Athiests: What do you believe in?

Question

Athiest Encyclopedia Definition: denial of the existence of God or gods and of any supernatural existence.

Many of the answers I got to my post seem contrary to what athiests are purported to believe.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=A9FJu8pkIntFuBAAFxfsy6IX?qid=20061208094603AAtKH5G

What do athiests believe? Why discuss religion and spirituality at all? You don't believe in either unless you're not a true athiest. If there truly is no God why address religion?

One athiest said because he is "spiritual." Spiritual means:
"Of, from, or relating to God; deific.
Of or belonging to a church or religion; sacred."
So, that response made no sense to me. How can true athiests be "spiritual?" You don't believe in God, Satan, Heaven, Hell or an afterlife.

Another said he was seeking physical proof of God or Jesus. If God doesn't exist and you are firm in that belief why are you searching for proof?

Are you trying to preach and convert others to athiesium? I thought you hated preaching since that is what you accuse the religious of doing?

Are you ridiculing the religious?

Answer 1

Why shouldn't I discuss religion and spirituality? After all, it effects my life. Like I said to you BEFORE, religion matters because it encourages blind faith and the idea that we must all accept faith come - what - may, regardless of how ridiculous, irrational and dangers it may be. Religion matters because it is being legislated into the secular government. Religions matters because those laws control my life. Religion matters because if you are NOT religious, one may be discriminated against in all walks of life. One might even get fired or denied employment.

Religion matters to everyone because it effects all of our lives.

Also... have you EVER discussed a movie with your friends? Why? You know that what happened in that movie isn't real. There's truly no "Wolverine" and no "X-men"... so why would people have discussions about it? Because people can discuss whatever they want EVEN IF they don't believe the subject matter to exist.

I believe in evidence, I believe in science, I believe in philosophy, I believe in intelligence, I believe in battling willful ignorance, I very much believe in REALITY and TRUTH.

If someone is seeking physical proof of God then they are of the belief that a God could possibly exist. They are not an atheist.

Answer 2

I believe that truth is a testable thing and the results are always consistent.

As for why I as an atheist visit this section, I have a canned answer.

I respond on this section because several of the questions are not about religion but about misunderstandings of topics that have been clarified in the worlds of science and math. Many people who I respond to have improperly given religious explanations for something science has proven to be natural phenomenon. It would be like someone telling you that your car engine is powered by angels who use "angel juice", and that the gas pump is a gateway to heaven. You would think that is ridiculous if you knew just the basics of a 4 stroke engine. Would you try to straighten that individual out?

I happen to have quite a bit of experience with the calculation of probability, physical laws and genetics, and these happen to be the categories that many incorrect religious explanations fall into. Consider the effectiveness of prayer, if 10 people are given a 1 in 10 chance of survival for some horrendous disease and 8 of them pray, the chances are pretty good that the 1 who survived will have prayed. Does this mean that prayer worked? No, it means that a good percentage of the population that was sick had also prayed. So the chance that the 1 person who survived had also prayed was very good. The only way this could have demonstrated that God answers prayers are if the odds were significantly beaten, I would say 4 or greater of the diseased that prayed also survived. Entropy is likewise misunderstood. While entropy relates to the dispersal of energy in a closed system, in an open system entropy tends to drive the formation of complexity. For 30 years scientists have been modeling naturally occurring phenomenon that form this complexity with no intelligent hand. Consider the formation of complex crystals, snowflakes and other complex molecules. Complexity does not require any kinds of intelligence. Related to this, genetics is the biggest and most misunderstood bone of contention in the evolution vs. creationism debate. Many creationists, and quite a few evolutionists here, don’t seem to understand the link between genes and the evolutionary process. After Watson and Crick discovered DNA, Darwin became old hat because genes were shown to be the drivers of evolution. Dawkins explained that evolution is directed and specific because it is a process involving the replication of genetic information. This had several implications for our understanding of biology from taxonomy to human psychology. Despite this, most arguments people make regarding creationism are the same one’s made back in the 1800’s – arguments proven false time and again.

This misunderstanding seems to happen because science and math are difficult subjects and statistics indicate they are not taught well in the US. I would say that most of the people touting religious explanations don’t have a firm grasps in these areas. Many of them don’t have a grasp on basic logic, such as why one can’t prove a negative. This lack of proper understanding is detrimental to their own judgment and society in general. Such inability is the reason why societies collapse to dictatorial rule or are overrun by religious extremists even if they had a Parliamentary and Congressional system, which require reason and debate. The exercise of a provable answer is the reason that science is good at finding cures for disease, providing medical solutions to recurrent human problems, and developing technical solutions to the challenges of human living, while religion can do none of these things. Some of the basic scientific beliefs that most people in the world hold today (the Earth revolves around the Sun, the Earth is round, the seasons are determined by the tilt of the Earth) would have been considered heresy just a few hundred years ago, but science and reason persisted. One could say debating religion is an attempt to stop a fall back to a time when we thought disease was caused by demons and the Earth was the center of the Universe. The religious extremists have clearly shown that such a fall back is possible.

Answer 3

I have every right to talk about and explore religion . There is no law against it. Just because I am not religious does not mean that I am not spiritual. Spiritual means "means of the spirit" and does not have to have an ecclesiastical meaning. Every person has a spirit. Hinduism and Buddhism are regarded as religions because they are spiritual yet include no concept of a god. Furthermore, this is a site to discuss religion and spirituality that is open to the public. Atheists have every right to be on here. For Christians who want only to communicate with only Christians, there are Christian sites that they go to.

Answer 4

There are many things to believe in:

Love
Music
Art
Family
Children
Literature
Achievement
Peace-building
The Earth
Stars
Friendship
Joy
Pleasure
Coupling

And in truth, when you inquire about what religious or non-religious people DO with their time, with the exception of worship & prayer, both groups find meaning in similar pursuits.

And your definition of "spiritual" is limited to a deity. However, Buddhists, who don't necessarily believe in God, are very spiritual:

Anyone who attends to the fact that one human being alone is not enough is a spiritual being. Anyone who acknowledges a deep kinship with nature is connecting spiritually. And anyone who has loved another person has experienced spiritual bonding.

I feel like religion has taken ownership of the spiritual without paying for it, stealing the potential human beings have for creating connections by placing a deity between us. Ask atheists. We can build bridges without the dogmatic divisions fostered by religions.

Peace.

.

Answer 5

Many atheists believe certain religious dogmas actually have a negative impact on the people of the world. I think Christianity is holding America back intellectually, scientifically, and in it's human rights maturity. People who cannot or will not become educated enough to know the hows and whys that science has taught us continue to actively stand in the way of learning more hows and whys. Religion encourages division and hatred and harmful ideas of superiority among its members.

Answer 6

Why do we have to be religious and/or spiritual in order to post here? Religion is an interesting topic even if you don't believe in any god at all. Do the scholars who study Greek mythology for a living worship Zeus?

Answer 7

Atheists do not comply with a suite of ideals. What one Atheist believes does no longer imply that a different Atheist thinks the equal manner. The handiest factor Atheists need to agree on is that they do not suppose in a deity.

Answer 8

I only address religion if religion addresses me first. I'm totally fine with people believing in God. I think that in some circumstances it can even be a good thing. But what I'm not ok with are people who either agressively try to convert me to their religion, or try to impose their morality on me on the basis that it's God's will or something to that effect.

The atheists you'll see frequenting the religion section here on Answers aren't really representitive of atheists in general (I just stopped by to check on something I heard about on the forum and saw this question). There are a few reasons they might be here. One is that they're just argumentative people and like stirring up trouble. People of any religion or lack there of can do that. Or they like the attention they get for loudly advocating a controvertial view. Some are trolls, just looking to piss people off (there are trolls of all religions - some people are just like that). Others are so sure that there is no God that they feel oblidged to bring others out of their ignorance, just as some religious people feel it's their duty to covert people to the religion that they are certain is true.

I don't believe in God for a number of reasons. The basic idea is that it doesn't make logical sense to me that God should exist, but it does make sense that people create stories to explain the unexplainable. The fact is that as new scientific evidence comes to light to explain previously unexplanable phenomina, it usually contradicts the biblical explanation. People can stretch the stories all the want to fit the new evidence, but that doesn't make them true. There's simply no reason why they should be true. I believe in reality, as I can observe it, or as I can read well-supported explanations based on direct observations. And I always try to stay open to the possibility that what seems like scientific fact can turn out to be wrong, so that my understanding of reality is based on the best available evidence.

I don't believe in God in the literal sense, but I do think (or rather, I know) that he exists. Not literally as some dude, or even some incorporeal entity that sits somewhere and does stuff. But he does exist as a very powerful force in the minds of millions of people. God absolutely does exist as a very powerful sociological and political force, and that's not something that can simply be ignored.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, spiritual can mean something like "Of or pertaining to, affecting or concerning, the spirit or higher moral qualities" or "Of or pertaining to, consisting of, spirit, regarded in either a religious or intellectual aspect; of the nature of a spirit or incorporeal supernatural essence; immaterial." It doesn't have to involve God. An atheist can be spiritual if he believes in an incorporeal and intangible human spirt, or a higher morality, without believing in God. It's sort of like the part of religion that's not stories or "facts," or rituals. The morality that's not derived simply from a fear of going to hell or a desire to go to heaven, or even a desire to do God's will, but to do the right thing. For a spirtualist, that "right thing" might come from their understanding of the human spirt, or what it means to be human, rather than what they believe God wants them to do. Not sure how well that explains it as I really only have a vagues sense of what it means to begin with, but hopefully you can at least get the general idea from that.

Answer 9

"If God doesn't exist and you are firm in that belief why are you searching for proof?"
well he obviously isn't of firm belief, you can be on the fence,thats where most smart people are

it is my firmly held belief that it is a mistake to have firmly held beliefs.

Answer 10

To extend consideration towards neighbors and send them presents are charitable acts.