My point is that the term “atheist with respect to” has no real meaning. If you don’t believe in Zeus then I could just as easily say that you are a Christian with respect to Zeus, because Christians don’t believe in Zeus either. Hey, really were both Christians, I just believe in one MORE God than you.
That position would be agnosticism. Even if there is absolutely no evidence for any religion, unless you have some reason or evidence for atheism being true, I think it is irrational to believe that no God exists. In the situation where there is absolutely no evidence all you are justified in saying is that you don’t know whether God exists or not, and any or no religious view could be correrct.
That for me is the crux of it. Throughout this whole thread I heard people say a million times that “There is no evidence for God”, but no-one has given any evidence for why atheism is at all likely. Without any evidence of anything the only justifiable position is “I don’t know”. Becoming an atheist in those conditions requires a leap of faith because there is no evidence.
Calculon- I would agree with you, if being atheist meant you were absolutely certain that any gods did not exist. But few atheists would say that they are certain.
It’s not 50-50, any more than Zeus is 50-50, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster is 50-50. It’s not like a coin flip. So until we see a solid reason to believe, we’re going to say “we don’t believe in God (or Zeus, or Horus, etc.)”. It doesn’t mean we’re certain.
I’m not certain that leprechauns don’t exist, but if you ask me, I’ll say “I don’t believe in leprechauns”.
I don’t really have the time to go through with everyone all of the details of the evidence for the resurrection. I think in part it also wouldn’t do any good anyway, since the historical methodology of a lot of the criticisms leaves a lot to be desired.
If people do want to look more into the resurrection I suggest N.T. Wrights recent book The Resurrection of the Son of God.
The main point that I want to get across here, is that there IS evidence for religious faith and there ARE reasonable arguments as to why someone should believe in God. They obviously won’t be convincing to everyone, but the statement “there is no evidence for God” is clearly absurd. Evidence is not the same as proof. I acknowledge that there is no irrefutable proof that God exists. However there IS evidence are there ARE reasons to believe. To say otherwise I think is to completely ignore reality.
Given that there is evidence for religious faith, what evidence is there for atheism? So far no-one has presented any shred of evidence to show why athesim is even more likely than not, let alone more likely than any religious faith. Without any evidence for it, and especially in the face of evidence for other beliefs, I find it completely irrational to believe in the atheist position.
So what evidence for atheism is there? Why is atheism more likely than anything else? Why is it rational to accept atheism?
In other words, religious privilege. We don’t treat other claims like that; we aren’t agnostic about whether or not the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Sauron or elves or goblins are real. But religion? Uh-uh; we are supposed to bend over backwards to pretend that believing in a particular bronze ages myth is a reasonable position.
Like it or not, atheism is the rational choice. Agnosticism is a copout, intellectual cowardice that exists only to pander to the believers. And theism is simply utter, contemptible foolishness.
If there is no evidence for atheism, then any evidence for a religious belief, no matter how shakey, would tip the scales away from atheism.
I think the problem is in the statement “until we see a solid reason to believe”. How do you define what a “solid reason” is? Here I think you betray the fact that the issue is not really lack of evidence for religious belief. I think it is more the case that you want to believe in atheism, so you define that as true by default. Then you just set the bar of what constitutes a “solid reason” so high that it can never be met. I still haven’t seen any reason to accept atheism as the most likely position in the first place.
Real rational argument involves weighing all the available evidence and coming to a conclusion based on that, even if your conclusion is not 100% certain. It is not rational to bias yourself towards one particular view and then insist that all other views must prove themselves before you can accept them.
When there is enough evidence to accept something as true, faith isn’t needed. “Evidence for religious faith” doesn’t even make sense.
Start another thread and enlighten us.
Atheism is being without belief in the existence of gods. It isn’t a claim and therefore necessitates no evidence.
You should start another thread instead of hijacking this one. You’ll get more responses that way, too. Or you could resurrect an older one. Here are a few I found with a quick search:
I guess we’re repeating ourselves now. Atheism isn’t something you accept. It’s not a religion. It’s not even a belief system. It’s the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. It’s the absence of belief in the existence of deities. I think it only even has a name because historically it has been rather uncommon.
If you’d like to discuss this further and more privately, feel free to email me; I love debates of this sort (even if we never solve anything ). My email is my posting name at yahoo.com.
Sure yoiu do. It doesn’t take long to count to zero.
I’ll provide my own criticisms and there won’t be anything wrong with them.
I don’t want to :ook more at the resurrection," I’m asking you to cite what you think the evdience is. Linking to an Amazon book and running away isn’t much of a response. I’m familiar with Wright’s basic case, though (you were essentially trying to cite it upthread). Wright basically asserts an unsupported premise (an empty tomb event and apostolic claims to to have seen a physically resurrected Jesus), then sets up a series of straw man explanations for the premise which he tries to knock down. The flaw in Wright’s case is that he cannot prove the premise in the first place, so what he contrives as skeptical objections to it are just a kind of misdirection away from the fact that he can’t support his premise. Getting an opponent to engage him on that “naturalistic explanation” prattle is already winning half the battle for him. He’s not even successful at debunking possibilities like lying apostles hallucinations because anything natural is still more likely than magic, but as it happens, Wright (or whoever) still has to prove that anything even needs explaining. If the empty tomb story is fiction (and we have some good reasons to think it probably is), then explaning it is just wankery. Moreover it’s circular. Wright basically tries to use the Gospel accounts as cites for themselves.
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The main point that I want to get across here, is that there IS evidence for religious faith and there ARE reasonable arguments as to why someone should believe in God. They obviously won’t be convincing to everyone, but the statement “there is no evidence for God” is clearly absurd. Evidence is not the same as proof. I acknowledge that there is no irrefutable proof that God exists. However there IS evidence are there ARE reasons to believe. To say otherwise I think is to completely ignore reality.
You’re not using your words well. Asking to see “evidence for atheism” is asking to see evdience that at least one person lacks belief in gods. Here I am.
Atheism is not a belief, so asking to see evidence to support a non-belief is logical nonsense. If you’re asking for evdience that gods don’t exist, then that is, likewise, anti-scientific nonsense. Non-existence is the Null.
You still seem to be asserting that there is evidence for gods. What is it?
Errata. I mixed up NT Wright with William Craig. Wright’s case is actually a litt;e more clever, but still emeinently refutable. To put it in extremely simple terms, Wright basically thinks the resurrection couldn’t have been invented because it doesn’t match Jewsh beliefs. The rebuttal is that the Resurrection myth wasn’t a Jewish invention, but a gentile one (which evolved from the visions of one extremely idiosyncratic, Hellenistic Jew).
Using Wright’s logic, Joseph Smith must have found those golden tablets because Christians would have never made it up.
Perhaps it is a misunderstanding on my part, but I was refering to the taking one and piercing it with a nail. Perhaps if he had some one who was a Catholic with him they could or should have told him ahead of time that non-catholics or those in not good standing with the church do nor go to receive communion. The word Communion itself indicates you are a believer in the Church’s teachings! You share beliefs in common!
The person who made the death threats was no better.
It sounds like the two of them were very immature, the one who took it to his seat to show a friend doesn’t sound like he was trying to desacrate a holy object. The one who took it home and stuck a nail in it then put it on his blog is a poor, immature being who sounds to me like he needs help! Trying to get attention by such an act is not something a mature person would do. And if he got a comunion wafer in the mail it may not have even been consecrated!
A good Catholic position could be: Like Jesus said from the cross," Father forgive them for they know not what they do!"
Catholics do not see it as an inanimate object(like a statue for example), they see it as truly the body of Christ. Because you or I do not believe, it is no excuse to go out of the way to taunt an other person’s beliefs. Belief is just that, and a person has the right to believe in anything, yes, even your flying spaghetti monster. Belief itself harms no one. If it comes to forcing another to try to make them live according to you beliefs then that is another story!
“Desecration” exists purely in the imagination of those who believe in “consecration” in the first place. In real terms, a guy poked a hole in a cracker.
Irrelevant since it isn’t any such thing no matter how hard they try to believe it. No matter how offensive they find the treatment of the cracker, the cracker itself can’t and won’t care. That makes it an entirely different proposition from threatening a real live person.
It can and does; it warps judgment. People who believe act on that belief. The church has caused great harm and continues to cause great harm; it is an evil organization and the religion it promotes is as evil as it is irrational.
By the way, when I first mentioned Pastor Terry Jones in the thread, I had no idea that he was just about to drive home the comparison by actually burning a Qur’an, as he had previously made much of threatening to do. But two days later, he went ahead and did it.
Certain American Muslims who had tried to engage with him before made the decision to ignore him this time, but there was still a TV crew on hand, and a video sent to Youtube. As with Myers and Phelps, the fulfillment of the exercise requires that the group one is insulting get the message. This time it seems Jones’ efforts have received the most notice in Pakistan, doing a little damage to American-Pakistani relations, and likely adding to a very real danger for Pakistani Christians.
). My email is my posting name at