Spreading Atheism

[Biosophilogical]

-snip-

Now I think we are getting somewhere with this. First off

Spoiler: Explanation of that stuff you didn't get

What I meant was, is that there is no such thing as choice. An Anglican friend of mine actually supported this with a quote from the bible (Don't remember which book though), which basically said, everything that will happen, will happen (as in everything that is going to happen will happen and there isn't anything anyone can do about it). And the 'circumstances had been different' thing, if somewhere in your life, an event had occured which influenced you away from Christianity or religion in general, then you would not be catholic today. So the whole 'I chose to be Christian' is just sort of an inside joke to me, cause I actually see it as 'you think you chose it, when it was really the events of your past which forced you into it' (It sounds blunter than it is)

Secondly

Spoiler: And correct me if I am mistaken

You believe in the existence of 'a' God (emphasis on 'a' rather than 'the'), which just happens to co-incide with the idea of the Christian God. (Seriously, if I got that horribly wrong, tell me, just the use of the word spiritual made it sound as though you made your own beliefs, and they happened to be closest to Christianity). On a slightly different topic, if what I just said is the case, then I have no problem with your beliefs as they seem to be well-founded on personal opinion rather than on narrow-minded intolerance (which is my biggest nit-pick with religions, and Atheism on occasion).

Thirdly

Spoiler: Bible moral stuff

You are quite right that many of the teachings from the Bible are good, and it would be great if more people had those ideals, (My favourite ideal being the anti-ignorance pro-wisdom thing that Proverbs preaches), my main thing(s) with this is,
a) No-one tends to know about it cause the Bible tends to get boring, fast.
b) Because most are written in parable or some other riddle-ish form, most people mis-interpret them
c) Because they are in a religious book, only religious people tend to see them, and people tend to go all high and mighty saying 'God's wisdom' and all this stuff, when wisdom belongs to everyone and if religious people wanted to help people, then they would offer a non-religious perspective on the bible for those who instantly shirk at the sound of religion (seeing as this would be the 'greatest good for the greatest number' approach. (basically, I don't like the fact that the wisdom is intimately (and unnecessarily so) tied to the bible when it could do greater good as separate from the bible)

Finally

Spoiler: Conclusion

I believe we may have gotten off topic slightly, my main point at the beginning (the whole Christianity-converting, Atheism-not thing was that having a belief in a lack of God should be considered just as important as havng a belief in a God, and therefore should be able to convert people to the same belief for as long as religion tries to do so, as I see neither as any better than the other (I lie, I am obviously biased towards Atheism, but from an outsiders view both would be equal.)

If there is anything I got wrong, or anything I missed then please tell me so we can clear that up.

 

[SonicKoala]

Wow. My purpose in posting my comments was in response to the original topic - however, as I have been posting these comments, I have been expanding on my original ideas to include concepts which are "outside the box".

Really? Where is this 'expansion'? I saw no expansion: I saw an abrupt reversal--in the post immediately preceding this:

I didn't add this in my original post, but I am no more for theists going around preaching their ideas than I am for atheists doing the same thing.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/18.153393.3702064


you wrote this:

I will concede that trying to spread atheism to non-genuine theists is acceptable, but the biggest problem I have with this notion is that there is nothing to atheism - all these individuals would be doing is providing evidence as to why God doesn't exist.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/18.153393.3695123

How exactly is going from "I will concede that trying to spread atheism to non-genuine theists is acceptable" to:

Should Atheists be allowed to spread their message in anyway they want - no, because then we'd just have another annoying Christian-esque group of people walking around telling people what they should believe.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/18.153393.3707084

an 'expansion'? Last time I saw an expansion that radical, it was when I picked up Beyond the Sword for Civ4!

I mean, I'm all for developing one's ideas through dialog--that's the great thing about dialog with someone who disagrees with us: it gives us a chance to find out what we really mean and what we really feel.

However, there's a difference between having a dialog and evolving your ideas, and trying to retcon one's previous statements into some sort of 'out of the box' thinking, with the inconsistencies in the things you say being just an 'expansion on your original ideas'.

Saying "I don't see the point to atheists spreading their ideas" (because I feel their ideas lack any sort of depth that is significant of spreading) is NOT in contradiction to my belief that "spreading their ideas is acceptable" - they can spread their beliefs all they want, it is their right as citizens of the United States. However, I don't personally see the point in that, and I am against this whole idea in general because of the fact that what they would be doing would be the same thing that bothers people so much about various religioius groups; this then leads into my idea that NEITHER group should be doing that.

PERSONALLY, I don't believe that Atheists should be going around spreading their ideas because I think that there is little to atheism, and hence it doesn't necessarily require "spreading", on top of the fact that nobody should be doing that anyway. My quote where I said that "I concede spreaidng atheism to non-genuine theists" is the part of my argument grounded in fact and reality, rather than opinion and personal belief - Although I don't believe that Atheists should engage in this sort of activity, it is there right to do so, and so were they to engage in such activity, their target audience should be people such as non-genuine theists. Think of it as sort of a doublethink - I don't believe that they should do this, but I am able to see the logic and fairness in letting them do so.

There are no inconsistencies in what I've been saying, so thank you for posting yet another pointless drabble of bullshit and once again contributing absoloutely nothing to the discussion yourself. Seriously though, You're like a 12 year old child. Apparently, you're only capable of making petty criticisms of the points I've made (which continue to be, without fail, blatantly inaccurate).

 

[SonicKoala]

-snip-

Now I think we are getting somewhere with this. First off

Spoiler: Explanation of that stuff you didn't get

What I meant was, is that there is no such thing as choice. An Anglican friend of mine actually supported this with a quote from the bible (Don't remember which book though), which basically said, everything that will happen, will happen (as in everything that is going to happen will happen and there isn't anything anyone can do about it). And the 'circumstances had been different' thing, if somewhere in your life, an event had occured which influenced you away from Christianity or religion in general, then you would not be catholic today. So the whole 'I chose to be Christian' is just sort of an inside joke to me, cause I actually see it as 'you think you chose it, when it was really the events of your past which forced you into it' (It sounds blunter than it is)

Secondly

Spoiler: And correct me if I am mistaken

You believe in the existence of 'a' God (emphasis on 'a' rather than 'the'), which just happens to co-incide with the idea of the Christian God. (Seriously, if I got that horribly wrong, tell me, just the use of the word spiritual made it sound as though you made your own beliefs, and they happened to be closest to Christianity). On a slightly different topic, if what I just said is the case, then I have no problem with your beliefs as they seem to be well-founded on personal opinion rather than on narrow-minded intolerance (which is my biggest nit-pick with religions, and Atheism on occasion).

Thirdly

Spoiler: Bible moral stuff

You are quite right that many of the teachings from the Bible are good, and it would be great if more people had those ideals, (My favourite ideal being the anti-ignorance pro-wisdom thing that Proverbs preaches), my main thing(s) with this is,
a) No-one tends to know about it cause the Bible tends to get boring, fast.
b) Because most are written in parable or some other riddle-ish form, most people mis-interpret them
c) Because they are in a religious book, only religious people tend to see them, and people tend to go all high and mighty saying 'God's wisdom' and all this stuff, when wisdom belongs to everyone and if religious people wanted to help people, then they would offer a non-religious perspective on the bible for those who instantly shirk at the sound of religion (seeing as this would be the 'greatest good for the greatest number' approach. (basically, I don't like the fact that the wisdom is intimately (and unnecessarily so) tied to the bible when it could do greater good as separate from the bible)

Finally

Spoiler: Conclusion

I believe we may have gotten off topic slightly, my main point at the beginning (the whole Christianity-converting, Atheism-not thing was that having a belief in a lack of God should be considered just as important as havng a belief in a God, and therefore should be able to convert people to the same belief for as long as religion tries to do so, as I see neither as any better than the other (I lie, I am obviously biased towards Atheism, but from an outsiders view both would be equal.)

If there is anything I got wrong, or anything I missed then please tell me so we can clear that up.

Saying that "if events in your life had been different, you wouldn't have been Christian" is a logic that can be applied to literally anything. By saying that, you're suggesting that everything that you are as a person (all your beliefs, your personality) is entirely the result of circumstance, and that you as an individual have absoloutely no say in what you believe, or what you are. I have to STRONGLY disagree with that claim - we as individuals have just as much influence in our lives as random events and circumstances do; right now, I could choose to go out and kill a bunch of people - the events and circumstances which preceded that event would have in NO WAY indicated that such a thing was about to happen, and therein lies the power of the individual and the choices that we make.

At any point in time, you can make a decision that will completely change one's life, so the idea that we are all by-products of fate and circumstance is one that I disagree with. The events of your past are just that - IN THE PAST, and the emotional and psychological effects they have on you can (relatively easily) be overcome. How else would you explain the hundreds of thousands of people raised Christian who choose to become atheists later in life? I have a hard time believing that every single one of them had such a horrific and traumatic experience that they had NO CHOICE but to become atheists - they simply chose to. The question of "were we always going to make that choice" is another issue, however, and one that I find particularly interesting.

In response to your second "correct me if I'm wrong" section, if I had to define my beliefs, I would most definitely say that it is a rather personalized set of beliefs that evolved out of my knowledge of the Bible - the messages contained within the Bible which I found to be positive and inspiring (such as the messages of Jesus) I chose to incorporate into my personal beliefs. That is why, if I am forced to label myself, I call myself a "Christian" if only for the reason that I am a believer in the teachings of Jesus. I'm sure, to most people, I'm not what you would call a "true" Christian, which doesn't matter to me, anyway.

I do agree that their is a lot of wisdom contained in the Bible which tends to get ignored because of the intolerance and narrow-mindedness associated with religion - True, some of the things in the Bible have an almost riddle-esque quality to them (although I would attribute that moreso to the fact that it had to be translated from very old languages), but that is not the cause of their misinterpretation - people interpret modern texts written in plain, simple english in countless ways; it is just a human quality to derive different meaning from the same sources, and that is unfortunately unavoidable. I strongly agree with your point that Christians should try to share the wisdom of the Bible with others - even if these people don't necessarily believe in God, these are still really positive ideas that could enrich people's lives nonetheless and make the world a better place.

To resond to your final point, I've found that I have a sort of "doublethink" approach to the OP - personally (and this is undoubtedly due to my bias as a theist), I don't feel that atheism itself has a sufficient amount of depth or complexity as to require any spreading; I believe that doing away with spiritual beliefs and embracing things like logic and rational in its stead is an idea that people are perfectly capable of coming to independent of outside influence, which leads into my other argument against this, that being that I don't think ANY group (religious or otherwise) should be allowed to openly preach and spread their message in public forums such as college campuses, which are open to all people. HOWEVER, due to the fact that religious groups are undoubtedly going to retain the right to spread their ideas, then it is only fair that atheists should be allowed to do the same.

 

[SonicKoala]

My quote where I said that "I concede spreaidng atheism to non-genuine theists" is the part of my argument grounded in fact and reality, rather than opinion and personal belief

Exactly--you're saying you responded to me with a "sort of a doublethink" mish-mash of the two, which is a waste of my time and effort: why should I have to figure out which is which; why should I wind up trying to deal with arguments you do not think are "grounded in fact and reality" as if they were?

Apparently, you're only capable of making petty criticisms of the points I've made (which continue to be, without fail, blatantly inaccurate).

Making a criticism of how you wasted my time and effort--and then tried to cover it up by making snide comments about me--is 'petty'?

It's not a mish-mash, the two opinions are able to exist completely independantly of each other without either losing any validity whatsoever. The entire point of these forums is to share one's opinion, which I did. However, for the sake of fairness, I made another point which defended the other side of the argument. I'm very sorry that you were so hopelessly confused by my comments that it led to you wasting your precious time and effort.

 

[Biosophilogical]

-snip-

Now I think we are getting somewhere with this. First off

Spoiler: Explanation of that stuff you didn't get

What I meant was, is that there is no such thing as choice. An Anglican friend of mine actually supported this with a quote from the bible (Don't remember which book though), which basically said, everything that will happen, will happen (as in everything that is going to happen will happen and there isn't anything anyone can do about it). And the 'circumstances had been different' thing, if somewhere in your life, an event had occured which influenced you away from Christianity or religion in general, then you would not be catholic today. So the whole 'I chose to be Christian' is just sort of an inside joke to me, cause I actually see it as 'you think you chose it, when it was really the events of your past which forced you into it' (It sounds blunter than it is)

Secondly

Spoiler: And correct me if I am mistaken

You believe in the existence of 'a' God (emphasis on 'a' rather than 'the'), which just happens to co-incide with the idea of the Christian God. (Seriously, if I got that horribly wrong, tell me, just the use of the word spiritual made it sound as though you made your own beliefs, and they happened to be closest to Christianity). On a slightly different topic, if what I just said is the case, then I have no problem with your beliefs as they seem to be well-founded on personal opinion rather than on narrow-minded intolerance (which is my biggest nit-pick with religions, and Atheism on occasion).

Thirdly

Spoiler: Bible moral stuff

You are quite right that many of the teachings from the Bible are good, and it would be great if more people had those ideals, (My favourite ideal being the anti-ignorance pro-wisdom thing that Proverbs preaches), my main thing(s) with this is,
a) No-one tends to know about it cause the Bible tends to get boring, fast.
b) Because most are written in parable or some other riddle-ish form, most people mis-interpret them
c) Because they are in a religious book, only religious people tend to see them, and people tend to go all high and mighty saying 'God's wisdom' and all this stuff, when wisdom belongs to everyone and if religious people wanted to help people, then they would offer a non-religious perspective on the bible for those who instantly shirk at the sound of religion (seeing as this would be the 'greatest good for the greatest number' approach. (basically, I don't like the fact that the wisdom is intimately (and unnecessarily so) tied to the bible when it could do greater good as separate from the bible)

Finally

Spoiler: Conclusion

I believe we may have gotten off topic slightly, my main point at the beginning (the whole Christianity-converting, Atheism-not thing was that having a belief in a lack of God should be considered just as important as havng a belief in a God, and therefore should be able to convert people to the same belief for as long as religion tries to do so, as I see neither as any better than the other (I lie, I am obviously biased towards Atheism, but from an outsiders view both would be equal.)

If there is anything I got wrong, or anything I missed then please tell me so we can clear that up.

Spoiler

Saying that "if events in your life had been different, you wouldn't have been Christian" is a logic that can be applied to literally anything. By saying that, you're suggesting that everything that you are as a person (all your beliefs, your personality) is entirely the result of circumstance, and that you as an individual have absoloutely no say in what you believe, or what you are. I have to STRONGLY disagree with that claim - we as individuals have just as much influence in our lives as random events and circumstances do; right now, I could choose to go out and kill a bunch of people - the events and circumstances which preceded that event would have in NO WAY indicated that such a thing was about to happen, and therein lies the power of the individual and the choices that we make.

At any point in time, you can make a decision that will completely change one's life, so the idea that we are all by-products of fate and circumstance is one that I disagree with. The events of your past are just that - IN THE PAST, and the emotional and psychological effects they have on you can (relatively easily) be overcome. How else would you explain the hundreds of thousands of people raised Christian who choose to become atheists later in life? I have a hard time believing that every single one of them had such a horrific and traumatic experience that they had NO CHOICE but to become atheists - they simply chose to. The question of "were we always going to make that choice" is another issue, however, and one that I find particularly interesting.

In response to your second "correct me if I'm wrong" section, if I had to define my beliefs, I would most definitely say that it is a rather personalized set of beliefs that evolved out of my knowledge of the Bible - the messages contained within the Bible which I found to be positive and inspiring (such as the messages of Jesus) I chose to incorporate into my personal beliefs. That is why, if I am forced to label myself, I call myself a "Christian" if only for the reason that I am a believer in the teachings of Jesus. I'm sure, to most people, I'm not what you would call a "true" Christian, which doesn't matter to me, anyway.

I do agree that their is a lot of wisdom contained in the Bible which tends to get ignored because of the intolerance and narrow-mindedness associated with religion - True, some of the things in the Bible have an almost riddle-esque quality to them (although I would attribute that moreso to the fact that it had to be translated from very old languages), but that is not the cause of their misinterpretation - people interpret modern texts written in plain, simple english in countless ways; it is just a human quality to derive different meaning from the same sources, and that is unfortunately unavoidable. I strongly agree with your point that Christians should try to share the wisdom of the Bible with others - even if these people don't necessarily believe in God, these are still really positive ideas that could enrich people's lives nonetheless and make the world a better place.

To resond to your final point, I've found that I have a sort of "doublethink" approach to the OP - personally (and this is undoubtedly due to my bias as a theist), I don't feel that atheism itself has a sufficient amount of depth or complexity as to require any spreading; I believe that doing away with spiritual beliefs and embracing things like logic and rational in its stead is an idea that people are perfectly capable of coming to independent of outside influence, which leads into my other argument against this, that being that I don't think ANY group (religious or otherwise) should be allowed to openly preach and spread their message in public forums such as college campuses, which are open to all people. HOWEVER, due to the fact that religious groups are undoubtedly going to retain the right to spread their ideas, then it is only fair that atheists should be allowed to do the same.

I am not really in the mood to discuss my 'no choise theory' as I have done so with many intelligent individuals before yourself and all have been swayed to my point of view. But my logic behind it is that, every decision you make is based upon who you are, which is based upon your experiences (basically, what you were taught, how you were taught it, bad things that have happened, pretty much everything in your life plays a factor). And so, by altering someone's experiences, they would be a different individual to who they were and ther5efore, make a different decision.

Basically, as a group, there are different 'decisions made', but as individuals, what you do is what you always would have done, and nothing could have altered that (BTW I am just giving you some more information, unless you wish to discuss this for any reason, then I'll bite, but if not, then I think we have pretty much resolved everything. It has been (and may continue to be) wonderful to argue these points with you.

 

[Hunter2458]

Just my two cents here, or rather, something I noticed. Only once was the worlds second largest religion mentioned. I dunno, but it seems that Atheists are only angry against Christians, because apparently Allah tells Muslims to be Nice to nonbelievers, including Atheists? Just saying it seems like Atheists are trying to only make one enemy, rather then really they should be making an enemy of every religious organization, including Scientology.

Atheists are not biased. Most atheists live in a Christian dominated society, so the criticism they dole out is proportional. Plus, there really isn't anything an atheist can say that society hasn't already about fundamentalist Muslims. Islam is a religion that has not adapted as well as Christianity did to modern society. As for the others- they are too much of a minority in the western world to draw much flak if any at all. Remember atheists usually only get mad at religions that interfere with society, and that cause people in positions of power to take stances based on faith rather than reason and logic, which is to say some more "passive" religions like Taoism don't draw much attention from the group.

Saying that, look at the other religious nations, the non-christian ones in particular. How great are the Muslim and Hindi societies for example?