Atheist/Anti-theist/Agnostic Troper Group

Technically a bigot is "a person who is intolerant towards those holding different opinions".

So being intolerant of the opinions themselves isn't bigotry, but being intolerant of the person holding negative opinions of your beliefs is.

I just find the beliefs fucked up, not the people who hold them.

IMO, they're victims.

I'm not a bigot in my opinion. I may disagree with religion as a concept but not religious people.

Like the whole hate the sin love the sinner thing that people throw around

edited 14th Jan '15 4:45:41 AM by ElectricNova

I'm agnostic because It's a cover to defend myself with when other people ask about my religion.

I've had some very scary experiences with people trying to "convert" me.

The Westboro Bapists don't think God is evil, though the god they believe in is one must people likely would call that. It's everyone else they believe is evil, apparently. From my experience, I find many people to be hypocrites about this issue. They take offense at anyone criticizing their religion, but think nothing about criticizing those of others, or none at all.

edited 15th Jan '15 7:36:45 PM by Fireblood

Never understood that kind of believer. Sure the world has problems, but some of them seem to look forward to some higher power showing up to destroy everything.

I always get really frustrated when christians (mostly, not always christians) go on about how the world is fallen and sinful and evil and stuff. And that humans are instrisnically evil.

Like, come on guys, a bit of optimism couldn't go astray.

edited 23rd Jan '15 2:59:24 AM by ElectricNova

But that's what the Bible says. "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God", sayeth Romans 3:23. There's way more verses than just that, but I can't be bothered to look them all up right now.

It's part of the narrative for the accepting Jesus and going to heaven bit.

edited 24th Jan '15 3:35:10 AM by ElectricNova

What's funny to me is mainstream Christians saying the Gnostics were the negative ones. They mean more negative, I suppose. Gnosticism at least seemed more consistent with the whole "this world is evil" stuff.

edited 24th Jan '15 8:47:59 PM by Fireblood

Both believe the world is broken. Gnostics don't think it was our fault.

Frankly I think that if the universe could be broken by someone eating a goddamn apple it was irreparably flawed to begin with.

How true. It has to be one of the most obvious things ever-if you don't want someone to eat from it, why have the tree there?

Theologically speaking, nothing irritates me more than the concept of original sin. If a creation is flawed, it is the creator and not the created that is at fault, and if you are omnipotent and omnibenevolent, not issuing a product recall is simple criminal negligence.

More bluntly, the free will argument is bollocks because our choices do not exist in a vacuum. They are inextricably informed by our biochemistry.

edited 27th Jan '15 1:56:35 PM by pagad

Did the Flood not count as a product recall of sorts?

Very few car manufacturers destroy the cars, the factory, the city that the factory is situated in and all of the surrounding countryside over an engine defect.

True.

Really, I think the real flaw with the concept of sin is that it's often defined as failing to live up to the "glory" of the very being who decided what glory is. Well, fuck that. God doesn't live up to the "glory" of me. Which is defined as being me.

Nice a thread for me.

Have anyone really thought about how your or mine atheism fits with sci fi and fantasy universes? I think alot about it, because I like babylon 5 and alien and baldurs gate but I am conflicted by pressure of creators or mediums injecting religion in their works. Babylon 5s creator spoken religious and now Alien universe is creationistic. Extra Credit on youtube encourage more REAL SERIOUS religion in Dungeon & Dragons games. Thats when I realised the "if". Is my Babylon 5, (the way I see B5) different from the intent the creators Babylon5 and if so, is it okey for me to like it? That and the sudden chilling realisation after watching Proteus, that Alien is religious are things that makes it very very hard for me to enjoy anything. I need to know how a universe is in cannon and I need that cannon to be acceptable for me if I like the show.

Everything is so confusing when supernatural religious content is injected into both fantasy and sci fi and then even in realistic everyday shows such as "Bones" which appealed to me because of its theme of rationality. I newer really saw the need to see Clerics and Druids and Gods in fantasy mythos as "real serious" religious "themes", just as a way to have fun.

Its the 3 things in combination that makes it horrible. 1 "gratuitous", again and again and again in the same show. 2 "anvilicious", when its a message, or story. 3 "unmotivated by story or some deus ex machina "

This is overuse of substitute for religious agents in science fictions that upsets me.

Advanced aliens or lifeforms older than the universe, visitors from other universes, energy beings etc

Funny thing is.. what I really want to ask is this: do you think space sci fi universes should have alien sentient races at all?,

Considering for example: A.aliens would be so different that they wouldn't be characters B.space is so sparse populated that man would never find one before either race dies out.

edited 27th Jan '15 2:30:12 PM by klas.wullt

I've never seen a convincing counterargument to the contradiction of the existence of sin in a universe created by a perfect God or more generally the Problem of Evil, really. Just a lot of clever words that obfuscate and sidestep the issue at best or "mysterious ways" at worst.

I'm having difficulty parsing your post, but the creator of Babylon 5 is an atheist and I'm pretty sure that Ridley Scott is an agnostic at the very least.

edited 27th Jan '15 2:32:19 PM by pagad

We have no idea how sparsely or densely populated space is. There might be life in nearly every solar system as far as we know.

@klas.wullt: Sci fi writers seem to be overwhelmingly atheists or agnostics at most, and their work generally reflects that view. Fantasy on the other hand usually posits gods as real. Babylon 5's creator is an atheist, as pagad said. So far as I know, he never showed any gods as real (though ancient, very powerful beings do exist). Depicting religion isn't the same thing as endorsing it. In fact, one complaint I'd have concerning Babylon 5 (though I'm a fan of the show) is why the aliens have so many religions, yet humans so few. From what I can remember, only two main human characters brought up a religion, and one as non-practicing. The alien religions all seem to be Planet of Hats types as well-every species just has one. It was especially ridiculous when they have a sort of interfaith episode, where each alien species explains their single, monolithic religion, while at the end we have a dozen humans lined up from the different ones. So obviously they still exist in this future. Whatever, but keep it consistent.

I think you're right as well that though sci fi often claims not to depict gods, they do beings that might as well be. Clarke's Third Law seems to come into play though.

Sci fi is, well, fiction. Mohs Scale of sci fi hardness}} doesn't necessarily dictate that you can have no intelligent alien beings whatsoever, just that it's done realistically. It has now been shown to be theoretically possible with the Alcubierre drive that getting across space wouldn't take that long necessarily for some species that has figured it out.

I see your point, and liked your answer. I don't want to sound negative but there as some things with B5, at least the last seasons that bothers me.

For one thing, Wikipedia used to have texts claiming Straczynski, (despite pretending being atheist) was religious which depressed me but as you said, that might not be true.

From how I experienced the show,: while I saw season after season again and again his "atheism" seems very superficial and "cool". Eventually more and more things started to resemble a "supernatural meaning" in the universe and the continued preaching of "the universe" sounding like god".

Consider this example: There is a god, in B5, an immortal alien who existed before the universe and consider all races his children, he brings Captain John Sheridan back from live. I liked season 4, it was season 5 that "was for me" a sour grape.

I don't see that on his wikipedia page now-in fact it doesn't seem to mention his religious views at all.

Here's what he had to say on the subject:

In an interview in the October 1995 issue of Sci-Fi Entertainment the interviewer observes "You count yourself as an atheist, yet spiritual matters often set the theme for episodes of the show, and seem to be a large part of the arc. Some would see that as a contradiction."

Straczynski responds "You have to understand that the writer's job is to be as honest as he humanly can in his characterizations and his storytelling. And, as I look at the long parade of human history, religion has not gone away in the past 4,000 years of recorded history, nor does it show any sign of going away any time soon.

"If I have to be honest in looking at the world 250 years from now, I have to say that people will still believe at that time, and I must treat that with respect—the same way I'd deal with scientific concepts. Because, truthfully, science and religion are two sides of the same coin. The methodology is vastly different—one relies on faith while the other relies on scientific method—both are endeavors to understand who we are, how we got here, where we are going, and what we are here to do. I feel that one must approach both of those endeavors with equal respect."

So I don't know how much Babylon 5 is supposed to reflect his personal beliefs. An atheist can write a universe where gods really do exist, after all-and I'm actually glad if writers don't make the creations adhere so closely to their actual beliefs. This can seriously damage it when done badly. As for the alien you're thinking about, Lorien, I don't think he's really a god. They didn't create the other races, but helped "teach" them, so to speak. They were immortals, but only in the sense of not dying from old age-they could die from diseases and wounds. I suppose it becomes tough distinguishing gods from sufficiently advanced aliens, but isn't a god supernatural? The First Born (Lorien's race) aren't, so far as I can tell. Of course, you get this a lot in sci fi, with beings that are very god-like even if they're ultimately just very powerful aliens. Some like Star Trek I think really do cross the line into outright gods with races like the Q.

In works of science fiction and fantasy, there's an important distinction to be made between gods that are acknowledged to exist in a concrete way and gods that don't. For example, there's no evidence in-universe that the Seven exist in A Song Of Ice And Fire or the Maker exists in Dragon Age, despite other deities either being implied to exist or definitely being confirmed to exist in the settings.

ASoIaF is a bit cluttered, metaphysically speaking. The Old Gods exist, but they're not really gods so much as a hive mind of dead druids. The Great Other is probably real, R'hllor is likewise apparently at least an actual being, the Stranger is an aspect of two different over-deities (the Seven and the Many-Faced God). It's a mess.

Is there really a problem to having existent deities in literature? Like, I don't read stories to get what I already believe blindly affirmed. I read stories to discover new worlds, explore interesting people, enjoy fun plots, and question interesting ideas and problems. I'd be more upset if every story I read were in an atheistic universe.

At the end of the day, in fiction gods are just powerful characters with certain abilities.

Even Yaweh himself is one stroke of a pen from being reduced to a tortoise or something. I'd argue that every story is both atheistic, in that the gods have no more power than the lowliest peasant should the author decree it, and also theistic as each is utterly under the thumb of the true God of the setting - the author themselves.