The Post Athiest Manifesto

[stdPikachu]

It's my own personal belief that the two are related; I believe religious dogma to be merely the repetition of the quasi-spiritual experience of a person or persons unknown. Call it dogma via spiritual groupthink, if you know what I mean.

Although I don't really see how this (opinion) conflicts with anything, it's just a personal observation. Much like FFF, I don't really believe in "spiritual" experiences, only in quirks of the brain that we haven't figured out yet.

 

[Idaho]

How do you deal with the irrational? Why would you help a stranger? Why wouldn't you lie if no-one would find out?

With belief being replaced with modern rationalism - what is the source of your morality?

 

[rhys gethin]

Why would you help a stranger? Why wouldn't you lie if no-one would find out?

With belief being replaced with modern rationalism - what is the source of your morality?

Why not? It seems to me that faith in 'the individual' is extremely naive. The source of 'my' morality is as near as I can get to total scepticism.

 

[obanite]

Great post, niksativa.

Personally, one of my big problems with atheism are its intellectual arrogance - that just because we've worked out some of how our world fits together and works, we know it all, and can somehow justify dismissing anything faith-based just because it's based on faith alone.

Do we need hard evidence to prove everything is correct and in order in our lives? Bollocks do we, most people don't know the first thing about the scientific method.

What we are very good at, is not believing or identifying with anything outside our immediate experience, even if it's somebody we know personally. It's like drink driving - so many people do it, something really terrible has to happen before people will actually "believe the truth" and realise quite how it can wreck theirs and other peoples' lives, despite the blanket campaigning against it every xmas. This attitude it prevalent on every level of society.

Every existing agnostic is a prop for the crushing oppression of religion.

I just don't understand this attitude. I'm humanist first and strongly object to oppression in all its forms. But because I refuse to subscribe to your doctrine, I'm supporting others? In the same way someone who refuses to support the Tories supports Tony Blair, I suppose... that'd be me too

As George W. Bush said, "You're either with us, or against us"...

 

[kyser_soze]

I believe in Saturn's moon Europa

I believe in Jupiter's moon Europa. Wanna start a fight about it?

I find that looking at pictures like this:

This false-colour composite was obtained by AKARI's Far Infrared Surveyor (FIS) instrument at 90 and 140 micrometres. It shows star-forming regions in the constellation Cygnus, one of the brightest regions in the Milky Way

takes care of my 'spiritual' needs quite nicely. A Stellar Nursery; witnessing the ACTUAL process of creation of new stars; the Hubble Deep Field...all of them.

Now I am an atheist, but not one who's dogmatically opposed to religion - simply because as with religious faith, you have to come to it, not the other way around. So as the JWs at your door have no impact, equally making the atheist's point is also meaningless.

But that's just me. I'm opposed to religion when it does bad things to people; but then I'm also against secularism when it does bad to people, as anyone who's in Falun Gong knows full well.

Anyhoo, I think what Idaho is referring to is the human need to create a narrative that explains the world, universe etc and the security that brings to the mind. It's always a tougher one for atheists I think because it's a process of building a 'non-belief' - a structure of ideas that's effective at keeping you secure, but is flexible enough to change within certain boundaries - for example, science showing that the Big Bang wasn't the creation point wouldn't shake me in the same way that being shown actual proof of God's existance would because it would still be within my 'acceptance' boundaries, whereas the existance of a religious deity...the funny thing is if you change 'deity' for 'very powerful alien' it wouldn't bother me, so there you are, a lot of it's semantics...

 

[rhys gethin]

Said it before, and I'll say it again - atheism is just a back-formation from theism. It's like saying you don't believe the earth is flat: well good, what sensible people do? It seems to me it is better to move on to something interesting, unless you happen to be spending your life with a lot of fundamentalists or something and are stuck with it. There have been a lot of belief-systems since theism bit the dust, and I think it might be more interesting to discuss those, particularly post-modernism. Most people who go on about religion as if they believe it are only pretending, as their actions clearly demonstrate. Or should we all dance a gavotte?