[Textcritic]

This has been an interesting discussion that I am sorry I missed (as usual). I did want to pick up on something that was said a few pages earlier.

Originally Posted by DuffMan

Pretty sure we're just going with the default God here, given our location...

Originally Posted by Chill Cosby

There is no default God.
There are multiple understandings of God, and different views of the attribute of said God, but there is no such thing as "default God," so if you plan on speaking about God, then you're biting more than you can chew...

Of course, Chill Cosby is right here, but it raises an interesting point that I had not thought much about since before now, and that is the counter idea of a "default" form of atheism. Generally speaking, atheism defines itself by the absence of a belief in any god or supernatural being, but what is often overlooked is that this declaration has been formed from a thoroughly Western concept of such things as "god" or "supernature." I think most atheists would agree that their ideas are formed from a strong commitment to rationalism (correct me if I am wrong here), but even what we consider to be modern rational discourse has emerged from a thoroughly, unavoidably Western religious, "JudeoChristian" outlook. So then, it is natural that modern atheism with which we are most familiar are responses to concepts about god and supernature that have emerged out of Western religion. "Western religion" itself is a rather artificial enterprise that emerged from ancient religious practice into a type of cognition or conceptualisation of ritual and performance.

This makes me wonder especially in light of some of terminator's complaints: are there, or will there be other forms of atheism that respond more specifically to "Eastern"—what I would consider more ancient and conservative expressions of "god" and "supernature"?

Originally Posted by Chill Cosby

Again, if you're taking on a religion, you'll have a much easier time, but I've rarely seen an atheist argue against God itself with any sense of clarity or proper understanding.

Similar to my first point, atheistic responses, critiques, and rejections of religion are quite specific to the modernised Western concept of religion, and as such are structured with particular sets of definitions in place which are not universal to all forms of what we now consider to be "religion." Hell, I would argue that the modern concept of "religion" itself is also a modernised Western idea that does not really align with what historical or universal "religion" actually is. The problem occurs because the study of "religion" has sought primarily to extract certain ideas from a complex matrix of cultural and social rituals, myths, self-conceptions, and anthropological behaviours. The modernised Western concept of religion is inextricably tied to the horribly simplistic notion of "worldview" that seeks to reduce cultural nuances to a set of premises and doctrines.

So, I am curious to see or know if there is such a thing as a non-Westernised form of atheism in the first place, and in the second to know how it counters religion from within its own religiously cultivated perspective. I might at the outset think that perhaps some forms of Buddhism (mindfulness?) or Chinese philosophies founded on Confuciun thinking might qualify, which is interesting, because I also suspect that these would be universally rejected by modernised Western (Judeo-Christianised?) atheists also as "religion."