I’m assuming that all of those who think X thusly think X and Y is not a component. X is the sole component. X has been defined, and in some cases, refined in this thread. X becomes the common denominator for the definition. So, as defined, yes I can say that.
Testify.
We Buddhists would also like to be called ignorant and unwelcome on the Dope.
I am the author of several Staff Reports. Among others, I have explained diplomatic immunity, summarized the Hatfield / McCoy feud, discussed the mysterious death of Bob Crane, and rebutted the sensationalist aspects of the story of Lupe Vélez’ suicide.
Did those efforts contribute to fighting ignorance?
To the OP: Yes, most certainly.
If they believe in evolution, then they really can’t be creationists. (There, I just pointed out some right there!)
I usually call myself a “vague theist” in that I really don’t follow any one religion – I just believe in God, and that’s it. (I’m a lapsed Catholic, though, and sometimes I still find some traces of it there.)
I like to think I can still be a Doper and fight ignorance, despite my religious beliefs. I have corrected people on what Catholics believe (such as evolution, the fact that Catholics do NOT teach you that you have to be a Christian to go to Heaven, etc). I’ve also participated in a lot of historical debates. Does that count? I like to think so.
I think if anything the OP is really the one that is ignorant.
The OP appears to be operating on the principle that all religious people are ignorant, because they believe in the supernatural. This can only be true if all religions are indeed wrong and metaphysical natualism is correct. It is only ignorant to believe in the supernatural if the supernatural does not exist. If it does, then it is entirely rational to believe in it. To use a Christian example, conswider the resurrection. Christians do not believe that Jesus was raised somehow naturally from the dead. Everyone agrees that would be impossible. Christians believe that God raised Jesus supernaturally from the dead. Now if God does not exist this would also be impossible. However if God does exist, then it is entirely possible that God could raise Jesus from the dead.
So the whole OP is essentially question begging. The only way that the OP’s premise makes sense is if one starts out assuming metaphysical naturalism.
Worse still though, the OP claims to be a “weak atheist”. Typically this means that he does not believe in God because he sees no reason to believe in God. Crucially though it also means that he has no reason to believe that God does not exist. If he had this sort of warrant he would label himself as a “strong atheist”. Since the premise of the OP is only necessarily true on strong atheism, then the OP is irrationally making claims outside of what they feel themselves epistemologically justified to do. So the OP’s position is in that sense incoherrent. Ironic given the accusations against religious people of being ignorant.
To make the argument you would first have to establish that the supernatural definitely does not exist, not just there is no evidence to believe in it. Until that is shown then I reject the premise that religious people are necessariliy ignorant, and the whole argument falls down.
Calculon.
Even Dawkins is a weak atheist. There’s no way to unequivocally disprove all gods and goddesses and supernatural things, just as there is no way to disprove the garage dragon, invisible pink unicorn, or flying spaghetti monster. To claim that the unequivocally do not exist is to claim a knowledge that can’t be knowable. As well as to claim that they do exist would be to delude oneself into knowing or believing in the unknowable.
And look, I did that without direct *ad hominems. *
First of all, Dawkins is not a good thinker on religion. He is horribly inconsistent on lots of issues and I think is only a good example of how irrational atheists can be.
Secondly, the claim that it is impossible to know that something does not exist is patently false. One can easily demonstrate the something does not exist through logical contradiction. For instance I know that there are no square circles because the definition of square and circle are incompatable. It is possible in principle to demonstrate that there is likewise something incoherent about the nature of God such that He cannot exist. For instance the problem of evil, while I think unsecessful, is at least an attempt at this by trying to show that the goodness of God is incompatable with the suffering in the world. So I think you are just simply wrong that it is impossible to show that God does not exist.
Fourthly, you don’t address the point that your argument only works if strong atheism is true. Even if it is impossible to show that strong atheism is true, that still does not justify you making arguments on the basis that it is true. So even if I accept that it is impossible to demonstrate strong atheism, I would still have to conclude that your OP argument is still irrational.
Fourthly, I appologise for calling you ignorant. What I should have said was that your argument was ignorant, not you yourself. Although I would point out that while you didn’t directly call anyone specifically ignorant, you did state that “religous” people, of who I am one, are ignorant. It seems to me a little pedantic to complain about specific cases of ad hominem arguements when you condemn a whole class of people as the same thing. That is not an justification for myself calling you ignorant, it is just a suggestion that if you phrase your posts more carefully then those responding to you will hopefully do likewise.
Calculon.
Admit it, you’re really an atheist. 
Certainly…I mean, there are several, perhaps even many 'dopers who are religious to one extent or another. You can be anything and be a 'doper, in the end…as long as you don’t flame out and get banned. 
Even taking your terms into account I don’t see why you can’t fight ignorance and yet be religious. There are many reputable scientists who are religious people. Even if you are completely atheist, you can respect the person even if you disagree with some aspect of their beliefs.
-XT
Okay, let’s. I’m a member of the Episcopal Church. We have a book called The Book of Common Prayer which includes our statement of faith, catechism, and other documents defining Episcopal beliefs. If you were to read those, you would see that nothing in them makes any mention of, for instance, a person living for several days inside a fish. Most other major churches have a similar presentation of their beliefs somewhere.
That said, I can only talk about my particular beliefs regarding the miraculous. Some people seem to think that it’s impossible for me to actually belief in the resurrection, Jesus turning water into wine, miraculous healing, Marian visions, and other things of this nature. The argument, as I understand it, is that since we don’t observe such things happening frequently and regularly and since we have no mechanism within the scientific materialist paradigm to explain the existence of such things, therefor we know that they can’t happen.
This argument is a gross misunderstanding. Obviously I am well aware that the miraculous events I listed are not common or everyday occurrences, as is everyone. That fact is presented clearly enough in scripture itself, among other places. Yet I still believe in those things.
Others, including Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, seem to think that we Christians view the supernatural events in the gospels as “embarrassing” and that we wish they weren’t there. That is also a misunderstanding. As William H. Willimon said, “Miracles are at the heart of the Christian religion.” As a Christian I believe that God created the universe including the physical laws that govern the universe. It follows directly that I believe that God has the power to act in ways that violate those laws, so naturally I believe in the possibility of miracles. I, like most Christians do and always have, also believe that the performance of miracles demonstrates God’s sovereignty, thus separating the Christian conception of God from pagan conceptions of deities who are within the universe and bounded by the laws of the universe.
As for the particular reasons why I choose to believe in the miraculous, I’d refer anyone interested to the books Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton and Miracles by C. S. Lewis.
We’ll agree to disagree as that could lead to a major hijack.
Yet there are plenty of logical contradictions not just in the Bible but the creation of the Bible. If that’s your basis, then you can see where I have the problem. Moreover, there are things that we cannot logical disprove. Not just through semantics but scientific observation. Can you unequivocally disprove the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
Did I miss the third?
Because strong atheism requires a belief that is unscientific and I thusly disagree with it. My contention remains that belief in the supernatural vis a vis the Abrahamic religions is ignorant.
It’s not my intention to offend but discuss. Great Debates is a place for witnessing. As such, consider this a weak atheist’s way of witnessing. Unfortunately, to have this discussion, my opinion of religion holders is that they are holding ignorant beliefs.
That said, this could turn into a baby with the bathwater scenario. The one reason I love this site is that the posters are by and large adherents to skeptical thinking. That for the most part, we eschew the woo and don’t accept Occam’s Razor but scientific reasoning to discover the truth behind this wonderful universe we live.
First, being ignorant means without knowledge, as I was about this site’s meaning of the word, doper. I now know in the context of this board means what someone just defined above this post. A doper at a high school means something else and was going to say they are too busy getting high to fight anything except being out of dope. As far a God goes, just because you think or were taught that he/she is nice might be wishful thinking as I constantly hear someone complaining as to how could a nice God let bad thing happen. Well that is it, they happen. God might be really pissed off at the angels and created man as a joke or to dis them. Maybe God and Satan had a bet and one of them lost? Which one I wonder. Ignorance is very acceptable as we all know how annoying a knowitall is, even though none really exist. Those that know it all really piss off the ones that actually do, like myself. So, being ignorant is simply normal and should not exclude anyone from trying enlighten others or themselves. Purposely making other people ignorant for nefarious reasons is not playing nice which brings me back to my first point as either I have forgotten the second one or it never existed. Maybe my second point does exist but can not be proven as it has left my mind, but that does not mean, like God, that it does not exist. Hmmmmm… If you think you are not ignorant, please prepare your case and post it in pig Latin which will give us all time to finish this discussion and give you something meaningless to do. I am glad to learn that I am a doper.
Can’t be a doper and not use paragraph breaks.
You are going to have to define how you use the word “ignorant,” since you do not seem to apply it in a way that corresponds to the rest of the English speaking world, (although your use of it appears to be a demonstration of its meaning in regular usage 
).
So, in fact, you are merely witnessing that you only approve of weak atheism and all the references to Abrahamic religions are a red herring. You also disapprove of strong atheists, probably agnostics, and pretty much all other religions, (aside from a number of Buddhists and some UU adherents), and you are flinging around the term “ignorant” without actually understanding what it means.
You might want to try this again with a bit more thought. I’d even be willing to close this thread so that you could make a second attempt without having it well-poisoned by the errors in this attempt.
Even if you grant that the bible contains logical contradictions, this does not mean that Christianity is wholly false. It would mean that belief in the inerrancy of scripture is false, but that is not the same thing. It is possible for both the bible to contain contradictions and for God to exist. Traditionally people have believed in Christianity not because the bible is inerrant, but because Jesus was raised from the dead, or because they have had an experience of God and/or the Holy Spirit. So for these people contradictions in the bible would not disprove Christianity.
I am also not sure what you mean about contradictions in the creation of the bible. There are some things that may be problematic, but I don’t think they would be necessarily contradictory.
Secondly, I dispute that there are actual, irreconcilable contradictions in the original texts of the bible. I have seen lists of alleged contradictions from places like the Skeptics annotated bible. Nearly all of them revolve around forcing one particular meaning into the text when there are other non-contradictory, and in many cases more natural readings. I think this may be another large hijack, so again I think we may have to agree to disagree. The main point is that even if there are contradictions, this does not disprove Christianity.
The problem with disproving the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) is that no-one actually believes in it, and therefore there is no concrete definition as to what the FSM actually is. This is in contrast to traditional theistic Gods like Jesus or Allah which are well developed concepts.
So I could try and sketch an argument that the FSM is not God.
- God is not created, but exists eternally out of the necessity of his own nature
- Physical matter is not eternal, but came into being
- (From 1 and 2) God is not fundamentally composed of any physical matter.
- The FSM is fundamentally composed of Spaghetti, which is by definition physical in nature
- (From 3 and 4) The FSM cannot be God.
While this argument is logical sound, the atheist would simply deny premise 4 as being part of the definition of the FSM. And since there is no real definition of what the FSM is, then this would have to be granted. I think though that if you went through several iterations of this the FSM would eventually adopt all of the properties of the traditional theistic God, and thus there would be nothing distinct about the FSM that really separated it from other definitions of God.
Secondly, I don’t have to “disprove” the existence of the FSM anyway. Because I believe I have epistemological warrant in believing in Christianity, all I have to do is show that the FSM contradicts Christianity and that the FSM is less warranted than Christianity. This is easy, especially since the FSM is entirely contrived to mock theists.
It is you I think that has is the epistemological problem. From what I gather you don’t have any real positive reason to adopt atheism, but are doing so as a “default” position. In that case if there is any reason at all to adopt the FSM, then you should as it would be more reasonable than atheism. Since I already have positive reasons for my beliefs I don’t have to disprove competing beliefs, just show that they are less warranted then Christianity.
I don’t get how the two statement here fit together. I don’t see how strong atheism is “unscientific”. I also don’t see how strong atheism being unscientific means that belief in Abrahamic religion is ignorant.
First I would say that “science” is not really a coherent epistemology. It is basically a form a logical positivism which is widely rejected by philosophers of all kinds. For a start many statements are not “scientific” statements. Statements about morality for instance are not known scientifically, so you would have to reject all morality as meaningless in that epistemology. Worse still a belief in science is not itself able to be demonstrated correct through science, so the whole thing is simply incoherent.
Calling someone’s beliefs ignorant, as opposed to the person themselves is not an ad hominem attack. While I think it is mistaken, saying that religious people have ignorant beliefs is not all that offensive. Your OP on the other hand implied that religious people themselves, and not just their beliefs, are ignorant. This is an ad hominem attack and I think more offensive.
Calculon.
Lock it up then.
My believes fall much closer IMHO to philosophy then religion, and I mostly call it spirituality, and the opposite of religion.
Fighting ignorance can have additional meanings, and as such many are fighting ignorance on a different front, letting people know who we are, God’s children and very much Loved, that all truths can be known if we just seek out the one who Loves us and to let them know we were not just dropped here to make it on our own, but so much is availabe to us if we just ask.
I sometimes compare it to the allegory of the cave Allegory of the cave - Wikipedia being taken outside and shown the truth, then seeing what we have been doing, looking at shadows and trying to understand them and now understanding why that could never work.
[moderating]
So mote it be.
[/moderating]