believer´s opinion on not believers going to church?

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So is empiricism if you take it to silly extremes... Just ask Hume.

I don't believe in the dark side of the moon.

I never felt welcome in church settings. Kids would bully me there as well. So I stopped going.

I seldomly go to church for one thing I like to sleep another I have the habit of sitting alone in the back. Also so much gossip goes on in alot of churches behind your back rumors and such. Also trying to pressure you into joining their groups and such. Not admitting sin etc well.... I sin I admit it but I do not think I should have some invisible being dictate how I live my life. 90% of the stuff in the bible etc kind of contradicts all the scientific studies I have learned like the origin of humans the universe etc. Just my thought on it and if i mention things such as evolution I will get ousted so yeah church is not for me.

Well... I guess I forget to finnish the thought.

So even though you cant be a "a fundamentalist atheist" you could in theory be an "evangelical atheist".

Not only CAN you be one- the PPR forum is rife with "evangelical atheists". Indeed they become a bit tiresome even to the nonreligous like myself.

If you have a missionary zeal to persuade others of something- then then that something can only be called "a belief".

Agnosticism is a nonbelief.

Atheism, especially if its militant and evangelical, is a belief.
The conviction that God does not exist is a belief.

Come on. Get real!

Well... I guess I forget to finnish the thought.

So even though you cant be a "a fundamentalist atheist" you could in theory be an "evangelical atheist".

Not only CAN you be one- the PPR forum is rife with "evangelical atheists". Indeed they become a bit tiresome even to the nonreligous like myself.

If you have a missionary zeal to persuade others of something- then then that something can only be called "a belief".

Agnosticism is a nonbelief.

Atheism, especially if its militant and evangelical, is a belief.
The conviction that God does not exist is a belief.

Come on. Get real!

I would say that atheism is a belief in all instances. There's no such thing as a weak and strong atheist. Just because you can say "I don't believe in God" doesn't suppose that you don't believe that God doesn't exist, and no one shouldn't because it's not possible to not believe in God's non/existence.

W O R D !

When I lived in Kansas I was friends with a true Atheist. We spent countless hours drinking adult beverages and talking philosophy--mostly thought experiments and classical ethics....

He home schooled his kids because Kansas public schools are so... hostile toward science, but he also sent his kids to church/sunday school. When I ask him about this, he said his kids needed the socialization (he wanted them to be exposed to a wide variety of people and ideas) and he wanted to let them make up their own minds about religion (like he had).


That was way back in the day... before angry atheists were cool.

My opinon is this I believe forcing people to go to church they do not believe in God or Religion for that matter is wrong Also I go to Church as part of my faith how ever I do not worry about people not going just as long as I go.

no.... i don't believe in anything to do with god, which includes any belief in no god. you were not able to establish that i believed in anything in the other thread, so making the same claim again is pretty empty.

interesting individual.

Also interesting that the Kansas public school system is that way.

My dad grew up in Hutchinson Kansan in the thirties and learned about evolution like everyone else does now. So Kansas must be going backward in time!

Huh?
Youll have to walk me through what you're talking about here.

There was another thread in which you said you had a(in my paraphrasing of what you said that you agreed with) "lack of belief in your ability to fly", but not a "belief in your inablity to fly". Which meant you had a nonbelief. And I agreed.

In other words you were expressing doubt about your ability to fly- which is agnosticism.
But not a militant missionary zeal to convert others to your conviction in your inability to fly.
Which would be the equivalent of militant atheism.

And what did I just say?
Agnosicism is a nonbelief.
But atheism is a belief.

The same thing I said before- that you have a none belief.

We were talking about your hypothetical belief in flight thing.

What your belief about god might be something else.

Havent kept tabs on your posts about theology/atheology so I dont know which way I would classify you about that.

i was able to establish that if i don't THINK i can fly, that is distinct from a NON-BELIEF in flight. you were not able to disprove that. so you might want to assert your ideas about beliefs with a little less certainty, seeing as how you were not able to support it.

It is actually the other way around Agnosticism is a belief, namely the belief that the existence of god/s is unknowable and can't be proved or disproved. Whereas atheism is merely the lack of belief in god/s. The two are not mutually exclusive. It is actually impossible to be agnostic without being either an atheist (who has no god belief) or a theist (who believes in a god, but in this case also believes in god's unknowability).

Many if not most atheists are agnostic, since they lack a belief in deities, but subscribe to the belief that claims about supernatural entities are unprovable. Other atheists don't hold any belief at all. They might be apatheists who simply don't care about religious truth claims, or people who refuse to hold any belief regarding things that have no empirical basis. And some atheists -- so-called strong atheists -- believe that god/s can be disproven, and have a definite belief in their nonexistence. The latter are a minority though.



To further complicate things, people can hold different beliefs in regard to different god concepts. I'm an atheist, but I actually believe in a pantheist god that is nothing other than the universe. Of course I don't doubt the existence of the universe that I live in, I merely don't call it god. I'm an agnostic atheist in regard to an undefined sentient creator deity, and a strong atheist when it comes to gods that are described in detail in contradictory books. Christians also hold different positions and are usually strong atheists in regard to Zeus and Odin.

Last edited by CrazyCatLord on 18 Apr 2012, 9:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

i am an atheist/agnostic. i do not have a belief about god (or lack thereof)

Being black is not a belief, it is a trait. Being Christian is not a trait, it is a belief.

Criticizing beliefs, hypotheses and truth claims is not intolerance, it is the way humanity advances in knowledge and understanding. No belief should be exempt from skeptical examination and criticism.

Edited to add: If I happened to believe that autism is caused by vaccines and went around spreading this misinformation, are people not allowed to disagree with my belief? Would disbelief and criticism be the same as a racial slur in your opinion? If not, what makes this outlandish belief any different from a religious belief, which is just another kind of unproven hypothesis?