From: dgraham@bmers30.bnr.ca (Douglas Graham)
Subject: Re: Atheism? Really Harold, how gauche...
Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada
Date: Thu, 08 Oct 92 04:19:41 GMT

In article <1992Oct7.105529.4605@desire.wright.edu> f0358@desire.wright.edu writes:
>Hi...y'know, I have met lot of people who proclaim the nonexistence of God, or
>god(s) as it were, I myself being one of them. Why is it though that so many
>'atheists' use the same faulty logic as those many spiritual debators? It's
>disheartening to see that so many people espouse 'atheism' without a true
>understanding of the concept.

Y'know, it's difficult to answer your questions when you don't give us any
specific examples of this faulty logic.  I'd be grateful if you did so.
I'd also be grateful if you were to attempt to provide us with a true
understanding of the concept of atheism, and why you think so many nominal
atheists do not have this understanding.

>I feel that atheism gets often a bad rap because
>of this. People often rightly assume that atheism is the conglomerate of all
>pagan, non-Theist, or Pan-theist beliefs. They are right in assuming this
>because many atheists lead them to believe this.

This is the first I've heard that people assume that atheism includes
all these things.  I can't say as I've seen much confusion over this
point in this newsgroup anyway.  'course the fundies think that everything
that isn't fundiism is Satanic, but there isn't much anybody could say
to get that notion out of their peabrains.  They believe whatever they
want to believe, facts be damned.

>A belief in the existence of
>God, god(s), is not in and of itself a bad thing, but never let yourself
>believe that you have THE truth lest someone come by and smack the smile off
>of your face.

Yes, rather than simply thinking you have The Truth, it's far more
important to have a procedure in place for filtering out the nonsense,
and deciding what is plausible and reasonable amongst the rest.  But
there's no need to keep running the same algorithm over the same old
bullshit time and time again.  You'll never make any progress that way.
Using that procedure (critical thinking) you'll come across a lot that
is simply false, and you can safely forget about it unless new evidence
presents itself.  But again, could you present an example extracted
from this group, where an atheist claimed to have The Truth?

>Truth is a virus, as they say, once people have it, they can, and
>often do, lose their minds to it.

It's unfortunate that we, in the late 20th century, have seen so much
of the damage that fanaticism can do, and from that infer that the wise
choice is to espouse that there is no truth.  It leaves us all semi-conscious
and unsure of ourselves, while the fanatics continue doing what they've
always done.  Worse, semi-conscious people are more likely to be infected
with the bad memes.  It doesn't seem like a fair contest to me.

>Atheism is only a concept by whose
>prescriptions there is no extant God, god(s). I believe this, but it doesn't
>mean I am free to do as I please;

Of course not.

>I am still obligated to search for my own personal truth.

Well, you should still be searching for truth.  But don't get caught
in the trap that says that truth is relative or "personal".  There are
objective truths out there, but it's often hard to find them amongst
all the bullshit.
--
Doug Graham          Unk, the big trouble with dumb bastards is that they
dgraham@bnr.ca       are too dumb to believe there is such a thing as being
My own opinions.     smart.    --Kurt Vonnegut from _The Sirens of Titan_
Newsgroups: alt.atheism