are you an atheist?

i dunno y'all, the universe is a mysterious place, i'm not ruling out anything

i am an atheist but i hate the whole richard dawkins new atheism pish. Not just because the tone can be tiresome and it's preaching to the converted, but also becuase i don't really subscribe to its worship of rationalism - no one lives their life in an at all rational manner and no-one would want to.

in a way i'm agnostic - i accept that i am completely fallible, so that must apply to my ideas on God as much as anything else - but i have an innate and strong feeling that there is nothing benevolent or all encompassing in the universe. I was raised catholic but doubted as soon as i could even begin to think about religion in any way at all, i was 5 or 5 iirc. The moment that confirmed for me that i didn't believe in god was when i was 11 and i saw someone die for the first, and so far only, time. A maybe 16 or 17 year old stranger drove a moped into a tree when i was on holiday with my family in Rome and after that i felt that my suspicion that there was nothing orderly or good about the universe as a whole was confirmed.

The irony that i reject superstitious, subjective, irrational religion on the grounds of feelings is not lost on me.

5 or 6, lol.

Sometimes I wish I believed in God. Like when I found out John Donne had a portrait done of him as he thought he'd look when he was resurrected at the Apocalypse, so he could hang it on his wall as a memento mori.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f0/Donne-shroud.png/453px-Donne-shroud.png

That's a cool thing to do that necessitates a belief in God/Christianity for it to be anything other than just a weirder-than-average portrait. But, ultimately, I'm too angered by religious paradoxes to just accept them. Like, I think I'm an atheist because I can't handle cognitive dissonance in the slightest.

Yes, atheist. Tried not to be once when I was 12-13 to get a boy to like me, didn't work (he liked me but I just couldn't get into God). Anyone else raised to *not* believe in a higher power or deity? That said, I did have a pretty spiritual upbringing (buddhist).

Was Richard Dawkins the one who said rather than "the creator" being a watch maker, "it" is a blind watch maker? That makes sense to me although I don't think there could be an "it".

Answer to OP: no, I don't have it in me to be an atheist. I'm fine with the magical-thinking aspect...actually I think I prefer a world where some things are unknowable, mystical, all that jazz.

It's the nitpicking ORTHODOXY of organized religion that I can't stand. I just can't imagine why I should care that any human authority throughout history or the present would award themselves the authority to proscribe the beliefs of others. Or me. Especially me!

all the antitheists in the house throw your hands up

I think the orthodoxy is useful because over time people found that certain rituals, certain thoughts, certain actions help program the mind in a way to put it in this spiritual state. You could reach a spiritual state sans orthodoxy but it's sort of a proven tool - to the converted - and this is why they want to share it so badly.

throw your hand in the ay-er
if you eschew prayer

I dunno, I am in awe of so many things even while being an atheist. I forget how lightning is formed every time I watch a thunderstorm (this seriously happened to me, like, yesterday. It was all like boooom! and I said to myself "wow, how does that even happen? Oh wait, right." But lightning is still kind of mysterious because how on earth do clouds get their charge anyway? I guess everything has an electrical charge and maybe clouds are just super unstable because it's all this water vapor hustling around? Is this completely inane?).

The idea that the universe has always existed and will always exist, that it expands infinitely, and that every thing is made up of and connected to everything else is pretty magical to me.

I know, and in an intellectual sense it's orthodoxy that interests me, because the Evangelical movement pretty much washed their hands of literacy and reading comprehension in the '70s with the rise of the Moral Majority and I still kind of find the idea of "respecting tradition and putting any stock in the writings of the great minds of history" to be a charming novelty.

But woe to him or her that actually BELIEVES any of it. Ritual is a great tool but I'm pretty sure there are several hundred aphorisms about a good tool turning in the hand of its user.

xp to Adam

dunno, I am in awe of so many things even while being an atheist. I forget how lightning is formed every time I watch a thunderstorm (this seriously happened to me, like, yesterday. It was all like boooom! and I said to myself "wow, how does that even happen? Oh wait, right."

but surely most theists are ok with "that sort of science", though?

(I hope?)

Hmm, atheist, with the added belief that female followers of Abrahamic religions might as well be turkeys voting for Thanksgiving. Have mellowed in that I don't mind other people's religion if they're not using it to enable bigotry, sexism or the control of some other person's behaviour by threatening them with Hell.

Anecdotally, all the people around me who went Evangelical in the '70s were not very bright, with stupid parents to boot, and were as scared of a three-syllable word as THE DEBBIL himself.

female followers of Abrahamic religions might as well be turkeys voting for Thanksgiving

haha yeah :/. i don't really think of myself as an atheist and am close to many female followers of Abrahamic religions, so this is a thought i usually only give vent to privately but yeah.

i was always p. neutral on this but i have been getting like militantly atheist in the last year or so

but surely most theists are ok with "that sort of science", though?

Science & religion are alot closer than popular (political) opinion seems to think. Big Bang first theorized by a Catholic priest and all. Increasingly science describes a universe that is more and more magical, interconnected, unseen, etc. The more dogmatic, mythical stories in the Bibles of the world may be incompatible with archeological/geological findings, but I think the spiritual & cosmological makeup of the universe (particularly in Eastern religions) tend to benefit immensely from scientific study.

If science directly contradicts the bible then its wrong (evolution)

If it wasn't something people who wrote the bible had any concept of (gravity) no big problems.

obv some religious people accept evolution and some don't that's the problem with religion multiple grey areas and interpretation means its not really comparable with science apart from for extremists.

I think there's enough leeway in Xtianity to take what you want if you personally are able to reimagine it without the patriarchal elements. But it's also possible that the foundations of the language and theology are too much based in patriarchy/male power to ever be truly gender-value-neutral and still call it Christianity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mmskXXetcg

female followers of Abrahamic religions might as well be turkeys voting for Thanksgiving

love this. yup.

i'm not a fan of dawkins-style militant atheism but i'm way way less of a fan of organised religion making its presence felt in my life, and the latter's rather more dangerous, so railing against dawkins seems a bit wrong-headed in a "fight the real enemy" way

....and women wonder how come they fall into abusive relationships, convinced that there is some redemption to be had for being involved. The major western religions pretty much show me how that happens, whatever the religion.

I like being atheist *but* it's no fun unless you've read the Bible, at least, just to put the wind up the annoying end of the God-botherer brigade. Any human being that's ever tried to emotionally blackmail me using their imaginary divine friend has gotten a big earful of 'no, actually you're the blasphemer here, trying to say what God wants or needs from me, a third party, to suit what you happen to need or want from me yourself'.

I'm Irish Roman Catholic (IIRC)

But that's a background as opposed to practicing. I'm happy enough that nothing happens for a reason, that there are basic constants in this particular universe, and that there is no overarching consciousness controlling it all.

I can dig Dawkins as a science writer, and I kinda enjoy that he's out there pissing off organised religions, but I think he'd be better off chilling out with some bones in a lab somewhere doing some actual work.

Are there any mainstream rappers outed as atheists?

I like being atheist *but* it's no fun unless you've read the Bible

yeah! i'm an atheist/anti-religion because i was raised in a religious household with all the attendant crap that comes with that, but i'm so glad i do have that knowledge of xtianity and its workings

Without god how would rappers win Grammys?

oh, mainstream

haha I'm gonna post this anyway

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii1dtebj24M

amazing track, mebbe they got personal religions tho

I can't think of any public figure atheist who happens to be black, interestingly enough.

this will end well

I'm Irish Roman Catholic (IIRC)

But that's a background as opposed to practicing. I'm happy enough that nothing happens for a reason, that there are basic constants in this particular universe, and that there is no overarching consciousness controlling it all.

i like Dara Ó Briain's thing about being catholic, which i totally agree with.

"I’m staunchly atheist, I simply don’t believe in God. But I’m still Catholic, of course. Catholicism has a much broader reach than just the religion. I’m technically Catholic, it’s the box you have to tick on the census form: ‘Don’t believe in God, but I do still hate Rangers.’"

I feel like Obama's religiosity is a marriage of convenience, and still count him on the team.

also (and I have really no reason to think this, but I do) I suspect Kanye is secretly agnostic.

there is no overarching consciousness controlling it all.

To me, this is like denying your own role in the perception & creation of this quantum dance of energy we call reality.

suspect your quantum dance and Darraghmac's quantum dance aren't the same?

I'm Irish Roman Catholic (IIRC)

that's Irate Irish Roman Catholic

I think Mrs V's Catholicism is much as darragh describes. I self-identify as atheist because non serviam, basically, plus all the world's established faiths are so obviously human inventions.

Science is a human invention too.

Uh, science doesn't claim not to be. /No Dawkins

my favourite of them all (along with red pepper hummus) xp

yuck. waste of perfectly good hummus.

not to negate your personal hummus experience, of course.

god dawkins sucks so bad

Prefer Jalapeno or that North African one Sainsbury's do

was talking about militant atheist evolutionary biologists there

Are there any mainstream rappers outed as atheists?

― Philip Nunez, Monday, June 7, 2010 12:32 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"I run with a thievin squad/and none of us believe in god" - Big L

In the last year or so, I've really been opening up to faith in God, however. It's the beginning of a journey and I'm still shaky on a lot of it, but it's there. Just to clarify my "no" vote as not being agnostic.

― kingkongvsgodzilla, Wednesday, May 21, 2008 5:39 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Egad, what a weird time in my life. I was doing heavy praying at the time - saying the Lord's Prayer in my head over and over again on the bus. The praying was fun! I'm back to being just a plain old boring agnostic nowadays though.

kingkongvsgodzillavsgod

but surely most theists are ok with "that sort of science", though?

The lightning thing was just an example to display that not all atheists are militant, non spiritual, non magical rationalists.

i don't even think atheist is the right word? mostly i say i'm irreligious or not religious. sometimes i say i'm a materialist but then people think i'm into money.