You either belive it, or you don't.

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My hebrew scripture prof said that, and i am verging on not beliving. Antole France called himself an atheist catholic, what do you think ?

― anthony easton (anthony), Friday, 20 September 2002 16:31 (twenty-three years ago)

in the same way freud was an atheist jew i suppose...

like thomas huxley i hold that agnosticism is a viable position...

― mike (ro)bott, Friday, 20 September 2002 16:47 (twenty-three years ago)

Atheism is a belief. It is quite possible to go from one extreme to the other.

― nathalie (nathalie), Friday, 20 September 2002 16:53 (twenty-three years ago)

The two old friends of mine who post here are a Catholic atheist (Andrew L) and a CofE atheist - at least I think that's what Tim is, except obviously CofE is an infinitely weaker adjective than Catholic. I expect I'm a CofE atheist too.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 20 September 2002 17:57 (twenty-three years ago)

Yes, but CofE practically begs atheism.

Church of England = do we worship god? No, we worship England!

― kate, Friday, 20 September 2002 18:06 (twenty-three years ago)

My xgf used to proclaim she was a nonpractising atheist. I heart that answer.

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Friday, 20 September 2002 18:14 (twenty-three years ago)

I've heard Jeremy Hardy say of CofE "Why not go the extra inch and be an atheist?"

I went the other way when filling out my profile on a web dating site, Mr Noodles: one question was religion (atheist for me), the next was observance, and the most appropriate choice seemed to be "daily devotions".

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 20 September 2002 18:20 (twenty-three years ago)

a catholic atheist for me

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Friday, 20 September 2002 18:41 (twenty-three years ago)

I am agnostic, for the reason mentioned above (atheism is a belief). I was brought up jewish, but I realized that morality can exist independantly of belief.
Has anyone seen the hierarchy of morality developed by (Harvard psychotherapist) Kohlberg? He asserts that acting a certain way simply through fear of punishment is a childlike response to moral reasoning. I don't think he mean to criticize all religion, but that is what is implicitly argued. Religion, in this sense, infantilizes.

― Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Friday, 20 September 2002 19:09 (twenty-three years ago)

i believe but not in what the christian church likes to preach, in any of its branches. actually when i think about it i have developed a personal belief system and so have the majority of my friends. none of us would lay claim to being religious but most wouldnt deny spirituality in some form or other. aaron you just posted as i type, and yes i agree religion infantilizes in this way. morality is ( to me ) a personal issue that develops over a lifetime,behaving under fear of punishment is not a particularly mature way of making decisions about actions.

― donna (donna), Friday, 20 September 2002 19:20 (twenty-three years ago)

The Kohlberg system is quite agreeable, although the higher bits are forced to start relying on some sort of Maslow-ish "self-actualized" internal morality. But yes, his conceptions of morality and good are entirely humanist ones, especially as they approach those more relativist higher levels. I find it pretty typical that people usually find his heirarchy reasonable at first glance, given that it puts a sort of relative "maximum-good" morality at the peak and rule-based systems at the bottom; in reality we all like to think this because we all like to think of our personal conceptions of that top end as the right ones. (But we disagree on them, which is why it always comes back down to those simple rule-based foundations.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 20 September 2002 19:32 (twenty-three years ago)

I mean, would fundamentalist Christians look at the Kohlberg heirarchy and say "no, the pinnacle is aboslute rule-based Biblical obediance?" (My guess is no, because they conceive as "rule-based" as being Man's Law and are happy for anything that tells them there's a higher level of morality.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 20 September 2002 19:33 (twenty-three years ago)

"You either belive it, or you don't."

Bullshit. There is such a thing as uncertainty. I'm an atheist, but I was confirmed, so I could still technically be defined as a Catholic atheist. I'd prefer just "atheist", though.

― weasel diesel (K1l14n), Friday, 20 September 2002 21:22 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm waiting for the next national Census so i can list myself as an Apathist. I don't believe in any god ['belief' as much in the sense of "i don't believe in capital punishment" as "i don't believe in the tooth fairy"]. But by the same token, i don't actively disbelieve in any god. It's an irrelevance, like having a favourite rugby team or member of n*sync.

― petra jane (petra jane), Friday, 20 September 2002 23:07 (twenty-three years ago)

That is the trouble with the term 'atheist': it is defining my beliefs in relation to god. Obviously as an answer to a question about god it is fine, but to state it as if it is in some way my religion is something of a category error.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 20 September 2002 23:21 (twenty-three years ago)

I used to call myself an Atheist but that implies too much commitment I think (though I probably still am one - I refuse the kind of 'open question' option agnosticism holds out, rational or no). I envy people with belief and faith, some of them anyway.

― Tom (Groke), Friday, 20 September 2002 23:22 (twenty-three years ago)

I don't understand it but I gather from things I've encountered that serious intellectual attempts to talk about morality and religion are not so simplistic as to come down to 'fear of punishment' from god.

nitsuh, I'm surprised you haven't heard of carol gilligan's criticisms of kohlberg.

― Josh (Josh), Friday, 20 September 2002 23:22 (twenty-three years ago)

i believe everything, it's less work and you see the mistakes quicker

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 21 September 2002 09:18 (twenty-three years ago)

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