militant atheist - 1. any person who openly professes his or her non-belief in gods. 2. any person who points out the nonsensical beliefs of theists. 3. any person who uses the word atheist to describe their beliefs instead of the more acceptable, politically correct term, agnostic.

In other words, if you want to piss off an atheist, call him or her a militant atheist. It's an unfair label to use against a person who sees extremist religion all around and simply wants to do something about it.

Yes! I am an atheist activist, just as I am a liberal activist, just as I am an equal rights activist, etc.

n/t

Most of the atheists in this forum are also agnostics. If you don't think those two words go together, you don't understand what the words mean.

Hint: The technical meanings of the words are different than the common colloquial (mis-) use where "agnostic" is treated as some kind of neutral position in between atheism and theism.

that most of the self-described agnostics in this room are also atheists. They simply are loathe to admit it, apparently because that word makes them feel soiled or stigmatized.

Wish I could say that things had improved while you were away, but no such luck.

Might be a short return.

The only reason why people don't like the word atheist is the cultural stigma attached to it. BTW, this goes back many years.

I do not call myself an agnostic because although the existence of god may be in principle unknowable, the existence of such a being that the theists claim is clearly falsified. A deist god may still exist, but that's not one any of these theists are claiming.

Therefore, I call myself an atheist, like I always have. After all, the definition is quite simple and clear.

From the OED:
One who denies or disbelieves the existence of God.

That pretty much describes me, and many, many people who prefer the word Agnostic.

Agnostic, from the OED:
One who holds that the existence of anything beyond and behind material phenomena is unknown and, so far as can be judged, unknowable, and especially that a First Cause and an unseen world are subjects of which we know nothing.

In the first sense (material phenomena), I am an agnostic. In the second sense (First Cause) I am decidedly not one.

However, one can be agnostic without being an atheist.

How can you be an agnostic without disbelieving in god?

Just a respectful question.

...even though you don't feel you can know whether or not that God exists, then one could be an agnostic theist.

The God you decide to follow would have to be a fairly specific God, not just a vague "First Cause" or the like, otherwise there wouldn't be any consequence to acting as if this God exists. That would make this sort of "belief" (if you can call it that) in something you believe you can't know a bit strange, but not impossible given the head games many people are capable of playing on themselves.

Agnosticism just means you deny the epistemological validity of mystically revealed certainty.

In other words you reject the idea that you can just "feel inside" that there is or isn't any god(s) and use that to pronounce the idea as true.

You can certainly still BELIEVE any number of gods exist; either by relying on some putative objective evidence or by simply choosing to believe that divine existence is probable.

Think of it like this: I believe my wife loves me. I do not think I can prove it to others simply by my subjective feeling that it is so. Agnosticism in a nutshell.

The idea that it's a (linguistically and logically impossible) "split the difference" between belief and lack of belief is a very intentional neologistic corruption of what the word really means.

Although I'd use another adjective.

How could you believe such a thing?

Does it not say that?

http://blacklikemoi.com/2012/03/black-news-2/racist-billboard-saying-slaves-obey-your-master-sparks-outrage-video/

I have been trying to have the billboard's commentary on race explained to me, but all I seem to get is either crickets or personal attacks.

"I think it offended them because it used slavery in a way that could at least be seen as trivializing the topic".

The lack of awareness and sensitivity, in my view, is more likely an aspect of white privilege than overt racism. But, then again, white privilege itself was one of the pillars that supported slavery.

The Xians would want us arrested and the cops would probably oblige.

Any more than you can KNOW that Monday, Monday

is more true than Tuesday Afternoon


There is a feeling state, profoundly valued by many of the religious or spiritually inclined, where things feel "truer than true". This state, when used well, is an important part of one's personal spiritual development, but the feeling is NOT an objective evaluation of the process that created it - that is, the things you perceive as "truer than true" AREN'T truer than true, you're just having that experience or that feeling. It's also really addictive, which is why religions are either paranoid about it or addicted to it (or both).

But from the outside, it's pretty obvious that you shouldn't apply it to anything that is testable, because when "truer than true" is observably wrong, you're in deep shit.

I get the sense that the right-wing programmers have learned to manipulate this mechanism, which is why you get people acting religious about things like global warming, where it's clearly just a silly approach.

Even conspiracy theory (i.e. behind-the-scenes manipulation for profit) will get you closer to explaining global warming then rigid belief in global ideological masterminds, because there really is behind-the-scenes manipulation for profit, like there is when ANY large change happens in society. There really are companies that will increase global warming for profit. There really are foundations that will use responses to global warming as an excuse to push other social agendas. There really are ideological agreements between different factions to try to shift the terms of debate. It's just that these are typical minority activities, that happen in every large-scale social change, and they are not by any means the largest part of the issue. Their impact is trivial compared with the impact of actual earth changes, and the scientific community's response to them.

But the idea that a global conspiracy of liberals invented global warming out of whole cloth, as a vast socialist conspiracy to hold down hard-working American people - that's as religious a belief as goat-hooved humanoid imps with prehensile tails and horns who can live indefinitely at molten-iron temperatures.

Belief is what Theism is about, and the LACK of belief is what atheism is about, not about knowing.

If I find myself in a concentration camp, and decide against suicide, I am damned well going to work my ass off to BELIEVE in the goodness of my fellow prisoners, and in, probably, some form of long-term justice. Because, I KNOW, from a long historical record, that those practices will substantially increase my chances of survival.

As for God, I vary, minute by minute between the Sikh "the creator and the creation are one" and Discordianism, which has a much more complex and convoluted approach to belief.

When I was young and messing with my mind, I PRACTICED believing impossible things for a while. Not like the Queen, but more like ritual magic. It's another practice I highly recommend, as far as understanding religion better.

Theism is specifically about the belief in a god or gods. Atheism is specifically the lack of belief in a god or gods. Your usage of the word "believe" above is irrelevant to the topic of theism/atheism.

And in the context of theism/atheism, it is a binary answer: if you believe in a god, even just a little, you are a theist. If you do not believe in a god, you are an atheist.

Disbelief and absence of belief are two different places on an abstract continuum - absence of belief is the simple refusal to DO belief as an action. Disbelief is USUALLY belief in the opposite of a hypothesis. It can be knowledge (i.e. the accumulated weight of opinion that is well-tested from many perspectives, especially rationalist ones) about the opposite of a hypothesis, but of course knowledge is gradually obtained, and is also not a binary yes/no phenomenon.

A simple test of an opinion versus a belief: what evidence would it require for you to change your mind, and what straightforward experiment could produce this evidence? If there isn't any evidence that would change your mind, you are believing in something. If you can't frame the evidence and experiment in terms agreeable to the person you're discussing it with, then you need to back up until you DO agree and start over, even if that means defining the word "be".

If you think that by "believe six impossible things before breakfast" that I mean "THINK six impossible things before breakfast" then you're missing the point entirely. It would be MUCH better to have this discussion while lying side-by-side in interactive MRI machines where we could see the nature of different states as we enter them.

"Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true." - Wikipedia
There's nothing about the definition that requires you stay in the same state for a long period of time. There are reasons that most people do that, but they aren't utterly compelling, and in fact I'm suggesting that in modern society keeping them fixed may be bad for you.

If you believe in a deity about six times an hour, on the average, for less than three seconds each time (but with a really wide standard deviation, especially during sex), and they are contradictory deities with conflicting universes, and most of the time between you drift between being an experientialist and a materialist except that about every two minutes, usually for only a few seconds unless you are with someone else, you are a savage mocker, sometimes of your own religions but mostly of others, and the deity you spend the most time with (aside from sex) is a psychedelic joke in the first place, and you are a practicing member of a few different joke religions - are you a theist or atheist? Yes or no?

I think your first mistaken assumption is that everyone else's mind works just like yours but has different and usually inferior contents. Don't fret - most people make this assumption, and almost all media reinforce it as a message. Corporations desperately want it to be true. But it's not true.

While I agree with your points, you are talking about the broad definition of the word "believe." The specific word we are discussing is theism, which is specifically the belief in a god or gods.

In the words of The Rock, "Don't sing, just bring it."

while portraying religious activists as killers is intentionally deceptive. Just a few examples:


- The Jokela school massacre was a school shooting that occurred on November 7, 2007, at Jokela High School in Jokela, a town in the municipality of Tuusula, Finland. The gunman, 18-year-old student described himself as “a cynical existentialist, antihuman humanist, antisocial social darwinist [sic], realistic idealist and godlike atheist”

- Church-Burning Video Used to Promote Atheist Event at Ft. Bragg - Anti-Religion Band at Atheist Rock Beyond Belief “Love how they burn your synagogues…”
- Lyrics by Aiden, Rock Beyond Belief lead-in act

- 2010 Texas church burnings

- “Atheist who shot Gabrielle Giffords read Communist Manifesto, liked flag burning”

and indisputable all

I am curious though, are these the "new" or the "old" militant, organized, world domination-crazed atheists that you so often speak of?

Needless to say, your list is very short, (no surprise) and looks to be comprised of isolated incidents if not coincidence hardly done for the sake of atheism, but I'll ignore all that and give you all of them. I'll give you the whole lot of that as THE direct product of organized militant atheism, as you would prefer it...

You've still got nothing.

Compared to the DAILY flood of stories that come through this narrow corner of the internet alone, concerning violence, discrimination, hate, sexual perversion, and murder in the name of religion, you've still got the farthest of odds.

If this is it, you're more likely to be killed by lightning on your way to check the mail, than by a crazed gun-wielding "militant atheist" anywhere on earth.

Can the same be said in countries where Jihad is every day life? Do they fear lightning more than their local church group? I'm guessing no.

The image would be perfectly indicative of those odds, and the wording is accurate too. I've never seen or heard of anyone (aside form you) that is actually afraid of so-called "militant atheists" and I think that speaks volumes. No TV network is afraid to insult us, lest we mail them bombs... In fact no one is afraid to label us as "militant" unfairly, but put that word in front of a major religion... and you must be talking about some very nasty, very messed up people.

Also, don't bother to change the wording to suit your needs, that image does not say religious activists, it says what it says.

reality is what it is, and it's depicted rather well in the OP.

As ussual, anything that doesn't agree with your assertions is labeled "spin". Far easier to write it off than answer for your arguement's shortcomings. I suppose I could do the same as you, and boil your posting style down to a single word or phrase.

faith? delusion? denial? They all mean the same, but I'll go with delusion for convenience sake. (I need the practise spelling it.)

call it anything else. You claimed the list is short. It is only a partial list as I indicated.

abortion clinic cases. It's not a matter of numbers, it's a matter of truth.

do you realize that there is probably a common thread that runs through most or all of the incidents related to atheism and religion alike? And that is that all those involved are all extremists and all a little "unbalanced," to put it simply.

I would never deny that people who burn buildings and kill innocents are bent individuals.