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Atheism
Atheism is the disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods.
1,002 Questions
How many australians don't believe in god?
It's impossible to know- there have been general polls conducted, the most recent one in 2016 which suggested that about a third of the Australian populace (just under 7 million people) have no religion, and there is evidence that this trend is rising, but this does not mean that somebody has no spiritual belief just because they do not follow an organised religion. The exact figure is difficult to calculate though.
No, he is a Methodist with some anti-Catholic views.
Yes they do. Yu-huang---The Jade Emperor. He rules heaven. All other gods must report to him. His function is to distribute justice, which he does through the court system of Hell where evil deeds and thoughts are punished. You-huang is the lord of the living and the dead and of all the Buddha, all the gods, and all the spectres and demons. He tells Yu-huang what to do. Yuan-shih T’ien-tsun--- The First Principal. He tells Yu-huang what to do. Yu-ch’ing(Jade Pure), Shang-ch’ing(Upper Pure), and T’ai-ch’ing(Great Pure)---Three Pure Ones. The are believed to be different manifestation of Lao Tzu. They aren’t rulers, but they seek to save man kind by teaching and benevolence. San-kuan -- Three Officials The San-kuan rule over all things in the three regions of the universe, keep a register of good and evil deeds and award good or bad fortune accordingly. T'ien-kuan, the Ruler of Heaven, grants happiness. Ti-kuan, Ruler of Earth, grants remissions of sins, and Shui-kuan, Ruler of Water, averts all evil.
How does atheistic existentialism impact on death and suffering?
The suffering and/or death of any living thing is abhorrent to most people, atheist or theist.
No one should have to suffer before they die, that is why a lot of atheists subscribe to the view that voluntary euthanasia should be the right of everyone who requests it and is of sound mind.
Are atheists protected by the first amendment?
Of course they are. First Amendment rights of the individual in America are not based in any way on the individual's religious beliefs or lack thereof. For example, atheists absolutely have freedom of speech and are protected from a state mandated religion.
Answer:
The amendment prohibits:
- the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion
- impeding the free exercise of religion
- abridging the freedom of speech
- infringing on the freedom of the press
- interfering with the right to peaceably assemble
- prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances.
Some fundamentalist groups maintain that the first two points of the amendment applies only to religion, and, as atheists state they are not a religion, they can be banned or legislated against. Most people hold that this is not the intent of the sections.
Who were the founders of atheism?
Atheism was not started, since it is merely a lack of belief.
The more interesting question, I think, is how religions started. There have always been atheists, because there have always been people who said: "wait.. that god you're talking about.. this seems a bit odd and doesn't really make sense."
So the above is accurate: nobody started atheism. Somebody started religion. Atheism, as Richard Dawkins said, is merely the noises which reasonable people make when confronted by the claims of rleigion.
It's a bit like asking who started the opposition to the KKK. The opposition was always there, in anyone who was a reasonable human being and who hadn't been brainwashed.
What is a person called who is between an atheist and an agnostic?
These are fine distinctions, but some philosophers define a range of beliefs:
Thiest - certain that god exists.
Weak thiest - acknowledges that one can't be certain, but believes.
Agnostic - neither believes nor disbelieves.
Weak atheist - acknowledges that one can't be certain, but disbelieves.
Strong atheist - certain there is no god.
As you can see, "weak atheists" hold the middle ground - in fact, most atheists are probably weak atheists - they acknowledge that certainty isn't possible, but it is very unlikely that god actually exists.
What is an agnostic and atheist and thiest?
Agnosticism should not be confused with Gnosticism. The two words both come from the Greek word 'know', but for different reasons.
The word agnosticism contains the prefix 'a-', which means 'not'. So, an agnostic does not know whether there is a God.
Gnosticism was a major, early branch of Christianity, in which the believers, or Gnostics, sought to 'know' the truth about God, not just to have blind faith. The early Gnostic schools no longer exist, but some believe that the Rosicrucians still follow some of the early Gnostic principles.
What are the arguments against God?
Please do not include comments that do not answer this question. Opinions from contributors:
Opinion
Humans have always been very curious about their origins. With the advent of science, not only human origins can be investigated but also the origins of the Earth and Universe. Obviously why the world seemed so wonderful and why anything should bother to exist seemed inexplicable to them. For some psychological or evolutionary reason, it seemed logical to the ancient peoples that the world and themselves should have come into existence through the work of some powerful being (invisible, yet powerful). They couldn't find such a force or being. But there were other advantages to the notion of a god than just explaining the improbability of nature. The notion of a spirit watching over them seemed comforting to some. Children were told about their god who would protect them. If a child asked where did the world come from, a ready made answer could easily be found. Over generations of story telling, a culture obviously becomes convinced of a real god. It is merely a matter of culture - where one was raised and in what time - which particular brand of nonsense infects the child brain, as Dawkins puts it - that determines which religion an individual will follow.
Opinion
Scientific Arguments: These arguments are based on science; specifically, the large number of cases where what the scientific method has near-proven about our world and our universe, is largely incompatible with religious dogma.
There are far more scientific contradictions of God than philosophical ones. The bedrock of the so called intelligent design movement is that matter cannot come from nothing. One of the many reasons intelligent design isn't normally allowed in the class room is that physics shows that matter does indeed spontaneously materialize, and that the true evidence of a universe with a God, would be one in which nothing existed. In fact, it has been said by Nobel Prize winning scientists that because there is material in the Universe that is proof God doesn't exist.
'Intelligent Design', and most quasi-scientific religious arguments, are based on the Argument from Improbability. It usually manifests itself as something akin to the following: "Phenomenon X is unbelievably complex. All of its parts work together in perfect order. This could not have spontaneously self-generated?"
Opinion
In reference to a biological system:
The discovery of Evolution. No sane person has ever suggested that a tree, or a bacterium, or a fish, or a person, came about by chance. The idea is absolutely ludicrous. The religious people claim that evolution is a theory of chance, and indeed, if the two alternatives were 'it generated itself by chance' and 'it was created' then intelligent design may carry some weight. But it does not, because nobody is suggesting chance as an alternative to design. The two opposing theories are intelligent design and evolution by natural selection. The theory of evolution is one of stunning simplicity - there are very, very slight changes to an organism in each generation, and they are small enough changes that anybody could accept they had come about by chance. Some of these very small changes will be advantageous, and increase an organism's survival chances, thereby causing the genes for themselves to become more prevalent in the gene pool. Over a vast timescale of millions of years, the effects of these tiny changes add up to become greatly noticeable, and giving us the wealth of diverse life we have today.
Intelligent design immediately raises a huge question: if everything complex was designed, then who designed the designer? If God has 'always existed', then why could not life have 'always existed'? Ditto the spontaneous self-generation of God.
Opinion
Science has provided much more accurate and verifiable explanations for the observable world and universe; so good, it has been said, that had we had these scientific explanations to begin with, religion would have never taken root in the first place.
Opinion
Most religions claim that their God is a loving God, and that he loves and cares for his people. Certainly, mainstream Christianity, Islam and Judaism all preach this. However, there is the rather obvious problem that the world includes a lot of suffering, and evil. Religions attempt to overcome the problem of evil by attributing evil to Satan, however, if God were indeed a sovereign and all-powerful God, his authority would surely preside over all things including Satan, and he could end evil. The fact that he doesn't, or so far hasn't but one day will, affirms the fallacy of an all-loving God, as he has allowed evil to exist either thus far, or indefinitely; if he can't, than the proposition that he is all-powerful is dispelled.
Opinion
It has been pointed out by Richard Dawkins that if you are a Christian, you have been told that Christianity is correct. You believe this. You also think you know that all other religions are completely incorrect and belief in them would be heretical. If you were a Muslim or Jew or Hindu you would think that you know that your respective religion were truly and undeniably the correct one and believe passionately that Christianity were incorrect. As you see, the idea of God is simply an opinion, with no actual truth in any statement about him anywhere. There cannot be a truth if all other religions in the world think the exact opposite. And their religion isn't true either as every other religion in the world other than themselves is against their doctrines too. God is in the eye of the beholder as it were.
Most of the evidence 'for' God (even ignoring the fact that it is largely pseudo-scientific ramble) is evidence 'for' Yahweh, 'for' Allah, 'for' Baal and Jupiter and every other creator being that has ever been postulated. So it does not go anywhere towards proving one particular set of fantastical beliefs.
Opinion
Rebuttal of Pascal's Wager
Pascal's wager, simplified, is this: Believe in God, and if you're right, you are rewarded with heaven. If you're wrong, you get nothing. Don't believe in God, and if you're right, you get nothing. If you're wrong, you get punished with Hell. Therefore, it makes more sense to believe in God.
This is clearly fallacious on two counts: firstly, that faked belief in God (I know that I personally could never 'believe' in something for the sake of a bet) is unlikely to win you his favour, and secondly that it would be ludicrously easy to worship the wrong God, since there are thousands of them that have been proposed, and hundreds of belief systems that are currently followed.
God said "they [humans] will live no longer than 120 years", yet somebody lived to 122 years. Therefore, God's word is not correct, though it is said to be perfect. Therefore, a perfect God's word must be correct. Therefore, God cannot be perfect, and therefore cannot exist.
What do you call someone who is not sure whether they do or do not believe in God?
Atheist.
Answer
In short, the answer is atheist, but a clarification is warrented here because atheist/theist isn't the only label needed to describe what someone believes on this subject, and it can get confusing.
The person in question is atheist because belief in a deity is a positive claim and said person is not claiming to believe in any form of a deity. i.e. Any answer other than "yes" to the question "do you believe in a deity?" makes you an atheist. This includes an answer of "I don't know."
However, this also means they are agnostic. The two terms are not mutually exclusive. Agnostic/gnostic describes what you claim to know while atheist/thiest goes to what you believe.
So, because the answer to "do you believe in a deity?" would be "no" or, more likely, "I don't know" this makes them atheist. The fact they are not claiming to know either way also makes them agnostic.
Also, in addition to "agnostic atheist," due to the unsure nature of the person, the person may also be described as a "weak" agnostic atheist. "Strong" agnostic atheist would be used to describe someone like Richard Dawkins who doesn't believe in a diety, doesn't claim to know this is sure, but he thinks it is very unlikely as so lives as if there is no diety. Note: strong does not mean gnostic... it only means you've very sure and it would require a lot of solid evidence to convince you of the existence of a deity.
Gnostic atheists would be those that claim to know for a fact there is no deity. There are very few of these, and I actually can't think of any well-known atheists that are gnostic on the subject.
To sum up:
Agnostic/gnostic - what you claim to know
Atheist/theist - what you claim to believe
Weak/strong - how certain you are of a position (As noted above: strong does not mean gnostic.)
What are the religious views of Richard Dawkins?
Richard Dawkins views religion (particularly revealed religion) as being more harmful than helpful to humanity, and inimical to human life and progress. He is one of a relatively new brand of scientists who believes that science has been too accommodating to religion for too long, and that science does, indeed, have something to say about God(s) and morality.
Which would be the next great war?
I have been studding about WWI, WWII, and The Cold War recently and given this some thought. While using history to predict the future is always a tricky move, it is one of the reasons we studdy, right? So, I think that the next great war will need powerful ideologies or scarcity of resources. When I say powerful ideologies, I do not discount the rebirth of extreme religious groups. A quote from Einstein seems appropriate at this point: "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
No. Atheism is not a religion, it is a term to describe those who don't believe in a supernatural being or beings. Many atheists follow a similar moral code but this differs among individuals.
What is the effects of being an atheist?
It doesn't really affect atheists much; unless they have a job that requires belief - for example, some priests lose their faith and get a bit "stuck" - being a priest is their livelihood, so it's difficult to "walk away" because they've changed their minds.
If this question means "Is there a God?", then the answer is that no one has proven or disproven the existence of a God, a task that is especially complicated by the fact that even people of faith disagree on the exact nature of "God". For some believers, it's simply a question of faith, and to some extent, a question of freedom. For others, it's a question of what they can and can't prove, using logical reasoning or scientific methods in existence today.
If this question means "Can good people be atheists?", well, of course they can. All atheism means is a disbelief in any God. It does not require the atheist to ridicule, revile or demonize people who believe that there is a God, any more than a belief in a God makes it right to demonize people who don't believe in God. Anyone who reviles or ridicules another person for having a belief different from his own shows a basic disrespect for his fellow man. Such behavior is neither rational nor loving.
Also please note that it is possible to disagree with someone's opinion and suggest places that they may find more information without actually intending to suggest that they are a lesser person or that their opinion has less value. Sadly when it comes to this issue an opposite opinion is often seen as denigration of the other person involved in the discussion. The purpose of a discussion surely is a sharing of ideas.
An atheist does not believe in a Hell or other afterlife. Assuming this opinion is correct, an atheist does not go to Heaven/Hell after death - and neither does anyone else.
Theists believe in an afterlife. Some (like Christians, Jews and Moslems) believe in a Heaven and Hell, others believe in a continuing series of rebirths leading to some sort of reward.
For theists that believe in a Heaven/Hell there is an imposing list of does and don'ts that the believer has to comply with to "succeed". Most Heavens are exclusive to their particular sect's beliefs. These groups would see the majority of the human race going to Hell, atheists included.
Atheistic existentialism belief on human nature?
To my knowledge atheism is not philosophocal, therefore existentialism, which means existence, is moot. We do believe that humans, religious or non, have problems. I don't really assume they exist, but research through independant studies conclude humans have problems, minor and major.
Is being a atheist a bad thing?
This question is often posed as "Pascal's wager". It says that if one believes in God and in the afterlife and if there is really a God, the person will gain everything. if one doesn't believe in God and in the end there is God, the person will eventually loss everything, and if one believes in God and in the end there is no God, the person will not loss anything because one cannot lose something which he or she did not gain.
This, of course, depends on there being only two choices - no god, or my god. Of the several thousand gods worshipped throughout human history it is difficult to imagine a process to choose the "right" one. Even more difficult would be the process to imagine how to believe in this deity - does it require circumcision, blood sacrifices, or dietary conformity. Also one would have to hope the deity chosen offers some sort of eternal reward, not all of them do. Another consideration would be the consequences of choosing the wrong god. Some of them are pretty testy if you make a bad choice. Too bad if you are wrong!
The wagers results then become:
1. If you choose a god with an associated afterlife and he/she/it exists and cares anything about you (another question) and you are right in your choice you may get your "reward" if you haven't ticked him off by not following all the rules or by just believing in he/she/it to get a reward. Note that not all afterlife's are pleasant even for the "good".
2. In the same case as above and you choose to ignore this god/afterlife package you probably wind up in a comparable situation - maybe a bit worse, maybe a bit better.
3. If there is no god, no afterlife, no continuation and you wasted your time mutilating yourself and your kids, eating a restricted diet or giving your time and money to a ragtag bunch of shaman's you've missed a lot in this life - the only one you've got.
4. If case 3 is true and you live a normal life with no effort made to believe in any god or follow any "divine" rules - you win.
So all in all it seems that it is better for a person to be an atheist.
AdditionAlthough I am an atheist I think it would be better to believe in a god (that is if you could bring yourself to believe in one unlike me). There is no proof for or against the existence of a god and if you really wanted maximum benefit it would be have faith but don't waste your time with religion. Therefore you don't waste any time and are theoretically have a chance at an afterlife, however unlikely that my be.Answer 3
I'm also atheist, but I feel that there is no "better" answer here. The question is, what do you feel comfortable following? If a particular religious tradition helps you make sense of the world, connect with your fellow human beings and motivates you in a positive way to become a better, more caring human being, that religion is probably the best choice for you. If a particular religious tradition makes you feel unworthy or fearful, motivates you to treat others as less than yourself (such as for not being saved as you are) or doesn't help you understand and relate to the world and your life within it, that religion is probably not a good place for you to be. If no religions help you, then maybe humanism, agnosticism or atheism would be best for you.
How can you become an atheist?
Some limit their attendance to only a small number of annual events and for some it is marked on a weekly basis. For a rare few, religion is a way of life and a full time expression of their belief system.
Can an atheist go on a pilgrimage?
A pilgrimage is part of a religion and an atheist isn't so unless they changed they wouldn't be able to go
Answer:
Why not? An atheist could go on a pilgrimage for the secular aspects of the event - touring historic areas, the scenery, the exercise, the society of new group of people.
Like atheists visiting cathedrals on a tour of Europe there is no belief-o-meter test given before entry is permitted.
There are also secular pilgrimages to places of historic importance outside of religion. Famous battle sites, the birthplaces (and burial places) of the rich, famous and powerful. The religious are not prohibited from participating in these events.
Roman Catholic, he even wanted to be a priest at one point.
What is an atheist view on human life?
That humans, like all other forms of life, are born, live and then die and that is it, no heaven, no nirvana, no paradise, just death. Answer: There is no "Atheist" view on human lifen as there is no standardized atheist belief system beyond the fact that there is no god(s).
The scientific viewpoint is held by almost all of the world's scientists independent of their philosophic or religious beliefs. It is that humans evolved from earlier forms through evolution.
Philosophically the viewpoints are mixed, some atheists see us as the top of the heap, others as just one of Earth's lifeforms. Opinions are mixed as to how our mental abilities work or our social abilities developed although they are again evolutionary attributes that led to our success as a species.
No supernatural being is seen as having any role in this development.
On issues such as abortion, capital punishment, war, socialized medicine and otthers, everyone has to reach their own rataional conclusions based on their studies. As far as birth and death - we come out of no place as thinking beings and vanish back to nothing,
It's because of an ancient concept called "The congregation of like minded souls" .
Humans gather together to worship on a regular basis , because of numerous reasons , supernatural , loyalty , appreciation , sociological , etc ... but also because it is believed that regular attendance makes you less likely to commit sin . and people say when big headed morons are coming u hide there.and eyeliner boys.
What is the atheistic existentialist view on human nature?
The reason we are all here: to propagate the species and increase the value of life for all humans on the planet. * Open in Google Docs Viewer * Open link in new tab * Open link in new window * Open link in new incognito window * Download file * Copy link address * Edit PDF File on PDFescape.com
ClarificationExistentialism is difficult to explain as it takes on different forms for different people but for most of its followers, it can be described as atheistic. Existentialism can be defined as a philosophy that sees human existence in an indifferent universe, unexplainable, that we have freedom of choice and are responsible for our own acts: each person's experience is as a unique individual rather than a member of a collective. There is no ultimate purpose. There is no created meaning (or purpose) for life and humans can create their own meaning.
