I didn't title it.
Try looking a little bit further. The link is a survey of religion in America. Feel free to ignore what I am contributing, but don't make a judgement on it if you don't know what it is.

What i meant was: 28% of Americans do not believe that any other religion leads to eternal life. The majority of these people belong to either the Christian or Islamic faith. So 28% of Americans are muslims OR christians who believe that their religion is the only "right" religion. From this 28%, some believe that Islam is wrong (the christians). Others believe christianity is wrong (the muslims). Yes I am making a generalization but i didn't feel like doing a shitload of percentage calculations. Please go ahead and correct me.

Atheism is the belief that there is no deity, and holds no inherent meaning in terms of the origins of life.
It is entirely possible that they mean general non-belief, which would be incorrect terminology at most.

@Allstone: That's why I said it was my personal definition; no matter what I say, it's probably different from your definition. Well actually if asked what Atheism was, I'd say it was a lack of belief in any higher powers, but that runs the risk of people claiming that it's dependent on religion to exist and that all Atheists are in denial.

@Pseudorastafari: The title of the survey was '28% of Atheists Believe in God', I wasn't referring to the title in your post. Wait wait wait, since when is thinking that your religion is the only one that can possibly be right, the same thing as hating all other religions? I guess I'm missing something here.

Again, I didn't title the survey. I posted it for the data it presents, not the title it has.

However, the survey titles that particular piece of data "belief in god or a universal spirit." I think they mean a universal force when they say spirit:
An Athiest might not believe in god, a being. But does this mean that they cannot believe in a universal force which governs many aspects of life? This could be chance, fate, destiny, the flow of history, even quantum physics (the bit with parallel dimensions). These things are not "beings," yet they could be considered universal forces, which are much the same as a god. Christians believe in judgement day. A meteor strike, which would be much the same (if it was large enough) would be governed by physics.

Ociamarru: my statement was a huge generalization. However, I never said that this 28% hated all other religions.

Before I get into this: yes I know that a huge combination of factors, not just religion, contribute to hate.
Ok look; only 8% of the U.S. does not believe in god. These people are most-likely not opinionated and very open to other cultures and religions - athiests generally are. So let us assume that most people who hate and put other religions down are themselves religious. From this portion of religious Americans, 30% believe that their religion is the only true way to eternal life - these people are the only ones who will hate another religion because of the beliefs it encompasses. This 30% are, at the very least, fairly religious. Many of these people accept that others are simply wrong, and only want to help them find the way. However, the other side (lets call them haters) is people who genuinely believe that people not of their faith should be punished, sort of like a modern-day crusader. These haters are deeply religious. Also, anyone who believes that their religion is the only right on would probably have been brought up by a family who was not only deeply religious, but also very opinionated, possibly even racist.
So, although 30% of the U.S. religious population is not in any way representative of haters, they are the most likely to be a hater.

The word itself has a set meaning.Christians follow what they take to be the teachings of Jesus Christ of Nazereth or however you spell it. There are no other required criteria.You'd be wanting to justify this. Whilst religion may show that a certain level of old ideas are adhered to, which may include antisocial or discriminatory ones, the religions themselves generally teach tolerance and peacefulness.A good deal of belief systems have parts which rule out other belief systems being correct. This is often an integral part of the system, but generally doesn't get stretched into the idea that other belief systems are therefore inferior.
You appear to be making wide-brush generalisations on religious people.

Well my reasoning on athiests:
An athiest judges himself/herself on every action they take. It is impossible to justify themselves by saying, "this is what my god would want." Also, chances are that at some point in their life they would have been exposed to religion. Therefore, they must have made a conscious decision to reject it. This decision would have probably been based on rationality and logic (belief is the very opposite). This decison would be of huge importance to that person. Because such a huge decision was solved with logic, this person most likely goes through life viewing everything else with that same logic. This means that person is less likely to have a bias against another person or culture. This is a generalization, of course. Logic can be used for whatever purpose you feel like using it for.

I am making generalizations on some religious people. But I thought I addressed that:

It is true that most religious people do not relate to my hypothetical scenario at all. I do, however, believe that it was a fairly good interpretation of some of them, esecially the ones who hate solely by using their religion to justify their actions.

It is aso true that religions generally teach tolerance. Both Islam and Christianity are based on this ideal. But as with everything else, understanding of religion is a matter of interpretation. People can twist these teachings to their needs - the Jihad used by terrorists and the entire Christian society of the middle ages (as controlled by the church) are examples. It is far too easy to twist the teachings of many religions to serve prejudiced ideas.

You're still overgeneralizing. I would bet that most atheists don't think about each and every action they take any more than you or I do. That would be silly and impractical.

As much as atheists would like to say to the contrary that they don't have beliefs (that they prove everything logically), they still operate on the belief that there is no god. There is no proof for or against god(s), thus you can't logically prove or disprove it/them. Not to mention they have whatever other biases that they acquired while growing up, such as the hatred of other belief systems that preach the existence of god(s).

And, as with every belief, there are those who stick very closely to what their belief teaches and those who do not. This principle is universal for all belief systems.

EDIT: By the way, you said something to the effect that any religion's beliefs can be twisted to suit someone's needs. That's true of any belief system, including atheism. In fact, the official belief system of the Soviet Union was a form of atheism, which was twisted to make religious belief something to be killed over.

Well yes athiests do not consider each and every action they take. The actions I was speaking of would be ones that a person would feel the need to think upon.

Because you cannot prove the existence of god, it would be illogical to believe in him. That is the logic I was operating on, and the scenario I offered was the one I used when I was an athiest. Whenever I make a generalization, please take it with a pinch of salt, because I often forget to add things which I believe obvious.

If you want a debate instead of a continual correction fest, say what you mean rather than some silly generalization. The amount of your post dedicated to clarifying points and terms you define entirely different from the accepted meaning is stupid.

Also, no proof of existence does not equate to proof of nonexistence. Lern2logic, that's a basic logical fallacy.

Also, that fails anyway, because if what you said was true (if you can't prove it, it is logically false), then God exists because you can't prove that he doesn't. On another note, isn't this getting a bit off-topic? How did we transition from 'United States/The World are Racists' to 'Random Religious Stuff'?

Well I have just been told.


Let me say that athiests instead do not believe in god because there is no proof. Then let me agree with you in that it is a belief, although slightly logical because it is based on the lack of evidence (rather than a blind belief). Let me go on to say that I could have avoided being called a silly waster-of-posts (and proved to be so) if I had admitted this from the start, and go on to withdraw from the discussion until I think of something actually logical to contribute.

I was trying to add some stats to that but it backfired. Please continue from there/wherever you feel like.

A lot of religions stress that constant self-evaluation is utterly necessary to ensure that you remain virtuous.Any action that a person could take that could cause harm is not something you can say with perfect assurance that it is an action one's god would want. Religions don't necessitate self-justification.No instrument you have for gathering data is fully accurate. Every scientist has faith that their instruments are correct to their calculated or listed precision, which is not technically possible. Believing that science is completely removed from belief displays a fairly poor understanding of it.Or perhaps it was solved with the prejudice they were ingrained with. I've known atheist prejudice first-hand, having exercised it for a good portion of my life.Including the cultures that have a high proportion of Christians or that are traditionally religious?Acknowledgement of a non-negligible source of error is not sufficient attenuation of its effects.You appear to be making generalisations on the psychology, thought process and ideologies of religious people, not just their views towards other cultures and religions.Yes, but you then made incredibly large generalisations as to the upbringing and thinking of religious people.As with the teachings of any belief system. For example, in science, you test a hypothesis by testing. In evaluating a hypothesis, you always check what is being observed and the verifiability of data. There are no good, verifiable observation methods for the existence or non-existence of a god, meaning that use of science as a reason for believing or not believing in a god is quite definitively against the core principles of science.I personally enjoy that the discussion is allowed to flow this way.Belief is based of faith, making it consistent. Belief based on lack of evidence does not work within the framework of logic you purport to follow. I've addressed this above.

I will stop defending my vast generalizations of thought processes. I admit that they are totally wrong, because an immeasurable amount of events shape any single person's view on life, and new events are constantly shaping this personality.

If I am wrong about the reason a person is an athiest, then what might the reason be?

You said that many religions stress self-evaluation. They do, but words can be twisted to suit a person's needs - it is far too easy to ignore this requirement of self evaluation. You also mentioned that religion does not necessitate self-justification. It lends to self-justification. How many innocents were slaughtered during the crusades, written off as being murdered "in god's name"? It cannot be said with perfect assurance that one's god would want any such atrocity. But many prejudiced, opinionated people do not require perfect assurance.

Points have already been made that any belief system can be twisted - a problem which seems to be inherent in the very nature of humanity. With major religions, the interpreters of the holy text (the priesthood) can manipulate massive amounts of people. This because of the ease with which a holy text can be manipulated. Personally, I also believe that the bible has been corrupted by such people throughout the ages, and almost none of it's passages are completely trustworthy.


Yes, belief is involved in science. Belief is the very core of being. What proof is there that I am actually not a whiff of consciousness on an infinite, empty plane, which has created - only in the sense that this creation is a delusion - this world out of boredom?

I, for one, do not believe in any gods because all the religions seem to be so silly.
And the thing that you're supposed to think you're a good guy because you believe in something that is pretty much impossible to prove.

"MY GOD IS THE RIGHT GOD YOURS IS WRONG HURR DURR"
"NO YOU ARE WRONG I KILL YOU DERP"

Agnostic Deist in the house B)
Although I still go to church on occasion, because some of my friends do.