Disbelieve is not a believe. I wouldn't call it a doctrine... because there is no teaching behind Atheism that I'm aware of.
Again - I don't see how 'not believing' can be called a believe.

You seem to be confused by words.

"It don't think that it is true" is simply a syntactic transformation of "I think that it is not true".
Similarly, "I don't believe in gods" is a syntactic transformation of "I believe that gods don't exist".

Oh heaven...
Now I don't even understanding contractions.

That was simply badly worded... I should have said "I don't see any evidence of there being any god"... "I don't believe" is a phrase I try to avoid, but sometimes it slips through.
But could you for once tell me why you would call Atheism a Believe... although it is the absence of any Believe in the supernatural? I think it is only a believe as you would call someone a believer who says "I believe the sun will shine tomorrow". That is just rhetoric.
Denying Jehovah is real takes as little believe as it takes denying Hercules is real. All it takes is looking at the evidence, and realizing that there isn't any.
If you don't call yourself a skeptic regarding Hercules and the Easter Bunny, then you have to accept that someone can call himself an atheist without having conclusive proof that every single documented god does not exist.

If you were referring to "disbelieve is not a believe"... Then your explanation is simply out of context.
And spare me your astrological remarks. Everyone is confused by words when he thinks about them.

So how is something you can't prove not a belief or conviction?
You merely like to think that you're rational, while what you're
doing is to rantionalise after the fact; you have a conviction,
and are trying to explain or justify it. I guess that means that
I'm a few steps ahead of you - I *know* that my belief is a belief,
and have no qualm admitting it; but to get the wider picture of
this and see the implications re-read my other posts in this thread.

As I keep saying: "You're not very good with words". And that's
as little of an insult as to state: "You're wearing glasses".

Now, normally I wouldn't point out to a short-sighted person that
they're wearing glasses. But if they set out to lecture me about
an object a few hundred meters away ....



Cheers,
Tink

Well, I try not to believe in anything that can't be proven. Of course I'm as gullible as anyone - I have to choose the people I trust on certain subjects. I read about physics and biology - and a lot of times I have no means to test if the claims made are true. But I don't dogmatically believe that the claims are true. I always leave the possibility open that what I am reading is wrong.

I do not say that I am absolutely sure that there is no god. But I will not believe in something that has absolutely no proof on its side. I don't think astrology is true, but I don't think It takes a believe to see that it doesn't make any sense. I don't think homeopathy does anything - but does that make me a believer in non-homeopathy?
Likewise I don't think that you can call a non-believe in a deity a believe. A lot of people claim that there are various gods. Most of them want sacrifices, or worship... yet nobody can show me how those gods are supposed to interact with the world I live in.
I don't 'believe' in any god, because there is as much evidence for them as there is for astrology, homeopathy... If there was anything at all - I would give the existence of a god a higher probability. If there was undeniable proof, we wouldn't have this discussion.
But there is nothing... absolutely nothing.
If you insist that Atheism is a Believe, then I must insist that you merely believe that gnomes and leprecons do not exist, since you have no proof that they do not exist.
Really everything you thought you knew is just a believe if you think of it. Maybe we can eliminate the words "know" and "think" from the dictionary, since everything is a believe according to your reasoning.

By the way - I know by know that I am not good with words - you have repeated that well over a dozen times throughout this threat. You can let it go now.

As I say. If you say you are an atheist, then people tend to give that a negative term and generally class you as an antitheist. Now some people who call themselves atheist really are antitheist, so this confuses things.

So I call myself a realist these days.

If it's real, then I believe in it.

Then it's just a debate about what is real and what is not

We had that about 7 pages ago... According to Jay73 god is real.

I know that Atheism has a bad image in some countries, but it shouldn't. You don't hear of Atheist suicide bombers trying to break the Agnostic stronghold. At least we don't cause any trouble. + we go to hell, and you can point and laugh from heaven.

The atheist holy war... Hmm. not likely, no...

And god is real? Which god? I'm partial to horus myself...

But lets face it, the greek gods are real down to earth kind of gods, the kind of gods you could actually relate to...

Agnostic in the sense of being against organised religion, mumbo jumbo, orthodox rituals (I come from a very orthodox South Indian background) but would have no qualms about being part of a religious event or procession - say, since it would be only for the sake of friends and family and I myself don't feel any fervour at these events.

End

Remember this much: with regard to religion, the burden of proof lies on the believers. Atheists do not have to prove there is no God (or god, or gods), they are not the ones making the claims.

However, religion is a faith, a belief, and proof does not come into it. It's when believers try to provide proof of their claim (look! my 2000 year old book says it's true, so it is), that we see problems.

I think no one can't deny that religion played it positive role in history of the mankind. The notion (or invention) of a single omnipotent god was far superior to the multiple ever struggling gods. Besides other, it provided people's responsibility for their deeds and obligations to lead moral (in religious) definition lives. It might explain why human civilization, as we know, started just about 2.5 thousand years ago, and previous 30 thousand years of modern biological humans were, probably, filled with "Conan barbarian's and destroyers". But even greater inadvertent religious invention was simple "Cesar Cesar's, and God god's", which allowed separation of state and religion.

Religion have ran its course. It is not necessary anymore for the mankind to survive to have religions. We could do even better without them. We invented constitutions, laws, democracies to keep our course and development. Remove religion and you remove one of the reasons for people's hate and distrust.

It has been misinterpreted for almost 2000 years, by the way.
It's not about separation of powers, it's about rejection of the
Roman sovereignty over Judah.


Cheers,
Tink

its suppose to be about 8 thousands real years where people are planting in straight rows with a common well at the center ...

why see god/s struggling ... ?? i guess thats the difference ...

all the while there havent been much distrust and hatreds between man and man with their god/s or god/s and god/s with their men ... ok ...

btw ... i enjoy being among their rituals(and whatever ...) like "for nothing i'm getting something free" ... yeh , lucky me ... and i'm not talking about those few hard-to-come-by minutes when people(when they are "left alone" nevertheless) for some reasons are going to make a decision as if they are going to write a new chapter in their religious/cultural history(but they playfully just let it slip by) ... because sometime i find scientists/anthropologists are actually a bit stupid leh ...


[EDIT ::]
>> "Don't you mean a brain the size of a human appendix?

i dont think so ... i have corrected that posting a bit , hope that it ok for you now ...

btw ... since i was 12 , i dont have any appendix already(yeh , i know ... a bit personel) ... ^_^



.

I believe the "morals" issue needs further debate. Not killing, not coveting your neighbor's wife and most of the other commandments make a lot of sense when one remembers that back then people lived in smaller communities and they are all very good ways of not destroying the unity of village life. Also, has there ever been a survey of the criminal fraternity to see whether atheists make up a greater number of criminals than the religious?

Lest we forget, the people who normally get the credit for civilisation weren't monotheistic - the Roman emperors were elevated to godhood on their death. And prior to them, the Egyptians - no one can accuse the Egyptians of worshipping one god!