Is an athiest movement really possible?

[frequentfaller 0]

yeah, i guess you're right. those muslims, jews and palestinians love each other. damn oil

Born ok 1st time.

[FreeflyChile 0]

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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?

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.

I think part of the problem would be funding. if you don't have guilt as a way to get money from your members ala religion, how the hell will you get your members to contribute?

[rehmwa 2]

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I think part of the problem would be funding. if you don't have guilt as a way to get money from your members ala religion, how the hell will you get your members to contribute?

do what government does - guilt to get the tax increases voted in - then take it

or other governments - just take it

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Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[FreeflyChile 0]

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I think part of the problem would be funding. if you don't have guilt as a way to get money from your members ala religion, how the hell will you get your members to contribute?

do what government does - guilt to get the tax increases voted in - then take it

or other governments - just take it

But that's government - my point is that how would an atheist movement (parallel to/organized similar to an established religion) force their members to 'voluntarily' give?

[rehmwa 2]

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I think part of the problem would be funding. if you don't have guilt as a way to get money from your members ala religion, how the hell will you get your members to contribute?

do what government does - guilt to get the tax increases voted in - then take it

or other governments - just take it

But that's government - my point is that how would an atheist movement (parallel to/organized similar to an established religion) force their members to 'voluntarily' give?

tell them that money is just a figment of their imagination I guess

or get them to give for "green" reasons (ooops, that's another false guilt based religion - can't count it)

I'm out of ideas - your true atheist won't care enough to donate, and the 'religious' atheists are too busy trying to belittle everyone else that they'll forget to sign the checks


(I like that phrase - "force their members to voluntarily give" - government and religion are SO similar it scares me)

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Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[SpeedRacer 1]

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Is an athiest movement really possible?

It'll never catch on until atheists figure out who to talk to during sex.

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[Nightingale 0]

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It'll never catch on until atheists figure out who to talk to during sex.

Their partner?

[Bolas 5]

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It'll never catch on until atheists figure out who to talk to during sex.

Their partner?

As long as it's not by name... Way to easy to screw that one up...

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

[rhys 0]

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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.

I am an deist/agnostic. I belive is something, but I refrain from using the word God, as it suggests a chistian background, in which i am totally against.

Most claimed Atheists(as I was) will probably be agnostic/deist themselves without realising.

Nature and existance itself are the ones we should respect and worship, we can use but we should not abuse.

There is plenty for all, just not all for plenty, as we unfortunately seem to wish for these days.

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, then the world will see peace." - 'Jimi' Hendrix

[SpeedRacer 1]

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It'll never catch on until atheists figure out who to talk to during sex.

Their partner?

As long as it's not by name... Way to easy to screw that one up...

yeah, for most people here it would be their own hand.

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[Royd 0]

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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

You must believe in eternity.... Jesus Christ, it took forever, to read that post.

[Royd 0]

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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.

Let's not forget Stalin and Lenin, and any number of other godless thinkers.

[riddler 0]

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Let's not forget Stalin and Lenin, and any number of other godless thinkers.

Yep, you're right, of course. All atheists are by-definition, also communists.

Except for Stalin, he was a closet believer:

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Historian Edvard Radzinsky used recently discovered secret archives and noted a story that changed Stalin's attitude toward religion.[257] The story in which Ilya, Metropolitan of the Lebanon Mountains, claimed to receive a sign from heaven that "The churches and monasteries must be reopened throughout the country. Priests must be brought back from imprisonment, Leningrad must not be surrendered, but the sacred icon of Our Lady of Kazan should be carried around the city boundary, taken on to Moscow, where a service should be held, and thence to Stalingrad Tsaritsyn."[257] Shortly thereafter, Stalin's attitude changed and "Whatever the reason, after his mysterious retreat, he began making his peace with God. Something happened which no historian has yet written about. On his orders many priests were brought back to the camps. In Leningrad, besieged by the Germans and gradually dying of hunger, the inhabitants were astounded, and uplifted, to see wonder-working icon Our Lady of Kazan brought out into the streets and borne in procession."[257] Radzinsky asked, "Had he seen the light? Had fear made him run to his Father? Had the Marxist God-Man simply decided to exploit belief in God? Or was it all of these things at once?."[257]

During the Second World War Stalin reopened the Churches. One reason could have been to motivate the majority of the population who had Christian beliefs. The reasoning behind this is that by changing the official policy of the party and the state towards religion, the Church and its clergymen could be to his disposal in mobilizing the war effort. On September 4, 1943, Stalin invited Metropolitan Sergius, Metropolitan Alexy and Metropolitan Nikolay to the Kremlin and proposed to reestablish the Moscow Patriarchate, which had been suspended since 1925, and elect the Patriarch. On September 8, 1943, Metropolitan Sergius was elected Patriarch.

Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD