What is the greatest strength of Atheism?

Answer 1

I believe it is the ability of many (not all, mind you) Atheists to let others keep their beliefs without feeling like they have to give up their own. We can all dance happily in the sunshine, even if we disagree about where that sunshine came from!

((((laptop))))!!!!

Answer 2

Why are you talking about Atheism? Atheists should be in P&S or science or something. This is religion.

*Smooches Laptop* You look hot, baby. There are many strengths in regard to atheism but I believe the strongest one is a tolerant, innate sense of morality - one that can be learned, as well, without the presence of religion.

Answer 3

Stength? Im not sure how a theory can be strong or weak. If its true, then its strength is that its true. A human who is able to discern truth from evidence and rational thought is always going to be stronger than one who doesnt. In every way.

Answer 4

We don't sugar-coat the realities of life and death. We enjoy life because we know it's the only one we all get. We can see the beauty in the word without having the need to give it all a "purpose". We don't believe everything we are told. We question everything.

Answer 5

The requirement of evidence and the belief that this is all there is.. it causes one to cherish life more every day.

This is from an observationist's view point, though.

This is religion here.

Answer 6

Logic, reasoning and critical thinking. Ability to see, think, hear and understand. Ablility to keep an open mind. Ability to question without fear. Ability to learn without fear.

Answer 7

Their incredible ability to draw the ire of everyone else.

Answer 8

Not being fooled by emotionally driven fallicies?

Mr. P.

Answer 9

Atheism is not a specific religion, but the very word makes it a religious subject. On the subject of religion, an atheist is someone who has chosen NOT to have one. His religous liberty to believe nothing is as absolute as the right of someone else to have a faith. By trying to put atheism outside of the subject of religion, people are trying to deny that the right to disbelieve is on an equal playing field with the right to believe. Which is how persecution - religious persecution - of atheists will start, if it ever gets going.

An atheist or agnostic (a doubter, rather than a firm disbeliever in anything spiritual) is not necessarily without a form of spirituality. Not if spirituality can be defined as a simple reverence for something. Religions require scriptures and organized hierachies, etc., but spiritualities need none. Yet they are every bit as legitimate as the big religions are.

Long before any of today's religions began, human spirituality centered around the Earth. They were keen observers of their environments and saw for themselves that ALL life comes from the Earth. That, to them, meant the Earth was the "Mother of All," i.e., a deity. They worshipped the Mother for tens of thousands of years, quite satisfactorily.

Today, although we need no longer think of the Earth as an actual deity, we CAN continue to revere it. The Earth DOES bring forth all life, DOES provide sustenance for all life, and DOES receive all life after it ends. Viewed in that way, it makes even more sense to revere the Earth than to revere the blatherings of people who lived 2000 years ago and who wrote the Old Testament out of towering hatred, specifically to wipe out the Earth Mother spirituality. The OT refers to "Baal" and others as evil gods. They were referring to names of the Earth Mother, who was known also as Astarte. As benign a god as we've ever known, yet those hate-filled men labeled her evil, and people still believe it is so. The real hate-filled god is the one they put in place of the Earth Mother: the male god Yaweh, who is worshipped today. The Bible even refers to that god as petty and jealous, easily made wrathful. Violence in the name of the Creator was never even considered under the Mother, but became a basic underpinning of the faiths based on Yaweh.

There is more actual evidence to justify revering the Earth than there is for ANY official religion. The official faiths require you to bend your sense of logic and credibility far out of shape in order to accept many of the things you are required to believe. Spiritualities do not. They deal with what can be seen, felt, heard, etc., and can be even richer in meaning and relevance, too. Religions conflict constantly with science. But science never contradicts a spirituality based on revering Earth and nature - never has, never will - because it never CAN. Religion gave all of nature to mankind to despoil. The Mother only demanded respectful usage and treatment of nature - nothing more - but despoiling it would bring her wrath, as it ought to. So which is more genuinely meaningful?

The problem is that people want more than reverence. They want salvation. They want to know they'll live forever. They want glory, to be superior in heaven to other people. They yearn to be judgmental. Their leaders know this. They tell the people what they want to hear, and it gives them huge followings, that result in a strong political power base. Spirituality doesn't do those things. Religion is inherently oppressive, deeply political and ultimately destructive. Spirituality can generate genuine love; religion only talks about love a lot, and fakes it.

Why did the writers of the OT hate the Earth Mother? That's something that would take a long time to tell, but the hatred stemmed from a belief that the world's women had carried out a vast collective conspiracy against all males, and kept it up for untold generations. It was the beginning of the "war between the sexes," and it continues to this day. Genesis is an allegorical retelling of the rift between male and famale, at the time when it first occurred. All official religions have enshrined the dominance of males over females, and for the same reason: hatred of women over a "conspiracy" that never existed. Prior to the time when the ancient Hebrews invented a male god, called "Yaweh" (the god worshipped today by Christianity, Judaism, and Islam), men and women were not at war with one another. And the Earth Mother spirituality served almost all of humanity very well indeed. It was this perception of a conspiracy by women which brought all of today's faiths into existence - over a huge misunderstanding.

It's ludicrous to think that a giver of life, a divine creator, would be male, when such activities are purely in the realm of the female. If a Creator god needs a gender, it would have to be the gender that brings forth new life. But, of course, it's equally ridiculous to think such a deity would have any gender at all. A god needs none. It has no genitals.

It would be extremely nice if the people of the world could return to reverence for what really DOES give life: the Earth itself. Whether a deity or not, it IS the creator of life, the sustainer of life, and the recipient of life when it dies. A makeshift male god, invented for the sole purpose of eliminating the Earth Mother spirituality, using hate and violence, while hippocritically claiming to be loving, makes no sense at all. Even in matters of belief, logic, evidence and reason should not go totally out the window.

But it does, with our "true believers." They can't be reasoned with. As Isaac Asimov once said, "You cannot reason with someone whose fundamental premise is that reason doesn't count." A person with simple spirituality can always be reasoned with. He has nothing to be defensive about.

Answer 10

That it's based on the facts, and not just wishful thinking.