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Kirata -> RE: Benevolent's Taxonomy of Atheism (3/25/2012 11:04:08 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: LookieNoNookie
I'm fairly certain atheism comes in one variety.
Maybe, maybe not. But atheists themselves seem to come in several varieties, apparently related to how they ended up being atheists in the first place. And as a general rule, at least in my experience, the atheists that you tend to encounter in these types of discussions seem mainly to fall into one or the other of the following two classes.
1. The Sour Grapes Type: These atheists came to disbelieve the religion in which they were raised, apparently without considering that their rejected beliefs about the nature God have nothing to do with whether or not there is a God, and that their rejected religion does not represent the category of "religion" as a whole. The typical story is a tale of a God who let them down by not giving them something they really wanted, no other kind of God being of any use to them.
2. The Fundamentalist Type: These people become atheists for the same reason that other people become religious fundamentalists, a pathological need for certainty rooted in a deep insecurity that requires an identifiable "out" group to castigate and scourge as irrational morons besotted by false beliefs and rank superstition. They tend to be picky about their appearance, and always prepared to deliver their opinion on topics about which they know less than nothing.
Personally, the atheists that I prefer are those who simply never quite really believed in a God, even if they were raised to go through the motions, and who see no compelling reason to start believing in one now. They are, as a rule and possibly as a consequence, delightful people with neither a chip on their shoulder nor an evangelical bone in their body; exactly the same qualities that I prefer in my religious friends too.
[:)]
K.
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