Atheism - Obvious Default?
- Thread starter Thor 2
- Start date
Pedantic obfuscation perhaps? I'm happy if you replace "everyone" with "someone" as it doesn't change the context and content of the points made (which you haven't addressed).
Are you claiming some people are born with a god belief and some aren't?
Can you provide any credible evidence that anyone is born with a god belief?
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abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
Then by definition, all newborns are atheists. Disagree? Go ahead and state what god all newborns believe in.
You appear to be making the classic error of assume that atheism is a belief system. It isn't. It is merely a privative.
Delvo
Дэлво Δε&#
Weird.You just responded to yourself with precisely how & why your own depiction of what somebody else had said did not represent what that person had actually said. And you did it in the very same post along with the original misrepresentation.
Instead of building a straw man and immediately calling yourself on it, why not just not build it?
FTFY
It's very difficult to come up with bulletproof evidence for this - the scope of scientific experiments is limited - but ...
1) The prosperous Western countries that you mention.
2) The former communist countries that you mention. They may not be as prosperous as the western countries we usually refer to, but the ones that remain irreligious tend to better off than the ones who don't.
3) Cuba, for instance, was seized by religion of the Afro-Cuban variety when the Special Period began.
4) Psychological experiments. If you make people insecure, they are more likely to be superstitious.
5) Professions where people tend towards superstition: They aren't usually the ones where people have both secure (!) and well-paying jobs. They are usually jobs with a high level of insecurity: professional sports, stockbrokers, performers, for instance.
6) Individual cases like the children in Beslan. Or the 'atheists in foxholes'. That there are no atheists at all is an obvious exaggeration, but the tendency that it describes isn't wrong.
7) The reasons why people believe: 'It makes me happy.' 'Have you heard the good news? 'I've never heard Christians tell me that the reason why they believe in God is that they sat down and seriously deduced that God must exist and they believe in him for this reason. I think you can find people like that online, but probably only when they are trying to legitimize religion to skeptics.
(When I was a child, we used to sing this song In my local Baptist church: "I am happy, I am happy, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I am happy, I am happy, 'cause Jesus is my best friend")
8) Education is always mentioned as the reason why people stop believing in weird things, but even educated people seem to be just as much in denial about reality as uneducated people when confronted with death.
My collection of links: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=9447804#post9447804
No, I don't think that atheism is a religion.
You are the one who makes the mistake of thinking that there is only one kind of atheism, and you argue from the point of view of the most absurd one of them: an absence of belief.
According to your definiton, anybody in a coma is an atheist: They have no consciousness, so they have no idea of anything at all, so they don't believe in gods.
The faith of some atheists comes very close to religion!
Talk about "weird".
You just responded to yourself with precisely how & why your own depiction of what somebody else had said did not represent what that person had actually said. And you did it in the very same post along with the original misrepresentation.
Instead of building a straw man and immediately calling yourself on it, why not just not build it?
Neither of my two posts you quoted were a response to your post you quoted. Seems you have created the straw man. Please explain in more detail if I have misunderstood your post.
Thor 2
Philosopher
I would add ynot that any posting here who suggest that atheism is not the default position must be suggesting that theism is the default.
Well . . .
Heavily implies at the very least that somebody must be born with religion.
I'm sure some might claim agnosticism is the default
.I'm waiting for someone to claim "our" definition of atheism is that dogs, cats and rocks are atheists
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Thor 2
Philosopher
Oh boy! What a jumbled up piece of scribble have we here.
Atheism not a religion but atheists having faith all mixed up in one post.
There's only one definition of "atheism" (not "atheist") that I accept as being valid - "Doesn't believe in a god or gods" - as it's the only definition that covers all atheists. There are many "kinds" of atheist however.
Yes, if you choose to neglect (or never read) what he wrote in an earlier post:
You obviously aren't born with something that you need to invent in order for it to exist. He seems to be saying that people have an innate tendency to turn to religion and superstition.
I disagree with him. I think that people have an innate tendency to find ways of making sense of the world. In specific circumstances this tendency makes them want to believe in weird things. And for most people, these circumstances have lasted from time immemorial until now if you consider the whole population of Earth.
Some of us, a more and more significant minority, are better off than the majority, however, to the extent where we don't even seriously consider the idea of gods anymore. We don't need them. And we tend to think of ourselves as irreligious or non-religious (or apatheists) rather than atheists: We think that it's a ******* waste of time to have a serious discussion about the existence of gods!
So you would also consider the comatose to be on your side, then. You could never seriously argue that they believe in a god or gods.
I'm sure some might claim agnosticism is the default
I'm waiting for someone to claim "our" definition of atheism is that dogs, cats and rocks are atheists
Why not? Do you claim that they are theists???
They seem to live up to the "only one definition of "atheism"" that you "accept as being valid - "Doesn't believe in a god or gods"".
No - Ever wondered why people don't go to sleep as theists and wake up as atheists? Hint - They never lose their belief, they merely temporarily lose their consciousness of it, but they retain it subconsciously.
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Oh dear!!!
Okay, I'll play your silly game . . .
Theism and atheism are uniquely the products of human brains. Do you think dogs, cats and rocks have human brains?
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Thor 2
Philosopher
I think dann missed the point in spectacular fashion ynot.
There are male, female and even transgender atheists. Big ones, little ones, white ones, black and brown ones. Need I go on?