Islamaphobia?

Great post Bert and OneMore yours at 11.15 makes sense too.

Since evolution gave us stags and rhinos, a horse with a fighting horn isn't THAT far out.

Probably wouldn't shit rainbows, though.

X post

"I'm trying to figure out whether you critically analyse everything"

I'm voting "yup" to that

Is it because we modern, Western atheists have very full lives in general that there's no God shaped hole?

Whereas village life 150 years ago would have revolved more around the church as a centre of community and faith in god so deeply assumed that it would be very radical to move away from it? That it was timetable and structure and ritual and "a day of rest" far more than it was ineffable questions of being?

"Yes, I understand that the way Bert regards her atheism is that it is not part of a system of belief. I can also grasp the rhetorical strategy of atheism as not skiing."

I don't doubt for a second that you understand these things. What I find hard to grasp is that you seem tho think that I must be wrong or that the strategy is fallacious.

I was brought up in a free thinking Bernard Shaw reading, port and walnuts sort of socialist home. My parents were atheists, although in later life my mother identified as a humanist. My father said that any lingering traces of his childhood faith were stamped out in the Pacific in the early 1940s. I was brought up to believe that agnosticism is the only intellectually honest position to take. However in adult life. I came to think that, as the possibility of the existence of God is so microscopically small, and that from a "small p" political point of view, agnosticism gives succor to theists, it is important to identify as an atheist.

I do not believe that there is a god or gods. That is what an atheist is. I believe lots of other things- that humanity is basically good, that parsnips are delicious, that homeopaths should be run out of town, that children have a right to childhood, that Idris Elba is beautiful, that old fashioned one nation Tories are more honest and.acceptable than Blairite Labour people, that being gay is no big deal, that abortion on demand is a basic human right although I personally could not have one, that early and detailed sex education is essential ..........I could go on. Not a single one of these things has anything to do with my atheism, and it would be perfectly possible to be an atheist and believe the exact opposite.

If I was a theist, my views on many things on that list would be informed by the requirements of my faith. My belief system. Except the parsnips. Probably. Unless I was Edmund Blackadder's aunt.

This is what happens when evolving primate neurostructures over-emphasise pattern analysis.

A lot of leaping around, a lot of figurative flying fecal matter.

Fascinating debate though.

I come from the view that people have reasons for everything that they do. We are complex, social beings who do things for complex and often social reasons

I don't agree that applies universally. It certainly does not apply in my case as to why I have never believed in a god.

I've read theories that there is a faith gene- if that were true it would make perfect sense for me. I definitely don't have a single faith gene. That makes more sense to me than saying the 7 year old me made a decision for complex and social reasons to be an atheist.

Also, people would love the comfort of knowing that when we die it's not the end. We live on somewhere else. This includes loved ones. Religion is a very good provider and it's what it thrives on.

Even those who believe in nature this and that. In one with nature and so on. The same theory still applies. They all understand that they will be decay and be joining all the other plant life and animals.

It's no different to reincarnation, the same thing applies.

OneMore is absolutely correct so I suppose atheists who were believers but stopped believing would able to have a conversation with Buffy about why they did so.

Apparently my husband was quite religious as a teenager, we've never really discussed it beyond he said it was a phase he went through. He must have presumably had a reason to believe at one point but from the way he talks about it I don't get the sense he actively found reasons not to believe, but, like me could find no reason to continue with his belief.

7days no, religiosity and spiritually is not real. Region is part of society in the same way politics is. It helps with social cohesion. It is one of those things that make people stick together because of a social norm. People Amy agree on it because, 1- the they were socially engineered too, 2- they chose what will explain something missing in their lives.
The lack of understanding of the world is a big player in understanding religion.
It is also another way people are controlled. Opium for the masses will rink a bell.

Spiritually and religiosity is that proses where people are practicing religion or try to find some form of help from something of a higher being. I would assume with spiritually is to do with things Beyond the human realm. More about your soul and whether it has connection to other energies outside the body.
There is no fact for the existence of the soul.

What your probably trying to say is that humans have a quest to know more and in turn that leaves a void. This is where region comes in and fills that void. It will explain why you are not doing that well in certain areas. God, evil, bad energy and so on are all to blame for human era, or breaking the agreed social norm.

Social norms are relative. That is why you have different religious groups,politics, and culture.

I don't think I am being rude One, but thanks for caring.

There are various ways to atheism, though - being born to atheist parents and never buying in; getting and then rejecting a religious method at school; lifelong belief shaken by tragedy; lifelong belief ousted by educational input or other realisation.

I'm sure all the atheists involved feel differently about their atheism, not least if they moved from church going to not.

Buffy , you are trying to come from this from the view there must be reasons not to believe. Whereas for me it is simply a case of there never was any reason to believe.

So far as whether we are just blobs of life, we are and we aren't. I don't believe in afterlife. But everything we do in this life matters so that extent the "afterlife" is not what happens to us after we die but what happens here and in the future.