The thing is, one can have an atheist religion and one can be an atheist and be religious (not tradtionally religious, but in the sense of using meaningful ritual in a social setting to celebrate one's place in the Cosmos). If you don't believe me, go to a UU church someday :). Atheism is the opposite of theism, not the opposite of religion.

Mendalla

As Mendalla pointed out, there are many religions or religious communities that are atheistic inasmuch as they don't believe in a separate, supernatural, interventionist God.

And there are people who feel spiritual but do not belong to any spiritual organization. This is known as "secular spirituality" and appears to be the fastest growing spiritual segment.

I am a Christian. But if God is defined as separate, supernatural and interventionist, and if this is regarded as the only possible defintion of God, then I am an atheistic Christian.

I believe you  and but with personal bias agree with all but the phrase in a social setting --

Somewhere in the NT, I believe a closet is mentioned....

Cordially,

Hi Arm!

I am and am not a Christian (If particles/waves can do that...)

'But if God is defined'--- stop there.

On the other hand I'll try:

God is God-like

Galaxies are neurons in the brain of God. (The Amydula portion)

God is totally unlike what you percieve Him to be, whatever that is.

Every thing from electron to galaxy is to some degree  aware.

God is aware of everything, in all dimensions, and always has been. And is really bored.

Einstein was wrong: God DOES roll the dice -- it keeps on comming up snake-eyes,

------------------

Do you ever think that the limits of human perfection is not the ultimate perfection?

When you see everything it's a human everything, no?

. 

The closet is turned inside out (or upside down) in the mental concept, as function of sole in revealing all the skeletons within that provide basis for the story. Then it is the myth or parable that gets the damn thing started in the first place to a state of deuce or duality ... is that divine or just deist?

What's in a word? Why powerful physical gods like silence in their court, wordy stuff screws up their desires in a negative dimension! That is like a fold in space or convolution that points to the f(rogue) emotion ... sometimes la-belled thought! It must be writ like Shintoism .. starts in silence of symbols to a nude sole as exposed ... outside the surrounding influence of wombish-Ness ... dark comfort? Yah, Hoo Dah known? Did I sah that yah hoo dah is an old word for God in Hebrew ... devilsh expression to King James that found ID ambiguous and meant too many things in the gross spectre ... big image?

Emotional people in their purity hate such things in their presence ... disturbs the unconscious, abstract, or celestial side that is missing ... somewhere off in the clouds! Does the mire image work the same way?

Yes, but tobe balanced really Pisces off the extremes (polity) so the medium was buried ... subliminal psyche as Sophia? Just as Isis ... cool! Best to be a high spatial drifter ... on Odysses (hajji)? Normal people don't know the same words as mediums and such mystical extentions of the norm sometime appear as Paul (pall) a hoers blanket ... sort of 'Ayrian experience when the damn thing is covered ... the pits ... the recessive Jinn thing ... nothing tuit?

But realize you can only say such things when anon-y-mus, if anybody knows you your dead shunned ... my own family ... allows that I am have crazed ... the other side well its a depth of story few would like to hear ... contains a lot of wines of pigs and legend ... grossly consuming beasts ... Shadow Personae that follows me ... subliminal of course .. and since it alks to me I'm a bit off ...

Get used to it phoqah ... Idid! Phoqah; core belle of heaven dead ringer to the senses?

Hi Happy G--How many of us who have Children, has seen when the child grows up he or she ,thinks they know more than the Father. The Bible says the greates mind of Man ,is but a babling fool to God. If we look at Canada and the U.S.A Countrys that seem to be moving away from God, are they getting better or worse?-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Happy Genius--Wrote--

Do you ever think that the limits of human perfection is not the ultimate perfection?

When you see everything it's a human everything, no?-------------------------------------------------Both of these Questions would take a long time for me to get into, May I just state . Yes and  NO.   airclean33

Atheism is simply superstition. It is retreat in the face of complexity, fear of diversity and food for a needful ego. It is the closing of the imagination and blinding to awe, wonder and the inexplicable: the universe stops dead at the limits of the atheist's intellectual capacities. Atheists chicken out when it comes to reflection and self-examination... atheism is a denial of selfhood.

I know because I was one for a number of shallow, stupid, dissatisfying decades.

Just wanted to quote this in its entirety first, before dissecting it.  I'd hate for it to go away.

Atheism is, as I think many Christians would even tell you, the opposite of superstition.  Mike, I really can't believe you began your rant by tripping over the start line.  Atheism is the rejection of superstitious claims that something must be out there, not because we have proof that nothing is out there, but because we have no reason to believe it to be the case.

By extension, atheism is also the rejection of complex stories about a complex god(s) that is used to explain complex phenomena.  It is the rejection of bad explanations.

I don't know of an atheistic position or a popular representative of atheism that is "against" diversity.  Maybe you could point out an example for us.  I have no problem pointing out religious figures who are against cultural, ethnic and sexual diversity.

When atheists are at our worst, we act as if we are better, or smarter, than theists.  Yeah, we like to think that we are right, but we're hardly alone there.  But we do not claim that our beliefs or our rejection of beliefs elevates us to a position that will reap some eternal benefit.  There's an ultimate ego trip - that our baseless belief will get us a ticket to an unprovable eternal paradise, and non-believers or those who believe incorrectly will suffer an equally unprovable fate.

I think everyone experiences "awe" in one form or another.  There are awe-inspiring sights, works of art, and life experiences that are universal.  What atheists don't do, is attribute every awe-inspiring moment to something that, for all we know, does not exist.  That does not mean we "stop dead" at the unknown.  Again, you're describing religion.  Christianity, for example, explains how the universe began.  It gives us an uncaused first cause.  Case closed.  Atheists don't accept that uncaused first cause, because there is no evidence that this is the case, and it therefore fails to explain anything.  All we can say is, "We don't know, but we have smart people working on it."  I think that is a far more humble and honest position than that of Christianity.

I'm not sure where atheists "chicken out when it comes to reflection and self-examination."  Certainly, there is no mechanism preventing atheists from engaging in introspection and contemplation of one's thoughts.  Atheists and theists, when they question things internally, probably get their answers from the same place.  Theists are just more likely to think they are getting the answers from God.

Mike, all of the above criticisms seem to be rooted in your experiences.  Maybe you were a depressed, angry, selfish, closed-minded atheist, but those descriptions are not synonymous with atheism.  I'm sorry you were miserable while you were a non-believer, but I also know some happy drunks who were miserable when they were sober.

Hi HG:

I feel and think that God is ALL, and that the ALL is self-creative, omni-aware and omnipresent. I feel that IT is not only the totality of everything but also the ultimate creative power.

I also feel that the biological part of God is continuously evolving, and that we humans are a part of that evolution. Moreover, we are the only biological species (as far as we know) that has the capacity to become aware that we, along with everyone and everything else, are an inseparable part of God. This makes us into co-creators and co-evolvers in God's creative game. We are creator as well as created, evolver as well as evolved.

Yes, I agree with you that Einstein was wrong, but I think that God rolls marbles rather than dice. And, in God's marble game, we humans are marbles as well as players.

In my early forties I was severely depressed. I was thinking too much, and badly. At one time I was close to suicide. I thought I had lost my marbles.

In desperation I consulted a psychiatrist, who diagnosed me as "manic-depressive" and prescribed Lithium as a cure. But the Lithium slowed my thinking. I would rather be dead than dull, so I chucked the Lithium and tried Eastern meditation and Eastern spiritual philosophy as a cure.

It worked! I not only found my lost marbles, I found more marbles than I had lost. Enough marbles to fill and expanding universe.

Ever since I have been playing with my marbles. And, in the process of playing, I find more and more marbles, and then play with those. Playing cosmic marbles has become my favourite pasttime.

Your comic marbleplayer,

Arminius

(darn, I keep forgetting that "s" in cosmic :-)

Blessed be the rapture (void, maw ) of marbles ... it assists to make sure the other side doesn't know what we're talking about! Did anuone see tha nonsensical connection between twins on the Dr. Phil Show today?

This is part of the game plan ... where real humans didn't wish to know (Exodus 20:19; thus anon -sense of emotional outburst, uprising of just swelling interests) then there is the other side of the story in depth ... that's Tøom in archaic Hebrew that King James hated as ambivilous ... rather deep like spatial thinking ... the man as King was illiterate! Gross leadership?

Does anyone know what Roman tics thought about thinking peoples?

Such insight requires some depth in the superficial world that worships simplicity ... thsu Simon Petre ... the ole phe art that proved that something could ignite in simple pastimes ... ethereal eh? Could cos a primal blast or bust in other tongues ...

Pull yourself together folks ... the emotional powers are going to Jack us up for a tumble ... why thinking is a secondary or subtle sense ... subliminal as the devil as the emotions grow! Isn't that eL ... keeps the universe bright! They do say that thinking is a pain in an emotional surround ... womb-ish humurs? Hurts to get out ... primary learning experience ... dropped here ... Dante's Fall?

My reply to Chansen:

“Atheism is, as I think many Christians would even tell you, the opposite of superstition.”

• The superstition underlying atheism is the vanity of assuming that the human mind is smart enough to comprehend the universe from its particular, selective little samplings of all there is. Atheism is problematic because it STARTS with the rejection of "superstition" and, in that basket, places most of the intellectual and artistic insight that makes culture (as opposed to technology) and cultural development possible. Depending on how bright the atheist is, he or she — sooner or later — bottoms out on being able to explain or connect with very little that’s immediately relevant to the human condition. Don't forget that Rene Descartes explained his insights into scientific mathematics as a gift from "the Angel of Truth".

The most honest atheists simply leave gaps. And those gaps involve side-stepping discussion of some fundamental human experiences, crucial to social functioning… on the grounds that they lie beyond the reach of scientific explanation and/or popular understanding of the current scientific explanation.

Science is fluid; a 10-year old science textbook is bound to be partly out of date, and its statements are provisional. You can follow science (i try to with a subscription to New Scientist — a brilliant magazine) but we also have to live life. Societies, by and large, are supported upon what are essentially mythic foundations. The myths are allegories of slowly garnered wisdom and they are necessary because they are widely accessible and not subject to sudden change — they do change, but gradually (as a rule) and (usually) in negotiated ways. Science, logic, rationality and skepticism are very apropriately the tools of a  society or a culture, but they fail us as our masters. We have emotions, imaginations and psychologies that demand more than rationality can provide.

You say, “Atheism is the rejection of superstitious claims that something must be out there, not because we have proof that nothing is out there, but because we have no reason to believe it to be the case.”

• Were we to strip society — any culture, in fact — of claims that extend beyond substantive measurability, we would lead very drab, intellectually totalitarian and weakly co-ordinated lives.

Most of the content of human culture lies beyond substance, matter and logical explanation simply because the needs of a humanly complex social creature to construct meaning and designate significance take it beyond science and into the numinous.

The complexity of the narratives is required not by logic but by the complexity of the human organism and the countless possible varieties of social organisation. Human beings, by and large, have emotions, goals, imaginations and forms of creativity that are too complex in their inter-relatedness to communicate in a text book on life. Life is lived impressionistically because life is too multidimensional and complicated to live fully unless you take a few leaps into the unknowable.

In its “rejection of complex stories about a complex god(s) that is (are) used to explain complex phenomena”, atheism makes the mistake of basing its judgments on the misapplication of a narrowly prescriptive logic system that nature may or may not obey. 

“It is the rejection of bad explanations,” you say, Chansen.

• Well that didn’t turn atheists like Pol Pot or Stalin into bearers of sweetness and light, did it?

You say you “don't know of an atheistic position or a popular representative of atheism that is "against" diversity”. You say you have “no problem pointing out religious figures who are against cultural, ethnic and sexual diversity”.

• Come on... the world's most narrowly prescriptive and unimaginative of states have been built on atheistic foundations.

You assertions here leave me only to assume that you see, for example, the Khmer Rouge, Stalin, Mao and Albania's Enver Hoxha (all fun-loving promoters of atheism) as celebrants of the rich "cultural, ethnic and sexual diversity" of their states? That they were “better, or smarter, than theists”. I think you’re overlooking a few  parallels between, say, the Chinese “cultural revolution” and Stalin’s or Pol Pot’s excesses with the height of the Inquistion’s "achievements" in the 16th century.

“But we do not claim that our beliefs or our rejection of beliefs elevates us to a position that will reap some eternal benefit?”

• I thought that’s precisely what atheistic North Korea promises. Marxism is ultimately utopian. So is atheism: it subscribes to a view that the world's problems will vanish as soon as everyone is rational, logical and reasonable.

Christianity, for example, “explains how the universe began.”

• Say again?I suppose there are some sad souls who take the Biblical creation stories (there are two of them) as literal factuality… I don’t personally know anyone who does. I have met people, though, who thought Coronation Street was a real place.

The Biiblical creation stories are cultural creation stories — like the Ainu story about a wagtail very slowly and patiently parts primeval chaos into order — that provide a dialectic (a discussion agenda) — or dialectical imagery — for discussing the priorities of the society. That's why it doesn't matter that there are two creation stories in the Old Testament, or that there are contradictions in the New Testament. They are essentially poetic expressions of experienced truths and therefore intellectually open-ended. For most reasonably sane followers of the Abrahamic (and largely Zoroastrian) tradition — Judaism, Islam and Christianity, etc — understanding is sought through a process of deep reflection and discussion. Prayer is about drawing oneself into a kinder, more caring and more interesting future, remembering that we live among other people and that we do not control nature's infinities. The scriptures are merely starting points for finding ourselves. You make the mistake of fundamentalists, terrorists and Richard Dawkins if you read scriptures as expressions of literal truth: they are about the generation of cultural creativity.

You say: “atheists don't accept that uncaused first cause, because there is no evidence that this is the case, and it therefore fails to explain anything.  All we can say is, "We don't know, but we have smart people working on it."  I think that is a far more humble and honest position than that of Christianity.

I'm not sure where atheists "chicken out when it comes to reflection and self-examination."  Certainly, there is no mechanism preventing atheists from engaging in introspection and contemplation of one's thoughts.  Atheists and theists, when they question things internally, probably get their answers from the same place.  Theists are just more likely to think they are getting the answers from God.

• Chansen, NO genuine theist is going to claim that he/she knows the “mind of god” (that expression, by the way. was originally used to describe science”). The closest any honest Christian will say is that they found an answer in prayer. Most theists will understand that the best they can hope to do is find some way of living in provisional harmony with the intentionality that seems to be embedded in “the creation”. Some see that “intention” in literalistic terms; many see it creative terms, recognizing that the slowly accumulating insights of countless generations can probably help us live our lives in happier ways than in the past.

It is very easy to identify the worst, most destructive expressions of any realm of human knowledge or activity and damn it all on those grounds. I'm in the midst of that right now and without regrets in relation to "the economy" (And I have done that above, deliberately, as a tease, above in my choice of of people like Stalin and Pol Pot as exemplars of atheism.)

My personal experience has been that the varieties of culture (and I’ve managed to cram significant experience of just a few into my 65 years) are the richest resource available to us… and it saddens me that, our expansive enthusiasm for consumption, intellectual imperialism and technological arrogance is annihilating these other ways of living and understanding the human condition when our real need to understand them is becoming increasingly deperate.

You offer: “Maybe you were a depressed, angry, selfish, closed-minded atheist, but those descriptions are not synonymous with atheism.  I'm sorry you were miserable while you were a non-believer, but I also know some happy drunks who were miserable when they were sober.”

• Thank you. But actually, I was very happy as an atheist. It was simple. And then — when I sat down and wrote a list of the things I really, really thought were important — I recognized the enormous conceit of it.

I would say that I am no “happier” as a “believer”: more fulfilled, more creatively resourced certainly (but I think I’d call call myself a questioner — there’s not a lot that I “believe”: I’m still looking…). I WOULD say that I have been happy ever since I got out of boarding school 48 years ago (I hated boarding school).

And I haven’t had a nightmare I’ve managed to recall since an extreme experience I had 47 years ago (see my ‘Profile’ for my ‘Testimony’ if you’re interested).

That depends on the atheism in question really. Applied science can solve many of the world's problems; infant and childhood mortality is now unusual in Canadian society for instance. Not all of them though: poverty is not rare in Canada unfortunately. I don't believe it is impossible to make poverty rare; but doing so requires public and political will that has very little to do with rationality, or logic. As for "reasonable", that can cover a lot of ground. The reasonableness called for here has very little to do with belief or non-belief in God.

I very much agree with you, mscribing. There is plenty of evidence that altruism has a genetic foundations and is not unique to humans. Culture plays an enormous role in deciding what is “good” and what is “bad” — and in who owes what to whom and to whom one is “naturally” obligated. I believe there’s often an aesthetic thread in “morality” as well as pragmatic and religiously-inspired threads. “Reason” and “reasonability” too are culturally malleable concepts, while virtues like hospitality and “decency” are almost wholly culturally sourced. It has been my experience as a journalist that it’s best to beware of any claims of a single cause for anything.

My personal experience, as an atheist for many years, was that atheism does embody a kind of utopianism and some recklessly unsupportable assumptions about human intellectual capacities (that's most visibly expressed in the utopianism). Atheism, by virtue of being a very particularly Western ideology, can be oblivious to the wisdom of other cultures to the point of supremacism. I saw in the denial of culturally-sustaining wisdom traditions/religions/supernaturalism (their dismissal as “superstition”) a potentially ugly inclination to also dismiss or devalue the people of those cultures. Religions are justly blamed for the same thing so I’m not saying atheism is “worse” … rather, that it’s not much different.

I came to faith out of curiosity (sparked by my wife's call to ministry) and soon realized that wisdom traditions and religions, like the arts, offered a tremendous extension of  territory to explore and languages with which to articulate and reflect on those explorations. I realised that “bad” experiences around religion had far less to do with the content and teachings of faith than with the unpleasantness of the people who were abusing religion for their own reasons (including a kind of determinedly selective ignorance). I have always found it hard to understand how the expansive beauty of a wisdom tradition —  be it Christian, Islamic, Judaistic, indigenous Polynesian (Maori) or South Asian (the ones with which I’ve had some experience) — can turn into narrowness, bigotry and vindictiveness. But somehow, it can and too often does.

People have a dark side, and  it’s amazing to me how they come to that. At the end of the 19th century, for example. Germany exemplified high European values, its arts flourished, it boasted philosophers, scientists, revolutionaries, atheists and theologians of what seemed global relevance. Half a century later they had triggered two enormous wars, were stuffing people into gas chambers and facing Götterdämmerung. I have yet to understand that… and there’s been Pol Pot’s Cambodia… that beautiful, gentle culture… I think we still have some way to go before we really “get” what it’s all about.