Quote:
Originally Posted by Devils'Advocate
If you are in the "don't know, don't care" category then you are not athiest; you are agnostic. What exactly is the athiestic belief structure?
I don't know where exactly I fall. It's somewhere along the lines of "I don't think there is a God. But on the off chance that there _is_ an all-powerful-supreme-being then it doesn't much matter since he/she/it isn't worth worshipping".
Athiesm is considered a "religion" because some believe that it is faith-based. To believe that there is *NOT* a God takes as much faith as to believe that there *IS* a God. There may be no solid proof that God exists; there is also no solid proof that God does not exist. It's sorta like aliens. There is no solid proof that there is life on other planets, but to say that they don't exist is taking a solid leap of faith.
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Thats the line all theists would love everyone to believe....its BS.
Atheism, by definition, is the absence of theism. If you cannot say "I believe in a Deity/God/Supreme Being" then you are an atheist. If you are not a theist, then you are an atheist.
My faith is in the human race...I believe that people are inherantly good and moral and dont need a "religion" to make them so. I find meaning in human compassion, social progress, the beauty of humanity (art, music, literature), personal happiness, pleasure, joy, love, and the advancement of knowledge.
All religions think that you MUST be part of a theistic choice to be compassionate, etc.
Freethinkers are convinced that religious claims have not withstood the tests of reason. Not only is there nothing to be gained by believing an untruth, but there is everything to lose when we sacrifice the indispensable tool of reason on the altar of superstition. Most freethinkers consider religion to be not only untrue, but harmful. It has been used to justify war, slavery, sexism, racism, homophobia, mutilations, intolerance, and oppression of minorities. The totalitarianism of religious absolutes chokes progress.
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
- Albert Einstein
"Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis."
-Sigmund Freud
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
- Thomas Jefferson
"God was invented to explain mystery."
- Richard Feynman