Not bad...

Posted by Gremlin on 11 February 1999 at 07:21:06:

In Reply to: Reply to the subjective musings of a first grader posted by Mephistopheles on 11 February 1999 at 02:53:19:

Somehow I overlooked this one earlier. Essentially, you're right [though the flamewar is getting a bit out of hand now]. There's one thing I'd contest though.

: All religions are cults. Hello! Atheism is a cult. Move on!

Atheism isn't a cult. Atheism isn't anything. It's a placeholder. It's simpler than listing all the things you're not. An atheist is just what someone is until he buys into a religion, cult, doctrine, or whatever. And that's the problem: too many aggressively religous people are trying to convert atheists into whatever religion they're part of--usually something christian or catholic; islams don't seem to give a damn what anyone else is. Moreover, there are different 'types' of atheists. Some atheists consider themselves to be moralistic crusaders off on some vendetta. Great. That might qualify as a cult, but it's not an atheistic practise. That would be the same as accusing all christians of being scientologists. They're an exceptional, and unfortuante, group of losers who want to be part of somethin, but can't make up their minds.

A true atheist has no religion. That's the definition of atheist. 'without theism'. It's not even antitheist, which would mean 'countertheologistic', or opposed to theism. Atheists don't really care, because gods evidently don't exist. There's no cult out there [hopefully] banding together in some warehouse and preaching that the eighth continent of Wugga doesn't exist. No one cares. There is no Wugga. If some idiot claims to be from Wugga, or to have overheard of its existence, or to have spotted it on a map, then I'd probably expect them to be able to prove it. Until then, it's irrelevant, because it's fictional.

--Gremlin

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