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Someone please explain "atheist spirituality"?

It is oxymoronic, to my understanding. Yet, I never fail to see it displayed all over the site, and is even one of the "groups" advertised.

Yes, I'm asking because it fails the sniff test.

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Permalink Reply by Freedom of Anonymity on January 20, 2010 at 10:27am

That's a damn fine and interesting point. Just recently had this discussion with a friend at my site; theism has an advantage of trying to prove a positive, atheism is in the less favorable position of proving a negative.

Under that view, it is easy to see, in my opinion, why atheists have a much tougher road to social acceptance.

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Permalink Reply by Johnny on January 20, 2010 at 3:18am

at the very least I would say "Who gives a damn?"

when the world is primarily atheist then we can nitpick this crap.

For now, you must all at least agree that a "spiritual" atheist is still more sensible than a fucking retarded theist.

there is nothing in my mind more rediculous than the notion of an objective being. How the fuck could there be? everything in the world, spiritual or naturalistic, points to subjective beings. Even the concept of a ghost can not possibly be as stupid as the concept of a deity.

Go debate a theist and leave the nitpicking of atheists alone lol

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Permalink Reply by Sonny Mobley on January 21, 2010 at 3:59pm

I dunno, I find these discussions to be very important. I'd rather discuss such things than go brow beat a bible thumper. :D

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Permalink Reply by Фелч Гроган on January 20, 2010 at 5:38am

Johnny: anything that is attempted to be be proven is a theory... Just because most don't use the concept of ghosts as a "theory" doesn't then mean that no one does

Jeez Louise. Where to begin...

Ghosts are not a 'theory'. Just because something doesn't have an explanation doesn't mean you can just go and invent unprovable, unfalsifiable hogwash and label it a 'theory'. This is precisely how cranks and nutjobs operate. You need to do some reading son. You can start of with this vid and then work through the rest of them -

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Permalink Reply by Johnny on January 20, 2010 at 1:56pm

yes i understand that and I've seen that video. I never claimed what you are opposing. Obviously accepting "god of the gaps" type theories has nothing to do with open mindedness.
not what i was saying at all.

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Permalink Reply by Richard Healy on January 21, 2010 at 1:26pm

I'd still like to know what the "theories of ghosts" are.

>no known mechanism for surviving death

>That is not the only theory about ghosts. There is also imprint of energy, parallel dimensions, whatever.... personally I don't care enough to investigate these claims but if it meant something to someone to explain it to me, I'd listen."

http://www.atheistnexus.org/forum/topics/someone-please-explain-ath...

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Permalink Reply by Фелч Гроган on January 22, 2010 at 2:58am

Don't you remember phlogiston ?

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Permalink Reply by Richard Healy on January 22, 2010 at 3:05am

I know all about Phlogiston; I've just had to write an essay about it, in fact. :-)

What has a defunct alchemical hypothesis of combustion based on Aristotle's Elements got to do with ghosts, Felch? I'm not seeing the connection. :-/

I'm even wearing my "Teach the controversy" T-shirt with the Alchemical Periodic Table.

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Permalink Reply by Фелч Гроган on January 22, 2010 at 3:23am

I could never really tell the difference between phlogiston and ghostly ectoplasm. It's all making things up to fit in lieu of thinking about it a bit more.

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Permalink Reply by Richard Healy on January 22, 2010 at 3:57am

Ah well that's kind of easy.

Ectoplasm was thought of as a kind of plasma. (Now plasma does exist, it's the furth state of matter above, solid liquid and gas. Plasma is what lightning bolts are made out of and there's a fantastically dangerous experiment you can perform with some old CDs and a microwave oven that is absolutely not recommended, that will also make some.)

Ectoplasm was though to be reified, spiritual energy or something.

Phlogiston is much more interesting.

In brief:

Aristotles 5 elements: Earth, Air, Water, Fire, Aether.
Jerome Becher, ditches 4, keeps Earth, subdivides it into Vitrious Earth, Mercurious Earth and Fatty Earth.

In the era of guttering candles made from animal tallow "fatty" makes sense and the "earth" is just it's Alchemical elemental group.

Things made out of fatty earth combusted. This meant wood and coal and sulpher were all made out of or contained "fatty earth" (depending on how much debris was left afterwards.)

Disciple of Becher, Georg Ernst Stahl changes the name to from "fatty earth" "flame principle" or "Phlogiston" as that's just a bit more respectable and gets busy popularising the idea. Superficially plausible it seems to accord with several observations. (The candle reduces and eventually the bird in the killing jar suffocates as the Phlosigiston "comes out"

Robert Boyle publishes "The Sceptical Chemist" which rails against the absence of an experiment that could confound the alchemists

Joseph Priestly, "discovers" Oxygen by heating mercuric oxide and finds it can re-light a glowing splint but thinks the reason is because the splint (which burns) is re-introducing phlogiston into the gas (or as Priestly saw it the element Air) so he called it Dephlogisticated Air.

Lavoissier finds out about this - and by being very accurate and meticulous with weights and measures, meets Boyle's challenge of showing that combusting things get heavier (as the combine to form oxides) not less heavy (as phlogiston is released) which was a key prediction. Other experiments show something in the air is being "used up" (which in turn leads to the discovery that air is a mixture of gasses)

Proponents suggest Phlogiston has negative weight (it's addition makes things lighter), but this absurdity doesn't last long. Phlosigston is dead.

Lavoissier, thinks Oxygen is the base of all acids. (He was wrong about that. That's Hydrogen) but he calledit "Oxy-Gen" meaning Acid Creator.

The Royal Society hated it, were fierce in their defence of Priestly's primacy more or less until he fled to America for his republican leanings. Lavoissier was beheaded by the Revolutionaries in France. but Oxygen lived on, principally because Charles Darwin's Grandfather Erasmus included it in a poem he wrote that became widely distributed.

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Permalink Reply by Richard Healy on January 22, 2010 at 6:42am

It's called The Botanic Garden

You can find it here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=Tn8gAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcov...

Do a word search for "Oxygen" to see how often it is mentioned.

Permalink Reply by Howard S. Dunn on January 22, 2010 at 10:00am

Priestly also discovered the existence of a significance linkage (symbiotic gas exchange) to the metabolism of living systems - the oxygen/carbon-dioxide respiration cycle of animals and the carbon-dioxide/oxygen cycle (used in photosynthesis - not then understood) of plants.

Our understanding of 'ecosystem' could be said to originate with Joe Priestly suffocating small animals in jars.