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Originally Posted by KenWittlief
Wow! has this thread gone off topic permanently?!
Im not an atheist, but I do find the idea interesting from a philosophy perspective. Im wondering, do atheist define gods in the traditional sense?
is it only the gods of established religions that they believe do not exist?
where would you draw the line? Do atheists believe there could be life in other star systems?
if so, could that life be so far advanced from us that they would be god-like?
could they be what we would call spiritual beings (as opposed to physical?)
is it a matter of creation? god created the universe? or could it be that some alien life form created humanity and seeded our planet?
I guess Im trying to understand exactly what it means to be an atheist?
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You trivialize atheism greatly with your questions. Atheism is simply the lack of a theistic belief, a belief in the existence of god(s). Not all atheists are rationalists (or, ‘one should only believe what one has rational reason to believe’) who take the principles of
Occam’s Razor and Tripartite Theory to heart; for example, some don’t believe in god(s) on the basis of the Problem of Evil or because they reject premises of the Cosmological Argument, and some follow a religion that has no concept of a god. Atheism is a very broad outlook that consists of different reasoning, and is
not a religion, though there are many religions which can be described as atheistic (Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism don’t mention god for example), just as how many religions believe Jesus was more than an ordinary man. It doesn't necessarily preclude the belief in the supernatural or holy, but is simply a disbelief in a deity – being a person upon whom our fate ultimately depends
exclusively and whose power is infinitely greater than our own – or multiple gods which form the same purpose of a deity (another philosophical debate revolves around whether there is really a distinction between multiple omnipotent beings and one singular being, a definite description). God is almost always defined in philosophical circles as the great monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) define him, wherein God functions as a definite description, and this is the main reason people get confused around the definition of “god” in philosophical arguments.
I’m sure some atheists believe there is life in other solar systems, but most theists and atheists alike will agree there is a gaping hole in your logic when you equate powerful beings with gods. Atheism, as I described earlier, clearly does
not have anything to do with this. In a theistic world,
Star Trek’s Q could exist, as he could exist in an atheistic one. For one thing, Q is neither our creator, nor divine. For another, judging by what he does to the
Enterprise, he is not infinitely good, as the great religions say god is.
So that’s what atheism means. I doubt that’s what TheShadow meant when he asked what other atheists were on the forum, but so-called ‘positive atheism’ is unquestionably not the only type of atheism exhibited by ChiefDelphi posters. I personally am surprised there aren’t more atheists here; after all, most scientists are atheists, and ChiefDelphi is a breeding ground for young scientists.