Atheists: Not Curious About God?

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I was talking with one of my buds on WP and he knows I'm atheist, but he told me he doesn't believe me when I say I am. I asked him why and he said it was because atheists aren't normally curious about religion and God (I always wondered why people worship a God that allowed all this crap to prevail in our world and if he created Satan, who became evil, then God would have to have a spark of evil zieself) and if someone talked to them about God and religion, they would laugh and give a sermon about molecules (that's how he put it). I told him that I don't have to be a believer to be interested in religion. Does anyone here interested in Greek Mythology worship Zeus, Hera, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, Ares or Poseidon?

What's your view on atheism?

I'm a lifelong atheist, and I've always been fascinated with religion as a social and psychological phenomenon. You don't have to be religious to wonder why other people are religious, just as you don't have to have lost a limb to want to work in prosthetics.

It will vary with the person, surely.

Me, atheist days I was as always a total Elephant's child, read Bible [in original lingos and used it professionally], read Qur'an [in original lingo], checked out a variety of IndoEuropean and other religions.

But some are not so curious - there are Christians who will not read other than the Bible in a Year plan and the lit from their particular version.

However, an antitheist who does not read up on the main theologies is not just incurious, he is a disarmed fool.

A serious prepared antitheist SHOULD be able to talk around an incurious Christian. It is as bad for him to be provincial as for a Mormon or Jehovah's Witness or an Evangelical. God does not care about doctrine - but if you are into proselytizing or apologetics from ANY background including atheism, you need to do the homework.

Most atheists I know are very interested in the subject,

Most Atheists I know are more well-versed in the subject than most Theists. Some often wonder why that is, but it seems to have a lot to do with actually reading the Most Holy books and actually watching what Theists do and listening to what religious leaders say.

I am only interested in religion in so far as it tells me something about human nature. Religion is (apparently - to me) sort of an elaborate fairy tale, which billions of people not only believe, but spend a great deal of their time recanting.

It's fascinating to me that people can believe wholehartedly and think they know something to be true, when apparently to me it is certainly false. That despite all evidence to the contrary a person, out of societal pressure or whatever can go on believing. It makes me wonder what constitutes knowledge. We forget sometimes that science too requires a great deal of faith, we do not usually do many of the experiments ourselves and we trust in scientists based upon their reputation. We usually do not confirm the results of an experiment ourselves - but that's really what we ought to do if we wish to seperate science from belief.

God itself is almost without meaning, because there is no central definition for it, you ask people what is god. An all knowing being. God is the one that judges. God is love. God is the creator. You get different answers all of them abstract. So it's this being - not a person, like you or I but something more abstract. I suppose if a scientist were so inclined they could institute the "laws of nature" in for God and have a fairly consistent definition.

God to me, if it does exist, I would surmise something else entirely. It is this idea that we may encompass as cells to a greater body. Just as the cells in our body may not be aware of our existence perhaps too we are cells to a greater body. Perhaps whatever organization we find ourselves a part of. Perhaps nations are living things, perhaps they have their own conciousness resulting from the actions of all those who inhabit them. Perhaps our function is to preserve the "body" we encompass.

It's merely speculative, but if this was true, and organizations we make up are conscious, I would call that god.

being an atheist myself, I can say that I am very interested in religion. before becoming an atheist for good I toyed with religion like a cat with a mouse. I still find it fascinating.