How do you know you are a theist? There are, after all, a lot of woo woo beliefs that qualify as quasi religious but are still atheistic. A belief that the universe is consciousness, for example. I’ve run across that a few times. (Consciousness is the emergent property of the universe. It is the guiding force in the universe.) Complete woo woo, but atheistic in its nature.
How about Buddhism? “One school of thought claims that this world came into existence by nature and that nature is not an intelligent force. However, nature works on its own accord and goes on changing.” No god needed - Atheistic
Another school of thought just cites eternal existence with no beginning or end. Everything is a process and our thoughts are impoverished by assuming beginnings and endings. No God required, complete falsifiable woo woo, and still Atheistic.
So the division is not quite as clear as you would like it to be. Care to try again?
Time for another excursion into the world of Google Docs. This time, an article I’ve just completed, covering two interesting peer reviewed scientific papers from the neuroscience literature, in which the authors document:
[1] Experimental reconstruction of still images viewed by humans, from fMRI brain scanning data;
[2] Experimental reconstruction of movies viewed by humans, from fMRI scanning data.
The article, and the paper citations and links contained therein, can be found here:
Those two papers on their own detonate a nuclear depth charge under creationist assertions that human thought is some magic process, purportedly needing a magic man to prop it up. Once again, testable natural processes are demonstrably useful, while “Magic Man did it” is an intellectual eunuch by comparison.
You claimed love was all you needed to be believe in a creator, and you have claimed to be a theist in your profile, quod erat demonstrandum.
One either does or does not hold theistic belief. All other claims are about knowledge not belief. You also claimed love was all you needed to believe in a creator, and rejected the lack of theistic belief as insufficient for this.
That is unequivocal, you are talking about a creator, and rejecting the lack of theistic belief. Why play dishonest games, just clarify your position, you might get more respect if you showed us any. I’m still not convinced you’re not here simply to troll the heathens, a lot of theists seem to enjoy such nonsense.
Atheism doesn’t concern itself with any issue other than suspicion of unsupported mythology fanboy assertions. Unlike mythology fanboyism, it doesn’t pretend to be a “theory of everything”, though mythology fanboys keep lying about this. It leaves questions of this sort to science, or other disciplines whose remit is the questions at hand.
Though all too often, the response of mythology fanboys to our pointing everyone at the disciplines in question, and the output thereof, is infantile sniping and carping arising from wilful ignorance.
What an ignorant statement. ATHEISM is not a base for explaining anything. Atheism is the non-belief in god of gods. It is not a belief, it is setting down a belief and walking away from it. It’s putting a belief on a coat hanger, sticking it in a closet, and forgetting about it. It’s taking a belief out to the beach, digging a hole, putting the belief in the bottom of the hole, covering it up, and walking away. NOTHING IN THE WORLD CHANGES but the BELIEF is no longer with you. That’s all.
Neither does not believing in mermaids, by your rationale that makes mermaids real, ingenious as it is, I’m going to remain dubious.
FYI, atheism is not a base for anything, it is based on there being no objective evidence or rational argument that demonstrates any deity, or anything supernatural exists, or is even possible.
For what it’s worth, I think all three of you are wrong. Or, maybe I should say you are all partially right?.. … Yes, that would be nicer. (After all, I wouldn’t want to hurt Sid’s touchy precious feelings, and Cog and Shelly would just team up against me and slap me around the room. Anyway…)
Listen up, guys. Ever since I started believing in atheism, I have discovered the Atheist World View to be a fantastic foundation for helping me explain things that always eluded my understanding. So, in that respect, Sid is almost not wrong. Sure, over the years I tried not believing in other things like mermaids, unicorns, honest lawyers, Zeus, Poseidon, etc. However, not believing in those things never provided me with the answers to all the questions I had. The reasons for love, hate, fear, property taxes and stuff like that always remained just out of reach.
Then came the day I finally DECIDED to stop believing in the god of the bible. Changed my life completely. Suddenly, all the mysteries of Life were clearly illuminated before me. Yep, the moment I tossed my belief of the bible god into my psychological garbage disposal unit, the fog of cloudy thinking was lifted. My faith in atheism has allowed me to see the world in a completely new light, without all the indecision and anxiety caused by worrying about sin, evil, Tammy Faye Bakker, and the threat of eternal torture in heaven. And to make sure I never lose that light of understanding, I remind myself every day of why and how much I hate the bible god. Because I don’t want to take any chances of ever believing in it again.
I submit, your conflating your setting the god thing aside, with a new way of thinking about the world. I submit to you that setting one thing aside is not the same thing as beginning to think rationally without that thing. There are two separate events. This is evidenced by the fact that not all ‘atheist,’ people who put down the God belief, end their belief in woo woo bullshit. Skepticism and Critical thinking are probably minimal prerequisites for the elimination of all the other woo woo stuff after one does away with the god belief. The fact that you were free to question once you set God aside has nothing to do with whether you began questioning. Corrolation is not causation.
Whoa! Who the hell are you, and what did you do with Cog? No way the real Cog would have taken me seriously like that. Any way the Mods can check to see if Cog’s account has been hacked? I’m worried about my little primate pal.
No need to worry, he probably rotated the anal rolling pin 180 degrees again. It does affect his thought process…such as it is.
A good twist with a torque wrench set to 240, that should do it.
… Yes, that would be nicer. (After all, I wouldn’t want to hurt Sid’s touchy precious feelings, and Cog and Shelly would just team up against me and slap me around the room. Anyway…)