Atheists do NOT worship themselves or anything else

[cathym]

In your argument about pb&j, the usage of nothing has two different connotations, but they are made to be equivalent. Therein lies the problem.

In the original post, in this logic,

Worshipping idols is not worshipping God
Not worshipping God is what atheists do
Therefore worshipping idols is what atheists do.

"Not worshiping God" plays the same role as "nothing" in the PB&J version -- it's used for both "worshiping something other than God" and "not worshiping anything". The resulting construct is therefore as flawed as the one I gave, just less funny.

[cathym]

Gnostic Atheists ( never met or even heard of one) these people claim the knowledge that NO God exists.

I've met several, some quite evangelical about it. They're pretty obnoxious, as a rule. On one memorable occasion, the evangelical atheists in the audience were enough to make an atheist & philosophy professor friend of mine start arguing in defense of the Methodist minister on the panel with him.

[Turtle]

If worshiping ourselves decreases our chances of contracting STDs or getting divorced, I see nothing wrong with it.

I totally agree, but that is metaphorical worship. There are other words for that, like self care and self respect. Even people who claim to worship gods can do that. In fact, christianity promotes a kind of self worship by saying our bodies are temples that the God lives inside. But that is metaphorical too, often taken for literal.

How many people build altars to themselves, offer sacrifices to them selves, pray to themselves, truly believe they created everything and are responsible for what happens to everyone else? A person who truly worshipped themselves would be considered mentally ill.

[Turtle]

In your argument about pb&j, the usage of nothing has two different connotations, but they are made to be equivalent. Therein lies the problem.

In the original post, in this logic,

Worshipping idols is not worshipping God
Not worshipping God is what atheists do
Therefore worshipping idols is what atheists do.

"Not worshiping God" plays the same role as "nothing" in the PB&J version -- it's used for both "worshiping something other than God" and "not worshiping anything". The resulting construct is therefore as flawed as the one I gave, just less funny.

Yep. I was also comparing the two arguments and agreeing that they were similar. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

[Turtle]

Gnostic Atheists ( never met or even heard of one) these people claim the knowledge that NO God exists.

I've met several, some quite evangelical about it. They're pretty obnoxious, as a rule. On one memorable occasion, the evangelical atheists in the audience were enough to make an atheist & philosophy professor friend of mine start arguing in defense of the Methodist minister on the panel with him.

Most atheists feel the same about evangelical gnostic believers, and there are a lot more of those around. The problem is not with the belief or non-belief. It is with the insistence that everyone else must be like them, because they "know" the truth about something that technically cannot be known.

The point is, it's a two way street. "People are people, wherever you go." Treat others the way you want to be treated. If you don't want an atheist, or a person from another religion, to get evangelical with you, give them the same courtesy. Most people don't like to be harassed, no matter what they believe or don't believe.

[chrisso99]

Being evangelical (or obnoxious) or certain does not make you a gnostic atheist. Claiming to have definitive proof no gods of any sort have any possibility of existing is what makes you a gnostic atheist. I am highly certain the God of the inerrant bible definitely does not exist- it would be a paradox of logic. However, there are lots of other God concepts out there I can't say with certainty definitely aren't real. I don't have enough evidence to accept any of those other gods as real, or even remotely likely, but I can't say for sure.

[agricola]

Interesting -
My basic position is that I can't prove the existence of (a) god in no way at all.
Secondary to that are some - axioms? -

1 - if there is a god at all, there is only one (more than one is surely superfluous and even contradictory - given that the definition I would use for 'god' includes being transcendent, omni-whatever, etc. 'There can be only one' (but there doesn't have to be, except IF there is any at all, there is only one).

2 - the god we were taught about in the coc - doesn't rightly qualify.

There are some other tidbits - if a god exists, there is no particular reason to assume this god wants to, or even can, communicate with us....

You know, the details.

I am definitely not ready to say I'm any sort of 'atheist'. I take the existence of God (capital G here) as a kind of hypothesis of existence: there is no proof a god exists but equally there is no real proof a god DOESN'T exist - on this I'm agnostic to the core. I don't know and can't prove.

BUT - I'll accept as a potential tenet of existence that there is or could be one. And therefore, I am totally willing to discuss (and act) till the cows come home, ideas about what God wants, what God says (or might have said, or didn't say, or could have meant....)

Bahya, in Hovot HaLevavot (Debts of the Hearts? something like that) wrote:

The ultimate result of your knowledge of God should be the conviction that of His real essence you are completely ignorant.

[KLP]

I used to think that it was sort of 50-50 on the supernatural thing. That it could go either way. But then I started actually studying and thinking about it and I could find no other example of something-from-nothing or of things becoming more and more complex on their own. Studying on such things as the astronomy and astrological mathematics and patterns of movements, mandalas being traced out, how the ancients predicted an eclipse, and the echoes all around of the Fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio. I basically studied myself out of agnosticism.

So I decided to let go of my agnosticism because it seemed to me overwhelming that there is an intelligence to most everything. It just seemed like a I forcing myself to not use reason or rational thought to keep considering it an even chance that it all just "poofed" into existence by itself. So basically I studied myself into accepting that theism just made so much more since than atheism. But in my terms or way of thinking I do not really use the terms (a)theism. To me I think of it more generally so I use a term such as "something" as in it makes more sense to that there is "something" outside of nature once one considers and studies all the echoes of designs. Anyway, that is what makes sense to me.

[chrisso99]

I am definitely not ready to say I'm any sort of 'atheist'. I take the existence of God (capital G here) as a kind of hypothesis of existence: there is no proof a god exists but equally there is no real proof a god DOESN'T exist - on this I'm agnostic to the core. I don't know and can't prove.

BUT - I'll accept as a potential tenet of existence that there is or could be one. And therefore, I am totally willing to discuss (and act) till the cows come home, ideas about what God wants, what God says (or might have said, or didn't say, or could have meant....)

[/i]

You can't prove a negative. I can't prove Bigfoot doesn't exist but I can be confident that Bigfoot believers have failed (utterly) to prove Bigfoot does exist. It's not up to the agnostic atheist to prove there isn't a god. It's up to the gnostic theist to prove there is. In logical thinking the positive claim has the burden of proof (see Bigfoot example for why that's so).

Agricola, whether you want to admit it or not, by definition, you're an atheist, a Jewish agnostic atheist. The fact that you don't like calling yourself that is a sad reminder that atheism is still the minority most discriminated against, even amongst ourselves.

[agricola]

I'd prefer to say I'm an agnostic THEIST, actually. An agnostic atheist says he doesn't know if a god exists - and then acts as if one doesn't.

The position of 'I don't know, and I don't think anyone else can know either' has a long and respected history in Jewish thought, and has never implied that the person asserting that position doesn't actually believe that God doesn't EXIST - they (and I) simply don't believe we can 'know God'.

Rebbe Nachman of Breslov:

Faith is the foundation of all spiritual quest...the root of all teaching and practice...the channel for every benefit and blessing.

and

Get into the habit of dancing. It will displace depression and dispel hardship.

and again

Truth is the "light" by which to find your way out of darkness. Turn it on.

Not everything in life is subject to intellectual 'proofs'.