No,Sam. It may be that "god" might have those associations, but "God" doesn't.

corsair the pirate

Oops, fixed my previous entry (you need a preview mode)

There is one, it may not be good but it does exist.

Obviously you didn't know that there really are no atheists. This guy can attest to that:

There Are No Atheists

On a cross-country flight some years ago, we hit severe turbulence. The gentleman in the seat next to me who had been insisting vehemently that he was an atheist shouted out loud, “God help us.”

Yes, even atheists pray because the image of God is implanted in us. Independent studies have showed that we yearn to know God. It’s the way we’re wired. So to be an atheist takes a stubborn refusal to acknowledge that which deep down we all know to be true.

I have, in fact, never met an atheist. When a person professes to be one, I ask him to offer me the proof that God does not exist. I’ve never had anyone successfully respond to that question. Most retreat and say they’re really agnostics. I then ask them if they have examined every religion exhaustively. Their answer is usually no. I explain they cannot be agnostics unless they are sure that God can’t be known.

There are no atheists. There are simply people whose pride overwhelms their innate knowledge.

The theists need to show some proof that there is a god before it's even worth the atheist for any comments (since atheism is just assumed if there's no evidence to contradict it).

There are no atheists. There are simply people whose pride overwhelms their innate knowledge.

Even if they were to hedge their declaration about with descriptive phrases that describe their abiding faith in humanity's power for good and the strength of social commitment, the detail would still get lost in the general uproar.

Even if what I just wrote is untrue, and the populace is actually more tolerant than that, the perception is still that admitting to a God-free universe is a high-risk public strategy.

It has no agreed upon component aside from being supernatural in some way and worthy of reverance and prayer.

Universal spirit is essentially pantheism, which is a form of theism, esspecially when it is claimed to be able to interact with reality.

For example, one of the exact questions was "Do you believe in God or a universal spirit?"

The exact wordings of other questions can be found at the bottoms of these data tables.

however, to say that one believes in a god or a "universal spirit" (which seems to me to be only an attempt to get away from the "g" word) and say one is an atheist, means that one is simply ignorant on what atheist means and one should ask what it means before making such a mistake. However, I can understand why most people are so stupid, they simply don't read anything that they don't have to.

"Catholicism is now largely effete with its large populace distracted by kneeling and bowing."

"In the first world, yes, there are still some third world countries where the Catholic church has some real power to cause problems."

Listen, the Catholic church is still causing plenty of problems right here in the U.S. I agree it's tremendously worse in, say, Latin America and Africa. But what about Catholic hospitals that don't provide contraceptive or abortion services -- and they're the only hospital left in the county? What about abusive priests? What about how they treat LGBT people? What about the new "pope" cozying up to the American religious right, including creationists?

Catholicism seems very quaint and outdated, sure, but harmless? I wish.

And hey, let's not use "effete" as an insult. Some of my best friends are effete.

And I don't think it's ridiculously inconsistent to believe in "a universal spirit" and call yourself an atheist... I agree it's not easy to see how they fit together, but it's not impossible. It could describe many buddhists and, at a stretch, some humanists and unitarians. In fact universal spirit is such a vague term it's difficult to be sure what it means! (I'm rather more worried about the 6% who considered their universal spirit a personal god!)

Actually, the more I think about it, the word God has so many potential definitions that any question which includes it will almost certainly be a bad survey question. It might have made more sense if they had asked about more specific things e.g. sentient being who loves and takes care of me, sentient being who knows everything and judges me, sense of wonder at the beauty and order of the universe, feeling of connection to other human beings, feeling that there's more to life than the material....

Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer!