# Get your GOD-damned idiocy out of my education! **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [November 30, 2004, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-your-god-damned-idiocy-out-of-my-education/277358 "2004-11-30T17:58:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2004, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-your-god-damned-idiocy-out-of-my-education/277358/141 "2004-12-01T19:41:04Z")
> [@bup](#): > > So, you and I agree you can’t disprove God. If you want to be an atheist, though, you have to _assert_ that there is no God - even though you can’t prove it. > > Otherwise you’re agnostic. Nope, I’m an atheist. IThe existence of God is so extremely unlikely that it is statistically insignificant. An agnostic would give equal weght to the God/not God hypothoses, and I don’t. I can’t say with 100 percent certainty that there are no gods, but 99.99999 percent is good enough for me. ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2004, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-your-god-damned-idiocy-out-of-my-education/277358/142 "2004-12-01T19:42:18Z")
> [@gobear](#): > > An agnostic would give equal weght to the God/not God hypothoses, and I don’t. So is someone who’s 51% certain that there’s no God an atheist? ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2004, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-your-god-damned-idiocy-out-of-my-education/277358/143 "2004-12-01T19:44:38Z")
How did you arrive at the 99.99999 figure? Anyway, if you’re willing to say, “there is no God,” you’re at 100%. And you arrived there based on an assertion you cannot prove. If you’re not willing to say, “there is no God, but it’s a very remote possibility that ips exists,” you’re not an [atheist](http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=atheist). ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2004, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-your-god-damned-idiocy-out-of-my-education/277358/144 "2004-12-01T19:45:09Z")
> [@ultrafilter](#): > > So is someone who’s 51% certain that there’s no God an atheist? Still too much theism. ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2004, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-your-god-damned-idiocy-out-of-my-education/277358/145 "2004-12-01T19:51:11Z")
> [@bup](#): > > How did you arrive at the 99.99999 figure? > > Anyway, if you’re willing to say, “there is no God,” you’re at 100%. And you arrived there based on an assertion you cannot prove. > > If you’re not willing to say, “there is no God, but it’s a very remote possibility that ips exists,” you’re not an [atheist](http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=atheist). Nope, I’m an atheist. The 99.9999 percent only comes because i can’t conclusively demonstrate that there is no God any more than I can absolutely disprove the existence of any other supernatural entity. I just don’t take the possibility seriously. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Ashtar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ea924/32.png) [@Lord\_Ashtar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Ashtar)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2004, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-your-god-damned-idiocy-out-of-my-education/277358/146 "2004-12-01T19:56:54Z")
> [@bup](#): > > So, you and I agree you can’t disprove God. If you want to be an atheist, though, you have to _assert_ that there is no God - even though you can’t prove it. > > Otherwise you’re agnostic. How’s about everyone picks their own label for their religious (or lack thereof) beliefs? ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2004, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-your-god-damned-idiocy-out-of-my-education/277358/147 "2004-12-01T20:04:29Z")
> [@gobear](#): > > Still too much theism. They don’t give the God/no God hypotheses equal weight, as you said an agnostic would do, and they don’t completely disbelieve in God. What are they? I see the atheists here wanting to have their cake and eat it too. If you believe in things that aren’t supported by the available evidence (and by your own admission, there’s no evidence that could completely disprove the existence of God), you have faith in something. **Lord Ashtar** , the issue here isn’t about labels. It’s about the claim that atheism doesn’t require faith in anything. ---
**Author:** ![Meatros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2004, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-your-god-damned-idiocy-out-of-my-education/277358/148 "2004-12-01T20:19:52Z")
> [@bup](#): > > No, you need conviction, or faith, that there is no God. > > If simply don’t have faith that God exists, you’re not an atheist. Incorrect. Atheism is a=without, theos=god, ism=belief. On the other hand, theism is god belief. If you doubt this then what God do agnostics believe in? If they don’t believe in any…then wouldn’t they be ‘without the belief in God’? ---
**Author:** ![Bojangles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eada6e/32.png) [@Bojangles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bojangles)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2004, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-your-god-damned-idiocy-out-of-my-education/277358/149 "2004-12-01T20:21:41Z")
I wonder sometimes: what must it be like to have faith? Presumably (and I’m prepared to stand corrected here) some event or occurrence happens and from then on, perhaps until something else occurs, it is as easy to believe in god as it is (to paraphrase Dawkins, out of context I know) to believe that the sun will rise tomorrow. I guess that if such a thing had occurred to me then I would believe too and it just wouldn’t matter how rational or well reasoned the argument - I would “know” that it was wrong and I was right. This is immensely frustrating to those of us who do not believe, precisely because we don’t ‘believe’ - we look for evidence. That, wholly subjective evidence can never be provided objectively - thus we can never reconcile the two sides. I too feel the urge to dismiss all religious believers (and I mean all), but common sense, and experience, tell me that there are very smart people out there who believe in supernatural beings. I know I am wrong to label them all fools - that can’t be right - but surely they can all be foolish. All of us are foolish at some point - maybe every day. Liberal – if you believe that you are totally free to indoctrinate your children with whatever nonsense you were fed then, yes, you are a fool. I’m truly sorry to say that – I have no desire to insult you or pick a fight but for crying out loud! Surely everyone’s’ children deserve a chance to be educated free of the prejudices and blind faith of their parents. What chance have any of us got if our kids are filled with the same spite and blind bigotry that we exhibit in world and national politics today? Education is not (as Stephen Fry once said) training. Train roses – educate children. I live in the UK and this whole subject isn’t really an issue here. The only person in our government who thinks that invoking god will win votes is Tony Blair. I don’t know anyone at all who believes - not one single person (unless they are keeping it secret of course!) Regardless of the statistics quoted earlier - amongst my age group and below (that’s 40 downwards) religion is an utter meaningless irrelevance. Seriously. It is bewildering, bemusing, and sometimes downright scary, when we look to the US and see people that genuinely seem to believe that there is a god. Everyone I know equates god with Santa Claus – I mean, in terms of reality. What hope reconciliation and world peace if education is outlawed? The only way we can have hope for the future is precisely if children are allowed to see and know things as they are – not as we would wish them. American atheists – I sincerely hope you are not the minority the statistics seem to suggest – but even if you are, please – never give up the fight. FinnAgain, Gobear and Ghanima – you say it so much better than I can. You are the America that the sane world looks to for some sort of reassurance. Thank God for you. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2004, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-your-god-damned-idiocy-out-of-my-education/277358/150 "2004-12-01T20:23:31Z")
> [@Lord Ashtar](#): > > How’s about everyone picks their own label for their religious (or lack thereof) beliefs? That’d be cool, _except_ that **Corner Case** asserted that you need faith to be an atheist. Saying you don’t need faith, because you have your own definition of atheist, doesn’t make sense. You can’t have it both ways. Forget the freaking definitions if you like. Claiming that you can hold some position that you can’t prove, but don’t take on faith, is internally inconsistent. ---
**Author:** ![Meatros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2004, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-your-god-damned-idiocy-out-of-my-education/277358/151 "2004-12-01T20:26:07Z")
> [@ultrafilter](#): > > They don’t give the God/no God hypotheses equal weight, as you said an agnostic would do, and they don’t completely disbelieve in God. What are they? Most agnostics are in fact, atheists, as they don’t have any belief in any deities. Agnosticism is a position on whether you can know whether God exists or not; NOT whether you believe any way (fideism) or not (atheism). > [@ultrafilter](#): > > I see the atheists here wanting to have their cake and eat it too. I don’t see why you’d think that, but that’s your perogative. > [@ultrafilter](#): > > If you believe in things that aren’t supported by the available evidence (and by your own admission, there’s no evidence that could completely disprove the existence of God), you have faith in something. Actually you are putting the cart before the horse here; in order to believe in something we need to know what that something is, don’t we? We need something better then vague attributes, otherwise how do you know that something could exist (as opposed to being a square-circle)? What does it mean to say I believe in Snarflewidgets if we don’t have the slightest clue as to what Snarflewidgets are? Do you have faith that Snarflewidgets exist? No, probably not seeing as I just made them up. So you would be lacking the belief in Snarflewidgets, or an “Asnarflewidgetist”. Also, please explain what evidence there would be to constitute that something _doesn’t_ exist, seeing as you seem to think there would be some (and thereby trying to shift the burden of proof toward the atheist). > [@ultrafilter](#): > > **Lord Ashtar** , the issue here isn’t about labels. It’s about the claim that atheism doesn’t require faith in anything. Atheism is just the lack of faith in God/Gods, beyond that, the atheist could have faith in things. ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2004, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-your-god-damned-idiocy-out-of-my-education/277358/152 "2004-12-01T20:35:37Z")
> [@ultrafilter](#): > > They don’t give the God/no God hypotheses equal weight, as you said an agnostic would do, and they don’t completely disbelieve in God. What are they? > > I see the atheists here wanting to have their cake and eat it too. If you believe in things that aren’t supported by the available evidence (and by your own admission, there’s no evidence that could completely disprove the existence of God), you have faith in something. That’s ridiculous. I’ve already disounted _beleif_–I said that the likelihood of god’s existence is remote. That’s not faith, that’s based on lack of evidence. Take the ichneumon wasp. The wasp stings a caterpillar, lays an egg on its paralyzed body, which hatches and devours the caterpillar alive. That is merely one example of natural phenomena that show that a loving Creator probably does not exist. Certainly, most of the stories given in the Bible that are supposed to prove God’s existence are fraudulent, e.g., archaeology shows that the Jews were never slaves in Egypt, thus no Moses, no Exodus, no Edward G. Robinson getting his Technicolor comeuppance. I am perfectly willing to be convinced that any gods exist if you can show me compelling evidence that will make me believe. But being skeptical of theism is not in any way a faith of its own. If atheism is a religion, then bald is a hair color. ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2004, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-your-god-damned-idiocy-out-of-my-education/277358/153 "2004-12-01T20:40:39Z")
Man, the One Percent Society is so not exclusive enough, if they’re presenting those numbers as qualifying scores. I need to start a Half-Percent Society or something. Plus, the web design is fugly. ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2004, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-your-god-damned-idiocy-out-of-my-education/277358/154 "2004-12-01T20:43:18Z")
In the extremely unlikely event that the fundie Christian eschatology outlined in the Left Behind books comes to pass, I plan on being a Tribulation saint, getting saved and preaching the Gospel until I’m guillotined for refusing to take the Mark of the Beast. Y’see, I’m a skeptic but I’m no fool. I’ve alwys thought the token scientist in horror films is an idiot for saying, “There must be a rational explanation” when presented with supernatural activity. If vampires exist, then the set of rational explantions expands to include vampires. Ditto for gods. If really convincing evidence for Osiris or Odin comes along, I’m perfectly willing to convert. Until then, I reserve my right to doubt. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2004, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-your-god-damned-idiocy-out-of-my-education/277358/155 "2004-12-01T20:43:53Z")
> [@bup](#): > > That’d be cool, _except_ that **Corner Case** asserted that you need faith to be an atheist. Saying you don’t need faith, because you have your own definition of atheist, doesn’t make sense. You can’t have it both ways. > > Forget the freaking definitions if you like. Claiming that you can hold some position that you can’t prove, but don’t take on faith, is internally inconsistent. Nope. It’s only a problem if you insist that atheism is the belief in no gods. And gods, not God, since the Western god is only one of an infinite set of possible gods. Give me descriptions of all of them, (using a modification of Peano’s Fifth Axiom 🙂 ) and I’ll tell you if I believe they don’t exist or withhold belief from lack of evidence. I know the God who created the universe 6,000 years ago in 7 days doesn’t exist (or do as well as I know I have a computer in front of me) but I don’t know that the god of Procyron V doesn’t exist. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2004, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-your-god-damned-idiocy-out-of-my-education/277358/156 "2004-12-01T20:49:30Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Actually, no evidence has been presented that this is true. From the linked story (emphasis mine):Now it is entirely possible that some run-amok secular humanist school administrator is purging all references to God/gods from the classroom. However, given the tenor of the story and the lack of substantive information, I would guess that it is at least as likely that the teacher in question has been cutting out little snippets of various documents tailored to “prove” that the U.S. is a “Christian” country and the principal has decided to eliminate the proselytizing that the teacher had been carrying out in the classroom. That was my reading of the story. It sounds like an avowed Christian teacher was teaching bad history to make a point. None of the quotes given in the story were counter to the position the US is a Christian nation. I doubt he discussed Jefferson’s version of the NT, or the Treaty of Tripoli. And I know my daughter in a California public school had, in 7th grade, an extensive and very fair unit on world religions. BTW, a very large number of students around here are not Christian, so this kind of distortion is exceptionally offensive. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2004, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-your-god-damned-idiocy-out-of-my-education/277358/157 "2004-12-01T20:51:15Z")
> [@Meatros](#): > > Incorrect. Atheism is a=without, theos=god, ism=belief. > > On the other hand, theism is god belief. > > If you doubt this then what God do agnostics believe in? If they don’t believe in any…then wouldn’t they be ‘without the belief in God’? Man, everybody’s saying what atheist means, but I’m the only one who’s linked [the definition](http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=atheist). BTW, **Meatros** , your personal definition of atheist, taken from a literal parsing of Greek, is incorrect. Check my link if you don’t have faith. **Voyager** , I agree with your points, but I don’t get how they refute mine. You can’t assert that you know something if you’re neither willing to say you know it’s proveable, nor that you take it on faith. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2004, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-your-god-damned-idiocy-out-of-my-education/277358/158 "2004-12-01T20:55:40Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Pst. > > The official view of the Catholic Church is that evolution theory and the story in Genesis are fully compatible. Specifically, if you take the 7 “days” as being “periods of time” and not “24-hr periods” (and there’s plenty evidence that time counting wasn’t exactly up to Rolex standards when the Genesis was written, not to mention they still hadn’t invented archaeology), it’s kind’a funny how nice it fits with the Big Bang, paleoastrophysics, the soup thingee and the general order given by archaeology (first life appears in the seas, plants before animals, mankind is a relatively recent thing). Several of the biggest students of fossils and evolution during the mid-20th century were Jesuits. Anybody who thinks the Soldiers of Jesus are dumb has never argued with one (that’s what “SJ” means, “Societatis Jesus” but in the military sense, after all their founder had been a mercenary captain and their head is a General). I think you give them too little credit. The “day not a day” argument doesn’t really work. In the Hebrew, the day is the standard 24 hour one, but more importantly the text goes “it was evening, it was morning, the Nth day.” My reading of the latest statement, though, is that the Garden of Eden was not a literal place, and Adam represents the first person with the capacity to sin, and the first person with a soul, though perhaps biologically indistinguishable from his parents. That’s a much better argument, I think, than quibbling about the meaning of day and bird. I’m not Catholic, but my understanding is that children in Catholic schools get an excellent education in evolution. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2004, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-your-god-damned-idiocy-out-of-my-education/277358/159 "2004-12-01T21:34:48Z")
> [@gobear](#): > > If atheism is a religion, then bald is a hair color. That doesn’t make any sense. A lack of religion might be atheism, but a lack of hair color is not baldness. A lack of hair color is albinism. ---
**Author:** ![Meatros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2004, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-your-god-damned-idiocy-out-of-my-education/277358/160 "2004-12-01T21:35:14Z")
> [@bup](#): > > Man, everybody’s saying what atheist means, but I’m the only one who’s linked [the definition](http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=atheist). Perhaps you should read it next time: > [@](#): > > One who disbelieves or denies the existence of God or gods. Do you notice the **disbelieves** OR denies part? > [@bup](#): > > BTW, **Meatros** , your personal definition of atheist, taken from a literal parsing of Greek, is incorrect. Check my link if you don’t have faith. Your link reinforces what I said. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-your-god-damned-idiocy-out-of-my-education/277358.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-your-god-damned-idiocy-out-of-my-education/277358.md?page=9)