Any other atheists around?

[GuybrushThreepwoodMP]

Is there a group for us atheists to discuss ideas of faith, morality, life, the universe and everything (42!)?
Note: I would not want this to become about dissing people of faith and would truly welcome discussion with anyone. This isn't about ridiculing anyone. I would be particularly interested in sharing ideas and discussing the social, anthropological, philosophical, political and psychological aspects of religion from an atheist point of view. Anyone else? I can provide and and .

taffleee I am sure there are plenty of churches who would love to welcome you if that's what you are after. Post on one of the religion threads and I'm sure someone could find you something local to try.

Or you could look to get some counseling to work through your feelings as a secular alternative.

Tafflee, can you think of other times you have needed comfort, can you remember the things that helped you through?

I'm atheist
I avoid "belief" threads like the plague
give me evidence any day

What a horrible place a discussion forum can be, I think writing about my horrible past could be quite cathartic, only to be called 'weird' -
lol, i give up

Thread for people who might call themselves atheists if other atheists on different sub threads weren't so argumentative

I'm on that one!

Or I might have to start my own soapbox, entitled "Religion, Spirituality and Mental Health". It's an extremely unpopular soapbox round here, people throw rotten eggs when I stand on it.

Sorry tafflee haven't seen that thread. Some posters can be too flippantly rude like any message board participant. When I get flack I just think, well that person doesn't actually know me from Adam so no need to take it personally. Easier said than done, especially when you're feeling quite vulnerable I guess.

Head I like you xxx you totally seem to have your head in gear x

Why thank you . :)

Contrary to my earlier post, if you are an agnostic doesn't that make you a better skeptic than an atheist?

An atheist asserts there is no god, but without proof. A skeptic would question this and demand proof and therefore choose to be agnostic.

Should I be an agnostic then? I do like evidence.

Alternatively, do agnostics believe the FSM is possible?

I think the atheist is someone who has no belief in any god, not that they are certain there is no god anywhere. I am not convinced by any of the proofs of any religion so logically I have no belief at this time. If I get my hands in some proof I will change my mind.

For clarification, when I called myself agnostic it was because I wasn't sure if Yahweh etc was real. Now I'm very sure having thought more about it so feel I'm atheist as in sure the gods we know about are manmade.

Agnosticism is saying you can't prove/disprove god, not just that you don't know or don't believe. So you can be an agnostic Christian who accepts you can't prove god but believes in a particular one; or an agnostic atheist who accepts you can't disprove god (though particular types of god may be exceedingly improbable and some may be logically impossible) but believes there is no god.

So, I'm an agnostic atheist - I'd guess most atheists are.

Taffleee - a public forum may be a difficult place to discuss very personal issues - sometimes people do manage to have a support thread where people are kinder. Perhaps under bereavement (if the loss was through death, it sounds that way but might not be) or under Off the Beaten Track which doesn't show up in active convos so doesn't get too much random traffic by bored busybodies. (if you do start one in one of those places perhaps PM anyone who you think might be supportive as otherwise they might not find you).

I was thinking about you after I logged off last night; I don't think you can create faith (I couldn't hang on to mine when I still wanted to) so perhaps you might find something like a Buddhist group would work better for you as that does not require belief. As I understand it, one of the main focuses of Buddhism is to enable people to better deal with suffering, and their basic principle is to combine compassion and wisdom - perhaps this is somewhere you could find comfort without needing faith?

But if you can't prove/disprove then atheism is just a belief, like theism.

Perhaps I'm just an agnostic skeptic then. Atheism sounds like it requires belief (in no god).

Keep helping me on this one please. I'm having a philosophical identity crisis.

Atheist doesn't assert "there's no God, without proof". That would be a silly thing to say.

If anything, atheist asserts "I listened to all your fancy stories and I'm not buying any of it" - i.e. I don't believe your God hypothesis.

Isn't that wriggling out of the problem a bit. Not that wiki is any arbiter of truth (!) but here's what it says about atheism:

"Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities."

A theist in the latin sense, means "without God". So I can see the position where one starts with no God and suggests it's up to theists to prove there is one, not up to atheists to prove there isn't.

Maybe I am just mixed up.

On agnosticism, if we start with "I think, therefore I am" then do we have to stop there? Is it actually possible to "prove" that our external perception is correct? I am not sure it is. In other words, aren't we all believing in the world/universe around us but unable to prove its existence?

By the way, I started the "register"

Sign up now!

"Atheist agnostic skeptic register, 1 post each, 10 words max, I am ..."

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/philosophy_religion_spirituality/1910951-Atheist-agnostic-skeptic-register-1-post-each-10-words-max-I-am

I don't believe the burden of proof is on those of us who don't believe. I can't prove there isn't a god. I also can't prove that there isn't a big pink unicorn or giant spaghetti monster. Doesn't mean I should believe in them unless their existence is disproved.

I would say that agnosticism is a non-belief in the existence of god whereas atheism is a belief in the non-existence of god.
By that argument I an an atheist. I don't not-believe in god, I actively believe there is no god.

I don't think we can compare the "belief" in god the same way as a belief in the"non- existance" of god. One is a stance of faith.
Athiesm is not a faith.
Comes down to semantics but to me a faith is an emotional response, not the same approach as most athiests have.

So I can see the position where one starts with no God and suggests it's up to theists to prove there is one, not up to atheists to prove there isn't.

Yes - you're not mixed up at all. Russell's Teapot is the standard bit of philosophical kit for this issue.

Totally agree with stuff above on burden of proof.

And if we can't immediately knock the skittle down with the ball of a rational explanation, that doesn't mean there isn't one. We could just be not throwing straight. There could be a perfectly good scientific answer to the "problem" - an answer which has evidence to back it up. Just because science hasn't found it YET, doesn't mean it isn't there. It may well be accepted in the future. We don't look at the gap and think, "Hmm, couldn't answer that one... must be a supernatural force, then."

People who want to find a supernatural explanation - despite the fact that there are, if you believe that sort of thing, literally thousands on offer - always seem to want their particular favourite one to be the only answer. It was God. Or it was angels! Or it was demons! Or it was a ghost! Or it was crystal healing! Or it was Thetans! And so on. They're not open to each and every one of these irrational explanations. They choose ONE and stick to it, despite not being able to provide a shred of actual evidence.

Stuff like "angel feathers" makes me lose the will to live. I could not believe - until I saw it on here - that functioning adult humans would believe in stuff like that. Charming and sweet from a 4-year-old girl, but...

Just wanted to say that I didn't have a special immunity to religion when I was younger. At one time I believed it too. There was no reason not to. I might have carried on vaguely believing if nothing had caused me to look at it closer. It's only the adults who can defend it in detail that I have the problem with.

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I see the whole Atheism/agnostic thing has been covered, but for the record I'm atheist in the "give me one good reason to accept it' camp and am atheist to all things for which there is no proof. Gods, teapots, lucky dice, and ghosts.

You can't disprove god as a vague 'something out there', but can find evidence that a particular god doesn't exist.

If someone claimed their god looked after them and controlled the weather I could point out that their church building had a lightning conductor and for that matter a new roof where the storm blew tiles off. If they claimed he was the god of love and that he liked to torture people then I could point out that this was a contradiction.

So we can show that the god they describe isn't real even though there might be some entity out there.

I think the difference between atheism and agnosticism is this. Atheism is simply an absence of a belief in god. Agnosticism is about knowledge, it is not just a moderate atheism as so many people seem to think. It is saying there is no proof either way. So you can be both agnostic and atheist or conversely you can also be a deist and be agnostic. The latter obviously requires a belief, whereas the agnostic atheist position does not as it is an absence of belief.

So can you be an atheist and not be agnostic? If i say i am an atheist and not agnostic would that be an irrational position, as i would be taking a standpoint for which there is no proof, however unlikely i considered the existence of god to be?

For an atheist to say there is certainly no god would be irrational. Not least because the definition of god is so fuzzy that you can't be sure what you are denying. It can be anything from a little invisible man who whispers in your ear to an impersonal force that initiated the start of the universe and doesn't know or care that we exist.

We can only say that belief is irrational without at least some evidence.