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The Apostolic church on Pearse Street??

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    #32
    Soul Winner
    Registered Users Posts: 2,534 ✭✭✭Soul Winner


    robindch wrote: »
    Just a small point -- it's more accurate to say that one "reverts" to the natural atheism that we all had as children. One doesn't "convert" to it.

    The word 'convert' simply means 'to turn with' ‘con’ meaning ‘with’ and ‘vert’ meaning ‘turn’. If iUseVi used to be a Christian (someone who believed in Christ and who prayed as admitted) then to change from that belief system to atheism (not believing in God) something must have happened to 'turn' him/her. Your point can only be made if in fact iUseVi used to be an atheist before becoming a Christian. You assume this is the case looking through the spectacles of your own experience but you don’t know that it applies to iUseVi. I used the word ‘convert’ on the same basis.

    BTW I don't recall ever having any ‘natural’ atheism as a child. I think this is an over generalisation on your part and IMO would only include those who had no religious instruction in their early years, which might make someone of that non-persuasions think that it applies to every child. It doesn’t. Any slips into agnosticism and doubt that I have had in my life have come more frequently the older I get. I was brought up Catholic and always believed that there was a God. Only later on when I abandoned Catholicism did my simple childlike faith become more solidified the more I learned, as it continues to do the more I challenge and have challenged my beliefs. Which is one of the reasons I use this forum. If Christianity isn't true then I want to know about it. I don't need Christianity if Christ did not raise from the dead as a fact of history. I’ve yet to be convinced that He didn’t with solid evidence. Saying that it is merely implausible that He didn’t doesn’t cut it for me. I have found no reason whatsoever to disbelieve the reports. But this and other forums are great for researching things atheists have raised in relation to the Christian faith, things that I would never have thought of myself. Once they are resolved for me they have only served to strengthen my faith even more. I love you guys, thanks :D


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    #33
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,399 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    PDN wrote: »
    I would see 'atheism' as the doctrine that there is no God. To be an atheist would mean, in my opinion, that one is aware of the concept of God but has rejected that concept.
    An unusual definition, I must say. I go for the much simpler intent-free definition that an atheist is somebody who doesn't believe that a god or gods exist.
    PDN wrote: »
    If we apply the label of 'atheism' to children on the grounds that they have not yet heard of the concept of God then may we not equally describe dogs, stick insects, and even trees as 'atheists'?
    If you really wanted to call a tree an atheist, then I certainly won't mind. I doubt the tree would either.


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    #34
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,399 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Soul Winner wrote: »
    But this and other forums are great for researching things atheists have raised in relation to the Christian faith, things that I would never have thought of myself. Once they are resolved for me they have only served to strengthen my faith even more. I love you guys, thanks
    Indeed, and I find it fascinating to see how religion works in practice -- how it makes its way from mind to mind, adapting and changing as it goes, appealing to different things in different people, ensuring that it stays "alive" at any cost. The forum here is a real-life research lab -- thanks in return!
    Soul Winner wrote: »
    BTW I don't recall ever having any ‘natural’ atheism as a child.
    Before you ever heard of god, before you read your first bible, or even perhaps, before you said your first word? You were an atheist then, my friend :)


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    #35
    PDN
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,686 ✭✭✭✭PDN


    robindch wrote: »
    An unusual definition, I must say. I go for the much simpler intent-free definition that an atheist is somebody who doesn't believe that a god or gods exist.If you really wanted to call a tree an atheist, then I certainly won't mind. I doubt the tree would either.

    I don't think it's unusual at all. According to Anthony Flew. in the days when he was an atheist, mine is the usual meaning in English. Flew wanted to change our language, as apparently you do also, but I don't think either of you have proved successful in so doing.
    Anthony Flew wrote:
    The word 'atheism,' however, has in this contention to be construed unusually. Whereas nowadays the usual meaning of 'atheist' in English is 'someone who asserts there is no such being as God,' I want the word to be understood not positively but negatively. I want the originally Greek prefix 'a' to be read in the same way in 'atheist' as it customarily is read in such other Greco-English words as 'amoral,' 'atypical,' and 'asymmetrical'. In this interpretation an atheist becomes: someone who is simply not a theist. Let us, for future ready reference, introduce the labels 'positive atheist' for the former and 'negative atheist' for the latter.


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    #36
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,399 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    PDN wrote: »
    mine is the usual meaning in English. Flew wanted to change our language, as apparently you do also, but I don't think either of you have proved successful in so doing.
    You mustn't be very familiar with atheism to say something like this. FYI, here's Wikipedia's opening two sentences on atheism:
    Wikipedia wrote:
    Atheism, as an explicit position, either affirms the nonexistence of gods or rejects theism. When defined more broadly, atheism is the absence of belief in deities, alternatively called nontheism.
    The second sentence is the one which describes my general understanding of atheism as an implicit position, and that's the one that you were apparently unaware was in common usage.


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    #37
    mossieh
    Registered Users Posts: 436 ✭✭mossieh


    robindch wrote: »
    If you really wanted to call a tree an atheist, then I certainly won't mind. I doubt the tree would either.

    If a tree falls in the forest and it hasn't been baptised does it go to 'purgatree'?

    My coat I am getting.


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    #38
    Soul Winner
    Registered Users Posts: 2,534 ✭✭✭Soul Winner


    robindch wrote: »
    Indeed, and I find it fascinating to see how religion works in practice -- how it makes its way from mind to mind, adapting and changing as it goes, appealing to different things in different people, ensuring that it stays "alive" at any cost. The forum here is a real-life research lab -- thanks in return!

    Well if it all came as a by product of random mutations coupled with natural selection as the evolutionist believe then what harm is there in it? Evolution, as has been pointed out again and again in these forums has no ultimate goal or purpose so why hate religion so much? Even if it was proven that evolution was right and that religion was wrong then having religion shouldn't really matter because evolution is going nowhere anyway.

    In any case has the basic claims of Christianity on the whole changed since New Testament times in order to adopt to be more acceptable to modernity? Has Christianity decided that miracles cannot happen in order to be accepted by this scientific age? Any Christian organisation that does this is not Christian. And for those who do do it you still hate anyway. You admit that you would like to get rid of religion and even when it changes to appease you, you still hate it. It can’t win.

    robindch wrote: »
    Before you ever heard of god, before you read your first bible, or even perhaps, before you said your first word? You were an atheist then, my friend :)

    Before I said my first word I was eeehhhmmm let me think about 2 to 6 months old, before I heard of God, oh that must have been when I was about 1 to 2 years old, and before I read my first Bible I must have been 9 years old (I got a children’s illustrated Bible when I was 10 off my aunty for Christmas) so if I go back to the earliest one which is 2 to 6 months old then I doubt very much that I could have been an atheist by your definition. Why? Because to be an atheist by your definition would have meant that at 2 to 6 months old I'd have to have been somebody who doesn't believe that a god or gods exist. Concepts I couldn’t possibly have envisage in my then undeveloped mind let alone decide I don’t believe in.


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    #39
    PDN
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,686 ✭✭✭✭PDN


    robindch wrote: »
    You mustn't be very familiar with atheism to say something like this. FYI, here's Wikipedia's opening two sentences on atheism:The second sentence is the one which describes my general understanding of atheism as an implicit position, and that's the one that you were apparently unaware was in common usage.

    So, given that the context of this was a poster turning away from theism to atheism - you are stating that he embraced an implicit, rather than an explicit, position.

    Any other implicit atheists out there?


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    #40
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,399 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    PDN wrote: »
    So, given that the context of this was a poster turning away from theism to atheism - you are stating that he embraced an implicit, rather than an explicit, position.
    It hardly matters, since implicit atheism includes explicit atheism.

    Capeesh?


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    #41
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,399 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Soul Winner wrote: »
    You admit that you would like to get rid of religion and even when it changes to appease you, you still hate it. It can’t win.
    I detest religion because it demands that people look at the world back-to-front, with an intellectual position which starts off with a conclusion (or an interpretation of a conclusion), then permits the evidence of the world gained through one's senses, and processed, to be mashed and squeezed until the evidence fits the conclusion. The creationism thread is a sad example of this, but to a greater or lesser extent, the same back-to-front conclusion-first view informs all of religious thought.

    Consequently, religion, a virtually infinitely malleable social construct, is most unlikely to be able to evolve into something that I can accept. And I certainly don't want it to "win" either!
    Soul Winner wrote: »
    Because to be an atheist by your definition would have meant that at 2 to 6 months old I'd have to have been somebody who doesn't believe that a god or gods exist. Concepts I couldn’t possibly have envisage in my then undeveloped mind let alone decide I don’t believe in.
    I think you may have missed the point about implicit atheism in this post. As a 6-month old, I agree that you weren't capable of being an "explicit" atheist, but you certainly were an "implicit" atheist at the time, hence the comment :)


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    #42
    iUseVi
    Registered Users Posts: 1,435 ✭✭✭iUseVi


    Soul Winner wrote:
    Honesty tends to do that.

    Would the 'all situations' in which you used to pray include praying for good weather, and a safe journey as referred to by yourself in your other post?

    If so how could you possibly have prayed with equal earnest for things like having a nice sunny day along with praying that your kid who is dying of cancer might get healing? I find that a fairly shocking confession.

    What converted you to atheism?

    My "conversion" to atheism was certainly not some sort of sudden over night thing. In my heart I don't think I ever believed there was a God. I grew up in a entirely Christian, and quite honestly fundy family. I did and said everything any other Christian says and does. I even used to defend creationism because that was what I was taught to do! :confused::rolleyes:

    However, no amount of peer pressure or "teaching" can make someone believe. God never spoke to me or did any miracles, even though I repeatedly asked, and I really was quite earnest at that time, really, no faking!

    After I went to college and began reading a few science/philosophy books, I began to think for myself. I realised that I only said I believed in God because that is what other people told me to! I had in fact no more evidence of Gods existence than I did of Santa Clauses existence.

    The more I thought and more I learnt, the clearer the flaws and inconsistencies in Christianity, and religion in general became to me. (imo, no insult intended!)

    So in a sense, I was always an atheist, but only had the courage to "come out" recently.

    Hope I didn't bore you. :rolleyes:

    As an aside, I am sure there are loads of people in a similar position to what I was, but fear of what families and Christian friends would say might hold them back. I would encourage people to be honest, I know for me I was walking on air for weeks after I "came out", such was the relief.


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