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Re: Sunday, May 27, 2007 (Thoughts on Salvation)
First, let me state that I am an atheist, but I was raised a Christian and graduated from a Christian college. Also, commenters should be aware that lumping atheists into one big group and making broad and generalized statements about that group is akin to lumping Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Buddhists, and pretty much most religions together and making broad statements about them as a whole. Atheists are an immensely diverse group of people with no founding set of documents from which we derive our own moral beliefs such as the Bible or Koran - although most tend to believe in the findings of modern science, yet pure science says nothing, or little, about morality. "With or without the straw man argument, I also don't get atheism... which essentially asserts the negative certainty of something that cannot be proven because it cannot be proven. A bit circular if you ask me. Agnostic, sure... but I agree it's hard to believe in atheists." Atheism doesn't attempt to prove anything, and that's where I think most people get off on the wrong foot. I don't feel a need to define or not define God, I just state that I don't believe in God. I'm always a little baffled why religious individuals think atheists are trying to prove atheism by disproving God because you're correct that is circular, but that's not how I know atheists to define their belief (actually atheist technically isn't a belief. Beliefs are based IN something, not in the absence of something). Atheists aren't "believers" in atheism because they disproved God and hence don't believe, but we're people who just don't believe in God. There is no starting point where God ever was, and hence no circular logic to disprove that starting point. More often, that's how religious people characterize atheist's beliefs, but that makes sense because your beliefs begin with God and require logic to disprove God before you could ever believe in the no-existence of God. The second most common problem from there is religious people trying to understand how atheists make decisions like moral decisions since we don't have a book or set of books or a group of authority figures defining at least some portion of those moral beliefs to us. Yet, we are still moral, kind, and just people (for the most part I like to think). Sadly, this leads to comments like, "There are no atheists in fox holes," which is about as offensive a statement as you can make to an atheist, and I don't think religious people understand this. The only way I can think of showing the level of offense is like telling a Jew that the Holocaust didn't happen. It's a horrendous statement to make, and one that totally and completely devalues my personal beliefs in about as catchy a statement as one can make. However, I understand how someone wouldn't realize that, and I let it run off my back like rain off a duck's, but I try to highlight the offense when I can. There are responses to this message:
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