Is God irrelevant?

[HarveyDarkey]

Between ‘New Atheism’ and believers, Apatheism forges a different path
By Davidson Loehr

While the media still milks the chattering and snarling between theists and atheists, most people are bored by this show, and many have quietly moved into a more productive position. Growing numbers of people don’t particularly care whether or not there are gods since, even if there are, they don’t seem able to do anything in our world. If they’re omnipotent, they appear to be indifferent to the small and large-scale wars, tragedies, and slaughters around us. If they’re impotent, who needs them?

Even when people are reflexively tempted to thank God for saving them from a disaster that may have killed hundreds or thousands of other people, they don’t want to say it too loudly—because they know someone may ask them, rhetorically, what their God had against the thousands he let die. Even bromides about God have lost much of their usefulness.

Still, with or without gods, we cannot escape the existential questions that have underwritten all the religions—and most civil codes of law—throughout human history:

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/2711/is_god_irrelevant/

[lazarus]

1. bah

that's just people who don't understand what atheism is, or don't have the guts to completely let go of their early-childhood brainwashing.

[laconicsax]

2. +1

[laconicsax]

3. A different path--a dull, ignorant path.

Theologians, ministers, and active congregants may say, correctly, that their religions still offer some responses to these most basic human questions. But theologians and preachers can no longer claim (and anyway are no longer granted) any particular authority for their differing, often warring, prescriptions.

Since when? Did I miss a complete reversal in public perception in the last couple days?

Advocates for apatheism as a 'third way' makes the same ignorant mistake that advocates for agnosticism as a 'third way' make:

Atheism is a question of belief, not of relevance. Whether or not you care is the answer to a different question.

[realisticphish]

4. nonsense, I agree

they are still theists. If you ask them, most will still say they believe in God, but just don't practice. That is NOT atheism. That is theism.

It's like saying "I don't care about politics" is a political party.

[laconicsax]

5. That's a good one! Mind if I use it in the future?

It's like saying "I don't care about politics" is a political party.

[realisticphish]

6. as long as

you donate 10 cents to Big Yak each time :D

[laconicsax]

7. I hope not retroactively.

:scared:

[realisticphish]

8. nah

Big Yak has enough funding that extreme measures aren't that necessary