Darcy wrote:Antitheists are just people who oppose theism.

Once the anti-theist figures out the aims of anti-theism, he's got himself a brand-new religion, unless the aim is merely to yank the chains of people whom we can't expect to put up much of a fight, unless the gloves come off.

Darcy wrote:I have no interest in enforcing such a thing.

You know exactly why that is.

Any time I want to know what I believe, I need only speak to a theist, and they will sling forth voluminously on the subject of what atheism really is, since I clearly have no clue.

There is a sidewalk in back of the plant where I am employed, running the length of the structure, and hugging the brick wall rather closely, offering cool shade from Mr. Sun and frustrating the arctic blasts of winter. It is the favored location of those who partake of the leaf in times of stress. Passing that way this morning, I came upon a coworker furiously texting away while dragging aggressively upon a Marlboro.

An abrupt "Hey!" brought me up short, thinking he had something important on his mind. I waited without speaking, resting my hands in my pockets in anticipation of a long siege from a notoriously chatty soul. I gauged the length of his cigarette, calculating how much time he needed me to help fill.

"I understand you don't believe in God."

"Is that a question?" I asked, with a disarming 'not-to-be-a-dick-or-anything' grin.

"Is that true--are you an atheist?"

"If you had asked me that question four hundred years ago--let's say--it would be tantamount to a warning that I had better run fast."

He seemed to weigh this in both hands, but decided against a direct reply.

"OK", I surrendered, "You got me".

"You know there's no such thing as a true atheist, right? Because if you don't worship God, then you place yourself above Him, and that means that you worship The Self, and that makes you god, in your mind. You're a hypocrite and an idolator, but you're anything BUT an atheist." He admired his acumen while self-administering another pull of life-saving nicotine. He flicked the ashes with a coolness born of long practice.

"Well then let's assume you're correct. I'm an inconsistent, self-worshipping ingrate, who has the definition of the word Atheist all fucked up, and you've just spotted me in the crosshairs and squeezed off a round of reality. I'm dead to rights. Would that make you happy? Would you have proven that you are right and I am wrong?"

He looked down the barrel of his Marlboro, took a quick puff, and blew the smoke out through both nostrils. A small but ragged cough was followed by a Bible quotation, "Have you ever heard where it says 'The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God'?"

I took a sidewards step toward him, regarded him with the expression of an entomologist peering at a fascinating new specimen, and said, "Just so we're clear, does any of this lead one to believe that a perfect being, try as he might, failed to create a perfect world, and then, after it went bad on him, decided to fix everything by way of..." at this point I looked away as though fetching to find the right phrase, then immediately returned my gaze... "blood sacrifice?"

His face tightened.

"Because," I continued, warming to the subject, "I cannot take that seriously, and no thinking adult should. And if you do...that's a problem."

He held his smoke about two inches from his face and squared off at me, declaring "There's almost six billion people in the world who think you're full of shit." I heard a fighting challenge in the way he spat out the last three words. His eyes were filled with the commanding confidence that he stood at the head of an armored cavalry of those same six billion.

I needed him to be calm, so I nodded thoughtfully and mildly stated, "I think you've hit on something very important there."

His face relaxed at the compliment and I could almost hear the clanking of armor as the six billion dispersed, so I concluded, "I think you have correctly identified a world-wide...

public...

mental health...

crisis."

I walked away because you should always leave your audience wanting more. I wish I could report his interesting reply, but alas...it was not. All he could gather and toss at me as he crushed out his glowing butt was, "I guess you think you're pretty funny".

He stopped one step shy of sentencing me to hell. He would never have come up with a plan to solve the world's ailments via blood sacrifice, but I think he took my criticism personally.

Wow. Just wow. Thumb up for that fascinating story.

We have fundies in Australia too, but probably fewer (even as a percentage of the total population) than in your country, and they do not tend to be as in-your-face militant about their delusions.

So hear you don't b elieve in God.

None of your fucking business.

Me, half an hour ago, on a discussion with a guy about faith and beliefs in general (not just religious ones) :

Me : - "Any belief based on no evidence (or contradictory evidence, even) is by definition a refusal to apply critical thinking to this belief

Him : - Faith is not blinkers, you know, thinking is nice but feeling is complementary.

Me : - Feeling and thinking are 2 very different things. Telling the difference between the 2 is precisely the point of critical thinking. Faith is what you use when you have no evidence for your belief. I don't need faith to believe the earth is not flat, or that vaccines are effective. Doesn't mean that faith is intrinsically bad, just that it's not a good tool to know what is true or not.

Him : then you didn't understand anything to faith, nothing important here. It's not a tool used to know what is true or not, seriously, you atheists need to stop talking about faith please."

yeah right, because no believer around the world claims that his faith is why he knows God

The guy is French by the way. Hard to find one of these there...

aban57 wrote:...you atheists need to stop talking about faith please."

We will if you will...

aban57 wrote:
Him : then you didn't understand anything to faith, nothing important here. It's not a tool used to know what is true or not, seriously, you atheists need to stop talking about faith please."

Well, we want to know if it's true or not when someone says he believes in god. In the old days, they used to know how to test for this. Nowadays, when someone says he believes in god, we just take it on faith.

How do we know how to test for atheism? I mean, what exactly would we be looking for other than a deep contempt for religious people, or a deep desire to own a fat wallet? And would either of those things prove that atheism is true, or that atheism is for certain people of a retarded intelligence?

Another pussy thread.

Fenrir wrote:

jamest wrote:How do we know how to test for wanking? I mean, what exactly would we be looking for other than a deep contempt for sexy people, or a deep desire to own a fat cock? And would either of those things prove that wanking is true, or that wanking is for certain people of a retarded intelligence?

Another straw post.

Bollocks. Anyone with a semblance of intelligence must know that atheism amounts to a contempt for simple religion combined with a desire to [continue to] be selfish.

I'm not posting here as a Xian so don't respond to me as though I were one.

jamest wrote:How do we know how to test for atheism? I mean, what exactly would we be looking for other than a deep contempt for religious people, or a deep desire to own a fat wallet? And would either of those things prove that atheism is true, or that atheism is for certain people of a retarded intelligence?

I asked a serious question. I didn't expect to get a serious answer from you. And I didn't get one. Why have you not forsaken me?

Here you seem to be recycling that old crap about the eye of a camel, or whatever it was. I still can't detect a difference between your professed religiosity and ordinary garden-variety trolling, or at least blind backlash against whatever pains you.

jamest wrote:

Fenrir wrote:

jamest wrote:How do we know how to test for wanking? I mean, what exactly would we be looking for other than a deep contempt for sexy people, or a deep desire to own a fat cock? And would either of those things prove that wanking is true, or that wanking is for certain people of a retarded intelligence?

Another straw post.

Bollocks. Anyone with a semblance of intelligence must know that atheism amounts to a contempt for simple religion combined with a desire to [continue to] be selfish.

Alternatively, only a drooling numpty would make such an ignorant claim.

jamest wrote:
I'm not posting here as a Xian so don't respond to me as though I were one.

You're also not posting as a serious, competent, rationally and emotionally capable adult, which is why no one responds to you as if you were so.

jamest wrote:How do we know how to test for atheism?

I'm an atheologist, jamest, which is not the same as atheist. In order to be an atheist, I have to at least recognize that the concept of deities is not gibberish; atheology declines to practice theology. Give me some theology that isn't gibberish, and give an account of how it's not just empty fantasising. Try to stay away from the argument that fifty billion flies cannot be wrong. You portray yourself as a lone wolf, a voice crying in the wilderness, who even conventional theists will scorn. If you seek to distinguish yourself, try a field where achievement can be tested, instead of bidding to see who can bark the loudest at a gate that has not been opened.

jamest wrote:How do we know how to test for atheism? I mean, what exactly would we be looking for other than a deep contempt for religious people, or a deep desire to own a fat wallet? And would either of those things prove that atheism is true, or that atheism is for certain people of a retarded intelligence?

Most people with a deep contempt for religious people or religious people themselves. It's just that the targets for their deep contempt are members of religions other than their own.

In the past such deep contempt was not limited to an animous attitude. History is cluttered with religious wars, the most long-lasting of which was the Thirty Year War that took place throughout Europe following the reformation. More recent wars and massacres between Christian denominations took place too, but I won't bother listing them. You can look them up yourself.

As for fat wallets, religious people are no less desirous of them than atheists.

So, how do we test for atheism? For that we need a real-world definition of atheism first (which disqualifies the SEP's article on atheism). I go by what another encyclopedia starts off with:

Atheism is, in the broadest sense, an absence of belief in the existence of deities.

The only distinction between atheism and theism that can be made is this absence of belief in the existence of deities. All other properties, such as selfishness, avarice, contempt, or whatever else you care to raise, are shared to one extent or another by theists and atheists. They are not distinguishing features.

Hermit wrote:
So, how do we test for atheism? For that we need a real-world definition of atheism first (which disqualifies the SEP's article on atheism). I go by what another encyclopedia starts off with:

Atheism is, in the broadest sense, an absence of belief in the existence of deities.

The only distinction between atheism and theism that can be made is this absence of belief in the existence of deities.

That treats theism and atheism as two clocks which only exist to wind each other up; such atheism can't exist in the absence of somebody else's belief in deities. That's fine when the only clock available for the atheist to wind up is somebody like jamest. Just watch out in case somebody flashes the relata of a property-exemplification nexus at you.

http://barefootbum.blogspot.com/2010/01 ... icism.html

jamest wrote:

Fenrir wrote:

jamest wrote:How do we know how to test for wanking? I mean, what exactly would we be looking for other than a deep contempt for sexy people, or a deep desire to own a fat cock? And would either of those things prove that wanking is true, or that wanking is for certain people of a retarded intelligence?

Another straw post.

Bollocks. Anyone with a semblance of intelligence must know that atheism amounts to a contempt for simple religion combined with a desire to [continue to] be selfish.

I'm not posting here as a Xian so don't respond to me as though I were one.

Shut up, James.

Also, why the fuck are we yet again providing definitions of atheism? Why are we attempting to discuss the detection of atheism with James? Why would one need to detect it in the first place? He lives in a country where someone’s possible atheism plays absolutely no part in their lives, apart from in contrived discussions such as this. He gets up every day and interacts with people who don’t believe in god with no friction or issue whatsoever - in fact I doubt he ever even considers whether these people believe in a god or not. His interest in such matters extends to the boundaries of this forum, mainly because he thinks that his alleged views give him some sort of value.This is all a nonsense.

Atheism and Agnosticism
First published Wed Aug 2, 2017

…

“Atheism” is typically defined in terms of “theism”. Theism, in turn, is best understood as a proposition—something that is either true or false.

The proposition is true is true or false, but the argument for its truth may be sound or not.
If theism is the proposition "God exists" then atheism is only a rejection of the proposition, which is not the same as a proposition "God does not exist".

The proposition "there is a small teapot orbiting the Sun between Earth and Mars." is either true or false, but we can reject it as unsound and baseless without advancing the proposition "there is no teapot".

It's an issue of reason more than psychology.