Is Neo[Atheism] a Rational Religion?

If I understand correctly what definitions are, agnostics don't know and atheists say God doesn't exist.

In answer to the OP, atheism isn't a religion. It is a belief. Religions are a community, organised and follow a doctrine.
Atheists are individual, have no published doctrine and are not organised.
Whether atheism is logical or not is something you would have to discuss with each "non believer" who by definition, think for themselves.

 

That's one commonly accepted set of definitions, yes. An issue that always comes up in these threads is that there are numerous commonly accepted definitions for these words, and so it gets messy/confusing when people don't agree on these meanings.

"Atheist" can also mean somebody who just doesn't believe Gods exist, and doesn't necessarily positively assert that they don't, making agnostic a type of atheist. "Agnostic" can also mean somebody who doesn't just not know, but believes it impossible to know.

"Religion" is yet another word that different people define differently, so it can get confusing, but I agree with you completely.

I do think a case can be made that it isn't logical to positively assert with absolute certainty that no Gods exist, when many God claims are unfalsifiable. But I don't know any self-titled atheists who make such a strong assertion.

 

In using words like "logical" , "rational" and "belief" one has already blown up the bridge you are trying to cross.
One has very little if any effect on the other. Both think their "knowledge" is unsurmountable by the other.
The only "proof" we have is those rare testimonies of those who technically died and were resuscitated. But the existence of a god is far wider than what happens when you die.
The closest thing I can define it as is a life-force. Something that is creative, eternal by definition if you consider the universe to be eternal.
Any further speculation is pure belief and pure belief is unrelated to logic.
And what is illogical is by definition, irrational.
Which doesn't really matter because believers are functioning in another part of the brain and rationality doesn't count there when it comes to the existence of the "godhead".
It is like trying to justify liking a painting by rationalising it. Two different languages, one has little effect on whether the painting exists or not.

 

Thats the reason for the definition, not the definition itself.

ag·nos·tic
noun: agnostic; plural noun: agnostics
a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God.

If you dont know, you cant 'rationally' take either the atheist or theist position.
Look to the right of the semicolon for how it is used in practice.

Sure it is. I cant think of any ism that is disqualified from being a religion.

Yes, all religions have beliefs

Yes individuals follow the doctrine of their personal beliefs , organization is not required, though its necessary when it becomes a large group all claiming the same beliefs.

Christians are individuals. You cant have a group unless made up of individuals, there is no requirement to publish your religion that I am aware of, do you have a source?
There is a requirement if you claim to be a 501(3)c and want a tax exemption.

Jesus Christ was a one man religion, he wasnt organized.

So then nonbelievers dont think for themselves? Nonsense, people change religions all the time precisely because they do think for themselves.

Not in practice.

as soon as someone comes up with proof either way then I will hold a belief on the matter. Until then Im agnostic

Its been proven to you in post 3112, let me knoe when you want to discuss anything in good faith.

 

Please read properly.
You quote my sentence "non believers who by definition think for themselves" by some supposed "oppositional logic" that says I said non believers don't think for themselves.
I just said non believers think for themselves.
Further a religion implies an organisational structure. It is not a bunch of individual, independent people. This includes self declared secular humanists who believer the same large concepts but do not have a Centre, a building, a tradition, a common behaviour or act of worship.
Or a financial interest. We are not a religion. We have a belief and most of us arrived at it independently.
Finally Christianity depended for its existence on Paul and the apostles and the writings of thosecee refer to as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Without them, Jesus would be just another self styled early hippie. He was certainly not a one man religion nor do we know how much of his story is true.
An agnostic is not an athiest. If they were we wouldn't have to differentiate between the two.

 

Oh, so you claim that the following can't be disqualified from being religions:
prism
seism
mutism
euphemism
somnambulism
photojournalism

Do you, really?

 

that was a typo, too late to correct it. It should have read believers

 

yep strange as it may sound, anything that describes a character or human characteristic, value etc.
Religion is a broad term, thinking about not eating pork, which is the right to control what you put into your body.
Of course the US has abolished your religious right to govern what you put into your body, and now you better take a shot when the guv tells you to take a shot LOL

 

Add humanism. It is certainly not a religion. Because for one thing its definition says all creativity, development and the future is due to man's ingenuity as a living species, not because of any god.
Nor do we meet, celebrate, worship, build "temples" , sing songs, pay money or advertise ourselves.
You can't be what you reject as a guiding principle.

 

Uh huh.
And the rest of your reply to the points I raised?

 

No it does not imply that, however that is the conventional way people think of it merely because its so often used that way, to describe a group. That is not an implication, though it depends on how you word it of course.

sure it is. it only takes one person with a core belief they govern their lives by, if this were not true than if you seperated an individual from the group (when everyone goes home from church) that individual would no longer have a religion when seperated.

Oh they are a religion, so is satanism.

Yes the nice thing about the religion, unlike the state as atheists insist.

Very true, good luck telling that to the 3 amigos! LOL

 

Christian humanism, otherwise known as humanistic Christianity, is thus a religion (or a kind of religion). Secular humanism combines the humanist ethic with the metaphysical doctrine that God does not exist (or the epistemological doctrine that knowledge of God is moot).

Is secular humanism a religion
https://uh.edu › ~psaka › dfhum

Secular humanism combines the humanist ethic with the metaphysical doctrine that God does not exist (or the epistemological doctrine that knowledge of God is moot). Secular humanism thus exhibits both features (1) and (2).


Although secular humanists do not have places of worship (3), many of them do engage in ritual (4). Just as Christians borrowed Christmas from pagans, so too do many secular humanists borrow Christmas from Christians. Such humanists, however, seem to me to be nominal humanists; practicing secular humanists would not celebrate Christmas.

 

Are you really expecting a reply that makes sense from someone who claims prism is not disqualified from being a religion?

 

Prism does not define or articulate a human characteristic, that is really a foolish think to post since there is no such thing as pr-'ism', lol too funny!

 

I cant discuss this without your understanding definitions in English.
You cannot keep saying " no it doesn't mean that, it means what I want it to mean".
Look up the word "religion".
Then maybe we will speak the same language.

 

None of which defines it as a religion.
The rest of the cut and paste did, I hope, offer you some expansion of your learning.

 

You didn't define what area of the dictionary you confined yourself to.
Instead you merely said that there is no ism which is not a religion.
I'd give up making it up as you go, just to make an argument.
Best to find something a bit more manageable.

 

Being short is a religion?
Baldness is religion?
These are human characteristics.

 

Didnt you know that lots of atheist groups are defined as a religion.

Secular Religion

A secular religion is a communal belief system that often rejects or neglects the metaphysical aspects of the supernatural, commonly associated with traditional religion, instead placing typical religious qualities in earthly entities.

Secular religion - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Secular_religion

 

and you wonder why I ignore most of your posts
Understanding 'context' always manages to escape you

 

Under one commonly accepted set of definitions for these words, yes.

But these words have multiple commonly used meanings. Under another common set of definitions, agnostic is a type of atheist, and the same as "weak atheist", meaning one who doesn't believe Gods exist but also doesn't positively assert they don't. And a "strong atheist" positively asserts they don't.

 

yeh gay is no longer happy, 420 is pot and pot is marijuana LMAO

Not definitions, invalid slang usage.

both weak and strong are both atheists, not agnostics. Pixie is 100% correct, that there is a difference that you refuse admit no matter how many academic citations are posted.

 

For our purposes, a proposition is any statement that has a truth value.

"God exists" is a perfectly good proposition, it might be true, it might not be. We might not know whether God exists, but it must be true or false.

"The pope believes that God exists" is another perfectly good proposition. It might be true, in fact, it is true (let's for now ignore the possibility that the pope lies during his credos). Belief is a psychological state, "the Pope believes God exists" is a proposition, a proposition about the Pope's psychological state, but a proposition nonetheless.

Similarly, "Kokomojojo believes that God exists" is a proposition, and is either true or false. You might not know the answer (maybe you've been lobotomised and don't know your own beliefs, but it seems unlikely), but that doesn't make/unmake you a theist or an atheist, it just means you're not a good source of knowledge about whether you're a theist/atheist.

So then how can you say you're an agnostic? If you don't know whether you believe, then for all you know, it could be that Kokomojojo is in fact a dedicated, ultra-convinced theist, and apparently, you just somehow haven't noticed your own psychological state.

No, we're asking you about your mind, you shouldn't have a problem accessing that info. For instance, "the Pope believes God exists" is an easy statement to make (even easier for the pope to make), even if we don't know whether God exists.

Here is my post in question, your response here provides no indication of what in the Stanford article you think I disagree with, or why.

I agree with most things that article says, but I have tended to agree with very few of the times you've attempted to paraphrase the article.

None of these suggest "disallowed", "invalid", "loony" or anything like that. Unusual just means that there are alternatives that happen more often. Rejecting things for being unusual is not supported by the dictionaries, the Stanford article, Flew, Horn or your ISI reference.

I don't think I've said anything particularly stealing about the word agnostic.

But for the word atheist, why would we create a new word? Flew's argument is that atheist better describes our version than your version (dunno if I agree, but I see where he's coming from), i.e. that you have stolen it more than he has. Either way, semantic drift is a common feature of language, I don't really see why "Kokomojojo doesn't like it" would trump that.

Yes you do. A triangle is defined as having three sides, if you want to know if something is a triangle, you need to know the direct answer to "does it have three sides". An indirect answer, such as "I don't know" may be true and "valid", but it isn't useful in determining whether it is a triangle. Only having three sides makes you a triangle, there are no points for not knowing how many sides there are.

This is sounding more promising, now you're suddenly able to tell us what the state of your mind is.

Two states of mind were described, effectively equivalent to "Kokomojojo believes there is a God" and "Kokomojojo believes there is no God". You say that you do not have either of those states of mind (which indeed I think is an accurate description of an agnostic). You do not have either state of mind, so you lack both those states of mind, i.e. it is true that you lack the one state of mind AND it is true that you lack the other state of mind.

If someone then asks for a direct answer to the question "do you have the first state of mind", the answer is no, and if someone asks for a direct answer to the question "do you have the second state of mind", the answer is no. The definition of atheist asks specifically only the first of those questions.

 

[QUOTE="Swensson, post: 1073419370, member: 30924]
If someone then asks for a direct answer to the question "do you have the first state of mind", the answer is no, and if someone asks for a direct answer to the question "do you have the second state of mind", the answer is no. The definition of atheist asks specifically only the first of those questions.[/QUOTE]

And answering no to the first question does NOT mean the answer to the second must be yes.

Which is precisely what I meant what I said the following that gave Kokomojo such trouble:

 

I believe I do not know.

I told you, I dont know.

freakish, bizarre, outlandish,alien
You stretch the meaning of the words into complete useless nonsense.

Yes, anyone !theist is flews argument that you cited.

we are not arguing semantic drift, you cited flews !theist, little late to change it up now.

Not my problem you really need to take that up with our resident logic teacher, professor dodge.

Like I said take that up with professor dodge. lol

A state of mind has nothing to do with God, it does directly apply to psychology however. AND isnt going to work btw

You are moving the goal posts now from flews definition to the dictionary is that it?
Flews asks the second.
!theist is invalid, as is without, and and absent, you have been given several angles proving the point from myself and stanford.

That would be a contradiction since I posted academic resources demonstrating the meanings of the 2 statements are semantic, (the same)