Cofty » Atheists have absolutely nothing in common apart from one simple fact. Atheists don't believe in the god of theism. That's all.
Hmmm. You continue, saying, "There
are no books that all or even most atheists agree about. There are no
leaders that they follow. I disagree with many atheists I have
interacted with about lots of significant issues."
Atheists have more in common than that. They all believe that man had no existence before nor do they exist after mortality. They all believe there are no eternal consequences for doing right or wrong. That is the meat of atheism; the rest is just gravy. You may disagree with atheists on the gravy, but not the meat. One atheist may be content to let others believe as they will, while others believe theism represents a danger to civilization.
Atheists believe they can determine their own moral codes, recognize right from wrong and be good, decent citizens, but moral codes can change over time. Again, gravy. The meat's the same. Whatever the moral code is, the creed says there's no ultimate responsibility for one's action. One can be a saint or a sinner, a peacemaker or a despot, a Churchill or a Hitler. Whatever choices an atheist makes in this life, one thing is certain. His eternal reward is the same. The grave. An atheist may be of sound moral character one day, but if he rationalizes his actions, there are no consequences.
There is no creed. If
somebody tells us they don't believe in god that tells us nothing at all
about them. It is not an indication of how intelligent they are or how
moral or how rational they are.
Is that what religion is supposed to do, tell us about people? Is it supposed to tell us how intelligent they are or how moral or rational they are? That's only the gravy. Atheists are people like everyone else. They can be kind, generous, loyal, discreet and brave, or they can be angry, resentful, insulting and spiteful. Those are all part of being human. It's not part of whether someone believes in God or not.
I have no faith. Faith is not a
virtue. Our beliefs should be commensurate with available evidence. That
means there is a lot of things that can be known for sure and a lot of
other things we just don't know. Making up the sort of fanciful stories
believed by the citizens of Salt Lake City is not rational.
Now you're getting into unchartered waters. Whether stories come from Salt Lake City or Jerusalem really make no difference. Since you're unaware of religious evidence, whether in the Old World or the New, you're depending on your atheistic creed to navigate between the evidence, and in that there's little difference between atheism and religion. You rely on crass insults, not evidence, to make your points, and that's creedism. If you can't burn them at the stake, you simply toss out barbs, and that tells us a lot about you.
TD » The idea of a being composed simply of energy, who can materialize a
physical body out of thin air in any form it desires is far more
reminiscent of early to mid 20th century science fiction than anything
the Bible writers would have had in mind.
Yes, and it seems to be popular in Adventism and more recently other religions. In the Book of Enoch, the spirit angels take on bodies to marry mortal women and thus incur the wrath of God. Most mainstream scholars see the "sons of God" as people of the covenant and the "daughters of men" as the heathen. One reason the Book of Enoch never made it into the Bible is that is does sound like science fiction and even the ancients realized it was sensationalized pulp nonsense.
Once God realized what had happened, He zapped the angels so they could not return to the spirit realm and thus they lived out their lives on Earth.
But even if this story was true, does it mean that the bastardized children of light were automatically damned? Isn't God the creator of all life? Yet we're to believe the hybrids corrupted the genetic structure of mankind, thus the flood to rid them from those effects.
Perhaps that's how beards were introduced into mankind. Before them there was no facial hair.
