Thread 17898971

Welcome to the /atheism/ general, a thread for discussing the history, philosophy, and cultural impact of atheism and secularism. This is not r/atheism or a place for edgy memes, keep it grounded in historical context or humanities. Topics can include:

>Atheism in ancient philosophy (Epicurus, Lucretius, etc.)

>Secularism's role in the Enlightenment and modern nation-states

>Historical conflicts between religious institutions and freethinkers

>Non-Western perspectives on atheism (e.g., Carvaka in India, Chinese secular traditions)

>Michael Ruse’s role in the creation-evolution debates, like his testimony in McLean v. Arkansas (1981) against “creation science.”

Rules:

Stay on topic. /his/ is for history and humanities, not /pol/-tier rants.

Cite sources when possible (books, papers, or even archive links).

Current discussion starter: How did the French Revolution’s anti-clericalism shape modern secular governance? Was it a net positive or negative for the development of atheist thought in Europe?

This thread isn't going to get any discussion because atheism is too broad of a topic and isn't anywhere near as engaging as threads with a more focused premise or your typical /pol/bait

That being said, how do you feel about nontheistic religions like Christian atheism?

>>17898971 (OP)
YAY!!! Atheism!!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_atheism

>>17898977
>Nontheistic religion
That is excruciating to read those movements sound like language butchers
There are a lot of good ethical lessons from religion but why call it a religion if it isn't supernatural? Just get your morals and ethics from history.

>>17898971 (OP)

Praying for you.

>>17899389
Atheism doesn't actually preclude supernaturalism necessarily. Soft Atheism, at its most extreme end, basically resembles Deism in all but name

/rel/igion needs its own containment board

>>17899413
Deism thinks the universe needed a creator, and by many descriptions it's opposed to supernatural claims except when it comes to the creation of the universe. So for the most part it stands against "supernaturalist atheism" on both sides, the supernaturalist part and the atheist part.

>>17899469
*Deism thinks the universe needed a supreme being as the creator of the universe

>>17899413
I used to like blurring the lines like that but something is either a circle or a noncircle. That there's a small chance something is true doesn't make it rational and acceptable at all.

In a recent poll in the US, Atheists ranked coldest on the thermometer scale. Participants were asked to rank what they think of different religions, hotter being good, and colder being bad.

>>17899552
>Amerilards are retarded
Imagine my shock.

>>17899562

Jesus Christ loves you so much he died for you.

>>17899552
It's strange to introduce a thermometer scale instead of just asking directly. It seems like it would bias the results if there's an association between coldness and rationality, which I believe there commonly is. That said, since most American adults still identify as Christian, I can see why the results would lean that way regardless.

>>17899552
It's strange to introduce a thermometer scale instead of just asking directly. It seems like it would bias the results if there's an association between coldness and rationality, which I believe there commonly is. That said, since most American adults still identify as Christian, I can see why the results would lean that way regardless.

>>17899567
He also made infinite torture for the vast majority of us for injuries that don't even register to him

Reading atheist filth monthly: 44€
Reading one boon on occult practices that work: 19€
But for some reason, fedoras think their hot opinions have any weight

Sean Carroll on New Atheism at roughly the 3 hour 5min mark
https://youtu.be/2OiNy9av6pE

>>17899552
Cell phone data on church attendance
https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/many-americans-skip-church-but-say-they-go

>>17899679
>The definition of weekly attendance used in the study is "36 out of 47 weeks," allowing for occasional absences. This means the roughly 5% figure for weekly attenders reflects frequency within a span of around one year, not multiple years or just a one-time snapshot.

Dominion + Within Reason + Misquoting Jesus + probably Peter Thiel + my own blossoming schizophrenia and Carl Jung have swung me from soft atheism into Christian agnosticism over the last couple years. Seems to be in the air right now, seems fishy.

Dumbest religion of all time. Enjoy Hell.

>>17899721
Cannibal.

>>17899650
Shut the fuck up and kill yourself you mentally ill freak retard

My own atheism comes more from emotional responses than logical ones. Existence appears to be a chaotic, madening mess or strife and conflict and random meaningless events. How can there be any order, other than what humans attempt to create? Creation itself is flawed, and I can't imagine worshipping a flawed creator. It doesn't help that organized religion is so often a blatant scam, that the most devout are also the most gullible, that weakness and vulnerability is so easily exploited. All these nitpicky theological debates don't go anywhere when you talk in circles about "well it says this in this book so that must be so". Maybe my ego just won't accept a supreme authority to begin with. I sometimes want to go back to the baptist church I grew up in and talk to the current pastor about God, His creation, the nature of good and evil, and the moral nature of God Himself. I mean, the Christian God is kind of a prick, right? He can't possibly be a good person. That's the main issue to me, at least. Why does he need to be worshipped? Why the prostrating and singing and praying? What benefit does He get from it? Why does His own existence have to be cast in so much doubt? Why even make it a mystery? Why is prayer so worthless? Why are miracles such patent bullshit? Why must innocent pleasure be punished?

all glory to the mighty Atheismo
may his eternal nothingness continue on forever and ever as it is now, was in the beginning and shall be; world without end

>>17899850
He nothinged for our nones.

Thing for me now is, you have people actually like the guy Enjoy Hell Westboro guys are pretending to be, then you have guys like Thomas Keating and Tolstoy and Carl Jung and Meister Eckhart and Giordano Bruno and Francis Collins, and a hundred million rational love your neighbor Christians, and the guys on Mount Athos waking up at 2am to pray daily for 3 hours straight before breakfast, and probably Chinese and Coptic and Mexicans and Peter Hitchens. Real living breathing religion occupying vital whole-brain unknown unknown identifying parts of individual and collective minds. And then you have black people.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh-oge3eaUg

>>17899838
>>17899882

And there's probably nothing more foundationally useful and purely good for individuals and groups alike than the condensed, cherry-picked (by me) teachings of Jesus Christ.

>>17899953
Oddly enough the actual teachings of Jesus are a rather small part of Christianity. If you think about it.

>>17899963
Sounds right. To me, an outsider who's read 15 pages of Bible tops, Quakers are probably the closest to being teachings of Jesus focused.

>>17899882
I accepted Jung's intellectual thundercock into my receptacle for years while in Catholic school and wound up schizo, eventually rejecting most supernatural claims. I think his leanings into synchronicity or gurdjieff/bergsons vital force offshoots were interesting but more satisfying to explain the lacking law of identity with concepts like qubit teleportation or entanglement. Even proven methods of energetic bodywork in nei gong seem wholly physiological.

>>17899731
Take your meds.

>>17899390

THIS.

>>17900035
Still new to Jung, giving benefit of the doubt cautiously but I'm pretty sure there's a lot there, even if the lot there is justified dubiously. Within 10 mins in his little book on Synchronicity, there's a reference to a non-replicable ESP study, and skimming ahead all the alchemy/magick etc. With QM, apparently he was close to Wolfgang Pauli and Pauli helped him develop some of his ideas. That's basically all I know.
>eventually rejecting most supernatural claims
Would you say you're an atheist now or still Catholic in some sense, what's a label you'd give yourself

>>17900044
Enjoy your barbecue.

>>17900064
I'm an atheist but identified agnostic for a long time before then. If you're committed to an intellectual journey chances are you know a bit of existentialism I would get a Jung anthology with minimal secondaries he's accessible but obviously a very high ceiling involving knowing latin and the alchemical canon. He wrote a lot.

>>17900044
Anon is correct. You invite people to lead an ahistoric, aconsequential life from a coffin and feed on them then.

>>17648779

[Paraphrased:]

>"Don't make generals, ya faggit."

>>17900298

>Threads should be about specific topics, and the creation of "general" threads is discouraged.

>>17898977
>>17899389
I'm an atheist and I've raised the idea of Christian Atheism on /his/ before. The idea of being inspired by the Bible and Jesus's morals, without literally believing that there is a God, or that Jesus was the son of God.

But Christians on /his/ seem to get angry at the suggestion. "Nooo you must believe in our fictional sky wizard!"

>>17898977
Christian Atheism is a cope. It is inherently admitting that humanity is better off living under a lie under the vague notion that it is "culturally" better than the rest. Morality must necessarily be secular because otherwise we are deciding on what the best morals for immortal souls in a test chamber are instead of the best morals for humans living on earth.

>>17900665
>Christian Atheism is a cope. It is inherently admitting that humanity is better off living under a lie
I don't see how it admits that. Surely Christian Atheists want to live under the truth, which is why they are sceptical about the existence of God. They just think that the morals of the Bible are good morals, even though they don't believe in God.

>>17900665
cont; If you accept christ's idea of altruism (a man's value is only measured by the degree to which he sacrifices with no value given in return) you merely create a moral framework that enables communists (the real "christian atheists") to enslave you to the workers party. After all, why would you want a good life for yourself instead of working for the glory of the working class? Isn't that selfish? That's not self-sacrifice! Go to coal mine. "Christian values" enable the initiation of force on the individual by the group on a moral level, which is fucking horrific.

>>17898977
Spoke too soon, eh?

>>17900668
Because you admit that your atheist values are inferior, otherwise you wouldn't need christian values and calling it christian atheism would be performative instead of optimal.

>>17900674
What would you say are better atheist values?

>>17900685
Humans survived, evolved and thrived on this planet because of their unparalleled use of the mind to interpret reality better than any other life form. We can conclude then that the mind is our reason to exist, like wings are to a bird or claws are to a tiger. To treat a human humanely thus means to let them use their mind to either consent or not in any dealings you have with them and to respect that consent. In a societal framework this means that individual freedom and a free market is moral. Initiating force by violence, deception or coercion is denying another human their own mind by making them a means to your end, which is the mistreatment of a human. No utilitarianism, no mysticism, pure principle based on what we can prove.

>>17899469
Who or what do you believe to be the necessary being?

>>17899469
They think it needs a creator because of some inherit orderliness of our current reality that seemingly emerged out of chaos. Beyond this, to a Deist, the true nature of God is incredibly vague, and amounts to just a metaphysical manifestation of order that is projected into this universe

>>17900674
>>17900685
Surely with atheism (I'm an atheist myself) you can adopt whatever values you want, whether those are Christian values, or secular humanist values, or whatever. Atheism just means you don't believe in God. It doesn't mean you're committed to any one set of values or morals.

>>17900774
Of course you can but I see no reason to take your morals seriously if your metaphysics, epistemology and axiom do not line up.

>>17900778
The fact of the matter is, whether you want to face this reality or not, is that Christian moral values are ultimately just secular moral values under a metaphysical veneer

>>17900787
Untrue, using purely materialism to come to a moral framework you end up with (>>17900691). If the point of life is to go to heaven (scoring enough goodboy points) you end up with a man being crucified for crimes he did not commit "but totally for the greater good u guise" justifying brutal government/church overreach into your personal life because you are born sinful/selfish and must be curtailed from your evil nature.

>>17900788
cont; It is the difference between seeing man as a heroic being that is worthy of his own happiness and seeing man as a sacrificial animal to be devoured by those lesser than him.

>>17900788
>using purely materialism to come to a moral framework you end up with (>>17900691)
Proof by Example fallacy, that guy is a retard. But the reality, again, whether you want to face this fact or not, is that not a single country, in the history of the world, has ever thrown out their legal framework in favor of the Bible. For one thing, the morality of the Bible itself, especially the Old Testament, is highly questionable in the modern age, and the Bible as a whole is only selectively followed by modern Christians, with ongoing debates as to what verses are metaphor or literal, and secondly, we have relied exclusively on secular moral law, based on consensus, for hundreds to thousands of years with no Bible required
If you want to generalize "Atheist Morality" with a single word it would probably just be "reciprocity" as that approach ensures that all parties living within a society has some mutually beneficial ideal. God is not required for this anon
>If the point of life is to go to heaven (scoring enough goodboy points) you end up with a man being crucified for crimes he did not commit
You're missing the point, if God is meant to be the ultimate judge of your morals after you die, it means humans are not actually obligated by said God to uphold these morals. We do it for secular reasons, under a metaphysical veneer.

>>17900794
In order to disprove the other post you would have to pose a primary reason that humans still exist on this planet that is not "their unparalleled use of the mind". Care to pose a counterpoint instead of calling me retarded with nothing to back it up? Because if the mind is our reason d'etre, it logically follows that to bypass that mind in someone is treating them inhumanely. Sure, the bible is the predominant (albeit cherrypicked) way for people to ascertain morality. That does not make it correct.

>you're missing the point
No I am not, governments and churches have used their power to decide how you must live for as long as recorded history goes for the simple reason that they don't believe humans are to be trusted with freedom. There is no other reason to dictate public life. *You* are missing the point because you are ignoring the philosophical groundwork for all the moral ideas that exist today. It is very simple, either humans are pretty cool and deserve to be left alone or they are not. Calling atheist morality reciprocity is folly, as the golden rule is a bible quote. Most modern atheists are still altruists, but they are wrong in thinking so, and disproving that statement requires coming up with an alternative to why humans are still alive on this planet today.

>>17898971 (OP)
Real talk, why is there anything at all, I mean anything, like even a 0-dimensional point, sorry if this comes across as shizo, but im having a hard time describing it.

Like, why is there nothing, and nothing to describe said nothingness? like a total absence of existence of anything. Like no universe and nothing for said universe to be contained in or be absent from. Is the universe contained in anything?

>>17900808
*Why isn't there nothing

>>17899887
Church music is never this good. The many black baptist churches in my area have extremely obnoxious and exhausting services. I don't want to put up with all that commotion and repetition. I feel so put upon in churches that are just way too into the whole worship thing. Just shut the fuck up already. That's what I usually think while suffering through a hymn.

>>17900808
>>17900809
The honest answer is that we simply don't know, and religion doesn't really have an answer for this either, since even if you posit that we're here or not because of a God, there's still no answer as to why there's a God, or what created said God, or if God even needed a creator, but by the same principle you could argue the universe itself needed a creator.
We know the universe is expanding, which means it was smaller in the past. We know the universe was hotter and much more dense in the past, as the CMB is remnant heat from this period, but that's all we know. It's pretty much impossible to know what happened before the recombination epoch with any real certainty. The big bang was likely not a singularity, but rather represents the earliest expansion event we can reliably measure. Anything before this is entirely speculative. It could be the work of God or something else entirely. We just don't know what we don't know.

>>17900808
We don't know. With more science we might find out.

>>17900818
I was asking a genuine question, not so much shilling for religion. You could argue from a metaphysical point of view that there must be something to define nothingness. or that maybe there is a metaphysical, non-material realm, like in Platonism, and the universe is some kind of a hologram. I do, however, think that a god isn't to crazy an idea, I mean, look at our solar system, forget the classical fine tuning argument, if our solar system was different in any meaningful way, earth would be unlivable, at least for advanced forms of life.

I get where atheism comes from, but I think that reductive materialism is incomplete. I mean, this idea starts with thinkers like Descartes, and can be described as viewing the world as clockwork. This is powerful, but this metaphysical paradigm is incomplete. For starters, it cannot explain the human experience. Forgive me, but most atheists are reductive materialists.

as for my initial question, I don't know if my feble mortal mind could comprehend the magnitude of the question asked. If you believe in evolution, my brain is here to help me make tools, help me not to get cucked, hunt and form social relationships. That being said, I think that Christ is a good answer; however, I hate the modern Christian impulse to not think and just follow the church to your doom. Christianity lost its brain, and science lost its heart. and by that, science is locked into a metaphysical paradigm that is imperfect.

>>17900808
There is very little associative warrant between various claims about creation and what is observed. There's not a concept of nothingness I believe when I suspend judgment about something I don't understand when the conclusions about it are all found to be irrational.
So when natural design people or presuppositioners say it's just obvious it's God and there's no other explanation that isn't actually what they're talking about all along, then they start answering questions about God qualities, which then are pointed out as paradoxical and spoken in politically/culturally high stakes language. The concept they find self evident they will turn around and say can't be spoken of logically (nondualists understand this problem better). At worst it's a smokescreen and all you have to say is "what's obvious?" Why prefer the name God? The realm of the unknown is well documented in the ongoing exploration done in science because it's own language tries to be based on a productive, decentralized neutral language. Like imagine trying to do science but you're forced to audit your findings with literalist theology so it matches up. Today it is not so bad but a few core teachings stick out whether for religious or political purposes, or maybe the first is just a convenient veneer for the second (stem cell research, abortion, condoms, evolutionary biology).
Most people desire a final theory like they want a single authoritative source of information to tell them what the world is and how to live in it. It's obviously much harder to find this information, it's a mark of submissive laziness to pretend otherwise, most likely you're going to get conned doing so.

>>17900294
There's the sadism, but also he's right that it's insane... but I think there is some deep, murky connection between the cannibalistic skull cults of Western Europe paleolithic through neolithic and the hell fixation that seems to have become a fixture of certain W Euro Protestant movements (but maybe the hell fixation has been there since the start, I don't know). There are deeply rooted consumption of people archetypes/memes at work there, or genes in the case of people like Fred Phelps and the delighted that you're going to burn forever guys. It's really genuinely abominable. Probably originated in or was a response to (biblically) the pagan human sacrifice practices of canaanites. Don't worry, people still get roasted, it's just WE can stop doing that, let God roast them (you get to watch if you're good). Just thinking out loud here. Abominable.

The idea that you're given tickets to a hell show IN HEAVEN as a reward, is so completely removed from anything Jesus-y it's baffling. The leaps are just unquestioned. Cherry-picked Bible above all. I'M elect, YOU will suffer and I get to watch. This is every single non-psychopath's definition of evil. I'd be ashamed for falling for it and run psychopath diagnostics if I delighted by it on top of that. Makes me sick.

>>17901515
There are rule followers and rule breakers, the rule breakers are obviously evil and its nice to see bad things to happen to evil people. Oh yeah, compassion is also important too so its good to be compassionate with my neighbours (rule followers) like jesus said

>>17900808
Ah, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" A classic question, as formulated by Heidegger. Here are my thoughts:
1. Why should nothingness be regarded as a default while somethingness needs to justify itself? I've never seen a nothing. Why can't existence be the standard?
2. This question seems related to determinism in its notion of everything needing a cause. Determinism can never deliver a complete explanation of the universe due to the first cause problem. If there's an uncaused cause, then determinism isn't universally true. We also know from Bell inequality violations that local realism is dead. Reality does not appear to be deterministic at a fundamental level. It seems much more plausible that causality is an emergent property within spacetime than some kind of ur-condition for anything that exists.

>>17901542
Jesus was a rule breaker. Caused a lot of trouble. Should he have been sent to hell? You cunt?

>posts on 4chan
Angered, I apologize

>>17901560
Those were fake rules, of course they dont matter. The only true rules are the rules of God

if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament. opposition to abortion or birth control is frequently tied to controlling sexuality or maintaining patriarchal structures rather than purely theological concerns.
>>17901542
what version of gods rules
baptist? jewish? anglican? ethiopian? muslim?
who do they apply to
everyone pre bible?
what rules are metaphors
what rules which changed later are actually the correct rules
the world is going to end and everyone in heaven is going to watch ppl get infinitely tortured 2379812793871982 years later because the government book in their room went unread?
and if only one church is right it's going to be members of that specific church that gets to watch? which is probably <1% of all humans. for being born without consenting to it having desires they didn't ask for. or for dying at age 0 in an ancient country that practices infanticide for having a weird looking leg that baby is gonna suffer for 23091840918240+years as horribly as possible. and everyone in heaven is going to laugh and rejoice watching it.

>>17901620
>what version of gods rules
Whichever one i believe in obviously. Also way too many questions

>>17901620
If men could get pregnant Human biology and by extension society would be so incredibly different we have no way of guessing what they would be like.
Idk about Birth control but as far as abortion is concerned pro-lifers seem to just think the Fetus is a baby and that killing that baby is wrong, that's it.
> rather than purely theological concerns.
Abortion was never a theological issue though. Always an ethical one. Rooted in the religious belief life begins at conception sure, but an ethical belief, not a theological one.

Though apropos of nothing, it is funny to see feminism slowly loop back into the idea that the defining feature of a Woman is having a vagina over the course of a century after rejecting the notion. It's a bit subtle. But you see it around.

Either that or I just spent too much in a very particular part the feminist intellectual cosmos and it rotted my brain.

>>17901620
based and boybortion pilled :3

>>17901657
London?

The greatest number of people who believe in a single version of christianity is probably about 400 million people. This is the post vatican II version of catholicism (~1.1b people). Surveys suggest only 30–40% fully adhere to all doctrines (e.g., papal infallibility, birth control bans, transubstantiation). so somewhere around 300-400 million "True Catholics" in all history.

If the world ends in 200 years, that number compared to all humans who have ever lived (117b up to 2024, maybe an extra 15 billion more births by the time they all die out), is .31% of all humans who get to go to heaven, max.

If Post Vatican II Catholicism isn't correct and instead it was 1500 Pre-Reformation Catholicism, the total number of strict adherents is more like 50-70m, so compared to 130b max humans (very generous again) that is .04% of all humans who aren't getting infinity torture

basically, according to christianity, if you are born in this universe there is a 99.9% chance you're going to suffer, infinitely, forever, by an all loving god.

>>17901717
And the people who rejoice about this are psychopathic sadists who want to consume human flesh. It works perfectly as a metaphor for adults though. If you lie, cheat, hate, or (with some form of conscience) murder, rape etc, you're likely to live in metaphor hell and, for some, stay there until you die (functionally forever).

>>17902448
Stay there forever without perceived divine forgiveness and major spiritual feeling breakthroughs* Metaphorically heaven and hell are absolutely real. And sometimes they're real for people unfairly. And then you can hope for a non-reddit karma/reincarnation system. A just God would work in this way if you ask me. "Just" as defined to be recognizably just to us, therefore salvaging our use of language as opposed to what happens with "ONLY God (as depicted in the written by humans Bible) gets to define our words" nonsense.

Enough quibbling about little things like abortion and whether or not talking snakes exist. The thread should move past that towards discussing what an ideal atheistic political system looks like using historical examples. And to me that means some variation of state socialism.

>>17901555
Nice trips, that's really interesting, I suppose Descartes has me psyoped into thinking causality is universal, well I've never seen anything in my life that wasn't causal save for the actions of women. But I see your point.

As for the concept of nothingness being the standard, in the world everything was created, I made my computer, I was born, this comment box started out blank, so i don't think it's unreasonable to assume that this phenomenon isn't just local. however, your point is good, I never thought about it like that

>>17902659
Ideal atheistic political system is probably something like the church-state separated systems many of us currently operate in. Atheism at the individual level whenever desired, protection from violent zealots. That's it. Nothing more to it involving systems.

>>17900787
This isn't necessarily right even though I agree overall. Secularism is defined in contrast to religious systems. Also what we think of as humanism is highly indebted to Christianity/the philosophy of Jesus. As far as I know, haven't thought about this carefully and don't know my classics/anthropology. Was swung on this by Tom Holland in Dominion.

You are followers of Christ but you don't know it yet. I'll pray for you.

>>17898971 (OP)
Holy shit I can't believe it took this fucking long for anons to finally make a general. I hope more anons make generals for other topics like ancient and ww2. Let's hope this is permanent

>>17902659
Politics/ethics I don't give a lot of thought. Managing so many different facets of life like that there's no right answer and it seems simply impossible. It definitely must be tailored to the specific era, constitutions from the 17th century have zero bearing because they don't interact with industries/culture/subgroups that exists today. How can virtuous leaders who have great organizational skills get into office? That seems like the only thing that matters. Whether it's called republic/socialism/fascist/oligarchy they seem to take turns as the main principle in a government but always call themselves something else.

One could argue it's cyclical and healthy to just have a hard reset revolution every now and then, like imagine Deng Xiaoping trying to make his reforms in the US where everything is gridlocked by lazy red-tape bureaucracy, it'd be impossible because there's too much incompetence in power.

As far as atheism's role it seems like a real requirement to have secularism in 1st world countries, there is too much dissonance with technology to believe in talking snakes alongside AI data centers. Societies certainly need a central code of ethics, and they should be enforced like a bible. The best picture of the world you get is from your parents, it's their job to give you a clear picture of the world, and the second most clear picture is the opposite of that. It's way too strenuous to demand a philosophical journey from everyone most are too busy just trying to survive, laboring in ethics should be divided to a class of people like any other, and this is probably not the realm of academic philosophers unless their form/institution changes drastically from how it operates now.

>>17899427
This will never happen

>>17898977
>how do you feel about nontheistic religions like Christian atheism?
uber cringe, almost as cringe as moral fictionalism except moral fictionalism has a purpose, this is pure autistic theatrics

>>17901702
A lot of the books I'm alluding to are published in London but I wasn't talking about any specific geographic location. More like amn intellectual current.
My sister is also into that stuff, as part of her academic work.

.