are propositions regarding the non-propositions of the theists and atheists. They too are speaking nonsense.

Read A.J. Ayer's "Language, Truth, and Logic".

[Cerril]

Maybe. Like I said though, I'm not sure what you mean by Strong/Critical?

If you mean people who say 'People who believe in God are <insert pejorative>!' then yeah, I'll go ahead and go along with it.

[CallMeIshmael]

[ QUOTE ]
Maybe. Like I said though, I'm not sure what you mean by Strong/Critical?

If you mean people who say 'People who believe in God are <insert pejorative>!' then yeah, I'll go ahead and go along with it.

[/ QUOTE ]

A weak atheist lacks belief in God.

A strong/critial atheists says that there ISNT a God.

[willthethrill]

atheism is a lot more believable than that there is someone somewhere controlling everything

[philopker]

Traditionally there are two general arguments that we should not to believe in God, or that we should believe there is no God, or whatever. I'll call them the positive and the negative argument, and hopefully why will be clear upon expostulation.
First the negative argument: There is no reason to believe God exists. It's best to approach this argument from a historical perspective. Since the Middle Ages there have been three main arguments for the existence of God: the cosmological, the teleological (design), and ontological argument. Only the teleological, or design, argument has much plausibility, so I'll review it quickly.
The world displays what appears to be a great deal of intricacy. This is especially evident in biological organisms, whose various interrelated and interdependent working parts are extremely complex. From this we may infer that there is a designer of the world in all its intricacy, and we call that designer God.
(There is a famous watch analogy or argument to the best explanation that was put forth by William Paley, who said that just as anyone examining a watch must conclude that it did not result from natural processes of entropy, so the same can be said of the world and life within it, i.e. it was designed consciously).
As many people know, two developments in science first questioned the force of the inference of and then completely undermined the argument. The discovery that the earth is not the center of the universe had a negative psychological effect on those who hold that humans are the most important creatures in the universe: after all the planet we inhabit is not the center of things and seemingly of less importance thereby.
But what really laid this argument to rest was Darwin's theory of evolution, and Darwin was very aware that his arguments spoke directly and in opposition to Paley's. After Darwin all intricate design can be explained by unintelligent, natural, and non-teleological (that is, not goal-oriented) processes--mutation, natural selection, gentic drift. Thus there is no reason to believe in a designer of the world or of human beings, and certainly not a God that created humans in his own image--at least not based on the design argument.
The positive argument is simpler, I think: it gives positive reason to believe that God does not exist (as a opposed to refuting any reason to believe that God does exist). This is the famous argument from evil, which simply says that the world is full of evil, and if God is, as traditionally defined or understood, all-powerful and all-good (omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent), then God should not allow so much evil, particularly non-moral evil, to exist in the world (Non-moral evil is human suffering that results from natural processes, like diseases that effect infants or the natural disasters like the recent tsunami). Since such evil does exist, God cannot, as this would lead to a contradiciton: either God cannot prevent all this evil, which means God is not omnipotent, or God can prevent such evil but chooses not to, which means he is not all-good. Thus God does not exist.
As far as my personal opinion, I find the first of these arguments, the negative argument, to be most compelling. Given what we know about the universe, it seems quite ridiculous to believe that some extremely if not all powerful being really cares about us on an individual and species level, sharing out tastes and emotions; I mean talk about the arrogance such a belief entails! But I do from time to time feel the force of the positive argument: Did God really have to allow so much evil to come back? Wouldn't even a little less human (and animal) suffering be possible? And if so, why doesn't God allow for just that small amount of evil to never come about (Did all those people have to have there lives destroyed by the tsunami? All of them?)?
Anyway my main point is that atheism is not retarded but in fact the most reasonable position one can hold. That is: there is no God, and no one should upon rational reflection believe that there is one, at least as defined by traditional theism.
Any questions? Conversions?