It IS very civil in here. And earnest. I was told this was a fun thread.
How is atheism a faith?
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Individuals are not allowed to override the group consensus in any human society that I am aware of.
One, it is violence against a member of the community. Two, the idea of it being a biological impulse is wrong because there is no mate bond. In the evolutionarily-significant time scale, both human parents are needed for their offspring to survive to reproductive age.
You yourself are threatened if the community group you live in stops functioning because some significant number of members have no compunction against harming other members.
The reason I address this is that a lot of people -- in the US at least -- still go to the idea that atheists must not have morals, either because these originate from a higher power or because they don't fear the higher power's punishment. It's a tactic to run down the non-religious. But no one on the atheism side seriously proposes that atheists can't subscribe to moral or ethical codes or find them useful or even essential to life. The fact that there are biological imperatives at work underneath should have no bearing on that; the source shouldn't matter. But the argument still comes up: In the past year we've seen a former US state governor link mass shootings to atheism, and a Supreme Court justice question whether an atheist can be trusted to take an oath.
Right, much depends on where the line is drawn between insiders and outsiders. As Bad Thoughts pointed out, humans are aggressive and quite capable of doing violence to other humans if they are identified as from an outside group. You hit upon it in your own question: "Trump dehumanizes immigrants." Dehumanizing means essentially "They are not people like me, so I don't have to treat them the same as people like me." And obviously there are still a lot of people who take that point of view and are not bothered by it at all.
That’s exactly what I’m saying, atheists see morality as an end unto itself, and that is inherently an act of faith regardless of the source.
If morality only existed due to our instincts to be communal and protect ourselves, it wouldn’t matter if immigrants were subject to moral considerations.
The fact we generalize our communal instincts to humans who are not part of our community proves, God or no God, we see it as something of intrinsic value independent of our communal instincts.
If morality was not something we saw as having intrinsic value, we would not pass judgments on people who break moral rules if it only affects other people’s communities. We wouldn’t donate money to Doctors Without Borders, or rage against human rights abuses in China. We’d only care about moral violations with consequences within our own clan.
If morality only existed due to our instincts to be communal and protect ourselves, it wouldn’t matter if immigrants were subject to moral considerations.
The fact we generalize our communal instincts to humans who are not part of our community proves, God or no God, we see it as something of intrinsic value independent of our communal instincts.
If morality was not something we saw as having intrinsic value, we would not pass judgments on people who break moral rules if it only affects other people’s communities. We wouldn’t donate money to Doctors Without Borders, or rage against human rights abuses in China. We’d only care about moral violations with consequences within our own clan.
"Faith" as used there implies a belief in common principles and ideals which, though abstract, have identifiable and even sociologically quantifiable and predictable implications. That's different from faith in some kind of creator god, spiritual higher power etc.
Well, only few people have only atheism in their lives. I myself have several ethical beliefs not rooted in religion, but I know that not every other atheist shares them. For example, I believe in international solidarity. But there are lots of right-wing atheists that don't give a shit about the rest of the world. I don't view Islam as inherently more violent than Christianity, but I know of a very prominent atheist who throws a tantrum whenever somebody disagrees with him on that (and any other subject, really). On the other hand, there are quite a few religious people I share a lot of beliefs with. Cornel West comes to mind.
Because atheism has nothing to do with faith.
You judge people for not donating to Doctors Without Borders? You're harsh.
No, we have a couple of principles that we as humanity have recognized to be beneficial to all of us. Like the human rights carta of the United Nations, like International Law. And we rage against human rights abuses in China (and, ideally, anywhere else, neither North America, nor Europe have done a very good job about that ourselves in the past few ... decades) because there is a list of human rights that we all agreed on.
Atheism isn't a belief nor is it a disbelief. Atheism is for an intents and purposes the same meaning as God, which is uncertainty in knowing how something works, such as the environment that a tree grows in. Atheists really don't believe or disbelieve, but are more so aligned with discovering the reasons why something is to further their knowledge on how Creation made everything, so to then say that God is real.
Atheism is more about putting all of the pieces of the puzzle together to make the knowledge of God real instead of always being uncertain.
Atheism is more about putting all of the pieces of the puzzle together to make the knowledge of God real instead of always being uncertain.
Spock: If I let go of a hammer on a planet that has a positive gravity, I need not see it fall to know that it has in fact fallen.
If you are saying that atheism is a lack of belief then I agree - that's all it is at its most basic definition.
No, that's more like scientific enquiry. I can disbelieve in a purported god whilst simultaneously have no interest in how the world works and still be an atheist.
By calling it "Creation" instead of just "creation" you've already smuggled in your conclusion, not to mention the implication of a creator. Why not just call the universe what it is - the universe?
In any case, both theists and atheists can pursue the answer of how the universe works or came to be, irrespective of their beliefs.
Atheism has nothing to do with putting the pieces of a puzzle together, it is simply the response to a question like "do you belief in this god?"
Anything else on top of that is in addition to atheism, not an integral part of it.
Generally speaking, if someone simply doesn't accept religion without thinking any deeper, they would be regarded as agnostic. Identifying as Atheist implies having considered the universe that we perceive and basing an ethos on that. Observation is not a belief; conclusions based on observation are a hypothesis, until they are constantly confirmed.
Gravity is just a theory, so I keep myself chained to the floor just in case.
Gravity is just a theory, so I keep myself chained to the floor just in case.
One can be both agnostic and an atheist at the same time. I am an agnostic atheist. Atheism is about belief (ie without evidence I see no reason to believe in a god) and agnostic (because I admit that it is not possible to know for certain that a god does not exist).
On the Dawkins scale I am a 6
On the Dawkins scale I am a 6
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Belief and knowledge are not the same - I might not know for certain that a specific god does not exist, I'm just unconvinced by the arguments for it.
Hmm, I see @Miss Chicken has put up a chart which explains this scale much better!
I hope you also keep your molecules tightly strapped together with bandages (atomic theory) and keep a witch doctor at hand (germ theory)
Suffice to say, a scientific theory is not the same as the colloquial use of the term
One can be both agnostic and an atheist at the same time. I am an agnostic atheist. Atheism is about belief (ie without evidence I see no reason to believe in a god) and agnostic (because I admit that it is not possible to know for certain that a god does not exist).
On the Dawkins scale I am a 6
If there was an 8 on the scale, that would be me. It would be the same as #7, only with more swearing.
I'm a 7 regarding the Abrahamic religions; and close enough regarding Abraham himself. I think I may technically be a 6 regarding the general concept, because of my provisional view that reality may be actually infinite, but saying so makes me feel kind of like a fence-sitter.
IIRC, Dawkins put his own position as #6.
IIRC, Dawkins put his own position as #6.
Dawkins say he is a six on that scale but he’s added that he is more of a 6.9
My position isn't on that list.
I've yet to see a rational calculation of the probability of God's existence.
My position is more like: God is or God isn't, and that isn't, as far as I know, dependent on what I believe or disbelieve. There isn't any evidence for God's existence, nor is there evidence for his non-existence, but that doesn't make their respective probabilities equal. The central problem is that no one has a rational basis for assigning probabilities either to any possible causes of the universe or to whether there was any cause at all, and critical to that is that there has been no grasping of what those potential causes might even be.
So, we're basically stuck with a big nothing. We know nothing about the nature of existence in terms of any causes it might have, despite continuing to work on the problem collectively, and that's about the extent of what we know.
I've yet to see a rational calculation of the probability of God's existence.
My position is more like: God is or God isn't, and that isn't, as far as I know, dependent on what I believe or disbelieve. There isn't any evidence for God's existence, nor is there evidence for his non-existence, but that doesn't make their respective probabilities equal. The central problem is that no one has a rational basis for assigning probabilities either to any possible causes of the universe or to whether there was any cause at all, and critical to that is that there has been no grasping of what those potential causes might even be.
So, we're basically stuck with a big nothing. We know nothing about the nature of existence in terms of any causes it might have, despite continuing to work on the problem collectively, and that's about the extent of what we know.
it’s not binary.
Far from it.
It’s either no god, or one of many thousands, or multiple of many thousands, or one or multiple of gods we have no idea about.
Which one or ones to believe in?
The odds are stacked a lot against any specific god.
now, the question, could any god(s) exist or not is a slightly different one we cannot possibly answer, because we are even lacking a proper definition of god(s) to begin with.
If polytheism is the truth, then no monotheistic god exists, full stop. What I said is fine. Dawkins' scale was framed as scoring statements relative to a monotheistic position, and my post was framed in reply to that. It wasn't intended to represent a full expression of all possibilities; that's impossible anyway.
I'm a 6 here too I guess, but the problem with that scale though, is thinking god is very improbable isn't my stand. I think that if its existence is unproven, then there's no reason to assume one exists at all. So for all intents & purposes, my thinking is that there isn't a god, just like I think there isn't witchcraft. I don't think of a probability of it at all. It's entirely absent, until otherwise proven. I don't make a habit in life of even recognizing the subject of something that isn't. Hypothetically, it's improbable.One can be both agnostic and an atheist at the same time. I am an agnostic atheist. Atheism is about belief (ie without evidence I see no reason to believe in a god) and agnostic (because I admit that it is not possible to know for certain that a god does not exist).
On the Dawkins scale I am a 6
& frankly, a strong atheist here isn't an atheist at all imho, because it is a belief in the absolute non-existence of God, which is still a god related belief, & atheism, by definition, is the absence of any god beliefs altogether, no?
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