Marching Folly

ACK!

Yes it is. I can talk about your great-great-great grand daughter (see, I just did), even though she doesn't exist. You don't need to have a referent in order to talk so that people can generally understand you.

Atheism is not a religion.

laca

Marchin fully
Don't be so confident believing only in your senses. We must have imagination, inspiration or intuition because of some reason. From philosophical point of view evrething what we talk about exists ( in our words, mind or somhere else ). For example I can close my eyes and imagine my grand daughter at that moment she exists in my mind. What about latest theory in physics that says that infinite numbers of parallel identical worlds exist ( can you sense them? ). God and my grand daughter are not compatible things to be compared. Atheism is a religion because you and some others BELIEVE that God doesn’t exist, you do not have evidence for this so you can only believe in this the same as I believe that he exists.

froggy

The question about the definition of God look like a major factor that determine the outcomes. The programmer most likely did not realise the Islamic diversity in the way we define God, hell and heaven. But yes you're right my being muslim is mostly lining to sufism.

Huon

Yea, and every day I recite the atheist's prayer. And every monday I go to the atheist church, and I have my sins confessed to an atheist monkey. And I pay for that one tenth of my income, net of taxes, as in good old times.

Religion is not only a bunch of creeds, it is an organisation. Religion has been invented by religious priests in aid of religious priests.

Huon

The wikipedia page spoke of pantheists, pagans, Taoists, Buddhists, Hindus, and some lines later, of atheistics, and of mysticism.

What can we make of this gibberish ?

laca

Dear Houn
Firstly you have to distinguish between religion as an idea ( for example about moral, ethical, universal existential principles etc) and those institutions that represent religion and are created more in, imperfect human than perfect God’s image.
Those institutions very often distort real religious teaching in other to please human interest. For example in accordance with original Christian teaching God does not exists because of human but human exist because of God.
Catholic Church distorted this teaching by introducing new dogma about Pope’s infallibility virtually pronouncing him as a God on earth which means that God exists because of Pope and not opposite.
Inspired by this Jesuits immediately concluded: “We do not need Christ any more we have a Pope�?.
Or protestants introduced a dogma that God’s grace and human solvation can be achieved by hard work and accumulating wealth and financial success ( Kelvin ). Both of this fundamentally oppose real Christ teaching.
As far as what individuals believe in and what they do in their religious institutions is their own business which has nothing to do with the definition of religion.

And once again If Atheism aim to be a science instead a religion first has to find scientific evidence about God’s non-existence, otherwise a statement “ God does not exist�? is just a dogma of another religion called Atheism.

Apologising, in my modesty, for my imperfection

Best regards
Laca

Huon

Dear Laca

Point 1 : God exists because of Pope and not opposite.
Inspired by this Jesuits immediately concluded: “We do not need Christ any more we have a Pope�?.

You are going to make friends with Cathos, eh ?

Point 2 : You are going to make friends with Protestants, eh ?

Point 3 : As far as what individuals believe in and what they do in their religious institutions is their own business....

During centuries, religious institutions have encroached upon the freedom and often the life of many individuals who were not of the "good religion". A religion is not only an idea, was never only an idea. A religion is not represented by the idea of a god or gods, it is represented and enforced by the actions of priests and their political, legal or military allies.

Point 4 : If Atheism aim to be a science instead of a religion :
Atheism was never, is not and will never be a science. When theists give instructions on how to scientifically test the existence or non-existence of what they call a god, the contest will soon be settled. So far, "god" is but a word, and the meaning of this word depends on the person who uses it, and on the circumstances.

Atheism was never, is not and will never be a religion. No priests. No prayers. No chapels. No conflicts between atheists who say that "no-god is this" and atheists who say "Error. No-god is that. Go to no-hell !".

Best regards
Huon.

Amedeo

If by spiritual you mean a type of substance [reality which exists of itself rather than a property of a sustance] which is not a material substance or physical event, then
it is impossible for anybody (including atheists) to believe it.

Indeed "spiritual substance" (like a "square circle) is something which cannot exist, cannot be conceived, and therefore cannot be believed in. God, Spiritual Substance, Soul, Angel, and the like belong to the class of square circles, dehydrated water and non-existence of deniers of their own existence.

A substance (or substantial being) is, by definition, active and capable of affecting another substance and of being affected by another substance. Things which cannot interact are either properties of substance or imaginary substances. (E.g., the shape of a rock is not a power and, hence, cannot act upon something else. A ghost can pass through a wall without interacting with it: the visible volume of a ghost is imaginary, not part of a substance.) Interactions may vary in kind: mechanical, chemical, etc. My pressing against and pushing something else is one evidence of two interacting substances.

What is not physical cannot interact, mechanically, chemically, or otherwise (as by emanations of sound, which has effects). By definition, a SPIRITUAL substance is not physical. (It lacks all the powers and properties of physical substances. Thus,
"spiritual substance" = "non-physical substance."
A non-physical substance = a substance that cannot interact physically.
Sustance = a thing that can interact physically."
Therefore, "a substance that cannot interact physically" = "a substance that can interact physically."

That's a reduction to absurdity.

So, the very compound of words, "spiritual substance," does not denote anything, and we have no concept of such a thing.

WHAT people CAN believe is is what the words independently of each other say or mean: "Substance" (something powerful, with an existence of its own) and "spiritual" (something that does not occupy space, cannot be cut into pieces, does not havee color or shape, etc.) We know such things. For instance, a movement cannot be put in a container, cut be cut with a knife. is not liquid or solid or gaseous; a memory likewise lacks all the properties of a body. But such phenomena are not sustances. When one says that there is a spiritual substance [named god or soul or satan], he is saying nothing, for saying "substance" contradicts "spiritual."

Similarly saying circle (a figure with no angles) contradicts square ( a figure with angle). "Square circle = a figure which has and does not have angles."
Such a figure does not exist, cannot be conceived, and cannot be believed in. But one certainly conceives circles and square independendly of each other.

Theists suffer from linguistic delusions, for they do NOT believe in what they call god or soul or satan. Theism is a fallacy of the human mind.

knotted paragon

Although they are delusions, theists do believe in those things Amedeo. Belief is the only mental state that can be true or false.

Damn, I wish that were true though. Any corner drugstore could cure the blight of religion then, eh? Perhaps someday there will be a prescription for religion.

Amedeo

I thinkyou are missing my point. Look at it this way:

You know circles, you know square, your know there are circular things and square things; you have learned the properties of geometrical things, and so you believe that mathematical calculations apply to realy, and so forth.

Likewise you know sunstances. You know thet have powers. You can vaguely conceive of substances with extremely high powers, knowledge, intelligence, and so forth. These are superlative substances. You also know various realiueis, phenomena, which cannot be be said to be BODILY, such as sounds, movements, images of things you have seen or imagined, and so forth.

You CAN call superlative substances GODS. You CAN say non-bodily things SPIRITUAL. Being non-bodily, certain things (as I have mentioned) CAN be said to be created, rather than made out of materials (e.g., the sound, when you speak, the light that a fire-bug emits, etc.)

Now a theist says that there are spiritual substances, that one spiritual sustance creates, etc. etc. He CAN say such things, but he is sayin NOTHING. The term, "spiritual substance" is self contradictory, exactly as "square circle" is. Contradictions are created by word combining. Contraditory words have NO meaning, do NOT denote anything that possibly exists, do not denote anything that one can believe in.

What a theist believes is WHAT disconnected words mean: There are substances, there are spiritual things, there are creating agents, and so forth, just as you and I believe, but they have the ILLUSION , the belief precisely (certainly not the conception), that there are substances WHICH ARE SPIRITUAL. It's exactly like believing that there are FLYING MEN (even though by "man" they mean something that has no wings. In saying "flying man" you conceive a man as being like a bird while you forget that By "man" you means something which is NOT like a bird [that is, with wings]. The world of fantasy has many such linguistic constructs. It is populated with gods, the souls of the dead, fairies, and so forth. It is a wonderful world of nothings.