the Origin of Atheism

Originally posted by Titen-Sxull
Why don't you sum up the points it makes for me?

this is something we have to see for ourselves and maybe that does not happen until we grow from our adolescent years...

we all grow up sometime, just like the animals in the documentary

I will be wishing you love and understanding for the future... I only wish I had someone jump start me when I was 20 years old or so.

I could have never seen it anyway...

reply to post by Cosmic.Artifact

I could have never seen it anyway...

What exactly are you on about here?

This thread is about the origin of atheism, do you actually have anything to say on the subject?

Originally posted by Titen-Sxull
What exactly are you on about here?

love

This thread is about the origin of atheism, do you actually have anything to say on the subject?

one has to think outside their box... and add things up.

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
reply to post by etherical waterwave

 

Originally posted by etherical waterwave
Atheists claim there is no god. Aren't they antichristians in life?

No, atheists do not claim there is no god. An atheist doesn't believe in any deity.

Now I get it, it is also impossible to 'believe' in a deity, but belief in a deity is impossible, isn't that right? I'm an atheist to if you ask me. I get it do I?

Having belief in a deity can make you run around talking to nothing right? Isn't that a psychological issue? Weird people those believers. ah well, now I get it completely. As I get it it is not believing there is an exterior force to do things for you, you've got to always do it yourself. Does anyone get me? MIMS, am I right? # this is confusing at the moment.

But you do learn within yourself don't you, and you always stand tall in truth don't you, it got nothing to do with lying and such atheism. To have no belief in a deity. But I do learned to know there is a God whom is love and alike all humans. God has the keys of life and death. And Jesus is the forgiver of our sins we all inherited because of adam and eve. Those stories I do believe. I do.

Something tells me I still got something wrong?



Are you guys making fun of me?

I think God is the root cause of atheism.

Why? For not providing any concrete evidence that he or she or it actually exists, or is actually worthy of following.

reply to post by Cosmic.Artifact


No, you're thinking within a box. A box of ignorance and bigotry without any airholes for even the most basic level of reason to penetrate. You don't have anything to say on the subject besides your own unfounded bigotry, which is all you ever bring to any thread.

reply to post by Cosmic.Artifact


You do realize that most of the atheists on ATS are older than 20, right? Hell, I've just turned 22, literally today.

I will post it again in case some missed it, there are 5 parts to series A



Happy Barf Day...

be sure to tell your mother you Love her !

reply to post by Cosmic.Artifact


Hey look, a completely off topic video from the one who keeps complaining that we atheists keep trying to drag his threads off topic.

What does this...sort of crappy...documentary have to do with anything?

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


hi, the video is not off-topic and actually the conversation leading up to the video explains a little about why it was posted.

also my comment about the video to another poster explains some to, I am terribly sorry some users english is not well enough to comprehend what that poster was asking me.

watch and have a little vision, then one may see how relevant it is.

reply to post by Cosmic.Artifact


Dude, a video about chimps has about as much to do with atheism as Toy Story 3.

Look, it's really simple:

1) There's people who accept not knowing everything, such as "what started it all". Those people are called atheist...they value logic and rationality.

2) There's people who for whatever reason cannot cope with not knowing. They fill a GAP IN KNOWLEDGE with mythical beings and events for which they have no evidence whatsoever.

Funny enough, both could coexist just fine if they left eachother alone. However, unfortunately there's a couple of fools in group 2) who are so hilariously judgemental (I'm looking at you btw) that they feel the need to try and attack group 1). The funny thing is, they're trying to argument based on logic and rationality, a fight they can never win since their entire BELIEF is based on pure speculation (that has in many cases already been proven wrong by science...like that silly global flood).

Originally posted by MrXYZ
reply to post by Cosmic.Artifact

 

Dude, a video about chimps has about as much to do with atheism as Toy Story 3.

what do you mean ?

you can not understand Evolution and Science ?

be afraid... be very afraid !

Originally posted by cycondra
reply to post by Cosmic.Artifact

 

I stopped after the first paragraph, Atheism is not an organized religion or an idea which someone sprang upon the masses one day. It is simply the absence of theism / religion.

It is akin to taking a monkey and placing a hat on his head, eventually alot of the other monkeys like the the hats and begin to wear them. Then one day far into the future one of these monkeys sees some of the other monkeys and they are not wearing hats and wonders how that trend started.

Any talk of the origins of "mainstream" atheism or other nonsense is mute. Atheism can not be organized or have a set of base rules / beliefs because it would then cease to be Atheism and become Theism.

Close, but the hat wearers are more representative of the religious folk.

The earliest humanshad yet to invent beliefs.

Originally posted by Cosmic.Artifact

Originally posted by MrXYZ
reply to post by Cosmic.Artifact

 

Dude, a video about chimps has about as much to do with atheism as Toy Story 3.

what do you mean ?

you can not understand Evolution and Science ?

be afraid... be very afraid !

I understand evolution quite well...but it has NOTHING to do with atheism, lol.

Just like "gravity" has nothing to do with atheism either. Which makes it abundantly clear why your monkey video is totally off-topic.

reply to post by Cosmic.Artifact

one has to think outside their box... and add things up.

The statement above is completely meaningless.

If you are suggesting that I didn't do my research before becoming an atheist, that I didn't spend much time thinking outside the box, than you are about as wrong as a person can be. Before I was an atheist I was a born-again Bible believing Old Earth Creationist. I also believed in Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, ghosts and to some extent aliens. Eventually my Christian faith weakened mainly because I read the Bible in my late teens and found it to be insufficient in every way possible. So I became a deist for a time just to try it out, I also researched a lot of ancient mythology and spent hours reading up on deities throughout history from the Aztecs to the Norse and beyond. Eventually I became a sort of pantheist, believing that God was the Universe and we were all part of God, I took a liking to the idea of reincarnation since it was the afterlife idea that I liked best (an eternity of hellfire or paradise both sounded awful). At this point I was already questioning whether there was any God at all, there certainly wasn't any good evidence for one but I still wanted to believe because it felt better, it offered comfort and it filled the gaps in our knowledge about the Universe.

About a year ago however, during a time I was referring to myself as simply agnostic, I was talking to an atheist friend of mine. He clarified that atheism does not mean you arrogantly declare there is no God and he explained to me what agnostic-atheism is. I realized that I was an agnostic-atheist and had been for at least the last few months before speaking to him. I've considered myself an agnostic-atheist for the last year and, unlike with theism, the more research I do and the more arguments I listen to from BOTH sides the more I feel confident in this position of uncertainty.

You seem to act as if Evolution is somehow related to atheism however it wasn't until after I became an atheist that I began to look into Evolution fully. I'd spent ages 16-19 arguing with Evolutionists online because I was an Old Earth Creationist at the time. So even though I'd stopped being a Christian I hadn't actually looked at any of the evidence for Evolution and had spent about a year (when I was around 20) believing in ancient astronaut theory, the annunaki and all that nonsense. When I finally looked into Evolution I found that I had been continuously lied to by Creationist websites and preachers, all the evidence was there. Evolution has no logical link to atheism, as MrXYZ has pointed out already.

Now that I'm an atheist I've become far more skeptical on other beliefs I used to hold as well. I no longer arrogantly claim that Bigfoot definitely exists and spend my time arguing to skeptics because I understand the skeptics were right and that their position of uncertainty, strangely enough, is the most intellectually honest. The same goes for gods. Uncertainty about the existence of god(s) may not offer the same comfort you get from theism but it is far more intellectually honest and logically tenable.

Atheism means, roughly, "not theist" or "non-theism." Just as asexual indicates a lack of sexuality, or amoral means a lack of morals (not to be confused with immoral.) It is the refraining from, or state of not being adherent to, belief in a deity or deities. It does not necessarily have to have had a source or author in order to exist. It is no different than someone saying, "I do not believe in the existence of dragons."

Someone doesn't have to have authored the lack of belief in, say, dragons, for that lack of belief to exist. In my opinion, that doesn't mean that disbelief in dragons is the work of an entity called Satan or demons.

I respect the beliefs of those who feel differently though, of course.

so who was holding the potato here when the topic seemingly ended

I guess we were never able to resolve the origins of atheism straight forwardly ?

oh well...

Atheism is growing for 2 reasons:

1) In older times, you got thrown in jail, got killed, or tortured if you criticized the church. Nowadays we have free speech and can finally say what we think without fear of being hurt/killed.

2) Science is able to "debunk" many religious doctrines and stories. As the education level increases, more and more people will realize how silly and far from reality some of those stories/doctrines are...like the Genesis account.

In ancient times, people worshiped the sun because they couldn't explain it...until science was able to explain it and now everyone who has that scientific knowledge isn't worshiping the sun anymore. The same is slowly happening for Judea-Christians religions as they are hellbent in ignoring scientific facts that go against their world view.

In the future, religions will either have to change to being a philosophy rather than literal doctrines...or be happy only having blind fundamentalist followers who don't care about reality/rationality/logic. My guess is they will go with option 2, until they realize there's not enough of them to bring in a ton of money like now...so eventually they'll switch to being philosophies like Buddhism in order to increase the amount of followers...which means more money.

Although the term atheism originated in the 16th century—based on Ancient Greek ἄθεος "godless, denying the gods, ungodly"[1]—and open admission to positive atheism in modern times was not made earlier than in the late 18th century, atheistic ideas and beliefs, as well as their political influence, have a more expansive history.

The spontaneous proposition that there may be no gods after all is logically as old as theism itself (and the proposition that there may be no God as old as the beginnings of monotheism or henotheism). Philosophical atheist thought appears in Europe and Asia from the 6th or 5th century BCE.

Will Durant explains that certain Pygmy tribes found in Africa were observed to have no identifiable cults or rites. There were no totems, no gods, no spirits. Their dead were buried without special ceremonies or accompanying items and received no further attention. They even appeared to lack simple superstitions, according to travelers' reports. The Vedahs of Ceylon, only admitted the possibility that gods might exist, but went no further. Neither prayers nor sacrifices were suggested in any way