Talk:Atheism/Archive 22

message: We currently have the following:
:the practical application of these worldviews to religious thought remains atheistic
This could be a whole lot clearer.  I'd clarify it myself, if I were entirely sure what the intent was.  (This somewhat goes to the above "what constitutes a god" discussion, perhaps, as many of the proposed criteria are found in assorted branches of Buddhism, though none are necessitated by its basic precepts.)  Alai 05:24, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm thinking Atheism and behavior would be rather stublike: "Atheists act like everyone else, but they use different justifications." --Yath 20:39, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't really follow this.  It would probably help me if you could say how atheists act, and then I could judge whether or not Buddhists act like that. Mel Etitis  (Μελ Ετητης) 10:10, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I substantially rewrote the Buddhist/Taoist section.  Asserting that early Buddhist texts assume an atheistic standpoint is factually wrong; the earliest texts that we have available include Vedic deities, supernatural powers, and visits to and from heaven.  What distinguishes Buddhism is not its rejection of the reality of deities, but rather its assertion that deities are bound by the same rules as humans and other beings, and are not necesary to the ultimate salvific goal (Nirvana).  Claiming that supernatural elements are later additions is usually based on circular logic: we know that the early teachings denied the supernatural because the supernatural parts are later additions, and we known the supernatural parts are later additions because the early teachings denied the supernatural. --Clay Collier 03:44, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Taoism and Buddhism (in History section) 

message: ‘Atheism’ means the negation of theism, the denial of the existence of God. I shall here assume that the God in question is that of a sophisticated monotheism. The tribal gods of the early inhabitants of Palestine are of little or no philosophical interest. They were essentiallly finite beings, and the god of one tribe or collection of tribes was regarded as good in that it enabled victory in war against tribes with less powerful gods. Similarly the Greek and Roman gods were more like mythical heroes and heroines than like the omnipotent, omniscient and good God postulated in mediaeval and modern philosophy. As the Romans used the word, ‘atheist’ could be used to refer to theists of another religion, notably the Christians, and so merely to signify disbelief in their own mythical heroes.
The word ‘theism’ exhibits family resemblance in another direction. For example should a pantheist call herself an atheist? Or again should belief in Plato's Form of the Good or in John Leslie's idea of God as an abstract principle that brings value into existence count as theism (Leslie 1979)? Let us consider pantheism.
At its simplest, pantheism can be ontologically indistinguishable from atheism. Such a pantheism would be belief in nothing beyond the physical universe, but associated with emotions of wonder and awe similar to those that we find in religious belief. I shall not consider this as theism. Probably the theologian Paul Tillich was a pantheist in little more than this minimal sense and his characterising God as the ground of being has no clear meaning. The unanswerable question ‘Why is there anything at all?’ may give us mystical or at any rate dizzy feelings but such feelings do not differentiate the pantheist from the atheist. However there are stronger forms of pantheism which do differentiate the pantheist from the atheist (Levine, 1994). For example the pantheist may think that the universe as a whole has strongly emergent and also mind-like qualities. Not emergent merely in the weak sense that a radio receiver's ability to receive signals from distant stations might be said to be emergent because it is not a mere jumble of components (Smart 1981). The components have to be wired together in a certain way, and indeed the workings of the individual compunents can be explained by the laws of physics. Contrast this with a concept of emergence that I shall call ‘strong emergence’. C. D. Broad in his Scientific Thought (Broad 1923) held that the chemical properties of common salt could not even in principle be deduced from those of sodium and chlorine separately, at the very time at which the quantum theory of the chemical bond was beginning to be developed. Though the mind has seemed to some to be strongly emergent from its physical basis, it can be argued that developments in the philosophy of mind, cognitive science and neuroscience favour weak emergence only.
One strong form of pantheism ascribes mental properties to the cosmos. If the weak sense of emergence was adopted we would be faced with the question of whether the universe looks like a giant brain. Patently it does not. Samuel Alexander asserted, rather than argued, that mentality strongly emerged from space-time, and then that at some future time there will emerge a new and at present hardly imaginable level which he called ‘deity’ (Alexander 1927). It is hard to tell whether such an implausible metaphysics should be classified as as pantheism or as theism. Certainly such a deity would not be the infinite creator God of orthodox theism. A. N. Whitehead, too, had a theory of an emergent deity, though with affinities to Platonism, which he saw as the realm of potentiality and thus connected the atemporal with the contingent temporal deity (Whitehead 1929). Such views will not deliver, however implausibly, more than a finite deity, not the God of core theism. God would be just one more thing in the universe, however awesome and admirable.
The weak form of pantheism accepts that the physical universe is all and eschews strong emergence. Sometimes the weak form of panthism is rhetorically disguised as theism, with God characterised as ‘absolute depth’ or some equally baffling expression, as by Paul Tillich. At any rate, whether or not we accept pantheism as a sort of theism, what we mean by ‘atheism’ will vary according to what in the dialectical situation we count as theism. 4.250.33.72 00:47, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Atheism

message: #Live and very recent discussions shouldn't be archived. Mel Etitis  (Μελ Ετητης) 11:46, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: #None of the discussions archived for #21 seemed "live", "recent", or "on-topic". Whatever floats your boat.Adraeus 22:18, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archiving 

message: Haiduc added some info about control of religion in communist states which is generally right. I added one more sentence. I wanted to say there: initially the communist states were very strict in control of everything, this lasted some decade and then it went slowly down, for next few decades. The state simply didn't have much of resources to keep its functioning and control of religion was victim of cuts. Please feel free to fix clumsy wording there.
Being here: the History section somehow misses explanation of growth of atheims in last century(ies), at least in Western civilization. This trend and its causes must have been examined thoroughly. Pavel Vozenilek 23:10, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: My suspicion is that, first the reasons can't be pinned dowwn precisely, because we're in the field of sociology and psychology, and secondly, that the explanations that have been offered will be objected to be believers.  I might be wrong; if you want to add some material, then we'll find out (light the blue touch paper and retire...). Mel Etitis  (Μελ Ετητης) 10:33, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

text: I do not want to add anything, I just saw a gap. Pavel Vozenilek 11:22, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Not having read on this topic I am not in a position to contribute too much, but I recall that the growing success of scientific rationalism generated a wave of disbelief in religious dogma and a general fall into disfavor of irrational superstitions. I agree with Pavel that this material needs to be included Haiduc 12:00, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  History section, about communist states 

message: I have removed this section from the article because the anon who added it did nothing more than cut and paste from other articles. It was just a bunch of quotes and was quite incoherant and messy. I personally don't think the section is even required, as everything within it is covered within the article elsewhere. If other people think the section should be in here, we can go about putting a heavily edited and cleaner version of it back in. Let me know what you think about this. Aaarrrggh 13:04, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Reasons for atheism section

message: This is claimed in the section "Nonexclusive and contradictory use" that I began and others improved (Thank you). I'm unaware of what claims you find in need of verification. Please be specific about the claim you refer to and why you think it is in need of verification. Definitions, logic, and references definitely must be supplied where needed. Sometimes one person finds a thing obvious and another doesn't. Perhaps I'm actually wrong about something, or right but mis-spoke myself. Your help in improving this section by pointing out what is questionable would be wonderful. Thanks for helping. 4.250.201.231 12:23, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That section is almost entirely opinion and original research. The section needs to be written using journalistic style. Currently, the section's style is bloggish, and uses first-person pronouns and asks the reader a question. That's not encyclopedic. There's also an obviously unsubstantiated generalization beginning with "most people". Adraeus 16:31, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Why the use of quotation marks then? I don't understand that if this is original research. It definately needs some heavy tidying up, and I still maintain there's nothing of any value there that I can see that isn't already covered in one way or another within the article itself. I think regardless, the section should be taken down until it can be re-written to a higher standard at the very least. I still think the section is unnecessary, however. Aaarrrggh 17:32, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: "Some factual claims in this article or section need to be verified."

message: This is just to inform people that I want Wikipedia to accept a general policy that BC and AD represent a Christian Point of View and should be used only when they are appropriate, that is, in the context of expressing or providing an account of a Christian point of view.  In other contexts, I argue that they violate our NPOV policy and we should use BCE and CE instead. See Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/BCE-CE Debate for the detailed proposal. Slrubenstein   |  Talk  22:55, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  announcing policy proposal 

message: I removed the link to 'arguments for the existence of god' from the arguments for atheism section. However, now that i think about it, was its inclusion meant somewhat satirically? That is, the arguments for 'god' are so bad, or non-sensical that one becomes an atheist by default? If this is the case, then add the link back, otherwise, it seemed as if it could have been added by a 'believer'.--Black Dagger 12:46, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Haha. I love your reasoning :-) Aaarrrggh 23:32, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed link 

message: As a a simple and easily verifiable fact, the notion of race is controversial.  There is no consensus on its status as a biological natural-kind distinction, nor on its being a purely social construct.  The reference to this in the text might be put more elegantly, but I see no ground for removing it altogether. Mel Etitis  (Μελ Ετητης) 10:56, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, though, when I went to replace and tidy that passage, I discovered that the whole section was a personal essay, with much that was either vague or controversial (and some remarks that were pretty close to nonsense), and that it added nothing to the article.  I've been bold and deleted it. Mel Etitis  (Μελ Ετητης) 11:04, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree.  It was essay like material and didn't really make much sense.  Morwen - Talk 11:07, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Race 

message: Atheism is a nonexclusive condition and can be combined with also being Jewish (by race), also being Buddhist (as a philosophy and ethical system), also being called a Christian (some believe "once a Christian, always a Christian" ; others may admire Jesus as a role model while rejecting any religious implications), and even in apparent contradiction calling oneself something other than atheist when specifically choosing between atheist and something else .
Atheism is nonexclusive when the definition of atheism and the definition of the other state both apply, example: Jewish atheist. Atheism is nonexclusive when by one point of view or situation atheism as a label applies and by another point of view or situation it does not. Am I talking to someone who shares my understanding of the word or to someone who understands the definition or implications very differently from me?
The apparent contradiction of being both atheist and nonatheist is no more actually contradictory than a person or a box being black from one point of view and white from another.
The nature of belief itself also permits apparent opposites to be believed. Most people have no trouble believing in both timely behavior "He who hesitates is lost" and caution "Look before you leap", even though on some occasions you can't do both. 
Logical positivism asserts the term god is meaningless. So not only may one be both atheist from one point of view and nonatheist from another, some assert they are neither atheist nor nonatheist.
The previous discussion covers honest nonexclusive and contradictory use. The nature of speech allows actual opposites to be asserted as opposed to merely apparent opposites; sometimes in error, sometimes as a ploy. So in its actual use as a word, atheism can be used in a nonexclusive or contradictory fashion with any other term whatever.
:It is impossible to be an atheist and a nonatheist at the same time; you simply do nuot understand what it means. Being of Jewish ancestry has NO bearing on whether or not you are an atheist; someone who does not believe in God is an Atheist, and someone whose mother was Jewish is a Jew. Therefore, these are nonexclusive.
:However, a "nonatheist" is a theist. An atheist by definition is the opposite of a theist (or vice-versa, as technically the word atheist existed before the word theist). In any event, it is impossible to be an atheist and a theist at the same time, as they are mutually exclusive. A Buddhist can be an atheist, as (depending on the branch of Buddhism) their religious belief does not equate with belief in a deity, which an atheist is (strictly). Being an atheist is not synonymous with being irreligious. However, oftentimes in surveys they are not looking at atheists (which make up a fairly large chunk of the world) but irreligious atheists (who are the aforementioned relatively small percentage), which can lead to some amount of confusion.
:You cannot be a Christian and be an atheist. You cannot be a religious Jew and an atheist, though you could be an ethnic Jew and an atheist. If your religion includes a god, and you believe in your religion, then you cannot be an atheist. If you religion does not include a deity, and you don't believe in one, you can be religious and an atheist. Titanium Dragon 05:17, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: the section wasn't removed because it makes false statements. It was removed because it is a random rambling, and doesn't add any value. I bet I would be reverted too if I went over to Elephant and said, correctly, "An Elephant cannot at the same time also be a Giraffe. Or a Panda. Some admire Pandas because they are so cute". dab (ᛏ) 09:39, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Nonexclusive and contradictory use

message: I would be more than happy to justify a discussion of the use of the word "atheist" in the article as in the section deleted and put back (please leave it until AFTER we discuss it and arive at consensus). I submit that discussing the use of the word in the article is justified. 4.250.132.180 00:11, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Discussing the use of the word is fine, but the paragraph that I removed is a personal essay, as well as containing much that's either obvious (you can be an atheist while being other things unrelated to atheism) or controversial (you can be an atheist and a Christian).  It can't stay because of the first point, which means that it's against Wikipedia policy.  if it could be edited so as to be acceptable to other editors and properly backed up by citations, then the new version can be put back into the article. Mel Etitis  (Μελ Ετητης) 09:52, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

text: as Mel says, parts were obvious, other parts were, hm, peculiar. You may have a valid point to make, and I do not see the deletions as hostile: If you help us put a finger on your precise point, we may be able to find a wording acceptable to everyone. I suppose you can be atheist and "Christian" in the sense that you're perceived as belonging to the Christian culture, e.g. an atheist who self-identifies as "Christian" when travelling in the Middle East, just so people have a label to put him in perspective. dab (ᛏ) 11:50, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

text: That's true, though it would be correctly described as being an atheist while being thought to be a Christian, or being an atheist while calling oneself a Christian. Mel Etitis  (Μελ Ετητης) 13:09, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: well, I have labelled myself a Christian before, in Islamic areas, so I could not be offended by being referred to as a Christian. Although, if people insisted did I really believe in the Lamb, the Blood, the Resurrection and all that, I would have had to excuse myself. My point is, that Christians are really self-defined. If you say you are a Christian, for all practical purposes you are one. So in principle you could call yourself an atheist Christian. But we'll only mention such a movement if it has some notability, of course. dab (ᛏ) 14:10, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

text: Literary critic Camille Paglia has called herself an "atheist Catholic", and I can document that.   --goethean ॐ  15:09, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

text: It meant that although she no longer holds to Catholic dogma, her Catholic upbringing had a permanent affect on her personality. And perhaps that religion should not necessarily be defined only in terms of belief. One can be a Jewish atheist, because Judaism consists at least as much of folkways and practice as belief. The same can be said of Catholicism. Paglia often speaks of the affect of Andy Warhol's Catholic upbringing on his art. It is really Protestantism, Islam and atheism that tend to emphasize belief more than practice, ritual and culture.  --goethean ॐ  16:31, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, if that's what she meant, and if there's reason to believe that she was right, perhaps something needs to be added to Catholicism, Christianity, etc. (in fact it seems clear that she's wrong if she's really making claims about the nature of Catholicism rather than the psychology of individual Catholics).  I'm not clear, though, that it affects atheism, or needs to be discussed in this article. Mel Etitis  (Μελ Ετητης) 17:07, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Let's talk

message: Currently in the strong atheism section, the article says, "Strong atheism ... is the belief that no deities exist. This may be based on the view that there is insufficient evidence or grounds to justify belief in deities... ."  That can't be right.  "Insufficient evidence or grounds to justify belief in deities" is a weak atheism position, not a strong atheism position.  A strong atheist position would be based on the view that a lack of evidence should suffice (perhaps in combination with other reasons) to affirmatively believe that no God exists.  I want to get some input and thoughts before I change this.  But as currently phrased, it's definitely not a strong atheist perspective, speaking as a strong atheist. Unended 05:22, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)
:I would say that a strong atheist position is that there is evidence that no deities exist.  --goethean ॐ  15:15, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Strong atheism inconsistency

message: Mel Etitis, even on the Atheism article, the convention "God"=singular deity, "god"= any old deity should hold. Therefore, I cannot follow your "fixing" of capitalisation. Where "god" appears, it should read "any gods", i.e. either it should be "is there a God", or "are there any gods", but not "is there a god". "God" vs. "god" is not a matter of point of view (in the sense that the spelling "God" would imply that you are a believer), but they should be treated as two different lexemes, much like llah vs. ilah. dab (ᛏ) 8 July 2005 08:58 (UTC)
:Hmmm, unfortunately expressed ("I can't allow....").  The fact that one article adopts one approach doesn't necessitate the same approach in all other articles (any more than the reverse).  My view, which is of course far from unanimous, but which is nevertheless very widely shared) is that "god" is never a name or a title (it's sometimes been described as a job description), and should therefore never be capitalised.  "Allah", "Jehovah", "Siva", "Quetzalcoatl", "Ahura Mazda", etc. — all these are names, so need capitals, but not "god", whether plural or singular.  My own view is that the claim that the word should be capitalised when it refers to a unique being is an attempt by believers to keep their honorific use while seeming not to; that's backed up by the fact that it goes against normal English usage (e.g., "Queen Anne", but "Anne was queen").  Thus the use of the capital is implicitly PoV. --Mel Etitis  (Μελ Ετητης) 21:58, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: God

message: #If someone asks an atheist for her reasons for disbelief, she won't answer: "Perceived lack of evidence", she'll answer: "Lack of evidence".
#Unless we add "perceived" to every reason ("perceived moral reasons", etc.),this is going to look as though we're making a (PoV) comment on just this reason. --Mel Etitis  (Μελ Ετητης) 21:51, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd disagree with that assessment, Scorpionman.  While reasons for atheism other than lack of evidence may exist, I've never heard of one.  If one feels oppressed by the rules of their religion, wouldn't the more logical course of action be to switch to another religion with similar beliefs, but less strigent rules? ex. A Catholic that is uncomfortable with confession decides to convert to a form of Protestantism. -Cog05 18:25, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I suspect most atheists don't want to be bound by the laws of some omnipotent being, but that doesn't mean it's their reason. Probably for most, it's just how they interpret what they perceive. Nickptar 21:56, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reasons 

message: Please do not erase my material arbitrarily.  I don't want to lodge a NPOV complaint. 
I don't think Christianity is a narrow viewpoint and Plantinga is highly recognized thoughout the Christian community.   Plantinga's "freewill defense" for the existence of evil is widely praised for example. Also, Christianity is the largest worldview in the world.
I think the real reason is that many of those who profess atheism are tenuous in their position and/or feel uncomfortable about any pointed criticism.
I cite the following:
A website declares Sartre as saying in Harper's magazine: 
"As for me, I don’t see myself as so much dust that has appeared in the world but as a being that was expected, prefigured, called forth. In short, as a being that could, it seems, come only from a creator; and this idea of a creating hand that created me refers me back to God. Naturally this is not a clear, exact idea that I set in motion every time I think of myself. It contradicts many of my other ideas; but it is there, floating vaguely. And when I think of myself I often think rather in this way, for wont of being able to think otherwise." 
taken from: http://www.johnankerberg.org/Articles/apol...cs/AP0702W4.htm 
I believe the evidence is strong though that Sartre professed to be an atheist. Here is a education website's information below: 
"Jean-Paul Sartre was a well known French philosopher who lived from 1905-1980. His thought was influenced heavily by philosophers Heidigger and Husserl. He became one of the early proponents of existentialism, which emphasizes among other things, the ultimacy of human freedom. He considered himself an atheist existentialist (as opposed to a Christian existentialist) and eventually included Marxism and humanism in his philosophy." 
taken from: http://faculty.wm.edu/jmchar/Kin493/kinst10c.html 
Here is some additional data that support that perhaps many professed materialists are doubleminded: 
"Crick is also a fervent atheistic materialist, who propounds the particle story. In his autobiography, Crick says very candidly biologists must remind themselves daily that what they study was not created, it evolved; it was not designed, it evolved. Why do they have to remind themselves of that? Because otherwise, the facts which are staring them in the face and trying to get their attention might break through." 
taken from: http://www.ldolphin.org/ntcreation.html 
Here is the exact quote: 
"Biologists must constantly keep in 
mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved." (Crick 
F.H.C., "What Mad Pursuit," 1990, p.138). " 
ken 17:25, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, can we keep this discussion limited to the relevancy of the external links you first brought up please?  Dunc|☺ 17:55, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

text: Alvin Plantinga is well-known in circles of conservative Protestants who care about philosophical apologetics — a group that is numerically rather small. Not in "the Christian community" --goethean ॐ 19:51, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: A request to the person who removed my material

message: I'm not convinced that the article is POV. It seems to do a good job of presenting atheism in the tone of "atheists believe this" or "atheists don't believe that" as the case may be. I think the subsection titled Views of atheism might include a sub-subsection about christian views of atheism. However, this should be reported from the point of view of what christians think of atheism and atheists in a neutral way, not an opportunity to insert a christian sermon. The first link especially seems little more than a POV sermon about the supposed end of atheism, which is a highly questionable assertion. The person complaining the article is POV because his partisan links keep getting removed doesn't seem as much interested in presenting the christian point of view of atheism in a neutral tone, rather he seems interested in advocating within the article that atheism is wrong. I think the christian view of atheism is referred to throughout various parts of the article, a quick glance found a paragraph starting with In the European Middle Ages people were persecuted for heresy which fairly well indicates Christianity's hostile relationship to atheism. Later on a paragraph starts with By the 1770s, atheism was ceasing to be a dangerous accusation that required denial which indicates christianity's change to a less hostile view of Christianity. The section ends quoting Bush saying "I don't know that atheists should be regarded as citizens, nor should they be regarded as patriotic. This is one nation under God.", which seems to indicate a return to slightly more hostile responses to atheists, in attitude at least. Perhaps a section under the Views of atheism that specifically lists a brief history of christianity's attitude towards atheism would put the christian point of view alongside the other opposing views. This could be done in a neutral manner and would not require the insertion of a link that is little more than advocation against atheism. I'd prefer we keep it on wikipedia and keep it encyclopediac, rather than defer to an outside advocacy site. FuelWagon 22:11, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Comment from FuelWagon