Could Atheism be technically considered a religion?

reply to post by undo


Your quote now

now now you know the new rules were new testament not old testament

My quote before

Now before anyone gives me the 'New Covenant' speech... it doesn't change that God commanded this at a point in time!!...

Aside from that.

... The first quotes were New Testament. That part was in response to what you said "no one is forcing you to accept the claim". The word force can be interpreted differently. How about I use the phrase "shove down our throats". Surely the Biblical passages I quoted qualifies that!

"and if they do try to force you, they aren't speaking on behalf of the god" Surely the Old Testament passages I quoted qualifies that God, at least at one point in time (prior New Covenant) commanded 'force', force by 'death punishment'.

I think you missed my last one. Mark 6:11. That's a New Testament passage that essentially says people who deny the Christian faith will suffer a worse consequence than Sodom and Gommorah did (worse). That's a death threat (or an eternal death threat).

What text was hidden for 1500 years by the Vatican? Are you referring to Gnostic texts?

Originally posted by Prezbo369
Were you asked if you wanted free-will?

I wasn't.....

That question is completely meaningless, not only on itself, but also in regards to discussions. If you don't have free will, how can you make a choice regarding what you want or don't want? Think about it for a second..

There are two scenarios..

1) You don't have free will. In this case, whatever your answer, it was not you who chose it because your will is not free, thus, the question has no value since your 'want' does not exist.

2) You have free will. In this case, you already have it and whether you want it or not, you have to live with it. In this case, the question again has no value.


How these types of posts get stars is beyond me.

no no one was allowed to read the text of the bible on their own for like 1500 years. parishoners had no idea what it said, only the priesthood and vatican. i mentioned this earlier. first was the issue that it was written in a language (it had been translated into greek and then into latin from its original hebrew chaldean aramaic and greek) that most of the holy roman empire couldn't read. second was the issue that a lot of the people couldn't read anyway so even if it was in their language, they would have had problems. third was the issue that copies were rare since they had to be written out by hand.

when the reformation began, the printing press came out and it was translated into german and english, printed and distributed. those that could read, were seeing it for the first time. the vatican had a fit. this lead to the inquisition.

Now before anyone gives me the 'New Covenant' speech... it doesn't change that God commanded this at a point in time!!...

yeah it does change it. cause as i told ya before, there's more than one "god" in the text, interacting with the hebrews. why they don't indicate more clearly, i have no idea. some of the god references are to angels, some are to other gods, some are to one of the 3 anunnaki (enlil, enki, anu), some are to the dearly departed and some i believe, are to one pharaoh or another. the pharaoh was considered a god king. it's the big hush hush secret, i do believe, that the patriarchs of the old testament were pharaohs, including abraham, david, solomon, etc, all the way to jesus, who was the last pharaoh.

so some of the commands given, are not necessarily from the god, jesus claims to be the son of.

reply to post by undo

yeah it does change it. cause as i told ya before

I understand what you're saying, and you're interpretations. However your interpretations are simply not representative of common Christendom, and I intended my points to be speaking towards Christendom in general. However I did post to you so your interpretation was a fitting response

yeah right now i'm struggling with the passage where jehovah shows up at abraham's tent with 2 men. the word for men there is enowsh and means mortal men. it refers to all 3 of them as enowsh. how is jehovah a mortal man? it's taught that the other 2 were angels. i don't think so. also the way jehovah is used in the passages, concerns me. for example, he's travelled to israel so he can get a glimpse of the activities of sodom and gomorrah, to see whether what's being said about their actions is true. now why would god need to travel with 2 mortal men on land to find out if sodom was misbehaving? something's wrong with that passage. big time. i think this is one of those pharaoh moments. i suspect there's a whole lot we don't know that would surprise everyone greatly, if we knew. a very big and amazing secret.

reply to post by Budapest

But there is a fallacy that science denies God or even that it can explain Nature/Life without God (by God I mean a supernatural force that has designed the universe and life within it).

Some agree and others do not on this.

Evolutionary science does not support an atheist perspective - it has nothing to say about God or religion. Certainly there are proponents who have become evangelical in their rants against religion (Dawkins, Dennett ..) but that's their own personal views - its not science - most certainly not Darwin.

Again like I said they would be Darwinist. Whatever they rant about is not a shared belief by that is a prerequisite to being an atheist.

Darwin did something absolutely amazing - he showed that all life on Earth is connected - both past (fossils) and present. He showed that life on Earth is on a forward progressive path of improvement towards greater complexity, diversity and adaptability. He also showed that we are profoundly connected to Nature. No one had done that before. That is his genius.

Yeah it is definitely interesting at times.

But Darwin's essential tenet - that life started with a very simple construct and became more complex over time - was falsified in 1953 with the discovery of the DNA structure. In one blinding moment we glimpsed the complexity of the cell and since then we've been like 17th century explorers entering at a new and wondrous world. Now we realize that incredible complexity in code is required for the first signs of life to occur. Like the robot Asimo - it does very simple actions (by human standards) of walking, climbing stairs, and rudimentary running but the amount of ingenious code that is required for these few actions is immense - so too with life. The simplest life forms require hundreds of thousands of interconnected working components. Organisms may have appeared simple at the beginning of life on Earth but this belies the mad complexity that enables life.

Again that is all interesting but you are talking about Darwinist.

And I should point out that we still don't know what life is - we can isolate a single cell in a Petri dish then pierce the skin so all the cell's contents spill out. We have everything that is required for life in the dish (supposedly) yet we cannot put it back together again - cannot give it life

True but I am sure they will figure it out someday when technology and our understanding gets there.

Evolutionary science has now morphed into something called Neo-Darwinism, but it has nothing to do with Darwin and simply trades on his good name. Darwin spoke of natural selection and arbitrary mutation, but all of that is gone - gone is the concept of natural selection, and mutation has changed into 'arbitrary chemical collisions'. It has become fantasy and still it is no closer to explaining the mathematical perfection and precision of life.

Neo Darwinists now? Science is always changing.

I'm sorry that I've gone off on a bit of a rant myself, but it does science a great disservice to say that it supports an atheistic perspective. This position limits the investigation of our evolutionary past, because it forces a 'bottom up' methodology of inquiry. If we say that there is no 'reason to the rhyme of life', that our past is only a collection of physical arbitrary processes then we'll never look for the truth. Nature works through systems and processes, and I truly believe evolution is another process - a system of development like other systems found in Nature. It is time to connect the dots the way Nature works. Look around you, Nature makes sense, so too should our evolutionary past.

It just might when science gets there. Many things have been explained but not everything that is for sure.

We need to take a systems approach and connect the patterns and regularities we see in our fossil record. We presently explain the reoccurring jumps in evolutionary biological improvement (dinosaur to mammal for example) as being the result of mass extinction events. But that overlooks how the biology on Earth improved, and it stops us investigating what those mechanisms could be. We have recorded 6 huge genetic jumps, yet everyone is looking at meteor strikes, when that explains nothing.

It can’t be easy to piece together millions of year of history.

continues

We need to take a systems approach and connect the patterns and regularities we see in our fossil record. We presently explain the reoccurring jumps in evolutionary biological improvement (dinosaur to mammal for example) as being the result of mass extinction events. But that overlooks how the biology on Earth improved, and it stops us investigating what those mechanisms could be. We have recorded 6 huge genetic jumps, yet everyone is looking at meteor strikes, when that explains nothing.

It can’t be easy to piece together millions of year of history.

It's a fallacy to say science is atheist, molecular biology uses engineering principles to investigate the cell - we need to do the same to investigate our evolutionary past.

I agree there is no need to assign these things to atheism.

Atheism is a belief system.

No atheism is not a system. Darwinism, Neo Darwinism and I am sure there are more isms out there in the science field that are belief systems.

Science is a system for studying the operation of Nature in the observable Universe. The 2 are very different

I agree. Atheism is a description of someone who does not believe in deities and people need to stop trying to assign more to what it is to be an atheist. A person can have one of those belief systems and also be an atheist just like how Buddhists are also atheists.

Many would have us believe that what science has not or is unable to explain should be considered as proof that a deity is responsible. That is an incorrect way of thinking. The unknown is simply that unknown and I am sure with time and further exploration that one day these things will be explained.
Atheist beliefs vary widely the only thing that all atheists share is that they do not believe in deity’s there reasoning for that varies widely as well.

What I find remarkable is that atheists try very hard to assign the atheist label to as many people as possible. Be it by claiming that agnostics are atheists, or that Buddhists are atheists and so on. People have even argued to me in the past that rocks are atheist because they lack belief in God. If that is not a sign of religious crusading then I don't know what is.

Originally posted by vasaga
What I find remarkable is that atheists try very hard to assign the atheist label to as many people as possible. Be it by claiming that agnostics are atheists, or that Buddhists are atheists and so on. People have even argued to me in the past that rocks are atheist because they lack belief in God. If that is not a sign of religious crusading then I don't know what is.

I am curious do you think Buddhism requires the belief in deities? Are you saying they are deist? I f so can you please tell me what deity’s they worship?

Atheist or deist is the same as saying someone is right-handed or left-handed in the few cases that they are ambidextrous but still it is just a description. Agnostic is also a description.

I don’t know that others claim agnostics to be atheists however there is a category called agnostic atheist which is what I am.

reply to post by Grimpachi


Buddhism asserts that there are gods, and even though these gods exist in parallel to humans and are completely different than the Abrahamic god, in the sense that it's not an all-powerful creator, no need of worship and so on, they still believe in them. If atheism is defined as believing in a god or gods, then by definition, Buddhists can not be atheists.

You call yourself an agnostic atheist. Is there such a thing as a gnostic atheist?

Originally posted by vasaga

Originally posted by Prezbo369
reply to [url= by Pixiefyre[/url]

 

This might help you with your confusion

When I went back to find this graph I didn’t expect to have found that you have already seen and quoted it.

I wonder can you be playing games? This is from one of your posts. Obviously you have heard of agnostic atheists before.

We would have to disagree on deity’s being in Buddhism. If you really think Buddhists are not considered atheists then I think you are confused about the definition of atheists. Spirits are not deities. Buddha is not a deity. Can you please name the deity’s that Buddhists believe in.

reply to post by Grimpachi


Did you watch the vid I posted when I quoted that?

As for Buddhist deities, what about this?

TextIf creationists weren't attempting to throw their 'beliefs' down children's throats then you'd have a point. If creationists weren't attempting to hijack fact-based scientific theories with their 'beliefs' you'd have a point.

reply to post by Prezbo369


@ Prezbo

You continue to ignore the point of this discussion. Shoving a belief down a child's throat, as you put it, is not the issue in a matter of belief vs fact. Regardless of what you teach a child there comes a day when most children will think for themselves and will do exactly what they wants to do. It is true that a parent can influence the life of a child to a certain extent but not control that child's mind unless that child is mentally challenged. I find that evading the issue of this discussion.

The issue of this discussion is theology vs fact. A creationist is a creationist only through theology and not Fact. A Muslim is a creationist as well as most Christians and yet the one has a different book than the other. Regardless of this, both have differences within their structures and yet within each structure there are facts as well as theology. The Christian book has many facts of archaeology as well as history but it's main structure is theology of a deity. That deity is woven into the book as theology and not fact and has never claimed to be fact.

As a child matures and has educated his or her mind that child will at some point in time realize that Jesus is both fact and theology. The factual part is that there is outside literature that proves, to that mind of that child, that Jesus did live and did die in the manner described in literature. The theological aspect of that same mind will also realize that the deity of Christ is theology. That mind of a matured child will at some point in time sort this out and at a very young age.

You wrote - "If creationists weren't attempting to hijack fact-based scientific theories with their 'beliefs' you'd have a point" -

I believe you have the shoe on the wrong foot. It is not the creationists who claim that a monkey gene accidentally split some thousands of years ago and the end result is the human species. The only fact of this is that a gene can be split. Nothing more than that. No proof of an accident. No proof of evolution. No proof of thousands of years ago. And yet this fable is parroted about till it is accepted as fact by people such as yourself.

The creationist believes that God made a man and God also made a monkey and that both are independent in flesh while neither primates evolved into the other. That is not a claim but a belief. That is not an observable fact but a theological belief and always has been a theological belief. You can not show me where creationism claims God as a fact but I can show you the platform of an atheist who outright claims the fact that God is a fallacy. That is the difference between fact and theology and that was the intended discussion.

reply to post by vasaga


No I didn’t watch the video I stated earlier in this thread that I am not able to watch videos for some reason. I checked your link and I had no idea about their deities which I do now thanks to that link. I had no idea so now I retract my statement that Buddhists are atheists. Any Buddhist that believes that deities exist is most certainly not an atheist. I had always been under the impression that their teachings did not include the belief in them.

From what you linked it says that most of the deity’s can be linked to Hinduism. When I go back to Asia next year I am going to ask a monk friend of mine about this. He had explained most of what I know about Buddhism to me and said they would be considered atheists in the conventional sense. He had also said that most of what others had considered to be deity’s in the Buddhist faith were misconceptions because they do believe in spiritual beings and not gods. Many people have thought that Buddha was worshiped as a god where most have misunderstood.

I learn something new every day. Anyone that believes in a deity is most certainly a theist.

reply to post by Grimpachi

Anyone that believes in a deity is most certainly a theist.

No. Deism is not theist! And deism believes in God (deity).

Deism

Theism, at least as far as the philosophy of religion goes, attaches itself to dogma. Deism doesn't.

Theism

So as is shown, deism is separate from theism because it does not attribute any validity to any texts that claim to know the mind of God.

You can most certainly believe in 'God' and not be a theist.

reply to post by vasaga

Buddhism asserts that there are gods

Buddha did not.

and even though these gods exist in parallel to humans and are completely different than the Abrahamic god, in the sense that it's not an all-powerful creator, no need of worship and so on, they still believe in them.

There are many Buddhist 'religions' that splintered themselves from original Buddhism that elevate Buddha to godliness and worship him. So Buddhism is a religion technically due to that. But again, Siddhartha Gautama did not include god-belief in his philosophy.

If atheism is defined as believing in a god or gods, then by definition, Buddhists can not be atheists.

Buddhism as portrayed by the Buddha is atheistic.

Originally posted by undo
yeah right now i'm struggling with the passage where jehovah shows up at abraham's tent with 2 men. the word for men there is enowsh and means mortal men. it refers to all 3 of them as enowsh. how is jehovah a mortal man? it's taught that the other 2 were angels. i don't think so. also the way jehovah is used in the passages, concerns me. for example, he's travelled to israel so he can get a glimpse of the activities of sodom and gomorrah, to see whether what's being said about their actions is true. now why would god need to travel with 2 mortal men on land to find out if sodom was misbehaving? something's wrong with that passage. big time. i think this is one of those pharaoh moments. i suspect there's a whole lot we don't know that would surprise everyone greatly, if we knew. a very big and amazing secret.

edit on 8-12-2012 by undo because: (no reason given)

You might want to see the work over at
www.thechronicleproject.org...
it will answer a whole host of problems

reply to post by Lucid Lunacy


You got me. I get them mixed up a lot. So Buddhist that believes in deities would be deists and not theists because dogma is attached?

I never think about this stuff unless I have a conversation like this going on. So the only real difference between a theist and deist is whether or not dogma is involved?

reply to post by Grimpachi

You got me. I get them mixed up a lot.

It's no biggie I just figured that was my time to jump in hahaha

So Buddhist that believes in deities would be deists and not theists because dogma is attached?

Opposite. Said Buddhist would be a deist if dogma was not attached. Assuming god-belief is compatible with Buddhism (I think it is, only insofar as the Buddha not rejecting god-belief. He said he had no need.). Deism claims we cannot derive God's will, so any and all scripture would be viewed as being man-made. It's like having belief in God (gnostic) yet believing God is unknowable (agnostic). Which essentially means God belief (the existence of), but not believing in any scripture or bibles. That's of course a horrible description of deism. Alas I am tired and bout to sleep.

Generic definition: Belief in the existence of a supreme being, specifically of a creator who does not intervene in the universe.

Wiki: Deism is the belief that reason and observation of the natural world are sufficient to determine the existence of God, accompanied with the rejection of revelation and authority as a source of religious knowledge

Revelation being the operative word. Without revelation there would be no authentic bibles. Ergo the deist position there are no authentic bibles.

I'll update more manana I am sure goodnight.

reply to post by winterkill


interesting. odd that they don't recognize that adam is actually a plural word or that the first verse and the second verse, are set in entirely different time frames, separated by billions of years. i agree with their premise that it is a highly scientific and intellectual account, masked in ancient language and symbol.