To wonder why some atheists are so obsessed with being atheist?

[Fanfeckintastic]

I say this as an atheist myself, so many people seem obsessed with "not believing"! I don't mean just being vocal in their disgust at the Catholic church etc (completely understandable) I mean Ricky Gervais for example, somehow I have "liked" him on Facebook and he never stops posting skeptic stuff.

Why do non believers put so much effort and thought into "not believing"

On a side note, I'm in Ireland and sometimes get very pissed off with how much control the church still has, it sickens me actually. But I'm talking about just atheists almost making a hobby of being atheists?

AIBU in my observation?

do you think that abigfootism, afairyism, and aleprachaunism are belief systems? Most of us don't believe in a lot of things, and there are no special words for those types of people

Many people who label themselves as atheists take the position that there is no strong evidence for god, so they don't believe in his existence. That's different from thinking that he necessarily doesn't exist, or that one thinks they have evidence he doesn't exist

I'm confused by your post. I like the first paragraph, but in conjunction with your second it sounds like you might want to argue that someone who says they fairies don't exist is being unreasonable, and they should adopt a milder position that leave opens the possibility?

Not really confined to atheism though is it?
Lots of believers seem obsessed with god and love to push it in other's faces all the time, it's same with obsessive gym bores, parents, dog owners... I could go on practically forever.

It's just a person with an interest or belief that you happen to find annoying when they go on about it.
Some find fanatical atheists annoying, some find 'god botherers' annoying when they won't shut up about the lord. My personal dislike is vegetarians trying to convert me at dinner parties (then I tell em I'm a beef farmer - love it!), DW has a lesbian friend who literally won't shut up about her gay life and constantly posts all this quite inappropriate stuff on FB / babbles on when we see her etc, DW finds this quite wearing.

I think believers are more judgemental. Religious scripts talk about what bad things will happen to non-believers (inc. people of other faiths).
So these judgements are made on me, as an athiest, but believers get offended by abit of debate or mockery. Please I think eternal damnation is a bit more offensive, lol.

I have never seen teams of atheists going door to door seeking to convert people to their view.

Have you?

I can understand religious folk getting irritated by all the atheists banging on about their special beliefs. I mean, all the ritualistic singing and chanting to Christopher Hitchens in all schools, on TV, in those special houses dedicated to him. Then the Richard Dawkins Atheists blowing up the Hitchensists in his name. Those heads of the Atheist movement, with their political influence in parliament with their interference in women's jobs, uteruses and reputations etc etc blah blah blah. I call bullshit on this thread.

mrsrisotto - not to mention all those atheists claiming first dibs on places for their kids in state-funded schools.

"So these judgements are made on me, as an athiest, but believers get offended by abit of debate or mockery. Please I think eternal damnation is a bit more offensive, lol."

King exactly!

Eternal damnation is such a horror there are almost no words for it. If you think of the worst tragedy ever, the worst thing you can think of, and multiply that by a hundred million, that still wouldn't be the tiniest patch on what is basically 99% of the world's population being sentenced to burn alive in agony forever. If there is a God who does that, he's not remotely "loving" is he.

I don't understand it to be honest. They're making something they don't have part of their identity. To me it's as silly as making "Not British" and how "Not British" I am part of my identity. It would make more sense to make something you do have a strong part of yourself.

But that's just me.

Assholes, idiots, intelligent people and nice people exist in all walks of life, and atheists aren't exempt from that.

I was speaking to an evangelizing atheist recently. She had once been an evangelizing Christian. Her belief in god had changed, but she was still a preachy: "I'm right, everyone else is wrong" type.

I don't think it matters what you believe about god. It's what you believe about other people that matters. Everyone is a product of their knowledge and experience. No one is better/kinder/more intelligent than another just because they do/don't/don't know if a god exists.

"No one is better/kinder/more intelligent than another just because they do/don't/don't know if a god exists."

I'd agree it doesn't automatically make you thick or evil to believe in a deity. However, I think you can make a case for "kinder" being more a preserve of the don't knows or the "God can't have meant it like THAT"s, and the level of threat from the do know there is a God types being far higher.

If you have a really strong belief in anything, kind and nice tend to fall by the wayside. The two things can generally not stay in the same brain "I have a real duty to be nice to everyone" and "I have a strict devotion to X outside force, and its rules cannot be deviated from". Dedication to God and dedication to the Party bring about the same results. Not being particularly sure and bumbling along but not wanting to hurt anyone perpetrates no atrocities (it also gets nothing done, but this is a different issue).

I'm interested in political violence (that sounds terrible, I don't mean as a perpetrator!) and read a bit about it when I have time. Something interesting is that people believe all terrorists are psychopaths. They aren't - the proportion is slightly higher than in general population but nothing remarkable. What terrorists are is true believers who have convinced themselves, sometimes with a lot of soul searching and misery, that a particular aim is far more important than everything. They are you or me who have become convinced. There is no-one who is immune to ever taking up the Armalite, as it were, except the person who can't focus on anything much for more than ten seconds and is wondering idly what's for his tea.

True believers can be a great force for good and also a great force for evil, but "kindness" tends not to be on the list.

Snap Deftones We know how to liven up a party

OP YANBU - the trend seems to be to quite an aggressive atheism which troubles me almost as much as religious zeal. Actually I'm more of an agnostic. I don't have a faith but by my logic you can't disprove the existence of God - although I consider it highly improbable.

However like it or not, Christianity is a hugely important part of our cultural heritage and to just dismiss it as medieval claptrap I think is a little ignorant. The church is an important part of my community and I have seen first hand some of the good it can do. The horrific cruelties perpetrated by the Catholic Church don't make this less of a fact.

"However like it or not, Christianity is a hugely important part of our cultural heritage and to just dismiss it as medieval claptrap I think is a little ignorant."

It's a bit older than medieval :) That aside, this is conflating "good things Christians do" with Christianity, which is an error.

Christianity believes that evil entered into the world by the mechanism of a talking serpent (not a snake, it still had legs at this point) telling a naked woman to eat a piece of fruit. God, who was everywhere and knew everything, didn't know this was going to happen and wasn't there. Although he was there and did know.

How normal and sensible is that? How does that make any sense at all?

Do you want me to go on?

I have experienced 'aggressive atheism' for me it is someone who brings the subject up out of context and says mocking and belittling things about religion whereas normally that person would be more circumspect about their views on minorities, gay marriage etc.

The argument I have with my aggressive atheist friend is that he becomes to me as fundamentalist in his view as ardent religious people and both are a pain in the arse and are trying to control what I think when what I think is my view and my right ( which by the way I feel no need to argue with people about - they can be told what I think if they ask me but I don't care if they agree with me or not - I don't require anyone else's validation).

I don't agree religion causes anything, people do wrong and some people like to warp it up in whatever legitimising way they want it to including religion but fundamentally FGM and being anti- abortion or shooting a girl trying to go to school - that's just plain old people being sorry, utter cunts.

I am absolutely sure if there was no religion our social problems wouldn't just suddenly disappear as I think people who equate religion with a certain dispicable practice tend to be suggesting. People will just be cunts under some other banner.

The important thing is I try to be a decent person and so does my atheist friend.

Meant to say we both try to be decent and I appreciate a lot about him so when he starts being actually a bit rude to me 'a whole part of your life is utter crap you do know that SpanishLady' I firmly tell him he's starting to sound like his cousins the fundamental religious person so I'm checking out as it bores me being told what to think.

I admit this infuriates him..... (;

They're making something they don't have part of their identity.

I don't think the vast majority do. I agree with your point to the extent it applies though. Though I note you could make the same point about vegetarians. I think it's just a quirk of language that we have a word for not-meat-eating as opposed to (a positive) word for not believing in God. Vegetarians are also defining themselves by what they don't do. The quirk of language makes atheism look like a stranger choice than it really is.

Thinking about it, has Dawkins or somebody tried to establish the term "Brights" precisely to solve this problem. I find it a bit cringey, but it shows the problem is recognised.

Actually, it wasn't Dawkins, haven't time to check this at the moment, but I think this is what I'm talking about.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brights_movement

No shockingly it doesn't which is why I'm not a "proper" Christian. I also concede that I am conflating good things Christians can do with Christianity itself. Actually I've read through the whole thread since posting and I've found it really interesting - yours and Oxfordbags posts in particular.

I probably fit into the cultural Christian category. My position isn't as well read and well informed as yours but I have a huge distrust of ideological certainty. Faith can surely not exist without doubt and from where I stand the horrors inflicted by all religions seem to come from those who are certain of their position. Faith and religion aren't automatically the same thing and to mock those who have faith seems cruel to me. Those who I know who have faith (both Christians and Muslims) seem to consider their religion a duty and I respect the sacrifices that they make interns of fasting, charity work and just the time spent going to church week in week out.

I don't respect religion but I do respect faith. This is all a bit deep for a Saturday morning!

Wasabi deep but enjoyable (that sounds a bit worrying but you know what I mean!) I would totally agree with you it's faith rather than beliefs, and, more specifically, the absence of doubt.

Doubt comes naturally to people and you have to work on forcing it out. Doing so distorts your original thought because you have to start accepting things which you never would have previously just to avoid doubting. It also means you start making weird logical connections you wouldn't normally and respecting people who don't seem to have the doubts you have. If your best mate told you he wanted you to blow yourself up outside Sainsbury's for some ill-defined utopian aim you'd tell him to fuck off and get his head checked. If someone who's a respected leader and knows a lot about the religion and has a lot of time for you says you've been specially chosen for a martyrdom operation, and it's a really important responsibility, and you'll be doing a great thing which will see your name remembered forever - well, the game just changed.

I am not slagging off people who believe in things - I do myself. So I wouldn't at all want to personally insult you or believers on MN and I hope it's not taken that way (I find the central ideas of Christianity a bit strange but you'd undoubtedly think the same about my beliefs). It's more the nature of belief in itself which causes both brilliant and horrible things to occur and I think we have to accept that.

Shockinglybad - that's shockingly ignorant. Christians know the meaning of the word allegory. Luckily, most atheists do too. At least, that's what I believe. I don't actually have any proof but I'm minded to extend atheists the generosity that you aren't minded to extend Christians.

So it's an allegory for what? How did sin get into the world then, and for how many of your fellow Christians is it literally true and not just a nice story?

What other parts of the Bible are not true, but stories? Is there a handy guide to tell you which parts to leave out and which parts are TRUE FACTS? Because I can tell you from actually having known them that loads and loads of Christians believe there was a serpent, there was a tree, there was a woman with her kit off and it all actually happened. I would venture to suggest that "this is a charming allegory" is not a mainstream view for Christianity through the world, especially, shall we say, for the less middle-class parts of it.

People who say that religion doesn't cause all these atrocities and problems, etc., and that they'e the fault of people, are missing the big point - religion is created by people. Created by people in order to not only explain things and comfort themselves, but also give themselves benefits and to justify prejudices, narrow-mindedness, bigotry and worse. I know religious people believe that supernatural entities have bestowed religion upon us, but obviously, that is insanity.

Religion is people giving themselves a 'get out of jail free' card for being cunts.

And SpanishLady, FGM is done in the name of religion. You don't get Atheist anti-abortion protesters killing doctors and so on. Yes, it's an excuse, but religion is still what's making them do it. If someone mentally ill kills a person, they'e still killed a person. And at least mental illness is a genuine thing that people can't help suffering from, unlike religion, which is grown adults choosing to think like small children, and believe in invisible, non-existent fictional characters, and refusing to engage even a small portion of logic and reason.

But you know what? As religion causes so much death, suffering, hatred and so many problems worldwide as an excuse for people being cunts, then bloody hell, surely that is the most compelling argument of all for religion being the most powerful force for bad, and it must be got rid of?! In actual fact, this means that anyone who defends the right to support systems that kill or hurt millions of people year in, year out, is an absolutely psychopathic piece of shit!

If an oppressive regime in a single country did to its people what religion currently gives people an excuse to do everywhere, then the world would be up in arms about it.

The way religion 'gets off the hook' for what it gives people an excuse to do to others is so disgraceful that there are no words to describe the depths of its badness.

HOWEVER, on the other hand, there is NOTHING good that people do, or have done, or would do, in the name of religion that Atheists/non-believers haven't also done, or wouldn't also do.

It is entirely possible to be both agnostic and atheist. Those terms address two different positions.

I am agnostic - I do not know
I am atheist - I do not believe

Gnostics are the dogmatic among us, whatever the belief or lack of. Those who claim to know are those who make demands that this 'knowledge' be assumed true. Gnosticism naturally couples with positive belief more than with lack of belief.

I don't understand those who say they are agnostic, as if it means they haven't made up their open minds yet. How can you not know what you believe (even if you can't construct a rational argument or know exactly why you believe what you do)?

And Herc, you're the one who is shockingly ignorant if you really think that all, or even most, Christians think the stuff in the Bible are allegories. People genuinely believe that Adam & Eve literally happened. They believe it literally took 6 days to make the Earth. Millions more believe on the Immaculate Conception. These are big reasons why Athests cannot respect religious belief, because what normal adult thinks such nonsense is true? There's people classified as having severe delusional psychiatric conditions who don't believe things as bizarre and nonsensical as half of the stuff that many religious people believe to be true.

isn't North Korea an atheist state?

Religion divides people but that is down to people feeling safer by being with others that have the same belief and others using faith to secure power

awful lies are told to keep people under control particularly women

I dislike people feeling sorry for me as I have not yet found my faith and I dislike even more people claiming to be intellectually superior because they do not need a faith/religion

North Korea is in the grip of a personality cult, which operates exactly as a religion.

I believe in people

I believe that if more people make good choices and fewer people make poor choices then the world will be better for everyone. It matters not whether they take those good/bad choices in the name of religion or morality or self-interest.

Personally I believe that there is no god, both because there is no credible evidence for one and because I profoundly believe there isn't one. So I am both a believer with a strong faith and an atheist.

I feel no need to evangelise about it though and have never come across an evangelical atheist on real life.

However when I don;t keep quiet because it irritates the shit out of me is when people conflate christianity with morals and bang on about the advantages of a good christian upbringing.

I teach my child to do the right thing because its the right thing not because he will be punished in the afterlife if he doesn't. I beleive this the better moral position to take and I'm therefore a better person as a result.

I don't share this out loud however. Because I'm a nice person.