Atheists I don't mind. They don't believe in god. Pure and simple. And true atheists leave it at that.
Unfortunately, most atheists don't fall into that category.
No, unfortunately more fall into the crusaderism category where they have to LET YOU KNOW they're atheists. They need to get in your face. They wear it like a badge of honor, because, well, they really have nothing else of value going on in their lives.
And this is the just the latest bit of proof.
Look...I hate religion just as much (if not more) than anybody else. But when you MAKE A CHURCH about atheistism then you have become what you hate. You're a freaking hypocrite and aren't an atheist. Your "theist" has become "atheism."
It's the same thing with "going green."
How many lefitsts mock and ridicule Christianity, Judaism, or just religion in general (unless it's Muslim because Muslims would beat your ass)...
but then in the same breath swallow whole the "going green" "environmentalism" religion?
There is no difference between the two.
Environmentalism is nothing more than a snooty person's religion. Equally unfounded claims. Equally unfounded moral superiority. Equally deserving to get a punch in the face if they ever proselytize to you.
They may "claim" they hate religion or are "too smart for it," but just like all the other sheeple, they find something to glom onto because they lack true and genuine independent thought and individuality (see hipsters). Just because it isn't a biblically-based religion doesn't mean it isn't one and the intellectual weakness of one to subscribe to it doesn't apply. But when you go to the extend to create a CHURCH of atheists you are merely mocking atheists and atheism.
Atheism is the belief there is no god.
Therefore you should not be praying or attending church to/for anything.
Heck, the simplest, most banal reason to be an atheist is to avoid wasting your time praying to a deity in the form of attending church/mass/synagogue/mosque.
But now you morons decide to make a church for atheism.
You're not atheists. You're just a bunch of intellectual weaklings, cowards, and above all else, hypocrites.
Post script - I have also taken a second look at the pictures in the original article from CNN. Notice how nobody is good looking. They're all pretty ugly. Again, they're not real atheists. They are rejected people, desperate for acceptance, and something as pathetic and hypocritical as a Church of Atheism (whose standards I can only imagine to be "a pulse") is only more than happy to have them. This is how cults are formed.
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Oh yeah; evangelical atheists. I've written about them before. They're just as annoying as the fundies, and for exactly the same reason.
http://paxempyrean.blogspot.com/2013/05/theology-in-style-of-gilbert-and.html
Coming up: Why Scotsmen aren't really Scotsmen...
Seriously, though, there are religions and there are religions. Then there's pornography that gets taken as a common creed in the absence of a common religion:
"Finally, on page 22, I found something concrete: apparently in the '90s a couple of actresses were killed by stalkers who got their addresses from leaky government databases. This is very tragic. Of course, a few years later, 3000 people died to protect Zacarias Moussaoui's "civil liberties." But I suppose this would be reducing privacy to a pre-fabricated conception of a singular essence.
Just the way Roissy is a sex addict, the civil-liberties zealot is a power addict. There is a difference, however. Roissy actually has sex. Or so I believe. There is unfortunately no word that means "porn" in the context of political power, but there should be. Being a slave to desire is a low condition of the human soul, but the only condition more pathetic is that of a slave to unfulfilled desire.
Of course, history is long. Even the 20th century was long. While the civil-liberties geek of 2013 is a pathetic and even hilarious figure, it's not at all true that his passion has never gone requited. Actually, in its bureaucratic form, "civil liberties" helps keep the streets of San Francisco covered with turds and shambling zombies - two phenomena which constantly challenge and entertain my delightful precocious toddlers. "Why? Why, Pop?" Alas, though precocious, my offspring are nowhere near precocious enough to absorb the concept of the ACLU."
When halfway-understood concepts are taken as religious mysteries, why shouldn't you expect evangelical atheists and fundamentalist Christian universalists? When the common knowledge is thus compromised and taken as religion, you don't get an organized minority of dissenters, but a confused mass of refugees going every which way.
I thought that was the whole friggin point of atheism. You get to stay home and sleep in on Sunday.
And there already IS an atheist church. (Of sorts) It's called Unitarianism. Atheists who want to be in a bake sale lovin' religious community can go (not) worship there.
There's a good argument that atheism is just the logical endpoint of Calvinism. A form of non-theistic Christianity which wants to make sure people conform to the Right Thinking Cause (and which has its members belonging to an enlightened Elect, where they can feel better than anyone else.) It's hard to argue with that assessment.
The only argument against proselytizing is that, well, it's annoying. I can't blame someone for subtly trying to push their convictions on me - if they're a theist, it'd be weird if they weren't trying to save me from an eternity of torture just because it inconveniences them. If they're an atheist, it's reasonable of them to try and decrease the amount of stupid/intolerant in the world. If they're an environmentalist, it's reasonable of them to try to increase the chances of saving humanity.
Just gotta be subtle about it. If they're being in-your-face, they're not optimizing for success, they're optimizing for feeding their own ego.
That's the thing about Puritans, no matter who or what they worship, they never change their true nature. They seek out belief systems that they are able to interpret with their very narrow comprehension, the criteria of which includes, enabling a false sense of superiority over others ("atheism", environmentalism), ridiculous rituals that are usually enforced upon others (going green, the entire leftist social agenda) and last but not least, witches to burn ("climate denialists", "racists", "misogynists", "homophobes").
As far as atheists go, the Macfarlane cartoons - in spite of Seth being somewhat of a raging leftist - do make a very good point on the issue. See in Family Guy, you've got Brian the dog, a proud and very vocal atheist who isn't afraid to force his opinion down people's throats. This occasionally draws the ire of other characters, most notably, and ironically, the hedonistic sex fiend Glen Quagmire, who completely hates Brian and once told him so in a brutal and extensive rant, which is quite amusing because that rant could be used against any modern leftist.
Then, there is the Cleveland Show, where you've got Cleveland Brown Jr., a fourteen year old atheist. The difference with Junior is that he is more passive in his beliefs, or lack thereof, and prefers to keep to himself and not force them upon anybody, even when his entire family turned on him and tried to force him back to the church.
The important difference between the two characters is that Brian is a Crusader, who probably forces his views on others to fill the void of his shortcomings as a single, unemployed failed writer, whereas Junior is live and let live, who although suffers obesity and obsessive compulsive disorder, finds meaning in life through academic pursuits, community service and love for his family.
While Brian isn't all bad, and Junior is no angel (since they're cartoons, their personalities can be altered at the whim of their writers), their behaviors do a pretty decent job at illustrating the two main types of modern atheists - the ones who use their beliefs to talk down to others, and the ones who focus on building their own lives.
I know someone who attends. I nearly sprained something trying not to roll my eyes when she was telling me about the Christmas service.
David Silverman is a great example of the kind of atheist I can't stand. Watch any of his appearances on Bill O'Reilly's show to see what I mean.
Once you understand that Hypergamy creates winners and losers, then you understand that civilization has sustainability problems.
In order to get beta males to contribute to society, they need to have hope to get laid someday. This means that alpha males and women may need to compromise in their sex lives. And even in a society that agreed to thusly restrict people's optimum sex lives to make civilization possible, the values of the society have to be passed to children, who need to make the same choices or civilization falls. That's what religion is: the values of civilization passed onto children.
If it takes stories about all powerful sky god to keep women and alpha males from collapsing civilization due to war resuling from winner takes all Hypergamy then that's what it takes. Surely even an atheist can appreciate organized religion if only from a utilitarian perspective.
So everybody who passes their values to others such as their kids, even atheists, have religion, even if the atheists reject organized religion.
This makes prosthelitizing atheists all the more obnoxious: trying to convert you to their religion by saying their religion isn't a religion.
When I point out to militant atheists that they belong to a loosely organized religion whose major dogma is there is no God, they become quite defensive. This pointer is further proof of that.
I think there is a reasonable argument that atheism is just as much a religion as any other, as is agnosticism or any -ism you want to pick. If there are a set of beliefs that one adopts which are faith based, then voila, you have religion. There is no requirement that there be a deity in order to qualify as religion.
"Atheism is the belief there is no god."
This is actually incorrect. True atheism is the lack of belief in such a thing as a god. It seems like a small difference,but it's not. Once you cross over from the negative position,"I don't believe in god", to the positive position "I believe there is no god", then it is no longer atheism.
That is a belief system,just like Christianity is. Christianity has a positive position "I believe in Jesus and the promise of heaven.", Judaism has a positive position "I believe in Jehovah and the Ten Commandments", but atheism is supposed to be a negative position "I have seen no evidence of either Jesus or Jehovah to convince me of their existence."
Crossing over from a lack of belief in God to a belief in the lack of a God is what makes the atheists you describe so particularly annoying,as well as hypocritical.
There is no more evidence that God does not or cannot exist than there is that he does. It comes down to the same thing, faith. How can a so-called "atheist" ridicule a Christian for being "delusional" when claiming some kind of knowledge on the subject matter, when he himself claims special knowledge on the subject for the same reason-his BELIEFS ?
Isn't that the objection to Christianity? That it's based on belief and not science or observable fact?
Or were Christians right all along that atheism is just rebellious sinners who know they don't measure up acting out like toddlers?
They crave ritual without meaning.
There's nothing new here. It's been done, and they call it contemporary Quakerism.
You might enjoy this. I do love it when people promoting their own brand of whatever get tripped up by their opponents.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/theanchoress/2013/06/01/if-atheists-want-a-creed-they-ought-to-have-one/
Hey, brother. I don't have your email, but I wanted to invite you to the Las Vegas Manosphere Meet-up. Check out my blog for details. Our guest list is already pretty impressive. You are pretty much the last blogger we lack to have the full lineup of the best and brightest. Though I may have to kidnap Aurini
You're wise and smart about the issues that you focus on that when you write things like *this*, I am reminded how very young you actually are.
What, you didn't know?
I agree with your assessment.
It is impossible to be a true athiest and actually acknowledge it publicly.
An athiest does not believe in God. Full stop.
The word God is just another word in the dictionary, nothing more. Truck, eviscerate, thing, god, antler, fall, etc.... No special meaning, therefore, it is impossible for an athiest to be any more offended by the word God, than the word apple.
A true athiest would not see any difference between these two sentences:
1. In God we Trust
2. In Unicorn we Trust.
A true athiest would think you are just being silly by using the word God in a sentence.
This is actually incorrect. True atheism is the lack of belief in such a thing as a god.
Fail. As per the Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy ‘Atheism’ means the negation of theism, the denial of the existence of God.
If atheism was only a lack of belief in God, what would call the position of someone who actively did not believe then?
You are confusing agnosticism (of varying strengths) with atheism.
Atheists often exhibit the old adage that when we stop believing in God, we start believing in anything.
Environmentalism is a substitute religion for so-called atheists, and worse, a state mandated religion. We are told continuously that man-caused global warming is a scientific fact when anyone with a brain stem can see it's a complete fraud.
If a fundamentalist pastor tells his congregation that the world is coming to an end and the followers believe him, I really don't care because there's a separation of church and state in this country. But when that blowhard southern televangelist Al Gore says the same thing and an army of state-funded "scientists" are paid to be his soldiers, then I'm scared because the government has a gun at my head telling me to believe or die.
I thank you, sir. I am glad that someone with a readership has pointed this out.
I have a very good friend who is an atheist (I am not). When people start talking religion around him, he looks at his watch, makes a polite excuse, and walks away...somewhat the way I do when people start talking about last night's television show...simply not interested.
Sigh. Atheism isn't a religion. Neither is theism. The only thing that can make an atheist not really an atheist is believing some sort of God or god is real. Any other attitudes or beliefs they hold modify the person, not the person's atheism. --Dean
Speaking of ugly people, At one time I was writing reviews of all the Catholic churches in my home town in the Rust Belt. Just like theater reviews or restaurant reviews. One consistent feature that I noticed was that the more liberal and social-justice the church was, the fatter and plainer the women were. The fire-and-brimstone Catholic church in town -- a very small one -- was full of smoldering stunners. And then, not only were these women world-class beauties, they were wearing veils of black lace.
PS You may observe me at rantlets.net
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