Is an athiest movement really possible?

[Bolas 5]

From this thread:
http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3656074#3656074

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxRwQoNv4qA


He does make some valid points, but is the call for athiests to rise up realistic?

* Atheism in itself is a paradox: believing in doubt. This requires more intelligence to grasp as questioning is harder than just believing.
* People can't just blindly accept it like they can do with religion.
* Atheism has no afterlife reward or punishment structure.

How would you even organize athiests?

Ironically to really do it, atheism would have to start acting like a religion. Organizing and recruiting, using a fear and reward system, possibly picking a book to use.

Of course any fear (religious wars, bigotry, etc.) or rewards (acceptance, tolerance, etc.) would be limited to a persons finite time alive vs. religions eternity promises.

Maybe we need to hire a marketing group.

Stupidity if left untreated is self-correcting
If ya can't be good, look good, if that fails, make 'em laugh.

[billvon 2,792]

>but is the call for athiests to rise up realistic?

The Tamil Tigers did it. Heck, they _invented_ the suicide belt, and they don't have an afterlife to entice people with.

[Andy9o8 1]

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* Atheism in itself is a paradox: believing in doubt. This requires more intelligence to grasp as questioning is harder than just believing.
* People can't just blindly accept it like they can do with religion.

Not correct. People try too hard to define atheism, and in the process, they often wind up over-defining it.
True atheism is not "believing in doubt" (although that's a common misconception); indeed, it is not a type of belief at all. Rather it is, simply, an absence of any type of religious or spiritual belief.

[Bolas 5]

Hindu terrorsts.

Sri Lanka should have remembered to keep church and state separate.

Of course that brings up an interesting question, how many religions would violently revolt if they were simply officially removed from government? I'm speaking more of countries that have official religious ties, not countries like the US or others that have pseudo ties.

Stupidity if left untreated is self-correcting
If ya can't be good, look good, if that fails, make 'em laugh.

[billvon 2,792]

>how many religions would violently revolt if they were simply officially
>removed from government?

In many places religion is PART of the government, so it would be like asking "would the US violently revolt if the House and Senate were removed from the government?"

[Bolas 5]

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* Atheism in itself is a paradox: believing in doubt. This requires more intelligence to grasp as questioning is harder than just believing.
* People can't just blindly accept it like they can do with religion.

Not correct. People try too hard to define atheism, and in the process, they often wind up over-defining it.
True atheism is not "believing in doubt" (although that's a common misconception); indeed, it is not a type of belief at all. Rather it is, simply, an absence of any type of religious or spiritual belief.

While that may be the case, they defend their belief with doubt. Otherwise, they are just as close minded as any religious group.

Stupidity if left untreated is self-correcting
If ya can't be good, look good, if that fails, make 'em laugh.

[quade 4]

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. . . so it would be like asking "would the US violently revolt if the House and Senate were removed from the government?"

Did you say revolt or celebrate?

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[Bolas 5]

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>how many religions would violently revolt if they were simply officially
>removed from government?

In many places religion is PART of the government, so it would be like asking "would the US violently revolt if the House and Senate were removed from the government?"

These days?

Obviously, it could not just be totally removed without some form of replacement.

Stupidity if left untreated is self-correcting
If ya can't be good, look good, if that fails, make 'em laugh.

[Will_Evo 0]

I wish Atheists would speak out, I wish atheists would do something besides sit back and let religion rule the world. Religion and its core ideas literally make me sick to the stomach. Religion is absolutely detrimental to society, but without information and anyone challenging it, religion will remain a disgusting stain in human history. Here is a quote from an article I wrote not to long ago.

"Religion is fundamentally the single greatest failure in humanity, in its complexity, we have allowed ourselves to forget reason on an outrageous scale with little to no question of its validity. Furthermore, because of this blind faith, humans have created the single greatest motive for murder, and justified it"

Anyways, to what you said, atheists do not need a book, a scare factor, or recruiting, we just need to promote doubt in the certainty that religious followers have. The rest will play itself out.

Will Evo

Zoo Crew

[Andy9o8 1]

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* Atheism in itself is a paradox: believing in doubt. This requires more intelligence to grasp as questioning is harder than just believing.
* People can't just blindly accept it like they can do with religion.

Not correct. People try too hard to define atheism, and in the process, they often wind up over-defining it.
True atheism is not "believing in doubt" (although that's a common misconception); indeed, it is not a type of belief at all. Rather it is, simply, an absence of any type of religious or spiritual belief.

While that may be the case, they defend their belief with doubt. Otherwise, they are just as close minded as any religious group.

Sorry but you're still not correct. The minor point is that, semantically, they don't "defend their belief"; rather, they assert their absence of religious belief.

The major point is that, substantively, calling atheists "closed-minded" makes no more sense than calling an adult parent "closed minded" for not being open-minded to their 4-year old child's belief in monsters under his bed in the dark. One can conjure up any myth or fantasy, unsupported by any real evidence, and then call another person "closed minded" for refusing to accept that myth or fantasy in the absence of real evidence. Once you assert that your belief in your own religion is factually correct, but that another person's belief in Santa Claus is factually incorrect, then all you're really doing is saying that your myth is better than his myth. The truth, of course, is that they are equal.

"Ah," religious people often ask, "can you prove that God does not exist?" Well, of course not; but that's the point. An absence of proof of the falsity of a myth is not proof of its factual correctness. Religious belief is predicated on pure faith; it is not predicated on any physical, scientific or corporeal evidence. That being the case, the burden is solely upon the religious to prove the correctness of their beliefs (if they so choose); it is not upon atheists to prove the correctness of their absence of religious belief.

[Bolas 5]

Open mindedness is not belief. Open mindedness just means they want others to prove what they believe.

Re: your 4 year old bed monsters example. The parent knows that there are no monsters, but rather than just telling the kid there aren't any and shutup and go to sleep, let the child try and prove it. When they fail or it turns out to be a pet or a weird shadow, they're more likely to accept your response.
(Disclaimer: Not a parent)

Ah yes, the old argument that if you can't prove it not to be it must be. I could claim to be able to jump 30 feet in the air on Earth but until I do, it's assumed I can't, vs. just because I haven't done it yet, means I can.

Stupidity if left untreated is self-correcting
If ya can't be good, look good, if that fails, make 'em laugh.

[Bolas 5]

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we just need to promote doubt in the certainty that religious followers have. The rest will play itself out.

Will Evo

How do you fight using logic against something illogical?

Most religious people have that doubt already, but just throw the "faith" card on it.

Stupidity if left untreated is self-correcting
If ya can't be good, look good, if that fails, make 'em laugh.

[dropoutdave 0]

If anyone is interested there's some good Atheist-Creationist debates by this guy -

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http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=762A731FA12BCB57

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May Contain Nut traces......

[Will_Evo 0]

You cant say its logic or illogical, its completely relative, what you can say, is what about this part of what you believe, and question it, it takes zero input from an atheists stand point.

-Evo

Zoo Crew

[lurch 0]

Yes I think its possible, but not as you've described. Totally wrong way to do it. Last thing we need is to be working via coercion, threats and rewards.
If I were going to start evangelizing or otherwise trying to spread my own take on atheism, morality and philosophy, it'd be by positive means.
Meaning emphasizing a constructive, productive, humanist perspective.
Besides, I don't see it as "believing in doubt", I see it as simply a refusal to believe the self-evidently fantastical bullshit believed by everyone else. To me atheism is addition by subtraction...removing/abstaining from belief in mystical crap frees the mind to see the universe for what it is, as it is, without degrading oneself by either worshipping things or living under the fear of whatever believers think will be done to them by their gods after they're dead. I spent my first 15 years in a religion-saturated environment, complete with lots of guilt and fear. Leaving that environment and shedding what token remnants of religious belief I still had at that age added enormous freedom to my life. In my mid-teens I had a short period of curiosity and experimentation with the occult and new age/witchcraft style bullshit, and when I found it all to be just as much bullshit as the religious stuff it is related to, discarded all of it in favor of rational objectivism.
So if you want to build a rational atheistic movement, you need a clean, honest foundation. It should emphasize a drive to better yourself, to improve the human species by upgrading and improving the one individual you have control over....you.

Personally I'd make a point of highlighting ideas such as taking care of other people, totally random acts of kindness, empathy and understanding of others, and the deliberate choice to be a good person by the best standards you can find with the objective of contributing as much as possible to the positive life experiences of the people you come in contact with.
Since I lack a bunch of icons to tag it with, no named belief structure, I tend to think of it as just serving the light. Ever read up about the census and "jedi" being a popular religious entry? That'd be me. If I had to claim SOME religion I'd call myself a jedi. I love how popular that has become... a self-admittedly made-up fictional religion with no real structure or creed beyond "try to be good". I work for the light side of the force, (the "force" being vaguely defined as that which contributes to positive human experience) and I make my choices based on that. The only guilt I feel is when I fail to live up to that ideal, and theres always room to improve it.

Feeling irritable today? I try to smile at people who annoy me, anyway. Being snappish, petty or vengeful does not serve the light. It lessens the person being that way, and takes away from everyone who has to deal with it.
Being an atheist has added enormously to my life experience. Knowing there is no punishment nor reward, leaves existence a truly open-ended thing, limited only by my own choices. Taking responsibility for your own outcome forces you to better yourself. I figure, you get only one shot, better make it count. You're here, you're gone someday. Could be any day. You're responsible for writing your own story. You are the starring role in it. How do you want it to be? Hero or villain? You gonna do damage, or leave the world a better place than you found it? Encourage positivity and enthusiasm, and live the ideal here and now, practice it by your actions.

Its the little things that matter. When a child smiles at you, even if you are angry or upset about something at that moment, drop it at once. Have a sense of priority, and smile back. This goes for adults, too. I used to pass through this tollbooth all the time. There was this little old lady I kept seeing in various booths. Always had this horrible, grim look on her face. Must have been stuck in some real bad long term depression or painful life trip or something. One look at her face and you just knew for her, life sucked.

I decided to break that. Call it a whimsical impulse to see if I could spread a little infectious joy in what looked like rather stony, hard ground. Next time I saw her, in the 3 seconds of human interaction time available to me handing her a dollar passing through the booth, I grinned at her and said, "Smile!" Got a stone face in return.
Mischeivous positivity is SUCH a fun weapon. I kept hitting her with the word and the grin for months. Never a flicker of a crack in that harsh face. I mixed it up a bit over time, occasionally passing through saying "have a nice day" or "Come on, I know you've got one, Big Smile! (step on the gas and keep talking, so the last thing she hears as I drive away is this voice dopplering away going "Big smile!")
In the end I won. Rolled up one day and grinned at her, and her face cracked. I put on a comically wide-eyed look and said "oh hell yeah" and she turned her face away and looked down at the register in the booth like she didn't want me to see the look on her face. But from the side, I could see her smiling. I handed her a dollar for the toll and said "Gotcha!!!! a smile at last! Woohoo! Alright! Yeah! Have a good one!" The fact that her smile clearly made my day set off a self-reinforcing positive feedback loop and she smiled wider at my reaction, which in turn made me lose it completely, and I rolled away laughing fit to split. Victory! Somebody is no longer unhappy!
Its a tiny victory, but thats how you improve the world, little bit at a time.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Calling for atheists to "rise up" smacks of the same underlying mindset that gave religion such a bad rep in the first place, sort of implies a certain intent to gang up on and coerce those who do not believe as we do. Don't "rise up," reach out.
-B

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[BIGUN 1,233]

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How would you even organize athiests?

Well, first they'd need a mission statement. You know; something like, "We will not argue with those who believe in Jesus, God, Allah," etc. Then, start a web site that had a single web page with nothing but a black background on it. It's always been interesting to not only listen to the arguments among religions about which is the true religion, but if an atheist shows up; what do they argue about - nothing.

But wait, then there's the whole agnostic thing. They wouldn't fit in either group - believers or non-believers. Maybe they'd qualify for some kind of small business set-aside program.

Sorry... I'm in "a" mood.

Nobody has time to listen; because they're desperately chasing the need of being heard.

[Andy9o8 1]

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How would you even organize athiests?

Well, first they'd need a mission statement.

They already have a mission statement:





















.


Feel free to cut & paste.

[sandi 0]

I like this statement better.

From http://www.reasonproject.org/about/

The Reason Project is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society. Drawing on the talents of the most prominent and creative thinkers across a wide range of disciplines, The Reason Project seeks to encourage critical thinking and wise public policy through a variety of interrelated projects. The foundation will convene conferences, produce films, sponsor scientific studies and opinion polls, publish original research, award grants to other charitable organizations, and offer material support to religious dissidents and public intellectuals — all with the purpose of eroding the influence of dogmatism, superstition, and bigotry in our world.

While the foundation is devoted to fostering critical thinking generally, we believe that religious ideas require a special focus. Both science and the arts are built upon cultures of vigorous self-criticism; religious discourse is not. As a result, religious dogmatism still reigns unchallenged in almost every society on earth—dividing humanity from itself, inflaming conflict, preventing wise public policy, and diverting scarce resources. One of the primary goals of The Reason Project is to change this increasingly unhealthy status quo.

[TrophyHusband 0]

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I wish Atheists would speak out, I wish atheists would do something besides sit back and let religion rule the world.

to try to convert everyone one else over to your belief system is wrong no matter what side you are on. let's set aside the fact that it would be so futile to even try that, to steal a line from another post on dz.com, you might as well stand on your porch and fuck north. converting everyone to atheism will not solve any problems. lets say that some day get to the point where they stop believing in mythical omnipotent beings and all that afterlife stuff. humans will still have their dogma. just look at the global warming--excuse me-- "climate change" debate going on now. getting rid of religion solves nothing.

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we just need to promote doubt in the certainty that religious followers have.

why? why not just leave people alone to believe what they want to believe? i couldn't imagine how devistated my grandma would be if someone were to make her doubt her life-long beliefs. she's certain that when she dies, she'll get to be with jesus. she would have a miserable existance for the rest of her days if someone were to convince her that may not happen.

one thing i love about being atheist is that i don't have to promote my beliefs. i don't have to try to convince people to come to my way of thinking.

"Your scrotum is quite nice" - Skymama
www.kjandmegan.com

[Bolas 5]

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Taking responsibility for your own outcome

Personal responsibility?
Shit, we're fucked.

Stupidity if left untreated is self-correcting
If ya can't be good, look good, if that fails, make 'em laugh.

[Will_Evo 0]

The reson you don't let people believe what they want to be believe is because their beliefs, are dangerous. Some examples of things that religion causes and promotes.

9/11-caused by religion

The near halt to stem cell research-caused by a religious president

The terrible living conditions in middle eastern countries- Caused by religious extremeism

The failure of our government-As of now, it is statisically impossible for any person to become president that is not a christian. In fact it more likely that someone would vote for a homosexual, and perosn in their 3rd marriage, or someone over 75 yrs of age before they would vote for an atheist.

The future of nuclear weapons-Imagine if the same people who conducted 9/11, had a nuke instead of planes?

The list can go on and on...these are the reasons religion cannot go unchecked.


"Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who dont have all the answers to think that they do. Most people who think that its wonderful when someone says im willing lord Ill do whatever you want me to do...except since there are no gods actually talking to us that void is filled in by people with their own corruptions and limitations, and agendas"-Bill Maher


-Evo

Zoo Crew

[feuergnom 24]

yep. join the dudeist skydivers association

The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle

dudeist skydiver # 666

[RonD1120 59]

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From this thread:
http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3656074#3656074

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxRwQoNv4qA


He does make some valid points, but is the call for athiests to rise up realistic?

* Atheism in itself is a paradox: believing in doubt. This requires more intelligence to grasp as questioning is harder than just believing.
* People can't just blindly accept it like they can do with religion.
* Atheism has no afterlife reward or punishment structure.

How would you even organize athiests?

I think it would be difficult to organize atheists on a world wide basis. Madalyn Murray O'Haire probably came as close as anyone here in the U.S. with her campaign against school prayer. We also have the sporadic outbursts over the "under God" phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance. Those were specific points and not strong enough to pull a massive movement together.

During my college years in the 60's we had the "God is Dead" movement but it did not go much farther than the philosophy department.

It has been my experience that people aren't so much against the notion that God exists as they are against being held accountable to Him. It is very difficult for a person to face a problem, make a decision, act on the decision and, admit it was the wrong decision.

As a substance abuse treatment counselor, one of my group lessons concerned teaching folks how to make a simple linear decision tree i.e., problem ->thought->decision->action->evaluation=yes it worked; no it did not work. People tend to hold on to the immature position of not being able to defer immediate gratification. I want what I want, when I want it and, I want it now. Formal education does not eliminate the desire, or the behavior completely.

The best moderator of behavior is individual conscience. Conscience is only as good as the individual's initial training. The far end of this continuum is the sociopath.

So, IMO, the root element of the organization is not that there is no God but rather God really doesn't care what I do because He is God. So start there and it will naturally evolve into there is no God.

In this movement everyone is free and capable of doing whatever they feel like doing, whenever they feel like doing it. Your law is the opinion of your neighbors. I think this would be an existential utopia.

The movement would have to start with a base group living in a communal environment. We have such group in the U.S. called "the Rainbow People," not to be confused with the Rainbow Coalition. This nomadic group has existed about 40 years as far as I know. Not being a member, I don't know there collective thoughts about God. However, their anti-middle class values, I think, would allow them to be open to such an idea. A primary rock in their foundation is their belief that they are not, should not and, cannot be held accountable.

So, without God, each is allowed to satisfy all hedonistic desires. There is no divine moral code only a socially defined moral code. This is the formula we used in Taos, NM during the 70's. I participated in the experiment from 1976-81.

Look for the shiny things of God revealed by the Holy Spirit. They only last for an instant but it is a Holy Instant. Let your soul absorb them.

[TrophyHusband 0]

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The reson you don't let people believe what they want to be believe...

wow. good luck with that.

"Your scrotum is quite nice" - Skymama
www.kjandmegan.com

[Will_Evo 0]

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The reson you don't let people believe what they want to be believe...

wow. good luck with that.

I will fess up..that did not come out right whats so ever....def not what I intended. My bad 100%

What I meant, is more along the lines of you don't let religious beliefs go unchecked, or not contended.

I noticed my mistake as soon as I clicked post. Thanks for calling me out, seriously

-Evo

Edit: Just to be clear I am not being sarcastic, I really do appreciate being called out on that, quite the hypocritical thing to say, espeically in a conversation like this. Thanks.

Zoo Crew