Celebrity Atheists
 

Atheism seems like... coloring your hair green, just to make your parents mad. A little overly dramatic.

Why is that?... most Buddhist are atheists.

On a purely logical level, weak agnosticism is the only intellectually honest position, and that's true for everything from gods to faeries.

However, on a practical level, you can't give the benefit of the doubt to something just because it is undisprovable, so you might as well be atheist.

The balance of evidence suggests there is no God. The balance of evidence suggests that life evolved (and is evolving) without an intelligent driver. Belief in God or creationism requires a leap of faith much greater than that which assumes 'if I throw this ball in the air, it will more than likely fall to the ground.'

Hence, I am an atheist; I don't dye my hair green. In the UK, saying your an atheist isn't a particularly brave or anti-establishment thing to do. From your initial post am I incorrect to surmise that in the USA, such a stance is an unusual one to take when one is in the public eye?

What is with the green hair thing?

It all depends simply on your definition of the word God. If you take the most ridiculous, contrived, dogmatic definition available, and point out that something described in exactly that way is likely not to exist, you've simply proven that it was a silly definition to begin with. >>>>>>> :2cents:

However, if you make the most general, vague, unverifiable and unfalsifiable definition possible, you might as well have never made the claim to begin with.

"Claim? I have no...claim..." Chauncey Gardiner

I was using the general "you".

I know.

Maybe I should clarify what my definition of God is.

It starts with my definition of intelligence, which is simply a high level of organization. Our cells are organized bits of stuff, that act and have an agenda. We are a chunk of these cells, that is capable of symbolic thought, etc. The earth is a mass of life forms, which ebbs and flows in an organization that we don't identify as intelligence simply because we can't understand it with our human brains any more than a bacteria can do algebra.

Keep going outward and outward, bigger and bigger, until you include everything that exists. That is also an organization, to which the same definition of intelligence applies (intelligence is organization). That is what I call God. God is the organization of everything that exists, and everything that exists has an organization that is exponentially more complex than we are able to comprehend. There is no fairy-tale aspect to this.

By trying to understand the parts of the universe that apply to us, we seek to catch a small glimpse of a small part of the organization of everything. This is what we are doing when we use the Scientific Method in an attempt to objectively analyze what we can observe. This is also what we are doing when we seek to find a spiritual path which puts us in harmony with the flow of nature. In both cases, we are blind to the actual truth, and use the best tools we have available for the context we are working within.

The fallacy of Atheism, to me, is that it only seeks to disprove God as is defined by an external source (correct me if I'm wrong). Hence, an apparent symbolic rebellion against the establishment, IE the green-hair comment.

Intelligence != organization. Crystals are not intelligent.

That's not a fallacy, it's a structural necessity. I could turn you into an Afooist just by creating an idea called Fooism with which you disagree. You being Afooist is completely dependant on my definition of Fooism. That's not a fallacy on your part. You didn't change any of your views, but suddenly you get this label! In fact, you are an Afooist right now; Fooism doesn't even exist yet, so you can't possibly be a Fooist.

And not everybody that has a moustache is Hitler. So?
So...do you mean that "Atheism" consists of: not believing in a diety as defined by organized religions? Isn't that just disagreeing with a definition?
Nobody should just "get the label" of Atheist, you should decide to call yourself that. And, I propose that holding other people's beliefs as the source of your personal identity is sort of...odd. Saying I don't believe in something, which I provide the definition for, is one thing. But saying I don't believe in something that is exactly as these other people describe...well... it's kind of like making a rebellious statement, isn't it? Your whole identity, in that case, is defined externally. It looks like that would take you out of the driver's seat of your own life. Am I misunderstanding what Atheist means?

That same logic could be applied to people who consider themselves 'Christians'. Accepted tenets of the Christian faith have generally been derived from christological debates between learned clerics and ecclesiastical figures across many centuries. Most Christians believe in a God, described to them in someone else's terms. Since they define themslves in terms of their faith, and their faith is derived from external definitions of previous generations' beliefs, how are they different from your description of atheists?

They're not. I agree with what you said.

Then lets take it a step further:

The vast majority of people form their identity on the basis of belief-systems or cultural norms which are taught to them, or to which they are exposed, during certain crucial stages of their develpment, such as early childhood, late adolescence and early adulthood. Essentially, their sense of identity is based at some level on what others before them have believed or held to be 'true'.

That is also true, and I don't think it should be simply embraced without question.

So organization doesn't imply or entail intelligence. Some things just organize because that is the easiest path.Dieties are an invention of theists. They get to define them. Atheists making up their own gods in order to deny them would be a waste of time.Atheism isn't a personal identity. It is an answer to the question "do you believe in God?".
If you think it forms some sort of personal identity, then yes; you are misunderstanding. My own life is not in any way based on atheism. My views of religion are defined externally because I have no internal religious beliefs, but that is irrelevant because religious beliefs aren't in the car, let alone the driver's seat of my identity.

*nods*

In what way do you think people who have arrived at a position of atheism, have simply embraced it without question?

How can there be a list of "Celebrity Atheists" if it isn't a personal identity?

Who devised the list of 'celebrity atheists'? Who made the decision as to whether someone was included in the list? (the star or the compiler?)

If, as I'm trying to determine, Atheism simply consists of opposing something which is specifically defined by an outside source, then even by not believing in what they describe, you are still embracing their definition, apparently without question. It just validates their faulty definition.

tangent: the definition of intelligence
 

Do you believe that all things in the universe obey the laws of physics? And your nervous system is made of the same type of stuff as everything else? Therefore, what occurs to you as a thought or a feeling is really just the action of a mechanism which is obeying the laws of physics, right? Unless you have a "soul" or some other supernatural quality, you are a physical object, and "some things just organize because that is the easiest path" as you said. A level of organization above or below your own is not defined as intelligence, simply because you don't understand it. And, it probably feels the same way about you.

The star, if they said "I am an Athiest."

how do they know that they're atheists?

How does who know?

Easy. If someone asks them what their religious beliefs are, and they have none, they say "atheist". Now they're on the list.If there were no definition from an outside source, then there would be no reason for the question of belief to come up. If someone asks me, "do you believe in X", I will say, "What is X?". If they can't answer, I won't make up my own definition.

Do you know that's how the list was made? I've met plenty of people who are "hard-core" Athiests, and definitely do define themselves as such.

@HP: If I asked you "Do you believe in X?" and you asked "What does X mean?" and I said "X is the universe. Do you believe the universe exists?" what would you say? I'm not asking you to make up your own definition. I'm just wondering why the crappiest definition possible is being pushed as the only one available.

The list could have been made in any way. I suspect it's a combination of people who were asked and people who volunteered the info.

I'm not sure what defining oneself as atheist would entail, outside of considering oneself to fit the definition.

And the definition is what? Not agreeing with some other definition of something else, by someone else?

I would say yes. And then I would ask why you used "X" instead of "the universe", since we already had a perfectly servicable word, and I would suspect you consider the word "universe" to have some additional meaning that I don't.

Alot of things have alot of different meanings to alot of different people. The very concept of Athiesm, to me, seems to be to pick one word, and one definition, coming from one source, and make a symbolic gesture to indicate your disagreement with those people, with that definition, and with that word. If that's not what it is, please correct me. If it is, it just seems silly to me.

Not having a definition at all. And, once someone provides a definition, not thinking that anything in reality fits that definition.

I agree with this, but sometimes people choose to sacrifice inserting their own definitions in favor of successfully communicating. If someone asked you (as I have actually been asked before,) "What kind of Christian are you?", how do you answer without using the definition they are apparently assuming? You can get into a long explanation of what you believe and let them sort out how it is different from what they believe, which they probably won't take the time to do, or you can meet them halfway for the sake of communication and say, "I'm not a Christian, at least in the way you're thinking of it."

Is "I'm not a theist, at least in the way you're thinking of it" better than "I'm an atheist?"

So, which definition do you pick? Are there Athiests specific to each definition of God, from each person/persons who have one?

Being clear and specific is better than using pigeon-hole terminology.

I don't pick. I don't think any of them apply to reality.
Maybe:However, the term is usually reserved for just the ones who go one further. Suffice to say, I feel the same about Jehova, Thor, and Zeus. And I feel the same about Jesus and Hercules (with respect to parenthood). Likewise angels, demons, unicorns and faeries.

Someone asked me to explain my "green hair" comment... I think that it's a rebellious stance, by definition, if it consists of specifically opposing a word and a definition from an outside source. Atheism seems like it applies less to a description of reality, and more to a postition of semantics.

It's only rebellious (in and of itself; someone can certainly use it to be rebellious) in that there are a lot of theists. If there weren't any theists, it would be the default.

I think it's just letting "the other side" frame the debate. Although I do get your point about there not being a debate to begin with, if those external forces did not exist. But, the thing is, they do exist. And specifically opposing them is just validating their position, to me. I am an Atheist, if Atheism means disagreeing with the vast majority of monotheistic doctrine. But, I'm not feeling like letting their stupid asses define what I am. I'll call the shots, on me. Am I an Atheist? No, I just disagree with some specific things.

I only specifically oppose them when specific claims are made. I don't internalize any of the claims; none of the external definitions affect me any longer than the debate lasts, at which point they go back to the pile.