Athiest Evangelising?

Turtwig

Sam Vimes wrote: »

Basically Glenster, what you're saying here is: "No you can't hold this reasonable position that you're saying you hold, you actually hold this other irrational and illogical position that I think you hold because that allows me to label you as irrational and illogical".

Sorry mate but that's called a straw man

Here we go again.

Glenster

Believe is a verb but belief is not. You don't say "I belief in god".

[/QUOTE]

exactly

doctoremma

Glenster wrote: »

To say "I do not have belief" is to not think about it enough to have an opinion,

I think you'll find most of us here have spent a good deal of time thinking about it.

Sam Vimes

Glenster wrote: »

I'm merely pointing out that to form an opinion one way or the other is active (Disbelief/Belief are actions).

Not thinking about something a is passive rejection of the discourse

To say "I do not have belief" is to not think about it enough to have an opinion, or to accept that a personal opinion cannot be reached on the matter and to refuse to waste time and energy thinking about it.

But what if you accept that an opinion cannot be reached on the matter but 95% of people in the world disagreed and their belief that a personal opinion can be reached on the matter negatively impacted on your life. Would you still not waste your time and energy thinking about it?

Sam Vimes

Glenster wrote: »

Believe is a verb but belief is not. You don't say "I belief in god".

exactly

exactly what You said that believe is a verb, not a noun but I never used believe as a noun

Glenster

Wicknight wrote: »

*groan*

Atheists don't believe theists when they make claims about supernatural gods

I would have thought that was implied by the context, obviously not

atheists dont believe theists when they say a particular thing, so therefore atheists dont believe...........that particular thing. Hooray!, you've found out what your opinions are, you must be very happy.

Sam Vimes

Glenster wrote: »

atheists dont believe theists when they say a particular thing, so therefore atheists dont believe...........that particular thing. Hooray!, you've found out what your opinions are, you must be very happy.

We already know what our beliefs are but you still don't.

Don't believe=/=believe to be false

Malari

Glenster wrote: »

atheists dont believe theists when they say a particular thing, so therefore atheists dont believe...........that particular thing. Hooray!, you've found out what your opinions are, you must be very happy.

Jebus, this is getting frustrating.

Turtwig

Glenster wrote: »

atheists dont believe theists when they say a particular thing, so therefore atheists dont believe...........that particular thing. Hooray!, you've found out what your opinions are, you must be very happy.

*Sigh*

You can have atheists that actively believe that there no God, but it's not a requirement for the definition or label of atheist. That seems to be the bit your struggling to grasp : You can be an atheist and not have any belief what so ever about anything.

Sam Vimes

Glenster, how about instead of telling us what you think we do and don't believe, you listen to us when we tell you what our position is even if that requires you to drop your opinion of atheism being illogical and faith based?

Glenster

Ickle Magoo wrote: »

Sam said "you need to update your understanding of belief" - belief is a noun.

belief is a noun, so is bite as in "he took a bite" it refers to the verb to bite in the same way belief refers to the verb to believe.

Ickle Magoo wrote: »

Btw, believe can be either a transitive or intransitive verb

Thanks for the grammer lesson, I hope you dont mean that the status of the verb affects the validity of the action.

Ickle Magoo

Glenster wrote: »

I'm merely pointing out that to form an opinion one way or the other is active (Disbelief/Belief are actions).

Not thinking about something a is passive rejection of the discourse

To say "I do not have belief" is to not think about it enough to have an opinion, or to accept that a personal opinion cannot be reached on the matter and to refuse to waste time and energy thinking about it.

No, a lack of belief is nothing to do with how much time you spend thinking about it, a lack of belief is not having enough faith in the positive or negative to hold any other position.

Disbelief can be used in two different contexts, one is to doubt the truth about something & the other is a rejection of belief.

King Mob

Glenster wrote: »

I'm merely pointing out that to form an opinion one way or the other is active (Disbelief/Belief are actions).

That's not what you were saying.
You said that active disbelief and passive non belief are exactly the same thing.
You then said in that last post the exact opposite.

Glenster wrote: »

Not thinking about something a is passive rejection of the discourse

To say "I do not have belief" is to not think about it enough to have an opinion, or to accept that a personal opinion cannot be reached on the matter and to refuse to waste time and energy thinking about it.

Oh the ironing, it's delicious.

Didn't you give out to someone because he was telling you what you believed?

Here's the thing my lack of belief doesn't come a "passive rejection of the discourse." Quite the opposite. It comes from my personal research and enquiry.
The very fact that so many people here are actively engaging in discourse pretty much disproves your nonsense definition.

Glenster

Malty_T wrote: »

*Sigh*

You can have atheists that actively believe that there no God, but it's not a requirement for the definition or label of atheist. That seems to be the bit your struggling to grasp : You can be an atheist and not have any belief what so ever about anything.

Except the belief that you are an atheist, very Descartes.

Be agnostic then. better yet be nothing.

Sam Vimes

Glenster wrote: »

belief is a noun, so is bite as in "he took a bite" it refers to the verb to bite in the same way belief refers to the verb to believe.

And that is the way I used the words

Turtwig

doctoremma wrote: »

I think you'll find most of us here have spent a good deal of time thinking about it.

Wasn't Ickle born and raised an atheist? I'm the kind of atheist who believed heavily in a God, so my position of atheism could be described as a belief because I actively chose to reject God. Ickle though, not ever having belief, is only still in the default position, she can't possibly have an active belief that there is no God.

We're both atheists :
Mine in the sense of active disbelief.
Ickle in the sense of not having belief.

Zombrex

Glenster wrote: »

atheists dont believe theists when they say a particular thing, so therefore atheists dont believe...........that particular thing. Hooray!, you've found out what your opinions are, you must be very happy.

Did you read my analogy about Tom Cruise.

If I told you that Tom Cruise got married yesterday and I know because I was there you would (rightly) say you don't believe me cause I'm crazy.

But it would be inaccurate for you to say that therefore you believe Tom Cruise didn't get married yesterday You don't have a clue if he did or not.

You had no clue if he did before you talked to me and you have no clue after you talked to me. You have no evidence either way.

You are rejecting my claim that I know he did, without reject that it may actually have happened independently to my claim.

If you say "God exists" I don't say "No he doesn't", what I say to you is "I don't believe you"

I've no clue if God exists or not, but neither do you.

At the end of all this you wouldn't say you belief Tom Cruise did not get married last night. No one has presented any evidence to support that position.

Sam Vimes

Glenster, since you're coming into the atheism forum and telling atheists what they believe despite them trying to correct you I should ask, who made you the king of atheism :P

doctoremma

Glenster wrote: »

Be agnostic then. better yet be nothing.

Ideally, that would be great. You could belive what you wanted, I could reject that belief freely and choose a non-belief position. However, and back to your original point, there are countless examples of people of religious belief trying to impose that belief on those who don't care/don't want it, whether that be discriminating on schooling, calling for banning homosexuality or blowing people up. Religious belief pervades most of our lives.

Glenster

King Mob wrote: »

That's not what you were saying.
You said that active disbelief and passive non belief are exactly the same thing.
You then said in that last post the exact opposite.



Oh the ironing, it's delicious.

Didn't you give out to someone because he was telling you what you believed?

Here's the thing my lack of belief doesn't come a "passive rejection of the discourse." Quite the opposite. It comes from my personal research and enquiry.
The very fact that so many people here are actively engaging in discourse pretty much disproves your nonsense definition.

I'm just defining terms, do what thou wilt, just stop confusing me by drawing imaginary distinctions.

As for engaging in the discourse, all I want is knowledge. I would never try to impose my spiritual beliefs (or lack thereof)

Turtwig

Glenster wrote: »

Except the belief that you are an atheist, very Descartes.

Be agnostic then. better yet be nothing.

It is impossible to "be nothing".:pac:

Strictly speaking an agnostic is still an atheist because in their position of not knowing*, they are still lacking the positive belief that a deity or deities exist

*Or more precisely the truth value of the proposition of theism is unknowable.

doctoremma

Glenster wrote: »

I'm just defining terms, do what thou wilt, just stop confusing me by drawing imaginary distinctions.

As for engaging in the discourse, all I want is knowledge. I would never try to impose my spiritual beliefs (or lack thereof)

You can define terms all you want, that doesn't make them the accepted definitions. So, are you now clear that "atheists" find no evidence to support a belief in god?

Sam Vimes

Glenster wrote: »

I'm just defining terms, do what thou wilt, just stop confusing me by drawing imaginary distinctions.

As for engaging in the discourse, all I want is knowledge. I would never try to impose my spiritual beliefs (or lack thereof)

If all you want is knowledge then please stop telling us that you know better than a bunch of atheists what an atheist is

King Mob

Glenster wrote: »

I'm just defining terms, do what thou wilt, just stop confusing me by drawing imaginary distinctions.

You defined your terms in a way that was completely in opposition do the definition your were using to make your arguments in the previous pages.
You contradicted yourself.

Glenster wrote: »

As for engaging in the discourse, all I want is knowledge. I would never try to impose my spiritual beliefs (or lack thereof)

Really?
Kinda hard to tell that, what with you doing the exact opposite.
Ignoring what actual atheists are telling you their position is and then informing what they actually believe.

Glenster

doctoremma wrote: »

Ideally, that would be great. You could belive what you wanted, I could reject that belief freely and choose a non-belief position. However, and back to your original point, there are countless examples of people of religious belief trying to impose that belief on those who don't care/don't want it, whether that be discriminating on schooling, calling for banning homosexuality or blowing people up. Religious belief pervades most of our lives.

Was that my original point?

All I wanted was a reason why athiests evangelise.

athiests need to stop justifying themselves against the worst extremes of society.

doctoremma

Glenster wrote: »

All I wanted was a reason why athiests evangelise.

And now armed with your bang-up-to-date defintion of an atheist, what kinds of things do we evangelise about?

Glenster wrote: »

athiests need to stop justifying themselves against the worst extremes of society.

LMAO.

Glenster

King Mob wrote: »

Really?
Kinda hard to tell that, what with you doing the exact opposite.
Ignoring what actual atheists are telling you their position is and then informing what they actually believe.

All I want is for people to use the right words, otherwise it gets confusing. Drawing artificial distinctions between identical statements gets us nowhere.

doctoremma

Glenster wrote: »

All I want is for people to use the right words, otherwise it gets confusing. Drawing artificial distinctions between identical statements gets us nowhere.

Lol, the right words according to who? You should surely be clear now that there are three major positions outlined here. Can you clarify that you get this?

Glenster

doctoremma wrote: »

And now armed with your bang-up-to-date defintion of an atheist, what kinds of things do we evangelise about?

Just refer back to the start of the thread, militant athiesm and all that.

Sam Vimes

Glenster wrote: »

All I want is for people to use the right words, otherwise it gets confusing. Drawing artificial distinctions between identical statements gets us nowhere.

It's not an artificial distinction and they're not identical terms. Please try to understand that. Your understanding of the views of everyone on this forum is wrong and you're unlikely to get the information you're looking for as long as you're telling us that you know better than us what we do and don't believe. If you came here to tell us what we believe then off you go but if you came here to ask us questions then please heed the answers