https://youtu.be/T_XVxuu0SVs
I'm with NdGT, among others, who don't self identify with atheism, despite the fact we don't believe in the Judeo Christian (Biblical) version of God most of our neighbors believe in.
I do believe in Einstein's god, only one that does play dice with the universe on a quantum level, only the dice are loaded in favor of cosmos instead of chaos.

“I believe”, Bull Durham

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mn5crhTusSA

I need to watch that movie

Wow ! Famous people claiming they are not Atheists. Since they are famous they must be on to something .

You mean kinda like there were other people on Kobi's helicopter, but who cares?

I've always seen atheism as a "set" like in set theory. You have a bunch of elements and subsets as well. Agnostics technically don't believe in a god, antitheists don't, and then you have the standard, "pretty sure there's no god" ones.

But I've always been amazed at how the most obvious class of atheists is always ignored or diminished, and I suppose most fit into it: those that simply don't care if there is a god. I think this is because many theists love to fight, and in order to fight, they need someone to oppose them and take a position that can be fought with. How do you fight apathy? And since so many theists like to say that atheists are somehow pressuring them or society to become atheistic, an apathetic atheist is the best way to go.

Surely a god would not tell someone to tell someone to tell someone (and so on) that they exist. It always seemed to me that nobody really obeys a god anyway, they obey a person that claims to speak on behalf of a god.

Welcome to the wonderful world of apatheism. Google it, it's actually a thing.

I have self-identified as "apatheist" for years. I don't know, and I don't care. There is a lot of other material on my plate to keep me busy.

Yup. You will eliminate us Atheists by re-defining us.

Dave the Atheist Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yup. You will eliminate us Atheists by re-defining
> us.

I was a nihilist after 9-11.
The first thing I said was, "Nietzsche was right, god is dead."
That did it for me. Gordon B. Hinkley put a nail in God's coffin for me, when he admitted he was just a feeble minded old man who knew no more about the intentions of god on 9-11 than the dog laying on my back porch, by not saying jack shit when I needed to figure that shit out.
I quit looking to religion to answer questions for me on 9-11. I figured we were on our own after that.
There's no savior that's going to save us from killing each other, especially now that we've really got the capability of doing it, completely and finally. If we're going to save ourselves we've got to do the opposite of war and violence, otherwise it spirals down to zero pretty damned quick.
But, there were not a lot of other people down there in that deep dark hole of depression and I had to climb out of that dark place after awhile. So I grabbed the closest life ring.
For me it was simple, "Be the Change You want to see in the world."
I read that on the base of a Gandhi statue in downtown Bellevue one day and decided to make that my mantra.
So that's what I've been doing ever since,
Being the change I want to see,
Being less tribal, more peacefull, more loving, more reasonable and empathetic, because that's the kind of world I want to create and I am



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/28/2020 12:13AM by schrodingerscat.

WTF is a nihlist?

A misspelling of the word nihilist...


ni·hil·ist
/ˈnīələst,ˈnēəlist,ˈnihilist/

   noun
a person who believes that life is meaningless and rejects all religious and moral principles.



He ends with, "(I am) being less tribal, more peaceful, more loving, more reasonable and empathetic, because that's the kind of world I want to create and I am"


But the empathy is not really there, or he'd be aware of how his constant nagging grates on us here. It's like calling a hardcore duo of missionaries 'reasonable and empathetic' after 10 minutes of them banging on the door because they know you're home and by ghawd they are going to save you!

Is he still a nihilist? "Eh, could be..." (You have to say that like Bugs Bunny.)

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> But the empathy is not really there, or he'd be
> aware of how his constant nagging grates on us
> here. It's like calling a hardcore duo of
> missionaries 'reasonable and empathetic' after 10
> minutes of them banging on the door because they
> know you're home and by ghawd they are going to
> save you!

And similarly failing to see how that behavior itself is tribal.

dogbloggernli Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> elderolddog Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
>
> > But the empathy is not really there, or he'd be
> > aware of how his constant nagging grates on us
> > here. It's like calling a hardcore duo of
> > missionaries 'reasonable and empathetic' after
> 10
> > minutes of them banging on the door because
> they
> > know you're home and by ghawd they are going to
> > save you!
>
> And similarly failing to see how that behavior
> itself is tribal.

I'm just the devil's advocate here, speaking up against the predominant impression visitors get here, that if you're not an atheist, you're just an idiot. There are plenty of really intelligent people, geniuses, who reject the atheist label, like Niel deGrasse Tyson and Michio Kaku, and a bunch of dead guys. Even self described atheists, like Stephen Hawking, used the word, god, to mean, the laws of Nature, which is how I use the word.
How the hell is that unempathetic or tribal?