A small brief page, which I may or may not add more to later, that i felt i should add as everyone on brehaut.net appears to be christian.
Anyhoo, types of Atheist:
- Idiots — these people believe Atheism is purely logical, despite the absence of proof the there is no God (eg. failure to recognise Atheism is a faith — though it probably lacks the organisation to be a religion)
- Humanists — Modern humanism is founded on the idea “secular ethics grounded in human values” (http://www.iheu.org) and possibly has a level of organisation that would nowadays make it similar to a small religion. Mankind can solve all problems eventually, and can improve without a higher power, etc, etc
- Possibly-extremist-humanist — (I have frequently encountered this style of thinking from people who consider them humanist, much more so than not, but that’s hardly statistically valid) Humanism with the idea that the state should take over family planning, etc — often the term “humanistic eugenics” gets bandied about. (Early 20th century humanism is Frequently cited as being a significant .. um.. inspiration? source? driving force? for the nazi eugenics program — though clearly the Nazi use of eugenics was significantly more wide spread and inhumane than that supported by proponents of humanistic eugenics — but then any eugenics program by its very nature is not voluntary so the level of humanity is somewhat questionable)
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Ordinary — compare to ordinary christians, muslims, etc.
I would guess Humanists are the atheist equivalent to the fundy’s, only instead of using black and white interpretation of select portions of the bible they use select scientific papers.
Hm.. i should go back to work, so i shall leave this for now… Ollie
Comments
I always thought humanism was simply “humans hold the key to their own salvation”? I shall have to stop describing myself as a “theist humanist” â mattw
- Okay, my bad — my own prejudice got in the way there, a bit of reading and i’ve seperated them out a bit Ollie
What do you think the approximate percentage breakdown over the 3 categories would be? It seems to me that there’s not many atheists who would recognise their atheism as being a faith- am I wrong? — greg
- There’s never been a requirement that the majority be sensible — the problem is that most people do not distnguish between faith and religion (as the vaarious religions don’t) which makes it harder. Ollie
Umm… Whether atheism is a faith is somewhat debatable. So I’d disagree with categorizing them as ‘idiots’.
Also, Some atheists think that the burden of proof rests on proving God (rather than proving non-existance), and that there is insufficent evidence for the existance of God, thus it is reasonable to assume God does not exist. Where do these fit? — nato
