Toba a picture proves nothing. We need to know the context (assuming its not photoshopped).

And please tell us what kind of christian you are
1) A hypocrite or
2) A genuinely confused christian.

Wow u have chosen to narrow down the scope to suit ur self. no problem, i have ur time and im prepared for this for as long as u have the gas to endure. There still some flaws in r post but just as i have done, i woulds till go ahead to point them out for u as usual

jayriginal:

@Toba, try not to hurt yourself.

no sir. On the contrary i think u are the one hurt. I have said and would say again. u mentioned war, but i dont see this as any war. im trying to educate and im ready to take it to the next level till u open ur reasoning and understand to assimilate whats being said here.

I wouldnt have responded but for the sheer length of your post.

Na u can say this to ur self. Im even more than ready for u till u are ready to learn. have said the above line on couple of occasions only to repudiate. so im not in for that

I reacted to this issue today, I dont feel like doing it again.

u have said this and the below quote

At this point, Id like to say something before I leave

only for u to take a u turn as usual and return to post more BS in addition to those u have posted. Dont worry, im here for as long as this would continue in a civil manner

My teachers used to say "just write, at least even if you write rubbish, we will give you one mark for your biro".

Yes hats true and of course are gonna get marks not for posting anything reasonable or sensible but for making an attempt and telling us long tales

I know its not going to do any good, but I'll just try and respond.

Are u concluding that arent prepared to learn anything? wow this is shocking. I've havent reached half way with u and u are already concluding? too bad

No need to engage you on this.

I have also expected this kind of response. Its the usual atheist opt out, when they run out of gas in a discussion. did u run out of gas?

What pathetic view ? What spoon feeding. At least spoon feed me once before you say you wont have time for it for too long.

sir dont tell me u also learnt how to lie as part of ur atheism. I have spoon fed u. Even in the op, i posted what u might not have heard about. i.e the different kind of atheism up till that of evangelical atheism which is what u find difficult to comprehend may be cos u are acting as one already

I repeat, there is nothing like evangelical athiesm.

Well since are still insisting and judging by ur antecedence of not wanting to ready, i will post some things here for u to read from ur fellow atheists. Pls read this time cos if u say whats not again, i may be forced to spank u 3 time. lol. ok lets go there

"Evangelical atheism": Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it? But "evangelism" literally means "bringing of good news." I believe that strong atheism, the belief that there is no god, is not only true but is also good news. I also believe that the world would be a better place if there were more atheists. Unless you already are one, I believe you would be happier and the world would be a better place if you were an atheist.

There are already a number of resources on atheism: books, web sites, movies, you name it. Most of them patiently deal with the rational. This is as it should be; atheism is the only rational response to the question of whether there is a god. What I want to focus on, though, is the emotional. I believe that emotion, not reason, is the moat between the fantasy of religion and the reality of atheism.

We all are lonely, but aren't six billion of us, most of whom are really fine people, enough?
http://evangelicalatheism.org/

---

heres another one

R[b]ALEIGH, N.C. — The cliche notwithstanding, there are atheists in foxholes. In fact, atheists, agnostics, humanists and other assorted skeptics from the Army’s Fort Bragg[/b] have formed an organization in a pioneering effort to win recognition and ensure fair treatment for nonbelievers in the overwhelmingly Christian U.S. military.

“We exist, we’re here, we’re normal,” said Sgt. Justin Griffith, chief organizer of Military Atheists and Secular Humanists, or MASH. “We’re also in foxholes. That’s a big one, right there.”

For now, the group meets regularly in homes and bars outside of Fort Bragg, one of the biggest military bases in the country. But it is going through the long bureaucratic process to win official recognition from the Army as a distinct “faith” group.

Th[b]e Army atheists received coverage, too, from the News & Observer newspaper[/b] in Raleigh. Veteran religion writer Yonat Shimron included the military voices in a story on area atheists and agnostics starting a billboard campaign:

Taking a cue from the gay rights movement, Triangle atheists are coming out of the closet with a new billboard campaign that attempts to project a friendly, wholesome image of a group long stigmatized for its unconventional beliefs.

Plastered on billboards in Raleigh, Durham, Pittsboro and Smithfield are the smiling faces of real Triangle atheists and agnostics, accompanied by pithy statem[/b]ents such as “I’m saved from religion” and “Another happy, humanist family.”

Th[b]e “Out of the Closet” campaign is just one of several ways the growing nonbeliever movement is flexing its muscles and elevating its profile amid a competitive religious marketplace in the Triangle and nationwide.
http://www.getreligion.org/2011/04/the-armys-evangelical-atheists/

---

I would give u one more just in case u arent satisfied

Last Friday, a New York Times headline declared: "Atheists Debate How Pushy to Be." This ongoing debate among atheists -- "Just how much should we confront the religious?" -- is nowhere near resolution.

Note jayriginal that chris steman is also an atheist and here are some of his words about evangelical atheism/atheists

There is, as has often been noted, something peculiarly evangelistic about what has been termed the new atheist movement , It is no exaggeration to describe the movement popularized by the likes of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens as a new and particularly zealous form of fundamentalism -- an atheist fundamentalism. The parallels with religious fundamentalism are obvious and startling: the conviction that they are in sole possession of truth (scientific or otherwise), the troubling lack of tolerance for the views of their critics[b] (Dawkins has compared creationists to Holocaust deniers), the insistence on a literalist reading of scripture (more literalist, in fact, than one finds among most religious fundamentalists)[/b], the simplistic reductionism of the religious phenomenon, and, perhaps most bizarrely, their overwhelming sense of siege: the belief that they have been oppressed and marginalized by Western societies and are just not going to take it anymore.

Please also read the below of which may be part of
'When a large and vocal number of atheists say that their number one goal is convincing people to abandon their faith, it comes as no surprise that our community is construed as extreme and aggressive.'

How pushy should we be, then?" We're asking the wrong question. Instead, let's ask ourselves: What are we pushing for

Jay for reference purpose, here are some of the evangelical atheists behind the evangelism Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens

If I told you there was a true christian that accepted that Mohammed (pbuh) was the comforter Jesus spoke about, would you agree ? There is literature documenting that fact. Does it make it true to you ?

this is a bad analogy. if i told as a theist that i saw God and told me to do certain things and tell also not to do certain things, would u ever believe me? Whatever ur response his can be used to answer r rhetorical question

In your mind, a lack of belief is no different from a belief. No wahala.

u would do ur self a lot of good by opening ur reasoning to read what i actually posted earlier. Within the context of our discussion, heres what i want u to see


belief



noun
1.
something believed; an opinion or conviction: a belief that the earth is flat.
2.
confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof: a statement unworthy of belief.
3.
confidence; faith; trust: a child's belief in his parents.
4.
a religious tenet or tenets; religious creed or faith: the Christian belief.

Now let me make it clear to u. The definition is from dictionary.com. It applies to both the theists and the atheists. We believe in different things. I believe theres a God whilst believe theres no God. u even said the bible God is a non entity. this is ur belief as an atheist

[s]A second reference to shifting the goal posts. Now Sir, let me classify christians on my personal experience (which may attract attention and get its own standard definition later on). In my classification (and possibly a lot of atheists), there are two types of christians.
1) The genuinely confused
2) The hypocrites.
Now Toba, under which category do you fall. Answer me this if you are a man.
[/s]

Absolutely irrelevant and makes no sense. What are we talking about on this thread? U are free to open a new thread and start a discussion on this. U are yet to accept the different kinds of atheism and atheists yet u brought out a list of what i may term as gibberish questions about Christianity. do u believe that there are different kinds of atheist and atheism? answer that first then i may consider this ur attempt at shifting the goal post again.

What contradiction? There is only one if you hold the stubborn opinion that atheism is a religion. If you are determined against all reason to hold so, then there is little I can do. I can only repeat what I said earlier;

Its obvious u like to deny things. U have said u are not an atheist on u dont want to be regarded as an atheist, yet u called ur self and atheist in this same post of yours i've quoted. what can u say about that.

atheism is not a belief.

dont be too sure. Scroll up and read what i posted abouut the definition of belief and within the context of this discourse.


belief


 
noun
1.
something believed; an opinion or conviction: a belief that the earth is flat.
2.
confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof: a statement unworthy of belief.
3.
confidence; faith; trust: a child's belief in his parents.
4.
a religious tenet or tenets; religious creed or faith: the Christian belief.
u have said the uu believe the christian God is a non entity. U also believe in science as the truth dont u? kindly relate this to the definition. I believe we are speaking English and meaning of words are explicit. Also have agreed that there are different kinds of atheism. Some may even have a belief

You can actually find two atheists having different views. Their converging point would be that there is no God.

Good. with this line, i wold conclude that now agree that we have different kinds of atheism/atheists. is that the correct position?

I'll try and clarify a bit. I'm never going to say for certain that there is no God.

Alright this might be that to u and to some extent theres no God, if not, u wouldnt be called an atheist and u wouldnt have said that the christian God is a non entity. For the level of ur believing otherwise, how did u come to such conclusion about gods/God?

Until I have proof, I wont say so. The reason for this is that Im not from a science background. I cannot directly determine for myself if what Darwin, Dawkins et al say is true.

There lies another contradiction. Do u have proofs that theres no God to some certain level? I will also remind u that said the christian God is a non entity, do u have proof for this statement? Can please define dogma to me?

Talking about the evangelical atheists u mentioned above, dont u believe in them to some certain extent? is there any proof for u to have believed in them? ur thread the improbability of God if im not mistaking was culled from Dawkins. isnt it?

[s]My atheism journey started before I entered University and continued. I didnt need science to tell me there was no God. Science says "A" today and "B" tomorrow because they are forever questioning their theories and establishing new truths. I look to science to provide me with plausible answers. I can rely on those answers because of the peer review system. I dont need to test these things myself. [/s]

This is really not my busz cos i havent asked u how u became an atheist and really i dont care and i dont want to know. Its ur choice and im not here to debate u sir but to discuss the different kinds of atheism. so dont post off topic.

I suspect atheists who declare with certainty that there is no God are of the scientific calling and they have tested these things for themselves.

Are u now agreeing that we have different kinds of atheists, atheism and atheists belief? Now u have said some atheist may believe certainly that theres no God, whereas this isnt ur own view. pls dont lie sir.

Yet again, the one thing I will say with great certainty is that your God of the bible is a non entity.

Contradiction.At one point, u are certain and at another, u are uncertain. How many God do u think we have, having declared that a certain God is a non entity.

Thats like you assaulting me and when I fight back, you accuse me of starting it.

are free to start anything. trust me that im equal to the task. So go ahead

Its possible that you never antagonised an atheist (I doubt that) but you belong to a body which does and you cannot escape liability.

Why the dobt? why cant believe me certainly like u believed that the xtian God is a non entity?

On a similar note, most of the christians I have met have nothing but contempt for the atheist.

Same way the atheists too have against xtians. Dawkins has compared creationists to Holocaust deniers

If I said I was muslim, the more tolerant of them would be like "OK. At least you believe in something". Some christians even tell me that even if I dont believe in their God, I should at least believe in something. Why is it so hard to comprehend a human without belief in a deity ?

Which ever way, i believe its good for u

Do I really need to refute this silly assertion. I want to spare you the embarrassment.

Usual atheists opt out. respond if u have the balls. lol

*Yawn*. I believe Ive addressed this before.

Really? where have u addressed it? Can u pls give me the link?

Dont hurt yourself Sir.

im not hurt in anyway sir. im cool and seriously im enjoying this our discussion. Arent ?

[/quote]
Who gave atheists different classifications ? Is it in your bible ?
[quote]

atheists themselves did. didnt u read the op? i so stated on it. Its ridiculous asking me this. who gave christian classifications when asked me which particular christian i am

For the 500th time, an atheist is an atheist. An atheist is one who has no belief in a supernatural deity.

No sir. an atheist isnt an atheist. atheism is still used in a wide variety of ways.

Someone may announce that she is an atheist, and her listeners may assume she is one type of atheist, when really she is a different type of atheist.


A broad atheist denies the existence of all gods: Zeus, Thor, Yahweh, Shiva, and so on.

A narrow atheist denies the existence of the traditional Western omni-God who is all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful.

When it comes to Ogun, Sango, Allah, Buddha etc, you are an atheist too.

How do u know about ogun, sango and allah? pls tell me explicitly sir.

may also need to know that

An unfriendly atheist believes no one is justified in believing that gods exist.

An indifferent atheist doesn’t have a belief on whether or not others are justified in believing that gods exist.

A friendly atheist believes that some theists are justified in believing that gods exist. The late Bawolomo belongs here

Under which of your misguided [/b]categories do you fall ?

Easy sir. did i touch a raw nerve? dont get angry sir.

BTW im not an atheist and do not fall under any misguided category sir. Hope all is well with ur sight

Thank "God" your "U" is now working. It hasnt made much of a difference though.

thank u but on the other hand u havent made sense at all sir. u are just roaming the thread with irrelevant drifting in an attempt to derail the thread. its never going to happen

1) [b]I agree, some atheist on this forum (not all) dish out insults. Sometimes they fight back when they have been insulted and sometimes they dish it out without provocation. I am not for the latter, but you never know what these people have suffered in the hands of christians and theists.

The only truth u ve said so far. But at times without being incited, atheists decide to look for trouble. Even in the world over, we have fundamentalist and trouble makers

2) No Sir, you didnt insult me. You only called me lazy and made references to my profession when you do not know how I came up.

Thank God u have said another truth cos i wasnt trained to expressly insult people on NL

3) N[b]obody is trying to make you believe in anything. Trust me, if you ever become an atheist, it will come from you. If I had conclusive proof that God doesnt exist, you still wouldnt believe. An atheist doesnt believe in anything,[/b] so what is he trying to make you believe ? Speaking for myself, I never argue with the idea of getting someone to stop believing. If you want to take 10 percent of your hard earned money and throw it at a charlatan (who is most likely an atheist himself) whats my business? All I ask is for peace and quiet. Let me be without religion. I dont need it.

this may help answer ur queries. pls read with open mind.

Atheism’s most celebrated evangelist Richard Dawkins’ helped with money he helped to raise for that exercise go to follow‑up posters aimed at preventing the religious indoctrination of children. Meanwhile, the good professor endorsed atheist summer camps for children. So we indoctrinate religion, but teach atheism.

Jay, just listen or read what the prof said in the last line. He openly admitted that his own kind of atheism is a religion.

What is striking about Dawkins is his lack of rationality and so a lack of self-awareness. He is such a convincing story teller that he has convinced himself of his own dogmatic beliefs by making a string of reasonable but illogical statements. Take this little nugget of unsubstantiated rhetoric.

sir remember hes well respected amongst guys


in addition, jay kindly read what another atheist had to say who was formally a christian

Instead of just being a passive observer I began to question people about their reasons for believing things that can’t be proven and over the years I have become more aggressive in that area. Now, I belong to the Freedom from Religion Foundation and write letters to newspapers who have printed religious claptrap or other letters from overtly religious nuts who would like to have a 10 commandments posted on every street-corner and prayer in the schools. I characterize myself as an Evangelical Atheist and I believe that more of us have to take an activist stance.

A small minority of ultra-conservative Christians have been making trouble all out of proportion to their numbers because they take every opportunity to exert influence to push their agenda. We atheists need to follow their example and let everybody know that we exist.

---

I hope wouldnt come here to say we dont have evangelical atheism/atheist

4) I didnt insult you. Maybe my reference to your poor logic ruffled your feathers but hey, it is what it is.

For the umpteenth time let me reiterate that im not hurt in any way. believe me. im not here to preach to about God.

I said a true atheist. I dont presume to speak for all atheists. Its my opinion in anycase.

are u saying we also have false atheist? are u indirectly agreeing that there might be different kinds of atheists just as stated in the op?

Im sure you wont own up to every act committed by christians. If you will, I'm sure the atrocities of Reverend Dr James is enough to debunk your faith.

Do know that Dawkins disciple actually committed frauud sometime ago?

However if I attempted to put you in the same category as the Reverend Dr James, you would probably make an effort to distinguish yourself

Why do think so? u are contradicting r self. this is a direct admittance that there are different kinds of belief. arent?

Not bothering with that. Too base.

Why is it because u have no answer or because u ran out of Gas?

Poor logic, poor logic, shifting the goal post. It would appear I touched a nerve somewhere.

Im very cool with u. Its jst that uu are contradicting ur self. thats the poor logic im talking about.

The basic point of my post was to address/correct certain inconsistencies.

How far or how well have u gone about this?

The most outstanding were
a) Atheism is not a belief system and

Im sure should have change ur mind by the time u are reading this part.

Dawkins exercise go to follow‑up posters aimed at preventing the religious[b] indoctrination of children[/b]. Meanwhile, the good professor endorsed atheist summer camps for children. So we indoctrinate religion, but teach atheism.
http://transforminggrace./2010/01/05/dawkins-evangelical-atheist/
u can draw ur own conclusion thereafter

b) There is no such thing as an evangelical atheist.

'I characterize myself as an Evangelical Atheist and I believe that more of us have to take an activist stance.

A small minority of ultra-conservative Christians have been making trouble all out of proportion to their numbers because they take every opportunity to exert influence to push their agenda. We atheists need to follow their example and let everybody know that we exist. '

http://testimonials.exchristian.net/2008/07/i-characterize-myself-as-evangelical.html

And as for the "war" thing, its metaphorical. I dont hate christians or people who believe in a God of some sorts. I dont think most hate me either. They mostly pity me or feel superior to me.

the same way the atheist does as well. Dawkins and co

You didnt preach about God. Not directly at least. However Id like to hear you explain or have a discussion about atheism without God coming into it. Nuff said.

I woldnt question ur logic but would like to question ur reasoning. What made u so sure about this? u first brought God into this discourse? Are u obsessed with God?

No Sir. This is not a question you should ask.

What is the question? U are still mixing things up and getting confused

As a christian, you are adept at believing the unbelievable. This is a small thing for you . Just have faith.

Whats the relevance of this to different kinds of atheism?

No Sir. What category ?

Again u belong to one of the above categories

You must be into real estate then. It would be poor logic to you. That doesnt surprise me.

SMDH^{30000000000000000000000000000} times. Why did say that? are u certain about this statement? Is it only real estate surveyors that have the need for tenancy/lease agreement?

No Sir, infact you saidBecause I had already decried the term evangelical atheist (in no uncertain terms), and I thought that the point had sunk in, I thought you were insinuating that those mythical beasts were not found in the bible. I still think that is the case (the opposite scenario is too severe for me to contemplate concerning a fellow human being). My post is still there. You may want to refer to it again.
Interestingly, you have nothing to say regarding the mythical beasts.

usual atheist opt out. U cant twist things here again. What i asked u to back up is ur cliam that theres nothing like evangelical atheist or atheism. Up till this moment u have done that. im still waiting once u have such proofs, u can return here to me about it

I warned you not to hurt yourself Sir.
Truth is not measured in mass appeal. At the risk of galling you further, this is terrible. Are you insinuating that you are a christian because its one of the major religions ? Are you a catholic ? Are you afraid to be different. If you are in a group of 10 people and 9 say 1+1=4, would that make it true ?

i like this qestion. How sure are u about ur atheistic belief? isnt it possible that if truth is actually equal to numbers, we could have had more Christians in the entire the entire world than we currently have? relate this to ur question. After all there could be a God but because truth isnt equal to number, some people decide to deny his existence. not so?

I dont need to do any evangelism. What am I evangelising about? Im not concerned about any souls. If you eventually see the light, you will do it on your own.

that the christian god is a non entity and that u also believe to some certain extent that there's no God.

25% is even a big number. I thought atheists were less than that. The number has no bearing on reality.
In your mind, its pathetic to belong to a minority. Have you ever heard of the word "sheeple" ?

Thats why i said u dont read and its now becoming very obvious.

I said 'Whats the percentage of atheists in the world? I have a thread on that on this same NL. pls do your own research and if u cant, ask me for the link and i would gladly bring it up for u. Just before u do that, i can confidently tell u that the entire atheists on earth arent up to 25% of the worlds total population.'

I wasnt exact and only devil knows how u could draw such a poor deduction from my post

Evidently you consider this a compliment not an insult*Yawn*

What does it seem to u?

This is why I asked you for a definition of a religion. Are you afraid to define it because you know that the very definition will expose the inherent absurdity in the term "evangelical atheism"?

Again only devil knows whats wrong with u. Have i said atheism is a religion or isnt a religion? go and learn more about evangelical atheism and stop embarrassing ur self any more

@Toba once again, just so the point doesnt get lost. I want you to tell us on nairaland, what type of christian you are.
1) a hypocrite
2) a genuinely confused christian

Thanks in advance for identifying which category you fall under.

U would get same response. I Heard There Are Different Kinds Of Atheism/atheist, Which One Do U Fall Under?

If have the balls respond and once u do that, i may also give an answer to ur misguided question

jayriginal:

Toba a picture proves nothing. We need to know the context (assuming its not photoshopped).

And please tell us what kind of christian you are
1) A hypocrite or
2) A genuinely confused christian.

U would get same response. I Heard There Are Different Kinds Of Atheism/atheist, Which One Do U Fall Under?

If  have the balls respond and once u do that, i may also give an answer to your misguided question.

u can  pretend that the picture says nothing. its a sign of evangelical atheists in action.

BTW whats your proof that the pics isnt real?

[flash=500,510]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEqyZWbrYrA?fs=1&hl=en[/flash]

[flash=600,510]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dnCTApJ4Bc?fs=1&hl=en[/flash]

Let me make it simple for you.

An atheist is one who has no belief in a supernatural being.

In furtherance of this

(atheist) refer(s) to persons not inclined toward religious belief or a particular form of religious belief. An atheist  is one who denies the existence of a deity or of divine beings. from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/atheist

from wikipedia

Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities.In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Most inclusively, atheism is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which in its most general form is the belief that at least one deity exists.

The term atheism originated from the Greek ἄθεος (atheos), meaning "without god", which was applied with a negative connotation to those thought to reject the gods worshipped by the larger society.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism

from the same source above

Atheists tend to be skeptical of supernatural claims, citing a lack of empirical evidence. Atheists have offered various rationales for not believing in any deity. These include the problem of evil, the argument from inconsistent revelations, and the argument from nonbelief. Other arguments for atheism range from the philosophical to the social to the historical. Although some atheists have adopted secular philosophies, there is no one ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere.[10]

I hope you paid attention to the bolded and coloured parts.

Still from wiki

People who self-identify as atheists are often assumed to be irreligious, but some sects within major religions reject the existence of a personal, creator deity. In recent years, certain religious denominations have accumulated a number of openly atheistic followers, such as atheistic or humanistic Judaism and Christian atheists.

Christian Atheist indeed. How could you have missed that in your classification Sir ?

You said

Wow u have  chosen to narrow down the scope to suit your self.

You should know the point I'm objecting to.

u mentioned war, but i dont see this as any war

Since you didnt get it the first time, I'll say it again. The reference to "war" is a metaphorical one. Unless you are in denial surely you should get my meaning.

"Evangelical atheism": Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it? But "evangelism" literally means "bringing of good news." I believe that strong atheism, the belief that there is no god, is not only true but is also good news. I also believe that the world would be a better place if there were more atheists. Unless you already are one, I believe you would be happier and the world would be a better place if you were an atheist.

There are already a number of resources on atheism: books, web sites, movies, you name it. Most of them patiently deal with the rational. This is as it should be; atheism is the only rational response to the question of whether there is a god. What I want to focus on, though, is the emotional. I believe that emotion, not reason, is the moat between the fantasy of religion and the reality of atheism.

The term Evangelism has its origins from the bible. You know, I could bring up several links saying "God loves Homosexuals". You know for a fact that some Churches have openly man-lover pastors/priests/bishops etc. Does the fact that there are links and verifiable facts of people violating christian doctrine by itself amend the christian position? Why didnt you include "Christian Atheists" as wikipedia mentioned ?

RALEIGH, N.C. — The cliche notwithstanding, there are atheists in foxholes. In fact, atheists, agnostics, humanists and other assorted skeptics from the Army’s Fort Bragg have formed an organization in a pioneering effort to win recognition and ensure fair treatment for nonbelievers in the overwhelmingly Christian U.S. military.

    “We exist, we’re here, we’re normal,” said Sgt. Justin Griffith, chief organizer of Military Atheists and Secular Humanists, or MASH. “We’re also in foxholes. That’s a big one, right there.”

Plastered on billboards in Raleigh, Durham, Pittsboro and Smithfield are the smiling faces of real Triangle atheists and agnostics, accompanied by pithy statements such as “I’m saved from religion” and “Another happy, humanist family.”

Thank you for the above. My only surprise is that you used it to support your position. I guess thats the problem with the average christian debater. I believe I made reference somewhere in this thread that christians had been hounding atheists and ridiculing them.
You made a point somewhere saying that many scientists were christians (or something like it) I believe I directed you to another thread. I dont know if you found it, but in addition to what I said there, another point is that there were probably a lot of scientists who kept their atheism to themselves.
The point is that everybody is free to believe or not to. Most theists (christians in my experience) will try to force their religion on you, their beliefs and opinions. Same as you are trying to do here. In your opinion, atheism is a religion and we must accept it.
However, reading the above article a little further I came upon this

After reading both the AP and the News & Observer stories, I came away with a sense that the tactics employed by the North Carolina atheists are sort of evangelical in nature. In fact, I wondered if — except for the lack of belief in God — these groups could be described as “religious.” I wished that one of the reporters had posed that question to a theologian.

In both stories, the non-believers are portrayed as victims of society’s wider belief in God. However, not much evidence is provided to back up that notion. For instance, we have non-believers in the lede of the AP story trying to “ensure fair treatment for nonbelievers in the overwhelmingly Christian U.S. military.” But we have no feedback from Christians in the military to give an idea how they relate to atheist comrades.

Since I am far from an expert on atheists, I’ll be interested in GR readers’ feedback on the two recent stories and even the guilt-laden WSJ piece from way back when. Remember, we’re concerned about journalism and media coverage, not that bigger question, if you know what I mean.

Basically, you cited an admitted non expert to prove your point, and even the parts you cited dont help your case.
If we agree with him that the US military is overwhelmingly "christian" then you should understand why the different ones need to stick together. There is a tendency in humans to isolate those that are different and stick with their kind.

One quote there struck me though as instructive

In fact, I wondered if — except for the lack of belief in God — these groups could be described as “religious.”

In my opinion, taking God away from religion, takes away a whole lot. What would remain without God in a religion ?
A unified belief system (belief in what?). Possibly some rituals (though Im not sure what good that would do without a God). This is all hypothetical here I have to point out.
As I've said before, atheists have different reasons for being atheists. The basic term, I have defined above. There is no unified belief and no rituals. The thought of atheism as a religion is silly.

You gave Sam Harris as an example of an "evangelical atheist" in his book "Letter to a Christian Nation" this is what he says

In fact, "atheism" is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a "non-astrologer" or a "non-alchemist." We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and their cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs

The above Sir is very instructive and for the future, you should be careful with your sources.

There is, as has often been noted, something peculiarly evangelistic about what has been termed the new atheist movement ,  It is no exaggeration to describe the movement popularized by the likes of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens as a new and particularly zealous form of fundamentalism -- an atheist fundamentalism. The parallels with religious fundamentalism are obvious and startling: the conviction that they are in sole possession of truth (scientific or otherwise), the troubling lack of tolerance for the views of their critics (Dawkins has compared creationists to Holocaust deniers), the insistence on a literalist reading of scripture (more literalist, in fact, than one finds among most religious fundamentalists), the simplistic reductionism of the religious phenomenon, and, perhaps most bizarrely, their overwhelming sense of siege: the belief that they have been oppressed and marginalized by Western societies and are just not going to take it anymore.

You didnt post any link. Perhaps you forgot. I found it though http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2010/07/harris_hitchens_dawkins_dennett_evangelical_atheists.html
Some of the readers comments were quite damaging. A small sample

Wow, I guess journalists don't feel the need to actually research their subject anymore.
It's so stuffed full of propogandic rubbish that there's no point in highlighting the individual mistakes.
Absolute drivel, and somehow the author still picks up work. Perhaps his prayers are answered, or maybe the devil really does look after his own. Either way, writing of this poor quality does nothing good for the WP.

After reading the article (did some editor check some improper and incorrect statements?) and comments, I wonder why Americans all (pro & con) getting so spastic when even the word atheist is mentioned.
Come people, let reason prevail, and above all, this fine British sense of humor that makes Mr. Dawkins just what he is: a nice person, with the sort of reason many others lack. Stay cool, or get raptured

I tried to post a comment showing how Aslan was demonstrably wrong on many counts. They did not get published in the comments in this comment section (probably due to volume). But the comments can be read here:
http://allusiveatheist..com/2010/07/transcendent-bs.html

(In my best conspiracy theorist voice These are the comments THEY don't want you to read, maaan.

You have characterized Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and Dennet as examples of your "evangelical atheists".
Could this be why ?

Some prominent atheists—such as Bertrand Russell, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins—have criticized religions, citing harmful aspects of religious practices and doctrines. Atheists have often engaged in debate with religious advocates, and the debates sometimes address the issue of whether religions provide a net benefit to individuals and society.

One argument that religions can be harmful, made by atheists such as Sam Harris, is that Western religions' reliance on divine authority lends itself to authoritarianism and dogmatism. Atheists have also cited data showing that there is a correlation between religious fundamentalism and extrinsic religion (when religion is held because it serves ulterior interests) and authoritarianism, dogmatism, and prejudice. These arguments—combined with historical events that are argued to demonstrate the dangers of religion, such as the Crusades, inquisitions, witch trials, and terrorist attacks—have been used in response to claims of beneficial effects of belief in religion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism#Atheism.2C_religion.2C_and_morality

Lets read about those you tagged "evangelical atheists"

Richard Dawkins does not provide such a strict definition of atheism, and the fact he opposes describing a child as 'Atheist' or 'Christian'[5] suggests that he views atheism as a conscious position and thus leans towards the dictionary definition of atheism as necessarily an active disbelief: Martin's 'positive atheism'. Dawkins' central argument against religion is probabilistic, and his scale of belief reflects this, ranging from 1: 'Strong theist. 100% probability of God' to the equivalent 7: 'Strong atheist'. He doesn't see 7 as a well-populated category, placing himself as 6: 'Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist'.[6] Again, this terminology suggests that he sees atheism as strictly requiring certainty. It should not be taken for a lack of certainty in a practical sense, however: Dawkins states 'I am agnostic only to the extent that I am agnostic about fairies at the bottom of the garden'.[7]
Dawkins divides agnosticism into TAP (temporary agnosticism in practice) and PAP (permanent agnosticism in principle), identifying the first as Sagan's stance on alien life. All but 1 and 7 on his scale can be identified as TAP. The second, PAP, he rightly argues would not be on the scale at all, even in the middle,[8] though it is not clear if this is not sometimes true for TAP as well: Sagan does not give a probabilistic response to the question of alien life. Dawkins reserves PAP for[b] questions that can never be answered by science: and it is central to his thought that God can be shown to be incredibly improbable scientifically.[/b] As such, committed agnostics tend to be portrayed as obscurantist, and Dawkins attempts to claim that Huxley overlooked the question of probability, perhaps in an attempt to accommodate the religious to make his central points more effective. Whether this can be squared with Huxley's references to Kant and his 'pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble' is another question.[9] In any case, Dawkins' reading of agnosticism makes a useful distinction and seems fairer to the etymology and common use of the term 'agnostic', and most agnostics can be helpfully placed in the TAP or PAP categories.

Another useful distinction can be made between a broad sense of atheism (positive or negative), according to which an atheist lacks a belief or positively disbelieves in any God or gods, and a narrow sense of atheism (positive or negative) according to which an atheist lacks a belief or positively disbelieves in the personal God believed in by members of the Abrahamic religions, or some other subset of gods. Certain thinkers are positive atheists about Abrahamic religion, but best described as agnostic (whether TAP or PAP) about a deist God, or some other possible sort of God.

In the current atheist debates the New Atheists generally deny that there are good reasons to believe in the sort of personal God believed in by members of the Abrahamic religions. This is because they perceive the great Abrahamic religions - Christianity, Judaism, and Islam - as the greatest threat to the integrity of science and the rule of secular law. However, they also reject deism - the belief in a God that is not based on revelation but on evidence from nature and does not intervene in the world - polytheism (belief in many gods), and pantheism (belief that God is identical with nature). The last is described by Dawkins as 'sexed-up atheism', as he sees it as seeing the natural world in a spiritual way: probably very true for modern pantheists, though by no means universal amongst earlier pantheists, many of whom were more accurately panentheists, seeing the world as within God, rather than exhausting a description of him.

If we apply this distinction to the contemporary debates, the three chief public atheists, (Dawkins, Dennett and Harris) should probably be categorised as positive atheists in the broad sense. Dawkins, for example, denies not only of the personal God of the Abrahamic religions but also the more minimal deist God; he also dismisses the gods of the polytheistic religions, as well as the alleged pantheism of scientists such as Einstein, which he interprets as mere religious metaphor. The Abrahamic God is their primary target, but they broadly dismiss all other forms of belief in God as well.

Moreover, although this is not entailed by atheism in any of the abovementioned senses, avowed atheists tend also to disbelieve in supernatural entities of any kind (e.g., spirits, disembodied souls) and also in supernatural interventions of any kind in the course of nature or events inexplicable in terms of the best contemporary (orthodox) scientific understanding of the universe (for example, parapsychological occurrences).

It is noteworthy, however, that the strident atheist Sam Harris has signalled an openness towards the possibility of parapsychological events in nature.[10] This, of course, does not affect his status as an atheist, since the existence of phenomena such as telepathy and precognition is compatible with there being no God or gods. However, this puts him at odds with Dawkins and Dennett, for whom belief in such things is inextricably associated with the religious mentality.

The attitude to the term 'atheist' also varies, with some thinkers wishing to escape its negative connotations, or purely reactive definition. Sam Harris did not use the term in his first book, 'The End of Faith', and argued at a recent conference that 'our use of this label is a mistake-and a mistake of some consequence', objecting on both 'philosophical and strategic' grounds.[11] Alternatives proposed or used include 'free- thinker', 'rationalist' and the controversial 'Bright'.
References
Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. London: Bantam Press, 2006.
Harris, Sam. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2004.
Martin, Michael, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Atheism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
http://www.investigatingatheism.info/definition.html

in addition, jay kindly read what another atheist had to say who was formally a christian

Instead of just being a passive observer I began to question people about their reasons for believing things that can’t be proven and over the years I have become more aggressive in that area. Now, I belong to the Freedom from Religion Foundation and write letters to newspapers who have printed religious claptrap or other letters from overtly religious nuts who would like to have a 10 commandments posted on every street-corner and prayer in the schools. I characterize myself as an Evangelical Atheist and I believe that more of us have to take an activist stance.

Reference please.

You apparently  must be oblivious to the ills of religion. Maybe you are a "thinking christian" (which strictu sensu is a classification that does not make sense) like my friend claimed. Maybe you tend to see only the "good" in religion. Maybe you dont have friends that have been exploited by the church or by men of God. Maybe you were in Mars with your eyes shut and your fingers in your ears when certain child witches were killed. These were not the first set. Maybe you dont know anybody who was violated by a pastor or prophet or a small boy who was molested by a priest.
Maybe you dont know of anyone who killed his or her mother because she was a "witch" and was preventing his or her progress. Maybe you do not know of the ills that have been blamed on the devil or commanded by God.
Maybe you do not know of the attrocities directly traceable to the bible. Slavery. Subjugation of women. Religious intolerance. Maybe you never heard of the crusades or the inquisition.
There are a lot of ills directly traceable to the religion and the bible. Someone speaking out against them does not make him an evangelist even if he calls himself that.
If I hold a fork in my hand and refer to it as a spoon, it will not automatically become a spoon.

Ill leave the below for you to read. This happened a year back I believe.

Man accused of killing pastor for Desecrating his daughter

BY PATIENCE OGBO


A 56-year-old man, John Oromoro, is in police custody for allegedly killing his pastor, Ben Ojinaka.

The incident happened on Sunday, September 19th at Jakande Estate, Ajangbadi. Mr Oromoro said the pastor of Jesus Power Ministry, Benjamin Ojinaka, 45, allegedly violated his 15-year-old daughter in July this year. He said he went to confront the pastor on the allegation that it was his daughter that lured him to Be Intimate with him when a fight ensued between them that led to the pastor’s death. “I be tanker driver,” he said. “The thing wey happen na since more than one month ago. My daughter, wen be the last born of my fourteen children get marine spirit. Pastor Ben come say him fit deliver her. Na me and pastor na we form the church together, so na so pastor come dey carry her go for deliverance.”

Scandal and death

Mr Oromoro stated that his daughter was eventually delivered of the[b] ‘spirits[/b]’ but he noticed she kept going back to church after the deliverance. “Later my daughter come refused to go church; after I ask her many times, she come confessed say pastor Ben violation her for inside my house one day during deliverance,” he said. “I come vex, go meet pastor. Him come tell me make I forgive am say[b] na devil work[/b], I vex but I come forgive pastor.” He said he then heard rumours of the pastor claiming that his daughter lured him to Be Intimate with him. “When I hear say pastor dey tell people say na my daughter violation am, I come go him house on Sunday go ask am say why him dey spoil my daughter name,” he said. “Him tell me to get out from him house , I come vex, we come dey fight. Na so people for the compound come separate us. As pastor dey run go tell police, na so him fall down.”
http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Home/5622189-146/story.csp

This is one out of many that will never make the news.

You want to know if there are different types of atheist ?
The real answer is NO !
Am I contradicting myself when I say atheists have different idealogies ?
No !
An atheist is a person who has no belief in God.
When you ask a person if he believe in God, if he says no, then he is an atheist. It wouldnt make any sense to start asking him what kind he is. Militant or closet or "evangelical" etc
The fact that you can divide christians into sects and denominations does not mean that everything can be so categorized.
If you can stop this simplistic thinking, we can have structure, but you cant stop it because thats the only reason for this debate.

Your first lines at the beginning of this thread were

toba:

Alright. I was reading something online last night before i stumbled on a forum as  well as other sites and blogs wherein the subject atheism/atheists' were being discussed. I became enthused and then chose to review what had been discussed.

Some of their views will be captured on this thread, which i may or may not agree with.

So, you go to a few sites, then you copy and paste without understanding, come here with a biased mind and openly declare so.
Infact

claremont:

I am sure if Toba had found out from the Internet that there is such a thing as "Goat Atheism, "Cow Atheism", or "Tortoise Atheism, he would have come on here asking us which one are we. My point is, there are a million and one mundane concepts out there, it doesn't mean that these concepts make any form of logical sense, the concepts only make sense to the persons who may have invented them.

Apparently anything on the internet must be true. Here Sir.

To be “evangelical” means to be intentional about sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ to others. So, it is essentially nonsensical to speak of an “evangelical atheist”, as that would mean an atheist who believes in the divinity of Jesus and thinks others should as well!

Perhaps what he INTENDs to say, is that he is opposed to “proselytizing atheists”. (or perhaps even “evangelistic atheists” – which is not quite so problematic, but still a softer misnomer).
http://www.thomhartmann.com/forum/2010/05/evangelical-atheist-misnomer

Heck maybe what you meant was anti theism

An antitheist is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "One opposed to belief in the existence of a god." The earliest citation given for this meaning is from 1833. An antitheist may be opposed to belief in the existence of any god or gods, and not merely one in particular.

Antitheism has been adopted as a label by those who take the view that theism is dangerous or destructive. One example of this view is demonstrated in Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001), in which Christopher Hitchens writes: "I'm not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful."[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitheism

This is the same Hitchens that you dug up some bogus link proclaiming him an evangelical atheist. I believe he has made himself clear to you Sir ?
I hold similar views as he does, particularly the all religions (I'd be more particular about the major ones) being versions of the same untruth. What does that make me ? An anti theist evangelical atheist ?

Truth be told, theres no need to continue here.

toba:


Some of their views will be captured on this thread, which[b] i may or may not agree with.[/b]

Enjoy .

PS
I'll be on the streets tomorrow with Darwin's "Origin of the Species" in one hand and a megaphone in the other.
Till we meet on another thread, goodbye.

An Introduction to Atheism (1997)

mathew

Foreword

This article attempts to provide a general [/b]introduction to atheism. Whilst I have tried to be as neutral as possible regarding contentious issues, you should always remember that [b]this document represents only one viewpoint. I would encourage you to read widely and draw your own conclusions; some relevant books are listed in a companion document: Atheist Resources.

To provide a sense of cohesion and progression, I have presented this article as an imaginary conversation between an atheist and a theist. All the questions asked by the imaginary theist are questions which have been cropped up repeatedly on the Usenet newsgroup alt.atheism since that newsgroup was first created. Some other frequently asked questions are answered in a companion document: Atheist Arguments.

Please note that this article is arguably slanted towards answering questions posed from a Christian viewpoint. This is because the FAQ files reflect questions which have actually been asked, and it is predominantly Christians who proselytize on alt.atheism.

So when I talk of religion, I am talking primarily about religions such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam, which involve some sort of superhuman divine being. Much of the discussion will apply to other religions, but some of it may not. (See Definition of a "cult."
"What is atheism?"

Atheism is characterized by an absence of belief in the existence of gods. This absence of belief generally comes about either through deliberate choice, or from an inherent inability to believe religious teachings which seem literally incredible. It is not a lack of belief born out of simple ignorance of religious teachings.

Some atheists go beyond a mere absence of belief in gods: they actively believe that particular gods, or all gods, do not exist. Just lacking belief in Gods is often referred to as the "weak atheist" position; whereas believing that gods do not (or cannot) exist is known as "strong atheism."

Regarding people who have never been exposed to the concept of 'god': Whether they are 'atheists' or not is a matter of debate. Since you're unlikely to meet anyone who has never encountered religion, it's not a very important debate,

It is important, however, to note the difference between the strong and weak atheist positions. "Weak atheism" is simple skepticism; disbelief in the existence of God. "Strong atheism" is an explicitly held belief that God does not exist. Please do not fall into the trap of assuming that all atheists are "strong atheists." There is a qualitative difference in the "strong" and "weak" positions; it's not just a matter of degree.

Some atheists believe in the nonexistence of all Gods; others limit their atheism to specific Gods, such as the Christian God, rather than making flat-out denials.

"But isn't disbelieving in God the same thing as not believing God exists?"

Definitely not. Disbelief in a proposition means that one does not believe it to be true. Not believing that something is true is not equivalent to believing that it is false; one may simply have no idea whether it is true or not. Which brings us to agnosticism.

"What is agnosticism then?"

The term 'agnosticism' was coined by Professor T.H. Huxley at a meeting of the Metaphysical Society in 1876. He defined an "agnostic" as someone who disclaimed both ("strong" atheism and theism, and who believed that the question of whether a higher power existed was unsolved and insoluble. Another way of putting it is that an agnostic is someone who believes that we do not know for sure whether God exists. Some agnostics believe that we can never know.

In recent years, however, the term agnostic has also been used to describe those who simply believe that the evidence for or against God is inconclusive, and therefore are undecided about the issue.

To reduce the amount of confusion over the use of term agnosticism, it is recommended that usage based on a belief that we cannot know whether God exists be qualified as "strict agnosticism" and usage based on the belief that we merely do not know yet be qualified as "empirical agnosticism."

Words are slippery things, and language is inexact. Beware of assuming that you can work out someone's philosophical point of view simply from the fact that she calls herself an atheist or an agnostic. For example, many people use agnosticism to mean what is referred to here as "weak atheism," and use the word "atheism" only when referring to "strong atheism."

Beware also that because the word "atheist" has so many shades of meaning that it is very difficult to generalize about atheists. About all you can say for sure is that atheists don't believe in God. For example, it certainly isn't the case that all atheists believe that science is the best way to find out about the universe.

"What about the term 'freethinker'? What does that mean?"

A freethinker is one who thinks freely--one who is prepared to consider any possibility, and who determines which ideas are right or wrong by bringing reason to bear, according to a consistent set of rules such as the scientific method.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has a "nontract" on what it means to be a freethinker, at: http://www.ffrf.org/nontracts/freethinker.php.

"So what is the philosophical justification or basis for atheism?"

There are many philosophical justifications for atheism. To find out why a particular person chooses to be an atheist, it's best to ask her.

Many atheists feel that the idea of God as presented by the major religions is essentially self-contradictory, and that it is logically impossible that such a God could exist. Others are atheists through skepticism, because they see no evidence that God exists.

There are a number of books which lay out a philosophical justification for atheism, such as Martin's Atheism: A Philosophical Justification and Smith's Atheism: The Case Against God. A few such books are in the document listing Atheist Media.

Of course, some people are atheists without having any particular logical argument to back up their atheism. For some, it is simply the most comfortable, common sense position to take.

"But isn't it impossible to prove the nonexistence of something?"

There are many counterexamples to such a statement. For example, it is quite simple to prove that there does not exist a prime number larger than all other prime numbers. Of course, this deals with well-defined objects obeying well-defined rules. Whether Gods or universes are similarly well-defined is a matter for debate.

However, assuming for the moment that the existence of a God is not provably impossible, there are still subtle reasons for assuming the nonexistence of God. If we assume that something does not exist, it is always possible to show that this assumption is invalid by finding a single counterexample.

If on the other hand we assume that something does exist, and if the thing in question is not provably impossible, showing that the assumption is invalid may require an exhaustive search of all possible places where such a thing might be found, to show that it isn't there. Such an exhaustive search is often impractical or impossible. There is no such problem with largest primes, because we can prove that they don't exist.

Therefore it is generally accepted that we must assume things do not exist unless we have evidence that they do. Even theists follow this rule most of the time; they don't believe in unicorns, even though they can't conclusively prove that no unicorns exist anywhere.

To assume that God exists is to make an assumption which probably cannot be tested. We cannot make an exhaustive search of everywhere God might be to prove that he doesn't exist anywhere. So the skeptical atheist assumes by default that God does not exist, since that is an assumption we can test.

Those who profess strong atheism usually do not claim that no sort of God exists; instead, they generally restrict their claims so as to cover varieties of God described by followers of various religions. So whilst it may be impossible to prove conclusively that no God exists, it may be possible to prove that (say) a God as described by a particular religious book does not exist. It may even be possible to prove that no God described by any present-day religion exists.

In practice, believing that no God described by any religion exists is very close to believing that no God exists. However, it is sufficiently different that counterarguments based on the impossibility of disproving every kind of God are not really applicable.

"But what if God is essentially nondetectable?"

If God interacts with our universe in any way, the effects of his interaction must have some physical manifestation. Hence his interaction with our universe must be in principle detectable.

If God is essentially nondetectable, it must therefore be the case that he does not interact with our universe in any way. Many atheists would argue that if God does not interact with our universe at all, it is of no importance whether he exists or not. A thing which cannot even be detected in principle does not logically exist.

Of course, it could be that God is detectable in principle, and that we merely cannot detect him in practice. However, if the Bible is to be believed, God was easily detectable by the Israelites. Surely he should still be detectable today? Why has the situation changed?

Note that I am not demanding that God interact in a scientifically verifiable, physical way. I might potentially receive some revelation, some direct experience of God. An experience like that would be incommunicable, and not subject to scientific verification--but it would nevertheless be as compelling as any evidence can be.

But whether by direct revelation or by observation, it must surely be possible to perceive some effect caused by God's presence; otherwise, how can I distinguish him from all the other things that don't exist?

"God is unique. He is the supreme being, the creator of the universe. He must by definition exist."

Things do not exist merely because they have been defined to do so. We know a lot about the definition of Santa Claus--what he looks like, what he does, where he lives, what his reindeer are called, and so on. But that still doesn't mean that Santa exists.

"Then what if I managed to logically prove that God exists?"

Firstly, before you begin your proof, you must come up with a clear and precise definition of exactly what you mean by "God." A logical proof requires a clear definition of that which you are trying to prove.

"But everyone knows what is meant by 'God'!"

Different religions have very different ideas of what 'God' is like; they even disagree about basic issues such as how many gods there are, whether they're male or female, and so on. An atheist's idea of what people mean by the word 'God' may be very different from your own views.

"OK, so if I define what I mean by 'God,' and then logically prove he exists, will that be enough for you?"

Even after centuries of effort, nobody has come up with a watertight logical proof of the existence of God. In spite of this, however, people often feel that they can logically prove that God exists.

Unfortunately, reality is not decided by logic. Even if you could rigorously prove that God exists, it wouldn't actually get you very far. It could be that your logical rules do not always preserve truth--that your system of logic is flawed. It could be that your premises are wrong. It could even be that reality is not logically consistent. In the end, the only way to find out what is really going on is to observe it. Logic can merely give you an idea where or how to look; and most logical arguments about God don't even perform that task.

Logic is a useful tool for analyzing data and inferring what is going on; but if logic and reality disagree, reality wins.

"Then it seems to me that nothing will ever convince you that God exists."

A clear definition of 'God,' plus some objective and compelling supporting evidence, would be enough to convince many atheists.

The evidence must be objective, though; anecdotal evidence of other people's religious experiences isn't good enough. And strong, compelling evidence is required, because the existence of God is an extraordinary claim--and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

"OK, you may think there's a philosophical justification for atheism, but isn't it still a religious belief?"

One of the most common pastimes in philosophical discussion is "the redefinition game." The cynical view of this game is as follows:

Person A begins by making a contentious statement. When person B points out that it can't be true, person A gradually redefines the words he used in the statement until he arrives at something person B is prepared to accept. He then records the statement, along with the fact that person B has agreed to it, and continues. Eventually A uses the statement as an "agreed fact," but uses his original definitions of all the words in it rather than the obscure redefinitions originally needed to get B to agree to it. Rather than be seen to be apparently inconsistent, B will tend to play along.

The point of this digression is that the answer to the question "Isn't atheism a religious belief?" depends crucially upon what is meant by "religious." "Religion" is generally characterized by belief in a superhuman controlling power--especially in some sort of God--and by faith and worship.

(It's worth pointing out in passing that some varieties of Buddhism are not "religion" according to such a definition.)

Atheism is certainly not a belief in any sort of superhuman power, nor is it categorized by worship in any meaningful sense. Widening the definition of "religious" to encompass atheism tends to result in many other aspects of human behavior suddenly becoming classed as "religious" as well--such as science, politics, and watching TV.

"OK, maybe it's not a religion in the strict sense of the word. But surely belief in atheism (or science) is still just an act of faith, like religion is?"


Firstly, it's not entirely clear that skeptical atheism is something one actually believes in.

Secondly, it is necessary to adopt a number of core beliefs or assumptions to make some sort of sense out of the sensory data we experience. Most atheists try to adopt as few core beliefs as possible; and even those are subject to questioning if experience throws them into doubt.

Science has a number of core assumptions. For example, it is generally assumed that the laws of physics are the same for all observers (or at least, all observers in inertial frames). These are the sort of core assumptions atheists make. If such basic ideas are called "acts of faith," then almost everything we know must be said to be based on acts of faith, and the term loses its meaning.

Faith is more often used to refer to complete, certain belief in something. According to such a definition, atheism and science are certainly not acts of faith. Of course, individual atheists or scientists can be as dogmatic as religious followers when claiming that something is "certain." This is not a general tendency, however; there are many atheists who would be reluctant to state with certainty that the universe exists.

Faith is also used to refer to belief without supporting evidence or proof. Skeptical atheism certainly doesn't fit that definition, as skeptical atheism has no beliefs. Strong atheism is closer, but still doesn't really match, as even the most dogmatic atheist will tend to refer to experimental data (or the lack of it) when asserting that God does not exist.

"If atheism is not religious, surely it's antireligious?"

It is an unfortunate human tendency to label everyone as either "for" or "against," "friend" or "enemy." The truth is not so clear-cut.

Atheism is the position that runs logically counter to theism; in that sense, it can be said to be "antireligion." However, when religious believers speak of atheists being "antireligious" they usually mean that the atheists have some sort of antipathy or hatred towards theists.

This categorization of atheists as hostile towards religion is quite unfair. Atheist attitudes towards theists in fact cover a broad spectrum.

Most atheists take a "live and let live" attitude. Unless questioned, they will not usually mention their atheism, except perhaps to close friends. Of course, this may be in part because atheism is not "socially acceptable" in many countries.

A few atheists are quite antireligious, and may even try to "convert" others when possible. Historically, such antireligious atheists have made little impact on society outside the Eastern Bloc countries.

(To digress slightly: the Soviet Union was originally dedicated to separation of church and state, just like the USA. Soviet citizens were legally free to worship as they wished. The institution of "state atheism" came about when Stalin took control of the Soviet Union and tried to destroy the churches in order to gain complete power over the population.)

Some atheists are quite vocal about their beliefs, but only where they see religion encroaching on matters which are not its business--for example, the government of the USA. Such individuals are usually concerned that church and state should remain separate.

"But if you don't allow religion to have a say in the running of the state, surely that's the same as state atheism?"

The principle of the separation of church and state is that the state shall not legislate concerning matters of religious belief. In particular, it means not only that the state cannot promote one religion at the expense of another, but also that it cannot promote any belief which is religious in nature.

Religions can still have a say in discussion of purely secular matters. For example, religious believers have historically been responsible for encouraging many political reforms. Even today, many organizations campaigning for an increase in spending on foreign aid are founded as religious campaigns. So long as they campaign concerning secular matters, and so long as they do not discriminate on religious grounds, most atheists are quite happy to see them have their say.

"What about prayer in schools? If there's no God, why do you care if people pray?"

Because people who do pray are voters and lawmakers, and tend to do things that those who don't pray can't just ignore. Also, Christian prayer in schools is intimidating to non-Christians, even if they are told that they need not join in. It is particularly bad if the prayer is led by a teacher, or otherwise officially endorsed.

The diversity of religious and nonreligious belief means that it is impossible to formulate a meaningful prayer that will be acceptable to all those present at any public event.

This is one reason why the public school system in the USA is not permitted to endorse particular religious beliefs through official prayer time in schools. Children are, of course, quite free to pray as they wish in their free time; there is no question of trying to prevent prayer from happening in schools.

"You mentioned Christians who campaign for increased foreign aid. What about atheists? Why aren't there any atheist charities or hospitals? Don't atheists object to the religious charities?"

There are many charities without religious purpose that atheists can contribute to. Some atheists contribute to religious charities as well, for the sake of the practical good they do. Some atheists even do voluntary work for charities founded on a theistic basis.

Most atheists seem to feel that atheism isn't worth shouting about in connection with charity. To them, atheism is just a simple, obvious everyday matter, and so is charity. Many feel that it's somewhat cheap, not to say self-righteous, to use simple charity as an excuse to plug a particular set of religious beliefs.

To "weak" atheists, building a hospital to say "I do not believe in God" is a rather strange idea; it's rather like holding a party to say "Today is not my birthday." Why the fuss? Atheism is rarely evangelistic.

"You said atheism isn't antireligious. But is it perhaps a backlash against one's upbringing, a way of rebelling?"

Perhaps it is, for some. But many people have parents who do not attempt to force any religious (or atheist) ideas upon them, and many of those people choose to call themselves atheists.

It's also doubtless the case that some religious people chose religion as a backlash against an atheist upbringing, as a way of being different. On the other hand, many people choose religion as a way of conforming to the expectations of others.

On the whole, we can't conclude much about whether atheism or religion are backlash or conformism; although in general, people have a tendency to go along with a group rather than act or think independently.

"How do atheists differ from religious people?"

They don't believe in God. That's all there is to it.

Atheists may listen to heavy metal--backwards, even--or they may prefer a Verdi Requiem, even if they know the words. They may wear Hawaiian shirts, they may dress all in black, they may even wear orange robes. (Many Buddhists lack a belief in any sort of God.) Some atheists even carry a copy of the Bible around--for arguing against, of course!

Whoever you are, the chances are you have met several atheists without realizing it. Atheists are usually unexceptional in behavior and appearance.

"Unexceptional? But aren't atheists less moral than religious people?"

That depends. If you define morality as obedience to God, then of course atheists are less moral as they don't obey any God. But usually when one talks of morality, one talks of what is acceptable ("right" and unacceptable ("wrong" behavior within society.

Humans are social animals, and to be maximally successful they must cooperate with each other. This is a good enough reason to discourage most atheists from "antisocial" or "immoral" behavior, purely for the purposes of self-preservation.

Many atheists behave in a "moral" or "compassionate" way simply because they feel a natural tendency to empathize with other humans. So why do they care what happens to others? They don't know, they simply are that way.

Naturally, there are some people who behave "immorally" and try to use atheism to justify their actions. However, there are equally many people who behave "immorally" and then try to use religious beliefs to justify their actions. For example:

"Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, But for that very reason, I was shown mercy so that in me, Jesus Christ might display His unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life. Now to the king eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever."

The above quote is from a statement made to the court on February 17th 1992 by Jeffrey Dahmer, the notorious cannibal serial killer of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It seems that for every atheist mass-murderer, there is a religious mass-murderer. But what of more trivial morality?

A survey conducted by the Roper Organization found that behavior deteriorated after "born again" experiences. While only 4% of respondents said they had driven intoxicated before being "born again," 12% had done so after conversion. Similarly, 5% had used illegal drugs before conversion, 9% after. Two percent admitted to engaging in illicit sex before salvation; 5% after. [Freethought Today, September 1991, p. 12.]

So it seems that at best, religion does not have a monopoly on moral behavior.

Of course, a great many people are converted to (and from) Christianity during adolescence and their early twenties. This is also the time at which people begin to drink and become sexually active. It could be that the above figures merely indicate that Christianity has no effect on moral behavior, or insufficient effect to result in an overall fall in immoral behavior.

"Is there such a thing as atheist morality?"

If you mean "Is there such a thing as morality for atheists?" then the answer is yes, as explained above. Many atheists have ideas about morality [/b]which are at least as strong as those held by religious people. See "More research concerning atheist morality."

If you mean "[b]Does atheism have a characteristic moral code?" then the answer is no. [/b]Atheism by itself does not imply anything much about how a person will behave. [b]Most atheists follow many of the same "moral rules" as theists, but for different reasons. Atheists view morality as something created by humans, according to the way humans feel the world 'ought' to work, rather than seeing it as a set of rules decreed by a supernatural being.

"Then aren't atheists just theists who are denying God?"

A study by the Freedom From Religion Foundation found that over 90% of the atheists who responded became atheists because religion did not work for them. They had found that religious beliefs were fundamentally incompatible with what they observed around them.

Atheists are not unbelievers through ignorance or denial; they are unbelievers through choice. The vast majority of them have spent time studying one or more religions, sometimes in very great depth. They have made a careful and considered decision to reject religious beliefs.

This decision may, of course, be an inevitable consequence of that individual's personality. For a naturally skeptical person, the choice of atheism is often the only one that makes sense, and hence the only choice that person can honestly make.

The word "deny" can be used to mean "fail to accept the truth of." In that sense only, atheists deny the existence of God. They are not "in denial," willfully ignoring evidence; nor do they necessarily positively assert the nonexistence of God.

"But surely discussing God in this way is a tacit admission that he exists?"

Not at all. People talk about Santa Claus every Christmas; that doesn't mean he climbs down the chimney and leaves us all presents. Players of fantasy games discuss all kinds of strange creatures, from orcs and goblins to titans and minotaurs. They don't exist either.

"But don't atheists want to believe in God?"

Atheists live their lives as though there is nobody watching over them. Many of them have no desire to be watched over, no matter how good-natured the "Big Brother" figure might be.

Some atheists would like to be able to believe in God--but so what? Should one believe things merely because one wants them to be true? The risks of such an approach should be obvious. Atheists often decide that wanting to believe something is not enough; there must be evidence for the belief. See "The Revelation Game."

"But of course atheists see no evidence for the existence of God--they are unwilling in their souls to see!"

Many, if not most atheists were previously religious. As has been explained above, the vast majority have seriously considered the possibility that God exists. Many atheists have spent time in prayer trying to reach God.

Of course, it is true that some atheists lack an open mind; but assuming that all atheists are biased and insincere is offensive and closed-minded. Comments such as "Of course God is there, you just aren't looking properly" are likely to be viewed as patronizing.

Certainly, if you wish to engage in philosophical debate with atheists it is vital that you give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are being sincere if they say that they have searched for God. If you are not willing to believe that they are basically telling the truth, debate is futile.

"Isn't the whole of life completely pointless to an atheist?"

Perhaps it is to some, but still, many atheists live a purposeful life. They decide what they think gives meaning to life, and they pursue those goals. They try to make their lives count, not by wishing for eternal life, but by having an influence on other people who will live on. For example, an atheist may dedicate his life to political reform, in the hope of leaving his mark on history.

It is a natural human tendency to look for "meaning" or "purpose" in random events. However, it is by no means obvious that "life" is the sort of thing that has a "meaning."

To put it another way, not everything which looks like a question is actually a sensible thing to ask. Some atheists believe that asking "What is the meaning of life?" is as silly as asking "What is the meaning of a cup of coffee?." They believe that life has no purpose or meaning, it just is.

Also, if some sort of mystical external force is required to give one's existence a "meaning," surely that makes any hypothetical god's existence meaningless?

"So how do atheists find comfort in time of danger?"

There are many ways of obtaining comfort:

* Your family and friends
* Pets
* Food and drink
* Music, television, literature, arts and entertainment
* Sports or exercise
* Meditation
* Psychotherapy
* Drugs
* Work

That may sound like rather an empty and vulnerable way to face danger, but so what? Should individuals believe in things because they are comforting, or should they face reality no matter how harsh it might be?

In the end, it's a decision for the individual concerned. Most atheists are unable to believe something they would not otherwise believe merely because it makes them feel comfortable. They put truth before comfort, and consider that if searching for truth sometimes makes them feel unhappy, that's just hard luck. Often truth hurts.

"Don't atheists worry that they might suddenly be shown to be wrong?"

The short answer is "No, do you?"

Many atheists have been atheists for years. They have encountered many arguments and much supposed evidence for the existence of God, but they have found all of it to be invalid or inconclusive.

Thousands of years of religious belief haven't resulted in any good proof of the existence of God. Atheists therefore tend to feel that they are unlikely to be proved wrong in the immediate future, and they stop worrying about it.

"So why should theists question their beliefs? Don't the same arguments apply?"

No, because the beliefs being questioned are not similar. Weak atheism is the skeptical "default position" to take; it asserts nothing. Strong atheism is a negative belief. Theism is a very strong positive belief.

Atheists sometimes also argue that theists should question their beliefs because of the very real harm they can cause--not just to the believers, but to everyone else.

"What sort of harm?"

Religion represents a huge financial and work burden on mankind. It's not just a matter of religious believers wasting their money on church buildings; think of all the time and effort spent building churches, praying, and so on. Imagine how that effort could be better spent.

Many theists believe in miracle healing. There have been plenty of instances of ill people being "healed" by a priest, ceasing to take the medicines prescribed to them by doctors, and dying as a result. Some theists have died because they have refused blood transfusions on religious grounds.

It is arguable that the Catholic Church's opposition to birth control--and condoms in particular--is increasing the problem of overpopulation in many third-world countries and contributing to the spread of AIDS worldwide.

Religious believers have been known to murder their children rather than allow their children to become atheists or marry someone of a different religion. Religious leaders have been known to justify murder on the grounds of blasphemy.

There have been many religious wars. Even if we accept the argument that religion was not the true cause of those wars, it was still used as an effective justification for them.

"Those weren't real believers. They just claimed to be believers as some sort of excuse."

This is rather like the No True Scotsman fallacy.

What makes a real believer? There are so many One True Religions it's hard to tell. Look at Christianity: there are many competing groups, all convinced that they are the only true Christians. Sometimes they even fight and kill each other. How is an atheist supposed to decide who's a real Christian and who isn't, when even the major Christian churches like the Catholic Church and the Church of England can't decide amongst themselves?

In the end, most atheists take a pragmatic view, and decide that anyone who calls himself a Christian, and uses Christian belief or dogma to justify his actions, should be considered a Christian. Maybe some of those Christians are just perverting Christian teaching for their own ends--but surely if the Bible can be so readily used to support un-Christian acts it can't be much of a moral code? If the Bible is the word of God, why couldn't he have made it less easy to misinterpret? And how do you know that your beliefs aren't a perversion of what your God intended?

If there is no single unambiguous interpretation of the Bible, then why should an atheist take one interpretation over another just on your say-so? Sorry, but if someone claims that he believes in Jesus and that he murdered others because Jesus and the Bible told him to do so, we must call him a Christian.

"Obviously those extreme sorts of beliefs should be questioned. But since nobody has ever proved that God does not exist, it must be very unlikely that more basic religious beliefs, shared by all faiths, are nonsense."

The commonality of many basic religious beliefs is hardly surprising, if you take the view that religion is a product of society. From that viewpoint, religions have borrowed ideas which contribute to a stable society--such as respect for authority figures, a prohibition against murder, and so on.

In addition, many common religious themes have been passed on to later religions. For example, it has been suggested that the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament actually have their roots in Hammurabi's code.

The claim that because something hasn't been proved false, it's less likely to be nonsense, does not hold. As was pointed out earlier in this dialogue, positive assertions concerning the existence of entities are inherently much harder to disprove than negative ones. Nobody has ever proved that unicorns don't exist, and there are many stories about them, but that doesn't make it unlikely that they are myths.

It is therefore much more valid to hold a negative assertion by default than it is to hold a positive assertion by default. Of course, "weak" atheists may argue that asserting nothing is better still.

"Well, if atheism's so great, why are there so many theists?"

Unfortunately, the popularity of a belief has little to do with how "correct" it is, or whether it "works"; consider how many people believe in astrology, graphology, and other pseudosciences.

Many atheists feel that it is simply a human weakness to want to believe in gods. Certainly in many primitive human societies, religion allows the people to deal with phenomena that they do not adequately understand.

Of course, there's more to religion than that. In the industrialized world, we find people believing in religious explanations of phenomena even when there are perfectly adequate natural explanations. Religion may have started as a means of attempting to explain the world, but nowadays it serves other purposes as well. For instance, for many people religion fulfills a social function, providing a sense of community and belonging.
"But so many cultures have developed religions. Surely that must say something?"

Not really. Most religions are only superficially similar; for example, it's worth remembering that religions such as Buddhism and Taoism lack any sort of concept of God in the Christian sense. In short, there is no consensus amongst religions as to what God actually is. Hence one of the problems you must face if you wish to discuss God with an atheist, is that of defining exactly what you mean by the word.

Also, most religions are quick to denounce competing religions, so it's rather odd to use one religion to try and justify another.

"What about all the famous scientists and philosophers who have concluded that God exists?"

Firstly, note that surveys typically find that around 40% of scientists believe in god; so believers are in the minority. (The most recent survey was by Edward J. Larson and Larry Witham, was carried out in 1996, and was reported in the journal "Nature."

For every scientist or philosopher who believes in a god, there is one who does not. Besides, as has already been pointed out, the truth of a belief is not determined by how many people believe it. Also, it is important to realize that atheists do not view famous scientists or philosophers in the same way that theists view their religious leaders.

A famous scientist is only human; she may be an expert in some fields, but when she talks about other matters her words carry no special weight. Many respected scientists have made themselves look foolish by speaking on subjects which lie outside their fields of expertise.

Also, note that even famous scientists' views are treated with skepticism by the scientific community. Acknowledged experts in a particular field must still provide evidence for their theories; science relies on reproducible, independently confirmed results. New theories which are incompatible with a large body of existing scientific knowledge will be subject to especially close scrutiny; but if the work is sound and the experimental data reproducible, the new theories will displace the old.

For instance, both special relativity and quantum mechanics were highly controversial, and required that a lot of existing scientific theory be thrown out. Yet both were relatively quickly accepted after extensive experiments proved their correctness. Pseudoscientific theories such as creationism are rejected not because they are controversial, but because they simply do not stand up to basic scientific scrutiny. (For further information, see the FAQs for http://www.talkorigins.org/.)

The Constructing a Logical Argument document has more to say about scientific verification and proof by authority.

"So are you really saying that widespread belief in religion indicates nothing?"

Not entirely. It certainly indicates that the religion in question has properties which have helped it to spread so far.

The theory of memetics talks of "memes"--sets of ideas which can propagate themselves between human minds, by analogy with genes. Some atheists view religions as sets of particularly successful parasitic memes, which spread by encouraging their hosts to convert others. Some memes avoid destruction by discouraging believers from questioning doctrine, or by using peer pressure to keep one-time believers from admitting that they were mistaken. Some religious memes even encourage their hosts to destroy hosts controlled by other memes.

Of course, in the memetic view there is no particular virtue associated with successful propagation of a meme. Religion is not a good thing because of the number of people who believe it, any more than a disease is a good thing because of the number of people who have caught it.

The memetic approach has little to say about the truth of the information in the memes, however.

"Even if religion is not entirely true, at least it puts across important messages. What are the fundamental messages of atheism?"

There are many important ideas atheists promote. The following are just a few of them; don't be surprised to see ideas which are also present in some religions.

* There is more to moral behavior than mindlessly following rules.
* Be especially skeptical of positive claims.
* If you want your life to have some sort of meaning, it's up to you to find it.
* Search for what is true, even if it makes you uncomfortable.
* Make the most of your life, as it's probably the only one you'll have.
* It's no good relying on some external power to change you; you must change yourself.
* Just because something's popular doesn't mean it's good.
* If you must assume something, assume something easy to test.
* Don't believe things just because you want them to be true.

And finally (and most importantly):

* All beliefs should be open to question.

Thanks for taking the time to read this document.

@jayriginal:

Thank you for educating and enriching us with all this knowledge. I sincerely hope that Toba has got all his questions on athiesm answered. There is nothing more to be said.
If his motive is to learn, then you have given him much from which to learn, but if his motive is simply to discredict people who do not share his belief in his god, then once again, it would clearly demonstrate the convoluted logic of the abrahamic religiong, vis-a-vis: Intolerance in this life in exchange for paradise in the next life.

jayriginal:

Let me make it simple for you.

An atheist is one who has no belief in a supernatural being.

In furtherance of this from wikipediafrom the same source aboveI hope you paid attention to the bolded and coloured parts.

Why should i pay attention to it when i have already read same my self from Wiki? Wiki has always been there and remember throughout my discussion with u here, there wasnt any need for me to go consult wiki cos the views expressed herein are from self acclaimed atheists and not from what wiki has said. werent they? The op is very clear and only people that are deceitful wold want to pretend that we dont have sch classifications. Right here on Nl we have plenty passive atheist that exhibits such characters as contained in the op, hence would never come to the religion section like some of u does.

yet we still have the militant ones, that get very aggressive one they feel there points arent being taking by the opposing side. Its just common sense and logic thats being applied or that needs to be applied here.

Its obvious u dont want to see things that way so im gonna have to leave with that.

Still from wikiChristian Atheist indeed. How could you have missed that in your classification Sir ?

Classified as irrelevant cos we are not here to discuss wiki. Its very easy for me to have gone to wiki like u have resorted to and lift definitions. I chose not to cos i want u and other open minded atheists to see and learn other world views from fellow atheists. Restricting ourselves to just one source for information is no longer in vogue. Lets try to think outside the box. This u have failed to do all through the discussion. No qualms its ur choice which i would have to respect

You said You should know the point I'm objecting to. Since you didnt get it the first time, I'll say it again. The reference to "war" is a metaphorical one. Unless you are in denial surely you should get my meaning.The term

I got and only reiterated that theres no need for such comparison cos at the end of the day its not gonna be the win win situation cos this might continue for as long as we live. I measn so cos, even when we stopped this discussion on this my thread, theres every likelihood that may be on another thread, something might still come up and hence we would find the need to continue or resurrect from where we buried the previous one.

Hope the points are well taking

Evangelism has its origins from the bible. You know, I could bring up several links saying "God loves Homosexuals". You know for a fact that some Churches have openly man-lover pastors/priests/bishops etc. Does the fact that there are links and verifiable facts of people violating christian doctrine by itself amend the christian position? Why didnt you include "Christian Atheists" as wikipedia mentioned ?

Abeg stop running to wiki. Wiki has always been there for us. From the op, heres what i said


Alright. I was reading something online last night before i stumbled on a forum as well as other sites and blogs wherein the subject atheism/atheists' were being discussed. I became enthused and then chose to review what had been discussed.

I could have gone to wiki my self but hell no, lets see things from other source and up till now from the fore going im sure u cant find any of my links or post from wiki as u have done. It might also interest u to read another definition of evangelism cos this might also help in this discourse. This time its going to be from wiki for the first time

Evangelism refers to the practice of relaying information about a particular set of beliefs to others who do not hold those beliefs. The term is often used in reference to Christianity.

Theres something that needs clarrification before its misconstrued again. Theres difference between often and only I rest my case. are free to challenge me on this then we start another round of argument on this definition. Once again im prepared for it

Thank you for the above. My only surprise is that you used it to support your position. I guess thats the problem with the average christian debater. I believe I made reference somewhere in this thread that christians had been hounding atheists and ridiculing them.

And i simply responded by telling u straight that atheists are equally guilty of this. My brother if not that some of ur fellow atheists knows me on NL as a no nonsense person, i can bet with u that some of them cold have showed up on this thread to simply do what u accuse the christians of doing. Who knows they might even still show up here and then u would be able to see the other side of things. Its a case of if only people cold mind there buz. Its not a must to have a say in every issue. at times, pple must learn to keep must on some occasions especially on matters that doesnt affect them directly and even indirectly

You made a point somewhere saying that many scientists were christians (or something like it) I believe I directed you to another thread. I dont know if you found it, but in addition to what I said there, another point is that there were probably a lot of[b] scientists who kept their atheism to themselves. [/b]

if they are actually do, cant we call them closet atheists? if can open r mind sch scientist as describe might even fall under the classification of passive atheist. are free to go back and review the op with an open mind, if not, lets just forget about this conversation.

The point is that everybody is free to believe or not to. Most theists (christians in my experience) will try to force their religion on you, their beliefs and opinions. Same as you are trying to do here. In your opinion, atheism is a religion and we must accept it.

this is false accusation. We are both at the other side of the divide. U are claiming something and i on the other hand is also saying something else. U want me to believe something and i also want to believe something else. Its very very wrong of u to accuse me of forcing my view on u without accusing ur self of doing same. I hate this kind of playing the victim card by atheists. Its not by force and im repeating it. Im not here to force my opinion on anyone. Im i holding a gun and threatening u or anyone else? u may choose not to respond here again. The fact remains u arent ready to see things my way so also im not ready to see things ur way. We can go our separate ways with or different beliefs. cheers

However, reading the above article a little further I came upon this Basically, you cited an admitted non expert to prove your point, and even the parts you cited dont help your case.
If we agree with him that the US military is overwhelmingly "christian" then you should understand why the different ones need to stick together. There is a tendency in humans to isolate those that are different and stick with their kind.

they could have chosen to hide or bury their atheism after all its not as if they were threatened to be killed if they kept hold of their belief. they chose to come out of the closet and wanted to be recognized and given coverage like the theists. Hope u also read the part that says that now they are given coverage jst the same way the theist are. No one is marginalizing anyone. atheist should quit the victim card playing. They chose not to hide and them converge and teach themselves about their beliefs most especially how not to be weary in being steadfast about their belief

One quote there struck me though as instructive In my opinion, taking God away from religion, takes away a whole lot. What would remain without God in a religion ?
A unified belief system (belief in what?). Possibly some rituals (though Im not sure what good that would do without a God). This is all hypothetical here I have to point out.
As I've said before, atheists have different reasons for being atheists. The basic term, I have defined above. There is no unified belief and no rituals. [b]The thought of atheism as a religion is silly[/b].

I have told u to keep this to ur self cos i am yet to expressly state here that atheism is a religion or its not a religion. Sooooo pls dont force things down my throat

If want to talk about God, u are free to start another thread but not here. Only God knows how many more times i have to tell u this.

You gave Sam Harris as an example of an "evangelical atheist" in his book "Letter to a Christian Nation" this is what he says The above Sir is very instructive and for the future, you should be careful with your sources.

I must really SMDH and also LOL after reading the quote. people can say anything at one point and then change at the other, isnt it true? that hes making a point doesnt mean he would agree to be called a theist not so? Of course hes also one of the ring leader of the so called new atheism not so? OMG this is pathetic.

The more we continue this discussion the more i point out some more misnormal with some of this atheists. The noise hes making in that quote was juust to drive home a point and i can bet that he other circmstances, he would choose to be called an atheist and prefer to be associated with atheism than theism. SMDH once again at human being and goal shifting. I'll choose not to post another source which confirms that with the quote, the guy might be confused

You didnt post any link. Perhaps you forgot. I found it though http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2010/07/harris_hitchens_dawkins_dennett_evangelical_atheists.html
Some of the readers comments were quite damaging. A small sample

thank it must have skipped my mind. after all i posted others.

You have characterized Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and Dennet as examples of your "evangelical atheists".
Could this be why ?

Yes part of it and even more. Did u read the part of what hes using his money to sponsor in order to entrench atheism in the heart and mind of kids? what can u call that? evangelism or what?

Lets read about those you tagged "evangelical atheists"Reference please.

Pls dont make me LOL more than i already did. Its very convenient to post a source that claims Dawkins and co are something else, whilst i also do same. Pls lets change to something else Abeg

what about this?

[size=20pt]Dawkins, in choosing a form of firebrand fundamentalist atheism over the discipline science, is no longer the champion of reason but rather a kind of evangelical against religion[/size]

Richard Dawkins is at it again - trying to wean the non-converted away from religion this time in his examination of The Genius of Charles Darwin, on Channel 4.

In 2006, his brutal and beautifully convincing exegesis The God Delusion tormented those whom Dawkins described as holding "beliefs that flatly contradict demonstrable scientific facts".

In this vein, the first of Dawkins' three programmes, aimed to show how we can live without the looming shadow of God, and enjoy a world that rests entirely upon the accuracy of natural selection - the hitherto most important discovery in science since time began.

[b]It's not very long before Professor Dawkins cuts to the chase and explains how utterly irrational and dangerous spiritual beliefs can be (indeed it was an amusing undertaking to see how long it was until Dawkins plunged his dagger once more into faith).[/b]

Drawing upon the vacant menace of creationism and its sister theory intelligent design, Dawkins, in his inimitably composed manner, argued that hostility towards rationality, free thought, homosexuality and women still owes its persistence to medieval-esque subservience to theism, a vexation of science which should really have been promptly tossed away after the 18th century age of enlightenment, which Darwin himself was a prominent figure.

Dawkins' simple yet elegant address of Darwinism will surely make the programme a success, yet his attack on religion still seems to be somewhat indistinct. One obvious problem for Dawkins is that he battles to hold two rather inharmonious positions; at once he is the scientist - disciplined in observation and objectivity. But also he is the emotionally charged evangelical atheist.

Since the release of his bestseller, Dawkins has been unable to separate the two positions. Gone are the days of the professor dissecting halibut in front of an audience of pre-teens divided into those who are averting their squeamish gazes and those who can’t for the life of them turn away. Now, even in his scientific capacity, Dawkins is belligerent.

The God Delusion really marked the point where Dawkins transformed from the professor holding the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science to the celebrity fundamentalist atheist.

In his capacity as a scientist his efforts should be directed at safeguarding the longevity of Darwinism which, with the unsettling figure given by the British Humanist Association that at least 40 UK schools teach creationism, has the potential to be under attack from certain organs of the religious community. But given his more demanding role as fundamentalist, cedes all religiosity as dangerous, thus quashing any potential union to debilitate the creeping infection that is intelligent design, a topic where moderate atheists and those of faith can meet eye to eye. Indeed, Darwinism is not under attack from the religiously moderate, so why is there need to slur them?

The books by The Four Horsemen (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens) may well be trendy accessories (shown quite clearly by the numbers in their sales) but can they really solve the creationism-evolution argument in schools, or will they only create a small, solitary corner for themselves?

[b]It’s quite clear that what the New Atheists are doing is lumping all the religious together in one bundle, just like the religious fundamentalists would do to atheists[/b]. Dawkins, in choosing to pursue a form of emotional firebrand atheism over the discipline of the scientist, is no longer the champion of reason, but an old problem this time on the other side of God. Even dyed-in-the-wall atheists like Bertrand Russell recognised a minimum of contribution religion has given to civilisation notably when he illustrated that religion informed "Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they become able to predict them."

In the fight against religious fundamentalism, atheists need to embrace the moderate religious community; they may [b]well find they have more in common than they’d care to admit.[/b]

http://www.newstatesman.com/religion/2008/08/dawkins-evangelical-science

Need i say more? just read with open mind.

[s]
You apparently must be oblivious to the ills of religion. Maybe you are a "thinking christian" (which strictu sensu is a classification that does not make sense) like my friend claimed. Maybe you tend to see only the "good" in religion. Maybe you dont have friends that have been exploited by the church or by men of God. Maybe you were in Mars with your eyes shut and your fingers in your ears when certain child witches were killed. These were not the first set. Maybe you dont know anybody who was violated by a pastor or prophet or a small boy who was molested by a priest.
Maybe you dont know of anyone who killed his or her mother because she was a "witch" and was preventing his or her progress. Maybe you do not know of the ills that have been blamed on the devil or commanded by God.
Maybe you do not know of the attrocities directly traceable to the bible. Slavery. Subjugation of women. Religious intolerance. Maybe you never heard of the crusades or the inquisition.
There are a lot of ills directly traceable to the religion and the bible. Someone speaking out against them does not make him an evangelist even if he calls himself that.
If I hold a fork in my hand and refer to it as a spoon, it will not automatically become a spoon.

Ill leave the below for you to read. This happened a year back I believe.[/s]

Absolute irrelevant. I just cant help but LOL once atheist discovers in the middle of a discussion that they are running out of gas, they chose to change gear. I can see u obviously want us to drift from discussing atheists and atheism. No way. Once again its not going to work. If u are tired, u can check out. remember we have been civil since and i must say i respect to u for that as a gentle man. I think this discussion is almost over since u cant do but import a derailing tactics into the thread. Lets just forget it

This is one out of many that will never make the news.

irrelevant.

Still Irrelevant as it wold be ultra vires for me to discss it on this thread

You want to know if there are different types of atheist ?
The real answer is NO !

I would still tell u the same thing that u are wrong. U are free to hold firm to ur beliefs that there are none. That wouldnt change the OP one bit. Its a free world u can check out of the thread.

Am I contradicting myself when I say atheists have different idealogies ?
No !

Different ideologies under different kinds of atheism. that would be fine with me. Case closed.

An atheist is a person who has no belief in God.
When you ask a person if he believe in God, if he says no, then he is an atheist.

Yes and i can also say the same thing in another way which is also very correct in English that an atheist is someone who believes in the non existence of a God. Jay is an atheist who believes that the christian God is a non entity.

Case closed

wouldnt make any sense to start asking him what kind he is. Militant or closet or "evangelical" etc

It wold cos u admitted above that they have different idealogies and i helped u link it to this thread with the different kinds. I know for sure u are not a militant atheist from this our discussion, yet still fall under a category.

The fact that you can divide christians into sects and denominations does not mean that everything can be so categorized.

why do u think so? care to expatiate?

U would have made a good point probably if u never imported this to the thread

And please tell us what kind of christian you are
1) A hypocrite or
2) A genuinely confused christian.

it sound very absurd

If you can stop this simplistic thinking, we can have structure, but you cant stop it because thats the only reason for this debate.

I would advise same thing as well cos so far more than half of the questions i asked u are yet to be answered, most of which are off topic points which u ur self imported into the thread. No problem. its obvious u arent going to see things from my perspective, we may end the discussion on that note cos if we continue, u gonna be saying the same thing and i also might be saying same thing

Your first lines at the beginning of this thread were

So, you go to a few sites, then you copy and paste without understanding, come here with a biased mind and openly declare so.

May be if what i posted were something antagonizing the christian God which have said in certain terms is a non entity, probably u wouldnt have made the above statement. Dont u think so?
May be if u opened ur mind and shifted a bit from the stereotyped and biased view u have about the subject, we could have gone a long way with this discourse. apparently u didnt and u cant. Said enough already

Infact
Apparently anything on the internet must be true. Here Sir.

same also applies to u. More than half of the content in this single post were lifted from the internet and posted here. Check ur self before u talk

Heck maybe what you meant was anti theism

No im very certain about what im saying on EVANGELICAL ATHEISM

This is the same Hitchens that you dug up some bogus link proclaiming him an evangelical atheist. I believe he has made himself clear to you Sir ?

I hold similar views as he does, particularly the all religions (I'd be more particular about the major ones) being versions of the same untruth. What does that make me ? An anti theist evangelical atheist ?

U are free to tell me the answer to the question

Truth be told, theres no need to continue here.
Enjoy .

I hope i dont have to remind u about this.

BTW im not forcing to stay, neither im i begging u to stay. It imperative i state here that i salute u not because of ur argument but u endured so far without getting agitated and resulting to insult. I must state one again that i respect u for this.

We have failed to see things from others' view and then chose to cling on to our sides. Never mind probably in a not too distant future, we may agree someday. Enjoy ur self

PS
I'll be on the streets tomorrow with Darwin's "Origin of the Species" in one hand and a megaphone in the other.
Till we meet on another thread, goodbye.

it is well with ur soul and i wish u all the best in whatever u choose to do.

Once again happy Sunday.

U ve done me a favour, i work up early to respond to u hence i will be in church early today to play the Keyboard for the congregation as i've always done for over two decades now

cheers

globexl:

@jayriginal:

Thank you for educating and enriching us with all this knowledge. I sincerely hope that Toba has got all his questions on athiesm answered. There is nothing more to be said.
If his motive is to learn, then you have given him much from which to learn, but if his motive is simply to discredict people who do not share his belief in his god, then once again, it would clearly demonstrate the convoluted logic of the abrahamic religiong, vis-a-vis: Intolerance in this life in exchange for paradise in the next life.

easy sir. u dont need to get down to this level. We are not in a battle field. im not trying to force my opinion down the throat of anyone pls get this clear.

Its obvious atheist and theists may never agree and thats what is playing out here.

Peace and happy Sunday to you

[flash=700,510]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0dm_VbPSkU?fs=1&hl=en[/flash]
nice video

As I have alluded to earlier, the reason that the evangelical atheists are denying that they are evangelical atheists and denying evangelical atheism is very simple. They are ashamed to admit that which is patently obvious --- they are doing exactly the same thing that they accuse "religionists" of and are also now basically practising a religion. They may deny it till kingdom come: it is very patent on this forum itself and one of the protagonists living in denial in denying evangelical atheism is in fact currently one of the chief evangelists - despite being a 'newcomer' as far as we can yet see - with various ultimately inane threads.

Paradoxically, the denial of evangelical atheism by evangelical atheists is comparable to the case of those Christians who reject the appellation 'Christian'.

@ toba
Good job; well done.

I keep wondering aloud. . . What part of "ATHEISM IS NOT A RELIGION" don't these people understand? They desperately bring up lame claims and ideas to insunuiate that and I wonder why. Now they want to classify atheists into categories e.g "evangeical atheists" but I am yet to see an atheist who goes around "preaching" atheism (I don't do such). I do not condemn religious people and i only step up to them when they bring the heat to me. If you wanna be religious, that's fine with me but when you start calling me a fool because I lost faith in what you believe in, then I'll the pains to show you what a greater fool you really are (funny enough, when I do this, these same hypocrites turn around to say I'm trying to convert them). . .lol

globexl:

@jayriginal:

Thank you for educating and enriching us with all this knowledge. I sincerely hope that Toba has got all his questions on athiesm answered. There is nothing more to be said.
If his motive is to learn, then you have given him much from which to learn, but if his motive is simply to discredict people who do not share his belief in his god, then once again, it would clearly demonstrate the convoluted logic of the abrahamic religiong, vis-a-vis: Intolerance in this life in exchange for paradise in the next life. 

Thank you Sir. There really isnt much more to be said. I'll just address a few points of his once more without necessarily debating him I think thats all I'll say on this topic.

toba:

Wiki has always been there and remember throughout my discussion with u here, there wasnt any need for me to go consult wiki cos the views expressed herein are from self acclaimed atheists and not from what wiki has said. werent they?

I  dont think the above is a fair statement. I did not cite only from wikipedia, I cited from other sources as well including an online dictionary. I added the wiki source to give it weight. Surely you should understand that.

Its very easy for me to have gone to wiki like u have resorted to and lift definitions. I chose not to cos i want u and other open minded atheists to see and learn other world views from fellow atheists.

You pick and choose with your bible and the internet. Some of your sources were from your fellow christians. I posted material from Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris et al effectively rebutting your position. What you are doing is ignoring what the men have to say about themselves and adopting the view that their antagonists take. That Sir, is not how to learn. If you follow the links, you will see the page numbers to their books in which they stated their stances. Did you read the scale Dawkins uses, from 1 to 7, where 1 is a strong theist (like you) and 7 is the other extreme ? If you did, did you notice that Dawkins classified himself as a 6 ?

I could have gone to wiki my self but hell no, lets see things from other source and up till now from the fore going im sure u cant find any of my links or post from wiki as u have done.

Then you go on to quote from wiki which is fine, but you didnt post the link. Are we hiding something Sir ? Further in the article we find

Origin

According to the Christian Bible, during his last days on earth Jesus commanded his eleven disciples (the apostles) as follows:

    Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

    — Matthew 28:19,20 NIV

Other translations render the phrase “make disciples of all nations” in the above quotation as “teach all nations”. Jesus is also quoted in the Gospel of Mark saying

    Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature"

    — Mark 16:15 KJV

These are two main passages of the New Testament from God that are interpreted by some (mainly Evangelical Christians) to command everyone who believes in Christ to preach the gospel. Taken in context, the command is to the eleven, who in turn are taught to obey "everything [jesus] commanded them" including this preaching and teaching of the gospel - "How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?" (Romans 10:14 KJV)

and yet a little further down from the same link

Evangelism is not always received positively. People who are not interested in converting to Christianity may find such interventions by religious preachers and their respective movements to be patronizing and bothersome.　Saint Stephen was one of the first evangelists to be killed by people who rejected his words.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelism

DING DING DING DING.

My brother if not that some of your fellow atheists knows me on NL as a no nonsense person, i can bet with u that some of them cold have showed up on this thread to simply do what u accuse the christians of doing.

I'm really scared now too Sir. I can see why they are scared of you.

I must really SMDH and also LOL after reading the quote. people can say anything at one point and then change at the other, isnt it true? that hes making a point doesnt mean he would agree to be called a theist not so? Of course hes also one of the ring leader of the so called new atheism not so? OMG this is pathetic.

Well Sir, calling Harris confused because what he says about himself is at variance with the views of his antagonists is the real tragedy here. I'll help you out and post an article on the problem with atheists, by Sam Harris himself. It should be interesting to hear your views on the article.

Pls dont make me LOL more than i already did. Its very convenient to post a source that claims Dawkins and co are something else, whilst i also do same. Pls lets change to something else Abeg

There is a difference Sir. You posted arguably biased references. References from people who are antagonistic to atheists. I posted primary sources Sir. Surely you understand this. These are references authored by the men in question. I have the books in question, I can send them to anybody who wants them. Just drop your email, thats all. The credibility of my sources cannot be disputed. That is all.

May be if what i posted were something antagonizing the christian God which  have said in certain terms is a non entity, probably u wouldnt have made the above statement. Dont u think so?
May be if u opened your mind and shifted a bit from the stereotyped and biased view u have about the subject, we could have gone a long way with this discourse. apparently u didnt and u cant. Said enough already

Im relatively new on Nairaland and you dont know me, but take my word for it, I have played Devils advocate severally (and sometimes on behalf of certain christians who couldnt defend themselves). As someone who enjoys an intellectually stimulating debate, I am capable of taking a side that I dont necessarily believe in, as long as I understand the points. You should try it sometime.
I said

Infact
Apparently anything on the internet must be true. Here Sir.

and your response was

same also applies to u. More than half of the content in this single post were lifted from the internet and posted here. Check your self before u talk

Thats funny because your OP came with links to "prove" the categorization of atheists. Funny because you used urban dictionary" as an authority.
Then in response to some critics you said

u may be right though. but im sure u still have some data available on your internet access. why dont u just consult one of the numerous search engines to disprove my claim?

Funny because in my first response to you, inspite of the above, I did not use a single internet reference. I engaged you purely on logical grounds. Funny because I still did not deem it fit to use a single internet reference in my second or third posts inspite of the fact that you were lifting from the web consistently.
Its funny because even in my fourth post, I did not lift from a single internet reference. Its funny because you called me lazy and made denigrating references to my profession.
Funny because you screamed

GO AND ASK GOOGLE IF THERE'S NOTHING LIKE EVANGELICAL ATHEISM

and you posted a picture of doubtful origin as if to validate your claims.
It really wasnt necessary for me to look for online references, but it seemed as if that would be the only way to get you to "see" so I did.
Funny because it took me till page two and I think my sixth post, to finally use internet references. The effect must have been devastating on you, or else considering the foregoing, how can you turn around and say something like

same also applies to u. More than half of the content in this single post were lifted from the internet and posted here. Check your self before u talk

Do you have amnesia Sir ?

No im very certain about what im saying on EVANGELICAL ATHEISM

Well, I cant help you then. At least now you know what an anti theist is.

U ve done me a favour, i work up early to respond to u hence i will be in church early today to play the Keyboard for the congregation as i've always done for over two decades now

I play the guitar and a little keyboard. Will you invite me to play in your church ?

We have failed to see things from others' view and then chose to cling on to our sides. Never mind probably in a not too distant future, we may agree someday.

That is possible.

U ve done me a favour

So have you Sir. Many times I did not see the need to respond as it was clear to me the direction this was headed in. I would try and try again, hoping for you to see the light. I dont necessarily come to debates hoping to force my position on people. I usually come, hoping for people to "understand" my position. With understanding, there is usually tolerance. What you may term "attacks" on christianity may be explained by the proverbial goat that has been pushed to the wall.
On this thread, I took sometime out to emphasize that some of the things I was saying referred to me in particular. I said emphatically, that the only common factor with atheists is that they lack a belief in a deity.
However, when you forced me to source for online references, look what I found !

I'm not the type to read and accept, I'm the type to read and ponder. If it sits well with me, then fine. If not, fine as well. I would suggest that you consider this approach. While it may not work when it comes to your religion (or else you will end up like me), nothing stops you from having an open mind to anything else.
As promised, I will leave you with a talk by Sam Harris "The Problem With Atheism".
[quote][/quote]

Enigma:

As I have alluded to earlier, the reason that the evangelical atheists are denying that they are evangelical atheists and denying evangelical atheism is very simple. They are ashamed to admit that which is patently obvious --- they are doing exactly the same thing that they accuse "religionists" of and are also now basically practising a religion. They may deny it till kingdom come: it is very patent on this forum itself and one of the protagonists living in denial in denying evangelical atheism is in fact currently one of the chief evangelists - despite being a 'newcomer' as far as we can yet see - with various ultimately inane threads.

Paradoxically, the denial of evangelical atheism by evangelical atheists is comparable to the case of those Christians who reject the appellation 'Christian'.

@ toba
Good job; well done.

What is there to deny?. WE DO NOT CARRY ANY BURDEN(BELIEF) THAT IS DENYING OR DEFENDING.

"This story doesn't look right and doesnt sound true ,therefore it is most likely false. I dont believe it".
The above sentence encapsulates what athiesm is all about. Interestingly most adult human beings employ this same common sense approach to everything in life, exept for issues of religion. Athiests DO NOT MAKE THIS EXCEPTION. That is the only diffeence.

To be honest, I really dont understand what these people are trying to prove. Whoever coined the word "evangelical athiesm "cannot be too smart. Perhaps they meant " Assertive Atheism".
I wish Toba and Enigma can give us just one instance in their lives where they have been accosted , proletized to or harrassed by an athiest, one instance in their lives where they have been handed pamphlets condenming their faith, or where they have been discriminated upon by any athiest or an athiest group. It would also be nice if they can name any athiest group that they know of in Nigeria, Africa and the world, without looking it up on google.

It is not good enough to label other human beings athiest simply because they refused to smoke opium, you now have to go further by adding an evil word; evangelical" to further dehumanise them.
You label people so you can bully them, then when these same people stand up to protest and  defend themselves, you award them another yet label and call them evangelical.
I'm glad , however, to see ,that you acknowledge that "evangelical " is BAD, whether its christian or atheist.
But If Toba, Enigma and the rest wish to maintain that athiesm is a religion or a belief system, so let them be. That would be another feather in their religious cap.I dont know how having no faith is now another form of faith.The least they can do for us is to write up our Articles of faith. We would appreciate.
They are just probably looking fo another religion to lock horns with in order to validate their faith.That is their tradition.

@ Toba, I said "IF" in my earlier post when I was refering to you,

The Problem with Atheism

Sam Harris

(This is an edited transcript of a talk given at the Atheist Alliance conference in Washington D.C. on September 28th, 2007)

To begin, I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge just how strange it is that a meeting like this is even necessary. The year is 2007, and we have all taken time out of our busy lives, and many of us have traveled considerable distance, so that we can strategize about how best to live in a world in which most people believe in an imaginary God. America is now a nation of 300 million people, wielding more influence than any people in human history, and yet this influence is being steadily corrupted, and is surely waning, because 240 million of these people apparently believe that Jesus will return someday and orchestrate the end of the world with his magic powers.

Of course, we may well wonder whether as many people believe these things as say they do. I know that Christopher [Hitchens] and Richard [Dawkins] are rather optimistic that our opinion polls are out of register with what people actually believe in the privacy of their own minds. But there is no question that most of our neighbors reliably profess that they believe these things, and such professions themselves have had a disastrous affect on our political discourse, on our public policy, on the teaching of science, and on our reputation in the world. And even if only a third or a quarter of our neighbors believe what most profess, it seems to me that we still have a problem worth worrying about.

Now, it is not often that I find myself in a room full of people who are more or less guaranteed to agree with me on the subject of religion. In thinking about what I could say to you all tonight, it seemed to me that I have a choice between throwing red meat to the lions of atheism or moving the conversation into areas where we actually might not agree. I’ve decided, at some risk to your mood, to take the second approach and to say a few things that might prove controversial in this context.

Given the absence of evidence for God, and the stupidity and suffering that still thrives under the mantle of religion, declaring oneself an “atheist” would seem the only appropriate response. And it is the stance that many of us have proudly and publicly adopted. Tonight, I’d like to try to make the case, that our use of this label is a mistake—and a mistake of some consequence.

My concern with the use of the term “atheism” is both philosophical and strategic. I’m speaking from a somewhat unusual and perhaps paradoxical position because, while I am now one of the public voices of atheism, I never thought of myself as an atheist before being inducted to speak as one. I didn’t even use the term in The End of Faith, which remains my most substantial criticism of religion. And, as I argued briefly in Letter to a Christian Nation, I think that “atheist” is a term that we do not need, in the same way that we don’t need a word for someone who rejects astrology. We simply do not call people “non-astrologers.” All we need are words like “reason” and “evidence” and “common sense” and “bullshit” to put astrologers in their place, and so it could be with religion.

If the comparison with astrology seems too facile, consider the problem of racism. Racism was about as intractable a social problem as we have ever had in this country. We are talking about deeply held convictions. I’m sure you have all seen the photos of lynchings in the first half of the 20th century—where seemingly whole towns in the South, thousands of men, women and children—bankers, lawyers, doctors, teachers, church elders, newspaper editors, policemen, even the occasional Senator and Congressman—turned out as though for a carnival to watch some young man or woman be tortured to death and then strung up on a tree or lamppost for all to see.

Seeing the pictures of these people in their Sunday best, having arranged themselves for a postcard photo under a dangling, and lacerated, and often partially cremated person, is one thing, but realize that these genteel people, who were otherwise quite normal, we must presume—though unfailing religious—often took souvenirs of the body home to show their friends—teeth, ears, fingers, knee caps, internal organs—and sometimes displayed them at their places of business.

Of course, I’m not saying that racism is no longer a problem in this country, but anyone who thinks that the problem is as bad as it ever was has simply forgotten, or has never learned, how bad, in fact, it was.

So, we can now ask, how have people of good will and common sense gone about combating racism? There was a civil rights movement, of course. The KKK was gradually battered to the fringes of society. There have been important and, I think, irrevocable changes in the way we talk about race—our major newspapers no longer publish flagrantly racist articles and editorials as they did less than a century ago—but, ask yourself, how many people have had to identify themselves as “non-racists” to participate in this process? Is there a “non-racist alliance” somewhere for me to join?

Attaching a label to something carries real liabilities, especially if the thing you are naming isn’t really a thing at all. And atheism, I would argue, is not a thing. It is not a philosophy, just as “non-racism” is not one. Atheism is not a worldview—and yet most people imagine it to be one and attack it as such. We who do not believe in God are collaborating in this misunderstanding by consenting to be named and by even naming ourselves.

Another problem is that in accepting a label, particularly the label of “atheist,” it seems to me that we are consenting to be viewed as a cranky sub-culture. We are consenting to be viewed as a marginal interest group that meets in hotel ballrooms. I’m not saying that meetings like this aren’t important. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think it was important. But I am saying that as a matter of philosophy we are guilty of confusion, and as a matter of strategy, we have walked into a trap. It is a trap that has been, in many cases, deliberately set for us. And we have jumped into it with both feet.

While it is an honor to find myself continually assailed with Dan [Dennett], Richard [Dawkins], and Christopher [Hitchens] as though we were a single person with four heads, this whole notion of the “new atheists” or “militant atheists” has been used to keep our criticism of religion at arm’s length, and has allowed people to dismiss our arguments without meeting the burden of actually answering them. And while our books have gotten a fair amount of notice, I think this whole conversation about the conflict between faith and reason, and religion and science, has been, and will continue to be, successfully marginalized under the banner of atheism.

So, let me make my somewhat seditious proposal explicit: We should not call ourselves “atheists.” We should not call ourselves “secularists.” We should not call ourselves “humanists,” or “secular humanists,” or “naturalists,” or “skeptics,” or “anti-theists,” or “rationalists,” or “freethinkers,” or “brights.” We should not call ourselves anything. We should go under the radar—for the rest of our lives. And while there, we should be decent, responsible people who destroy bad ideas wherever we find them.

Now, it just so happens that religion has more than its fair share of bad ideas. And it remains the only system of thought, where the process of maintaining bad ideas in perpetual immunity from criticism is considered a sacred act. This is the act of faith. And I remain convinced that religious faith is one of the most perverse misuses of intelligence we have ever devised. So we will, inevitably, continue to criticize religious thinking. But we should not define ourselves and name ourselves in opposition to such thinking.

So what does this all mean in practical terms, apart from Margaret Downey having to change her letterhead? Well, rather than declare ourselves “atheists” in opposition to all religion, I think we should do nothing more than advocate reason and intellectual honesty—and where this advocacy causes us to collide with religion, as it inevitably will, we should observe that the points of impact are always with specific religious beliefs—not with religion in general. There is no religion in general.

The problem is that the concept of atheism imposes upon us a false burden of remaining fixated on people’s beliefs about God and remaining even-handed in our treatment of religion. But we shouldn’t be fixated, and we shouldn’t be even-handed. In fact, we should be quick to point out the differences among religions, for two reasons:

First, these differences make all religions look contingent, and therefore silly. Consider the unique features of Mormonism, which may have some relevance in the next Presidential election. Mormonism, it seems to me, is—objectively—just a little more idiotic than Christianity is. It has to be: because it is Christianity plus some very stupid ideas. For instance, the Mormons think Jesus is going to return to earth and administer his Thousand years of Peace, at least part of the time, from the state of Missouri. Why does this make Mormonism less likely to be true than Christianity? Because whatever probability you assign to Jesus’ coming back, you have to assign a lesser probability to his coming back and keeping a summer home in Jackson County, Missouri. If Mitt Romney wants to be the next President of the United States, he should be made to feel the burden of our incredulity. We can make common cause with our Christian brothers and sisters on this point. Just what does the man believe? The world should know. And it is almost guaranteed to be embarrassing even to most people who believe in the biblical God.

The second reason to be attentive to the differences among the world’s religions is that these differences are actually a matter of life and death. There are very few of us who lie awake at night worrying about the Amish. This is not an accident. While I have no doubt that the Amish are mistreating their children, by not educating them adequately, they are not likely to hijack aircraft and fly them into buildings. But consider how we, as atheists, tend to talk about Islam. Christians often complain that atheists, and the secular world generally, balance every criticism of Muslim extremism with a mention of Christian extremism. The usual approach is to say that they have their jihadists, and we have people who kill abortion doctors. Our Christian neighbors, even the craziest of them, are right to be outraged by this pretense of even-handedness, because the truth is that Islam is quite a bit scarier and more culpable for needless human misery, than Christianity has been for a very, very long time. And the world must wake up to this fact. Muslims themselves must wake up to this fact. And they can.

You might remember that Thomas Friedman recently wrote an op-ed from Iraq, reporting that some Sunni militias are now fighting jihadists alongside American troops. When Friedman asked one Sunni militant why he was doing this, he said that he had recently watched a member of al-Qaeda decapitate an 8-year-old girl. This persuaded him that the American Crusader forces were the lesser of two evils.

Okay, so even some Sunni militants can discern the boundary between ordinary crazy Islam, and the utterly crazy, once it is drawn in the spilled blood of little girls. This is a basis for hope, of sorts. But we have to be honest—unremittingly honest—about what is on the other side of that line. This is what we and the rest of the civilized, and the semi-civilized world, are up against: utter religious lunacy and barbarism in the name of Islam—with, I’m unhappy to say, some mainstream theology to back it up.

To be even-handed when talking about the problem of Islam is to misconstrue the problem. The refrain, “all religions have their extremists,” is bullshit—and it is putting the West to sleep. All religions don’t have these extremists. Some religions have never had these extremists. And in the Muslim world, support for extremism is not extreme in the sense of being rare. A recent poll showed that about a third of young British Muslims want to live under sharia law and believe that apostates should be killed for leaving the faith. These are British Muslims. Sixty-eight percent of British Muslims feel that their neighbors who insult Islam should be arrested and prosecuted, and seventy-eight percent think that the Danish cartoonists should be brought to justice. These people don’t have a clue about what constitutes a civil society. Reports of this kind coming out of the Muslim communities living in the West should worry us, before anything else about religion worries us.

Atheism is too blunt an instrument to use at moments like this. It’s as though we have a landscape of human ignorance and bewilderment—with peaks and valleys and local attractors—and the concept of atheism causes us to fixate one part of this landscape, the part related to theistic religion, and then just flattens it. Because to be consistent as atheists we must oppose, or seem to oppose, all faith claims equally. This is a waste of precious time and energy, and it squanders the trust of people who would otherwise agree with us on specific issues.

I’m not at all suggesting that we leave people’s core religious beliefs, or faith itself, unscathed—I’m still the kind of person who writes articles with rather sweeping titles like “Science must destroy religion”—but it seems to me that we should never lose sight of useful and important distinctions.

Another problem with calling ourselves “atheists” is that every religious person thinks he has a knockdown argument against atheism. We’ve all heard these arguments, and we are going to keep hearing them as long as we insist upon calling ourselves “atheists. Arguments like: atheists can’t prove that God doesn’t exist; atheists are claiming to know there is no God, and this is the most arrogant claim of all. As Rick Warren put it, when he and I debated for Newsweek—a reasonable man like himself “doesn’t have enough faith to be an atheist.” The idea that the universe could arise without a creator is, on his account, the most extravagant faith claim of all.

Of course, as an argument for the truth of any specific religious doctrine, this is a travesty. And we all know what to do in this situation: We have Russell’s teapot, and thousands of dead gods, and now a flying spaghetti monster, the nonexistence of which also cannot be proven, and yet belief in these things is acknowledged to be ridiculous by everyone. The problem is, we have to keep having this same argument, over and over again, and the argument is being generated to a significant degree, if not entirely, over our use of the term “atheism.”

So too with the “greatest crimes of the 20th century” argument. How many times are we going to have to counter the charge that Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot represent the endgame of atheism? I’ve got news for you, this meme is not going away. I argued against it in The End of Faith, and it was immediately thrown back at me in reviews of the book as though I had never mentioned it. So I tackled it again in the afterword to the paperback edition of The End of Faith; but this had no effect whatsoever; so at the risk of boring everyone, I brought it up again in Letter to a Christian Nation; and Richard did the same in The God Delusion; and Christopher took a mighty swing at it in God is Not Great. I can assure you that this bogus argument will be with us for as long as people label themselves “atheists.” And it really convinces religious people. It convinces moderates and liberals. It even convinces the occasional atheist.

Why should we fall into this trap? Why should we stand obediently in the space provided, in the space carved out by the conceptual scheme of theistic religion? It’s as though, before the debate even begins, our opponents draw the chalk-outline of a dead man on the sidewalk, and we just walk up and lie down in it.

Instead of doing this, consider what would happen if we simply used words like “reason” and “evidence.” What is the argument against reason? It’s true that a few people will bite the bullet here and argue that reason is itself a problem, that the Enlightenment was a failed project, etc. But the truth is that there are very few people, even among religious fundamentalists, who will happily admit to being enemies of reason. In fact, fundamentalists tend to think they are champions of reason and that they have very good reasons for believing in God. Nobody wants to believe things on bad evidence. The desire to know what is actually going on in world is very difficult to argue with. In so far as we represent that desire, we become difficult to argue with. And this desire is not reducible to an interest group. It’s not a club or an affiliation, and I think trying to make it one diminishes its power.

The last problem with atheism I’d like to talk about relates to the some of the experiences that lie at the core of many religious traditions, though perhaps not all, and which are testified to, with greater or lesser clarity in the world’s “spiritual” and “mystical” literature.
Those of you who have read The End of Faith, know that I don’t entirely line up with Dan, Richard, and Christopher in my treatment of these things. So I think I should take a little time to discuss this. While I always use terms like “spiritual” and “mystical” in scare quotes, and take some pains to denude them of metaphysics, the email I receive from my brothers and sisters in arms suggests that many of you find my interest in these topics problematic.

First, let me describe the general phenomenon I’m referring to. Here’s what happens, in the generic case: a person, in whatever culture he finds himself, begins to notice that life is difficult. He observes that even in the best of times—no one close to him has died, he’s healthy, there are no hostile armies massing in the distance, the fridge is stocked with beer, the weather is just so—even when things are as good as they can be, he notices that at the level of his moment to moment experience, at the level of his attention, he is perpetually on the move, seeking happiness and finding only temporary relief from his search.

We’ve all noticed this. We seek pleasant sights, and sounds, and tastes, and sensations, and attitudes. We satisfy our intellectual curiosities, and our desire for friendship and romance. We become connoisseurs of art and music and film—but our pleasures are, by their very nature, fleeting. And we can do nothing more than merely reiterate them as often as we are able.

If we enjoy some great professional success, our feelings of accomplishment remain vivid and intoxicating for about an hour, or maybe a day, but then people will begin to ask us “So, what are you going to do next? Don’t you have anything else in the pipeline?” Steve Jobs releases the IPhone, and I’m sure it wasn’t twenty minutes before someone asked, “when are you going to make this thing smaller?” Notice that very few people at this juncture, no matter what they’ve accomplished, say, “I’m done. I’ve met all my goals. Now I’m just going to stay here eat ice cream until I die in front of you.”

Even when everything has gone as well as it can go, the search for happiness continues, the effort required to keep doubt and dissatisfaction and boredom at bay continues, moment to moment. If nothing else, the reality of death and the experience of losing loved ones punctures even the most gratifying and well-ordered life.

In this context, certain people have traditionally wondered whether a deeper form of well-being exists. Is there, in other words, a form of happiness that is not contingent upon our merely reiterating our pleasures and successes and avoiding our pains. Is there a form of happiness that is not dependent upon having one’s favorite food always available to be placed on one’s tongue or having all one’s friends and loved ones within arm’s reach, or having good books to read, or having something to look forward to on the weekend? Is it possible to be utterly happy before anything happens, before one’s desires get gratified, in spite of life’s inevitable difficulties, in the very midst of physical pain, old age, disease, and death?

This question, I think, lies at the periphery of everyone’s consciousness. We are all, in some sense, living our answer to it—and many of us are living as though the answer is “no.” No, there is nothing more profound that repeating one’s pleasures and avoiding one’s pains; there is nothing more profound that seeking satisfaction, both sensory and intellectual. Many of us seem think that all we can do is just keep our foot on the gas until we run out of road.

But certain people, for whatever reason, are led to suspect that there is more to human experience than this. In fact, many of them are led to suspect this by religion—by the claims of people like the Buddha or Jesus or some other celebrated religious figures. And such a person may begin to practice various disciplines of attention—often called “meditation” or “contemplation”—as a means of examining his moment to moment experience closely enough to see if a deeper basis of well-being is there to be found.

Such a person might even hole himself up in a cave, or in a monastery, for months or years at a time to facilitate this process. Why would somebody do this? Well, it amounts to a very simple experiment. Here’s the logic of it: if there is a form of psychological well-being that isn’t contingent upon merely repeating one’s pleasures, then this happiness should be available even when all the obvious sources of pleasure and satisfaction have been removed. If it exists at all, this happiness should be available to a person who has renounced all her material possessions, and declined to marry her high school sweetheart, and gone off to a cave or to some other spot that would seem profoundly uncongenial to the satisfaction of ordinary desires and aspirations.

One clue as to how daunting most people would find such a project is the fact that solitary confinement—which is essentially what we are talking about—is considered a punishment even inside a prison. Even when cooped up with homicidal maniacs and rapists, most people still prefer the company of others to spending any significant amount of time alone in a box.

And yet, for thousands of years, contemplatives have claimed to find extraordinary depths of psychological well-being while spending vast stretches of time in total isolation. It seems to me that, as rational people, whether we call ourselves “atheists” or not, we have a choice to make in how we view this whole enterprise. Either the contemplative literature is a mere catalogue of religious delusion, deliberate fraud, and psychopathology, or people have been having interesting and even normative experiences under the name of “spirituality” and “mysticism” for millennia.

Now let me just assert, on the basis of my own study and experience, that there is no question in my mind that people have improved their emotional lives, and their self-understanding, and their ethical intuitions, and have even had important insights about the nature of subjectivity itself through a variety of traditional practices like meditation.

Leaving aside all the metaphysics and mythology and mumbo jumbo, what contemplatives and mystics over the millennia claim to have discovered is that there is an alternative to merely living at the mercy of the next neurotic thought that comes careening into consciousness. There is an alternative to being continuously spellbound by the conversation we are having with ourselves.

Most us think that if a person is walking down the street talking to himself—that is, not able to censor himself in front of other people—he’s probably mentally ill. But if we talk to ourselves all day long silently—thinking, thinking, thinking, rehearsing prior conversations, thinking about what we said, what we didn’t say, what we should have said, jabbering on to ourselves about what we hope is going to happen, what just happened, what almost happened, what should have happened, what may yet happen—but we just know enough to just keep this conversation private, this is perfectly normal. This is perfectly compatible with sanity. Well, this is not what the experience of millions of contemplatives suggests.

Of course, I am by no means denying the importance of thinking. There is no question that linguistic thought is indispensable for us. It is, in large part, what makes us human. It is the fabric of almost all culture and every social relationship. Needless to say, it is the basis of all science. And it is surely responsible for much rudimentary cognition—for integrating beliefs, planning, explicit learning, moral reasoning, and many other mental capacities. Even talking to oneself out loud may occasionally serve a useful function.

From the point of view of our contemplative traditions, however—to boil them all down to a cartoon version, that ignores the rather esoteric disputes among them—our habitual identification with discursive thought, our failure moment to moment to recognize thoughts as thoughts, is a primary source of human suffering. And when a person breaks this spell, an extraordinary kind of relief is available.

But the problem with a contemplative claim of this sort is that you can’t borrow someone else’s contemplative tools to test it. The problem is that to test such a claim—indeed, to even appreciate how distracted we tend to be in the first place, we have to build our own contemplative tools. Imagine where astronomy would be if everyone had to build his own telescope before he could even begin to see if astronomy was a legitimate enterprise. It wouldn’t make the sky any less worthy of investigation, but it would make it immensely more difficult for us to establish astronomy as a science.

To judge the empirical claims of contemplatives, you have to build your own telescope. Judging their metaphysical claims is another matter: many of these can be dismissed as bad science or bad philosophy by merely thinking about them. But to judge whether certain experiences are possible—and if possible, desirable—we have to be able to use our attention in the requisite ways. We have to be able to break our identification with discursive thought, if only for a few moments. This can take a tremendous amount of work. And it is not work that our culture knows much about.

One problem with atheism as a category of thought, is that it seems more or less synonymous with not being interested in what someone like the Buddha or Jesus may have actually experienced. In fact, many atheists reject such experiences out of hand, as either impossible, or if possible, not worth wanting. Another common mistake is to imagine that such experiences are necessarily equivalent to states of mind with which many of us are already familiar—the feeling of scientific awe, or ordinary states of aesthetic appreciation, artistic inspiration, etc.

As someone who has made his own modest efforts in this area, let me assure you, that when a person goes into solitude and trains himself in meditation for 15 or 18 hours a day, for months or years at a time, in silence, doing nothing else—not talking, not reading, not writing—just making a sustained moment to moment effort to merely observe the contents of consciousness and to not get lost in thought, he experiences things that most scientists and artists are not likely to have experienced, unless they have made precisely the same efforts at introspection. And these experiences have a lot to say about the plasticity of the human mind and about the possibilities of human happiness.

So, apart from just commending these phenomena to your attention, I’d like to point out that, as atheists, our neglect of this area of human experience puts us at a rhetorical disadvantage. Because millions of people have had these experiences, and many millions more have had glimmers of them, and we, as atheists, ignore such phenomena, almost in principle, because of their religious associations—and yet these experiences often constitute the most important and transformative moments in a person’s life. Not recognizing that such experiences are possible or important can make us appear less wise even than our craziest religious opponents.

My concern is that atheism can easily become the position of not being interested in certain possibilities in principle. I don’t know if our universe is, as JBS Haldane said, “not only stranger than we suppose, but stranger than we can suppose.” But I am sure that it is stranger than we, as “atheists,” tend to represent while advocating atheism. As “atheists” we give others, and even ourselves, the sense that we are well on our way toward purging the universe of mystery. As advocates of reason, we know that mystery is going to be with us for a very long time. Indeed, there are good reasons to believe that mystery is ineradicable from our circumstance, because however much we know, it seems like there will always be brute facts that we cannot account for but which we must rely upon to explain everything else. [/b]This may be a problem for epistemology but it is not a problem for human life and for human solidarity. [b]It does not rob our lives of meaning. And it is not a barrier to human happiness.

We are faced, however, with the challenge of communicating this view to others. We are faced with the monumental task of persuading a myth-infatuated world that love and curiosity are sufficient, and that we need not console or frighten ourselves or our children with Iron Age fairy tales. I don’t think there is a more important intellectual struggle to win; it has to be fought from a hundred sides, all at once, and continuously; but it seems to me that there is no reason for us to fight in well-ordered ranks, like the red coats of Atheism.

Finally, I think it’s useful to envision what victory will look like. Again, the analogy with racism seems instructive to me. What will victory against racism look like, should that happy day ever dawn? It certainly won’t be a world in which a majority of people profess that they are “nonracist.” Most likely, it will be a world in which the very concept of separate races has lost its meaning.

We will have won this war of ideas against religion when atheism is scarcely intelligible as a concept. We will simply find ourselves in a world in which people cease to praise one another for pretending to know things they do not know. This is certainly a future worth fighting for. It may be the only future compatible with our long-term survival as a species. But the only path between now and then, that I can see, is for us to be rigorously honest in the present. It seems to me that intellectual honesty is now, and will always be, deeper and more durable, and more easily spread, than “atheism.”

Talk of denial (of which the evangelical atheists often accuse Christians)!

Evidence was provided:

1. of atheists calling themselves evangelical atheists;
2. of atheists outlining the case for and explaining what evangelical atheism means and some of the beliefs it comprises;
3. of evangelical atheists admitting that they do indeed evangelise and should even be doing more evangelising;
4. of an advertisement and publicity campaign in the UK to promote atheism and challenge "religion ";
5. of another initiative to which Dawkins contributed financially and IIRC targeted at indoctrinating children towards atheism
6. of placard campaigns advocating atheism;
7. of an atheist chaplaincy at Harvard;
8. of atheists pushing for atheists chaplains in the US military.

Yet some are still arguing that there is no such thing as evangelical atheism?

Like I said before --- talk about living in denial! (And the evangelical atheists would accuse Christians of this?) Encroyable!

"Follow the evidence, my boy; follow where the evidence leads!"

I thought since u ve said u werent returning for the 4th time, u re gonna keep to it this time,but once again u didnt. Ok like i said, im prepared to go to any length regarding this subject. I have also posted something for u on another thread

jayriginal:

Thank you Sir. There really isnt much more to be said. I'll just address a few points of his once more without necessarily debating him I think thats all I'll say on this topic.

I think  have said this already so im expecting to hear new things from u. If  u dont have,  are free to keep mute

I  dont think the above is a fair statement. I did not cite only from wikipedia, I cited from other sources as well including an online dictionary. I added the wiki source to give it weight.

Are  saying contents  lifted from other sources arent weighty except u add that of wiki to it?

Surely you should understand that.You pick and choose with your bible and the internet. Some of your sources were from your fellow christians

This is a big lie. I never said anything or quoted from the bible or mentioned anything about God on this thread. u did and i immediately told u not to involve either. can u remember? its obvious u ve got not more to say. I'll advice u save your self stress cos the more  keep posting lies, i wouldn't spare u the embarrassment. U posted from the bible and mentioned God several times. Pls stop lying sir

I posted material from Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris et al effectively rebutting your position. What you are doing is ignoring what the men have to say about themselves and adopting the view that their antagonists take. That Sir, is not how to learn. If you follow the links, you will see the page numbers to their books in which they stated their stances. Did you read the scale Dawkins uses, from 1 to 7, where 1 is a strong theist (like you) and 7 is the other extreme ? If you did, did you notice that Dawkins classified himself as a 6 ?

A case of pot calling kettle black. i gave u links and posts of self confessed evangelical atheists who donot only call themselves evangelical atheist but are prepared to go on about crusading against religion in order for people to be 'liberated' from religion, hence choose to become atheist. U ignored most of them and u still shout here that theres nothing like evangelical atheists or evangelical atheism. The posts are still up there u may go review them if u still want to learn more about the subject.

Hope u read the links that also contained direct statements credited to Dawkins in his evangelical campaign to that kids would learn more about atheism whilst still young.

Then you go on to quote from wiki which is fine, but you didnt post the link. Are we hiding something Sir ?

Hide what? dont be ridiculous. what i did was to ask wiki for the definition of EVANGELISM.  can do that to get where i lifted the definition from. I consulted wiki cos i knew u consider wiki as a weighty source same way u consider the xtian God as a non entity. Not so?

I expected your comment about the definition but u avoided it. why? i wanted to challenge u to interpret the definition bt u chose to ignore it. fine

Further in the article we find
and yet a little further down from the same link
DING DING DING DING.

Still irrelevant cos i wanted us to debate about your claims that theres nothing like evangelical atheism or atheist. Leave outside scope for now

I'm really scared now too Sir. I can see why they are scared of you.

Dont be. I meant that once anyone amongst them chose not to be civil, i give it to them back in like terms. U have chosen to be civil so we are friends. Arent we?

Well Sir, calling Harris confused because what he says about himself is at variance with the views of his antagonists is the real tragedy here. I'll help you out and post an article on the problem with atheists, by Sam Harris himself. It should be interesting to hear your views on the article.

till u are ready to answer at least 10 of my numerous questions i have asked on this thread

There is a difference Sir. You posted arguably biased references. References from people who are antagonistic to atheists. I posted primary sources Sir. Surely you understand this. These are references authored by the men in question. I have the books in question, I can send them to anybody who wants them. Just drop your email, thats all. The credibility of my sources cannot be disputed. That is all.

Same way u posted subjective opinions of the evangelical atheists like Dawkins. theres something we say in Yoruba that if we give a mad man cutlass, he would definitely cut only the grass at his own side. Its quite obvious, cos the opinions of these men by these men themselves will definitely be biased and subjective. If u are to access GEJ today based on his performance in office so far, u may or may not do that objectively. But its almost certain that GEJ will tell u, that hes doing well despite we seeing the contrary. To cut the long story short, what these men wrote about themselves would definitely be a subjective view. Can u describe me now, having met me on NL? im very sure u would have many things to say as a critic than what i myself would say about myself. Lets try to be realistic about this.

Im relatively new on Nairaland and you dont know me,

yea but i can still say one or two things about ur views on The xtian God having declared with certainty that hes a non entity

but take my word for it, I have played Devils advocate severally (and sometimes on behalf of certain christians who couldnt defend themselves). As someone who enjoys an intellectually stimulating debate, I am capable of taking a side that I dont necessarily believe in, as long as I understand the points. You should try it sometime.

can i conclude that its very possible that u aren't sure about ur atheism cos u are Weavery based on this submission. Its possible for u to defend the Xtian God isnt it?

I said and your response was Thats funny because your OP came with links to "prove" the categorization of atheists. Funny because you used urban dictionary" as an authority.

know this isnt true. FYI i didnt even post any link of the form i got the op from. It was my second post that i culled from urban Dictionary and not the op. Even if i did, havent i posted from other links including those of the self confessed evangelical atheists?

Then in response to some critics you saidFunny because in my first response to you, inspite of the above, I did not use a single internet reference. I engaged you purely on logical grounds. Funny because I still did not deem it fit to use a single internet reference in my second or third posts inspite of the fact that you were lifting from the web consistently.
Its funny because even in my fourth post, I did not lift from a single internet reference. Its funny because you called me lazy and made denigrating references to my profession.

U also know this is not a true position. Did i say u lifted ur first four posts from the internet? U are alleging what i havent said and i really dont like it. I was referring to ur post #37 on this thread which u apparently lifted most of part thereof it from the internet. kindly correct that erroneous position. I ve been very conscious of my every word on this thread. Never mind, its just what my Job in real life requires me to do cos i do act as expert witness on some occasions hence i need to be meticulous and guarded

[/quote]
Funny because you screamed and you posted a picture of doubtful origin as if to validate your claims.
It really wasnt necessary for me to look for online references, but it seemed as if that would be the only way to get you to "see" so I did.
Funny because it took me till page two and I think my sixth post, to finally use internet references. The effect must have been devastating on you, or else considering the foregoing, how can you turn around and say something like
[quote]

I have addressed this part above and would re copy it here

'U also know this is not a true position. Did i say u lifted ur first four posts from the internet? U are alleging what i havent said and i really dont like it. I was referring to ur post #37 on this thread which u apparently lifted most of part thereof it from the internet. kindly correct that erroneous position. I ve been very conscious of my every word on this thread'

Do you have amnesia Sir ?

I asked cos u repeated a post twice and i was trying to call ur attention to it. Never mind if u saw my question as insult, accept my sincere apology

Well, I cant help you then. At least now you know what an anti theist is.

even if i do, its still different from EVANGELICAL ATHEISM thats a fact

I play the guitar and a little keyboard. Will you invite me to play in your church ?

I would gladly do that just tell me when u are free any time.

That is possible.

If believe so. fine

So have you Sir. Many times I did not see the need to respond as it was clear to me the direction this was headed in. I would try and try again, hoping for you to see the light. I dont necessarily come to debates hoping to force my position on people. I usually come, hoping for people to "understand" my position. With understanding, there is usually tolerance. What you may term "attacks" on christianity may be explained by the proverbial goat that has been pushed to the wall.
On this thread, I took sometime out to emphasize that some of the things I was saying referred to me in particular. I said emphatically, that the only common factor with atheists is that they lack a belief in a deity.
However, when you forced me to source for online references, look what I found !

I'm not the type to read and accept, I'm the type to read and ponder. If it sits well with me, then fine. If not, fine as well. I would suggest that you consider this approach. While it may not work when it comes to your religion (or else you will end up like me), nothing stops you from having an open mind to anything else.
As promised, I will leave you with a talk by Sam Harris "The Problem With Atheism".

all u have said is exactly what i have been trying to do as well, just that we are seeing things differently.

Cheers

He who has eyes, let him read.

@Toba
Enjoy your lunch Sir.

There are different kinds of Christians, Muslims and atheists. This only goes to show how atheism is in fact a worldview. Something which is flatly denied by many atheists. I find Sam Harris' argument to be facile and indeed a word play. Take for instance his talk of non-astrologers, if you don't believe in astrology it is very likely that you believe in astronomy (as a viable alternative). Atheism does in fact have consequences on morality, political views and lifestyle. I also find it contradictory for him to state (as a result of his atheism) science can dictate morality then on the same page deny that atheism espouses nothing.

Uyi Iredia:

There are different kinds of Christians, Muslims and atheists. This only goes to show how atheism is in fact a worldview. Something which is flatly denied by many atheists. I find Sam Harris' argument to be facile and indeed a word play. 

@Uyi, welcome. Did you read the thread or just the last post ? You seem to assume that which you seek to prove.
Please note that not every atheist relies on science to back up his atheism. Speaking for myself, names like Russel, Harris, Dawkins et al, were a blur to me until a few years back and I can trace my journey up until '97. I did not need and I still do not need science to validate my position. Harris and Co may be the most visible atheists you have heard of, but they are not like "Pastors" or the religious equivalent.
If you havent read the entire thread, do so. I suspect that it will be of little effect, considering these threads which you started https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-546562.0.html (Atheism is a religion) and
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-585245.32.html (Atheism is a religion part II).
Seems you have come with your mind made up.
When people know I dont believe in God, they then say "so what are you ? An atheist or free thinker". I tell them, "I am nothing, my name is (my name)". Thats because labelliing something allows you to find dirty ways to treat that same thing. As I have said somewhere on this thread, the term atheist is just a convenient grouping for those that do not believe in a God. That is all.

Take for instance his talk of non-astrologers, if you don't believe in astrology it is very likely that you believe in astronomy (as a viable alternative).

Uyi, astrology and astronomy are worlds apart even if they seem superficially related.

Atheism does in fact have consequences on morality, political views and lifestyle.

This is the problem with labelling. Let us see if a little editing will help.

Non belief in God does in fact have consequences on morality, political views and lifestyle.

Does that make any difference Sir ?
What would the difference be on morality Sir ? I hope you are not one of those claiming that if we dont believe in God, that we are patently immoral?
Political views and lifestyles ?
I for one will not vote a candidate solely on the basis of him being religious neither will the same factor make me not vote for him.
As for lifestyles, does that have anything to do with the morality you mentioned above ?

I also find it contradictory for him to state (as a result of his atheism) science can dictate morality then on the same page deny that atheism espouses nothing.

Since when is science the same thing as atheism ?

jayriginal:

@Uyi, welcome. Did you read the thread or just the last post ?

this is a misplaced priority question if u ask me. i think u need to review his post once again to see the valid points he raised and try to rebuke them if u can. now this isnt toba but someone else confirming my stance on different kinds of atheists and evangelical atheism

jayriginal, when u return, we would put our logics to test and also our thinking and deductive reasoning to analyze some key points.

i have asked some questions which u are yet to answer. i would repeat them here and we would both attempt to define the words and then deductively apply them to the subject at hand.

1) Dogma

2) Evangelism

3) Belief.

lets now apply them to what is happening on nl amongst the thiests and the atheists.

thanks in advance

toba:

this is a misplaced priority question if u ask me. i think u need to review his post once again to see the valid points he raised and try to rebuke them if u can.

It is certainly not "a misplaced priority question".

now this isnt toba but someone else confirming my stance on different kinds of atheists and evangelical atheism

If he confirms it, does that mean your stance is correct ?

toba:

jayriginal, when u return, we would put our logics to test and also our thinking and deductive reasoning to analyze some key points.

i have asked some questions which u are yet to answer. i would repeat them here and we would both attempt to define the words and then deductively apply them to the subject at hand.

1) Dogma

2) Evangelism

3) Belief.

lets now apply them to what is happening on nl amongst the thiests and the atheists.

thanks in advance

No Sir, I will not indulge you here. You seek to prove the following.
1)Atheism is a religion
2)There are different kinds of atheists
3)In particular, there is evangelical atheism
I seek to rebut 1 and 3 emphatically, and clarify 2.

We can go on and on without making any headway. I'm not sure this is useful. It is better to make the thread ore concise and friendly for readers.

[s]Going back to my original style, I want you to consider this. If you consider atheism a religion and Dawkins et al as evangelical atheists (as absurd as that term is), what do you think would happen if they all suddenly decide there was a God afterall ?

Let me tell you what would happen, and you may feel free to disagree. If the Dawkins' and Harris' and Hitchens' all agreed on a God being in existence, it would not affect one damn thing in the mind of the average atheist.
He or she will evaluate the claims of your "evangelical atheist" and make a decision on his own. The point is these people do not speak or pretend to speak for a body of people called atheists.
Feel free to express a contrary view.[/s]
That is all.

I got this from KAG's response to imhotep https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-585245.32.html

With his kind permission (KAG) I would like to adapt his refutation to this thread.

Christians try to prove atheism to be a religion by such faulty logic as
1) Atheism's belief in the non-existence of God makes it a belief-system.

2) Because it is a belief-system, atheism is a religion.

However, Christians do not believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn, nor the Flying Spaghetti Monster. They do not also believe in Russel's Teapot or in Santa Clause or in Allah, or Krishna and so on. Since non belief is a belief system by their logic, then they are also practicing these many religions which they do not believe in.

and from thehomer on the same thread

Even if one were to grant that atheism is a belief system, that does not mean it is a religion. Belief systems are not automatically religions otherwise, it would mean cultures and beliefs about the effectiveness of certain economic systems are religions.

That captures it nicely. Somewhere along the line, I had wanted to reduce the argument into absurdity by pointing out that following the logic of "evangelical atheism" we would also have evangelical business men, evangelical professors, evangelical politicians etc seeing that each of them is trying to convince others of his view point.

and from Horus https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-287843.0.html

Christians are the most complex people of any who discuss the Bible. They pose the most difficult challenges in religious communications because they make a wide variety of mistakes when they interact with those of differing beliefs. This is primarily a result of their unique religious philosophy. Christians presume that everyone they associate with has a moral obligation to have the same religious feelings that they do. They firmly believe that others who hold differing opinions are either uninformed or confused and are unable to correctly interpret biblical writings without guidance and insight. Christians never consider that other people's beliefs might be as valid as their own. This is the most insulting characteristic a Christian portrays. He begins interactions with skeptics and analysts with the preconceived attitude that he has all the answers and the other person is ignorant.

and from Martian

God is__________________________

Theists always leave the definition of god as open as possible because they know it cannot be defined because it doesn't exist.

I like Spinoza's definition though. He said, "God is an asylum of ignorance". He's very right, classic case of god of the gaps. Whenever there is a gap in knowledge, theists fit their gods in and shut down their thinking faculties.

A couple of months ago, Neil Degrasse Tyson gave another nice definition. "God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller as time goes on"

God is the result of man's fear of the unknown, fear of his own mortality and an illusory insurance policy for his ignorance and fear.

One of the main reasons for christianity/islam's popularity among the downtrodden and ignorant is their promise of life after death. The promise that happens to be the biggest scam in human history. That's one of the main reasons theists are unwilling to examine their beliefs; they need the illusion to help make sense out of life.
Evolution's curse is that it gave man the ability to understand how hostile,ruthless and unfeeling the universe can be. I guess god lets them come to terms with it. They attribute the good things they see to their god and the bad things to their god's adversary. Simplistic,effective and even acceptable but it gets offensive when it ceases to be a private delusion and they try to impose it on the rest of society a la creationists, fundamentalists, politicians that won't keep the separation between church and state, religious convictions threatening national security and well being ( repubs attack on Planned parenthood), fleecing of gullible and helpless masses (every doggone church in Nigeria) and psychos who can't think for themselves even if their lives depended on it ([s]olaadegbu, joagbaje, mabell,sweetnecta and cretins like them[/s]).

These pseudo-intellectuals must be suffering from a case of inferiority complex . "Since you think my belief in unproven entities and my religion is illogical and irrational, I'll say your lack of belief in this hogwash is also a religion. See you are just like me, you have faith too!"

Atheism is the rejection of all gods and so called decrees and commandments attributed to them.
There are no tenets, dogmas or doctrines in atheism. There's no belief in the supernatural. There are no rites, ceremonies or rituals. There's no holy infallible book that was revealed to some illiterate in a cave or written on slabs of stone.
Atheism is the rejection of gods and that's all. It's an acceptance of nature as is, without supernatural embellishments. It's a personal relationship with jesus reality.

And finally, god is nothing, god is a cat, god is a god, god is the air, god is spaghetti etc. because>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>gods aint sh_t!

And to those who keep rejecting evolution and who somehow think evolution is about the origin of the universe, you need to put your religious propaganda down for a minute and expose yourself to some information outside of your religious box.
Humans are apes, whether you like it or not. Look at any type of primate's hands, see the fingers and opposable thumbs? Now look at your hands.
Cats, Lions,tigers, cheetahs, pumas, etc are related. They all look alike in some kind of way. Same things with apes, we just happen to hit the evolution lottery a few hundred thousand years ago, give or take. Years before yahweh was "born" 6000 years ago.
Evolution's is the proverbial nail in the coffin, if you people admit that darwin and all evoultionary biologist that have come after him in the last 150 years are right, then even the gullible ones among you will have no choice to reject stories about talking snakes, dumb unclothed humans and the voyeuristic god who liked to take walks in the garden and play with his unclothed humans or whatever variation of the madness you subscribe too.

Ancient man had a lot of ignorant practices we don't do anymore, but some of us just can let go of the weirdness. That's why some accept the ancient fairy tales but reject scientific knowledge. The same knowledge that they rely on while thinking sky daddy is the one responsible.

Im sure there are many more on nairaland.

Atheism has a worldview and a belief system properly espoused by the Humanist Manifesto on the SHA (Secular Humanist Association) website.

I am not saying Atheism is or is not a religion but this 2005 court judgement says some points to note


[size=25pt]A federal court of appeals ruled yesterday Wisconsin prison officials violated an inmate's rights because they did not treat atheism as a religion.[/size]

"Atheism is [the inmate's] religion, and the group that he wanted to start was religious in nature even though it expressly rejects a belief in a supreme being," the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals said.



The court decided the inmate's First Amendment rights were violated because the prison refused to allow him to create a study group for atheists.

Brian Fahling, senior trial attorney for the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, called the court's ruling "a sort of Alice in Wonderland jurisprudence."

"Up is down, and atheism, the antithesis of religion, is religion," said Fahling.

The Supreme Court has said a religion need not be based on a belief in the existence of a supreme being. In the 1961 case of Torcaso v. Watkins, the court described "secular humanism" as a religion.

Fahling said today's ruling was "further evidence of the incoherence of Establishment Clause jurisprudence."

"It is difficult not to be somewhat jaundiced about our courts when they take clauses especially designed to protect religion from the state and turn them on their head by giving protective cover to a belief system, that, by every known definition other than the courts' is not a religion, while simultaneously declaring public expressions of true religious faith to be prohibited," Fahling said.

^^^ It is useful to post some of the info in the link here.

Court rules atheism a religion: Decides 1st Amendment protects prison inmate's right to start study group

A federal court of appeals ruled yesterday Wisconsin prison officials violated an inmate's rights because they did not treat atheism as a religion.

"Atheism is [the inmate's] religion, and the group that he wanted to start was religious in nature even though it expressly rejects a belief in a supreme being," the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals said.

The court decided the inmate's First Amendment rights were violated because the prison refused to allow him to create a study group for atheists.

Brian Fahling, senior trial attorney for the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, called the court's ruling "a sort of Alice in Wonderland jurisprudence."

"Up is down, and atheism, the antithesis of religion, is religion," said Fahling.

The Supreme Court has said a religion need not be based on a belief in the existence of a supreme being. In the 1961 case of Torcaso v. Watkins, the court described "secular humanism" as a religion.

Fahling said today's ruling was "further evidence of the incoherence of Establishment Clause jurisprudence."

"It is difficult not to be somewhat jaundiced about our courts when they take clauses especially designed to protect religion from the state and turn them on their head by giving protective cover to a belief system, that, by every known definition other than the courts' is not a religion, while simultaneously declaring public expressions of true religious faith to be prohibited," Fahling said.

Also text of judgment at http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/tmp/BM0RBPIB.pdf

Extract:

The Supreme Court has recognized atheism as equivalent
to a “religion” for purposes of the First Amendment on
numerous occasions . . . .

Edit: I initially missed toba's penultimate post; still all good . . . .

Enigma. whatever the case may be, its still very good. atheists have also hidden behind the term logic and that the theists are illogical. now the supreme court made pronouncement(not toba even though i brought out the link) that atheism is in deed a religion even though atheists are believers in the non existence of a god. can the atheist on nl accuse the supreme court judges that gave the judgement of being illogical?

toba:

Enigma. whatever the case may be, its still very good. atheists have also hidden behind the term logic and that the theists are illogical. now the supreme court made pronouncement(not toba even though i brought out the link) that atheism is in deed a religion even though atheists are believers in the non existence of a god. can the atheist on nl accuse the supreme court judges that gave the judgement of being illogical?

Once again you run to the internet. When will you stop this ?
Actually, I can accuse anyone of being illogical. Its a mere accusation. The question is whether there is substance to that accusation. It would seem that you are not well acquainted with the way the court system works. It would also seem that you did not read what you copied and pasted neither did you read the same thing that was copied and pasted by engima.

Brian Fahling, senior trial attorney for the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, called the court's ruling "a sort of[b] Alice in Wonderland jurisprudence.[/b]"

"Up is down, and atheism, the antithesis of religion, is religion," said Fahling.

You apparently never read Alice in Wonderland either, and possibly you have vaguest notions of the term "jurisprudence". Dont go rushing to buy the movie either, its not the same.

Here is more from your Fahling

Fahling said today's ruling was "further evidence of the incoherence of Establishment Clause jurisprudence."

"It is difficult not to be somewhat jaundiced about our courts when they take clauses especially designed to protect religion from the state and turn them on their head by giving protective cover to a belief system, that, by every known definition other than the courts' is not a religion, while simultaneously declaring public expressions of true religious faith to be prohibited," Fahling said.
http://www.cornswalled.com/2007/07/court-rules-atheism-religion.html

In your true "run to the internet and copy and paste anything that agrees with my position" you overlooked many things. The judgement is just 13 pages and I dont think you read it.
If a court of law declared Jesus a myth, would you stop believing in him ?

What you have done is akin to reading the headline of a newspaper and proclaiming facts on that basis. We shall delve in toto the ruling, but first,

Lets go to wiki together

In the United States, atheism is protected under the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause. In August 2005, in a case where a prison inmate was blocked by prison officials from creating an inmate group to study and discuss atheism, the court ruled this violated the inmate's rights under the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause. The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed previous Supreme Court precedent by ruling atheism be afforded equal protection with religions under the 1st amendment.[12][13]

There are also online churches that have been created by atheists to secure legal rights, to ordain atheist clergy to hold ceremonies, as well as for parody, education, and advocacy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism_and_religion

so what is this free exercise clause ?

The Free Exercise Clause is the accompanying clause with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause together read:
“ Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Exercise_Clause_of_the_First_Amendment

ok lets look at the piece you quoted

The court decided the inmate's First Amendment rights were violated because the prison refused to allow him to create a study group for atheists.

Brian Fahling, senior trial attorney for the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, called the court's ruling "a sort of Alice in Wonderland jurisprudence."

"Up is down, and atheism, the antithesis of religion, is religion," said Fahling.

Fahling said today's ruling was "further evidence of the incoherence of Establishment Clause jurisprudence."

Let us now review the case. I am going to copy word for word from the judgment itself adding commentary as I see fit.

Kaufman’s argument (was) that the prison officials violated his constitutional rights when they refused to give him permission to start a study group for atheist inmates at the prison. The events underlying Kaufman’s lawsuit occurred while he was an inmate at Wisconsin’s Waupun Correctional Institution.

While at Waupun, Kaufman submitted an official form titled “Request for New Religious Practice,” in which he asked to form an inmate group interested in humanism, atheism, and free speaking. The group would work “[t]o stimulate and promote Freedom of Thought and inquiry concerning religious beliefs, creeds, dogmas, tenets, rituals and practices[, and to] educate and provide information concerning religious beliefs, creeds, dogmas, tenets, rituals, and practices.”

Kaufman also submitted a list of atheist groups and literature. The officials concluded that Kaufman’s request was not motivated by “religious” beliefs. Accordingly, rather than evaluating the proposal under the state’s relatively more flexible policy for new religious groups, see Wis. Admin. Code § DOC 309.61, they considered it under the procedure for forming a new inmate activity group, see Wis. Admin. Code § DOC 309.365. Applying the latter standard, they denied the request, stating that they were not forming new activity groups at that time.

Kaufman argues that the defendants’ refusal to allow him to create the study group violated his rights under both the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. We note that Kaufman relies only on the First Amendment and at this stage of the litigation has not tried to take advantage of the added protections of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), 42 U.S.C. § 2000cc et seq.

We address his claim under the Free Exercise Clause first.

This is important.

An inmate retains the right to exercise his religious beliefs in prison. Tarpley v. Allen County, 312 F.3d 895, 898 (7th Cir. 2002). The problem here was that the prison officials did not treat atheism as a “religion,” perhaps in
keeping with Kaufman’s own insistence that it is the antithesis of religion

Now, here is a man suing under the free exercise clause, yet he is insisting it is not a religion. He did not apply for an activity group, neither did he take advantage of extra protection available under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.

But whether atheism is a “religion” for First Amendment purposes is a somewhat different question than whether its adherents believe in a supreme being, or attend regular devotional services, or have a sacred Scripture.

Pay attention.

The Supreme Court has said that a religion, for purposes of the First Amendment, is distinct from a “way of life,” even if that way of life is inspired by philosophical beliefs or other secular concerns.

Kinda puts things in a clear perspective doesnt it ?

A religion need not be based on a belief in the existence of a supreme being (or beings, for polytheistic faiths), nor must it be a mainstream faith. Without venturing too far into the realm of the philosophical, we have suggested in the past that when a person sincerely holds beliefs dealing with issues of “ultimate concern” that for her occupy a “place parallel to that filled by . . . God in traditionally religious persons,” those beliefs represent her religion.

Dont forget, this is for the purposes of the First Ammendment.

We have already indicated that atheism may be considered, in this specialized sense, a religion. See Reed v. Great Lakes Cos., 330 F.3d 931, 934(7th Cir. 2003) (“If we think of religion as taking a position on divinity, then atheism is indeed a form of religion.”). Kaufman claims that his atheist beliefs play a central role in his life, and the defendants do not dispute that his beliefs are deeply and sincerely held.

The Supreme Court has recognized atheism as equivalent to a “religion” for purposes of the First Amendment on numerous occasions, most recently in McCreary County, Ky. v. American Civil Liberties Union of Ky., 125 S.Ct. 2722 (2005).

The Establishment Clause itself says only that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion,” but the Court understands the reference to religion to include what it often calls “nonreligion.” In
McCreary County, it described the touchstone of Establishment Clause analysis as “the principle that the
First Amendment mandates government neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion.”

Hey look ^^^. The term non religion appears and is only described as a religion for purposes of the first ammendment.

As the Court put it
in Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38 (1985): At one time it was thought that this right [referring to the right to choose one’s own creed] merely proscribed the preference of one Christian sect over another, but would not require equal respect for the conscience of the infidel, the atheist, or the adherent of a non-Christian faith such as Islam or Judaism. But when the underlying principle has been examined in the crucible of litigation, the Court has unambiguously concluded that the individual freedom of conscience protected by the First Amendment embraces the right to select any religious faith or none at all.

In keeping with this idea, the Court has adopted a broad definition of “religion” that includes nontheistic and atheistic beliefs, as well as theistic ones.

Thus, in Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488, it said that a state cannot “pass laws or impose requirements which aid all religions as against non-believers, and neither can [it] aid those religions based on a belief in the existence of God as against those religions founded on different beliefs.” Id. at 495. Indeed, Torcaso specifically included “Secular Humanism” as an example of a religion.

It is also noteworthy that the administrative code governing Wisconsin prisons states that one factor the
warden is prohibited from considering in deciding whether an inmate’s request to form a new religious group should be granted is “the absence from the beliefs of a concept
of a supreme being.” See Wis. Admin. Code § DOC 309.61(d)(3), cited in Kaufman v. McCaughtry, 2004 WL
257133, at *9. Atheism is, among other things, a school of thought that takes a position on religion, the existence and importance of a supreme being, and a code of ethics. As such, we are satisfied that it qualifies as Kaufman’s religion for purposes of the First Amendment claims he is attempting to raise.

There is no code of ethics.

Kaufman argues that the defendants’ refusal to permit him to meet with other atheist inmates to study and discuss their beliefs violates the Free Exercise Clause. “ ‘[W]hen a prison regulation impinges on inmates’ constitutional rights, the regulation is valid if it is reasonably related to legitimate penological interests.’ In the context of the Free Exercise Clause, Kaufman must first establish that his right to practice
atheism was burdened in a significant way. plaintiff must show a “substantial burden” on a “central religious belief or practice” to prevail under the Free Exercise Clause); Civil Liberties for Urban Believers v. City
of Chicago, 342 F.3d 752, 760 (7th Cir. 2003) (collecting cases). He failed utterly to do so. Kaufman introduced no evidence showing that he would be unable to practice atheism effectively without the benefit of a weekly study group. The defendants apparently allow him to study atheist literature on his own, consult informally with other atheist inmates, and correspond with members of the atheist groups he identified, and Kaufman offered nothing to suggest that these alternatives are inadequate.

Of course he failed to do so. What central religious belief or practice is there to show for atheism ? None!

The defendants submitted an affidavit stating that allowing any group of inmates to congregate for a meeting raises security concerns and requires staff members to supervise the group. Prison officials unquestionably have a legitimate interest in maintaining institutional security. We cannot say that their denial of Kaufman’s request for a study group was not rationally related to that interest. Accordingly, the district court properly granted summary judgment on Kaufman’s claim insofar as it arises under the Free Exercise Clause.

Kaufman failed under the first ammendment/free exercise clause. He could noy prove a central religious belief to qualify under the clause, even though the court was willing to describe atheism "as a religion" for the purpose of the first ammendment.


Moving ahead, we come to

The same is not true with respect to Kaufman’s Establishment Clause claim. The Supreme Court reaffirmed
the utility of the test set forth in Lemon v. Kurtzman. A government policy or practice violates the Establishment Clause if (1) it has no secular purpose, (2) its primary effect advances or inhibits religion, or (3) it fosters an excessive entanglement with religion.
The Establishment Clause also prohibits the government from favoring one religion over another without
a legitimate secular reason.

Note 2 and 3, in connection with atheism being defined as a "religion" for the purpose of the first ammendment.

First Amendment does not allow a state to make it easier for adherents of one faith to practice their religion than for adherents of another faith to practice their religion, unless there is a secular justification for the difference in treatment.” (“Under the Establishment Clause, the government may not aid one religion, aid all
religions or favor one religion over another.”).

The problem with the district court’s analysis is that the court failed to recognize that Kaufman was trying
to start a “religious” group, in the sense we discussed earlier.

In the sense of the first ammendment. The beauty of the above is that the term "religious" comes in quotes. I did not put them there. They are there in the judgement. It should be obvious what that means.

Atheism is Kaufman’s religion, and the group that he wanted to start was religious in nature even though
it expressly rejects a belief in a supreme being. As he explained in his application, the group wanted to study freedom of thought, religious beliefs, creeds, dogmas, tenets, rituals, and practices, all presumably from an atheistic perspective.

It is undisputed that other religious groups are permitted to meet at Kaufman’s prison, and the defendants have advanced no secular reason why the security concerns they cited as a reason to deny his request for an atheist group do not apply equally to gatherings of Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, or Wiccan inmates. The defendants argue that all they are doing is accommodating religious groups as a whole, as they are required to do under RLUIPA. See Cutter, 125 S.Ct. 2113; Charles, 348 F.3d at 610-11. But the defendants havenot answered Kaufman’s argument that by accommodating some religious views, but not his, they are promoting the favored ones. Because the defendants failed even to articulate—much less support with evidence—a secularreason why a meeting of atheist inmates would pose a greater security risk than meetings of inmates of other faiths, their rejection of Kaufman’s request cannot survive the first part of the Lemon test. See Lemon, 403 U.S. at 612-13; Books, 235 F.3dat 301. We therefore vacate the grant of summary judgment in the defendants’ favor on Kaufman’s claim under the Establishment Clause [/b]and remand for further proceedings.

What then is the establishment clause ?

Under the Establishment Clause, the government may not aid one religion, aid all religions or favor one religion over another

So having established atheism as a religion [b]for the purpose of the first ammendment, Kaufman claims under the establishment clause.

That much is it as far as the court and religion are concerned. We are not inmates of the prison and so we can only speculate. I believe I said somewhere that there is a difference between an association and a sect/religion. I used to be in a chess club and we met often. Did that make it a religion ? No.

Reading the judgement, the court made it clear that the grouping of atheism under religion was only for purposes of the first ammendment. They even opined that Kaufman's application was turned down by the prison "perhaps in
keeping with Kaufman’s own insistence that it is the antithesis of religion".
It is noteworthy also that everytime the court used atheism and religion together, quotation marks were used to denote "religion". This says a lot.

So why did a man who said atheism is not a religion, turn around to apply for a religious activity group, have his request turned down, head to court and obtain judgement in his favour ? Your guess is as good as mine, but one thing is clear, he achieved his aim and atheism is still not a religion. The court has not said so. They simply classified it as one for the purpose of the fist ammendment, which they kept emphasizing. The repeated putting religion in quotes ("" shows this as well.


Now a word about the justice system. Judges are humans and subject to all human failings. There are good and bad rulings. There are also rulings that defy logic. An example was the rivers state case between Omehia and Amaechi. Some judgements are bad in law but necessary. These can only be explained by jurisprudence. Every now and then, a judge might have to deliver a ruling he knows is wrong. Unfortunately he is bound to give reasons and here the realm of jurisprudence will prevail over precedents. I'm sure like I mentioned earlier, a court ruling declaring Jesus a myth will not persuade you. Why then do you get excited over this one point that does not even support you ?

Toba you need to stop doing this. Not long ago, you were shying away from declaring that atheism is a religion, now you found an "authority" and you rush here to post.
I didnt even want to reply, but silence on my part may be mistaken as conceding to you. This took a lot of my time, time I am not going to get back. If I know you well, I have an idea of your reaction to this post.
I will not reply on this thread anymore. Outwardly, your claims seem real, but its a mirage when you look closer.

Even if you post a picture of "God" with tomorrows newspaper in his hand, proclaiming that atheism is a religion, I wont respond anymore.

After posting, this, I will copy and paste from a non lawyer, who analysed the judgement for himself, to show you how easy it would have been to read and understand the issues involved, if you had but taken the time.

Atheism and the Law

Matt Dillahunty
Atheism and The Law

While scanning through my normal news feeds and e-mails, I noticed several news reports stating that the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals declared atheism a religion in a recent decision. Atheism's legal status with respect to religion is one that has always prompted much debate. It's also one of the many issues that I feel very strongly about.

Fearing the worst and hoping for the best, I downloaded the opinion (Kaufman, James v. McCaughtry, Gary) and reviewed it. I'm not a lawyer, but I've spent a great deal of time reviewing Court decisions, especially those which pertain to First Amendment issues. What follows is my assessment of the ruling and some important information about atheism and the law.

What the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals got right:

", whether atheism is a 'religion' for First Amendment purposes is a somewhat different question than whether its adherents believe in a supreme being, or attend regular devotional services, or have a sacred Scripture."

This is an important point and the Court also made reference to the Supreme Court's opinion that a religion is distinct from a "way of life", even if that way of life is inspired by philosophical beliefs or other secular concerns. Essentially, not every belief or belief system is a religion.

The legal definition of religion, with regard to the First Amendment, may be very different from the layperson's definition. The First Amendment, in order to be effective in protecting all beliefs[b] must guarantee the freedom to hold no religious belief[/b]. This is fairly straightforward, especially if you consider - for example - that a Christian may be considered an atheist with respect to every religion except Christianity.

"Without venturing too far into the realm of the philosophical, we have suggested in the past that when a person sincerely holds beliefs dealing with issues of 'ultimate concern' that for her occupy a 'place parallel to that filled by . . . God in traditionally religious persons,' those beliefs represent her religion."

"We have already indicated that atheism may be considered, in this specialized sense, a religion. See Reed v. Great Lakes Cos., 330 F.3d 931, 934 (7th Cir. 2003) ('If we think of religion as taking a position on divinity, then atheism is indeed a form of religion.')"

This is, essentially, the basis for their decision. They have, in the past, considered atheism to be a religion in the specialized sense that atheism, like theism, specifically addresses the concept of god for the individual. This definition is an attempt to address the implied protections guaranteed by the First Amendment.

"The Supreme Court has recognized atheism as equivalent to a 'religion' for purposes of the First Amendment on numerous occasions"

They referred to another Supreme Court decision (Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38 (1985)), where the court said:

"At one time it was thought that this right [referring to the right to choose one’s own creed] merely proscribed the preference of one Christian sect over another, but would not require equal respect for the conscience of the infidel, the atheist, or the adherent of a non-Christian faith such as Islam or Judaism. But when the underlying principle has been examined in the crucible of litigation, the Court has unambiguously concluded that the individual freedom of conscience protected by the First Amendment embraces the right to select any religious faith or none at all."

As we've seen, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals hasn't declared atheism to be a religion as the layperson might usually define it, they simply acknowledged that atheism hold equal standing with religions with regard to the First Amendment. I can live with that. That doesn't mean the Court got everything correct,

What the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals got wrong:

"Atheism is, among other things, a school of thought that takes a position on religion, the existence and importance of a supreme being, and a code of ethics."

What "code of ethics"? No such code exists. Atheism is a single answer to the general question, "Do you believe in a God/god/gods?" For atheists, the answer is no. For theists the answer is yes. Apart from a position on the concept of God, there are no tenets, dogma, creed or code associated with atheism.

If the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals was presented with an atheist code of ethics, I'd love to see it. If they had no such document, they are irresponsible to mention it in a decision. If their opinion in this case was significantly based on this "code of ethics", their decision should be reviewed without regard to any such code.

I mentioned above that one of the reasons that the court ruled atheism a religion was that, like theism, it addresses the concept of god. However, theism isn't a religion. Like atheism, theism is a single position on the question of the existence of God/god/gods.

Under each of these categories are a number of belief systems, which may be classified as religion. Theism includes Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, Hinduism etc. Atheism doesn't necessarily have subcategories, [/b]though many Buddhists and Secular Humanists are, generally, atheists.

Be More Specific:

The ruling we've been discussing was with regard to a prisoner (James J. Kaufman) who claimed that his First Amendment rights were violated when the warden refused to allow him to form a group of inmates to study and discuss atheism. Specifically, he cited the Free Exercise clause and the Establishment clause. [b]The court, recognizing that the defendant "utterly failed" to demonstrate that his freedom to exercise his beliefs had been infringed, shot down the Free Exercise claim - and rightly so.

Despite the Court's reference to an atheist "code of ethics", it should be noted that atheism has only one requirement which would qualify under the Free Exercise clause - disbelief. Atheism isn't a religion in the conventional sense and there are no rituals associated with it. In order to violate an atheist's right to freely exercise their beliefs, you'd have to be able to reprogram someone's mind.

In a nutshell, Mr. Kaufman was just as free to exercise his lack of belief alone in his cell. As a prisoner he isn't necessarily afforded all of the other rights guaranteed to citizens of the United States. The right to speak freely and peaceably assemble, which atheists might choose to exercise, don't always apply to a prisoner.

The Court also considered his claim with regard to the Establishment Clause - a subject of much controversy in recent years. The Supreme Court and Circuit Courts have established a set of precedents with regard to the Establishment Clause, in an attempt to curtail religious favoritism. The "Lemon" test (Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971)) is a three-pronged test which the Courts have used on many occasions.

The Lemon Test:

"A government policy or practice violates the Establishment Clause if (1) it has no secular purpose, (2) its primary effect advances or inhibits religion, or (3) it fosters an excessive entanglement with religion."

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, referring to some of their previous decisions, stated:

"The Establishment Clause also prohibits the government from favoring one religion over another without a legitimate secular reason."

"('[T]he First Amendment does not allow a state to make it easier for adherents of one faith to practice their religion than for adherents of another faith to practice their religion, unless there is a secular justification for the difference in treatment.'); Berger v. Rensselaer Cent. Sch. Corp., 982 F.2d 1160, 1168-69 (7th Cir. 1993)"

Despite the controversy, this is just good law. It protects everyone equally, ensuring that favoritism is not afforded to any one set of beliefs at the expense of another - even if one group is a majority.

The Court, in this case, properly recognized that Mr. Kaufman's right to form a group with people who shared similar beliefs was a protected right. Unless the prison system had excluded all gatherings with regard to religion, prohibiting a group of atheists to gather is a violation of the Establishment Clause.

As we've seen, and despite the "shock" headlines to the contrary, they didn't declare that atheism was a religion, they declared that atheism was afforded equal protection with religions under the Establishment Clause.

In the end, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the law and ensured that Religious Freedom is a concept that applies to everyone equally. Apart from the reference to an atheist "code of ethics", I don't think anyone could reasonably ask for a better decision.

http://www.atheist-community.org/library/articles/read.php?id=742