I'm not an atheist.

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The Creep
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I'm not an atheist.

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I'm irreligious.

True fact.
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The Creep
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Re: I'm not an atheist.

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Creep wrote:I don't like calling myself an 'atheist' anymore, what with all the negative connotations the word has these days. When people think 'atheists', I think they tend to think rude, arrogant, intolerant, pseudo-intellectual douchebags who think they're somehow superior intellectually with better reasoning powers and a better moral compass etc etc. - than people who happen to hold religious beliefs. Which is bullshit. Because lots of religious people are actually highly intelligent, interesting, reasonable, good-natured, generous and kind, likable people.

I hasten to add that I realise most atheists aren't the awful people I described above - most of them I'm sure are lovely people. It's just that, as always, a few bad apples tend to spoil the bunch, and I just feel that more and more as time goes on, this is the way that people who identify as atheists are generally perceived.
Ported over from the 'I found Creep!' thread 'cause I think it's important and I wanna know how others on here feel about the "atheist" label these days.
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Re: I'm not an atheist.

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In my circles atheist is still a dirty word, but not for the same reasons as you mentioned. It's more the amoral, baby-eating type thing. People are still very religious here, so I don't go around calling myself an atheist.
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Re: I'm not an atheist.

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That last sentence came across as exactly the type of condescending atheist remark you described in the OP. When I say "very religious", I'm thinking of the fundamentalist religious people who are so prominent around here, who tend to also be flag-waving die hard Republicans, who hate homosexuals, transsexuals, women, and minorities. It's not a good idea to tell those people you're an atheist.
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Re: I'm not an atheist.

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Lol, I'm a rude, arrogant, intolerant, pseudo-intellectual douchebag who thinks I'm somehow superior intellectually with better reasoning powers and a better moral compass... who just so happens to be an atheist. [none] Being an atheist has nothing to do with any of that.

Personally, I think atheists need to be way, way, way, way more arrogant and intolerant, considering all the stupid bullshit religion makes them go through... but that's just me.
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Re: I'm not an atheist.

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Derived Absurdity wrote:Lol, I'm a rude, arrogant, intolerant, pseudo-intellectual douchebag who thinks I'm somehow superior intellectually with better reasoning powers and a better moral compass... who just so happens to be an atheist. [none] Being an atheist has nothing to do with any of that.

Personally, I think atheists need to be way, way, way, way more arrogant and intolerant, considering all the stupid bullshit religion makes them go through... but that's just me.
Oh don't get me wrong - I totally get why some atheists hate on religion so much, and completely sympathise. I still hate the fact that people are religious. I just kind of feel it's a waste of energy to keep harping on about it at this point. Because we'll never change it, y'know? A certain proportion of people will always believe in stupid, and potentially dangerous BS and that's that.

I desperately wish everyone on the planet would leave religion behind so we could all live a peaceful, harmonious existence and for everybody to just get along with everybody else and just be happy. But I know it's a pipedream. It will never happen. [sad]

I should add, before someone says I'm contradicting myself - I believe people can be bright, intelligent and reasonable and still believe in something stupid & unreasonable. I don't believe it necessarily makes them stupid, unreasonable people.
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Re: I'm not an atheist.

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I agree with the negative connotations but not the justification of dropping a term just because other people ruin it. It's one reason I still publicly identify myself as a Christian.
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Re: I'm not an atheist.

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Well, I don't really harp on it that much anymore. I just don't think atheists should really be under a social obligation to be polite and respectful to beliefs we consider to be stupid dangerous bullshit. I mean, I have the same level of respect for religious belief as I have for anti-vaccine conspiracies and Holocaust denial and flat earth-ism... which is none at all. Literally none. I don't really go out and antagonize people (anymore [none]... I mean, it's really fun to antagonize people), but I've been told all my life I need to be "respectful" of religion's stupid bullshit and by now I am just so over it.
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Re: I'm not an atheist.

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Religion is child abuse. If there were mandatory life sentences for being religious I would have a tough time finding any reason to object. Pretty much anything i disagree with should carry a mandatory life sentence. Well, except veganism, vegans should be used as hog feed.
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Re: I'm not an atheist.

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I describe myself as 'an atheist but not a dick about it' which I think sums it up. I don't object to people having personal faith (even though I think they're wrong, on account of, you know, being an atheist) as long as they stay in their lane. I tend to be much more critical of, say, anti-vaxxers or people who believe in pseudoscience because while we ultimately can't know the existence of a deity, we can know that YOU SHOULDN'T PUT JADE EGGS IN YOUR VAGINA, GWYNETH PALTROW.
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Re: I'm not an atheist.

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Paltrow is also a fan of solid gold dildos and has no idea why people think she is completely out of touch with most of humanity.
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Re: I'm not an atheist.

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It's so amusing that I find myself in the company of atheists since I am a person of faith. I'm not a believer in conventional theism however I do believe in what I hold as that there is something beyond understanding and as such requires me to keep it as a thing to have faith about.

I also have faith in science. I know it's something that helps us to understand our reality. Quantum physics is a favorite because it comes closest to the thing that I believe in. It's not quite there yet but it's getting closer and closer.
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Re: I'm not an atheist.

Post by Eva Yojimbo »

ampi wrote:Quantum physics is a favorite because it comes closest to the thing that I believe in. It's not quite there yet but it's getting closer and closer.
Please do elaborate on this.
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Re: I'm not an atheist.

Post by Eva Yojimbo »

The Creep wrote:
Creep wrote:I don't like calling myself an 'atheist' anymore, what with all the negative connotations the word has these days. When people think 'atheists', I think they tend to think rude, arrogant, intolerant, pseudo-intellectual douchebags who think they're somehow superior intellectually with better reasoning powers and a better moral compass etc etc. - than people who happen to hold religious beliefs. Which is bullshit. Because lots of religious people are actually highly intelligent, interesting, reasonable, good-natured, generous and kind, likable people.

I hasten to add that I realise most atheists aren't the awful people I described above - most of them I'm sure are lovely people. It's just that, as always, a few bad apples tend to spoil the bunch, and I just feel that more and more as time goes on, this is the way that people who identify as atheists are generally perceived.
Ported over from the 'I found Creep!' thread 'cause I think it's important and I wanna know how others on here feel about the "atheist" label these days.
I don't worry about connotations, I worry about accuracy. I've said this dozens of times before on IMDb, but I don't care what you call me, I just care if you know exactly what I believe and don't believe. So instead of saying I'm atheist, agnostic, irreligious, etc., I'd rather say "I think the probability of God's existence is extremely low, something like 0.000000001%. I think it's just as likely that extra-dimensional dragons or unicorns exist. That said, I don't claim to know for certain God doesn't exist, I just don't think there's any evidence for him and plenty of good evidence against him." So as long as you know that's precisely what I believe, you can call me anything you like.

As far as the connotations go though, I think the "evil, baby-eating heathens" connotation is more common down south where I live. I think the "douchebag" connotation you mention only occurs among those who have only been exposed to certain celebrity atheists (Dawkins, Hitchens, Maher, etc.) and other internet/YouTube atheists. To counter those I can always point people to non-douchey atheists like Sean Carrol, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Daniel Dennett, et al. Plus, I think from a morality perspective, there are far more pernicious things going on in the religious side of things (especially far-right conservatives) than the douchiness on the atheist side. I'll take rude, arrogant, douchebags over people who think entire groups of people are going to hell just because they believe differently and believe in their moral righteousness so much that they can force it onto everyone else in the country, often through policy. Of course, I also realize that, just like with the "douchey atheists," such a description only applies to a small portion of the religious right; but I still think where it exists it's far worse than even the most extremely douchey atheists.
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Re: I'm not an atheist.

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To be fair a lot of those far-right conservative views we may criticize from the religious right are also present among the douchey internet atheists, especially in the wake of Elevatorgate and Gamergate. It's not like there was a world of difference in the views of Hitchens and like, former President Bush on the War on Terror either for example.

I do think the religious right are more likely to hold actual positions of power that affect people's lives though.
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Re: I'm not an atheist.

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I think if God had issues with self-confidence he would be an atheist, because that would mean he doesn't believe in himself.
Last edited by Raxivace on Wed Nov 22, 2017 10:15 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: I'm not an atheist.

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Raxivace wrote:To be fair a lot of those far-right conservative views we may criticize from the religious right are also present among the douchey internet atheists, especially in the wake of Elevatorgate and Gamergate. It's not like there was a world of difference in the views of Hitchens and like, former President Bush on the War on Terror either for example.

I do think the religious right are more likely to hold actual positions of power that affect people's lives though.
True, though I'm not sure if they're quite as prevalent. I mean, Elevatorgate/Gamergate opened a rift in the atheist community between those that were social liberals and those that were social conservatives; whereas if they had happened at a far-right Republican convention I don't think there would've been nearly as much controversy within that group--the controversy would've came from those outside reacting to it.
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Re: I'm not an atheist.

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Eva Yojimbo wrote:
ampi wrote:Quantum physics is a favorite because it comes closest to the thing that I believe in. It's not quite there yet but it's getting closer and closer.
Please do elaborate on this.
No worries. It seems you wouldn't appreciate that. Being a believer I would never subjective you through anything I believe in. There goes the difference between me and the religious in the powers that be. Sooooo how many kudos do I get? Can I get at least a LOL.
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Re: I'm not an atheist.

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ampi wrote:
Eva Yojimbo wrote:
ampi wrote:Quantum physics is a favorite because it comes closest to the thing that I believe in. It's not quite there yet but it's getting closer and closer.
Please do elaborate on this.
No worries. It seems you wouldn't appreciate that. Being a believer I would never subjective you through anything I believe in. There goes the difference between me and the religious in the powers that be. Sooooo how many kudos do I get? Can I get at least a LOL.
For me it's stuff like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain

and how, given long enough time (however 'time' is defined), the emergence of such disembodied intelligences becomes almost inevitable and more likely than the emergence of the physical universe, suggesting a greater likelihood of such an intelligence preceding and being responsible for directing the creation of the physical universe.

Likewise I'm partial to the view that the physical universe is itself an illusion whose apparent existence is dependent on an external observer (i.e. God), where we effectively exist only as figments of God's imagination. AFAIK the science is increasingly substantiating the view that elements of the physical world and/or outcomes do not exist until observed.

I admit that this is mostly speculation and possible abuse of quantum physics (it's been a while since I studied it), but it still fascinates me.

Meanwhile, I just followed a link to an r/atheism thread and it was full of misogyny. I don't know if it's because it's reddit, or if internet self-identified atheists have devolved since I was young. This thread also made me realise that most of my atheist friends no longer really use that term.
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Re: I'm not an atheist.

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I think Reddit has issues with misogyny in general, so I don't think its limited to just r/atheism.

Not that I haven't met some cool people there (Some of whom were women), but still.
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Re: I'm not an atheist.

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Oh yeah, it's definitely not limited to that sub. But I've noticed how the alt-right has given rise to a new wave of atheists that take pride in being misogynist and racist (and so on) because it's 'politically incorrect', vs how in the past those were the things that internet atheists criticized religions for. There's been a definite positive shift in the left's attitude towards religion, most evident when it comes to Islam, possibly due to how its base of women, racial minorities and poorer classes tend to be especially religious.
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Re: I'm not an atheist.

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ampi wrote:
Eva Yojimbo wrote:
ampi wrote:Quantum physics is a favorite because it comes closest to the thing that I believe in. It's not quite there yet but it's getting closer and closer.
Please do elaborate on this.
No worries. It seems you wouldn't appreciate that. Being a believer I would never subjective you through anything I believe in. There goes the difference between me and the religious in the powers that be. Sooooo how many kudos do I get? Can I get at least a LOL.
Actually, I was really interested in what you had to say about it. Quantum physics is something of a special area of interest of mine so I'm always interested in hearing other takes on it; in particular I was wondering how you think it comes closest to what you believe, and "it's not quite there" in reference to what.
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Re: I'm not an atheist.

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Anakin McFly wrote:For me it's stuff like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain

and how, given long enough time (however 'time' is defined), the emergence of such disembodied intelligences becomes almost inevitable and more likely than the emergence of the physical universe, suggesting a greater likelihood of such an intelligence preceding and being responsible for directing the creation of the physical universe.
I've never quite understood the appeal of Boltzmann brains. To start, I'm not even sure how a disembodied brain could contemplate the universe or even survive without a body. But to your conception, I'm very much not sure how the idea of such brains "preceding the physical universe" makes sense: this would suggest the Boltzmann brains aren't themselves physical, and the only intelligence we know of is very dependent on the physical to work. Further, however simpler BBrains would be to bodied brains, they would most certainly be more complex than the fundamental physical particles in a vacuum that most physicists now think gave rise to our universe; so I don't know why you'd want to posit something more complex (the brains) and non-physical to explain something more simple (the physical universe) and physical; the latter seems to work well by itself.

Also, I think Sean Carroll has offered one of the most interesting cosmological models that would pretty much dismantle the Boltzmann paradox (if indeed it's really a paradox at all): http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blo ... inflation/
Anakin McFly wrote:AFAIK the science is increasingly substantiating the view that elements of the physical world and/or outcomes do not exist until observed.

I admit that this is mostly speculation and possible abuse of quantum physics (it's been a while since I studied it), but it still fascinates me.
Of the various interpretations of QM out there, only two assign a causal function to observers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpret ... pretations Of those, Copenhagen is being rejected more and more because when you really analyze it it seems no better than magic and is at odds with a number of logical and physical principles (not to mention General Relativity) and is also a pretty straight-forward violation of Occam's Razor. Most of the other interpretations, observers either play no role or are merely cogs in the formulation or a point of reference (not causally active).
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Re: I'm not an atheist.

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My phrasing was a bit off there, sorry. I meant it more in an interpretational rather than causal observer role, where it's the observation that makes the 'physical' world exist. i.e. the physical world is not an objective reality, but the universe is pure information that we interpret as a physical world. In that context, a disembodied/non-physical brain is less complex than a physical one, where in fact all intelligences are thus disembodied even if they perceive themselves as embodied. (I'm feeling restrained by language here and how to reference a physical world that isn't objectively physical, if that even has any meaning.)
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Re: I'm not an atheist.

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Actually, I was really interested in what you had to say about it. Quantum physics is something of a special area of interest of mine so I'm always interested in hearing other takes on it; in particular I was wondering how you think it comes closest to what you believe, and "it's not quite there" in reference to what.
muhahahaha I'm not falling for that. I've read your posts and you are significantly more intelligent I am.
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