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atheism
From the Oxford Online Dictionary:

/aythi-iz�m/

� noun: The belief that God does not exist.

� DERIVATIVES atheist (noun) atheistic (adjective) atheistical (adjective).

� ORIGIN from Greek a- �without� + theos �god�.

I am a Buddhist Atheist.
I follow a specific creed, but as far as I am concerned, There is no God.
But that's just my 'Truth'.....

Speaking for myself only, I know exactly where I stand: My choice is to not concern myself about such things as "god" and "belief in higher powers". Therefore I don't call myself an atheist because I'm not interested in trying to disprove god - I simply don't care. Ergo, I fit more into the definition of agnostic.

This particular forum happens to be called "Atheist/Agnostic". There are many other forums only for Agnostics and only for Atheists.

The rest of my "beliefs" are not relevant to this forum.

to be or not to be?
Let me tell a sample. Some one believes that an asteroid between planets of Mars and Customer named Siamac is full of Gold mines and nobody could prove this is wrong. dose it mean �it�s right and true�?
I�m not sure, maybe Atheist or anybody else hasn�t this ability to prove God isn�t exist at all, but I think they can tell us a lot of sane and understandable reasons to show that religions aren�t right about God.

I'm sorry but that definition is wrong. Their own origin proves it. Atheism. A-without. Theism - belief in a god. If you put it all together, it means "without belief in a god" there is no positive assertion in that sentence about believing anything. To say that an atheist believes anything BECAUSE they are an atheist would be a fallacy.

Just to clarify:

Atheists have no burden of proof because they aren't asserting anything. No beliefs, no burden, just freedom.

Think "asexual". It doesn't mean it is a man or woman who does not believe in sexual organs. It means that there are no sexual organs, and the organism reproduces on its own, like cellular division.

Anti-theism is what most of the posters in this forum confuse with atheism. Without theism is different from against theism.

I don't know how to make it any more clear.

If it is really as frattaro claims then I have a question. If someone thinks that aliens exist and someone else thinks aliens don't exist but they can't both prove their case 100% then are they both believing what they do or one is a believe and another is not a believe? And then how do you know which one is a believe and which one is not? How do we decide?

And about your sample babak, you do have a point but you are also preassuming that such a thing didn't happen. I am not claiming that it did but of course there is a possibility. You yourself said that atheist could never prove that God doesn't exist but atheist do deny the possibility of the existance of God but then that just begs the question. And I am not sure how many of those sane arguements about atheism I have heard.

On the subject of aliens, like the existence of a god(s), we are going to have 3 types of people, the believers, the refuters and the ones who abstain from assertions because there is no proof either way. If someone is a non-believer, they could fall into one of the two other categories.

Bottom line is that there is not enough information for either the believers or the refuters to be correct. Why waste your time in an argument that only ends when one side gives up?

And you are claiming that Atheists are "the ones who abstain from assertions" based on your three types that you believe there are? Well atheism does say that God doesn't exist then it also has to claim that the opposite of it which is theism, which claims that there is a God, is incorrect and wrong by the law of non-contradicion because they both can't be right at the same time. Either there is a God or not and if one claims there is no God then in order to make sense of their worldview, they also have to claim the opposite of what they believe is wrong otherwise their worldview wouldn't be logical or rational. Atheists don't abstain from assertions on the topic but rather presuppose that God doesn't exist and it is the agnostics that "abstain from assertions" on these topic because they believe that there is a no way to know. Therefore atheism by logic would be the refuters of theism (based on the 3 types that you say) , not people that the "abstain from assertions".

Ferrato
Nice sentences I think, you described properly.


God Loves You
I just said

I don�t know about Atheist philosophy and what they really mentioned about their believes but nearly know about theism, hence could guess which one is more right.

I guess Atheist will be meaningless without the existence of Theist, so first of all we have to talk about what the Theist believed, and more over what the meaning of God in theist.

When I saw your sentences, guessed you more liked to magnify some disability on Atheism and in this way justify the Theism and existence of God. Is it the right manner? It�s more acceptable for Atheist I think, when we see the words.