/atheism/ - Atheism

It's like the Philosophy teacher in God is Not Dead which my Christian father watched twice. "You're just rebelling against God but you know he exists!"

>>7365

That's like saying we subconsciously believe in Zeus, Hercules too. Why does this only apply to their god? Stupid christards, they think everything is about their religion, how about the other hundreds of religions?

>>7367

Nowadays Catholics claim that those other Native American Gods are just their God manifesting himself in other forms to pave the way for him to come for realz.

But wait a minute, Christians are atheist towards Marduk and Ahura Mazda, does that mean they're secretly Mesopotamian polytheists and Zoroastrians?

>>7370

Some more from the article author:

>Wow! I just had an email forwarded from Deepak Chopra, who has just joined the 29,000 others who have read this post.

>THINKINGMAN: You are correct that the dictionary definition of “atheism” is someone who does not believe in “God”, a god or gods. But what I’m suggesting is that not believing in a deity is just one belief among a great many traits which define “spirituality”.

>In global terms, I think this will eventually be a Christian-Muslim planet–but the brands of these religions will be sophisticated versions. Sophisticated religious people of my experience are often scientific (and sometimes even atheistic) and–thank goodness–emphasize what we all share, not what divides us.

>When I started reading widely about astrophysics and multiverse theory and m-theory—books which mention non-human consciousnesses all the time—I become much more open-minded. I realized that shutting my mind to ANY possibility, including the fact that this universe might have been brought into existence by quantum foam, aliens, God, a computer, or the screenwriter of the Matrix. Being open-minded in this way has made me popular with my religious friends, a sophisticated lot, but less so with some of my atheist friends (I expected the opposite to happen!).

Basically here he thinks that he's being open minded if he accepts every single thing as truth. He doesn't know what open mindedness is, look at video related. Anyway, back with more of his comments:

>This is in stark contrast to most (so-called) atheists of my acquaintance, who I would characterize as gentle, intelligent, and somewhat agnostic, especially the scientists. There is a sophistication and open-mindedness about them which I find absent in Dawkins and some of his more vociferous followers.

>Ouch! Scientists have pondered the relationship between the concept of the soul and the laws of thermodynamics for years.

To mock me for this, as you do, is a little embarrassing on your part

Honestly to me this guy seems like a major fedora tipper who tries way to hard to be sophisticated and accepting of every stupid belief. I think he just got into college or something and feels the need to show us how intelligent religious people are. Of course, I did hand pick these comments, but you can just look up at all his comments in that article yourself. I can't paste every single thing. Go ahead and look at the comments of Nury Vittachi, the fucking muslim apologist who quotes sources by other religious people like him.

>>7369

It's just like >>7368 said. They say every other god that is not from the christian religion, is a manifestation of their god even under a different name or appearance.

>>7364

So according to this, free will doesn't exist.

>>7371

I think he's forgetting practical atheism when talking about open-mindedness. I don't say a god or gods don't exist, I just say it has little relevance in my life. Just like you can't 100% disprove invisible bionic tigers that are beyond physical observance, I just think it's so unlikely as well as millions of things people think exist or are possible that it has no relevance in my life.

I'd believe in gods if I could be convinced just as many atheists. Yes, you can't 100% disprove gods. Yes, there could be a chance they exist, the thousands of them various people believe in. Yes, there's a chance they don't. Yes, there's a chance flying invisible cows exist but it has so little significance in my life, I fail to entertain it. I used to believe in one of the gods and entertained that for a bit and it made little if any difference in my day to day life just as my friends.

It sucks that there has to be an /atheism/ where we debate this bullshit. We may as well have /asanta/ where we debate the validity of santa in all his magic.

>>7376

We'll of course you have the possibility of god existing, and rarely atheists say that 100% there is no god. We just say that we believe he doesn't exist or that there's no sufficient evidence for him to exist. Obviously we can't show "well here's the proof for god not existing". There's just no evidence to prove such a claim, so there is just no reason to believe he exists in the first place, otherwise we should believe all the crazy stuff without evidence.

>Cognitive scientists are becoming increasingly aware that a metaphysical outlook may be so deeply ingrained in human thought processes that it cannot be expunged.

>which means you cannot not believe in god

Non sequitur. Clearly our minds are capable of acknowledging the lack of evidence for the existence of deities. Even if our minds are tuned to work with metaphysical concepts we can establish when there is something in front of us. But I don't buy that it has to do with metaphysical perception, it's probably more to do with our tendency to personify everything. It might be seem as commonplace today but shows like My Little Pony is a modern form of animism. And just as our ancestors gave spirits to creatures they also explained fires as acts of angering the gods who in most cases had human qualities the same. Einstein himself personified the universe with how he spoke of god. So I don't doubt we think like this but even in this personified universe we can still see when there isn't a person in front of us.

Okay so because people are naturally predisposed to religion there can't be any real atheists. Graham Lawton claims he is an atheist too and seems legit actually… really I'm just confused by this conclusion. How can you simultaneously be an atheist that believes no atheists rationally exist? That's so fucked up.

>>7391

I swear I saw this exact article on The Onion.

>>7404

I'm pretty sure you could use Christian apologetics to justify that.

Imagine a perfect waifu….

>>7405

I can imagine a perfect waifu.

My waifu is perfect, or, if she wasn't real, she wouldn't be perfect, as any real thing is more perfect that a non-existing thing (being real is a symbol of perfection).

Therefore, as my waifu is perfect, she is real.

>>7364

>Richard Dawkins may be convinced God doesn’t exist

stopped reading right there

>confronting Peter Higgs, the "god particle" guy, vs Richard Dawkins the "god hater"

>doesn't know Higgs is an outspoken atheist

>doesn't know Higgs regrets that media named the new boson "god's particle"

fucking kek

>>7368

as a Mexican I can confirm I have heard this one.

It comes down to this guy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servando_Teresa_de_Mier

who hypothesized that precolumbian god Quetzalcoatl was in fact apostle Thomas that was trying to evangelize the natives.

And there's people whose religiosity is really strengthened by this shit. TOP KEK

>>7371

awesome

All the study seems to suggest is that magical thinking or finding meaning in things that can be logically be deduced as coincidence is something humans are predisposed to. It certainly doesn't prove one way or the other the existence of god.

The author of this article also seems to be conflating spirituality with theism. Buddhists pray, have religious traditions and ceremony, and believe in the afterlife. They are not theists.

Even if we are predisposed to irrational thinking, I know I'm guilty of that, that doesn't mean we cannot escape it.

I'll be interested to see how this study does under peer review.