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Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
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Beyond the outer limits of nonsense, there is fun. Very much fun.
And while we're on the topic, how DO you know the Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn't exist? Can't disprove HIM with some ancient cave scroll, eh? Huh! No, sir. No "Sanskrit" silliness here... I say!
Check and mate.
: )
"Let us be honest guys!."
Oh? We have been, the question remains, are you capable of it?
"I regard you the worst enemies of atheism and I do hate your guts."
You do seem to regard us as YOUR enemies, but I doubt you actually hate us. You see, one thing that is fairly certain about human nature is, you don't talk to people you hate.
"I expose your weakness:"
Really? Where? As far as I can tell you only ever exposed your own delusions and hypocrisy, and were firmly trounced for it on every occasion. Your negatives aren't simply because people hate you, it is because you have utterly lost every argument you have initiated so far, and badly at that. Many of your arguments being so bad, they can't even be wrong or right, because they had no value whatsoever.
"your inability to admit that it is because of fear that you doubt the non-existence of YOUR God"
Nope, I don't have a god, but neither do I claim omniscience either. I don't claim absolute certainty when I do not have it, I also don't claim knowledge that I don't have, and I also don't base my beliefs around things I don't know. That is the main difference between us, you are louder and more arrogant, while also being logically bankrupt and delusional to boot.
"and, naturally, you hate my guts."
Nope, hate requires an emotional commitment. I am indifferent to you. I don't honestly give a flying fuck about you, in either direction. I think you are wrong and delusional, but I don't care about you in any way whatsoever. Honestly, you should really get over yourself.
"Love and compassion towards enemies is a Christian invention. :-D "
Neither love nor compassion are Christian inventions, and neither is applying humanity to your enemy, so your statement is blatantly retarded. Are you a troll? Are you a poe account? Because, honestly, some of the things you say are quite stupid to the extreme, and could have only conceivably come from a rabidly religious person.
Looks like I stumbled onto a bit of a feud here. Being new, both to this forum and to atheism, I certainly don't want to get off on the wrong foot with anyone. It is enlightening to me however to see the kind of disagreements that arise in the realm of unbelief. Not sure why there would need to be such animosity however between atheism and agnosticism. But of course, like anything, personalities clashes and conflicting ideals come into play.
_Being new, both to this forum and to atheism, I certainly don't want to get off on the wrong foot with anyone._
Since you managed to get rid of the theistic nonsense, I trust that you will be able to avoid New Atheism (aka agnosticism) too.
The philosophy in vogue today is agnosticism. Those who could not free themselves of the fear of God found a way to have it both ways: theists and atheists at the same time (they are known as fence sitters).
They say: sorry God, you provided not enough evidence of your existence so I will wait until you do and then I will fall on my head and start praying!!
Agnostics are the new flock of religion victims. You will come to know them and you will realize that they have no opinion of their own as all of them –as theists do—repeat the same dogmatic nonsense all the time.
They claim to be atheists but they do not know whether God exists or not. Stupidity to the verge of insanity. :-D
@Conor
Don't panic :)
It is a bit unfortunate for you to get this in you first forum thread.
Dimitrios is an extreme case when it comes to animosity among atheists. He basically disagrees with 99% of the rest of the atheist/agnostic community. And claims that there is a world wide conspiracy against him.
At this point it is actually starting to look like proselytizing.
He is not making any headway on the forum, so he jumped on you to try to recruit you.
There is a lot of disagreement among atheists, as atheism really only means "to lack belief in a god/gods". But this level of disagreement is not at all common.
@Conor
Have you read “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins?
Dawkins is a prophet of agnosticism and I neither like nor agree with him, but I respect him for being a honest man. He admits that he is not an atheist (he is one more agnostic) and confesses that the atheists (those belonging to category 7, as per his scale) are very very few on this planet.
So, do not believe the agnostic propaganda of The Pragmatic. :-D
What propaganda? Is there something I wrote that is not true?
Oh, and don't forget that you can send personal messages to anyone here as long as they (and you) have personal messages enabled.
It's heavenly(!) to see you here.
The way you feel is quite normal -what you feel- your need to belong somewhere, some community, some heaven or some nothingness.
All you need to do, is to understand that one has to follow the mind and what the mind tells is always reasonable.
So just listen to your mind and accept what it tells.
Even if it tells you to believe in heaven, or in complete nothingness.
Being an atheist or being a believer has nothing to do with the soul for soul should be described as ''SELF'' and yourself is your mind.
"All you need to do, is to understand that one has to follow the mind and what the mind tells is always reasonable."
What is that? The new religion of the mind lovers?
If what the mind tells is always reasonable what about unreasonable people? Do they not exist?
You may need to change your point of view Dimitrios if you ever want to understand me.
These are all my opinions and i KNOW that i'm free to share them.
If you think somebody is unreasonable, this is fine.
But you are missing something. That ''somebody'' isn't even aware of being unreasonable.
Do you think awareness and being reasonable are the same?
Have you ever did something unreasonable on purpose?
You may think that i'am a nerd, and that would be reasonable for you.
But not for me. So i can see that you're unreasonable but you can't, cause you are not aware of that.
This is my opinion.
_You may need to change your point of view Dimitrios if you ever want to understand me._
You are philosophizing and I happen to have a very bad opinion of philosophy.
Your axiom, that the mind is always reasonable, is expressed in the wrong way. I guess that what you mean is that the mind regards all his thoughts reasonable, but even that is not correct.
The person has to have the power to control his mind, i.e. to use that part of the mind that one controls because the other part of the mind (I am not referring to subconscious) is extremely selfish and unreasonable thinking only of the interests of the organism he controls and protects.
We, sometimes, catch ourselves to think like we were inhuman monsters.
Example: One is in love with a married person and the mind automatically thinks how nice it would have been if the husband/wife of the beloved person suddenly disappeared. Next stage could be to think that some assistance for the disappearance of the obstacle would be nice!!
No, one has to have control over his mind because most of its thoughts are selfish and unreasonable.
With regard to your last sentence; self-focus adjusts with maturity.
In infancy, a child is entirely self-focused. By adulthood, adults can become so advanced, that they are able to percieve themselves mostly is relation to others - and to empathize with most people.
If the mind is mostly inherently selfish, then it is only naturally so in its infancy.
Hi Conor,
I'm also new here, and could have written the exact same post. Feeling completely overwhelmed and uncomfortable with what I now see to be true. I'm deeply involved in a church community (I'm one of the lay pastors)--my family is entirely Christian, a large number of my close friends are, and my husband is. How do I now have real relationships if I can't be honest with people about my shifting beliefs?
My church is not filled with horrible, fundamentalist whack jobs. They're mostly good people, who are as blinded as I once was. And I fear the loss of relationships that may someday result from my lack of belief in God. And my marriage? Ugh. I'm terrified to tell my husband this--he'll be devastated. But I know that the day will come that I have to be honest with him.
But, like you, it's easy enough for me to just keep playing along for now--like you said, it's the language I've always spoken.
Today a friend's husband didn't wake up. He died in his sleep last night at the age of 42. He left 3 young children. As texts and emails poured in from our church, I had the thought--this is why people believe in God. It's so hard to give up the comfort of a belief system that promises that it's not all over, when it's really all over. It's so hard to give up the comfort of a belief system that promises that a higher power is going to help you get through the hard stuff. It doesn't make it true. I doesn't make me able to unsee behind the curtain. But, shit, I wish I could.
Anyway, just wanted you to know that I'm right there with you--unhappy to be here.
@Sue
Well said!
From my point of view (militant atheist) I see only one really tight spot for you; to prevent your children from finding themselves in your today’s position someday. Otherwise, you need tell nobody and ruin your life.
(Pssst! Just to let you know... I agreed with your post. Well said!)
@The Pragmatic
Cross the line and come to the atheist camp. You will find many more subjects to agree with. :-)
Welcome, Sue. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks for sharing that Sue. It's good to meet a fellow atheist who shares such burdens and inner conflicts.
Good point Dimitrios. It's good to focus our attention on a goal.
Sue - I was just writing this in another thread, but it fits here as well since you mentioned death and how Christians respond.
Tomorrow I am going to the funeral of a relative, who like all my relatives was a faithful church-going Christian. She went through terrible suffering and died in spite of everyone's prayers, but everyone will comfort themselves at the funeral by talking about how she's in a better place now. In such moments I do envy them, yet, I also pity them, as one pities a child who keeps saying his lost dog will come home someday when you know it will not. In such settings I feel utterly alone in my mind, as though I alone have access to the secret of reality, and yet I must mercifully spare them the truth about reality.
@Sue. Wow. You are the stuck between a rock and a hard spot. That's gotta be tough.
My wife of 30 years broke down a couple weeks back and, sobbing, told me she did not want to be married anymore. She was a total wreck and I had to calm her down. It took an hour or so. She was that devastated by her own announcement. Me? As far as I was concerned we stopped being true "lovers" many moons ago. Since then I've been a devout father to our sons, a "husband" to her when she needed me for that and the main bread earner keeping the family comfortable. Basically, I was simply upholding the vows of marriage I wrote and spoke to her on that day so many years ago. Her announcement made me wince a bit - the feeling of being rejected - but it was hardly a complete surprise to me. In other words, we silently held mutual feelings about our marriage. Still, she fell all to pieces when she announced it. It took every bit of courage she had to be honest and follow her heart. The craziest thing about the event was I had the oddest feeling of envy towards her for having the courage to be the one who opened up first.
Anyway, she couldn't live a lie and, despite my bruises from it, I have to respect her for it.
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