Heh, I was reading some stuff on politics, and it turns out that most religious people have the same political beliefs. Atheists are strongly liberal, [...]
It would help if you didn't put atheism down as if it were an actual religion, you know. Most of the time it's a lack of religion.
Nearly every atheist website and preacher focuses on what religion has done wrong.
...this bit being the exception. Just like you only have a few hundred radical mullahs or outspoken arch-bishops or whatever, there are of course self-publicising Strong Atheists. But quite a large proportion of both implicit
and explicit atheists don't really 'follow' such 'Atheist Leaders', and quite often (especially the implicit ones) really only get embarrassed by them.
And since religion has done so much wrong, [atheism is] more appealing than agnosticism (which just says that there's not enough evidence for anything).
For the record (again, I'm sure, I keep saying it to people): I'm an atheist (of the weak and/or implicit level, which puts me slap bang in the middle of the range contained by hard-line religious on one side and hard-line god-denial on the other, where most people put agnosticism)
and Strongly Agnostic (a separate axis of 'belief'/opinion) such that I am convinced that there is no way to know the truth of the situation. Note that this is an independent measure from the theism/atheism one (someone could be devout at either theism or strong atheism, yet know that it's mere personal opinion and unprovable, or have a reason to consider it proven that there is/isn't a God to whatever magnitude applies).
I also say that I'm apatheist. I coined that word for myself and then found that it already existed and my use
largely agrees with the word was already in use for, so it may not be a perfect fit, but does quite well. I'm well into the issue of a God (or gods) not being meaningful to my life (and consider that this approach is the best preparation for any afterlife that
may occur, a kind of reverse Pascal's Wager... it certainly appears to have less chance of blowing up in my own face than the original), and while I'm not particularly interested in accepting or denying claims of their existence/non-existence, I do seem to have an awkward personal need to explain where any such absolutist claims fall down that a full-on true 'devout' Apatheist would probably pass on by.
...over half the debate is whether religious facts are true or not.
Or, indeed, whether they were intended to be facts.
But, anyway, all this has been argued about multiple times. (Or at least mentioned and ignored.) And I hate myself for writing this continuation.
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Topic: Atheists (Read 407846 times)