Why are Atheists...Atheists?

Originally posted by Reverend SamuelTophatJack
We have a 100% success rate for those that complete the program here in Port Elizabeth. venturing a speculation for last year aprox 400 were freed from the psychological bondage of atheistic oppressions.

They arent true atheists then. I would like to see you try and cure me

I am so glad there are people of all religions that respect atheism for what it actually is, instead of hiding behind the bible and god like your ignorant self

reply to post by Reverend SamuelTophatJack


It's not 'athiest' that is the number one cause for suicide you doof. People often have problems with their love lives, their family lives, their personal lives (a combination of the two or more etc.).

Religious people commit suicide as well.

In fact, the belief in monotheism is what usually runs people into suicide and suicidal thoughts. You see, after questioning such scientific, universal and logical blasphemy, the questioner comes to the conclusion that he/she has been lied to its whole life by an institution filled with brainwashed faith drones and realizes that roughly 90%+ of the world is this way.

At the end of the day this is what explains your Christianity and how I feel about your cult.

I will never sit in a building and worship the murderous Father of a schizophrenic man whose Mother cheated on her husband and deceivingly, in the biggest Earthly lie ever composed in order to save her own life, had a "virgin birth" to the son of god who is referred to as the prince of peace that claimed to bring the sword and NOT peace. I have a high tolerance for pain and a low tolerance for stupidity (illogicality) and disrespect.

Now unless Extra-terrerstrials artifically insiminated this Mary, you have a lot of explaining to do and the word faith simply won't suffice.

Just to let you know, you'll NEVER convert me. NEVER, see that? I'm much too strong in my logic and acedemia to be swayed into the abyss of ignorance.

[edit on 4-6-2008 by LastOutfiniteVoiceEternal]

reply to post by Reverend SamuelTophatJack


That is really sweet - that you assume we are "boys." I'm a 30-year old woman with two master's degrees and very good health insurance. I assure you that my "disease" of non-belief in god does not need "treatment." In fact, in my profession, patients who think they see, hear and communicate with entities that aren't there are treated for onset of Alzehimer's dementia, Parkinson's Disease, paranoid delusional schizophrenia, or traumatic brain injury. THOSE are real diseases, Rev.

The sad part is, I think you actually BELIEVE that what you are doing is worthy and necessary of your time. There are so many better things you could do for the people of this world.

reply to post by optimistic skeptic


optimistic, you are my friend, from now on.

reply to post by OzWeatherman


OzWeatherman....my man! You got a *warn*.....not your fault, you can appeal to the Mod that sent it your way!

I've had some *warn*s....I took 'em, because I deserved 'em. But, there were a few, I discussed with a Mod, and were reversed.

Just a suggestion...

Peace!!!

reply to post by weedwhacker


Certainly. We could all use more of those.

Well back to the original topic, the Rev might not be so far off Dr. Paul Vitz of Columbia University published this lecture on the internet. Here's an excerpt...

The Psychology of Atheism

According to psychoanalysis, the child has a desire to kill his father and to lie with his mother. Freud called this the 'Oedipus complex'. (I personally do not believe that the Oedipus complex is universal.) The argument can be made that, due to this complex, we have an unconscious desire to kill God, the father figure. Atheism is thus merely Oedipal wish fulfillment.

In many prominent atheists in history, we see a strong antipathy toward their fathers. Voltaire was not an atheist, but he rejected the idea of a personal god. He vehemently rejected his own father, to the point of rejecting his surname and assuming the name 'Voltaire' (we do not know how he came by his adopted name). Diderot, likewise, was a profound atheist. He once stated that a child, if he had the strength of a man of thirty, would "strangle his father and lie with his mother".

Freud himself observed that young people tend to lose their religious faith as soon as they lose the authority of their earthly fathers. This can happen in several ways:

1. The father is present, but he is weak, cowardly, unworthy of respect.

2. The father is present, but is physically, psychologically or sexually abusive.

3. The father is absent, whether through death or abandonment.

What of Freud's own father? Jacob Freud was weak and unable to provide for his family. The money for their support came from his wife's family. Jacob was also passive in the face of anti-Semitism, whereas his son greatly admired courageous resistance and was himself courageous. Moreover, Sigmund Freud wrote that his father was a sexual pervert. Now, Jacob used to read the bible with his son, and he became increasingly religious over the years.

Another example of a prominent atheist with a poor paternal relationship is Thomas Hobbes. His father was an Anglican clergyman. Although the exact circumstances are unknown, he got into a fight with another man in the churchyard, following which he abandoned his family.

As for Ludwig von Feuerbach, his father abandoned the family and lived with a married woman in the same town, then returned after the woman died. Feuerbach was twenty at the time of his father's return. It is also to be noted that his father's nickname was "Vesuvius".

Schopenhauer was rejected by his mother, and his father committed suicide when Schopenhauer was sixteen.

Nietsche's father died when he was four. Camus and Hume also lost their father's in early childhood.

Coluimbia University

[edit on 6/6/2008 by Bigwhammy]

reply to post by Bigwhammy


Blah, blah, blah.

That's all I see. Take information that is convenient for a hypothesis and disregard all other applications and situations (like usual for the faithful and religious with their agendas) and only show segregated results that conform to an egotistical theory resulting in an incomplete showing of information and a consensus of only a limited amount of people with a preconceived mindset and a situated goal. That's not science, once again that is the faithful and opinionated making an attempt to do science, but failing horribly. Science is objective.

My Father is alive and well. A great man might I add. He has a twin Brother as well. He has been married to my Mother for over 40 years. He has loved her through both hard times and through good times. My Father is a great man and I will always remember him as such, even when he passes. He made it to all of my sporting events, sometimes sacrificing his sleep just to be there. He has worked 2 to 3 jobs his entire life to raise my family of 5 boys and an adopted Japanese exchange student. He's always been by my side the best that he could and through the best way that he was taught by his Father and his family.

I... am an Athiest ; - ) So you can kiss your psychology of the Athiest good-bye along with its generalizations, which by the way mean absolutely nothing. Specifications do justice, you should know this by now.

The fact that you backed up the reverend annexed with the fact that you acted like an infant having his bottle taken away from him a few pages back when you attempted to explain your God and its connection to the unvierse and failed miserably... grotesquely deteriorates the importance and reliability of anything that you say or have to add as it is clear that you fanatically support only a religious agenda and disregard all facts and all logic, even when your own is negated in fron of your face.

[edit on 6-6-2008 by LastOutfiniteVoiceEternal]

reply to post by LastOutfiniteVoiceEternal


Actually it was Dr. Paul Vitz of Columbia University. your response to evidence...

Blah, blah, blah.

Throw in some self aggrandizement, excuses, and ad hominem fallacies and thats your style of "reason". You are a text book case of mental instability. Megalomania. You even claimed you could create a new life form. Get counseling.

[edit on 6/6/2008 by Bigwhammy]

reply to post by Bigwhammy


No, sir. My response to the evidence is my self. If you would have read the entire post you would have figured that out. Maybe you did, but again disregarded anything that doesn't serve your agenda.

Subjective egoism, not objective study. That's what you do.

"Blah, blah, blah." Yeah, that's what this is. You and your Christian partner continuously diagnose me with mental illness, yet you are devoid of evidence, and this "mental illness" appears to be more intellectual and more logical than yourself. Is that the problem?

I have found the perfect counselor for you Eternal. He will be available at the atheology suicide crisis line.

reply to post by Reverend SamuelTophatJack


Well I guess we're just joking now.

I didn't watch the video, btw.

That seems to be the end of this.

You've missed the point in the OP.

Atheism is a disbelief in god, it is not a replacement of a religious god with a god of science.

Science is not worshipped, science is just a tool to gain knowledge. No, knowledge is not a god either, there is no replacing one with the other, god is just removed.

The lack of evidence for god is no reason to believe it and while you will never totally disprove it, you will never totally disprove that I myself am not god right now. You'll never disprove totally that every cup in the world will spontaneously turn into a nuclear warhead and kill us all. That's irrelevant though. All that means is that we're attempting to be logical and be open to the possibility of new information should the evidence present itself.

To clarify: SHOULD THE EVIDENCE PRESENT ITSELF. That means you don't assume god is real based on nothing, it means you don't believe it *until* such evidence appears.

That there is the big killer and people seem to have such a hard time getting over it. It's not that atheism is weak because "it can't disprove god, or prove X, Y, Z", that is a strength of atheism. If we said "NO GOD EVER!" then we'd be as bad as the church has been, or continues to be with denial of the facts.

I don't want to turn this into a gigantic rant anyway so I'll wrap it up. One of the greatest reasons this is so hard to talk about without fighting is that it is impossible to explain why atheists are 'right' without calling religious folks illogical. Nobody wants to be told they're irrational or illogical, but that's what religion is. It's an illogical belief in old stories and so forth with no evidence to back it up, rather than a disbelief until evidence presents itself.

As stated I'm edging into flameland but it's impossible to avoid really. Now of course you could take it from here and say "what about the bible" and all that, but that just again brings up the problem of people being illogical. The bible is no more proof of god than a scribbling that I'm god on a piece of paper, the only difference is that the bible's origins have been washed away over time, covered up, fabricated, turned into fantasy and also been made 'untouchable' by churches.

Blargh.

Another nice bold section for quick reading. Atheists who act as if science is a god to replace a religious god *are not atheists*, they're simply religious folk who jumped to a new bandwagon. I'd like them to go away.

That's my 2c. Take it or leave it or burn it or eat it, I don't mind.

[edit on 10/6/08 by Duality]

reply to post by Duality


Most atheists I know religiously look to science as a belief system and in many cases actually; revere it! Many can be said to worship it in that they go out of their way to promote it - go to skeptic meetings, like one would attend a church, and then often pass literature out to endorse their religion.

Here is another definition of religion from Wikipedia:

Sociologists and anthropologists tend to see religion as an abstract set of ideas, values, or experiences developed as part of a cultural matrix. For example, in Lindbeck's Nature of Doctrine, religion does not refer to belief in "God" or a transcendent Absolute. Instead, Lindbeck defines religion as, "a kind of cultural and/or linguistic framework or medium that shapes the entirety of life and thought… it is similar to an idiom that makes possible the description of realities, the formulation of beliefs, and the experiencing of inner attitudes, feelings, and sentiments.”[6] According to this definition, religion refers to one's primary worldview and how this dictates one's thoughts and actions.

With this definition, we can all relate. I am not a religious person nor go to church, but I do have very definite beliefs that I live my life by and form many thoughts and opinions on. In this, we have in common and it becomes a matter of semantics.

Atheists indeed, may not worship a higher power in the entity of a God but, for something that does not exist...you all spend an inordinate amount of time talking about it! I stand by my OP.

So one asked the question why are atheist atheist. Well, the answer is different for everyone. Some got disenchanted by religion and lost faith. Some never had faith to begin with. As i cannot explain why other people are atheist, i will try to explore the reason why one become one.

Yes, am i an atheist, yes, i am biased. No, I'm not here to bash religion or god. I may not believe but religion still has it's uses. The first argument for Atheism, is Occam's razor. It's a principle in science that when you formulate a hypothesis, you start with the simplest explanation. Why? because the simplest explanation as the highest probability of being right. So if you don't need a God to live, and to have everything, material or otherwise, then you start from the point that God does not exist until proven that he NEEDS to exist. So far, no such proof have surfaced.

But what about all the miracles? Most miracle have been throughly debunked, by scientist and the Vatican even. Those remaining are not necessarily act of god, just unexplained phenomena, which can't be reproduced at will. Just because something cannot be explain does not make it proof of good.

But what about the bible? Well, the bible doesn't prove anything. Most of it was written much after the fact and therefor can't be used as facts. Why? I'll take a page from Penn and Teller's Bull# episode and use the Elvis logic. We know Elvis died, we have pictures of him dead. We have autopsy reports. Yet, some people still argue that he his still alive. And that was less then 60 years ago. Now fast forward 2000 years in the future, how will people remember Elvis, dead or alive? The point is that the bible cannot be used as evidence to prove the need for existence of God.

But surely the amount of people who believe in God(s) in some way or another must prove it, right? Well, I'm going to answer that by the fact that Sanity is not statistical. Because most people think something is right, does not make it so. In the middle ages, most people thought the earth was flat. Obviously they were wrong. The majority does not make the truth, facts do. And since there is no fact one way or the other, it's up to the person to choose weather they believe in God(s) or no.

I choose not to because i do not need to. I don't need to believe in a higher power to go through life and lead a good life. I don't really care weather God exist or no, because it doesn't change anything. Weather or not there is a god does not change that tomorrow will still come. That if you jump of a high enough cliff, you will die. if you crash your car going 120mph, you die. God did not intervene for other people that did that, why do you think you will be special? Weather or not God exist, doesn't change a thing about the fact of life. Therefore, i choose not to spend what little time i have praying to him and trying to please in order to secure my place in heaven. I will live my life the way i see fit and if i end up in hell, so be it. That does not mean that you should go out and pillage, rape and kill and you choose. It means that if everyone focused on making the world a better place for future generation, not just to go to heaven once you died, we might be in a bit of a better place.

So, in my uneducated and proletarian opinion, atheist are so, not because of un-faith in god or church, but because by denying his existence, we can focus what really matters, the real world, the one we live in and the world in which our children will have to live in.

On a last note, if something do not make a whole lot of sense, i apologize. English is not my first language, and i have yet to master it's sintax all that well. Thank you for reading through my rant and hopefully it might help understanding Atheist.

I revere science...i think its pretty darn great,its getting a bit closed down now though so to speak on certain subjects scientists want to explore.Psychoactives is certainly one i want to see some better studies of! But yes science has basically given us everything we take for granted today...PC,electricity,internet,TV,washing machine,fridge,freezer,car,jets,lightbulbs..dvd's...cd's..antibiotics etc etc In fact i wish more people especially evangelicals or what have you show more respect to science.Im not talking about anyone specific on this board,but ive came across quite a few in my time that say they hate science,its a lie etc etc..completely forgetting they are sitting in front of a computer

I think the Anon poster makes a good point. Even if you were to assume god exists, he/she/it doesn't do anything for anyone, so what would be the purpose of worshipping it anyway?

Laziest god ever IMO. Decides to appear for a breif period in human history, rambles off some rules, brags about being omnipotent and shows off, but then disappears and does nothing for good or bad.

Blergh. It's totally ridiculous. An omnipotent being would literally be all powerful, it's not as if effort would even be a term an all powerful being could relate to. God could, in essence, help people with everything they need at all times and stop all problems from ever happening for eternity at no cost... Yet no dice? For anything for anyone? Sounds like a joke to me.

Anyway, believers are going to be believers no matter what. The "atheists worship science" argument is just the newest gun in the shed for religious folk to try and discredit nonbelievers. If you can't discredit the argument, discredit the person/group/entity. That's the old rule and that seems to be the aim of that tactic.

Excusing of course, those atheists who do act as if science is a god, but that's like saying all people in the world are crazy because a small proportion of the population have mental issues. Those people aren't atheists, no matter how much they'd like to pretend.

Also - I'm hesitant to contribute any more. With the new forum rules this should most likely be moved to the religion, faith + theology forum, I don't want to get 'yelled at' for replying. XD

I am an atheist, but would not agree that I fit into any of the categories previously mentioned.

I began to refer to myself as an atheist after a ten year search for god and/or religion. I have thus far attended 23 unique churches, mosques, synagogues, temples, etc. and studied their holy books while praying or attempting to commune with god. For each I dedicated several months of honest exploration and eager exertion. None of these experiences gave me any sense of truth or comfort. I did not feel any sense of protection, friendship, or family with a higher power (god or otherwise). I am still open to other's suggestions and beliefs, but have yet to find anything that I can in all honesty believe in without self-deception. During my time with various religions I devoted myself to the teachings, study, values, and friendships of those I met, but though I have gained many friends, return an atheist.

To those people that believe you cannot be happy and be an atheist, I respectfully disagree. I am very happy with my life and though I believe there is nothing after death do not find this disconcerting. I believe that when it is time for me to pass on I will welcome the endless slumber with open arms.

I would have to say that I became an atheist after an honest and continued search for god and/or religion, but have simply found these religions wanting and contradictory. I do not believe in a higher power because I have never been influenced by or been witness to anything I believed to be the result of anything but the natural course of life and individual's decisions.

I am atheist because belif in a god is ilogical and only has negative effects. I inherently distrust anyone with religious belif as they have already given up on acting rationaly. I have always been athiest despite various relations encoraging religion in my youth and I have not had anythign remotly happen traumatic to me to make me atheist. I rearlised I was athiest as soon as I knew what the word ment, before that I just thought religion was bull#.

reply to post by MatrixProphet


Nope, once again another poster than doesn't understand science.

We don't have to promote science, you do it everytime you post through the INTERNET.