Are you an Atheist

Post Reply New Topic

This poll is inspired by ARandomPerson's post on the percentage of those with an ASD who are atheists. I am using the Online Oxford English Dictionary definition for this

atheism

/aythi-iz’m/

• noun the belief that God does not exist.

— DERIVATIVES atheist noun atheistic adjective atheistical adjective.

— ORIGIN from Greek a- ‘without’ + theos ‘god’.

I think this would work better as a straight poll without comment (if you can manage this) straight answer Yes or No using this definition. If you are agnostic or believe in something that equates to god then you are NOT an atheist.

If you are not an atheist because ultimately you cannot disprove god, but in the words of Richard Dawkins are agnostic about god in the same way that you are agnostic about faeries at the bottom of the garden, in the spirit of the poll I would class you as an Atheist.

does it mean I should vote yes?

I'm confused

I tend to take a broader definition of atheist, meaning simply one who lacks a belief in God. Agnostics are, for all intents and purposes, atheists.

As I noted somewhere else, whatever people declare about absolutes they mostly live in a world of probabilities. If you want to be picky there is no way that an all powerful being can be discerned against its will but in the realm of probabilities atheists such as myself consider the existence of God to be such an improbability that non-existence is a reasonable acceptable facsimile. Agnostics merely refuse to commit themselves.

I am flattered

from what i can deduce there are three classes of atheists:
1) skeptics, these people have studied the material and have come to the conclusion that God does not exist. These people are very respectful and share their belief in a mature manner.
2) godkillers, these people hate God and religion, it is most likely because of the way that they have been treated by the church or they do not like the concept of a higher authority, from this class you would see the most "atheist apologetics".
3) sleepers, these people do not care about God or religion because they feel that it does not matter to them and that it is irrelivent to there own life and their own situation.

there can also be mixes such as a person who child gets murdered is angry at God for allowing it to happen.

You missed #4. Someone who highly respects the potentials of human reason and intelligence and is deeply offended that this wonderful capacity should be so totally distorted and misused to create entirely unnecessary conflict and misery in a world that has too many real problems without it.

I agree with you on that one, I love God yet hate the istitution of religion. If you are talking about the crusades, it was a shameful era of human history where man say Jesus as the Conquering King rather than the Prince Of Peace. Also Eph 6:12 states "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." meaning the Devil and the forces of darkness.

Mahatma Gandhi is one of the most respected leaders of modern history. A Hindu, Ghandi nevertheless admired Jesus and often quoted from the Sermon on the Mount. Once when the missionary E. Stanley Jones met with Ghandi he asked him, "Mr. Ghandi, though you quote the words of Christ often, why is that you appear to so adamantly reject becoming his follower?"

Ghandi replied, "Oh, I don't reject your Christ. I love your Christ. It's just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ..."

That would fall under #2, Sand.

And not just in the context of ARandomPerson's list.

Yeah I guess but not a militant one.

I think people are entitled to their beliefs as long as they don't infringe on the rights of others.

Couldn't have said it better myself!!
I am also #1, studies many religions but don't believe in any of them. I mainly study them to see how we got to where we are in the world today, with so much religious violence and war going on. I don't think we can solve our problems if we don't know how we got to this point.
Todd

The problem comes from the fact that most religions DO impose on other people, even if it isn't so obvious to see. I could list hundreds of facts that bring me to this conclusion, but unfortunately most religious people would strongly disagree with me because there going to defend there religion.

^That's true but I don't really think it's my place to tell someone what they should or shouldn't do with their life.

As long they don't involve me or other people into it.

I agree, I would never tell people what to believe in, thats there choice to make
But religion does involve you, and me and eveyone, here is a very short example, based on the US ,
So where a Christina nation, right?
76-78 % of the us population identifies themselves as christians
Only 15 % don't affiliate with any religion. Its safe to say a large majority of those people are atheist
That brings a conclusion that in the US the majority of people are christians, not a bad thing, if that was all it meant. So it is also safe to say the majority of people running the country are christians
A large number (having trouble finding the figure on my PC), a large number of this 76-78 % of christians vote for government, including the president, based on nothing but religion. They believe that if the person is the "right" religion, they will do the right things when in office.
So a problem in the US comes when the people running the country put a christian view towards running the country, again might not mean a bad thing, if that is as far as it went.
So it is safe to say that a large number of people running the country are letting christianity influence there decision for things like war, laws, forine policy, ect..., even if they don't directly see this.
This effects everyone in the world, especially when we decide to go to war, and christianity was a major influence in making this decision
So we go to war, but what we don't realize is that christianity is why where going to war and killing. Some people are to blind to see this, because they don't see anything wrong with christianity. Might not be anything wrong with believing in christianity, but when all these little christian things, what people see as minor, along the road add up to the decision to kill people, this is a major problem. So this is not much different then people killing people from the US based on religion, where just seeing it from a different view point, so we know it is wrong.
This is just a example, I dont believe there is anything wrong with christianity, and I respect peoples decision to make there own decision. I just believe in the end religion effects everyone.

Like Dawkins I am for all intents and purposes an atheist, however like him I cannot categorically prove that god does not exist, so therefore I cannot be an Atheist in the literal sense of the word, The fact of the matter is that I do not believe in god and this argument is really just one of symantics. I mean no one here would consider Richard Dawkins anything other than an Atheist.

So anna-banana if you basically believe that their is no god then you are an atheist

I am oh so close to being a atheist... but the reason I am not a total one is because I have no idea on what happens after we die... we know what happens during the death of the brain, but not total death.

For this reason I did not vote on the poll, but after reading the definitions that ARandomPerson
gave us, I think I am a combination of skeptic, and sleeper.

#2 is quite specific as to someone one affiliated with a church and then disenchanted by some personal affront. I have never been affiliated with any church and never been personally harmed by religious people. I feel the same way about astrology or gambling against insuperable odds or any other human foolishness that diverts excellent human capacity into idiotic ventures and mental distortions and frightful destruction of human decency.