WWLabRat

That term hasn't been coined and I don't consider my vocabulary skills to be high enough to determine what that phrase should be. There's less difference between a vertebrae made up of cartilage and bone than no vertebrae and one made of bone. Amoeba: Not Kingdom Animalia (Kingdom Protozoa) Algae: Not Kingdom Animalia (Kingdom Protista) Photosynthetic Flagellate (aka Green Algae): Not Kingdom Animalia (Kingdom Plantae) The notocords are the only argument you can make of the ones listed. Clearly they belong to Animalia. Most embryos that are to develop into vertebrates start out with notocords as the support structure for muscle tissue. Autocorrect mishap. "All" should have been "at". I have had no confusions other than ones where your logic has fallen through. And I've only had one error and I admitted to it. No, the Christian God is part of a trinity, The Father (god in the sky), The Son (human), and Holy Spirit (ethereal being). So, no, god is not living. God's son, however, would be a different story. They would have a starting point to learn more about their neighbor. But as was stated previously, their individual intricacies would need to be discovered through conversation.

You were saying? And saying that all those who don't affirm their belief in a deity makes them automatically atheist is incorrect. There are those who has not decided their position on whether or not there is a god. Those people are referred to as "agnostic". Agnostics are the middle ground between theists and atheists. They are the ones who are "on the fence". Things are determined by the groups they are in all the time, even if the determining factor is one of the criteria in order to be considered part of that group. A Republican is a Republican because they have identified themselves as one in addition to the other political views they hold. A group is a group. There's no falsehood about it. Part of the definition of an invertebrate is that they are animal, not plant, not anything other than life. So yeah, the lifeform criteria stands until there has been a discovery made that shows a thing that has vertebrae and has never been living. And what do you mean that's what the problem is by learning from groups? When you went to school, was every class taught by the same teacher to all the students in the school regardless of grade? Grouping allows one to be able to focus on one aspect while not focusing on others. Going back to the school example, students are grouped into grades, from that, each grade also gets divided up on the subject of class they are currently in. And even those who are studying the same subject may be in an honors class, regular or remedial. And, last I checked, sharks have vertebrae. So your argument, with the exception of my misnomer (saying backbone instead of vertebrae), is invalid. And being that, if it is real, God has no known physical form, it could not possibly be known as living or nonliving, to say nothing of whether it has vertebrae. And again, a requirement of vertebrate/invertebrate is whether or not the thing in question is an animal or not. Being that mushrooms, bacteria, and plants are not animals, they can't even be considered as to whether or not they are vertebrates.

Actually it does allow you to figure out something about them right off the bat: They don't believe in a deity. And grouping isn't from where bigotry comes. Bigotry comes from ignorance or just plain stupidity. People not seeing or understanding that though there are differences between two people, they are still both people. Yes, grouping can take you in odd directions, an example being you saying inorganic invertebrates. What that tells me is that this lifeform is not carbon based (so it would almost have to be extra terrestrial in origin) and that it doesn't have a backbone. . And by it's very definition, Atheism is the disbelief in a deity. By this discussion even taking place, the issue has come up, and last I checked is still continuing. Since when is an oak tree an animal? Pretty sure plants don't have backbones... Or a skeletal structure for that matter... Inorganic matter exists all around you. Inorganic being synonymous with non carbon/hydrogen based compounds (wiki article). I fail to see how the scope of grouping inorganic matter into it's own group (which it is) would make things confusing...

How can you not lump atheists into a group? Everything on Earth is grouped into one or more categories. EVERYTHING. Name one thing that doesn't fall into a category. Please. I'm begging you. Atheism is a group. There's Atheists and Theists. See, I did it right there. On a larger scale, there's organic and inorganic matter, plants and animals, planets and stars... Everything out there, every possible large group is made up of smaller groups each covering a different facet of the whole. If atheism weren't it's own group, then all people would be theists. There would be no one to doubt or disbelieve the existence of a deity. Grouping people together allows you to figure out, broadly, what they are and what they aren't. Of course to finely tune that, you would have to get to know each person and from there realize that the lines dividing some topics may be more or less blurred than others.

The degree to which they identify as atheist is of importance. Those who feel more strongly about there being no god will defend that viewpoint that much more vehemently. Those who aren't concerned about it will shrug it off and move onto the next topic. This also applies to whether or not a person perceives a comment as being offensive or discriminatory. Are you saying that astrology is a valid science? (I'm only joking, do not take that comment seriously)

It's not a matter of whether or not they are atheist when identifying themselves. What the degree is indicating is how much they identify as an atheist. As in how important is it to you that you are atheist? For example, when someone asks me about being Catholic, I'd have to rate it at a 1. I was born and raised Catholic, but I don't identify myself as a Catholic. I identify myself as someone who is spiritual (in that I try to do good when possible) but not religious (I don't believe I'm going to Hell if I don't follow strictly to ten laws that were made long before I can even trace back my heritage). And to answer you about the unicorns, I subscribe to the view Robot Chicken put forth: That if mythological creatures were real, Noah must have let them drown during the flood. And I see discrimination as a problem, but as I stated in this last post, everyone is discriminated in some way or another. Should they be? No. Do I do my best to ignore stereotypes and judge a person on their present actions? Yes. Do I always? No. But I agree with your statement " If one person is discriminated against because of their atheism then there is a problem." How many people are discriminated and how many times shouldn't matter, but that's what the study had been about, so that's what I commented on. You could say that. You could also say that definition of "religion", as a whole, is ill defined and leaves much room to interpretation. Unfortunately, I don't have a better definition than has already been published.

Have you checked to see when those Blue Laws were put into effect? The laws regulating what can be done on Sundays are outdated at best. I mean, hell, they even outdate the signing of the Declaration of Independence by a little more than a century! And that's just for Connecticut. In other states car dealerships are/were forced to be closed, etc. However the trend is that these laws are being amended or removed entirely as their significance reduces. These laws were generally put into place prior to an official separation of church and state. *Unable to access third link. It's not loading at all for some reason. Study done in New England requires credentials and/or a fee. First study doesn't present data on how strongly the subjects identify with atheism. Without knowing how strongly they feel about and believe themselves to be atheist, how can anyone know whether they are or if it's something that they still are deciding for themselves. People's reactions can be different based on on this. This study also shows that these atheists weren't completely out about their disbelief (on average). Out of the ten possible relations that they could be out about their atheism to, the average was just below 6. It's possible that the perceived discrimination was due to an ignorance on the discriminator's part for not knowing the person was actually atheist. On page 54 it gives a table of the types of perceived discrimination experienced by atheists in the study separated into groups of Social Ostracism, Coercion, Slander, Denial of Opportunities, Hate Crimes, and Other. Under Social Ostracism, it seems to be the extreme minority of the atheists who feel outcast because of their being atheist. Of these, the most they have felt discriminated is because of classmates or coworkers. Even then, less than 30% felt they were discriminated on more than one occasion. For Coercion, the highest amount of perceived discrimination is under "Being expected to participate in religious prayers against my will" with "Being asked to attend religious services or participate in religious activities (besides prayer) against my will". In regards to the prayer, isn't it possible that they are being asked to say grace with the rest of their family at dinner or during the holidays? And as for participation in religious activities, it's likely that they have been asked during the holiday seasons that are big within the religious community (ie Christmas and Easter). These are also the times when you see a large rise in the number of people filling the churches. Under Slander is where you find the largest amount of perceived discrimination. Of this, the majority is under "Witnessing anti-atheist comments in newspapers or on television". My problem with this is that television makes fun of all religions, beliefs, actions, etc. Atheism isn't the only thing that is shown in a negative light on the tube. Almost no one said that they were denied opportunities based on their atheism and of those who did, it was generally between 1 and 3 times that it happened with a few outliers in the 4+. Again, little to no hate crimes because of their atheism. In the Other category, I can understand the "Being unfairly stereotyped because of my Atheism" and Being treated differently because of my Atheism" sections. Many people do both of these. However, as with actual religions, or other dividing things like race, gender, age, etc, people are going to stereotype and treat people differently based on those stereotypes. It's just a fact of the world. The second study doesn't correlate the levels of discrimination that those who are religious (in the national sample) experience discrimination. It would have been a bit more productive for them to relate how many of the atheists or non-religious are discriminated against those who hold religious beliefs or belief in a deity/deities. What I do like about this survey, though, is that it makes a distinction between non-religious and atheists. Despite the arguments I've been putting in this thread, I don't believe atheists to be religious, merely that the definition we use to describe religion would make atheism included.

Pull Me Under by Dream Theater (link)

All I've seen from each of your arguments, in regards to hostility towards atheists, is that Atheism persecution is more about locale rather than the population as a whole. But how is this different from any other group that's persecuted? Scientology, of course, being an exception because it seems like the entire world persecutes them. Judaism was persecuted in Nazi Germany, and is now (and always has been) persecuted in Islamic nations of the Middle East. Christianity is persecuted in the Middle East. Islam is persecuted in many areas of the US, and AFAIK, parts of the UK. As you can see, there are plenty of areas marked in green and blue which shows that a large portion of even the US falls outside the dense religious communities. Overtone, it's up to individual businesses to decide what days and hours they are going to be open. If a store wishes to be open on Sundays then so be it. My mother, a Catholic, owned an ice cream shop and had the shop open on Sundays. She'd open it up right after Mass. Chick-Fil-A chooses to have it's stores closed on Sundays. Government offices are closed on Sundays. That's outside of the private sector and outside of the community. It's not something that affects only the atheists of a region. Can it be pointed out with absolute certainty that the reason atheistic politicians aren't elected is due to their lack of a belief in deities? I'm sure they still receive votes but, as is the case with democracy, the majority wins out. If they can't appeal to a religious area, they may want to think about moving and trying to run their campaign elsewhere. I don't know where you get off saying that atheists have difficulty becoming school teachers... I went to a Catholic school up until my sophomore year of high school. All through my junior high years, I had the same science teacher who was atheist. Now if an atheist can work at a religious school, what does that tell you? What assumptions aren't met? If a man, or woman, joins the clergy with absolute faith in what they preach and later finds that they lack that same faith, they are able to renounce their position and no longer be a priest, or nun. It happens a lot. A guy I grew up with, his mother was a nun for some time and later left the church. She married his father, they had him, three years later they got a divorce and years after that, she still participates in the church choir. Also, do you realize how long a priest has to study and train in order to be Ordained? They have to study for a minimum of 6 years, plus serving at least 6 months as a deacon. I think that's plenty of time for a person to decide that they no longer have the faith they did prior to starting. No, it isn't. The ten commandments state, the first one in fact "You shall have no other gods before me", This doesn't say that there are no other gods, only that none should hold a position higher to you than God. So it is entirely plausible for a catholic priest to believe in other gods. How does my entire argument rest on the claim that zealotry equates religiousness? Please state so explicitly as you have yet to do the last few times you've said that. Elaborate. The reason religious atheists tend to not be zealous about it is likely because to the general populace they would seem hypocritical. Most don't see atheism as having the potential to also be religious and as such would have no religious beliefs. So for an atheist to preach a religion would, for most, deem that atheist as no longer atheist. In case you missed my previous posts, I amended what I said in regards to the atheists I've met. Please read back through them.

When did I ever state that community=religious group? I'm fairly certain that I never said that. Please don't twist my words. I know that most of those atheists whom I have met are that way because I've actually talked to them. That's how most people find out information about each other. They communicate. They talk. They debate. I don't take a bus, I own my vehicle. That I know of, no bus is going to travel 30+ miles each day one way without it being for interstate travel. I don't eat out. Gets to be too expensive. Again, I know the views of those I talk to regularly because I talk to them. I don't make assumptions about the people I meet. I can rule out the fact that people I talk to are or are not atheist because I have had conversations with them. I see them in my day to day experiences and ask them questions about themselves while they do the same with me. And I don't think funerals are the place to go to debate topics, especially one that people find as sensitive as religion and the afterlife. But even still, funerals are innately a private, intimate thing (with the exception of celebrities, public officials, etc) and as such, these are commonly people whom I have already met previously. No sense rehashing old topics if I already know the response. Um... There's only one counter-example to my use of community, and it wasn't even a complete counter-example. I don't think that counts as many. I'm sorry that I wasn't articulate enough in my previous post. Forgive me for not living up to your standards. I don't think it's an "inability to recognize atheism in strangers". More accurately it's that I don't meet many strangers so it's not something that comes up as often as other topics. And I think you have used circumspection incorrectly here... What hostile community is there for atheists to fear? I don't live in the deep south nor the "bible belt" so there's not a church on every street corner. So what other possibilities are there to exist? If there are some, please enlighten all of us as to what they are. How is my saying that they have doubts unwarranted? When someone becomes clergy, they are affirming their belief, their faith, in front of the entirety of that religious group. They are declaring that they believe, unwavering, in their religious doctrine. So of course its probable that those 1-4% would remain silent about their lack of faith. Why would they choose to become clergy if they didn't believe in their religion? And not having a personal deity is not the same as not believing in a deity at all. I never said that zealotry is evidence of religious belief. Not all religious persons are zealous. I was indicating that the atheists who are adamant about being atheist are tend to be just as enthusiastic and passionate as the religious zealots who try to push their religion onto others. Hence "mirroring".

In the first place, I use the term community in the sense that there is a commonality among them, not that they are a group that meets for any particular reason. Second, I specifically state the zealots of many religious groups, not zealots in general. I never said that I don't come across passive atheists, in fact it's quite the opposite. My two closest friends are atheists but don't try to force this disbelief on me or others that they encounter. I was merely stating that the majority of atheists I come across are very ardent in their defense and proclamation of atheism. And it's not that others are careful in my presence, its that I don't run into many new people in my day to day encounters. I live a very structured and scheduled life that rarely deviates for there to be enough exposure to other people, whether theistic or atheistic. And those that I do see on a regular basis I already know their thoughts on religion and deities. Buddhists aren't adherent to their own religion? Nor are Taoist among Taoists? Not sure you're making much of any sense there... And the 1-4% you mentioned, as indicated by the small percentage, are a minority of the church officials. It's not a secret that many people, whether clergy or laymen, have times of spiritual crises and doubt their faith while looking for something to renew their faith. That doesn't make them non religious, it just means that they have doubts. Um, by its very definition, any religion with a deity is a theism (not to be confused with atheism)... That includes polytheism (many gods), monotheism (one god/goddess), pantheism (physical world is god), and deism (one deity exists who created the world, but doesn't intervene).

Where Are You by Dexter Gordon

Atheists have an interest concerning their disbelief in deities. It may not always be an active interest except when the topic arises, at which point, albeit based on my experiences with atheists, they become rather animated in religious debates. The atheists that I have come across are very adamant in their disbelief, mirroring the zealots of many religious groups. I'm not saying this is true of all atheists, but it still gives a good feel of how a portion of that community acts. To avoid rehashing a previous back-and-forth in this thread, I'll skip over belief and activity.

Then by that right, atheism is a religion.