Sure, there’s nothing we can be “certain” of, but there are things that seem to sneak past the validation process with a different set of rules, coupled with statements that somehow separate this particular thing from the herd, but for no other reason than ones that are made up by that individual. Statements like “it can’t be judged by the same rules because it’s just different”. Sez who???
I dunno…most atheists in these parts don’t claim to know. In fact, most freely admit god’s existence is unknown. Not “unknowable”, mind you…just not known at this time. And the proof offered by believers is unverifiable. Hence, the “faith” thing. Most believers in these parts freely admit that it’s faith; not knowledge, that drives their belief.
Aww darnit, now I’m even more confused. :smack:
I thought it was the agnostics who say the existence of God isn’t knowable, and the atheists are the ones who come down firmly on the side of “NO GOD”???
No, I’m saying that logic must abide by the rules of logic. If you (generic “you”) are attempting to use reason to convince me of the truth of the Bible/Koran/Bhagavad Gita/1973 Ford Capri Owner’s Manual and your reasoning is poor, you can’t use your faith to paper over the flaws. I may only be agnostic but even I know there ain’t no God of the Gaps.
I don’t intend to dissuade someone from faith, only from faulty logic. And yet it’s surprising how many people seem to base their faith on such gelatinous foundations.
Not at all. I know many highly intelligent people, even scientists, who are people of faith.
It’s not about consistency, it’s about verifiability. Faith makes many claims that cannot be objectively tested. Where they can be tested, however, faith needs to accept the result and move on.
Reason is a tool and, like all tools, is not necessarily useful in all situations. I like peanut butter cookies, postmodern art, the Harry Potter books and contributing to internet messageboards. There’s no logic to it; I just like them. But at least I accept that YMMV - how many of the faithful will claim the same?
Josh McDowell. It’s been a while, but IIRC the crux of his “Lunatic, Liar or Lord” shtick was that if one accepts the Biblical reports as historical fact then the logical conclusion is that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, an argument which holds up reasonably well as long as you don’t argue with that rather big “if”.
I’ve always understood (although I’m willing to admit that I may be wrong) that agnostics are people who don’t know whether or not God exists, while atheists are people who don’t think that God exists. Theoretically, if an atheist were presented with incontrovertible proof of the existence of God, they could become a theist. The question is, what is considered “incontrovertible proof”. Quoting a book that says that God exists and claiming that it must be right because God wrote that book (or inspired someone to write it) isn’t going to cut it. There was a thread on the SDMB relatively recently asking atheists and agnostics what they would accept as proof of God’s existence. It was interesting how many people skirted the question by stating that no proof would be acceptable because they knew that God didn’t exist, but were unable to provide any basis for this knowledge.
To be fair to him, I think we should say that he doesn’t leave the ‘if’ just hanging there and does in fact have a whole load of arguments as to why it can be answered in the affirmative. Maybe his assertions on the subject are all wrong, but I just wanted to correct what looks like a statement to the effect that he doesn’t deal with the ‘if’.
A fair point, and anyone interested in that and with a lot of free time is invited to peruse his “Evidence That Demands a Verdict”, and the secular rebuttals to it, and his rebuttals of the rebuttals, and the rebuttals of those rebuttals, and so forth.
[quote=“Blaster_Master, post:21, topic:479255”]
I agree with the general sentiment of his article, but ITR is right that the article is unintentially condescending.
However, the problem that he doesn’t state, is that athiests do the same things to Christians. There’s plenty of prominent athiests (like Dawkins), and even a number of posters on this board who employ essentially the same methodology that Christians are being accused of in the article. Just as much as a Christian trying to convince an Athiest that he should believe in absence of proof, Athiests constantly telling Christians that there is no proof is perceived exactly the same way. I know that there’s no scientific proof, constantly reminding me of it isn’t going to convince me of anything, that’s exactly what faith is, belief in the absence of proof.
I want to preface my remarks by stating for the record that I am not a christian or an athiest and I don’t give a shit either way. I find both sides to be capable of bigotry, intolerance and of being hypocritical. Below is a link to a documentary called “The trouble with atheists” It is a great response to the intellectual arrogance, smugness and self-righteous bullshit that they accuse christians.
http://www.moviesfoundonline.com/trouble_with_atheism.php
All
I think I’m deaf.
I wonder if he felt we were unable to follow along using normal-sized, non-underlined and non-bolded text.
Screaming something at me doesn’t help at all.
Maybe he was looking for the “How to Yell At Atheists” thread?
Also (for the general public): It’s A-T-H-E-I-S-T, not A-T-H-I-E-S-T. Don’t make me use the “athy/athier/athiest” joke.
When atheists form large organisations that have the backing of military forces and the might of law behind them, then we can consider them as much of a threat as the major religious players. Atheist suicide-bombers, anyone?
I really liked that video. It likely deserves it’s own thread. I started to watch, saw how long it was and planned to give it a few minutes. I watched it all. The comments were also interesting. Reminded me of SDMB.
It’s interesting, the need to be certain where there is no real certainty seems to affect atheists and believers. Since we’re all human my guess is as atheist numbers grow the relative % of those with a more radical view will be roughly the same as among the believers. Just a guess.
The thing I might challenge in the video is using older societies to show that violence occurs in atheist societies as well, but not using more modern societies to show that some societies have flourished as atheism gained numbers.
IMO it seems relative to , leadership and their goals, economics, and the societies place on the world stage.
It was amusing to see Little catch Dawkins and the other chap on the Stalin question and watch them fumble about. The problem seems to be that if you blame that kind of violence on ambition, economics, and other factors, it may also let religion off the hook in other examples. God forbid! 
I know a lot of atheists and believers have a live and let live attitude which seems to be a good choice. However, I also agree with Sam Harris that religious beliefs need to be questioned because of how they affect society. Let’s put all belief systems on equal footing. There has to be some work done to promote understanding. Believers have to understand , if they ever will, that their religious beliefs are really just their opinions and in a very diverse world an attitude of absolute certainty can cause a lot of problems. Personally, I found accepting the provisional quality of my own belief system to be more realistic and freeing. I go forward based on what I believe now with the expectation that my belief system will grow and change as I gain experience and knowledge. There are a lot of things that may or may not be true and most of them are not crucial to day to day life.
True, but God is not the Halting Problem. The problem with religion is that there isn’t even the foundation of logic and evidence beyond which one might want to use faith to find god. The evidence shows that there is nothing to explain, and given that it is not too much to ask of logic to let it tell you that there is no reason to believe in a supernatural deity.
Having a fossil missing in an evolutionary line doesn’t mean that you get to throw out all of evolution, and not being able to prove all theorems does not mean that 2+2 doesn’t equal 4 (base > 4). The incompleteness of logic is not evidence for a deity.
I didn’t know about anything at all about JM (probably because I do try not to notice those “out there” types of Christians), but that wiki pic of him gave me the creeps right off the bat, geez. I also get bored easily, as I did halfway through that wiki article. :o
And you should know I also had a sudden impulse to check my spelling in all my posts, yikes!..
… whew, all is well. 
I read this thread out of interest and have no desire for a debate. But this question bears comment, if only because it’s a common misconception. Atheists come is several flavors, but the dominant usage is that we don’t believe in God, not that we believe in no God. The difference resides in whether we claim to be able to prove the substance of the matter. Not able to prove, though, shouldn’t be equated with real doubt.
I’m prepared to operate on the premise that there is no God, once I get a sufficiently detailed description of what God supposedly is.
Just proves that Dawkins is an amateur. Atheist Dopers know that the proper response is that Stalinism, Maoism, Pol Pot-ism etc are all religions, and they’d have had that card on the table in a femtosecond.
Yeah, I think Little would have laughed even harder. I know I would have and I’ve seen that argument several times.
I’m surprised all this discussion of obnoxious dogmatic atheists hasn’t kicked up the name of Christopher Hitchens. Every interview I’ve heard in which religion has been discussed has involved him heaping fruity abuse upon all believers everywhere, and in particular any within literal spitting distance. Next to him, Dawkins is Miss Manners. Hitchens is a horrible man and one whom I would happily disavow.
Bill Maher is equally dismissive of believers but he’s frequently too busy making cheap gags to be genuinely offensive on the subject.