What’s there to “admit”? It’s right about some things and wrong about a lot of things. Jesus existed, for one. A lot of people think he was entirely fictional.
You keep going on about this cartoon image of atheists that is simply ridiculous.
Atheists don’t argue that there is no valid information in the Bible, or Quran or Tao Te Ching. They argue those texts do not necessarily provide sufficient evidence in and of themselves to validate that their stated theological beliefs are a reflection of material reality. Exactly the same way Christians do not consider that the oral tradition of the Iroquois provides sufficient evidence that the world was created by various anthropomorphic animal spirits.
The Bible contains human views that may or may not be applicable through the ages. But simply because they are in the Bible doesn’t necessarily make them right, moral or valid.
If I thought there would be eternal consequences to my “worldly” actions I would spend every second of my day studying every single religion ever until I died due to the fear I had chosen the wrong one and was pissing off the right god. I sure as hell would never watch a football game, go to a concert or post on a message board.
Hmm— that would almost seem to imply that all atheists aren’t in lockstep and in total agreement on all things including how to approach debates with those who hold alternate viewpoints?
Oh you can be as non believing as all get out but still slavishly submissive to authority which strikes me as unhealthy. I’d say atheism is an emergent property of a skeptical and rational mind and a *skeptical *mind is likely healthier than a non skeptical one. Dawkins goes too far in ascribing the healthiness to the end result rather than the mechanism.
Incidentally, Richard Dawkins has a lot of good things to say about the King James Bible. He speaks often about its literary merits (as we do today about the works of Homer), but only objects to claiming it as divinely inspired or a source of morality (as we may similarly object about the Iliad or Odyssey). Some may find this discussioninteresting, as well.
I’m getting the impression that you have a very digital view - that anyone who doesn’t think the Bible is 100% correct must think it 100% wrong. That is absurd. The Bible has lots of things right - the later kings really lived, and the Maccabean revolt really happened, though we see a biased view of it. As is usual. Do you acknowledge that any parts of the Bible are wrong?
Why do you need any kind of credit score at all, let alone a good one, if you are supposed to stay away from debt? A credit score’s only purpose is to determine how much debt (if any) a potential lender can trust you with. If you avoid debt, why do you care about your credit score?
Does it never occur to you that maybe an atheist might get enjoyment out of “wasting time on a debate forum”?
Right, so as you’ve basically alluded to here, “unknown causes” and behaviour that “resembles randomness” is not evidence that such events are uncaused. All we can say is that such events have no known cause and or/resemble randomness.
Hence, my original post from page 1 stands:
If people want to have faith, based on no evidence, that Big Bangs can happen without a cause, they’re obviously free to do so.
I, personally, don’t have enough faith to believe such things.
You’re free to believe what you want, but don’t try to pass off that your uncaused timeless extra-universal sentient being that makes universes is somehow on the favorable side of Ockham’s razor. Not when an uncaused timeless universe is in the mix (not to mention the unknown permutations of possibilities that have yet to be considered).
No one here has claimed to know the earliest status of the universe with the kind of certitude that rivals your “undying devotion”. We have repeatedly shown that modern science does not reject the possibility of uncaused phenomena, but your reaction is to assert that “they must have some unknown cause we have yet to discover…” (because your beliefs require it to be so). The faith in this conversation is all yours, and you shouldn’t pretend otherwise.