Fundie Atheists? - Beliefnet Forums: "I do not believe in God. There is no God or god that I will accept as having any influence on me or that I will believe in or worship.
I was not aware that rejecting all evidence that other people believe in God was a requirement of atheism. And by the way where are these requirements written down? I think on another thread there are people arguing that there is no requirement for being an atheist and therefore fundamentalist atheist is an oxymoron. We are all open minded, going where ever the evidence leads us! The only reason we don't believe in God is that God has not provided unmistakable evidence of Herm existence.
Some people don't look very hard. I look harder than most but still have not found a God that works for me. I may have found gods that work for other people, but since none of them work for me I am an atheist by Ken's definition. I do not believe in God. It is not that I reject clear evidence of the existence of God, it is that the evidence does not convince me that belief would be useful for me."
Next year in Jerusalem
5 days ago
2 comments:
Since Linda's death, the epiphanies have been coming upon me fast and furious. As you might know, my primary quest as the personna "exploringinside" has been to discover why my family and clan continue to cling so tightly to theistic notions. I love them all and for much of the years as a Strong Atheist I was forced to pity them in secret and lament their ignorance in private.
It turned out I was the one who had been fooled, not because Atheism was wrong, but Atheism turns out be woefully insufficient as a guide for one's life. Objectivism, until undergoing a transformation that began in 2001, addressing the spiritual needs of humans, was cold and lacking humaness.
I have embraced the Humanist Manifesto created in 2002 at the Internatinal Convention in Amsterdam. Melded together with a "spiritual version of Objectivism," I believe I finally have the answers for me and my family.
I grew up in an unbelieving family. This did not mean we had no ethical or moral basis for our actions, it was just that we did not accept any prepackaged Belief System for them. I was encouraged to pick and choose among the good things embraced by my religious friends without having to worry about the faith based stuff. It took a while but I was able to come up with a couple of algorithms for living that worked for me. The pick and choose algorithm made it impossible to embrace any pre-assembled belief system, either for my convenience, or the convenience of others.
There is much in Humanism that I can agree with, but I balk at the underlying assumption that humans are the special creation, and somehow are the most important. Humans are just another species trying to fill an ecological niche. Some are doing well, others aren't.
Evolution is continuing and both God genes and belief genes are weakening in the gene pool at least in the significant minority that makes things happen. Some will fall by the wayside and I see no need to prop them up just because they are human.
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