Notwithstanding my pedantic sectarian dispute in regards to retro-nominalizing beliefless homo fabers āatheistsā, as I still maintain that the ālackā per se was created (ex theo, theo ex?)ā¦
Point of Business: We need to find some way to can the lack. To sell nothing is the pinnacle of marketing evolution. It is an unavoidable eventuality. Supply is endless and demand is born evey minute!! The only labor involved in production is the mediation of the messagelessness.
So:
Why worship nothing?
For the superb rhetorical effect.
Apsalm 1
āOh Nothing, you are so inexplicably humongous! And yet you fit in the palm of my handā¦
Thine mystery is a dimensionless morass, and yet solice eminates from your nonbeing.
Great ontological personhoodwink, guide my episteme that it may be led by none other than what is determined momentarily.
For though I peregrinate through the many veils of nocturnal indefinition, yay do I find that I wake onto the same dream morningly.
Thine absense is my space to live. Aamen.ā
The only reason people have ever believed in God/gods is because the idea of God has always been attached to other specific conditions or implications. I.E. most God-concepts imply certain āextraā facts about the world, e.g. the existence of souls, Heaven & Hell, sin, God-given morality/authority, etc.
The idea of God becomes superfluous if you define God as the universe or as just whatever started everything. Unnecessary. You could never have a religion from a God-concept of this sort.
I disagree but not because thereās isnāt a belief, because practically speaking atheists are a bag of cats. If there is any dogma its confused and definitely undefined.
Itās called Buddhism and they donāt worship the source of all things as a person or worship anything in fact. You might argue Buddhism isnāt a religion its a philosophy, but I think its both. Especially when they start banging on about reincarnation and karma. Two more indistinct notions that are completely unnecessary.
Precisely! Thatās where the marketing challenge comes in. Dawkins et al. are being given free-reign to define the texture. Not that I have any great beef with that, but, hey, the frontier is open to all who seek to dispell monsters! Anselmās Fool is not only alive and well, but sending travelogues back to civilization. We of the Achurch must act now and keep our Adogma undefined, definitively!!
Adogma 1:
Believing is (not) believing.
To be aware of what one doesnāt believe in is to be informed. To be aware of what one does believe in is to be perceptive. To be wise, one must not only believe. To be compassionate, one must not only care. One must know and do. Those are the rules. Aamen.
I am not talking about Buddhism. Buddhism is a religion. Buddhism implies certain āextraā facts about the world.
I am talking about a God-concept that does not imply āextraā facts about the world. And I maintain that you could never have a religion from a God-concept of this sort.
There is no dogma to atheism. As Iāve said, atheism is merelyā¦atheism. For it to be anything else, it has to be āatheism +ā ā¦ āatheism andā
Again: Atheism is not a religion because it is neither a belief system nor worldview, it amounts to the single belief that God does not exist.
I donāt disagree but religions have been founded on less than two fundamental beliefs. No atheism is not a religion, it is by definition the lack of one, and is about as definable as the tensile strength of nothing.
Itās not only the fundamental beliefs of religions that matter, itās all that follows from the fundamental belief(s) that matters, and matters greatly. In this way, atheism itself is fundamentally not a religion, as weāve both said.
How is atheism undefinable? ādefinable as the tensile strength of nothingā
I donāt understand, do you take issue with the concept of atheism?
To recap: Atheism = a belief that there is no God (as opposed to being benignly without a belief in God) = a positive lack of religion = an extant void
Now to the tensile strength of nothing: All is suspended by nothing, by definition. Thus, to worship nothing is to expell All. This is surely akin to the Buddhist meditative state of observing emptiness (itself being only a penultimate state of contemplation, mind you). So, to differentiate the Achurch of Atheism (or Athiesm, if you prefer) from Buddhism, we must demonstrate that the extant lack which defines the belief in no God is not āsomethingā which might carry us ontoward a logical consequent. Rather, the worship of nothing must comprise itself as not being an outcomes-based perspective. Rather, it is explicitly affirming the presencing of the present, and not anything else. Or am I reading too deeply into things here?
The tensile strength of nothing is indefinable, thus atheism is indefinable, lacks dogma or fundamental truths and as said there is a serious challenge as to whether its a religion or ever could be.
As an example of a religion founded on few beliefs, secular humanism, before the church failed the first hit on Google was for the church of secular humanism. I was sad to see it go, but it did make no sense. Secular humanism really just is a moral philosophy.
Nope just the certainty.
If its any consolation on first reading you broke my logic bone, but in a good way. I agree, there arenāt enough logical positives to enforce a logical negative into being a logical positive by consequence.
Atheism does not imply worship of any kind, certainly not worship of ānothing.ā Is belief that unicorns donāt exist an āextant lackā? How can we differentiate āAunicornismā from Buddhism? These are rhetorical questions.
Again Buddhism is a religion because it is a belief system/worldview. Atheism is not.
Halelujah abrother, respect the lack of a lord and join with me in a prayer to no one never.
Ramen, and noodle be his indistinct name you fool. Gotta love pirates even if you never believed they existed or were related to global warming. Ninjas are better, hallowed be there lack of being seen, observed, or even heard of.
good FSM when anything is possible anything that is impossible is sidelined without a care for consistency.
We agree it was only a semantic issue anyway I think weāre all on the same train now? If thatās not too much of a suggestion of fact before the evidence is in.
No I think the term āreligionā is to be reserved for belief systems that include a fundamental belief in higher power (God). Secular humanism isā¦āsecular.ā
Secular humanism is a worldview/belief system. But this thread is concerned with religion and whether atheism is one. We already agree that atheism cannot be a religion. Done.
The certainty of whatā¦?
EDIT: And atheism is not a religion on at least two counts: (1) no belief in higher power (2) no belief system
Either of these by itself is enough to disqualify atheism from being a religion.
Yes indeed, but we are presently in the act of creating within the negative space, as per my previous thought:
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All we need worship is presence. This will radically transform Xmas!!
Is Evolutionary Psychology a religion? (ā¦not that I necessarily want to go thereā¦)
The perniciously spurious speculation of this thread, Iād suggest, is to undergo (for the purposes of intellectual treadmilling) the process of making atheism into a religionā¦ plenty of misguided disbelievers already do. Perhaps thereās call for guidance in that respect (on the assumption that itās unavoidable), doused with a jerry can of sarcasm naturallyā¦ [-o<
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We agree. We have to anyway I have to go and don my ninja robes soon and speak to an imaginary crowd of imaginary adherents about a religion that does not and could not ever exist.
Short story short, thereās no way atheism is going to become a religion unless oughtist sorts out his cult and dies at a Wako like place.
Atheism is just an idea not a religion, but religion is just an idea. What distinguishes it, is that they make articles of faith into truth, an atheist cannot and will not do that, because obviously their only article of faith is up to revision if God smites them. In that sense of course it canāt become a faith unless all atheist are strong atheists, and they most certainly arenāt, some atheists couldnāt give a damn if God exists or not until thereās something to talk about, nor even want to talk about it.
Are you saying thereās hope for me yet!!! Actually, I wouldnāt want to assume actual ownership of the cultā¦ I think Pav has copyright privileges on this thread.