Non-Believers & Rejectors

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As an outspoken atheist I am subjected to an inordinate amount of nonsensical loaded questions with fallacious premises. My beliefs regarding God are also constantly the focus of very strange and unfounded assumptions, often the result of simple ignorance but also quite frequently the result malicious distortions made utterly knowingly by those in positions of authority purportedly derived from the divine. To address all such loaded questions and bizarre assumptions in a single video would be a task too great for any one atheist, even with my "old school" director's account, which enables me to post videos exceeding ten minutes in length. However, there are two recurring bits of abominable miscomprehension that are in dire need of addressing. The first is the misnomer of "non-believer" that we atheists all-too-often hear and all-too-often accept. I daresay many of us wear it as something of a badge of honor, but the term contains within it a tacit admission of a theocentric world. Atheists, like all other people, believe and disbelieve in a great number of things. I personally believe in concepts freedom and truth and beauty and all that jazz. I also believe in concretions like the blueness of the sky or the texture of a stucco ceiling. I disbelieve in concepts like fascism and religion and two wrongs make a right. I disbelieve in purported concretions like Santa Claus and Goblins. I disbelieve in God both as a concept and a purported concretion. So, I am both a believer and a non-believer. It merely depends on the context, the subject, the narrative. If the subject is Santa Claus as a concept, then I am a believer. If the subject is Santa Claus as a purported concretion, then I am a non-believer. To accept the label of non-believer without any contextual clues or any predefined subject as non-belief in God by default is to give the concept undue credence. By admitting the God question so important that belief or non-belief in him trumps all other beliefs or non-beliefs is to give him undue importance. For "believer" to be the center of a Christian's identity is perfectly sensible and sensical, but for "non-believer" to be the center of an atheist identity is ridiculous outside of the context of debating theists. We are atheists. Atheist is a word which means that we lack a belief in deities—and that's all it should or shall ever mean. Whether or not we are non-believers should always depend on the context of the word and if the word is without context we should not acknowledge it as meaning anything. The next time you are called a non-believer, you're response should be, "A non-believer in what?" The second of the inglorious sophistries I've made this video in hopes of correcting is this silly notion that atheists have rejected God. Now, of course we have rejected God as a concept or an idea, just as most of us with good sense reject communism and dictatorships. We have not, however, rejected God in the sense that one rejects a parent who was never there or a friend who betrayed us. We don't believe in God, and to reject him in that sense, belief in him is an absolute prerequisite. Certain theists believe, even after being corrected on this point, that we are deceiving ourselves—that we genuinely do believe in God, but reject him because we want to be able to free ourselves from his will. In other words, we disbelieve in him so that we can disobey him. This argument holds no water for one simple reason. No idea, regardless of how vile or wicked it might be, has suffered from the idea of being divinely willed. Hitler claimed to be the chosen of God. Albert Fish, who cannibalized children, was a devout Christian who believed that angels would have intervened to save his victims if God had thought his crimes wrong. If we really wanted to do evil, God would not stand in our way—we could make him condone it, just as Christian Scientists make him condone not-treating disease and the Opus Dei sect of Catholics make him condone self-mutilation. God's will is largely controlled, for all practical purposes, by the will of his believers. And if atheists really wanted to do whatever they wanted, they'd not bother with atheism—they would just say that God approved of whatever behaviors they indulged in. We don't believe in God because there is no pressing reason to believe in God. It's really quite simple and requires little in the way of further explanation.

Channel: People & Blogs
Uploaded: June 23, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Author: TheAmazingAtheist

Length: 0:04:50
Rating: 4.76
Views: 55,351

Tags: Atheist Atheism Terms Theist Theism Christianity

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Video Comments:
paranoidprophecies (Sunday 5th of October 2008 05:00:32 PM)
Another reason to believe in God; please pass this on! In Isaac Newtons day church, religion, science went together; perhaps were getting back to that. Einsteins Theory of Relativity becomes even more interesting in that the closer you get to light speed time its self slows down and if you match the speed, time stops! Truly making God the beginning and the end (alpha and the omega) If God is light (1 John 1:5) and the Bible was put together so long ago before physics and such sciences
RyuDarragh (Friday 3rd of October 2008 01:49:18 PM)
Quite right, TAA. There is non-belief in God of a passive sort: This is the same as disbelief in alien lifeforms. There is disbleief of a more active sort: This is akin to saying we don't believe in Unicorns and Magical Fairies. Then there is Rejection of God: This requires *belief* in God and a rejection of Him and everything he stands for at the same time. Atheists do not believe in God, so cannot reject him.. they never accepted him in the first place.
mrdevious (Thursday 2nd of October 2008 10:03:31 AM)
I saw a comic that beautifully illustrated the illogical creationist mindset. It showed a scientist in one block, and a "creation scientist" in another, each reading: Scientist: So, here are the facts collected from our data, what conclusions can we draw from them? Creationist: So, here's the conclusion, what facts can we find to support it? Creationism/Intelligent Design are illogical superstitions that veil themselves in the disguise of science. No regard for the scientific method.
PandoraCanBe (Saturday 27th of September 2008 03:03:15 PM)
No, I really feel sorry for you. Without proper etiquette, nobody will ever take you seriously. Its hilarious :D
TidBitsOfHappiness (Friday 26th of September 2008 10:13:22 PM)
"We don't believe in God because there is no pressing reason to believe in God." -Is life itself not reason enough for the belief in God? Try thinking about it.
PandoraCanBe (Saturday 27th of September 2008 02:59:10 PM)
Why would you even say that? Its clearly not.
mrdevious (Thursday 2nd of October 2008 09:57:54 AM)
"try thinking about it"; possibly the most fallacious and common accusation against atheists; that we simply haven't thought about it. I went 3 years of tireless research into every argument for the existence of God before coming to atheism. Atheists didn't get here by a casual "meh, probably no God so I'm gonna assume there's none". Life itself is NOT reason enough for belief in God;it's reason to ask HOW we got here, and not assume the conclusion before analyzing all facts and possibilities.
SkepticalAtheist (Thursday 25th of September 2008 08:39:13 PM)
Amazing. You tried to type in caps, but you seem to have forgotten that you left your caps lock on when you pressed shift while typing your "I"s. Fail.
bigjakefletcher (Sunday 21st of September 2008 04:29:37 PM)
in the name of that said religion. Like I said before a group of people cannot be judged by the act of one. I agree with comedian Lewis Black, he says that religion is one of the greatest things about this world until it gets organized. The Catholic Church lost sight of their purpose hundreds of years ago. They are now the richest cult in the world. I agree with what you said about mislabeling atheists. You are an atheist and you should be called as such; however, many Christians will...
bigjakefletcher (Sunday 21st of September 2008 04:23:29 PM)
When looking at Christians you can't immediately pull out the ones that use Christainity to justify their evil acts. You used Hitler as an example, Hitler became an atheist after his unsuccessful career as an artist. You can't take the beliefs of a few and project that as the belief of many. Or vice versa the beliefs of many cannot be projected on a certain few. Too many times when people try to argue against Christianity or any religion for that matter they use all the evil that has been done..