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[MrWiggles]

He's trying to say an "Athiest Church" could worship Darwin or Issac Newton.

Oh. Well, thank you for the clarification.

It still doesn't make any sense, but thank you.

Since atheism of itself is just philosophical rejection it can have a wide range of beliefs attached to it. There no particular shared belief outside the whole no god thing.

So um, sure I guess it could be any random person.

[Ampersand]

Why sing the praises of men as if they were worthy of worship? Worship is the willingness to everything that an entity does is good by definition of it being done by the object of worship. All humans have flaws, including Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton (even if he didn't think so). They were not granted special revelations of absolute truths, they were discoverers, and incomplete ones at that. They found an limited amount of truth, and nothing more. Every researcher and scientist whom lives today does the same thing. One should not sit and blindly believe everything that Darwin or Newton ever said without question, because they were both plainly wrong. While both approached truth, neither found absolute truths, and probably, such truths will never be found.

I do not mean to say that Evolution is wrong, but that Darwin's Evolution was wrong. The theory has undergone countless revisions as truths are uncovered and data gathered. Similarly, Newtons laws of motion were wrong, and Einstein proved it. And even he was and continues to be wrong.

Truth is not something you will find engraved on stones handed down through generations to be blindly believed. Truth is something that really exists out in reality, in nature, in our universe, and can only be found by studying it, not from, as generations prior to Newton believed, studying almost two thousand year old works of Ptolemy, Aristotle, and Euclid. All these people found elements of truth in their search for truth, but what they found are bits and pieces to serve as jumping off points, for you. For all of us. And that's the definition of science.

[Neruz]

He's trying to say an "Athiest Church" could worship Darwin or Issac Newton.

An Atheist Church could worship anything it liked, so long as it denied the existence of Gods.

It would be completely pointless, but they could do it.

[Starver]

I'd like to (re?)raise the point that Atheism can be "hard" (Dawkinsesque) or "soft" (more my kind).

My own atheism (perhaps better in lower case) is better defined as "no (god believing)", rather than "(no god) believing".

And yes, this is distinct from agnosticism, though I consider myself an agnostic too (in that I consider that there is no proof either way, and there can be no proof because divine powers apparently exhibited can so easily be coincidence, superior technology or whatever in reality, on top of the whole "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" argument and whichever particular flavour of Occam's Razor you might present).

I also consider myself apatheistic, which (for me) is more or less along the lines of thinking that there's no point in worshipping an all-knowing God, because if you're a suitably good person that hold to their particularly demanded values then they know that without actively considering Them, and if you aren't then going through the motions at the local church/temple/synagogue/mosque/frozen-food counter isn't going to help you any.  (Essentially, Pascal's Wager is toothless and possibly counter-productive.)

That all said, I have attended churches, recited prayers, sung hymns and otherwise participated for social reasons (weddings, funerals, having been part of the Scout movement[1]... that sort of thing).  But any deity worth his mana that does exist and has problems with that isn't going to be persuaded that you're devout just by regular church attendance, right?

And so I live a good life (give or take people's opinions) haven't murdered anyone[2] (yet!).  My load on the society is probably well between the quartiles of the statistical bell-curve (Ok, so I'm hardly at philanthropist level, either).  Neither God (should he/she/it exist) nor my fellow humans (who almost certainly do) should be able to complain much about my behaviour so far[4] and when(/if?) I die then (not that I imagine it would matter personally to me) I'm on currently course to being remembered here on Earth (or maybe even across the Galactic Empire) in some sort of positive manner by whoever cares to care about it.


But I don't think I proselytise my case, with the above, I'm merely explaining my personal position.  So that's possibly another thing that differs me from Dawkins (or at least how he is often perceived).



[1] Which may not be as regimented as the cadets or as religious as the Church Lads'/Girls' Brigades, but (at least in our unit) had sufficient elements of each that make me at least admire a good smart uniform and know the Lord's Prayer...

[2] Besides which, as I don't particularly believe in an afterlife, I'm pretty sure that a death means a loss of an intelligent consciousness to the universe, and thus the flickering out of existence of a complex system that seems to exhibit self-awareness[3].  Which is not a happy thought to have.  I don't get the comfort of them "being up in heaven, with the angels, learning how to fly", or even the psychotic "I can send them to a better place!".

[3] Not that I can even prove that I exist, even to myself, and I also have a disbelief in Free Will (i.e. this is a fully deterministic universe, so whatever I do is a direct product of everything that's happened to me) and that consciousness is just biological and physical complexity interacting with itself, so some of my psychological convictions probably don't mesh together as perfectly as one might wish.

[4] Save for spending too much time on forums, perhaps!

[Micro102]

Actually I think the name was Dawkins not Darwin, but you don't have to worship someone, the beliefs just have to be based around someone. But I tried looking up the definition of religion and it seems the world cannot make up it's mind onthis subject.

[Phmcw]

Personally, my atheism is to always try to never believe. (sorry the grammar might be wrong. It sound wrong at least. Not sure.) So I reject the theism system by rejecting faith itself, witch is mostly what science is about. But I try to not believe what I know is probable too. I just make assumption that one thing may or may not be a way, and try to make the most sound decision.

[Cheeetar]

Atheism = Not theism
No belief in god, but not necessarily a belief that there is no god.

Actually I think the name was Dawkins not Darwin, but you don't have to worship someone, the beliefs just have to be based around someone. But I tried looking up the definition of religion and it seems the world cannot make up it's mind onthis subject.

Richard Dawkins.
Charles Darwin.
Different people.
Also: you seem to be assuming that atheism is a religion, and needs somebody to worship/idolise for absolutely no reason.

[Il Palazzo]

And when the(Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Zoroastrian, etc.) God finally came back to this world, he gave each atheist eternal happiness in heaven, while ditching every other person into the depths of inferno for failing to use their minds as they were supposed to be used.

[Andir]

And when the(Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Zoroastrian, etc.) God finally came back to this world, he gave each atheist eternal happiness in heaven, while ditching every other person into the depths of inferno for failing to use their minds as they were supposed to be used.

What if I'm an Atheist who doesn't use his mind?  The god I don't believe in would have a choice to accept me as a non-believer, but reject me because I vegetated all my life.

[G-Flex]

Yes. Speaking as an atheistic individual, not every atheist out there is that way because they "used their minds", believe me.

[MrWiggles]

Yes. Speaking as an atheistic individual, not every atheist out there is that way because they "used their minds", believe me.

Yea. I was a felt my way out atheist before I was a thought my through atheist.

[Starver]

And when the(Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Zoroastrian, etc.) God finally came back to this world, he gave each atheist eternal happiness in heaven, while ditching every other person into the depths of inferno for failing to use their minds as they were supposed to be used.

Indeed, I've postulated the idea that there's a God Of Logic out there.  Having created and formed the universe to look like it wasn't created or formed by anyone, His criteria for damnation is anyone who looks at the overwhelming evidence[1] and still says something like "God did it".  Despite the fact that He did.  And, in fact, I may be damned for having dared to suggest that He exists.


[1] YMMV.  And this is just a thought experiment anyway.

[Il Palazzo]

What I am always wondering about, whenever I hear about Richard Dawkins, is how he treats religious people with contempt and disdain. I can't make up my mind if it's a sensible approach - after all, from the atheist's point of view, you need to be at least slightly bonkers to believe in God, which invites, and maybe even justifies ridicule - or maybe the proper one would be that of tolerance, that of live and let live, of respecting other people's inner demons and kinky desires.

It's a vague question, I know, but I'd like to hear what you guys think is the proper(by whatever standards) approach.

[Siquo]

Respectful. And that should go vice-versa as well.

Not every atheist believes all theists are slightly bonkers. If they did, it would've been called theistsareslightlybonkersism instead of atheism.

[G-Flex]

Besides, even if you do think that theistic tendencies are (or are due to) a character flaw of some sort... so what? Everybody's flawed. It's no reason to treat people with contempt.

Besides, from a more political point of view, it doesn't really help to enact social change when you treat your ideological opponents like dirt.