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Re:Does religion make you nice? Does atheism make you mean? by netcan on Sunday November 09, 2008 @08:02PM (#358695)
In the technical sense it makes sense: Atheism means non-belief (or disbelief) in theism (& maybe also deism). You can hold all sorts of supernatural beliefs without a god-equivalent. So you can vaguely believe in souls, reincarnation, afterlife, spiritual energies, qi, prana, karma, darma, etc & still be an atheist.

In the looser sense of common usage, people often call themselves atheists if they do not believe in a formalised or institutionalised set of beliefs & do not explicitly believe in (a) god.

Re:Does religion make you nice? Does atheism make you mean? by gaius on Monday November 10, 2008 @12:33AM (#358921)
Most atheists, if you probe them a little, turn out to be skeptical agnostics. The atheist position "there absolutely, unequivocally is no god" is untestable scientifically and is therefore a position of faith. In that sense, atheism has religious aspects.
Re:Does religion make you nice? Does atheism make you mean? by netcan on Monday November 10, 2008 @02:32AM (#358992)
Of all the arguments Richard Dawkins tends to make, this is one of one of the most important. It isn't new or particularly profound.

You needs to take this down a notch from the pure philosophical theory. As an atheist, saying you don't believe in god or that you are sure the He doesn't exist is OK. Even if you couldn't convince Des Carte (he went the other way).

You are sure as you are that celestial teapots or fairies do not exist. Or more to the point, as sure as a Muslim is that Apollo does not drive his chariot across the sky or a Christian is that there are not multiple gods. That is the level where the discussion needs to be conducted.

Not fair to make atheists conduct their analysis at the level where you might be a brain in a vat while eveyone else gets to live in the world where the floor is solid, gravity pulls down & today is followed by tomorrow. The point is to treat the debate just like any other. The existence of god & fertilisation methods for turnips. Use the normal set of tools we use to evaluate everything else.

At the level that you are (rudely) probing atheists, the atheist is agnostic not just about the existence of god, but the existence of dogs, aliens, angels, pyramids & burglars. Certainly agnostic about any of the unseeable uknowable objects of the world. On any level that is meaningful, many skeptical agnostics (after some gentle probing) are atheist.

Re:Does religion make you nice? Does atheism make you mean? by BFalkner on Monday November 10, 2008 @02:07AM (#358969)
Any theory that is not falsifiable and has no supporting evidence is false with very high probability. God shares this position with silent black helicopters and invisible people doing experiments on us.

At least, that's one of my answers on the rare occasion I'm prodded. The other has to do with the lack of usefulness. ;)

Re:Does religion make you nice? Does atheism make you mean? by kaens on Sunday November 09, 2008 @09:58PM (#358799)
It may make sense in the technical sense, but I for one have never met someone who claimed to be atheist that believed that humans had a soul that continued after death.

I've met ones that didn't discount it as a possibility, but not any that professed a belief in it.

Re:Does religion make you nice? Does atheism make you mean? by netcan on Sunday November 09, 2008 @10:52PM (#358835)
I think that a lot of the people that actively believe in supernatural things tend not to like to use inflammatory terms like atheist.

But a lot of people that do not believe in god are interested in 'spiritual energies' or something similar that really amounts to a supernatural belief.

Re:Does religion make you nice? Does atheism make you mean? by kaens on Sunday November 09, 2008 @11:08PM (#358847)
I tend to agree. Most people I know who would label themselves as an atheist, myself included, do not have any supernatural beliefs, unless you get ridiculously nitpicky on the semantic side.

The term itself doesn't exclude belief in the "supernatural", but it is (as far as I can tell) claimed largely by people who don't have any belief in the "supernatural".

Re:Does religion make you nice? Does atheism make you mean? by time_management on Sunday November 09, 2008 @10:56PM (#358836)
Since when is "atheist" an inflammatory term?
Re:Does religion make you nice? Does atheism make you mean? by kaens on Sunday November 09, 2008 @11:03PM (#358841)
I don't consider it to be, but it certainly is for a large portion of the USAs population, mainly due to differing interpretations of what the word means, and the common perception (at least in small-town USA) of atheists being amoral as well.
Re:Does religion make you nice? Does atheism make you mean? by pchristensen on Monday November 10, 2008 @09:58AM (#359243)
It's kind of like "socialist" - many people think of it as inherently bad, instead of just a different set of relative values. I've lived in Sweden and can say that atheism, agnosticism, and socialism aren't bad, just different.
Re:Does religion make you nice? Does atheism make you mean? by kaens on Monday November 10, 2008 @06:18PM (#359920)
Exactly. It has a lot to do with the ambiguity of language, particularly english.
Re:Does religion make you nice? Does atheism make you mean? by netcan on Sunday November 09, 2008 @11:39PM (#358874)
It is inflammatory. Not only to the religious but also to the very large percentage of people who see it as a strident position.

For something to be inflammatory it only needs to inflame.

Re:Does religion make you nice? Does atheism make you mean? by SwellJoe on Sunday November 09, 2008 @09:57PM (#358797)
As you've noted, "atheist" is a very specific term, which simply means one affirms the non-existence of a god or gods. "Skeptic", of course, is probably the word that would best describe one who does not believe in any supernatural things, including god, elves, gremlins, and Eskimos.
Re:Does religion make you nice? Does atheism make you mean? by blurry on Monday November 10, 2008 @11:56AM (#359379)
Huh? Having grown up in Siberia, I assure you Eskimos are very real.
Re:Does religion make you nice? Does atheism make you mean? by SwellJoe on Monday November 10, 2008 @04:10PM (#359735)
Quick, someone help this man! His humor has stopped!
Re:Does religion make you nice? Does atheism make you mean? by blurry on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @10:46AM (#360577)
In the grand scheme of things, your joke is less obvious than my gender, and you got that wrong. Just sayin ;)
Re:Does religion make you nice? Does atheism make you mean? by netcan on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @05:26PM (#361066)
OK. You got me curious. What is your gender?
Re:Does religion make you nice? Does atheism make you mean? by blurry on Wednesday November 12, 2008 @01:22PM (#362100)
Now I am truly confused. Is this more humor I don't understand? Err, well, SwellJoe above identified me as a man and I said I wasn't. What am I missing?
Re:Does religion make you nice? Does atheism make you mean? by netcan on Thursday November 13, 2008 @11:14PM (#363960)
SwellJoe above identified me as a man and I said I wasn't. What am I missing?

This is what you get when sex education doesn't get taught at an early age. Boys have a..

Re:Does religion make you nice? Does atheism make you mean? by netcan on Monday November 10, 2008 @11:20PM (#360208)
Prove it.