I’m not sure why I’m drawn to Atheism. Perhaps is because God is unrealistic in my opinion. Or he’s just not real. I don’t know.
“Atheism is characterized by an absence of belief in the existence of gods. This absence of belief generally comes about either through deliberate choice, or from an inherent inability to believe religious teachings which seem literally incredible. It is not a lack of belief born out of simple ignorance of religious teachings.
Some atheists go beyond a mere absence of belief in gods: they actively believe that particular gods, or all gods, do not exist. Just lacking belief in Gods is often referred to as the “weak atheist” position; whereas believing that gods do not (or cannot) exist is known as “strong atheism.”
It is important, however, to note the difference between the strong and weak atheist positions. “Weak atheism” is simple skepticism; disbelief in the existence of God. “Strong atheism” is an explicitly held belief that God does not exist. Please do not fall into the trap of assuming that all atheists are “strong atheists.” There is a qualitative difference in the “strong” and “weak” positions; it’s not just a matter of degree.” (Atheism: and introduction)
I’m a ‘weak atheist’. I just lack belief. That being said, I’m also doing a lot of research on God/Gods and I may end a ‘strong atheist’. There are a lot of Gods out there. Who is right? What if no one is right? What if believing in a god is just a bunch of crap? So many questions so few answers…ugh.
Filed under: Other Beliefs | Tagged: atheism, bisexual, gay, God, Gods, introduction to atheism, jesus, Lesbian, queer, religion
C
It is hard to be at a place where there are more questions than answers. I have been there and I know how lonely and hard it can be. Don’t give up, I’ll pray that you get the answers you need. Take care of yourself and know that this too shall pass.
Answers are useless if they are false. Uncertainty is infinitely more useful than lies.
There is a position between the “weak” and “strong” atheists positions. One can think that there is overwhelming evidence against the existence of deities and the supernatural without having a belief that there are no such things.
That would be called weak atheism. Weak atheism includes “almost certain”. Only if you are certain are you a strong atheist like myself.
Ceara,
It takes a lot of faith to be an atheist.
Sane
(((HUGS)))
I still care about you and will pray for you, regardless of what you choose.
That’s funny. Yesterday we had a couple of kids
come up to the door wanting to had me their
church pamphlet . I told them that we already had
our own. They were put out about that.
HUGS!!!!!
If there are two positions, only one can have more evidence. The other will require faith.
Given that theism is the one that promotes faith, it is obvious that theism, and not atheism, requires faith.
@ Samuel: Good point. Atheism requires self-assuredness. Theism requires faith in another. They aren’t the same thing.
that graphic is fantastic! im personally agnostic/borderline belieiving in some spiritual entity.
Ceara,
I’ve been doing some thinking over the past hours about your post.
I can’t help but think that you are walking away from God. I know in past posts you’ve written about how he seems silent and distant, perhaps that is because you’ve taken your eyes off of Him and are looking else where?
Maybe it’s because you are struggling with being a lesbian and believing in nothing is your solution? If God cannot accept me, then I cannot accept Him kind of thinking.
I think you would make a poor atheist. You are too bright and spiritual minded to settle for not believing in anything. I think your spirit is searching, and you are tired. As we all get on our spiritual walks.
I have faith that you will find the truth. Saying you don’t believe is just a form of denial. Seems that you are in a lot of denial about things right now.
Sane
C,
This is exahusting, isn’t it?
I remember being in a similar place, questioning so many things, searching and searching only to find myself exhausted from searching. Mainly because sooooo many people have soooooo much to say about God, homosexuality, atheism…….hm, well, pretty much everything now that I think about it.
This is your journey however and I pray that you continue to search and not settle.
I too have faith that you will find the truth.
Lindsey- you are assuming what you are proving- theists also have to have “faith in their senses” to get to God in the first place! It is a problem with ALL attempts to understand the world.
Queerunity- define spiritual entity. The fact of the matter is that almost noone can ever give definitions for such fuzzy words.
Sane- someone is giving up their religious beliefs because they realize that it requires them to deny who they are? What a surprise.
I am reminded of the movie “Kingdom of Heaven”
“If God objects… well than, he isn’t God.”
In short giving impossible commands isn’t an attribute of someone who cares. Guess what the God (s) of all religions do?
Stephanie- that is why the internet exists. Just type in atheism, antitheism, apologetics… anything you are curious about. Also, use the blog tabs to see people’s thoughts.
Best of luck and remember that alot is false, pron, raw stupidity and self agrandization. Still, there is alot of good stuff.
Of the top of my head Daylight Atheism is the best. The Barefoot Bum is rather interesting- he covers philosophy.
For raw information, nothing beats Star Destroyer.net. It is slightly humorous… and extremely informative. Those people take their versus debates seriously. Who would win SW vs ST? ST vs WH 40K? The pope vs Hitler? Wilson (leave it to beaver) or Wilson (Home Improvement)?
Plus, it has Shep (of the infamous “shep solution”)!
Samuel: I suppose since we come at this from different angles there is bound to be confusion. Obviously ultimately everyone must believe that they are right or they wouldn’t believe (or disbelieve) what they do in the first place.
Theism is in many ways a more difficult choice, because not only must I trust my own senses and logic, but I also must exert a certain amount of faith that those things which I can’t logically prove are ultimately for my own good, as well as an additional amount of trust in the people around me who share my faith.
The last bit is the hardest, because (to say things plainly as well as crudely) a fair number of Christians have proven themselves to be selfish bigoted assholes. Of course I’m a bit of a freakish hybrid Christian, because I also study Buddhism and Taoism- and I know a guy who is a Bhakti Hindu Christian.
In my earlier comment to you I was simply agreeing that Sane Christian’s assertion that Atheism takes a lot of faith was wrong- because it’s not like Atheists are exerting faith that they won’t go to Hell or something like that. They don’t need to. You don’t need to exert faith that something you don’t believe in won’t affect you- you simply trust in your belief that such faith is unnecessary.
Hey all thanks for taking time to comment and share your thoughts.
WVHILLCOUNTRY–Thanks for encouraging me. I’ll plod along and see what their is to see, and learn what there is to learn.
SAMUAL–Thank you for swinging by and taking the time to comment and share some information with us/me.
I’ve just got my big toe wet on the atheism learning. I’ll check out Star Destroyer, and the other things you recommended.
SANE–I saw some of those sites listed when I was doing a search. How much faith does it take to be an atheist, Does it take faith to be an atheist.
I assure you I’ll take all points of view that I can find into consideration.
I’m sure it seems like I am walking away from God to many Christians. But from where I’m sitting God took the heal toe express a while ago.
If I can’t be who I am and be accepted by God I don’t want to be accepted. It just proves to me that God is a lair. But according to so many teachings because he’s God he can’t be lair or wrong.
LIBHOMOS–Sounds like Atheism may be a two spot religion. You are either ‘weak’ or ’strong’. You are almost an atheist, or you totally are.
LINDSEY–Thanks.
LAURIE–lol. I think people get put out when someone is comfortable in what they believe and don’t want to hear about something else.
It goes to that thought of what I believe is best and you should change because I have all the best answers.
QUEERUNITY– Lol that graphic cracked me up. I thought it was the best one out of the ones I found. Glad you enjoyed it.
I’m so naive I don’t know what agnostic is.
STEPHANIE–It is tiring. Trying to learn about and consider things I’ve read, and heard. By the end of this I’m going to have a large library on religions, spiritual teachings, and thought.
Again thank you all for taking the time to reply and share your thoughts.
I shouldn’t wade into this…
For the first time in my life I agree with Sane. (It feels chilly. I think hell just froze over.) Let me take a minute to explain where I’m coming from. In my view, faith involves a leap into believing something that cannot be proven with those things we use to prove something scientifically. Can it be weighed? Observed? Smelled? Etc. etc.
Neither strong atheism nor theism, ultimately, can be proven. Prove to me there is a God. Prove to me there isn’t a God. How do you prove or disprove the existence of an invisible man who acts and behaves in any number of different ways depending on the culture and time we speak of?
In my opinion, the most faith-less/logical position is agnosticism. “I cannot know for certain whether there is a God.” Perhaps I’ll add weak atheism to the faith-less/logical list. But anything else involves some sort of leap of faith.
I don’t say this to say faith is bad or good. We need faith all the time– faith in our friends, our families, our abilities. I just say that either stance does, indeed, involve a measure of faith.
Me again. Just really quickly: There are some deeply faithful people who comment here and elsewhere whose writings I respect. I want to let you all know that I intended no disrespect in my previous comment.
Jade, I took no offense because you are writing from your life. I may or may not agree with you (I have to think more) but I appreciate your ideas.
Ceara, Maybe I will get blasted for this, but I don’t care what you choose to believe. I have good Christian friends, I have friends that have fallen away, and I have atheist friends. To me, it is more important that I love all, it doesn’t matter if they agree with me or not.
I only pray that you find your answers, your answers don’t have to agree with mine. I know what I know and you may know a different thing. Either way, I appreciate who you are and I will be your friend. So go look. And when it all boils down, I will still be here. Take care, Kelli
I agree that my position does not fit the definition of strong atheist. However, it really doesn’t fit the definition of a weak atheist either. I am taking a position that deities do not exist based on reason and evidence, which a weak atheist would not do.
Dualisms are convenient, but they often are not accurate descriptors.
As an Atheist. I’m always torn between weak and strong atheism. Its impossible to proof god does not exist, as arguments supporting belief in a god or gods are unfalsifiable. So as a scientific thinker, I cannot rule out god’s existence because I can’t prove he does not exist. With that in mind I cannot call myself a strong Atheist.
Definition: unfalsifiable = not able to be proven false
However, belief based on unfalsifiable assertions is inherently unscientific. I could claim the tooth fairy exists and no-one could prove me wrong. Ditto for Bigfoot, leprechauns or invisible pink unicorns. So I equate belief in god to belief in the tooth-fairy or any of the other aforementioned mythological creatures.
In this sense there is nothing weak about my atheism. I’m pretty sure none of the above exist and that god doesn’t either, I just can’t prove it. However I should stress, that the burden of proof does not lie with the sceptic, it lies with the person making the positive assertion. If you assert that something is true or an entity exists, the burden is on you to prove it, not for sceptics to prove you wrong.
It is now dec
i just found this post a minute ago.
Intuitively, and with reason, the non-believers, questions themselves, their minds, and the world around them.
there are answers.
and there is an answer to “who’ God was.
http://www.ANaturalPhilosophy.com
Science and Religion
Science is different from religion. It does not pretend that it knows everything. There are even now deep questions about the origins of the universe that we don’t have answers to now though it is possible we may be able to answer some of them in the future.
But the inability of science to provide answers to these questions does not prove that religious faith, tradition, or an ancient holy text has the ability to answer them. Science cannot prove that God does not exist, but this in no way establishes that God exists. There are millions of things whose lack of existence cannot be established.
The philosopher Bertrand Russel had an analogy. Imagine that there is a teapot in orbit around the sun. It is impossible to prove that the teapot does not exist because it is too small to be detected by our telescopes. Nobody but a crazy person would say “Well, I’m prepared to believe in the teapot because I cannot establish that it doesn’t exist.” This means that maybe we have to be technically agnostics, but really we are all atheists about teapots with orbits around the sun.
But now let us suppose that everybody in our society including our teachers and the sages of our tribes all had faith in a teapot that orbits the sun. Let us also suppose that stories of the teapot have come down to us for many generations as one of the traditions of our own society and there are ancient holy texts about the teapot. In this case people would say that a person who did not believe in the teapot is eccentric or mad.
There are infinite numbers of things like celestial teapots whose lack of existence we are unable to establish. There are fairies, for example, and there are unicorns and goblins. We cannot prove that any of these creatures of the imagination do not exist in reality. But we don’t believe they exist, just as we don’t believe that the gods of the Scandinavians, for example, have any true existence.
We are all atheists about almost all of the gods created by societies in the past. Some of us, however, take the ultimate step of believing that the god of the Jews and the Christians, like the gods of the Greeks and the Egyptians, also does not exist.
—
Now here’s a version of this text in Interlingua. (For more information about Interlingua, use a search enging to search on the title “Interlingua in interlingua” or go to http://www.interlingua.com.
Le scientia es differente del religion. Illo non pretende que illo sape toto. Il ha etiam nunc questiones profunde sur le origines del universe al quales nos nunc non ha responsas ben que il es possible que nos potera responder a alicunes de illos in le futuro.
Ma le incapacitate del scientia de provider responsas a iste questiones non proba que le fide religiose, le tradition, o un texto sancte e ancian pote responder a illos. Le scientia non pote probar que Deo non existe, ma isto non establi de ulle maniera que Deo existe. Il ha milliones de cosas cuje existentia non pote esser establite.
Le philosopho Bertrand Russell habeva un analogia. Imagina que il ha un theiera in orbita circum le sol. Il es impossibile probar que le theiera non existe proque illo es troppo parve pro esser detegite per nostre telescopios. Nemo excepte un folle dicerea, “Multo ben, io es preparate a creder in le theiera proque io non pote establir que illo non existe.” Isto significa que forsan nos debe esser technicamente agnosticos, ma vermente nos es omnes atheistas sur theieras con orbitas circum le sol.
Ma que nos nunc suppone que omnes in nostre societate includente nostre professores e le sagios de nostre tribos habeva fide in un theiera que orbita le sol. Que nos anque suppone que historias del theiera ha venite usque nos trans multe generationes como un del traditiones de nostre proprie societate e que il ha textos sancte ancian sur le theiera. In iste caso le gente dicerea que un persona qui non credeva in le theiera es eccentric o folle.
Il ha numeros infinite de cosas como theieras celestial cuje manco de existentia nos non pote establir. Il ha fees, pro exemplo, e il ha unicornios e gnomos. Nos non pote probar que iste creaturas del imagination non existe in le realitate. Ma nos non crede que illos existe exactamente como nos non crede que le deos del Scandinavos, pro exemplo, ha ulle existential ver.
Nos es omnes atheistas sur quasi omne le deos create per societates in le passato. Alicunes de nos tamen prende le ultime passo de creder que le deo del judaeos e del christianos, como le deos del grecos e le egyptianos, anque non existe.