• Our software update is now concluded. You will need to reset your password to log in. In order to do this, you will have to click "Log in" in the top right corner and then "Forgot your password?".
  • Forum moderator applications are now open! Click here for details.
  • Welcome to PokéCommunity! Register now and join one of the best places on the 'net to talk Pokémon and more! Community members will not see the bottom screen advertisements.

Atheist Alliance

Shining Raichu

Expect me like you expect Jesus.
8,959
Posts
13
Years
AChipOffTheOldBrock said:
Well of course I wasnt talking about christianity. I was talking about a hypothetical illogical belief that made someone happy and didnt hurt anyone else.

That would still be an exercise in fruitless wish fulfillment, though far less objectionable.

As to your question about whether I find the thought of gay sexual acts disgusting (which I will not quote as it has language that is inappropriate for a Pokemon forum, has been reported and will be deleted when a higher staff member gets to it), yes I am a man and no, I don't find it disgusting at all. I also just called my boyfriend and he doesn't find it disgusting, either.

Also welcome GolurkIsDaBomb :D! Great to have you on board!
 

AChipOffTheOldBrock

Too Legit To Quit
148
Posts
11
Years
  • Age 27
  • NC
  • Seen Feb 18, 2021
It's about time I joined this! Woooooooooooo atheism!

What are your opinions on subjects such as same-sex marriage, abortion, the death penalty, and so on? Why?
Same-sex marriage? Go ahead! Why would I be against something that makes two people happy? As for abortion, I'm pro-choice. In my opinion, it's the mother's choice, as the baby won't feel pain/isn't really a baby yet when abortion is still an available option. I am against the death penalty, however. Since I don't believe in an afterlife, cutting someone's only chance at the world short seems horrible to me. Even if they've done terrible things, they still deserve the one chance they have. That's the idealistic version of my view on it. In all actuality, I believe this up to a point, but...but there are people like Hitler.



As we all know, Andy is extremely anti-gay. He even supplies churches with their facts about how dangerous being a homosexual is, and why it should be illegal. He's an inspiration to us all! *sobs from inspiration*

(Okay, I apologize for the extreme sarcasm, but it felt somewhat warranted/I'm just kidding :P)

Anyway... Here's what I don't get. You say, "Whats wrong with believing something illogical if it makes you happy but doesn't hurt anyone else?"

So why is something that is completely logical, makes people happy and doesn't hurt anyone else (I'm referring to gay marriage here, presuming you're against gay marriage since you seem to be against gay sex (if not sorry for this little rant)) not okay by you? I guess I can't say it's hypocritical, since they're slightly different ideas, but your ideology confuses me a bit. If you're okay with potentially lying to someone or a group of people or society, just to make them happy, then why aren't you okay with - just letting people be happy, without criticism?

And furthermore, the problem with believing in something illogical just to be happy... well while they say ignorance is bliss, it's still ignorance. And ignorance is dangerous to the ignorant person, everyone else, and well, the world. :/
Its not that I wouldnt hate someone just because they are a homosexual but I do not like the idea of homosexuality. Ive also never met a homosexual I liked. I like some gay singers but so far in my life I have yet to meet a homosexual and like them as a person. I was also raised very aint-gay. I was raised in the south, baptist, and by a very anti-gay single mother. So I guess its kind of a learned behavior as well as not liking homosexuals that I have met. Im not going to lie, Im against gay marriage just to get at gay people. I just dont like them and I dont like the idea of them getting married. Im fine with domestic partnerships or what have you but I dont see why they cant use a different word than marriage. Sorry if Im rambling Im kind of out of it right now. Ill edit this tomorrow if its not well constructed.

And onto the other part. How is ignorance dangerous? And say there are two theories as to why something happens. One is the most logical one and the other is not. If the more logical conclusion makes people unhappy and the less logical one makes people happy what is the problem? How does this hurt anyone. Again I apologize if this post isnt any good.

@Shining Raichu, I edited my post. Sorry if the language was too graphic. Im assuming you werent kidding with the boyfriend part. Well, do you find the sexual acts that homosexual women engage in disgusting? Or men and women? Sorry if you dont like my anti-gay stances. No offense intended, but Im not going to lie about my views.And you might find the above description of acceptance of a less logical theory more reasonable. Also how is it fruitless if it makes someone happy? Thats metaphorical fruit isnt it?
 
Last edited:

Shining Raichu

Expect me like you expect Jesus.
8,959
Posts
13
Years
This wasn't meant to become an interview about your beliefs about homosexuality, and it's getting a little off-topic from the the religion discussion we're meant to be having, so lets end it here.

But no, I don't find heterosexual or lesbian sexual acts disgusting, and I'm not offended by your views. They're nothing new to me. What bothers me is that they're largely baseless and seem to hinge on "ew gay sex is gross".

And with that, please lets return to topic.
 

Keiran

[b]Rock Solid[/b]
2,455
Posts
12
Years
You admit your stance against homosexuality then proceed to state that you're high, basically all in one sentence. Who chooses which morals you follow and the ones you ignore? Or do you only adhere to the ones that affect you? (e.g. If you were a gay Christian, you would be against/ignore Pauls' passages about homosexuality. Or if you enjoyed getting high, you would ignore the law and the Bibles' strict attitude towards following the law of the land you live in and retaining a healthy, earthly body.)

When I see young people walking in their ignorant parents' footsteps I feel so sorry for them. It's like when a parent chooses which outfit a child will have to suffer with, but in this case what personality and beliefs they will wear to make the public suffer.

You're a product of ignorance and you don't even know it, and that is what is dangerous. When you can captivate the hearts and minds of young, impressionable people you harm and stall the progress of humanity. When you have people who believe God can make a planet out of nothing, so much as to worry not of the consequences of our actions on the environment, you put everything at risk; therefore, it is extremely dangerous to choose to be ignorant to things because you find them unsettling. Sure, you'd make people happy by telling them the Sun will never expand and engulf the Earth. But they won't be happy when the Sun is approaching and it is too late to do anything about it.

(Trying to explain how ignorance can be dangerous. I really hope that is the topic, if not I'll edit this~~)
 

FrostPheonix

Eternity.
449
Posts
13
Years
le big answer

Can we please move out of the topic where we discuss whether or not Brock's ideas are logical or not? We're just gonna get into another flame war.

Spoiler:


I'm not asking anybody to leave, you are all still welcome here. But this is a club for atheists so there is a skew, even if only in numbers. Because of this, all I'm saying is that you can't expect the same fair shake you'd get in a religious discussion in Other Chat, because there is a certain 'home field advantage' in this thread. That's not to say that we're intentionally ganging up on you, just that you should have known by the name of the club what you were getting yourselves into.
I'm fully aware, I've had a lot of interesting discussion here. But what I was asking was whether or not you would like to keep it to yourself to talk about whatnot without us butting in. I suppose, as you said, you can't ban non atheists due to rules, but if you would like to keep the discussion out of debate and more philosophical or something I'll respect that.

Welcome! I gotta ask the obvious question... what is a Thelemite? I might be the lone dense person here but I've never heard of that before lol
Youre not the only one... I just found out :)
Spoiler:

And no, I didn't forget the philosophy argument!
Spoiler:


Spoiler:


omg, I wrote so much. I probably wrote a ton of stuff that people won't like and a ton that may be wrong. I might edit it. So please go easy on me if you reply.
 
Last edited:

AChipOffTheOldBrock

Too Legit To Quit
148
Posts
11
Years
  • Age 27
  • NC
  • Seen Feb 18, 2021
You admit your stance against homosexuality then proceed to state that you're high, basically all in one sentence. Who chooses which morals you follow and the ones you ignore? Or do you only adhere to the ones that affect you? (e.g. If you were a gay Christian, you would be against/ignore Pauls' passages about homosexuality. Or if you enjoyed getting high, you would ignore the law and the Bibles' strict attitude towards following the law of the land you live in and retaining a healthy, earthly body.)

When I see young people walking in their ignorant parents' footsteps I feel so sorry for them. It's like when a parent chooses which outfit a child will have to suffer with, but in this case what personality and beliefs they will wear to make the public suffer.

You're a product of ignorance and you don't even know it, and that is what is dangerous. When you can captivate the hearts and minds of young, impressionable people you harm and stall the progress of humanity. When you have people who believe God can make a planet out of nothing, so much as to worry not of the consequences of our actions on the environment, you put everything at risk; therefore, it is extremely dangerous to choose to be ignorant to things because you find them unsettling. Sure, you'd make people happy by telling them the Sun will never expand and engulf the Earth. But they won't be happy when the Sun is approaching and it is too late to do anything about it.

(Trying to explain how ignorance can be dangerous. I really hope that is the topic, if not I'll edit this~~)
Ill say this again, I am not a christian. I do not believe in the bible, in its entirety. And to answer your question, yes I just pick and choose what parts of the bible I want to believe in and I just do whatever I want regardless of what the law says. I get that my view on homosexuality is pretty much baseless and illogical. But its my choice, I can think whatever I want. Theres not really too much to argue about when it comes to my view on homosexuality. And your last paragraph was kind of ridiculous. If a planet doesnt come from nothing where does it come from? Either the material to make it was already there or it wasnt and it came from nothing. And if it didnt come from nothing where does the material that to make it come from? The Big Bang? Who/what created the big bang? How is it extremely dangerous to choose to be ignorant about things you find unsettling, especially when those things are irrelevant to your life or unproven. Maybe the sun never will expand and engulf the earth. And if it does, scientists say it wont be until long after we are dead so it wont affect us in any way. They will be dead before the Sun is approaching and it is too late to do anything about it.

BTW, what is the general atheist view on recreational drug use?
 

Oryx

CoquettishCat
13,184
Posts
13
Years
  • Age 31
  • Seen Jan 30, 2015
There isn't a general atheist view on drug use. It has nothing to do with religion so atheists in general don't have a set opinion on it.

I personally am one of the "legalize everything" types though.
 

Oryx

CoquettishCat
13,184
Posts
13
Years
  • Age 31
  • Seen Jan 30, 2015
LGTSs.gif


What's illogical is for pot to be illegal. It really makes no sense whatsoever. I can kind of understand with drugs that may cause violence in people (then again, so does alcohol SO), but with pot it just makes no sense.
 

Barrels

The Fresh Prince of Kanto
82
Posts
12
Years
Cats and history are two different things, in my opinion. Cats are tangible. They live. You have one in several households. My teacher had about 6 and 4 dogs. History, in and of itself, is a concept, similar to love, liberty, slavery. Well, close enough. You can't really touch history, can you? But you can for a cat. If you say 'The only thing is that no one can prove that cats exist. But, correct me if I'm wrong, they can't disprove it either, right? So it's another case of belief.' I would stop you at the first sentence, bring a cat, and therefore prove a cat exists.

Haha, this was exactly my point. It's the job of the irritating resident philosopher to pick up the cat and doubt it. To say, 'am I really holding this cat? Or is there a powerful supercomputer tricking me into believing that I am holding this cat?' I mean, you can't prove that the supercomputer doesn't exist. And so you haven't actually proven that the cat exists, because there still exists the possibility that it doesn't.

To really, properly prove something is true means that you have to extinguish every other possibility. Which is impossible, because they're literally infinite. You bringing me a cat doesn't prove its existence – I might be dreaming the whole encounter! Or I might be under the influence of a powerful extraterrestrial entity with the ability to make me believe things which are not true. Or Bast herself might be appearing to me in feline form – so while she might look, sound and feel like a cat, she'd still be a goddess. You can't actually disprove any of those ridiculous assertions – so the existence of a cat is not certain. Here:
'Cats are tangible.'
Ah, but I could be wired up to a machine that simulates the texture of fur under my fingers – so I believe that the cat I'm stroking is tangible. Doesn't mean it actually exists!
'They live.'
Well, they appear to breathe, but that could be a cunning illusion. Perhaps all cats are secretly evil, dimensionally transcendental beings who have invented perception filters that make them seem to appear physically in our world. Or perhaps they're just really convincing ghosts. And so on.

Obviously – obviously! – I'm not recommending this as a way to go about arguing. It gets you absolutely nowhere, and it isn't the way the world works. If you're in court, for example, and the judge asks you whether you did in fact drown all those cats, you cannot possibly respond, 'well, you can't prove that cats exist, so you can't prove I drowned anything at all, so you'll have to let me go.' Our justice system – and indeed our lives – instead use the principle of 'reasonable doubt' – you can find a defendant guilty if you can prove 'beyond reasonable doubt' that they did whatever you're accusing them of. And this is the crucial point.

We tend to use the word 'proof' when we mean 'proof beyond reasonable doubt'. Which is fine! The problem is that people tend to forget this when arguing about things which are far from reasonable: like the Flood example. We have all of one piece of evidence that Noah, say, really existed, and even believers will (or should) concede that a worldwide flood is extremely unlikely. This doesn't mean it can't have happened – just that the odds are against it.

And so to argue that you can't disprove the Flood is meaningless. It's exactly the same as arguing that you can't prove that cats exist! Both statements are not supported by any reliable evidence, and the fact that we can't prove them one way or the other is neither here nor there. To justify a belief, you have to provide a satisfactory explanation for it – it's not sufficient to plead that 'it could be true', because all beliefs could be true. That doesn't elevate it above any other – so we're back where we started.

Your satisfactory explanation can, of course, be God! (Though that may not satisfy other people.) You can say that you believe that the Bible is historical fact because God wouldn't lie, and that's fine. Many people believe just that. But what people have to understand it that saying 'you can't disprove the Flood/Eden/insert-contentious-Biblical-event-here!' is not going to convince anyone who isn't religious, because it's not reasonable to believe such a thing happened.

In essence: the whole point of my cat example was to say, 'yeah, look, it's ridiculous not to believe in cats! It goes against all the evidence!' Of course I believe in cats! But it's for the same reason I believe in cats – because they've been proven beyond reasonable doubt – that I don't believe in the Flood – because it hasn't. Hopefully I've managed to make things a bit clearer.

History, in and of itself, is a concept, similar to love, liberty, slavery. Well, close enough. You can't really touch history, can you?
Well… I'd have to disagree. Again, it's the reasonable doubt thing – we can 'prove' that, say, Henry VIII was King of England in 1525 because the evidence overwhelmingly supports that conclusion. You can go to the College of St. George and touch his coffin. You can look at the X-rays of his skeleton, the letters he wrote, the portraits that were painted, and conclude, 'yes, I believe Henry was King. It's the most likely conclusion.'

So I would say 'You can't disprove the flood!' has actually much more sense than saying 'You can't disprove that the world is flat!' I am sure the cat analogy was meant differently, but I can't think of another object that would work better in ur example. Sorry about that.

Hey, don't apologise. ;) My example was intentionally bonkers. But here's the thing – I disagree when you say that the statement 'you can't disprove the flood' is any more sensible than saying that 'you can't disprove that the world is flat'! Neither of those statements are backed up by any reliable evidence. In fact, there's major evidence to suggest the opposite in both cases!
 

Phantom1

[css-div="font-size: 12px; font-variant: small-cap
1,182
Posts
12
Years
I don't think a lot of the people coming in to argue for religion's sake know exactly what atheism is.

It's a lack of faith. They don't 'believe in that god, but I believe in this one'. They don't believe in any god. They simply agree that there isn't a god or higher power.

Now, yes there are different types of atheists, including agnostic/weak atheism. Standard cookie cutter atheist does not believe in ANY higher powers. I get people can believe or not believe whatever the hell they want, but it just doesn't make sense to me that a Thelemite can be an atheist. It just doesn't work. Either you believe in higher power(s) or not.

Also, AChipOfftheOldBrock, Shining Raichu is the founder of PC's The Rainbow Connection... Which a few here, including myself, are members.
 
10,769
Posts
14
Years
Atheism is sometimes hard for people to grasp. It's a lot like people who choose not to have romantic relationships. Lots of people assume they can't maintain a successful a relationship or "just haven't found the right one yet." They assume relationships are the right way to be and that for anyone who doesn't have one there's something wrong. Sound familiar?

But more than that it's a choice like religion is, only it's a choice to have nothing in that area of their life. Atheism isn't a religion any more than a person without a relationship is in a relationship.
 

Phantom1

[css-div="font-size: 12px; font-variant: small-cap
1,182
Posts
12
Years
True.

I'm a huge fan of Sam Harris. He's a bit... forthright, but he isn't afraid to get down and dirty and get straight to the point.

From his essay, "There is No God, and You Know It"...

"It is worth noting that no one ever need identify himself as a non-astrologer or a non-alchemist. Consequently, we do not have words for people who deny the validity of these pseudo-disciplines. Likewise, "atheism" is a term that should not even exist. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma."

A bit of reading lit.

10 myths - and 10 Truths - About Atheism
Misconceptions about atheism <- I suggest believer wanting to come into this thread and debate read this.
 

Shining Raichu

Expect me like you expect Jesus.
8,959
Posts
13
Years
On the subject of "misconceptions about atheism", one that I run into a lot that's not on that list is that people choose atheism because it's easy. When you're an atheist, there are no restrictions placed on your life in the hope of attaining an afterlife and so it gets a reputation for being the "easy way out". But I haven't found this to be true at all. Just as with choosing any religion, choosing the absence of religion is not without sacrifice. Personally, I think the hardest part of forsaking a belief in God is abandoning the concept of destiny and God's Great Plan, and in turn, the notion that you are inherently any more or less special than anybody else.
 

Phantom1

[css-div="font-size: 12px; font-variant: small-cap
1,182
Posts
12
Years
Personally, I think the hardest part of forsaking a belief in God is abandoning the concept of destiny and God's Great Plan, and in turn, the notion that you are inherently any more or less special than anybody else.

Which is why so many of die hard religious people can't even begin to understand how someone can not believe in god. To them you are literally condeming yourself to Hell, and you have no qualms about it. They feel compelled to save you, after all, it's what any good person would do for someone else in need.

To us, this just comes off as unbearably annoying and needlessly bothersome.
 

Shining Raichu

Expect me like you expect Jesus.
8,959
Posts
13
Years
I could most likely go to Google and find the answer to this, but what would be the point of that when it may generate discussion? :P

Can somebody please explain to me what exactly is Pascal's Wager?
 

Phantom1

[css-div="font-size: 12px; font-variant: small-cap
1,182
Posts
12
Years
I could most likely go to Google and find the answer to this, but what would be the point of that when it may generate discussion? :P

Can somebody please explain to me what exactly is Pascal's Wager?

Pascal's Wager is considered the safe route, and is used by many theists to confirm their beliefs.

Pascal was a French guy who made a wager. Basically he said that it's safer to believe in God and be wrong, than to not believe in God and be wrong.
 
Back
Top