ragnelle 's List: About.com articles religion-atheism

• Is spirituality from God and religion from Man, or is it the other way around

• Spirituality is a form of religion, but a private and personal form of religion. Thus, the valid distinction is between spirituality and organized religion.
• Religion is spiritual and spirituality is religious. One tends to be more personal and private while the other tends to incorporate public rituals and organized doctrines.

• agnosticism is about knowledge, and knowledge is a related but separate issue from belief, the domain of theism and atheism.
• Those who disclaim any such knowledge or even that any such knowledge is possible are properly labeled agnostics
• The literal meaning of agnostic is one who holds that some aspect of reality is unknowable. Therefore, an agnostic is not simply someone who suspends judgment on an issue, but rather one who suspends judgment because he feels that the subject is unknowable and therefore no judgment can be made.

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• A closely related agnostic position argues that we simply aren’t in any position to adequately evaluate the evidence offered both for and against the existence of God — assuming that any such evidence actually exists. This is closer to the stricter definition of agnosticism in that it focuses primarily upon human limitations as a reason for not being able to arrive at knowledge of the existence of God, but it adds the stipulation that these limitations should also prevent us from believing one way or the other.

• atheism is merely the absence of belief in any gods, it becomes evident that agnosticism is not, as many assume, a “third way” between atheism and theism.
• Agnosticism is not about belief in god but about knowledge — it was coined originally to describe the position of a person who could not claim to know for sure if any gods exist or not.
• It is also worth noting that there is a vicious double standard involved when theists claim that agnosticism is “better” than atheism because it is less dogmatic. If atheists are closed-minded because they are not agnostic, then so are theists. On the other hand, if theism can be open-minded then so can atheism.

  • Nice

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• It is true that smarter people than I and many other atheists have accepted theism and religion — but so what? Smarter people than you have rejected your brand of theism and your brand of religion in favor of some other type of theism and religion. Smarter people than you have rejected theism and religion entirely, leading an entirely atheistic and irreligious life. Do you think you're better or smarter than they were? Is this a reason for you to drop your theism and religion? Of course not.
• while today there is a strong correlation between greater education and increased rates of atheism

• Pascal’s Wager: if the believer is wrong and God doesn’t exist, then nothing has been lost; on the other hand, if the atheist is wrong and God does exist, then the atheist risks going to hell. Therefore, it is smarter to take a chance on believing than to take a chance on not believing, and the atheist is in a bad spot.
• Another problem is the assumption that there are only two options: either the believer is wrong or the atheist is wrong. In fact, both could be wrong because there could be a god, but not the god of the believer. Perhaps it is an entirely different god — indeed, it could be a god which objects to people who believe because of arguments like the above but which doesn’t really mind the doubt of atheists. Perhaps we are both in trouble and taking a risk. Perhaps neither of us in trouble or taking a risk.

• Why don’t you just be an atheist? If there is a god, and it is moral and loving and worthy of respect, then it won’t mind if people have rational doubts about it and rational reasons for not believing in it. This god won’t punish people for exercising their critical thinking skills and are skeptical of the claims of other, fallible humans. Thus, you wouldn’t lose anything.  

  And if there is a god who punishes people for rational doubt, why would you want to spend an eternity with it anyway? Such a capricious, egotistical, and nasty god wouldn’t be much fun. If you can’t trust it to be as moral as you are, you can’t trust it to keep its promises and make heaven nice or even let you stay for long. Not spending eternity with such a being doesn’t sound like much of a loss.

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• People who promulgate this myth are trying to shift the burden of proof to atheists by making them justify their atheism. In reality, the burden of proof or support is on theists and unless they can show sufficient justification for their beliefs, then disbelief is the default. We are all born without belief in gods and most people live their lives without believing in most gods. If someone wants others to make an exception for one or two at some point, the burden is entirely theirs to show why.
• reality is exactly the opposite of what myth portrays: atheism doesn't create any "prepackaged worldview," but precisely this is true of religions which tell people who they are, what their role is in the universe, how to behave, and how everything will turn out. Anyone who grows up in such an environment but leaves it behind must do exactly the opposite of what the myth claims about atheists: they will have to think for themselves, seek answers to difficult issues, and address life's most difficult questions — not so much because they are atheists, but because they can no longer simply accept the answers that had previously been provided by religion. Freethought isn't exclusively atheistic, but there's a reason why freethinkers are more likely to be atheists than theists.

• Atheists don't dispute that there are patterns in the universe, though, and even in truly random sets — like sequences of numbers — patterns will emerge. The existence of patterns does not contradict the existence of randomness.
• religious theists seem to mean is that atheists' belief require a universe without order — that randomness entails disorder — and that therefore the existence of order in the universe means that some god (preferably their god) must exist
• The equation of randomness with disorder is incorrect and this is why the above claim amounts to a myth: atheists' beliefs do not entail that the universe be disordered and order can in fact arise spontaneously, without any directed intervention from a conscious being.
• Atheists do not deny that the universe has order, structure, and patterns. What atheists deny, and science supports them in this, is the idea that order, structure, and patterns are incompatible with randomness or that they require the prior presence of some "designer" for them to exist. A structured, ordered universe can be random in some aspects, does not need any sort of god to explain how it originated, and does not need any sort of god to explain why it continues to exist now.

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• The fact that people like to contrast atheism with Christianity on the basis of myths like this leads to another significant problem: Christianity doesn't "explain" the origin of the universe either. People misunderstand what an explanation is — it isn't to say "God did it," but rather to provide new, useful, and testable information. "God did it" isn't an explanation unless it includes information about what God did, how God did it, and preferably also why.