Yes, Atheists do Exist.

format_quote Originally Posted by BlackMamba

I do not think atheism based on the scientific method exists. You get a bunch of scientists and pseudo-scientists (mostly this) who come in an try to use science to somehow prove atheism.

I have yet to meet such a person. How does one "prove" that an unfalsifiable thing doesn't exist?

When in reality, atheism is more faith-based than really any religion out there.

It doesn't take any faith at all.

One must make a huge leap of faith when deciding to become an atheist.

I didn't make a decision about it. No more than you made a decision not to believe you are a dolphin dreaming.

You say you see danger in religion. Well, is that in religion, or in fundamentalism? Because fundamentalism is not in any way restricted to religion. It can occur in any group-phenomenon.

I see both the good and the bad in religion. Since you asked, the bad I see is mostly about the authoritarianism and tribalism that a lot of religions foster. I get concerned when I see people mistaking obedience for morality and I get concerned when I see people loving the in group by hating the out group. I see this outside of religions, yes, of course, but I see it in religion more than anywhere else.

format_quote Originally Posted by Pygoscelis

This is not the first time I have seen religious people flatly stating that non-believers don't exist.

I agree with you that there are people who believe that God simply does not exist. To impose my opinion on you or to coerce you to believe that God does exist would contradict our belief that 'there is no compulsion in religion'.

I don't believe in supernatural beings. I don't believe in ghosts. I don't believe in faeries. I don't believe in Gods. I don't see any of the three as any more likely to be real than any other of the three. I don't say that to anger anybody. It is the truth. I don't hate God anymore than I hate ghosts. Hating something that you don't believe in makes no sense.

I see what you are saying and your honesty in stating your lack of faith does not offend me. You are not attacking my faith or belittling me for believing in something that you believe does not exist. The ayat where it says 'to you your religion and to me mine' applies equally to those without any religion as those with a religion different from mine. An analogy that I can make to illustrate your position is that I do not believe that God became a man, Jesus, and that Jesus was at the same time the Son of God. My disbelief about Jesus being God Incarnate is not a matter of choice as I grew up believing those statements to be true, but I read the Qur'an and I had an 'aha' moment of realization that the Christian concept of God made less sense than the Islamic concept of One God without father, mother, son, daughter, or equal. It is not a far stretch of the imagination that someone could go beyond that realization that Jesus is not God to simply believing that God does not exist. I will use the analogy of Santa Claus which many children sincerely believe exists, but no mentally competent adult believes he exists. You may look down upon theists as being irrational and child-like in believing in something you don't think exists, but I again see an analogy with how I perceive Christians as believing that Jesus was God Incarnate. Your opinion of me does not offend me.

The fundamental question beyond belief or not in God is, "Where did we come from and where are we going?" I believe that I am the direct result of an act of creation by God; whereas, I presume that you believe we evolved from a Common Ancestor through the natural process of evolution with no opinion for where the Common Ancestor came from. I believe that we will be resurrected from the dead to face judgment by God for our beliefs, intentions, words and deeds with some people going to Hell and some going to Paradise; whereas, I presume that you believe that we simply cease to exist at our death. I see your (presumed) belief along the lines of, " 'Poof' we are here and then again 'poof' we are gone." as being less likely and less meaningful than my belief that we were created by God and to Him we will return. Please, correct my presumptions that are in error and forgive me for my mistakes.

I do see danger in religion (mostly in fundamentalist and authoritarian oriented religion) but I can also see good in it. As for Islam, I see a lot of wisdom contained in it. I like the ban on usury for example. Makes sense to me. I can take some good insights form Islam without adopting the belief system or believing in the God.

I can relate to your fear of 'fundamentalists' as being intolerant of others with different beliefs than their own. These people may be so inclined to commit atrocities against the 'heretics' and the 'infidels' as in the Spanish Inquisition. I also respect your fear of 'authoritarian oriented religion', but how is that different from irreligious authoritarian idealogies like Nazism, Communism, or Corporatism?

format_quote Originally Posted by Pygoscelis

I have yet to meet such a person. How does one "prove" that an unfalsifiable thing doesn't exist?



It doesn't take any faith at all.



I didn't make a decision about it. No more than you made a decision not to believe you are a dolphin dreaming.

Huh? You believe in something without proof. Sounds like faith to me.

format_quote Originally Posted by BlackMamba

Huh? You believe in something without proof. Sounds like faith to me.

I am not sure that it makes sense to identify your faith by the things you don't believe in.

I mean, I don't believe in the Norse gods or in the spaghetti monster. I have no proof that they don't exist, just as I don't have proof that the God I believe in does exist.

But my faith relates to what I believe in, not in what I don't believe in.
Otherwise I would have to call myself a Norse mythology atheist and a spaghetti monster atheist and a [fill in the blank with everything else I don't believe in] atheist.
That would make me more of an atheist than a theist ...

It is easy to be atheist - I was one before I became muslim. Just say: I believe nothing.

Being muslim or christian is much more difficult - then you have to think and learn several matters.



And understand.

format_quote Originally Posted by glo

I am not sure that it makes sense to identify your faith by the things you don't believe in.

I mean, I don't believe in the Norse gods or in the spaghetti monster. I have no proof that they don't exist, just as I don't have proof that the God I believe in does exist.

But my faith relates to what I believe in, not in what I don't believe in.
Otherwise I would have to call myself a Norse mythology atheist and a spaghetti monster atheist and a [fill in the blank with everything else I don't believe in] atheist.
That would make me more of an atheist than a theist ...

Don't mean to derail the thread, however, I find it strange that a Christian doubts the existence of God. We have historical evidence to prove the existence of Jesus Christ (PBUH), so isn't that enough for any Christian to be satisfied that there is a God? Or is your faith linked to the divinity of Jesus Christ (PBUH), or in other words your faith depends on whether he was a God or not?

just for the record:

The Prophet (SAW) related that when Allaah created Aadam, He took a covenant from him in a place called Na'maan on the day of 'Arafah,[4] then He extracted from him all of his descendants who would be born until the end of the world, generation after generation, and spread them out in front of Him in order to take a covenant from them also. He spoke to them face to face saying: "Am I not your Lord?" and they all replied, "Yes, we testify to it." Allaah then explained why He had all of mankind bear witness that He was their creator and only true God worthy of worship. He said, "That was in case you (mankind) should say on the Day of Resurrection, "Surely we were unaware of all this. We had no idea that You, Allaah, were our God. No one told us that we were only supposed to worship You." Allaah went on to explain that it was also in case you should say: "It was our ancestors who made partners (with Allaah) and we are only their descendants; will You, then destroy us for what those liars did?"[5] This was the Prophet's (SAW) explanation of the Qur'anic verse in which Allaah said:

"When your Lord drew forth from the loins of the children of Aadam, their descendants and made them testify concerning themselves. (Saying): 'Am I not your Lord' They said, 'Yes, we testify to it.' (This) in case you say on the Day of Judgement, 'We were unaware of this'. Or in case you say, 'It was our ancestors who made partners (with Allaah) and we are only their descendants. Will you then destroy us for what those liars did?"[8]

The verse and prophetic explanation confirm the fact that everyone is responsible for belief in God and on the Day of Judgement excuses will not be accepted. Every human being has the belief in God imprinted on his soul and Allaah shows every idolator during the course of his life, signs that his idol is not God. Hence, every sane human being is required to believe in God beyond His creation and not manifest in it.

therefore, it is impossible to believe that Allah doesn't exist. PERIOD. you can "think" that you believe it, you can be convinced that you believe it. however, you cannot be 100% sure, thus you really aren't sure, thus you are agnostic to an extreme. that is a collective you, i realize that you, personally, don't believe that. just being a little bit of Joe Friday, here. (uh, that's Dragnet to anyone that doesn't know)

now, Pygo, i'm not trying to convince of that, i'm just stating how i view the matter. i hope you do not find it offensive; and if anyone thinks they can change my mind on the matter, well, they don't know the meaning of the word stubborn. (not like i do)

to Abu Loren, yes, i would agree to your proposition that those who claim that they don't believe in God appear to be in the majority. with the caveat, that they are really agnostic, as many, many people born into and actually professing religion are also (to some varying degree) agnostic, which would then make agnosticism the largest belief system in the world. even though it, as well as (so called) atheism aren't really belief systems.

but to get back to what i want to know:

looking at how you define belief in the unseen world, Pygo, you are kind of close to paralleling the philosophers of ancient Greece. you view "theist" (a word i really don't like as it groups monotheists and polytheists (and those professing monotheism, but aren't, all in the same group), pretty much as pagans. that WOULD be an appropriate description on any polytheist, but NOT a true monotheist.

do you differentiate between the various religions? as far as what they believe, or just how they act?

when bani-Israel first appears in history, they were considered atheists because they didn't believe in THE gods. it took a few centuries to be accepted as not being atheists, albeit with but just the 1 God. the Romans also held a similar view of early Christians, they didn't not believe in THE gods, ergo atheists. eventually, Christianity became pagan enough so that it made sense to the Romans and they signed on in record numbers!

do you see polytheist differently than monotheists? what does your girlfriend and her family think of you views? or is "religion' just as "aspect" of life to them, instead of being all encompassing? are are just "such a nice lad" that they don't care?

peace

format_quote Originally Posted by Iceee

These are just estimates. Also, there are more Christians than Muslims; of course not all are actually practicing their faith but still.

But I do have to say that Muslims seem to be getting married rather than staying single.
And Muslims tend to have 3-4kids, maybe even more while Christians tend to stay at 2-3 kids.
So Islam will be the majority population soon.

That could happen in theory--but not everyone really practices when it comes to Islam either. When people answer under "religion" on census forms or surveys I strongly suspect that a gigantic chunk of these responses are just people who are indifferent or rarely practicing (read: "insincere") members of the religions they were raised with or agnostics, and are just arbitrarily marking that religion because out of conscience or habit they feel that they have to put down something. "The numbers don't lie," they say. Bull. The numbers may not lie, but they do mislead. Oh, how they mislead. But don't get me wrong, it is encouraging. We can at least feel sure that the numbers of genuine Muslims are at least increasing in some capacity. Praise Allah.

format_quote Originally Posted by MustafaMc

You completely missed the point of her post. She believes in God even though she does not have scientific proof for His existence.

This doesn't make sense to me. Aren't there non-Christian history books, Roman Empire records and archaeologists that have proven that Jesus (PBUH) existed?

^ I doubt it. There is really no proof.

You want to know what I think about all this? I think you people exist all right. You have too much in common with each other for there not to be something real to it. Atheism, or antireligion, is a youthful phase that some people like myself grow out of and other people don't. I'm sincerely trying to avoid that conclusion but the more I see the more convinced of it I become. You know a lot more of your ilk than I do, Pygoscelis, so answer me this. How many atheists do you ever meet who didn't stop believing before they reached the age of, oh, say, twenty-five-ish or so? Didn't you tell me that you pretty much never believed even as a little kid? I've heard that one quite a lot too. For example I don’t know how many Wikipedia articles I’ve come across with some variation of the exact words “decided early on he was an atheist”. So, so many. Dan Barker was, to be sure, in his mid-thirties (which isn't very far removed from the age range I spoke of) but he's the only exception that springs quickly to mind.

Flying spaghetti monsters, pink unicorns, fairies, leprechauns in your attic...of course our old pal Santa Claus is always sure to rear his hoary head eventually. Mightn't there be a reason why these people's minds are so locked down in the pattern of talking like playground bullies that when you ask them to express themselves in another way they can’t even fathom how they possibly could go about doing that? For heaven’s sake, look at what this guy did on another board. When I refused to give him the time of day by responding to his childishness he got even more childish—so much so, in fact, that he told me that if I was going to be a great big crybaby and run and cry to mommy instead of coming out and fighting him like a big kid then FINE ALREADY!

Like I said, I’ve tried and tried and tried to avoid this conclusion, telling myself time and again, “You’re just getting weary; you’re maybe even getting prejudiced.” But when the evidence of your experience confirms something fifty, maybe two-hundred-and-fifty times in a row with pretty much no definite exceptions, it becomes increasingly difficult to ignore. People always seem to set themselves in opposition to religion when they’re young, or at the very least have traits easily associated with youthfulness or all out immaturity in their personalities. In contrast what are old people more infamous for? Being strongly religious. I’m sorry but I’m fighting a losing battle here. Oh atheists are real, all right. And it’s not a good thing that they are either.

I am not sure that it makes sense to identify your faith by the things you don't believe in.

My point is that at the end of the day, atheists are choosing to believe in something, just as theists do. Atheists believe that life started spontaneously. There have been experiments that suggest that IF the earth was a certain composition of methane, H2, water, etc then it is possible that certain molecules could be produced which might have eventually given rise to the life we see today. But at the end of the day, the science is very far away from even beginning to disprove God. So, the scientist is left with a decision. Either he can chose to believe in some religion due to that religion's own non-scientific proofs. OR the scientists can chose to believe in atheism and that all of life happened spontaneously. Either way though, that person will be believing (therefore, having faith) in something.

I mean, I don't believe in the Norse gods or in the spaghetti monster. I have no proof that they don't exist, just as I don't have proof that the God I believe in does exist.

But my faith relates to what I believe in, not in what I don't believe in.
Otherwise I would have to call myself a Norse mythology atheist and a spaghetti monster atheist and a [fill in the blank with everything else I don't believe in] atheist.
That would make me more of an atheist than a theist ...

So you have faith that Norse gods do not exist just as an atheist has faith that no God exists. That's my point. And the only reason you aren't identified as "Norse mythology atheist and a spaghetti monster atheist" is because of convenience.