Are you an
atheist?
The answer has to be yes —I am a
Secular Person, and atheism is
a part of that. Atheism
has to be the default position for so long as no proof exists in support of
claims made by the innumerable religions about gods. I am only waiting for
one of them to provide material evidence that leaves no doubt. Most atheists
will say the same. Atheists who hold no beliefs in a spiritual realm, magic,
or the supernatural are called panatheists. You can
read more on another web page
at this link.
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Why are you
an atheist?
It's a matter of attitude, not intention. I am a person who asks questions
not because he wants to hear himself supported by the answers, but because
he wants to hear and be shown what's true and because I enjoy learning new
things. I am accustomed to being wrong, hearing different versions of what's
claimed to be true, and having to figure it out for myself. People who
express doubt about that tell more about themselves than about me.
Other than that, there are lots of reasons, one of them being a matter of
pride (we are reputed to be emotionless. Don't be fooled). I am proud that I
can say that I took the honest route to find rectitude in my life, that I am
maintaining that route as I progress, and that I can be honest in saying all
that. In other words, I am proud that I tested religion in all the ways I
could find, and it more than came up short. Now, don't you wish you could
say that and tell the truth to do so?
Well. here's how you can: What is true
has to be testable, not what
someone wrote in a book or said to me that cannot pass as anything more than
hearsay. Being called names (like 'smartass') or being accused of
'tomfoolery' when I asked questions as a youngster only prodded my
curiosity. I just had to know what was being hidden from me, and I could not
be satisfied with responses that only showed me I was not being considered
in any way that could be called 'serious', and that I was apparently not
worth expending the effort on. "Young boys should not be asking such
questions at your age" was not an appropriate response for adults to be
handing to a precocious kid. More information is available at
this link.
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Aren't Atheists Immoral?—or amoral?
Convinced that morality is an entirely religious idea, many atheists will
say
they claim no morality. They err in doing so, and show that their own lack
of understanding is what they have inherited from religion. Everybody's
ideas about right and wrong are what morality is all about. Studies of
nature show that good and evil are mainly secular concepts that
religion has
usurped and attributed to their various gods and
priests. They lie in doing so, and that betrayal of human trust is
what is immoral.
Statistics from wherever they are available will show you that atheists are
among the most moral groups of people worldwide. We do, per capita,
worldwide and in the USA, only a small percentage of the murders,
rapes, thefts and all other crimes about which records are kept. We are that
way because we are
moral at the outset: It is
historically verifiable fact: That we are honest and sincere, and refuse to
be led into doing wrong, is what mainly contributed to our having remained
or become atheists from amidst all the frightening proselytization that
religionists do. We demand testable truth to add to our personal storehouses
of knowledge, not scary unverifiable stories that no sane and sensible
person could believe and that we find offensive.
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Read More about it
Read still more about it
....and even more
You don't! The first mistake any
of us make in in looking for truths in life is taking others at their word,
especially if their words rely solely on still others' words, in a long line
of degrading iterations, for their support and refuse any other kind of
verification. That bespeaks a high degree of gullibility and intellectual
laziness and laxity. Shame on you! Do
your own digging, but realize this: As soon as you feel comfortable with
what you've found, you've met the first sign that your newly adopted beliefs
are wrong.
Amazon.com is a good place to
start looking, or make sure you know their ISBN numbers and order them from
your local bookstore anywhere in America and the U.K. The easiest way is to
click on the links to amazon.com scattered around this website and follow it
to amazon.com's order page and use your credit card. Oh, by the way, thanks!
I have found this link
to work .
Decades ago, a
Russian playwright named Anton Chekov said, "Everyone has the same God, only
people differ." While people dispute that, every religious person behaves
toward atheists as though it must be true. No matter what name they give
their god, they appear upset to with the notion that theirs is the very god
that atheists do not believe them about. That said:
Where have you been? I realize most atheists don't proselytize, but most of
my ideas can be found elsewhere, a lot of them in science literature, the
exception being those that arose as a result of my work to piece all that
information together and test the results according to my own standards
wherever/whenever I could.
Think of your mind as like a garden: the good soil gets buried under weeds
and rocks because it wasn't cared for. Weeds will crowd out the unnurtured
harvest. A good gardener cares for his garden by constantly working with it,
trying ideas in it, testing it, and keeping those methods that work. His
garden is a rare, productive place because of his collection of uncommon
ideas and careful nurturing.
However advanced your education, if you have been overprotected by constant
church attendance, avoided technical discussions about human existence,
steered clear of materials that might have offended you, and filtered out
any stray thoughts or information that disagreed with your beliefs, you have
worked very hard to keep yourself in the dark where nothing can grow but
weeds, poisons and germs on barren soil. Relax. The truth only hurts when it
has to pull out misinformation by the roots, and when you think of all those
years you have wasted avoiding that, you feel offended. The pain is only
temporary. Why spend the rest of your life avoiding the inevitable?
Who is
your greatest influence?
A small multitude of people have
led me to my ideas. I am lucky enough to have been born into relative
poverty to parents of different religious persuasions. You can read about
our family arguments in
Reality 101 and other places. I ran across a book named Magic and
Religion by John Vetter quite by accident and that started me on a whole
new journey spiced up on occasion by Heinlein, Asimov, Rimmer, John David
Garcia, and many, many more. Have a happy journey.
Family. I tried to avoid confusing my
kids while I sought my own path through life. That was a mistake, but I felt
at the time I would do more harm than good by allowing them to join me in
the struggle to learn how to survive as free members of a mesmerized
society. Freedom has to be as important for them as it was for me and you
know?—I think they're starting now to see that at about the same age I was
when it began to dawn for me. Real freedom is important, not just
freedom like that on which politicians expound—but freedom
like our forefathers intended. Read the
Declaration of Independence:
"Freedom from the tyranny of superstition." And,
hedonism: "…the pursuit
of happiness…." The nation's most prominent founders made it abundantly
clear they hoped we could live without religion.
I'm pretty hep on having a
birthday every few years at the very least, even though the
calendar is off about a week and
a half. The year, for me, changes on Winter Solstice (day or eve, depending
on the relative distance between Leap Years). There are, of course, the
equinoxes, and the Summer Solstice that seem to be significant to some of
us. I don't really like our Greek Orthodox calendar designed by Muslims and
modified by Catholics. I like anniversaries, too: The day our entire family
sang together in tune would be a good one, but it hasn't happened yet. Oh,
I'm sorry, you meant, "when do I do something strange for no evident
reason?" Most of the time, if you'd ask anybody else.
See my calendar.
What about the "War on Xmas"?
The "War on Christmas" is a
fraud, for many reasons, the main one being that it's nonexistent or
one-sided, being fought only by Xians against imaginary enemies. In my view,
which is much like I have heard from other atheists, whether any one says
"Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays", they have said the same cheery
religious thing, except that "holy-days" has more religions covered, and so
is less offensive to fewer people. "Merry Xmas," by the way. gets pronounced
the same as in the English spelling. Why do Xians always say it wrong? Don't
they know who they are, and where their religion came from?
As an atheist, I recognize
that others considered some portion of this time of year as "holy days", and
feel inclined to join in on the festivities by celebrating the Solstice,
which marks another successful trip around the sun (even though that is by
no means "holy". It's on about the same level as a birthday or the
completion of any other event, except the choice of exactly what point in
the circle makes the mark is rather arbitrary) and that the days will begin
growing longer again— signs that Spring is on its way (Well, yeah, I feel
like honoring that).
Jews and Xians aren't the only
major religious enterprises with a celebration of any type this time of
year. What's the difference in how you want to express yourself for that? Am
I supposed to also be at war against Jewish folks who might say "happy
Hanukkah"? Some atheists, and a few pagans will regard the solstice as a
special day, but that is an individual concern, for the most part. If you
say "Merry Xmas" to me, and I say "Happy Solstice" back, are we at war?
Well, maybe in the middle of July….
Oh, yes, there's that "X" business that you Xians keep throwing up about.
Don't you know that 'X' is "Christ" (Cristos) in the original Greek (that
you are pronouncing incorrectly) that Constantine (the originator of
organized Xianity) spoke?— and that Jesus is a Latin invention by the
Romans, originally pronounced something close to yay-zoos according
to all I can find out about it? If it's bad for people to use
his original name, why is it not also bad for you to pronounce it wrong, or
use a Catholic invention, in spite of the dictionary's affinity for
supporting erroneous traditions? Christ (quite likely said the same as
'Creased') is the Latin version of X, you know, that has been vulgarized
into its English version, as has the name Jee-zuss.
Why are there no
atheists in foxholes?
Why don't religious people realize how they insult themselves more than any
atheists with such myth-making statements? There are too many aspects of
that question to deal with in a small space, but let's just take a quick
look at the implications of it: At its roots you are acknowledging the
origins of Xianity in the "soldiers' religion", Mithraism (the Mithrains
worshipped the Sun God, not the Son of God). Mithraism was kept separate
from the civilians because it inspired soldiers to fight, to be warriors,
not docile and loving citizens, and so you are acknowledging the truth
wherein Xianity leads to world violence and domination through conquering
rather than discourse. Look at the history that leads to current world
problems, and see that for yourself.
With that behind us, think about the accusation you are trying to make, that
atheists are cowards (because we don't believe in God?— and dare to stand up
and say so?), and yet you are presenting a picture of yourselves as kneeling
in the ground during the pitch of battle, praying while your enemy overruns
you instead of standing up and fighting like a sincere and valiant soldier
who truly believes his God will look after him while he does the work
assigned him.
Since atheists do answer the call to their patriotic duty in numbers that
accord with our population within society, and you claim they are not down
in their foxholes, where does that put them if they are not cowering along
with you. You dishonor those of us who have died or been maimed in the line
of duty, and your own kind, by the making of such inherently stupid myths,
while at the same time calling to attention the failings inherent to your
religion.
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Why do atheists disbelieve in God?
Xians love to say that because it makes absence of God-related belief appear
intentional while they assert their belief that there is a god named God and
try to gain the upper hand in their losing battle with honesty. We don't
care; we'll say 'disbelieve', too, because we disbelieve what Xians say
about God, and we are in the world-wide majority on that.
Truth be told, Xians are far guiltier of intentional disbelief than the
worst kind of atheist one could imagine, simply by their refusal to assess
and accept many more subjects according to their own merits. Scientific
discoveries and theories appear to warrant disbelief by the religious until
they get overwhelmed by the absurdity of their own disbelief, or until
apologia gets developed to rationalize and explain away the differences (the
religious version of reasoning).
So: atheism is the absence of god-related beliefs, and nothing more than
that even though some atheists insist on applying their own kind of apologia
to it. People by the billions have come and gone in this world without any
hint of a god-perception. Having never heard or read the term 'god', those
are born and raised atheists.
If your attitude says you either believe or disbelieve with no middle
ground, then all agnostics and hypocrites are atheists: An honest religious
person in our times faces a choice between atheism, hypocrisy and
obliviousness. Will he or she stay honest?— It is that last that organized
religions of all kinds strive to perpetuate: they know that, once curiosity
gets around, they will lose their most honest members, and keep only their
gullible and their hypocrites. That explains why all religions degrade over
time, and why that process has reached such a hasty pace in this era of
rapidly advancing knowledge. One has to first believe in a god before one
can then disbelieve. When belief gives way to doubt, and doubt gives way to
belief's attrition, even apostates cannot be said to disbelieve.
Disbelief, as an intentional act, is only for a believer, in whatever is the
subject, to accomplish.
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