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Atheism
Atheism is the disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods.
1,002 Questions
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I thought long and hard about the claims of religion (I was raised a Christian), and I found that there was no evidence to support those claims. Not a single shred. So I stopped believing.
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I have never discovered any evidence which suggests that any gods exist (or even which ones of the thousands claimed are more likely). They all have equal amounts of evidence: zero.
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I do not believe in claims which have zero evidence to support them.
Personally, I believe it is equally illogical to claim that there is a god or gods, and there is not a god or gods. For me, it came down to a choice - I believe that many scientific theories are correct, or at least on the right track, and science tends to mesh a bit better with atheism. In addition, I accept that there could be some sort of higher being, but I don't think that being would be as described in the major religions. I get a feeling of freedom, the ability to do as I choose, and not as a higher intelligence has determined for me.
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I am an atheist due to the fact that the theory of evolution has been proven to be true while all religions have never been proven entirely true. Christians believe god created earth and man. Evolution has proved that man has evolved from the tiniest of microorganisms.
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There are two factors that seem to be in effect my position to answer the question
Studies of the brain and genetics indicate that there may be a physical and genetic connection between a person's ability to believe in god(s) and the structure of their minds. Atheists of this stripe just can't buy into a god or gods. I would attribute much of my position to this factor whatever it may be. Amusingly, this could be called the "God made me this way." explanation by theists.
Having found myself unable to buy into the supernatural, I attempted to determine why others had "belief". Logic, when brought to bear on all religious belief, appeared to demolish it. This affirmed the "gut" decision that I had made.
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I am an atheist because I simply do not believe in any religion. I think religions are like fairy tales, and were made to scam people. Scamming is a basic fact, because just look at medieval times when chruches tried to sell indulgences. And Fairy tales because the idea of going to a fluffy cloud heaven place after death to live for all eternity seems illogical to me. Also the whole creation of how God made humans and Earth I think has been disproven by science and astronomy.
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I was raised in England although not in a religious household. I attended Baptist Sunday School until I was about 7 because all kids from the village went there so that's where all your friends were. I remember finding it all a bit tedious and ridiculous even then and I just can't make myself believe things that seem so obviously untrue.
I am an atheist because the the claims of Christianity, Islam, Judaism etc. are littered with so many illogical inaccuracies and contradictions (not just in religious text but in their actions too) that it makes the mind boggle that ANYONE subscribes to them.
All religions pretty much teach that unquestioning belief is a virtue. Why? The answer is simple, if you start questioning the beliefs and dogma of these religions the only conclusion you can reach is that they are wrong.
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I am atheist because I dont believe in God/Gods. Personally i believe science disproves religion.
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We are all born atheists. In the same way that no one is born a bigot, no one is born into a religion. It must be taught. I am an atheist because there is no reason to believe in a god at all. No evidence exists. So, why bother?
Gods are make-believe entities that man once used to help explain the mysteries of the world. Since science has begun to unravel those mysteries, there is really no need for a god anymore. Religion has seen this coming for centuries and has fought science at every turn. Since science often conflicts with religious texts, religious leaders see science as a threat to their way of life.
So, superstitious people still cling to their religions. It might be that they are not secure enough to embrace reality, or perhaps they just don't know any other way to live without their spiritual "comfort blanket."
No. In and of itself atheism is simply the absence of any belief in gods. It is a benign intellectual choice. Some people with strong religious beliefs may find that offensive but atheism itself is not the offender. Also, there may be some people who are atheists who are offensive but that is true of any group of people and is not caused by atheism but by human nature.
Did the religion Paganism have a founder?
Paganism is not one religion, but a blanket term for any number of unrelated ideologies other than Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. So to answer, no, it has no founder as it is not an organized demographic.
Apart From Beng Born To and African American Mother and a British Father, he dosent talk about religion even though many people mistake him for being jewish!
Does Eusthenopteron prove Evolution?
Eusthenopteron is a link in a chain of evidence supporting evolution. Transitional forms have been found that are elements of its development from a fish that lived entirely in the ocean to the tetrapods that walked on land. These progressive changes spanned million of years in the late Devonian, from the fish Eusthenopteron, through Tiktaalik, and Acanthostega, to the oldest known tetrapod, Ichthyostega. Eusthenopteron was fish in the ocean, but a portion of that ocean became landlocked and is now part of Pennsylvania. In Darwin's evolution there are mechanisms for development of new genetic information. One of them is described by Ilya Prigogine. Another is Lamarck's evolution (this requires a feedback loop), which is a subset of Darwin's evolution. A third is... well, I'll leave it to you to research on your own.
What are some good comebacks for atheistic argument?
Contributions from Contributors:
(1) A painting assumes a painter. Creation assumes a Creator.
(2) Something cannot come from nothing. And as there is such a thing as entropy, what is in existence could not have existed for all eternity. It could not have just come from another natural cause, for then we'd be asking about that.
(3) It had to come from a supernatural cause - an entity that could cause, but not itself be caused.
(4) Perhaps tell the village atheist the are no atheists in hell.Once there, they will realize there is a God. Crude, but true?
Another Perspective
There are no good comebacks for any atheist argument because "good comebacks" need to rely on faith and speculation that something supernatural simply "must have"created everything. That is an assumption, not a good comeback. Your question is unanswerable. Going from a painter who can be easily viewed painting to a supernatural creator who is assumed by some to have created everything in the universe is a very wide, unsupportable stretch. We have all seen painters so we don't "assume" them at all. We know there are painters. We have proof we can see and touch. We do not know where we came so why assumeanything? That's faith and speculation. But . . . we sure have answered a lot of questions that baffled the ancients. We have identified millions of natural causes. We're closing in.
Answer:
Here are a few:
1) Teleological Argument: The universe has design, order, and arrangement which cannot be sufficiently explained outside a theistic view. From the complexities of the human eye to the order and arrangement of cosmology, the voice of God is heard. God's existence is the best explanation for such design.
2) Anthropic Principle: The laws of the universe seem to have been set in such a way that stars, planets and life can exist. Many constants of nature appear to be finely tuned for this, and the odds against this happening by chance are astronomical.
3) Sensus divinitatus: The innate sense of the divine exists within all people. People and cultures of all time have, by nature, sensed a need to worship something greater than themselves. No ancient society ever existed that did not believe in a supernatural power.
4) Tradition: There are events in human history which cannot be explained without God. Many people have their subjective stories that bend them in the direction of theism, but there are also historical events such as the Giving of the Torah, which are underpinnings for the belief in God.
5) Pascal's Wager: Belief in God is the rational choice, due to the consequences of being wrong. If one were to believe in God and be wrong, there would be no consequences. However, if one were to deny God and be wrong, the consequences are eternally tragic. Therefore, the most rational choice is not agnosticism or atheism, but belief in God.
6) Why is there reality rather than nothing? Aside from God's creating it, there are only five options:
a) The universe is eternal and everything has always existed.
- Even atheists have abandoned this possibility, especially because it would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
b) Nothing exists and all is an illusion. There is no reality. There is only nothing.
- This possibility, it should be obvious, is completely self-defeating. In order to even make such a proposition, the subject has to exist in some sense. If all is an illusion, where did the illusion come from? Even the solipsist, who does not believe in the existence of other minds, has to explain the genesis of his own mind.
c). The universe created itself. This is the idea that the universe and all that is in it did not have its origin in something outside itself, but from within.
- Like with the previous two, this makes a logical absurdity. It would be like creating a square triangle. It's impossible. A triangle by definition cannot be square. So creation cannot create itself as it would have to pre-date itself to create. The pre-dated form would then need a sufficient explanatory cause, ad infinitum.
d) Chance created the universe. The odds of winning the lottery are not very good; but given enough time, everyone will win. While the odds of the universe coming into existence are not very good, given enough time, it could happen.
- This option is a sleight of hand that, like "survival of the fittest," amounts to nothing, because it implies that "chance" itself has quantitative causal power.
The word "chance" is used to describe possibilities. It does not have the power to cause those possibilities. It is nonsense to speak of chance being the agent of creation of anything, since chance is not an agent. What are the real chances of the universe created by chance? Not a chance. Chance is incapable of creating a single molecule, let alone an entire universe. Why not? Chance is no thing. It is not an entity. It has no being, no power, no force. It can effect nothing because it has no causal power within it. It is a word which describes mathematical possibilities which, by the curious flip of the fallacy of ambiguity, slips into the discussion as if it were a real entity with real power, the power of creativity." (R.C. Sproul, Not a Chance. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1999.)
e) The universe is created by nothing. Simply put, nothing created the universe.
- The problem here is that it is either a restating of option #1 (the universe is eternal) or fails due to the irrationality of #4. In our current universe, the law of cause and effect cannot be denied by sane people. While we often don't know what the cause of some effect is, this does not mean that there was no cause. When we go to the doctor looking for an explanation for the cause of our neck pain, we don't accept the answer "There is no cause. It came from nothing."
He is not public on his personal beliefs or religion, but he is probably religious and most likely a christian
No they are not satanic if you've seen their merch there are shirts that say there is no god. their lyrics are just like that too, they are atheist, as am I :) PROMOTE ATHEISM AND THE RAELIAN MOVEMENT!
What is atheism according to feuerbach?
The standard definition of atheism is a lack of belief in gods. Ludwig Feuerbach wrote that atheism, "is the secret of religion itself; that religion itself, not indeed on the surface, but fundamentally, not in intention or according to its own supposition, but in its heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else than the truth and divinity of human nature." (The Essence of Christianity)
If you meant to say, "Atheists" . . . the prefix "A" means "No" or "Not".
"Theios" means "religion. So, an A-theist is a person who does not believe in religion.
What Enlightenment thinker was an atheist?
Most of them were probably Atheist by today's standards, but to answer the question Spinoza....
Hate to tell you this, but there are no "mystics" of atheism. There are no guidelines to follow, nor any stories to learn. The only thing that makes a person an atheist is a disbelief in god, beyond that you can think that the Earth is flat and the center of the universe. We don't follow anyone in particular, even people like Richard Dawkins we can disagree with.
Why do atheists deny atheism is a mental disorder?
It seems unlikely that many atheists think about such things! But, atheism isn't considered a mental disorder.
How many members of US Senate are atheist or agnostic?
It is impossible to know. Atheism is a great way to tank a political career. Most politicians will feign some form of religion to help themselves get elected.
Why is the devil evil if he punishes the bad because that is a good deed?
Because he encourages them to be bad in the first place and then oversees their punishment in hell.
:/ geez... if only i could find a question that nobody could answer... anyway thanks!
She does not follow an organised religion but has also said that she is not an atheist.
What was the world's first atheist state?
An atheist state is a country in which atheism is actively promoted by the government. The states which have promoted atheism or the outlawing of religion:
- France after the French Revolution ( a short duratuion atheist state)
- Revolutionary Mexico under Plutarco Elías Calles 1917
- Albania 1945
- China 1949 after the Chinese Revolution,
- Cuba since the 1960s
- Soviet Union 1922
- North Korea Not declared but in effect)
What should a person do who doesn't want an answer from religion?
Other answers from our community:
Religions do not provide any satisfactory answers. They all rely on an assumption which is impossible to test. Most modern religions have retreated as far as they can from being tested, because tests seem to show that they are wrong.
Ancient religions said that if you sacrificed a goat (say), then the gods would reward you. Experience showed, however, that all you got was a dead goat.
Christianity has stopped claiming that the sun goes around the earth, and that women with warts possess magical powers, can fly on broomsticks, and should be burned alive.
The sillier beliefs of most religions have fallen by the wayside as people started to become more educated and to question more. Modern religions tend to boil down to: if you believe X, then you will think it is true!"
Which is about as useful as it gets.
For s, turn to a library, or google, or learn the scientific method, and do some experiments yourself. It's fun!
For comforting words about death, you could turn to religion: but again, Humanist provides more satisfying answers, and arguably leads you to live a more moral life than religion would.
A person who does not want an answer from religion is usually the type of person who has no confidence in the integrity of such information. I believe that this person is seeking reliable information as opposed to fairytale, fantasies and superstition.
In order for you to access credible information you must find a dependable source where the data can be validated. Accurate information is usually substantiated by tangible proof.
What is Nonoverlapping Magisteria NOMA?
Stephen Jay Gould proposed the concept of Nonoverlapping Magisteria (NOMA). He said that the domain or magisterium for science is the empirical realm - what the universe is made from and why it works the way it does. He said that the magisterium of religion includes the ultimate meaning and moral values. These magisteria are nonoverlapping - science does not comment on the ultimate meaning of life, while religion should not comment on the natural world. If accepted, this concept takes questions about creation and evolution out of the religious magisterium.
Is there any restrictions on a Atheists diet?
Atheism is not an organization like areligion. It do not have rules. An atheist is an independent thinker who makes up his own mind on what to eat drink, say, believe, follow etc.
Well, different atheists believe different things... Atheism, which is literally godlessness (nothing more and nothing less), does not nullify the idea of an afterlife. Most atheists don't think there is one, some do. For example I don't think life just ends and there's nothing more. Now to personally answer your question, while we'll probably more or less forget everyone, this is probably a good thing when you think about it. :D Do it.
Atheists who don't believe in any sort of afterlife, from my experience, accept that their time here is limited and try to make the best of it. They don't dwell on death and what happens next and it just doesn't bother them. It isn't hard to do.
They are probably just worried about themselves and try to play it off as something that cant harm or effect them,
but i believe that you go where you believe your going to go if you believe you have lived a good life and have done well to others and yourself and truly believe that they have resolved all problems correctly and properly they get what they deserve.
What is the difference between an Atheist and an Antichrist?
There is a large difference between an atheist and and antichrist. An atheist is one who lacks belief in Any supernatural beings, state of personal being, and essentially asserts that life has no purpose, we are merely here as a product of the evolutionary process. An antichrist can have variances in definition, but is basically one who is against or attempts to draw away from the followers the Jesus of Nazareth, of first century Palestine. The typical use of the word antichrist is in reference to THE antichrist, who is presumed on a biblical basis in dispensational theology to be one and the same with the "abomination that causes desolation" from the seventh chapter of the book of Daniel, through potential parallels in the synoptic gospels and in the Revelation of St. John. It can be used in this sense to declare someone as being immensely evil in their actions. The person's labeling as an antichrist is generally irrelevant, except in dispensational theology where the antichrist is presumed to be an agent of Satan. This view is common, but not the majority, or necessarily of orthodox origin. While eschatology is a hotly debated topic within the Christian church, careful investigation of the biblical text will reveal that in fact there are multiple antichrists.
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I applaud the eloquence of the first to answer. Might I sugest a much simpler way of expaining the answer to the question. An Atheist is one who does not believe in any kind of deity, while an anti christ knows there is such a being but then denighs or comes out in open rebelion of his exisitance.
Where will atheists go if they do not go to heaven or hell?
It depends on how it is read:
What do Atheists believe will happen to them?
Most Atheists are monists, believing that a person is only their physical nature, whereas most Theists are dualists, believing that a person has both a physical nature and a spiritual component. Monists argue that the brain is the source of a person's personality and essence and, therefore, when a person dies, and the brain begins to shutdown and decompose, that is the end of that person. (This is much the same way that dualists would conceptualize the destruction of a robot.) Dualists argue that a person's personality comes from an ethereal soul which can leave the body and go to an afterlife. Atheists who are monists take the monist position, while Atheists who are dualists (most commonly Buddhist Athiests) believe in whatever afterlife their tradition teaches.
What do Theists believe will happen to Atheists?
This entirely depends on the religion and even on the Theist himself. Most religions argue that Atheists will go to Hell or some other place of torture, but other religions do not believe Atheism to be sinful or to warrant pain if the Atheist is a good person.
What is the difference between traditional atheists and conceptual atheists?
These are descriptions usually given by religionists to try to describe our atheism. We do not wear labels well. Atheists may have different philosophical directions, but no name tag is needed.
