are you an out of the closet atheist?

[Torie]

A happy ending then. Most excellent.

With your priest, I most certainly would have spilled my guts out to him, in a non confrontational way. He seems like he was approachable, and I am sure that he has heard it all before. But then you were 16, and that is a lot to ask a kid to understand and execute upon.

I was a very unusual kid. I never had any fear to telling any adult my thoughts about anything ever, if I deemed it in my best interests, or to just mouth off, or to provoke a debate, after I reached the age of about 8. I in short, was born to be a lawyer, and knew it from my earliest sentiment moments. Weird, huh?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Nix just basically summed up why I dislike confirmation (and thus infant baptism as well).

[danny]

Yes, not that I was ever in the closet to begin with.

[Redalgo]

Ya - I'm "out of the closet" about it, for better or worse. I do not speak the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance, kindly refuse to read out of prayer books at meetings, am one of a handful of members at a local secular humanist organization who does not care if other people know that I attend - in spite of threats made in the past against some of the others, and if one inquires about my beliefs I say that I am atheist, an agnostic non-believer, or skeptic toward all that is supernatural. This makes my folks somewhat uneasy but it is not their decision to make.

[John Dibble]

A better example is PioneerProgress' valiant attempts to describe the rituals, practices, and beliefs of the LDS church.  He specifically asks that there be no discussion about the truth value of Mormon doctrine (for good reason, that takes away from all of the discussion about the interesting ins and outs of the modern Mormon church).  What's Dibble's response?

<snip>

That was the first post on that thread and it cast a pall on the entire thing.  The truth value of whether or not Native Americans are descended from Nephi or whether Joseph Smith actually saw tablets is irrelevant to discussion of the rites and practices of the LDS Church as it now exists, yet Dibble insists on dragging that out as a way of delegitimizing the conversation before it even began!  How are we supposed to have reasonable discussion like this?

He didn't specifically state that there wasn't to be any discussion of truth value, he said "feel free to ask about or talk about anything related to the LDS Church" and then made some very specific and seemingly arbitrary restrictions. I took issue it with because it seemed completely arbitrary. If he just wanted to talk about theology in the sense of rituals, practices, and beliefs he should have specified that and I'd be fine with discussing those, but it seemed to be a broader topic to me.

Regarding your earlier post - honestly Mikado, do you really think I'm going to try to convince you that events involving Hindu gods didn't happen when I know that you don't actually believe in those gods? That's just plain silly on your part.

[後援会]

Raised atheist. Still atheist. I think all religion is false on an objective level. Absolutely not an "agnostic" or "irreligious" or "decline to state".

At the same time, I don't have any animus against religion. I think the role of organized religion in society and history has been overwhelmingly positive, especially the role played by the Catholic Church in Western Europe (scholasticism, philosophy, ethics, science). And I generally find myself on the same page with the religious when it comes to most social issues where religion is usually a cleaving factor. So meh.

[WalterMitty]

call me skeptical, but no way are a 'majority' of you all out of the closet atheists.

seems like a lot of people are hiding behind the poll.  which is, by definition, being in a closet.

[courts]

[後援会]

I'm reminded of my Japanese language instructor, who's from a Zen priestly family from a very rural part of western Japan. Japan is what we'd call a religious society in a lot of ways but being given to much explicit religious thought isn't one of them. At some point between the Tokugawa era and the post-war (there's a lot of debate over this) most of the religious institutions in Japan stopped being taken really seriously in terms of truth-value, but what happened here is that many Japanese people stopped caring very much about the truth-value of their metaphysical and cultural narratives. Obviously this has led to problems. We can probably think of a really obvious one right off the top of our heads. But what this has meant is that aesthetically and culturally elements of this society have stayed more or less constant despite surface-level extreme secularization (and I do think that secularization is a process that admits of getting extreme or going way too far). This isn't in all ways a good thing but the last attempt to reverse or redirect the set of processes going on here led to State Shinto, which was at its core an attempt to rationalize--and, not to put too fine a point on it, contextualize within Modern ideas of the nation and the state and what constitutes 'reasonable' public reliogisity (this was of course a fascist context but fascism is still a type of modern context)--a religion that originally...well, the Atlantic recently ran a surprisingly good article on the subject of the De Beers cartel and I couldn't take it as seriously as I would have liked because it used the phrase 'Shinto law'. That's what Shinto is. It doesn't use that language. Christianity and Buddhism do, but that's not really what they should be about either.

Oh boy, I can't believe I missed this. So much to argue, yet so little anyone else would care about.

I actually agree a lot with your assessment that the "secularism" of Japan is way-way overstated. Of course, I'm have almost no knowledge of religion/philosophy, but I do see that there tend to be large social, cultural differences between atheists and theists in the West. Much larger than say, exist in East Asia. So what you say about that makes a lot of sense.

And what you say about truth-value makes a lot of sense. How often do you meet people who legitimately believe in the Pure Land. And I'm one of those incorrigible people who don't really view "shintoism" as a largely separate religion from Japanese Buddhism. I also lean personally on the side that the truth-value was largely lost (at least among the educated) even before the surrender. Of course, people were calling it a "Holy War" even in the 30's, but there has been no religious motive in any Japanese foreign policy decision ever. Hell, even during Hideyoshi's invasion of Joseon Korea in the ye olde dayz, you would think the largely Buddhist Japanese would have gotten along well with persecuted Buddhist clergy, but of course, it was the Buddhist monks who ended up leading all those righteous armies.

Also IIRC, even some of the first hyper-millitarists who penned a lot of their tracts didn't even personally believe in any kind of "imperial divinity"; they just viewed it as the simplest way to build the kind of society they wanted. Also, I'm not sure how much this argument matters.

Perhaps we could classify much of East Asia welded to religion without spirituality? I'm reminded of one of those old philosophers (or one of those 500 commentaries on them) I had to read as a kid who basically admitted ancestor worship was BS, but argued that it was still precious because everyone did it and it was a social bonding device. Or something like that. Because for a supposedly "secular" society, there seem to a lot of "oughts". Things one "ought" do. Perhaps it's just me, but I feel that secular Westerners have a lot fewer "oughts". Like how most Mormons are married by the time they graduate college and I don't even know if most atheist-Americans ever marry. And how I'm fairly certain there isn't this cleavage between say, super-fundamentalist pentecostal Koreans and irreligious Koreans. One of my favorite texts is this diary (maybe I'll find it again later) from a college student in the 40's who basically admits that the war is stupid, state shinto is BS, that they're going to lose the war, and all of that, but is still signed up for a "special attack squad". And spends every entry moaning about how stupid it is, but still eventually goes through with the mission. So "oughts" persisting in the lack of actual truth-value.

Also, I'm going to sleep now.

[Jerseyrules]

Alter boy

[Oakvale]

I guess, although I don't really identify as an atheist as such because of all the connotations that has. That's not to say I can't be quite anti-religion at times, but I hate the assholes that think saying "YOU BELIEVE IN A MAGIC CLOUD GOD LOL" is somehow a good argument for their position.

EDIT:

One short question Mikado before we go further. Are you conflating philosophy with religion? One can discuss  ideas (whatever their provenance, say about the ideas of Jesus, even if some of them may have been put in his mouth later to meets the imperatives of those that did it at the time, or even if Jesus did not exist at all, although the historical consensus is that he certainly did) from a philosophical perspective, sometimes productively, without having to argue about leaps of faith, no?

We need to get past this point, to go much further. As a functional atheist, what you say does not ring true at least for me. I am happy to discuss ideas, even those that emanate from a religious provenance. The provenance is less interesting than the ideas themselves.

And yes there is more to life than science and "progress," whatever the latter means, which for purposes of exploring ideas is probably counterproductive. I think you may be stereotyping atheists. Is that possible?  And do you think one needs religion to have a moral compass? As you got passionate there, you may have got close to implying that. If so, in my opinion, that is just wrong. But then I am biased. The most admirable man I have ever known from the standpoint of simply good character and courage, was my Dad, and he was an atheist. He is long dead, but he sets the standard for myself - and will until my final exit.

I absolutely do not think that religion is necessary for a moral compass.  What I do think is that too often people dismiss "religion" as old, musty, and not for them, then promptly embrace a different set of ideas with the same sort of religious fervor that are often far more dangerous and problematic than the religious ones, all while patting themselves on the shoulder about getting rid of God.  My problem's not with the irreligious: I'm one, as is my father (and I think my mother's moving in that direction).  My problem is with secularism as a value with inherent worth, of people thinking that opposed to religion=good any more than other people think divinely ordered=good.

Atheism and atheists tend to have this real "No, f**k you, Dad!" vibe to them in their vehement rejection of what has gone before as tainted by the Invisible Sky Wizard.  As someone trained as a historian, that dismissive attitude towards the past and towards the many, many aspects of "pre-modern" (I hate that word so much) civilizations' moral codes that are in my view superior to our own.  It also leads to a teleological view of history as uncivilized brutes who didn't know better worshipping "God," while we moderns can be smug and condescending.  This is A. a vicious crime against history in a vain attempt to make contemporary civilization feel better about itself, and B. baldly inaccurate.

It chills my blood when I hear atheists campaigning to end the teaching of the Bible or of comparative religion.  There are very few books that have aided my academic career more than my backwards and forwards knowledge of the Bible, and I can't imagine having gotten where I am without a solid academic classroom-setting background in it.  This attitude that knowledge of the Bible or other holy books is somehow poisonous actually seems to reflect more the attitude of the Scopes Trial to evolution than to the sort of open pursuit of knowledge atheist education activists usually claim to advocate.

In short, Torie, maybe I am stereotyping atheists, but I've had enough annoying encounters with atheists who find my entire field (history) an unwanted obstruction to their propagandistic teleological tale of progress from superstition to wisdom and who advocate against any sort of religious instruction at all to not view them with skepticism and distrust.  Advocates for Secularism as an inherent good that should be mandated on society are one of the most pernicious and anti-thought forces out there today, and I tend to associate the word "atheist" with militant opponents of religion rather than the simply nonreligious.

One of the best posts in forum history.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Yes, I'm an "out of the closet" Atheist because I don't believe in God and also don't make major decisions about my philosophies based on what I think other people will make me look like.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

To be fair, all of those things exist. They're just not necessarily good.

[Politico]

A majority of participants in this poll are atheists? Seriously, folks?

[Donerail]

A majority of participants in this poll are atheists? Seriously, folks?

I read it as either "Yes, I'm an out of the closet atheist" or "No, I'm a closeted atheist", so the only people that should be voting are atheists, voting on whether or not they reveal their atheism to others.

[FritzMacKenzie]

I'm a borderline atheist, so I think that would just make me a closeted atheist, I'll vote no then.

[All Along The Watchtower]

No, I'm not an atheist. I see value in religion and theology, learning about different religions, wrestling with one's faith, and living out the values of my own religion(Christianity, specifically Methodism). I don't dismiss it all out of hand automatically because "It obviously never happened." Nor do I put all my trust in science or modernity. Like Mikado said in that fantastic post up-thread, the increased secularization and contempt for religion in the past century or so in the "advanced" civilizations has developed concurrently with such unfortunate things like Positivism, as well as "modernity" and all that that has entailed (genocides, fascism, world wars, Communism, nuclear warfare, Cold War proxy wars, the Cold War itself...)

Another dangerous doctrine to come out of all of this is Moral Relativism-the idea that one's personal subjective morality is all that matters or exists. This dogma doesn't even attempt to self-validate...it just functions on the whims of the individual in question. But, more to the point, this extreme individualism is toxic to social cohesion within a society.

In sum, the above are reasons why I am not an atheist. I concur wholeheartedly with much of what Mikado and others have said.  The disrespect for the past and history, the smug, arrogant view that modern civilization is "better" and more "civilized", the idea that somehow, we are headed in the right direction (or that "Progress" is even an ideal to be upheld, always)....these and other reasons make me more defensive of both my own religious beliefs and those of other religious people, billions of them worldwide.

Also, for those who hate the militant, dogmatic strands of religion (Christianity and Islam, mainly)...these are strands that have largely developed with, reacted, and adapted to "modernity." So much for "Progress."

[afleitch]

No, I'm not an atheist. I see value in religion and theology, learning about different religions, wrestling with one's faith, and living out the values of my own religion(Christianity, specifically Methodism). I don't dismiss it all out of hand automatically because "It obviously never happened." Nor do I put all my trust in science or modernity. Like Mikado said in that fantastic post up-thread, the increased secularization and contempt for religion in the past century or so in the "advanced" civilizations has developed concurrently with such unfortunate things like Positivism, as well as "modernity" and all that that has entailed (genocides, fascism, world wars, Communism, nuclear warfare, Cold War proxy wars, the Cold War itself...)

Another dangerous doctrine to come out of all of this is Moral Relativism-the idea that one's personal subjective morality is all that matters or exists. This dogma doesn't even attempt to self-validate...it just functions on the whims of the individual in question. But, more to the point, this extreme individualism is toxic to social cohesion within a society.

In sum, the above are reasons why I am not an atheist. I concur wholeheartedly with much of what Mikado and others have said.  The disrespect for the past and history, the smug, arrogant view that modern civilization is "better" and more "civilized", the idea that somehow, we are headed in the right direction (or that "Progress" is even an ideal to be upheld, always)....these and other reasons make me more defensive of both my own religious beliefs and those of other religious people, billions of them worldwide.

Also, for those who hate the militant, dogmatic strands of religion (Christianity and Islam, mainly)...these are strands that have largely developed with, reacted, and adapted to "modernity." So much for "Progress."

Yours, Progressive Realist

[All Along The Watchtower]

No, I'm not an atheist. I see value in religion and theology, learning about different religions, wrestling with one's faith, and living out the values of my own religion(Christianity, specifically Methodism). I don't dismiss it all out of hand automatically because "It obviously never happened." Nor do I put all my trust in science or modernity. Like Mikado said in that fantastic post up-thread, the increased secularization and contempt for religion in the past century or so in the "advanced" civilizations has developed concurrently with such unfortunate things like Positivism, as well as "modernity" and all that that has entailed (genocides, fascism, world wars, Communism, nuclear warfare, Cold War proxy wars, the Cold War itself...)

Another dangerous doctrine to come out of all of this is Moral Relativism-the idea that one's personal subjective morality is all that matters or exists. This dogma doesn't even attempt to self-validate...it just functions on the whims of the individual in question. But, more to the point, this extreme individualism is toxic to social cohesion within a society.

In sum, the above are reasons why I am not an atheist. I concur wholeheartedly with much of what Mikado and others have said.  The disrespect for the past and history, the smug, arrogant view that modern civilization is "better" and more "civilized", the idea that somehow, we are headed in the right direction (or that "Progress" is even an ideal to be upheld, always)....these and other reasons make me more defensive of both my own religious beliefs and those of other religious people, billions of them worldwide.

Also, for those who hate the militant, dogmatic strands of religion (Christianity and Islam, mainly)...these are strands that have largely developed with, reacted, and adapted to "modernity." So much for "Progress."

Yours, Progressive Realist

Admittedly, I registered here with that username a few years ago. Nice catch, though!

[afleitch]

There seems to be a bizarre amount of 'hating' on the term atheist. Which is mildly disturbing. I don't believe in a god. I used to believe as most people on here know but I spent alot of time grappling with the idea. Now I don't believe in a god or gods. That's all there is to it. I have no beef with faith or what people believe and personally I think the ancients had the right idea in worshipping the sun. If I ever had to worship anything it would be the sun given that it's existance means everything to us.

I do however have issues with people telling me their god knows where I should be putting my penis. They can tell me as a person what they think and I can talk through it eye to eye but I don't like appeals to a higher authority. That's the only part of religion I dislike. Unfortunately for some people, that part is all there is to religion. Which is a great shame.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

There seems to be a bizarre amount of 'hating' on the term atheist. Which is mildly disturbing. I don't believe in a god. I used to believe as most people on here know but I spent alot of time grappling with the idea. Now I don't believe in a god or gods. That's all there is to it. I have no beef with faith or what people believe and personally I think the ancients had the right idea in worshipping the sun. If I ever had to worship anything it would be the sun given that it's existance means everything to us.

I do however have issues with people telling me their god knows where I should be putting my penis. They can tell me as a person what they think and I can talk through it eye to eye but I don't like appeals to a higher authority. That's the only part of religion I dislike. Unfortunately for some people, that part is all there is to religion. Which is a great shame.

Mikado's excellen post wasn't really directed at reasonable people such as yourself