Is Atheism trendy?

You got a number of these Neo-Atheists spouting out the nonsense that their nihilistic materialistic viewpoint, where we are all just random productions of matter, in a mechanical material universe, is sufficient to find meaning in life. Sure, you can live your life and pretend you have ethical values, and ignore the fundamental beliefs you hold about reality and consciousness, like any good hypocrite can. But anyone with a lick of intellectual integrity and ethical honesty, wouldn't buy into their Neo-Atheist crap for a second.

My Best,
Bertha
 
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These guys are not just happy with insisting they got the truth regarding what reality and consciousness is, but now, like any religious fanatical organization, they want to tell us what our ethics ought to be, this new modern day cult of materialists. They got "the truth", and god forbid if you disagree with them.

My Best,
Bertha
 
What I find incredibly interesting is this notion that so much can come from nothing, and ultimately is nothing.

There's some sort of cognitive dissonance going on where there is a refusal to acknowledge that BBT says "everything from nothing", oh wait actually, everything from a pinpoint of matter, contained within nothing that came from nowhere. The BBT violates the second law of thermodynamics, but there's very little discussion or acknowledgment of this fact. But if you bring up the subject of god, then their first question is "then who created God?". To which I'd say "whoever created the big bang of course!" ;)

Then again, they'll just start spouting off theories about previous universes and multiple universes, etc. etc.
 
Of course it changes. For example, regarding "Nothing I say, do or feel means, will mean, or has ever meant anything"
From a nihilistic viewpoint:
Yes
yes
yes
no
no
no
no
No
No

From my viewpoint, not nihilistic:
Yes
Yes
yes
Yes
yes
Yes
yes
yes
Yes
Actually,scratch that.

From a nihilistic view:
Ultimately no.

From my viewpoint:
Ultimately yes.


I think I phrased it poorly by asking does "your" perspective change. What I meant was to evaluate it from the perspective of who you fill in: So for example:
  • Nothing I say, do or feel means, will mean, or has ever meant anything to me.
  • Nothing I say, do or feel means, will mean, or has ever meant anything to my loved ones.
  • Nothing I say, do or feel means, will mean, or has ever meant anything to my aquaintances.
  • Nothing I say, do or feel means, will mean, or has ever meant anything to the universe.

And do the answers change based on whether you ask:
  • Nothing I say, do or feel means, will mean, or has ever meant anything to me. vs
  • My life ultimately means nothing to me vs.
  • Life doesn't mean anything to me.
Do you think one could find things they say and feel means something to them now, while on this planet, even if it won't ultimately mean anything to them?
 
What I find incredibly interesting is this notion that so much can come from nothing, and ultimately is nothing.

There's some sort of cognitive dissonance going on where there is a refusal to acknowledge that BBT says "everything from nothing", oh wait actually, everything from a pinpoint of matter, contained within nothing that came from nowhere. The BBT violates the second law of thermodynamics, but there's very little discussion or acknowledgment of this fact. But if you bring up the subject of god, then their first question is "then who created God?". To which I'd say "whoever created the big bang of course!" ;)

Then again, they'll just start spouting off theories about previous universes and multiple universes, etc. etc.

Agreed! The new push by the Neo-Atheists and Skeptics, the guerilla censoring going on with Wikipedia, the ridiculing of scientists in public, the more and more tightly controlled use of funding sources in academia to limit what scientific questions can be asked etc. is to me, strikingly like the hegemony of the church during the middle ages. Where no one is really allowed to question some of the most obvious glaring fallacies of officially accepted dogma! And we have plenty of examples of this by the new Scientism creed: random mutations, the random origin of life, the origin of laws of physics & the origin of reality, paranormal phenomena, NDE phenomena, consciousness itself, etc.

I don't mind living in an intellectual milieu where people have different ideas, theories and models about things and remain tolerant. And there is even a general consensus regarding some ideas and theories over others. But when you start having a relatively few group of individuals fanatically organizing to oppose any other views about reality (and even ethics!) than their own, and who deliberately go about character assassinating other individuals, if not ruining the careers of intellectuals - just so their paradigm and belief system remains dominant, then I see exactly the same kind of harmful anti-intellectual activity being engaged in, that the church was engaged in centuries ago. And it goes very much against the original spirit of science. You know, many of the original thinkers in science: Newton, Kepler, Copernicus etc. were also spiritual men. This idea that science and spirituality are mutually exclusive is just another blatant fallacy propagated by these new materialist cultists.

My Best,
Bertha
 
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I think he who has the loudest voice in your head controls it, I think old men start wars and young men fight them, I think those who don't know history are condemned to repeat it, I think religion has been man's blessing (ex. algebra, the Red Cross, preserving Roman language and knowledge after the Fall) and curse (obvious), I think people are the problem and not institutions, I think colleges give people a terrible idea of what the real world is like, I think science should be neither theistic or atheistic but agnostic in everything, I think atheists should follow malt and Arouet's example, I think everyone should put themselves in the shoes of others, and learn how to each become a scientist, priest, and artist, and I think if y'all wanted this forum to move forward you'd focus your attentions less on third party accounts, and more on pursuing your own personal experiences and reporting them back here for discussion.
 
I think atheists should follow malt and Arouet's example

Arouet does not believe in science, he believes in materialism. He claims he believes in science but after you've seen enough of his posts, you realize he's just another dogmatic materialistic with an axe to grind. I doubt very much he's attempted to investigate mediumship or paranormal studies on his own, and yet he seems to know all about the scientists and scientific work in psi or NDEs. This to me this is just someone caught up in materialist dogma and unwilling to be honest enough with himself to realize he's caught up in a dogma; or be open-minded enough to actually seek out the answers for himself.

My Best,
Bertha
 
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I can't speak for the rest of Western civilization, but here in the US, it is exactly the opposite. This is largely a Christian society, and in much of the country fundamentalist Christianity is rampant. Atheists are a small minority, and as polls have shown, are widely despised. The pressure here is to believe in God.



As I said, atheists have become more outspoken.
Regardless of what polls do or don't say, I work around groups of men that I suspect a short time ago would've been more staunchly Christian than they are . . . I suspect a sea-change.

This is Southern Louisiana I'm talking about . . . Even driving across the Atchafalaya there's a large political billboard announcing that the woman wanting your vote has voted 100% pro-abortion . . . That she bills this as a positive thing in such a rural area strikes me as extremely odd . . .
 
Regardless of what polls do or don't say, I work around groups of men that I suspect a short time ago would've been more staunchly Christian than they are . . . I suspect a sea-change.

This is Southern Louisiana I'm talking about . . . Even driving across the Atchafalaya there's a large political billboard announcing that the woman wanting your vote has voted 100% pro-abortion . . . That she bills this as a positive thing in such a rural area strikes me as extremely odd . . .

Wow, that is something. When the bible belt starts baby stepping (no pun intended) toward a pro-abortion stance, you know times are a changin'!

However, just last June we were driving through Florida, and seriously every 5 miles there was a billboard spouting various anti-abortion proclamations.
 
Are we within our right to request moderate atheists to speak out against the murders that occured in Chapel Hill? Just wondering...




Apart from that I'd like to share an anecdote...
I had a brief exchange with some guy whom I assume was an atheist on Twitter. It all started with me replying to someone that expecting muslims to speak out against terrorists was like expecting atheists to be vocal against the mischiefs committed by Staline, Mao and Pol pot. That man replied that those three didn't commit their crime in the name of atheism to which I retorted that it was a mere coincidence that those three were atheists. He later got back to me saying that I shouldnt be confused between correlation and causation :)

Yet I bet that he's the same as those people who assert that consciouness is a byproduct of the brain. When it comes to consciouness, sure correlation = causation, but when it comes to anti religious motives not the event are just correlated...
 
Apart from that I'd like to share an anecdote...
I had a brief exchange with some guy whom I assume was an atheist on Twitter. It all started with me replying to someone that expecting muslims to speak out against terrorists was like expecting atheists to be vocal against the mischiefs committed by Staline, Mao and Pol pot. That man replied that those three didn't commit their crime in the name of atheism to which I retorted that it was a mere coincidence that those three were atheists. He later got back to me saying that I shouldnt be confused between correlation and causation :)

Yet I bet that he's the same as those people who assert that consciouness is a byproduct of the brain. When it comes to consciouness, sure correlation = causation, but when it comes to anti religious motives not the event are just correlated...

I've written about this issue recently. Where there is causation there will be correlation, but correlation does not necessarily imply causation.

Determining which requires testing the relationship - and there are various ways to do this.
 
Are we within our right to request moderate atheists to speak out against the murders that occured in Chapel Hill? Just wondering...

Apart from that I'd like to share an anecdote...
I had a brief exchange with some guy whom I assume was an atheist on Twitter. It all started with me replying to someone that expecting muslims to speak out against terrorists was like expecting atheists to be vocal against the mischiefs committed by Staline, Mao and Pol pot. That man replied that those three didn't commit their crime in the name of atheism to which I retorted that it was a mere coincidence that those three were atheists. He later got back to me saying that I shouldnt be confused between correlation and causation :)

Yet I bet that he's the same as those people who assert that consciouness is a byproduct of the brain. When it comes to consciouness, sure correlation = causation, but when it comes to anti religious motives not the event are just correlated...

To quote Arouet, atheists lack a belief in a deity, so to say Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot didn't commit crimes in the name of atheism is redundant and invalid. We KNOW they didn't commit crimes in the name of atheism. They just found something else to name, and they committed crimes in the name of THAT.
 
To quote Arouet, atheists lack a belief in a deity, so to say Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot didn't commit crimes in the name of atheism is redundant and invalid. We KNOW they didn't commit crimes in the name of atheism. They just found something else to name, and they committed crimes in the name of THAT.

I would not pay much attention to what Arouet claims or insinuates and what are known facts, which I have found, often differ from Arouet's fundamentalist belief system in materialistic atheism.

For example, the Russian Orthodox church during Stalin's terror was opposed to Atheism and communism. Stalin persecuted the church and the clergy and practitioners, many of whom were either sent to labor camps or simply executed. Of the 50,000 original churches, only about 500 now remain.

Mao Zedong, following in the footsteps of Marxism and Stalin, around the 1960s conducted a widespread persecution of religious activities in China i.e. the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution". Many temples and churches were desecrated, Buddhist priests were tortured, catholic priests were sent to labor camps, and Muslim mosques were turned into pig slaughterhouses.

Pol Pot ... well you got the killing fields there. heh. Sad how guys like Sam Harris & Arouet gloss over all this, as if it never happened, and pretend Atheistic beliefs hold some kind of higher moral ground.

My Best,
Bertha
 
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I would not pay much attention to what Arouet claims or insinuates and what are known facts, which I have found, often differ from Arouet's fundamentalist belief system (materialistic atheism).

For example, the Russian Orthodox church during Stalin's terror was opposed to Atheism and communism. Stalin persecuted the church and the clergy and practitioners, many of whom were either sent to labor camps or simply executed. Of the 50,000 original churches, only about 500 now remain.

Mao Zedong, following in the footsteps of Marxism and Stalin, around the 1960s conducted a widespread persecution of religious activities in China i.e. the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution". Many temples and churches were desecrated, Buddhist priests were tortured, catholic priests were sent to labor camps, and Muslim mosques were turned into pig slaughterhouses.

Pol Pot ... well you got the killing fields there. heh. Sad how guys like Sam Harris & Arouet gloss over all this, as if it never happened, and pretend Atheistic beliefs hold some kind of higher moral ground.

My Best,
Bertha

Ah, well, I was saying basically your last sentence, but you have a wonderful knack for cutting through all the diplomacy and going straight for the jugular :P
 
To quote Arouet, atheists lack a belief in a deity, so to say Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot didn't commit crimes in the name of atheism is redundant and invalid. We KNOW they didn't commit crimes in the name of atheism. They just found something else to name, and they committed crimes in the name of THAT.

Given that both atheists and theists have committed similar atrocities of this kind, I question whether mere belief or lack of belief in a deity should be thought to cause these atrocities. The three dictators listed have atheism as a commonality. Add some similar (but theist) leaders to that list (Hitler, Genghis Khan, Ceasar) and suddenly the correlation doesn't look so significant.
 
Given that both atheists and theists have committed similar atrocities of this kind, I question whether mere belief or lack of belief in a deity should be thought to cause these atrocities. The three dictators listed have atheism as a commonality. Add some similar (but theist) leaders to that list (Hitler, Genghis Khan, Ceasar) and suddenly the correlation doesn't look so significant.

Right, that's what I'm saying. Stalin used communism as a tool for power and control, Pope Urban V used Christianity as a tool for power and control, King George III used monarchism as a tool for power and control... that's what all this comes down to, power and control, who has it, and how do I take it from them?
 
Right, that's what I'm saying. Stalin used communism as a tool for power and control, Pope Urban V used Christianity as a tool for power and control, King George III used monarchism as a tool for power and control... that's what all this comes down to, power and control, who has it, and how do I take it from them?

Exactly! Although this is the opposite of what Bertha wrote, which you said you agreed with? :eek:
 
Exactly! Although this is the opposite of what Bertha wrote, which you said you agreed with? :eek:

Oh, but remember, I said I was BASICALLY saying his last sentence. Neither atheism or theism currently hold the higher moral ground, and there are many scientists who seem unwilling to acknowledge that being atheists doesn't make them better moralists. Naturally, I left you out of that thought ;)
 
Oh, but remember, I said I was BASICALLY saying his last sentence. Neither atheism or theism currently hold the higher moral ground, and there are many scientists who seem unwilling to acknowledge that being atheists doesn't make them better moralists. Naturally, I left you out of that thought ;)

For me, tolerance holds the highest moral ground. Tolerance for people's spirituality and tolerance for different belief systems, and tolerance for scientists who study the hard questions like consciousness. Tolerance that the Johnny Come Lately brand of Neo-Atheist Skeptics lack in huge doses.

Tolerance for asking different questions. Tolerance in science for those who work on unorthodox questions, that have sometimes led to the greatest breakthru's in science.

My Best,
Bertha
 
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