Ubuntu 11.10 makes Unity compulsory

[Mark Widdicombe]

On 5 April 2011 13:44, Avi Greenbury <lists at avi.co> wrote:

> Mark Widdicombe wrote:
>
>>
>> There's a difference between not believing in god and believing there is
>> no
>> god.  I can't remember who said that saying atheism is a religion is like
>> saying not collecting stamps is a hobby, but he was right on the money.
>>
>>
> I don't think the second sentence supports your first.
>

Why not?

>
> Say we take stamp collection as analogous to believing in God. Not
> believing in God would, therefore, be not collecting stamps. This would
> probably be some form of agnosticism.
>
> No, this is atheism.


> Atheism, though, goes one step further and claims there is no God. I think
> the best we can do with the stamp collecting analogies is say this is like
> habitually disposing of stamps, but that's not a great analogy.
>

I don't know of anyone who makes such a claim; you misunderstand what
atheism is.  We can say that it is *extremely unlikely* that gods exist, but
I can't think of anyone who expresses faith in the notion that god does not
exist.

>
> Atheism appears to perform the same functions as a Religion - it requires
> belief in a particular status of a deity or deities, and succinctly answers
> the question of why we are here.
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