What were you before you became and atheist?

[Exi5tentialist]

I like Feck's description of christianity as a veneer over the preexisting culture ... made me think of how the aboriginal people of any land must feel about the arrogance of empire building invaders declaring the culture to be christian and imposing that on the original people. How ludicrous the veneer must look when viewed from the underside where the original culture still exists. Imagine, for example, that muslims forced their culture onto us in the same way christianity has been forced onto other cultures, and we have to live under islamic theocracy ... how many generations before we are completely absorbed by the new culture?

Uggg ... that wasn't a pleasant example, just the easiest one to try to convey the point.

I agree with you about the ludicrous view of an external culture being imposed on your own, but I'm not at all sure that if islam had been forced on our culture, western capitalist culture would look all that different from the way it looks now. Reading the history of western christianity reveals a state theocracy which is every bit as authoritarian and brutal as the islamic theocratic rulers of Iran and Saudi, so I don't think it would have made a lot of difference. If I were to stick my neck out, I'd say that capitalism would have moulded islam into the vested interest-serving force that christianity became. And probably that would have happened in a relatively short time. I believe that the resistance to theocratic or theocracy-influenced dictatorship in Egypt, Iraq, Bahrain, Yemen and Tunisia are all to do with the rapid development of capitalism within those economies on the last 30 years.

So no I don't think islam invading the west would have made much difference to us overall. We'd still have had all the same resistance movements that arise under capitalism: labour rights, trade unions, human rights, women's equality, gay rights. Islam would have had to adapt just as the culture of the inquisitors had to adapt; indeed muslims in the west usually absorb all those values within a generation or two, and even in the middle east those values have made a lot of headway with the development of capitalism and the development of labour that goes with it.

[BrettA]

I've never been anything else... even before I was conceived or born I didn't believe in any God (of course), so while I guess one could argue I wasn't a strong atheist who's (now) something like 99.999% comfortable / sure there are no gods and never have been, I certainly never believed in any. It's as silly a notion as any I've heard (or at least can think of now).

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I found religion to be like loving a sports team. The team doesn't know you, they don't care if you live or die, and they rarely perform to your expectations. They just expect you to give them money.

I wasn't interested in any sports teams either.

[apophenia]

I found religion to be like loving a sports team. The team doesn't know you, they don't care if you live or die, and they rarely perform to your expectations. They just expect you to give them money.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I found religion to be like loving a sports team. The team doesn't know you, they don't care if you live or die, and they rarely perform to your expectations. They just expect you to give them money.

I've known some Cubs fans in my day.

[Robert_S]

Before I became an atheist I was an alcoholic, a drug abuser and a wife beater. I was lost in the dark but Richard Dawkins found me and he's been with me ever since. He gave me the strength to give up drink and drugs. I've found a better way. I know I can never fully make it up to my family, the pain I caused them, but with the guidance of Dawkins I do my best to right wrongs.

Actually, I had to come to terms with my atheism before I could really be comfortable leaving alcohol alone.

[Schneibster]

I think, though have no immediate proof, that Cantor, Frege, Dedekind, Hilbert and Godel, to name just the mathematicians I know off the top of my head who have addressed the issue, would disagree with you on the nature of the infinite or the transfinite, and any concepts such as immortality and omnipotence / benevolence / whateverness that might flow from such concepts. I know from my own investigations of such as Anselm's original ontological argument, and commentators both pro and con on the question, that, to my mind, your ideas on the matter seem somewhat sophomoric. In a nutshell, the transfinite is smarter than you. And far more subtle.

Gödel did a version of Anselm's ontological argument; what he did was codify Leibnitz' version of it into modal logic in order to use mathematical methods to rigorously prove it, but he didn't release it for a very long time because he was afraid people would think he was asserting belief in God, or that it would be twisted to that purpose. The real point, of course, was to show that it would be subject to the Incompleteness Theorem; which in turn implies that a formal system, such as reality, with God in it is either incomplete, or inconsistent.

It's a pretty cute method, leading to an internal inconsistency in reality introduced by the assertion of the existence of God.

So, you're correct, apophenia; Gödel, at minimum, would disagree with Exi.

You have an interesting mind, apophenia.

Have you read "Gödel , Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter?

I read it many years ago; I think I should read it again...

Get the 20th Anniversary Edition. I gave away my original to someone young and deserving once I had it.

[Schneibster]

More down to earth, though, bringing in the notion of eternity in the context of "I've never been anything but an atheist" makes as much sense as bringing it in if Geoff had said "I've never had any more than twelve toes" or "I've never been to Spain."

It's called "changing the subject."

That's a charitable way of putting it.

Would 'moving the goalposts', or, 'introducing red herrings because you want to discuss shit rather than the subject at hand' fit better?
Me, thinking on it, I think we (and certainly myself) did fall for the trolling.

In order to maintain focus on the ball rather than attack the man I prefer to stick with what I said on the matter in the first place.

When dealing with people, I find that keeping track of their behavior helps predict their future behavior. Changing the subject is one of those behaviors that I find most useful in this regard.