Take what you said about Aliens and the way they’ve changed over time. That’s a good example about how I see things.
If across time Alien theory showed up in every culture, every country and changed over time even though I could dismiss that there is not likely to be Aliens, it would cause me to pause to consider why belief in Aliens is so wide spread.
The lazy man’s answer is like that of Dawkins in the God Delusion. He says he’s talking about God but spends the entire book discussing religion. Religion is the practice and application of faith into ritual.
But God in and of itself is something different. To me God is simply the symptom of the disease.
Some people will ignore the God and dismiss the God and thus never understand the disease. I want to know what’s going on.
Atheism is a statement of belief, not knowledge. However, an atheist would begin with a belief that there is no god behind a religious experience and so would be default believe the one with the experience was wrong about a god being behind it. I was reacting to his rather blase statement that the believer might be right, and that his seeming lack of belief was kind of random. (He strengthened it later.) If you say you have a dragon in your garage I’m not going to come close to accepting it without loads of solid evidence.
Eonwe you don’t understand the OP. Just because you ranted endlessly completely off topic doesn’t mean you actually said something? You know?
The OP refers to the position held that there IS NO GOD. Read Penn’s “This I Believe” post to see.
The OP refers to the idea that those who do believe there is a god are idiots. And the trend of “tallying up” all the bad that the religious do as evidence that there’s a right to mistreat a believer simply because he wears the same boy scout badge as the evil ones.
The arrogance is suggesting that any of us KNOWS with absolute certainty anything about the universe at all.
At least that’s how I took it, perhaps he’ll come back and trounce…
How about if the aliens always looked a lot like the oddest animal known by that culture? It certainly makes sense to study why a belief is wide spread, but that is a lot different from assuming the belief is true since it is widespread and different in each culture. There are lots of superstitions that are wide spread also.
It is very hard to figure out the characteristics of any type of god without examining the religion that believes in it. One reason why gods in general can’t be disproven is that there is no default deity. But I do agree that the sins and virtues of organized religions say nothing about god’s existence. But we do have this situation:
Religion X, widespread, says that abortion, drinking or certain sex positions should be banned.
Why? There are no good purely secular reasons, so they fall back on the fact that God says it is bad. (Perhaps disguised, but that’s what the reason is.) That’s when the evidence for a particular god belief becomes important. If religions didn’t try to impose their moral code on us,. I wouldn’t care. None of my Hindu friends are trying to get the consumption of beef banned in the US, so while I default don’t believe, I don’t really care. Religion is the reason for active atheism, since otherwise we all would be left alone to do what we want.
Like what? Claims are not evidence. Anecdotes are not evidence. Science is not a court of law where any kind of testimony, argument or exhibit are indiscriminitely tagged as “evidence” which a jury has to sort out. In science, evidence actually has to demonstrate something. There is no scientific evidence for the God Hypothesis (and nothing to demonstrate its necessity).
Which is encouraging. Unfortunately, experience is subjective, and the majority of people who subscribe to this board experience the following reality:
USA 293,028,000 3 - 9% 8,790,840 - 26,822,520
Atheists don’t even number as high here as they do in Canada (19-30%).
What’s even sadder is the qualifier at the top of the list:
Fer fuck’s sake, even ITALY has a higher percentage of atheists, and the Roman fucking Catholic church is plopped right in the center of it.
Please demonstrate that those actions were related to the extreme nature of the atheism of those people… ie, not just that those people were atheists (which, in Hitler’s case, is arguable at best), but that their actions were related to and motivated by their extreme atheism.
Jeffrey Dahmer was either religious or not. I don’t know which. But as far as I know, he was not motivated to kill and eat people by his religious or agnostic/atheist beliefs. He was just a sick fuck. Similarly, Elizabeth Bathory (to pick a random example) was (if only because she lived in Europe in the 16th century) almost certainly a Christian, but was incredibly evil. And yet those of us who point out evil things done in the name of religious extremism don’t use her (or zillions of others like her) as examples. Why? Because she was an evil person who happened to be Christian, not someone who was doing evil things BECAUSE OF her Christianity. I’ve never seen anyone credibly argue that Stalin or Mao did the evil things they did because their atheism motivated them to do so.
Jesus Christ [irony noted]!! The main issue I had with the OP is the following:
The only person calling anyone names there is the OP. His stated reason for calling someone an ‘arrogant fool’ is that that person ‘dares to say there is no higher purpose, that all is meaningless.’
This is the primary issue I have with the OP. I do not need to work on reading comprehension. As stated, I understand perfectly what those sentences say.
And for the last time, as I’m really getting tired of being a broken record for people who are pretending to not understand me; you say that arrogance is claiming that anyone knows anything with certainty. Does this mean that it is equally arrogant for a person to know there is a god, and if so, does this make anyone who doesn’t doubt the existence of god arrogant? If not, why?
Gozu:
I did get that. My question (which I stated above, and above, and above) is why you demand an atheist state that he doesn’t know, while you (I assume) give theists a pass on knowing there is god. And, if I’m wrong about that, then are you actually annoyed to no end by the arrogant fools who dare say that there is a higher purpose, and that all is not meaningless in absolute terms? I doubt it, but it seems to me that your alternatives based on the portion of your OP I’ve been quoting is that you either are hypocritical about statements of knowledge regarding god, or you are equally annoyed by anyone who isn’t a doubter on either “side” of the issue.
No, not a strawman. You said:
How does “the effects of encouraging people to have more kids . . . [is] just a bonus,” not parse to “people need religion to encourage them to procreate”? Perhaps the word need is slightly questionable, but I don’t see why encouraging people to have more kids would be a “bonus” unless it was something that was a necessity.
(quote regarding my statement about the total tally of good deeds vs. bad deeds of religion)
Oddly enough, the only thing I feel is that it’s impossible to make a definitive statement about it. So, I agree with the portion of your OP that is annoyed with people who point to religion as the source of bad things, I just don’t think that you can successfully refute that position with an appeal to the opposite.
Unless that joke falls under the “there aren’t as many atheists as Christians, therefore atheists may behave in the same stupid manner that some Christians do without expecting to be called on it” meme that’s going on here. 'Cause if you’re going to mock Christians for misusing the term “theory”, you shouldn’t misuse it yourself in your mockery.
(now we’re even. strawman argument = bad!)
