Learn to think clearly and use language precisely. You may JUSTIFY racism & sexism towards white males. But it’s still racist & sexist.
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins)
WHY are so many militant atheists misogynists? Isn’t that funny how that is? Hey ladies we get it from the left and the right and the up and the down! No belief structure is too inflexible to include racism and sexism!
LUCKY US! ESPECIALLY lucky if you’re a black woman!
He is such a piece of dogshit. Between him and Sam Harris there is no question in my mind why people think atheists are all arrogant, hateful, mean spirited people.
They are the fundamentalists they so often bitch about and for men who position themselves as the great knowers of shit in this lifetime, it shocks me they can’t see this.
When you proselytize you turn your personal moral code into a codified belief system and forcing your own beliefs down someone’s throat is always forcing your own beliefs down someone’s throat.
It’s still just ‘my way or the highway’. This type of atheism changes nothing and only alienates people who might have otherwise been on board.
I wish for gravity to let go of Dawkins so he can go flying off into the quiet expanse of space forever.
John Gray answering the question “So, in that sense, is contemporary atheism also a religion?”
Read the rest of the interview with John Gray over at Vice
I thought yesterday that I was not being controversial at all by stating the simple fact that atheism isn’t a religion. But everyone seemed to get caught up on the definition of religion. Let’s take a look at a different word: belief.- noun1. something believed; an opinion or…
First of all
I’ll concede that it’s just as possible that there is a god as it is that there isn’t.
The possibility of something gives us only a 50/50 split. However, is itprobable that there is a god? From all available evidence, my answer is no. I’m so confident in this, that I’m comfortable calling myself an atheist, as opposed to agnostic.
That description I quoted, is actually a perfect example of agnosticism. The idea that the existence of god is unknowable due to lack of evidence. That it is possible but not probable or provable.That is actually a textbook definition of Agnostic. So…no that’s not Atheism. You may well describe yourself as an agnostic atheist, but that agnostic part is actually pretty important given the structure of your personal worldview.
Theism is a belief in a diety. Theistic. Ergo it follows that A-theistic is a complete rejection of the belief of any diety. Or that any diety exists, objectively. Period.
Secondly, we can all agree, I think, that atheism or agnosticism are not considered relgions. What they are, are larger belief structures; Personal philosophies that some people can and do identify with, with the same amount of passion and fervor as a religion. So I think what people may be trying to articulate is that atheism and agnosticism present as personal worldviews and can be integrated into a personal philosophy with the same zeal, intensity and inflexibility that you often see in those who hold religious beliefs. That atheism, as a secular, irreligious philosophy is not necessarily immune to those problems that present in the religious.
The idea being that a god or diety does not have to be present for it to form the cornerstone of someone’s personal doctrine and it can cause the same kind of myopic inflexibility, in it’s adherents, as can organized religion cause in its. While they (irreligious philosophies) tend, by their very nature, not to engender the same kind of fervor as often, secular philosophies and uncompromising rigidity to that philosophy caused by a devotion to that belief structure, are not mutually exclusive.
Is what I think people are getting at.
(via mentalextensions)
Atheists, elevators, Nice Guys, and Richard Dawkins being an asshole.
And here. This pretty much sums up why I’ve never really gotten involved with the atheist/agnostic community, online or otherwise.
Dawkins being a smug, patronizing twatwaffle? NO! I refuse to believe it. Absolutely shocking.
Edit: I just read that post and misogyny ahoy! He is a fucking piece of stool, if I may say so myself. It’s just so hard to imagine why people think he’s a douchebag. SO HARD.
What is it about people who can’t understand that there doesn’t need to be a higher power or greater meaning to life other than what we already have?
So many people say ‘I could never be an atheist because it would be so nihilistic to believe nothing has meaning’.
Who says that not believing in god or a higher power or ‘something greater’ eradicates ‘meaning’?
What is this purpose everyone keeps looking for?! This justification that everything you do must ‘amount to something greater’. Greater than what? There is a value judgement in that statement that implies that this, being alive, loving, eating icecream, watching movies, making friends, building buildings and cars and creating paintings, isn’t enough and there must be something more.
It is my opinion that the creation and perpetuation of the idea that there must be ‘something greater than life as it exists and a great organizing principal to which our lives all contribute to’ is precisely why no one appreciates life as it exists right now, right here and why no one takes joy in the mundane and finds beauty in the temporary but miraculous thing that is human conciousness and life. There is no future port of entry. The journey is the destination. Not to put too fine a point on it but YOU HAVE ALREADY ARRIVED.
Why do you need something greater than that? The chances of any of this happening is infintessimally small! Organization from the chaos of the great cosmic soup? The likelihood of that is as close to zero as you get. And yet there still must be something more than that? What more could you possibly want?
Forest. Trees.
For the record, I’ll go 1 mile further up what the OP considers to be the nihilist superhighway and state that not only do I not believe in souls (which clears up where they go, what happens to them or whether or not dogs have them) but I don’t even believe in a self. There is no ‘me’. And I ain’t even mad!
Beat that!
Called by the Universe: Neil deGrasse Tyson speaking about Richard Dawkins.(via scipsy)
Also, have I mentioned how much I love and admire Neil deGrasse Tyson? Like full out fangirl, will you sign this copy of Nova for me, kind of thing. Is that weird? Yes it is, but I don’t care.
(via scipsy)
