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Atheist literature that has shaped your life [W:229]

Pantheists (nietzche, schoepenhaur, mackie) or deists (mill) or agnostics (sartre, Foucault), no atheists among them (with the exception of Peter singer who doesn't qualify as a "great thinker"). Reappropriating great deistic or pantheistic thinkers as "atheists" when they were no such thing is a common mistake of the New Atheists. Thank you for exposing your like of familiarity with their work! I can now safely hold your opinion in contempt.

Haha are you kidding me? Please give me quotes from the aforementioned philosophers that show their explicit pantheism / deism - not some quote you think can be construed as such (I can feel a semantical argument coming). And yes, Singer is qualified as a "great thinker" considering his position at Princeton, the work he has done, his reverance among peers, and his being named one of Australia's top ten intellectuals.
 
Name two. Any two philosophical questions where any theistic answer is actually a better answer. Of course, even that doesn't have any bearing on whether or not those answers are true.

Probably not philosophical ones, either. Isn't the notion that our biological status as human beings is the source of our desire to be kind to one another a better one than that we're only kind to each other out of fear of divine punishment?

Not to mention the falsehood of it, considering there are those of us who do not accept that belief of divine punishment, yet we are still "good."
 
Atheism is such a wonderfully naive, childlike state. It is sweet and pure.

Hear, hear!

"Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven" (Mat 18:3)

Amen.

;)
 
So what atheist/agnostic literature has shaped your lives?

First of all, "Agnostic" means theist. If someone allows for the possibility of superhuman, or supernatural spirits existing, then they are religious.

Second of all, the theory of Cosmological Reality, that states that human beings are irrelevant to reality, is not yet widespread or popular.

The literature that has shaped my life is the realization that humans are irrelevant to universal reality.
 
First of all, "Agnostic" means theist. If someone allows for the possibility of superhuman, or supernatural spirits existing, then they are religious.

Second of all, the theory of Cosmological Reality, that states that human beings are irrelevant to reality, is not yet widespread or popular.

The literature that has shaped my life is the realization that humans are irrelevant to universal reality.

Wow, you managed to misuse two words in the same post.

Fail 1) Agnostic means they believe the question of god is inherently unknowable. That is NOT a theist. A theist says "There is a god". An agnostic says "We can't know if there is or isn't."

Fail 2) Literature is written word. A realization is not a book.

When you're ready to contribute to the topic, let us know.
 
There are plenty of good books out there that revolve around atheism, but none of them changed my life. However, The Demon-Haunted World:Science as a Candle in the Dark, by Carl Sagan, definitely did change my life. While it touches on religion its focus is scientific skepticism in general. That book played a big role in me becoming a Skeptic with a capital "S". And it was that skepticism that eventually led to my atheism.
 
Hear, hear!

"Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven" (Mat 18:3)

Amen.

;)

I never said atheists weren't going to get into heaven. Being childlike is not necessarily a bad thing. It depends on what your goals are. If your goal is to float through life without doing any deep thinking then atheism is great!
 
There are plenty of good books out there that revolve around atheism, but none of them changed my life. However, The Demon-Haunted World:Science as a Candle in the Dark, by Carl Sagan, definitely did change my life. While it touches on religion its focus is scientific skepticism in general. That book played a big role in me becoming a Skeptic with a capital "S". And it was that skepticism that eventually led to my atheism.
I wonder when you will get around to applying you skepticism to atheism.
 
I wonder when you will get around to applying you skepticism to atheism.

What's to be skeptical about? Someone sees no proof for a god, so they don't believe. Do you think they're just saying they don't believe to further some agenda?
 
I agree. I may disagree with some intelligent and insightful individuals, but I always learn something from them and their arguments. I rather prefer to be curious than confrontational.



For me, I came to realize that there are deep mysteries which the human intellect probably won't ever illuminate. It seems more or less inevitable that we be left with a residue of mystery that just doesn't go away, no matter how hard we try. One of the principle characteristics that seems nearly essential to most religious experience is just that kind of mystery, confronted in a direct experiential manner. Indeed, the old pagan mysteries were called mysteries precisely because they could not be formulated in language, and so were not susceptible to rational analysis.

Indeed, some would say that these mysteries transcend rational analysis.
 
I never said atheists weren't going to get into heaven. Being childlike is not necessarily a bad thing. It depends on what your goals are. If your goal is to float through life without doing any deep thinking then atheism is great!

Sure, sure. But you are assigning the "atheist" title to feces-throwing monkeys like Sam Harris (not a pure child, as I see it, rather a kindergarten bully), while apparently denying it to any number of thinkers, from Condorcet and Voltaire to Bentham and J.S.Mill, to Dewey and Santayana.

Asking deep questions is perfectly compatible with atheism. Being satisfied with shallow and vague answers, on the other hand, is a feature of believing mind.
 
What's to be skeptical about? Someone sees no proof for a god, so they don't believe. Do you think they're just saying they don't believe to further some agenda?

You're talking about agnosticism. Atheism is a stinger belief; it is an affirmative denial. A true skeptic would never indulge in such an unsound belief.
 
I never said atheists weren't going to get into heaven. Being childlike is not necessarily a bad thing. It depends on what your goals are. If your goal is to float through life without doing any deep thinking then atheism is great!

Actually......

According to dogma and doctrine Atheists would be the only one's guaranteed to not get in. (Sorry Cy, it breaks your heart, I know...;)) It's the "rejection of" that does it... They have up to the last minute, some even postulate they have yet another when they're crossing over but it is their refusal to accept which puts the kibosh on things...
 
If someone allows for the possibility of superhuman, or supernatural spirits existing, then they are religious.

I am not sure what "supernatural" means ("nature" encompassing all reality, but definition), but I "allow for the possibility" that countless things I don't know about do exist with gusto.

It doesn't make me religious.I don't believe in any of those things - I will accept their existence when presented with evidence, and I treat them as non-existent until then. A matter of mental hygiene.

Neither am I an agnostic. When not a weasel word for "atheist", it means someone who believes in existence of things unknowable - which I think is patent nonsense: Even in theory, how can you prove that any entity is beyond the reason's grasp?
 
You're talking about agnosticism. Atheism is a stinger belief; it is an affirmative denial.

"Atheism" you are talking about is a mental disorder: a belief in non-existence of something undefined.
 
You're talking about agnosticism. Atheism is a stinger belief; it is an affirmative denial. A true skeptic would never indulge in such an unsound belief.

Nope, I'm talking about atheism. I don't make the leap of faith to believe in any of the gods I've heard about. Atheism is the default position.
 
Actually......

According to dogma and doctrine Atheists would be the only one's guaranteed to not get in. (Sorry Cy, it breaks your heart, I know...;)) It's the "rejection of" that does it... They have up to the last minute, some even postulate they have yet another when they're crossing over but it is their refusal to accept which puts the kibosh on things...

Hey, buddy, it's atheist, not Atheist. There's no Church of Atheism.
 
You're talking about agnosticism. Atheism is a stinger belief; it is an affirmative denial. A true skeptic would never indulge in such an unsound belief.
De facto atheist: Very low probability of God's existence, but short of zero. "I don't know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_of_theistic_probability


In other words, God has the same chance of being real as a unicorn, a leprechaun, or a garden gnome.
 
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Hey, buddy, it's atheist, not Atheist. There's no Church of Atheism.

I'd beg to differ pal o' mine, with some of them there atheists we got running around...
 
I'd beg to differ pal o' mine, with some of them there atheists we got running around...

Unless they call themselves a part of some atheist group it's not a proper noun, so regardless of whether you think they act like they're part of a church it's still atheist.
 
Unless they call themselves a part of some atheist group it's not a proper noun, so regardless of whether you think they act like they're part of a church it's still atheist.

Uh huh...:coffeepap
 
You're talking about agnosticism. Atheism is a stinger belief; it is an affirmative denial. A true skeptic would never indulge in such an unsound belief.

That's not true. Agnostic atheist is probably the most compatible with extreme skepticism.
 
Hey, Guy, I'm still waiting on those quotes from this:

Haha are you kidding me? Please give me quotes from the aforementioned philosophers that show their explicit pantheism / deism - not some quote you think can be construed as such (I can feel a semantical argument coming). And yes, Singer is qualified as a "great thinker" considering his position at Princeton, the work he has done, his reverance among peers, and his being named one of Australia's top ten intellectuals.

But I see you've posted repeatedly and chose not to respond. Interesting...

I never said atheists weren't going to get into heaven. Being childlike is not necessarily a bad thing. It depends on what your goals are. If your goal is to float through life without doing any deep thinking then atheism is great!

I wonder when you will get around to applying you skepticism to atheism.

You're talking about agnosticism. Atheism is a stinger belief; it is an affirmative denial. A true skeptic would never indulge in such an unsound belief.
 
De facto atheist: Very low probability of God's existence, but short of zero. "I don't know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_of_theistic_probability


In other words, God has the same chance of being real as a unicorn, a leprechaun, or a garden gnome.

That's not true. Agnostic atheist is probably the most compatible with extreme skepticism.

I think, too, part of the problem, is, it's safe to be an atheist when it comes to the Judeo-Christian "god" and other historical deities as there have been positive claims disproven previously and repeatedly (i.e. the Bible). It is, however, not really logical to say "no 'god' is possible" as that's a claim of absolute knowledge in the future.
 
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