Canuckistani

By wiki, the terms are positive and negative atheists. Your gnostic atheist would be a positive one.

Exclude definition number 4. Makes the term so broad as to be meaningless. I'm a religious oxygen consumer, how about you? Not necessarily. Experiments are showing we may not be consciously responsible for any of our actions, they all arise out of the unconscious. Behaviorism says we have no free will. Social Psychology says it can easily be overpowered. Etc. So from a materialistic perspective, our human brains are responsible for what we do, but our person isn't. Say the not criminally responsible by reason of a mental disorder - are they responsible?Betsy keeps preaching that we are wholly responsible for our actions tho - she's no atheist. I don't think her stance fits with an omnipotent and omniscient God tho.

It could yes. It could also lead to nihilism, amoralism or antisocialism. Or none of the above. Atheism is just the first step, and by itself is not a belief system. Also you're using positive atheism as your definition here ( )

Seems to be a gray area. Don't really hear much about people practicing BDSM being prosecuted. And I think we would, the media would be all over it. If someone can consent to getting a tattoo on their private parts, or rings thru them, why can they not consent to BDSM?

Note Tim's argument to the contrary. I don't think atheism is a belief-based values system. What are the values of atheism? Atheism itself if just not believing there is a God, no other values and no system involved. I do understand there are now churches of atheists - I guess that qualifies. But that's not atheism as such. I can just see those folks sneering at other atheists that they are not true atheists the way some Christians do to each other. Personally I consider myself a Christian in the sense that the teachings attributed to Yeshua ben Josef have value for me. I don't believe he was any more or less divine than I am tho, so most Christians would not accept me into their fold. Not a problem for me, I don't practice the religion of Christianity.

Insanity as defined legally has nothing to do with terrorism. One look at the world and any reasonable person would say that Islam does seem to produce the preponderance of terrorists right now. It's not Islam by itself causing this, but the mix of the conversion ideology of Islam and social conditions in most Islamic countries. Islam, as people have pointed out, needs a reformation to move ahead. And, with the Canadian born terrorists, they seem to be all Muslims as of late. Can't say it's our social conditions that cause them to do this, so there is something about Islam that does. The whole concept of jihad. No other religion seems to have that as such an explicit motiv.

It's not about changing anybody's mind, but addressing their argument if you want to get into it with them. There's no God I can think of that requires a 6000 year old earth, only some humans. I also seriously doubt there could be any God that requires the following of a particular religion with practitioners of other religions being less favored, but that of course can't be proven.

Yes, and there's a few atheists that fall into that category too.

I get it. But see that last part of my previous post. To throw your definition of atheism at someone who says atheism is a religion, how does that help? They're talking about hard atheists who deny the existence of God and who are very zealous about it. Just parsing the term they are using doesn't really seem very useful.

That would make terrorism, communism, capitalism, carpentry and anything else practiced with zeal a religion. Not much of a definition, seems we all have many religions, yet use the word with most people and they would be pretty clear that conditions 1 - 3 should apply. A term becomes meaningless when it's too broad. Just shows the difficulty of really communicating. The primary culprit is God - there must be at least 7 billion definitions of It, with everybody assuming that the next person means the same thing they do by the term. We seem to be standing on quicksand here.

People come down on two sides of this issue. Some say that #$#^$#^ is a religion because it is a belief that no God exists. Others say that #$#^$#^ is not a religion because it has no moral code, rites, and other elements of religion. I'm with the second group. I hope this helps, since apparently the term atheism is not the disbelief in God. So I guess the term is #$#^$#^ I mean the concept certainly exists, so we need a term for it.

Up to you if we do this every thread. Common usage of atheist is one who does not believe in God. So when people make the argument that atheism is a religion that's what they mean - it's a belief that there is no God. You trying to change the definition of atheist doesn't address the argument. Here's OED: This is what people are talking about. Just going round and round about your parsing of the term doesn't do anything. There are people who believe that no God exists. That's what people mean when they say atheist. You think a different term should be used, feel free, but nobody will understand you.

from wiki:

I'll go with these guys: http://www.merriam-w...tionary/atheism

Proves my point.

You want to keep parsing atheist and agnostic, feel free. In common usage atheist is the belief there is no God, agnostic is no strong belief either way. If you want to use the term atheist for how people usually use agnostic, then you'll have to invent a new one for people who believe there is no God.

Well, any group that can have a slogan of "keep your government hands off my medicare" is obviously not composed of the brightest bulbs in the American chandelier. But then the whole thing looks pretty dim these days.

Nope. just what i gathered from the media. I wiki'd it and it does seem to be about female submission. Sounds creepy, and I can't see how this can be so popular with women. What's up with that?

As for Christianity:

You're wrong about Buddhism. Some Buddhist sects do have a multitude of Gods - Buddhism has a whole realm of Gods, in fact. None of them are the creator God, none really require worship. Pure Land Buddhism is as close as it comes - by constant mantra practice you can assure yourself re-birth in the Pure Land, which is like heaven. Still not enlightenment, and Amitabha Buddha runs the joint, but isn't really God. Again, he didn't create anything. He at one time was a being subject to rebirth, same as all of us, until he attained enlightenment. Never heard Shiva mentioned by Buddhists - that's a Hindu thing. Atheism is not a religion. The only defining characterization of atheism is a belief that no God exists. That's not a religion. Essentially it's an anti-religion.

Walking someone one a leash is not obscene - no sex involved. The couple doing this are consenting adults and seem content with it. So really we should just butt out. Personally I find it sad that someone gets off on this, but to each his own. Fifty shades of gray - funny how many women seem to want to be dominated and abused, at least in their fantasies. As long as the guy is good looking and rich of course, so he's not a creep. (ie creeps are not good looking and definitely not rich). It seems many modern women in some part of their psyche still harbor dreams of being taken care of and giving up responsibility for themselves. That's sad too.

Different matter. I think we should grant birth citizenship only to people who's parents are at least permanent residents in Canada - ie no tourists or temp workers.

We already have a procedure in place. The govt can revoke the passport of these people. That way they can't travel or operate as a Canadian citizen. They can demand to be let back in, as the Kadhrs did, but if they do something we can prosecute them here for they have to face that.

The Islamists seem to be dominant, and if the people who resist them get too violent the army will step in and set up another dictatorship. Looks like it could go either way. I hope you're right and I'm wrong.