Does antitheism exist?

[Outrider]

No I think you'll find they have got a right side and a left side.

I think you'll find it's an inside and an outside...

O.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

NEW RULE ONE for the Religion and Ethics forum:-

VLAD IS NEVER, EVER,  WRONG IN ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM - IT IS ALWAYS EVERYONE ELSE WHO IS WRONG!

If anyone thinks Vlad is wrong it is becaiuse their mental faculties are not well enough developed for them to understand what he is trying to teach us!

All bow to the Almighty God VLAD!


NO BLOODY WAY!!

I fail to see your exasperation since nobody wants to believe a word I say.

Would you say an antitheist theist is possible since I recall Nearly  has nominated you as  possibly being one.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Do anti-atheists exist and is there any relationship between them and theists?

One for you to consider Vlad.

Do they have another more recognisable handle?

[ProfessorDavey]

Insure there are although they've never been discussed. Do they have another more recognisable handle?

I think anti-atheism is rife world-wide, both at the level of the individual and through state-sanctioned anti-atheism. For example there are at least 13 countries where to be atheist is illegal and punishable by death. There are eight states in the USA where atheists are banned from holding public office.

Just some examples.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

I think anti-atheism is rife world-wide, both at the level of the individual and through state-sanctioned anti-atheism. For example there are at least 13 countries where to be atheist is illegal and punishable by death. There are eight states in the USA where atheists are banned from holding public office.

Just some examples.

I am against all of that which you mention.

[Outrider]

I am against all of that which you mention.

But are you though?  Are you sure you don't have an anti-atheist 'side'?

O.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

But are you though?  Are you sure you don't have an anti-atheist 'side'?

O.

Only anti their position regarding God.
Not that they have a voice in the public forum
Or That they can do Births deaths and marriages
Or the hair. Wouldn’t you just die for hair like Dawkins, Grayling and Pinker?

[ProfessorDavey]

I am against all of that which you mention.

So does that make you a medium-soft anti-atheist, rather than a diamond-hard anti-atheist then Vlad?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

So does that make you a medium-soft anti-atheist, rather than a diamond-hard anti-atheist then Vlad?

It makes me a diamond-geezer anti-atheist.

[SteveH]

NEW RULE ONE for the Religion and Ethics forum:-

VLAD IS NEVER, EVER,  WRONG IN ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM - IT IS ALWAYS EVERYONE ELSE WHO IS WRONG!

If anyone thinks Vlad is wrong it is becaiuse their mental faculties are not well enough developed for them to understand what he is trying to teach us!

All bow to the Almighty God VLAD!


NO BLOODY WAY!!

Calm down, dear! Vlad disagrees with you, but that does not make him rigidly dogmatic or narrow-minded, as you suggest; it just means that he disagrees with you, and no more.

[ProfessorDavey]

Only anti their position regarding God.

Which would surely make you an anti-atheist, likely to the same degree as the atheists you argue are anti-theists, whose views goes no further than being against their position on god.

So if hard anti-atheism is about making atheism illegal, with a death sentence, and banning people from holding public office for no other reason than they are atheist, I'm struggling to see any equivalence with the views of Dawkins, Hitchens, Graying etc. So I guess those guys are just soft antitheists, similar to your son anti-atheist tendencies.

[ProfessorDavey]

It makes me a diamond-geezer anti-atheist.

You may be many things Vlad - but a diamond geezer definitely isn't one of them.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

You may be many things Vlad - but a diamond geezer definitely isn't one of them.

Wot? Even if I self-Identify as one?

[ProfessorDavey]

Wot? Even if I self-Identify as one?

Nope - being a diamond geezer is definitely something that is ascribed to an individual by others.

[Owlswing]

I fail to see your exasperation since nobody wants to believe a word I say.

That does not stop you incessantly telling every that you are right, does it! Are you the voice in the wilderness? If 'yes', you are not far enough into the wilderness because we can still hear you.

Would you say an antitheist theist is possible since I recall Nearly  has nominated you as  possibly being one.

I believe in the deities that are connected with my particular belief system, but, at times I find that, like humans, their attention span is not long enough, they have a taste for practical jokes as long as those jokes are on humanity and not themselves and they can be just as vindictive as humans.

Nevertheless I still find that they do have their useful side, if spoken to with the proper respect and if they are in the right mood and as long as you are asking the right deity.

Yes, my deities have the same failings as humans and even Loki at his worst is not as bad as the vindictive "I AM THE GREATEST" bastard of the Christians!

If that makes me an antitheist theist then yes I suppose I am such.

I speak only for myself, I do not speak for any other Pagan either known or unknown to me!

)O(

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Which would surely make you an anti-atheist, likely to the same degree as the atheists you argue are anti-theists, whose views goes no further than being against their position on god.

So if hard anti-atheism is about making atheism illegal, with a death sentence, and banning people from holding public office for no other reason than they are atheist, I'm struggling to see any equivalence with the views of Dawkins, Hitchens, Graying etc. So I guess those guys are just soft antitheists, similar to your son anti-atheist tendencies.

Let me stop you there. This thread is about antitheism. I have resisted replying to you using tu quoque even though you have begun to use that argument.

You should therefore do the decent thing and take this up elsewhere.
I acknowledge there are injustices against atheists.I oppose them.

I do not believe that Celebrity atheists support the death penalty for religious people although historically there are examples of antitheism going that far. But then I don’t believe people like Ken Ham or the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Pope want that either
There may be 8 States in the US that do not allow atheists into public office but is that not true of say, communist states and provinces around the world?

Where Dawkins, the NSS and humanists are different from theists who accept they live inoverwhelmingly secular countries where they are looked down on. The UK for instance. Is their will to eliminate religion from the public forum. I don’t want to limit atheist talk for most posters here they probably tend toward wanting to curtail religious talk

[Walt Zingmatilder]

I believe in the deities that are connected with my particular belief system, but, at times I find that, like humans, their attention span is not long enough, they have a taste for practical jokes as long as those jokes are on humanity and not themselves and they can be just as vindictive as humans.

Nevertheless I still find that they do have their useful side, if spoken to with the proper respect and if they are in the right mood and as long as you are asking the right deity.

Yes, my deities have the same failings as humans and even Loki at his worst is not as bad as the vindictive "I AM THE GREATEST" bastard of the Christians!

If that makes me an antitheist theist then yes I suppose I am such.

No, not really.

[Outrider]

I don’t want to limit atheist talk for most posters here they probably tend toward wanting to curtail religious talk.

Which is a reasonable stance if you start from a position of relative equality, but there is an entrenched entitlement to religious expression in this country - there are reserved spaces for a particular religion in government, there are reserved slots in the national broadcaster's output for religious outlooks.  Opposing these privileges is, undoubtedly 'wanting to curtail religious talk', but the question is whether it's a justified desire.  Removing an entitlement is not the same as suppressing someone's equal opportunities.

O.

[Nearly Sane]

That does not stop you incessantly telling every that you are right, does it! Are you the voice in the wilderness? If 'yes', you are not far enough into the wilderness because we can still hear you.

I believe in the deities that are connected with my particular belief system, but, at times I find that, like humans, their attention span is not long enough, they have a taste for practical jokes as long as those jokes are on humanity and not themselves and they can be just as vindictive as humans.

Nevertheless I still find that they do have their useful side, if spoken to with the proper respect and if they are in the right mood and as long as you are asking the right deity.

Yes, my deities have the same failings as humans and even Loki at his worst is not as bad as the vindictive "I AM THE GREATEST" bastard of the Christians!

If that makes me an antitheist theist then yes I suppose I am such.

I speak only for myself, I do not speak for any other Pagan either known or unknown to me!

)O(

No, I was thinking it was more posts like your OP linked to here that make you antitheist.

http://www.religionethics.co.uk/index.php?topic=17470.0

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Which is a reasonable stance if you start from a position of relative equality, but there is an entrenched entitlement to religious expression in this country - there are reserved spaces for a particular religion in government, there are reserved slots in the national broadcaster's output for religious outlooks.  Opposing these privileges is, undoubtedly 'wanting to curtail religious talk', but the question is whether it's a justified desire.  Removing an entitlement is not the same as suppressing someone's equal opportunities.
S
O.

This is a country of reserved spaces Outrider a veritable museum. The idea behind religious lords was a perspective other than the secular and temporal.
So any removal of a check leading to only one point of view of how humans are and should ideally function is necessarily a bad thing so I would say change it’s composition before getting rid of an alternative to “ The one conception”.

To me then anyone who wants to get rid of a view of humanity as more than materialist consumer social and capitalist by turns is not someone I can readily agree with.

[Outrider]

This is a country of reserved spaces Outrider a veritable museum.

And some of those reservations have had their time.

The idea behind religious lords was a perspective other than the secular and temporal.

No, that's the claim in support of maintaining the Lords Spiritual.  The idea behind the religious lords was the explicit attempt of the church to influence temporal power at a time when the concept of 'secular' didn't have a place in the discussion.  There are religious people already in the parliament to offer a perspective not based on facts or evidence already, we don't need a reserved place for bronze age mythology subjected to a few centuries of advanced navel-gazing in a 21st century democracy.

So any removal of a check leading to only one point of view of how humans are and should ideally function is necessarily a bad thing so I would say change it’s composition before getting rid of an alternative to “ The one conception”.

Removing the specifically Church of England reserved seating from parliament would not result in 'only one point of view' of how humans are; it wouldn't even remove the voice of members of the Church of England...  It might work to reduce their over-representation, however, making the views in parliament a little more representative of the populace.

To me then anyone who wants to get rid of a view of humanity as more than materialist consumer social and capitalist by turns is not someone I can readily agree with.

If you think that the Church of England, or even religion in general, is the only viewpoint that takes issue with materialist consumer capitalism, can I suggest you listen to some politicians - there's a group called 'The Labour Party' they have a whole thing about that...

O.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

As always I refer everyone to Wikipedia according to which the definition you are using is popularised by Hitchen's in the early 2000s other,earlier definitions are available.

First, I notice that you just ignored every correction you were given. Why is that?

Second, if you really want to reference Wiki and you don’t want to fall flat on your face again can I suggest that you actually bother to read it first? From Wiki:

“Antitheism (sometimes anti-theism) is the opposition to theism.[1][2] The term has had a range of applications. In secular contexts, it typically refers to direct opposition to the belief in any deity. Antitheism has been adopted as a label by those who regard theism as dangerous, destructive, or encouraging of harmful behavior.”

“The Oxford English Dictionary defines antitheist as "One opposed to belief in the existence of a god".”

There’s even a whole section titled, “Opposition to the idea of God”.

Thus what Wiki actually tells you that antitheism means exactly what I told you it means: opposition to the beliefs of theism, but not arguments about the validity or otherwise of the beliefs themselves. Antitheism isn’t concerned with the epistemology of theism – just with the effects of its beliefs. 

So what of Hitchens? Let’s have a look at that too shall we (still from Wiki)?:

“Christopher Hitchens offers an example of this approach in Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001), in which he writes: "I'm not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful."

Well looky here – turns out he makes a clear distinction between atheism and antitheism (“not only”, “but also”), and says that he’s both of them. What he was doing in fact was merely identifying as one of the four types of positions I outlined for you a few posts ago, namely:

“- an atheist can also be an antitheist. That is, he sees no reason to believe in god(s) and thinks the fact that some people do believe in god(s) does more harm than good;”

So yet again you’ve tried to find a citation and it turns out that when someone bothers to check it it blows up in your face. Who’d have thought it eh?

Such are the wages of linguistic piracy is that Orwellian doublethink is going on with the proposal of Antitheist theists.

Hilarious incompetence. Just hilarious.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

And some of those reservations have had their time.


No, that's the claim in support of maintaining the Lords Spiritual.  The idea behind the religious lords was the explicit attempt of the church to influence temporal power at a time when the concept of 'secular' didn't have a place in the discussion.  There are religious people already in the parliament to offer a perspective not based on facts or evidence already, we don't need a reserved place for bronze age mythology subjected to a few centuries of advanced navel-gazing in a 21st century democracy.

Removing the specifically Church of England reserved seating from parliament would not result in 'only one point of view' of how humans are; it wouldn't even remove the voice of members of the Church of England...  It might work to reduce their over-representation, however, making the views in parliament a little more representative of the populace.

If you think that the Church of England, or even religion in general, is the only viewpoint that takes issue with materialist consumer capitalism, can I suggest you listen to some politicians - there's a group called 'The Labour Party' they have a whole thing about that...

O.

No, I’m afraid any purely secular politics thinks that the job is a good un when materialism, capitalism, socialism and consumerism have been adjusted in Some way.
Most people would agree that we need more representation of more varied experiences not less

Not only are you advocating less. You are targeting removal from public fora.

[Outrider]

No, I’m afraid any purely secular politics thinks that the job is a good un when materialism, capitalism, socialism and consumerism have been adjusted in Some way.

There are other points of view which have something to say regarding politics, but in principle yes.

Most people would agree that we need more representation of more varied experiences not less

We need broader experience in politics than we currently have, yes; we do not, though, need to reserve seats for one specific viewpoint regardless of the electorate, especially when the defining factor of that viewpoint is an adherence to one particular take on one particular version of one particular poetic rewrite of one particular sect of on particular religion's chosen book of fairy tales.

Not only are you advocating less. You are targeting removal from public fora.

I'm advocating more, I'm advocating broader, but I'm also advocating better and relevant.

O.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Not only are you advocating less. You are targeting removal from public fora.

Stop lying. All he’s arguing for is the removal of privileged access to public forums, not to removal from the forums themsleves. And I agree with him. Why don’t you?