Not just the people who identify as an atheist – absolutely everyone is an atheist. You, me, everybody.
The Jew is an atheist about every other god exept the god of Abraham. The Christian is an atheist about Allah and the Muslim about Jesus. Even the most liberal minded polytheist, who accepts as gods gods they have never even heard of and thinks that all the gods in the world are mere manifestations of the same divinity, is an atheist about the versions of monotheistic gods, that demand they are the one and only god there is. Simply because the polytheist does not believe in that sort of god. Most people do not even believe in most versions of the gods they profess to believe in, exept perhaps on the most vague terms. When people get into specifics about the gods they do believe in, that is when the suspension of disbelief starts to crumble in the mind of the other person. Does this make the term atheist irrelevant? It does not.
We use the word atheist to describe a person who does not believe in any gods. However, it should be noticed, that it is our shared disbelief in all sorts of gods, that is the unifying factor between all of us and thus the right to not believe in the other man’s god is important to all of us. As such, it should also remind us that for the same reason laws must not be passed based on the alledged opinion, or authority of any gods, but based on the ethical evaluation of secular reasoning for harm and benefit of action, or inaction. If the gods are reasonable, they agree with such secular morals, if not, then to hell with them.
World's Pain 
September 14, 2022 at 4:25 pm
And what I would tend to call a TRUE atheist is the individual who doesn’t believe in ANY god or gods. But yes, your reasoning has merit.
September 15, 2022 at 11:52 am
Yes, well I know, I did not bring much new to the table.
I like to let people label themselves. Hitler called himself a ” National Socialist”, so that is what he should be called, even though what he did or held important was all about Nationalism and hardly at all Socialism. A self labelling Atheist should be called that, even if they are someone like Lee Strobel, who claims to have once been an Atheist, while from what he says about it, it appears he has not much clue about what that even means. Most more, or less religious people would propably resent being called Atheists and that should be respected. However, I for one, would appriciate it, if they found the honesty to recognize my point in the topic post. Maybe they could then reason to agree, that the actual Atheists are not demanding especial liberties for themselves, but that their right to have a society built on secular morals is in fact better for everyone, since as gods go, they do not seem to be able to agree much on anything. Not even the same gods agree with themselves on major moral issues. For example, what does Jesus think about gay marriage, abortion, or suicide? It seems he can not get it together, or transmit his opinion clearly enough to his devoted followers and ritual experts for them to know his opinion.
September 15, 2022 at 3:01 pm
As you pointed out, Atheists are not demanding especial liberties for themselves … but by the same token, atheists do not want religious people (especially Christians) to demand special liberties for themselves either.
Unfortunately, in the Christians religion, believers are taught that their god wants them to “win lost souls” (whether they want to be “won” or not), which results in many of the problems we face today throughout the world.
September 19, 2022 at 2:11 am
Winning souls is such a problematic concept. Most souls troughout history have been “won” to this or that deity by them being born to people whose ancestors were forcibly converted under pain of death, or just fear of being shut out of the community. Peacefull missionary work brings almost no results at all, unless the lives of the convertees have been seriously disrupted and they are desperate for help. Preying on the weak, to convert them may include helping, but it is also despicable, even if it also helps them, as it is so self serving. But that could be a topic for a nother post.
October 4, 2022 at 9:09 pm
Jesus didn’t teach morals, he promoted perfection in God’s eyes- “I am the light.” Most of us don’t want to live in plain view of God. The issue isn’t what’s right or wrong, it’s ‘God with us,’ or no God.
He didn’t condemn sinners, he condemned sin- doing without God. For example, Jesus told the woman caught in the act of adultery, “Go, and sin no more.” The first sin wasn’t eating the fruit- it was doing without God. Choosing one’s own morals.
October 5, 2022 at 4:21 pm
I sorta’ LIKE “choosing my own morals.” (Whoops!)
October 6, 2022 at 6:16 am
One kind of needs to choose their morals to be moral at all. After all, to be moral, is to choose to make moral choises instead of immoral choises. If one chooses to externalize their choises to ancient scripture, or the interpretation of some ritual expert of such scripture, one may be in luck and not cause any harm and indeed mostly beneficial things, but in all likelyhood, that is not what happens and thus that descision to externalize is an immoral attempt to escape responsibility. A child is dependant largely on the adults to make their choises, but we hold adults as responsible for their own actions and inactions, for a reason.
October 6, 2022 at 3:04 am
Hi Arnold and wellcome! Do you not care, if your actions are right, or wrong? If people stop caring about morals, we will end up in a terrible world to be in. We have ample evidence of it having happened and happening all the time. It sounds – and forgive me, if I misinterprete you – like you only cared if your god condones your actions, or not. If you are saved or not, to hell with others. I refuse to believe, you are that selfish. How then, if you do not wish to evaluate the morals of your god, will you know, if you are seeking the acceptance of an evil deity?
I do not put much weight on what gods, or religions people profess to hold, as long as they seek to do right by others. Most people can not be blamed for choosing a “wrong” god, as they are typically chosen for them by their parents. Is this not the case with you too? There is no religious sect to wich most people would belong to, so according to most gods, most people are deserving of a punishment for a choise they did not even make. In my book, that is immoral. Yet, people can be expected to behave and held accountable, if they do not.
Morals is a harm/benefit analysis, we all (exept perhaps the sosiopath) engage in. Not some arbitrary set of iron age camping rules about where the gong pit should be dug, or how people having tattoos, or gay sex should be cruelly stoned to death. It is not even a series of examples of how you should not be adulterous, but should pay your taxes and always obey the secular authorities given by a comparatively mellow and empathetic preacher character in a book from late antiquity/early middle ages, that tells us absolutely nothing about the moral aspects of for example nuclear power, space travel, or climate change – very real moral issues we as citizens and voters in the modern world will have to face, to call our selves moral at all.
October 6, 2022 at 8:45 am
Thank you for your sincere welcome and reply. You do make a good case for being responsible to one another through wise moral choices.
However, my view is the Bible’s, that we are born independent of God (“a terrible world to be in”). I believe we possess stolen property: “the knowledge of good and evil,” inherited from early man (Adam).
So I defer to Jesus Christ as truth. In him I’m not alone with my opinions and choices because I have received God himself in my person. Via Christ I am “born of God.” This doesn’t mean I’m right or wrong in my opinions.
Take for an example the abortion issue options: pro choice and pro life. Laws are needed to arbitrate opinions, so God is either dragged in as a witness, or non-existent. (See Moses.) This is our world without God.
October 6, 2022 at 12:20 pm
Well, it appears we are in agreement, your Bible and I, in that we are born independent – and being true to my topic post – of any gods. The world is indeed both terrible without any gods making appearances, other than in hearsay folklore stories, or in the testimonies of individuals mostly referring to vague emotional experiences. This sadly is true about all religions equally, so a person born outside of any particular religious heritage is more than likely to be atheistic of the stories of religions other than their own. Does this not apply to you also?
So, did I get this right? In your particular interpretation of the Biblical myth morals is a “stolen” property and if all had gone to your gods plan, humans would have remained in an animal like state without the knowledge about moral choises? But then your god botched it with the newly created humans by accidentally giving them free will, before they had the capacity to even evaluate the consequences of their actions and like a bad parent expected them to obey on a “because I said so”?
It may be my different cultural heritage, but I do not understand what you mean by being “born of God”.
I think the abortion issue is a very good example. Thank you for pointing it out. It seems this unawoidably emotional issue is frequently misunderstood. Both of the groups you refer to, after all, have the same ultimate goal. To diminish the amount of abortions. The question is really about how to achieve that goal? By banning abortion legally? Or by reducing unwanted pregnancies through sex education and easier access to contraception? This is where the scientific method steps in to provide hard data about the objective reality. Nowhere are abortions known to be reduced much by legal bans, but what is known to happen are direct risks to womens lives, increase in parentless children and the gap between the rich and the poor growing. Where sex education and easier access to contraception are increased, the rate of abortions is known to significantly reduce by time. Simple really. The Bible does not even mention the subject, so it plays no role in the issue. The Quran gives a number of weeks from the conception, that abortion is a-ok by the god of Muslims, but since neither of us would want their superstitions rule our lives and their faith is just as valid as yours, faith should not play a role in this societal, medical and moral question any more than it plays a role in traffic regulations. Agreed?
October 6, 2022 at 10:21 pm
Agreed! faith is obsolete if there’s no one to trust. Yet since I believe God runs this show (subsequent to us each “knowing right from wrong”), everything plays a role in everything: to me the whole world is independently interconnected, and God absolutely IS involved in traffic regulations.
Being born of God is receiving the crucified, risen, ascended life of God, via faith in Jesus Christ. It’s giving up my independence and choosing to no longer do without him. I rest on his life in me in the daily mix of life in this ol world.
And so being born of God begins a personal relationship with him. And so I don’t think we were created “animal like,” rather, in God’s likeness- able to intimately share and understand one another, perhaps including “moral choices.”
I appreciate trading thoughts and opinions with you- I hope to continue.
October 7, 2022 at 3:19 am
I appriciate your input as well, Arnold. Let us continue.
In my view also the world, everything in it, the solar system, our galaxy and the entire universe is interconnected through physics as a phenomenon we call nature. As such I see no agency behind it, rather an abundance of evidence, that agency is a result – one of a multitude of possible results – of the processes happening within nature.
Morals is a logical and natural result of our evolution towards agency, not some inexplainable unnatural property from beyond time-space continuum. Self preservation and replication are the basic requirements for biochemical evolution of speices. All animals present a level of “free will”, from the most simple worm to the most complicated mammals. This is where we appear to differ from other organisms, such as plants and fungi. The ability to make individual choises through our nervous system appears to be wider, if the central nervous system and thus the brain capacity are better. A small rodent understands the concepts of right and wrong, fair and unfair. It has a moral perspective. Was it also created in the image of some god? It resembles us by its DNA in over 90%, because we have common ancestry and fairly similar evolutionary path. Can some small rodents be held accountable? A guinea pig is a social animal, same as us, and it is often held accountable by its peers. It understands cause and effect of being selfish and its herd mates reacting negatively to bad behaviour, just as well as positive reactions to comeradery. Like us it may be willing to take personal risks to benefit the family. These things we call morals are direct results of our evolutionary survival. Being social is only one of many survival mechanisms of a species, but an effective one.
I place my trust in humans I know, the society around me, tools I use and my weapons, if need arises. I trust the observed laws of nature to function as ever, as there is no reliable evidence to the contrary, despite stories of gods, pixies and other unnatural phenomena. I have been priviledged to live in a reliable functional society (Finland), to have reliable friends and family and to have used reliable items. In gods I would propably not trust, even if I believed they exist, other than in the imaginations of humans. Gods appear fickle, unpredictable and, unlike humans, their motives are unknown. We have no experience of gods as we have of human individuals and societies, nor do we understand the mechanisms behind gods as we understand mechanisms behind tools, or the nature.
Giving up ones indipendence sounds an unhealthy relationship regardless of the trust between two agents, unless the other is a child, or seriously incapacitated. An infantile attempt to awoid responsibility, at least in regard to morals. This is not what you mean, I expect, but that is the immidiate observation. Thanks for trying to explain the cocept alien to me, anyway.
October 7, 2022 at 5:16 am
Let me emphasize, I’m not an apologist looking to prove God’s existence- I’m very sure that he is, and very sure he precisely controls all of his Creation. (Yes, I could be wrong.) I hear him in the birds, ocean waves, leaves, thunder, whatever. And I firmly believe that Jesus Christ is the clearest Voice of God because he was and is, ‘God with us.’ These are my interpretations of the bible and my belief that I consciously live. Christ is always at my forefront, when I help others, and when I “fly off the handle.” He’s within my eyesight, meeting my eyes.
Much thanks for your patience in reading my explanations, and explaining your own. Normally, at this point in conversation I’m being dismissed and derided for my irresponsible and irrational belief in God. He is indeed viewed by many as an inept monster. I think that in our (humanity’s) independence from him there is an infinite chasm between God and us. Thus came the Christ to bridge the gap, to redeem us (in effect, buy us back), and mediate relationship in the daily grind of life. That to me preempts ‘moral choices.’
My conscience tells me Christ is so, and yes, my parents conscience told them so. Relationship with God is the goal in sight yet still hampered by deep-seated independence, a, ‘right to be myself.’ So, being ‘born of God’ is an infant-like beginning of making a multitude of daily choices to depend on HIS life in me, as my Creator- to follow and understand and know and obey him in a growing and ongoing intimacy. Despite life’s setbacks.
Of course, this is wildly foreign to anyone without being born of him. It was wildly foreign to me until I began relationship with God almost 10 years ago. I’m now 68 years old. The sayings of Christ make sense to me, I think, because God himself is working in me to will and to do his will in my daily circumstances. In my ups and downs, success and failures I remain fixed in him. My views are the bible views as best I can interpret his language. To me, Jesus Christ is preeminent because he exampled being born of God- the Son of God touching people with the life of God.
October 7, 2022 at 1:17 pm
I am sorry to hear people have behaved badly towards you. I am not even sure, if it is fair to call your faith irrational. I guess you must have your own rationale in believing as you do. Apologetics appear to me more as attempts by believers who have doubts, to reconvince themselves of what they would want to believe. In my experience (and altough I am not quite as venerable as you, nor am I a youngster any more myself) people secure in their faith are happy to accept there is a grand mystery involved in their respective deities. Much like I accept mystery in the material universe. I just do not see enough evidence for anything worth the label of supernatural. (Yes, I could be wrong too.) We simply do not know everything. I am not here trying to deconvert anyone. What I am getting out of conversations like this, is to learn how other people see the world.
My conscience tells me nothing at all about the existance of Christ, nor of any other deities. There is silence on that front for me, as there was for my parents and their parents, and who knows perhaps also for their parents in the 19th century, but in those days they had no real possibility to express any faithlesness under social, economic and legal pressure. That brings me back to my post topic. Since none of us wants anyone else to dictate our lives according to their different, or even totally alien beliefs, we need a religiously neutral way to determine facts upon wich to formulate social morals and laws to enforce it, to be able to live at least bearable, but at best wonderfull lives. The scientific method is evidently the best one to separate fact from fiction, that humanity has managed to formulate thus far, so I suggest it to be also used. This may be more important to us mere mortals, who do not expect to survive our death, like so many believers of so many different religions, as we percieve to only posses this one life. However, it should be perfectly acceptable to anyone who believes this life is just foreplay to eternal bliss and many a man of faith has embraced it and secular rule of law.
I will be busy during weekend, but if you want to discuss further, I am awailable here next week.
October 7, 2022 at 4:27 pm
From my perspective, this is the most telling comment in your response: My conscience tells me nothing at all about the existance of Christ, nor of any other deities.
If an individual is honest with themselves, this is truth. It is the outside influences that distort the natural inclinations.
October 10, 2022 at 2:22 am
Yes, well, it may be my lacking English skills again, but I do not understand what conscience has to do with any of it. It is an emotion, that tells us wrong from right, not true from false. It is known as remorse, when we do something against our learned values, that are culturally based. A fairly typical trait on all social animals.
Is the conscience supposed to refer to the “knowledge of good and evil” in the Christian context? Something the Abrahamic god did not want to give to humans, but played around with the possibility, untill something went horribly wrong and countless of generations have had to suffer for a mistake they did not even commit? Generatios of suffering both before and after the same god alledgedly punished himself of once being irresponsible about it by a discomfort of becoming one of us for 30-odd years and an afternoon of violence? I do not get it. Not when I have actually read the Bible and by far most Christians have not and a very few of the ones that have are in a position to put it into the cultural context it was created in, as I do with my education of the ancient and classical antiquity. Most of the interpretation of what the Bible says comes from medieval and reneissance theologians, but it seems the book is being reinvented all the time according to what the believers would want it to say, totally irrespective of what was written and why, much like the 2nd amendment of your constitution.
October 10, 2022 at 4:41 pm
I think you picked up on something I didn’t intend in my comment. But that’s OK because overall, we’re in agreement. In fact, your last sentence sums things up quite well.