Atheist = narrow-minded

5uspect

Asiaprod wrote:

Very good post and good advice.

...

Me too and I still make many mistakes

!Off topic!

Firefox 2.0 will have an integrated spell checker, I shed a tear when I heard that.

jessk

pH wrote:

Instead of telling people what they believe, do yourself a favour, and learn something. Go read the wiki page on Atheism.

I am a recent convert to Ignosticism - when someone comes up with a reasonable definition of God (that I can understand), then I'll tell you whether I believe in him or not.

Telling people what they believe.....obviously you didnt understand my comment either,let me know if you want it on simpler terms.
Im glad you have found something which you can now define yourself as,mite make you feel better.

Zombrex

jessk wrote:

Telling people what they believe.....

I think pH was referring to the fact that atheism isn't a belief, it is a rejection of a commonly held belief.

As 5uspect says

I see atheism more as acknowledging a concept, which history suggests was created by man, to have no rational merit.

To say that atheism is a belief is a bit of a miss use of the word.

For example I wouldn't say "I believe Niall Quinn doesn't play Rugby for the All Blacks" While technically correct that sentence has very little meaning.

That tells you nothing about what I believe with regard to Niall Quinn. If asked do I believe if Quinn plays for the All Blacks I woudl say "no I don't." That is not a belief, it is the rejection of someone elses belief. I reject the idea put forward by someone else as not having merit.

I don't actively believe Niall Quinn doesn't play for the All Blacks, or Austrialia, or South Africa or professional rugby etc. I do believe Niall Quinn is the chairman of Sunderland football club.

If one counts what someone believes isn't true as their beliefs then the term "beliefs" loses all meaning, because that set is infinately large. I don't believe an infinate set of different ideas, god is just one such idea. I could list the things I don't believe and I would still be writing that list when I die.

In fact I would probably still be on the things I don't believe Niall Quinn does.

What ever an atheists believes about the world is their belief, not all the infinate things they don't believe.

Zillah

I'm sure whoever coined this line will claim it:

"Atheism is a belief in the way that not collecting stamps is a hobby."

Someone also pointed out that everyone is Atheist. A Christian rejects all sorts of Gods, an Atheist just goes one further.

Scofflaw

Zillah wrote:

I'm sure whoever coined this line will claim it:

"Atheism is a belief in the way that not collecting stamps is a hobby."

Someone also pointed out that everyone is Atheist. A Christian rejects all sorts of Gods, an Atheist just goes one further.

I've been not collecting stamps for years now. The thought of all the stamp shows I don't go to gives me a real thrill. I have endless books not full of stamps, and sometimes I read them for hours - simply hours. Not having taken a Penny Black into my life brings me out in a cold sweat, I can tell you. Sunday mornings, when other people go out collecting stamps, I remain stamplessly asleep.

I take not collecting stamps very seriously - I even do it while I'm asleep. That's how seriously I take it.

Actually, not everyone is an atheist - there are plenty of people who are oligolatrists, monolatrists, or alatrists - people who acknowledge the existence of gods, but who worship only some of them, one of them, or none of them. Strictly, the Bible does not deny the existence of other gods - indeed, it mentions them - nor does it require you not to worship them, as long as you don't place them before the Big One. Check the Ten Commandments - "thou shalt have no other gods before me".

currently rejecting all known gods,
Scofflaw

Dades

jessk wrote:

It seems these days that if someone decides they dont want to be a catholic nowadaya they call themselves an atheist.

Basically you're saying that people often don't understand what an atheist is, therefore call themselves one when they reject "God". I agree this is often the case.

I'd like to think that one reason for this forum's existance, is to 'clarify' (i.e. beat to death) definitions for posters such as this one:

jessk wrote:

Of course an atheist is a belief,if someone is truley an athetist (and not just ant organised religion) well then they have an active belief that there are no gods.

UU

I do not think atheism itself is "narrow-minded" as most atheists have thought throughly about what they accept as truth and what to believe in (or disbelieve in as most put it). Narrow-minded is prejudice, intolerance, that is, making a rash decision about something before examining it fully. On the contrary most religious people IMO are narrow-minded as most believe in blind faith without challenging their beliefs, looking at other views, beliefs, etc.

Anyway, here is an extract I recorded from Richard Dawkin's "Root Of All Evil?". It is very good and makes sense:

Teapot Atheists

Science can't disprove the existence of God but that does not mean God exists. There are a million things we can't disprove.

The philosopher, Bertrand Russell, had an analogy. Imagine there is a china teapot in orbit around the sun. You cannot disprove the existence of the teapot because it is too small to be spotted by our telescopes. Nobody but a lunatic would say "Well, I'm prepared to believe in the teapot because I can't disprove it". Maybe we have to be technically and strictly agnostic but in practise we are all 'teapot atheists'.

But now, suppose everybody in the society, the teachers, the tribal elders, all had faith in the teapot. Stories of the teapot have been handed down for generations, it is part of the tradition of the society, there are holy books about the teapot. Then, somebody who said that they did not believe in the teapot, might be regarded as eccentric or even mad.

There's an infinite number of things like celestial teapots that we can't disprove. There are fairies, there are unicorns, hobgoblins. We can't disprove any of these but we don't believe in them anymore than nowadays we believe in Thor, Amanra or Afradity.

We are all atheists about most of the gods society has ever believed in. But some of us just go one god further......