Who Really is an Atheist?

[Hobbes' Choice]

Hobbes' Choice, who is currently on your ignore list, made this post.

It's also true to say that those infected with the burden of belief, when challenged tend to ignore that challenge.

[yiostheoy]

Hobbes' Choice, who is currently on your ignore list, made this post.

[Nick_A]

Lacewing wrote: If I've misunderstood what you really think about atheists, maybe you can clarify? Is "ignorantly arguing blind deniers" not at all accurate?

As I’ve said there have been and still are many intellectual atheists who do not believe in idolatry or any form of personal god. They are necessary for the whole God question. Einstein is called an atheist since he didn't believe in the personal god. Then you have the blind deniers who deny emotionally and I believe that emotional skepticism is really poison for the psyche. It is based on emotional preconception rather than intellectual impartiality. So yes, IMO blind deniers suffer a truly harmful form of ignorance

What about the old who sense the same thing? Do you think they are any more capable than the young of finding their way through it?

Yes and no. Actually around forty is when many great people like Walt Whitman for example experienced a revelation. But in many ways older people turn off and become spiritually dead. Young people haven’t been spiritually killed yet so are more open but are often held captive by spirit killers in schools they are required to attend. So the question of age is really double edged.

By the way, I don't think you ever answered a question I posed to you awhile back... and I would truly like to hear your answer:

Just curious... what do you think about children being subjected by adults to Pentecostal (or other extreme) religious environments with psychotic wailing and screaming, speaking in tongues, raging preachers, and demons being "cast out". Who protects children from the spirit killers in religion?

You seem to be focused on "spirit killers in schools", and I wonder if you're ignoring all the spirit killing that goes on in religion?

This is a good question. What is our obligation to protect the young in a free society built on freedom of religion? That is worthy of a thread of its own. Of course they should be protected by law and just because their religion says the cult leader should screw every young virgin in the community against their will, it shouldn’t be allowed. I honestly don’t know where to draw the line. I do know that secularism will attempt to destroy the truth of religion and young people should be protected against these spirit killers. At the same time older people must be free to walk away and the young ones should be protected from abuse. Look at all the abuses of Scientology for example. At what point does a person have the obligation to protect themselves from the influences of such dangerous charlatans and not rely on the police? Just walk away. If people want to be free they have the voluntary obligation to avoid being so gullible and believe everything they hear in either secular or religious advertising. The young are in a more vulnerable position and need the help of adults.

[Nick_A]

Hobbes wrote:

It's also true to say that those infected with the burden of belief, when challenged tend to ignore that challenge.

Go ahead and challenge Simone. Tell me intellectually how she is wrong and experience cannot lead to belief.

"To believe in God is not a decision we can make. All we can do is decide not to give our love to false gods. In the first place, we can decide not to believe that the future contains for us an all-sufficient good. The future is made of the same stuff as the present....

"...It is not for man to seek, or even to believe in God. He has only to refuse to believe in everything that is not God. This refusal does not presuppose belief. It is enough to recognize, what is obvious to any mind, that all the goods of this world, past, present, or future, real or imaginary, are finite and limited and radically incapable of satisfying the desire which burns perpetually with in us for an infinite and perfect good... It is not a matter of self-questioning or searching. A man has only to persist in his refusal, and one day or another God will come to him."
-- Weil, Simone, ON SCIENCE, NECESSITY, AND THE LOVE OF GOD, edited by Richard Rees, London, Oxford University Press, 1968.- ©

[yiostheoy]

Hobbes wrote:

It's also true to say that those infected with the burden of belief, when challenged tend to ignore that challenge.

Go ahead and challenge Simone. Tell me intellectually how she is wrong and experience cannot lead to belief.

"To believe in God is not a decision we can make. All we can do is decide not to give our love to false gods. In the first place, we can decide not to believe that the future contains for us an all-sufficient good. The future is made of the same stuff as the present....

"...It is not for man to seek, or even to believe in God. He has only to refuse to believe in everything that is not God. This refusal does not presuppose belief. It is enough to recognize, what is obvious to any mind, that all the goods of this world, past, present, or future, real or imaginary, are finite and limited and radically incapable of satisfying the desire which burns perpetually with in us for an infinite and perfect good... It is not a matter of self-questioning or searching. A man has only to persist in his refusal, and one day or another God will come to him."
-- Weil, Simone, ON SCIENCE, NECESSITY, AND THE LOVE OF GOD, edited by Richard Rees, London, Oxford University Press, 1968.- ©

You are truly wasting your time arguing with Hobbs.

He is an imbecile who uses fallacies for his proofs same as Protagoras of ancient Athens.

[sthitapragya]

Sthit wrote: Well, I know of fundamentalists who destroy things by the thousands too. And the OP is not asking who an atheist is. It is saying what you think an atheist is. If you were asking who an atheist is, you would ask and I would tell you.

No, the OP asks what it means if both blind belief and blind denial are based on idolatry. You can deny you are a blind denier but the OP still asks what blind belief and blind denial means psychologically and theoretically. From the OP

I already told you what it means. You refuse to read it. Blind belief is what you have. It means psychologically you can't let go of God. Blind denial is something you made up assuage your inability to accept how atheists can let go of God and you cannot. If you want proof that my denial is not blind, I challenge you to tell me what you believe God to be. I will tell you why I do of believe in him. You understand? I WILL GIVE A REASON. not blind denial.

What does it mean if both belief and denial are expressions of idolatry? What does it mean to believe and what does it mean to deny if both are based on idolatry? An atheist may be denying God but perhaps they may only be denying an idol. As usual Simone Weil supplies food for thought.

The problem here is your blind belief in whatever she says. There is blind belief. You can blindly believe something because of psychological reasons. There is no blind denial. YOU CANNOT BLINDLY DENY SOMETHING. YOU HAVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DENYING AND WHY. IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO BLINDLY DENY ANYTHING. that is a figment of your childish imagination.

[Skip]

It is not for man to seek, or even to believe in God. He has only to refuse to believe in everything that is not God.

It is not for man to seek, or even to believe in God. He has only to refuse to believe in everything that is not God.

This has to go in the ten stupidest things I've ever read. No, better make that the top three. It's right up there with "a high tide floats all boats" and "He'll make America great again." It's stupid in more ways that one can really stomach to analyze this late at night. That Sim One must have been one very silly saus... er... the counterpa... anyway, damn silly.

[yiostheoy]

It is not for man to seek, or even to believe in God. He has only to refuse to believe in everything that is not God.

It is not for man to seek, or even to believe in God. He has only to refuse to believe in everything that is not God.

This has to go in the ten stupidest things I've ever read. No, better make that the top three. It's right up there with "a high tide floats all boats" and "He'll make America great again." It's stupid in more ways that one can really stomach to analyze this late at night. That Sim One must have been one very silly saus... er... the counterpa... anyway, damn silly.

The interesting thing about "make America great again" is that it is practically a direct quote of Adolf Hitler.

There have been rumors that Trump studies Adolf's speeches.

[sthitapragya]

"...It is not for man to seek, or even to believe in God.

In that case every person would believe in the same God. There would not be so many religions or even atheists. We would all be one religion and peace would reign over the world. Unless there are many Gods including Gods of hate which would explain the reality of today where so much killing goes on in the name of religion.

By the way, I felt like I am arguing against a child because what simone says is that childish.

He has only to refuse to believe in everything that is not God.

And what is this everything that is not God? You need to explain this bizarre statement.

This refusal does not presuppose belief. It is enough to recognize, what is obvious to any mind, that all the goods of this world, past, present, or future, real or imaginary, are finite and limited and radically incapable of satisfying the desire which burns perpetually with in us for an infinite and perfect good... It is not a matter of self-questioning or searching. A man has only to persist in his refusal, and one day or another God will come to him."
-- Weil, Simone, ON SCIENCE, NECESSITY, AND THE LOVE OF GOD, edited by Richard Rees, London, Oxford University Press, 1968.- ©

[/quote][/quote]
First of all, I have no burning desire for that good crap she is talking about. She just assumes, falsely, that she is a psychologically normal, and therefore everyone else thinks and feels like her. Unfortunately, not everyone in the world is the same. So I have no burning desire for infinite and perfect good. I do have a desire to taste every whisky ever made before I die but that is it.

And the last part is just wishful thinking. Typical of a theist who wants every atheist to be like her. This woman has the intellect of a fish and you follow her blindly. Says a lot about you. SHE IS ACTUALLY PREDICTing THE FUTURE. And you believe in her supernatural powers. You really are a blind believer. How does she know what will happen in the future?

The problem with arguing against her is that what she writes is embarrassingly stupid and I really don't understand what you see in this crap. Did you actually pay money to buy her books?

I have heard of suckers but you really take the cake. It boggles my mind that you can believe and actually enjoy the absolutely mind zombifying crap this woman writes.

IF you really want to understand how an atheist thinks, read this. viewtopic.php?f=11&t=19198

[Nick_A]

You wouldn’t appreciate this sthit but some young people have enough in them so that they can stand up to the spirit killers and acquire what the spirit killers are incapable of

We shall send the Red Virgin as far away as possible so that we shall never hear of her again."-- C. Bouglé, Director of Career Placement Ecole normale supérieure

What does it matter that she finished ahead of her fellow student Simone de Beauvoir? She thought for herself and acted on her thoughts so was an annoyance to the powers that be. Of course you would have had her boiled in oil. So the spirit killer is happy to never hear of her again and Albert Camus calls her the only great mind of the times and T.S. Eliot called her a genius. To you she is just a stupid woman. Stephanie Strickland in her intro to her poem suggests something different. Of course she may also be just another stupid woman

From The Red Virgin: A Poem of Simone Weil by Stephanie Strickland which won the Brittingham Prize in Poetry in 1993.

Weil used her body as a tool as well as a weapon. She threw herself under the wheels of the same issues women are starving for answers to today: issues of hunger, violence, exclusion, betrayl of the the body, inability to be heard, and self-hate. ...

"Weil, our shrewdest political observer since Machiavelli, was never deceived by the glamor of power, and she committed herself to resisting force in whatever guise. More 'prophet' than 'saint,' more 'wise woman' than either, she bore a particular kind of bodily knowledge that the Western tradition cannot absorb. Simone Weil belongs to a world culture, still to be formed, where the voices of multiple classes, castes, races, genders, ethnicities, nationalities, and religions, can be respected. To achieve this culture is an impossible task, but, as Weil would remind us, not on that account to be forsaken.

Today we look to Weil for hope, for meditation, for the bridge a body makes. She knew that the truth had been 'taken captive,' and that we must 'seek at greater depth our own source,' because power destroys the past, the past with its treasures of alternative ideals that stand in judgment on the present."

You cannot understand people like this. You are too involved with complaining and denying. Yet I appreciate them and believe their collective influence is essential for humanity to survive technology. We have chosen our paths.

[sthitapragya]

You wouldn’t appreciate this sthit but some young people have enough in them so that they can stand up to the spirit killers and acquire what the spirit killers are incapable of

We shall send the Red Virgin as far away as possible so that we shall never hear of her again."-- C. Bouglé, Director of Career Placement Ecole normale supérieure

What does it matter that she finished ahead of her fellow student Simone de Beauvoir? She thought for herself and acted on her thoughts so was an annoyance to the powers that be. Of course you would have had her boiled in oil. So the spirit killer is happy to never hear of her again and Albert Camus calls her the only great mind of the times and T.S. Eliot called her a genius. To you she is just a stupid woman. Stephanie Strickland in her intro to her poem suggests something different. Of course she may also be just another stupid woman

From The Red Virgin: A Poem of Simone Weil by Stephanie Strickland which won the Brittingham Prize in Poetry in 1993.

Weil used her body as a tool as well as a weapon. She threw herself under the wheels of the same issues women are starving for answers to today: issues of hunger, violence, exclusion, betrayl of the the body, inability to be heard, and self-hate. ...

"Weil, our shrewdest political observer since Machiavelli, was never deceived by the glamor of power, and she committed herself to resisting force in whatever guise. More 'prophet' than 'saint,' more 'wise woman' than either, she bore a particular kind of bodily knowledge that the Western tradition cannot absorb. Simone Weil belongs to a world culture, still to be formed, where the voices of multiple classes, castes, races, genders, ethnicities, nationalities, and religions, can be respected. To achieve this culture is an impossible task, but, as Weil would remind us, not on that account to be forsaken.

Today we look to Weil for hope, for meditation, for the bridge a body makes. She knew that the truth had been 'taken captive,' and that we must 'seek at greater depth our own source,' because power destroys the past, the past with its treasures of alternative ideals that stand in judgment on the present."

You cannot understand people like this. You are too involved with complaining and denying. Yet I appreciate them and believe their collective influence is essential for humanity to survive technology. We have chosen our paths.

Yeah well. Enjoy. It's money well spent. Oh, and would you be interested in exclusive rights to a famous bridge? I have all the papers and the potential for money making is fantastic. Let me know. Simone already approves of the bridge so as FAR as you are concerned, it's pure gold.

[Hobbes' Choice]

Hobbes wrote:

It's also true to say that those infected with the burden of belief, when challenged tend to ignore that challenge.

Go ahead and challenge Simone. Tell me intellectually how she is wrong and experience cannot lead to belief.

Simone is dead. You, on the other hand are infected with belief. If you had said anything worthwhile to say I'll challenge you. But Simone is nothing more than a cloudy headed mystic, poetic and vain.
There is nothing here of substance.
It's a poem, this is not Philosophy and has no place here, because you are confusing poems with evidence.

[Walker]

Both blind believers and blind deniers remain psychological prisoners in Plato's cave. My concern is for the young who intuitively sense they are surrounded by absurdity and seek a way out from this blindness Plato referred to as attachments to the shadows on the wall. You are helping me to understand the power of attachments which enchant and captivate both blind believers and blind deniers .

So far the assertions and conclusions displayed by atheists amount to:

- no God
- no creation
- no non-existence
- no know

There’s a pattern here.

When you say no, one part of your brain lights up. When you say yes, another part lights up. Didn’t hear about maybe, which may be lights out. Zombie/agnostic?

May this label-sorting benefit all life.

[Hobbes' Choice]

Both blind believers and blind deniers remain psychological prisoners in Plato's cave. My concern is for the young who intuitively sense they are surrounded by absurdity and seek a way out from this blindness Plato referred to as attachments to the shadows on the wall. You are helping me to understand the power of attachments which enchant and captivate both blind believers and blind deniers .

So far the assertions and conclusions displayed by atheists amount to:

- no God.

You got this one right.

[sthitapragya]

Both blind believers and blind deniers remain psychological prisoners in Plato's cave. My concern is for the young who intuitively sense they are surrounded by absurdity and seek a way out from this blindness Plato referred to as attachments to the shadows on the wall. You are helping me to understand the power of attachments which enchant and captivate both blind believers and blind deniers .

So far the assertions and conclusions displayed by atheists amount to:

- no God
- no creation
- no non-existence
- no know

There’s a pattern here.

When you say no, one part of your brain lights up. When you say yes, another part lights up. Didn’t hear about maybe, which may be lights out. Zombie/agnostic?

May this label-sorting benefit all life.

When your brain simply cannot grasp what is being said, you can interpret anything in anyway you can with your limited ability. So kudos to you for getting some of it almost right.

From personal experience I can say you have about 5 years to go before you get to know and analyse enough to understand what we say, provided you keep an open mind. Otherwise you have reached the limit of your growth.

It took me about three years from where you are now. So I am giving you 5 since I was more open minded than you at this stage.