I don’t buy that line of reasoning. Cultures contradict each other on all sorts of objectively definable concepts and concrete physical questions.
Scientists don’t agree on everything and even what they do agree on is sometimes contradicted by differing approaches.
Saying any given religion is wrong because it contradicts (or is contradicted by) another is akin to saying a style of music is wrong because it doesn’t follow another style’s rules.
Given a mutually contradictory plurality of opinions on an objective question, the majority of opinions will be wrong, even if any particular one is right. It’s sort of a semantic point, but kind of refutes Pascal’s wager under certain assumptions. Those assumptions are essentially that there is an objective reality and that we can take the mutually exclusive statements at face value (Surah 5:72, John 14:6 for example).
Edit: also that the followers and the deity took them at face value. If both the Creator of the world and the majority of professing Christians/Muslims actually believe that those passages were inspired, but not literal truth and that a simple belief in the deity is enough to ascend to heaven, then one could hold that the majority of religious people could be correct. But I haven’t seen evidence of deistic prosyletising from Mecca or the Vatican City, nor from the actual professors of the faith.
I agree that it is a somewhat semantic point, and I don’t mean to belabor the issue, but even in the article you linked to we find this:
My point is that there isn’t necessarily a mutually exclusive case with religion.
I get your point in the verses you included, but maybe a better way of making my point is to ask if Democrats are wrong. How about Republicans?
These people disagree on just about everything (talk about knee-jerk!). But I don’t think it makes any sense to say that being a Democrat is wrong, or that Republicanism is wrong.
I see your point that the act of changing a belief doesn’t necessarily make one open-minded, but I think there is a distinction to be made between adding a belief that you didn’t have and taking a belief you were raised with and reconsidering it.
If one defines “not holding a belief in god or gods”, then it still only makes sense to speak of beings capable of holding beliefs. Describing a tomato as an atheist is ridiculous unless you think a tomato is possible of becoming a theist. Tomatos aren’t believers or non-believers - they are abelievers.
It is entirely acceptable to have a positive disbelief in an entity/concept that contradicts evidence or logic. I can logically have a disbelief in square circles. By a similar process of logic, one can actively disbelieve in a God that is simlutaneously omnipotent, onmiscient, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent on the grounds that such a God is not compatible with the universe as it operates. It takes wild feats of rationalization to juggle word meanings in creative ways to make room for such a god.
Try Salt Lake City.
Well, if we exclude other animals and inanimate objects, thenoffer an arbitrary “age of reason” where one is taught the concept of God… Well, I still can’t argue whether it takes more reasoning or not to accept or reject the proposition (again, fallacious reasoning could support either proposition: Kohlberg puts acceptance of authority below rejecting it outright though, in moral reasoning). I don’t think the issue is particular important though, what is more important is whether there is a logical or empircal support for said entity.
I’d agree that things can be said to be illogical, though theists can propose an illogical deity based on no evidence. We also can’t reject the possibility of physical evidence of the existence of the supernatural outright, but that doesn’t mean we’re more agnostic about it than Russell’s teapot.
You’re free to define words however you wish; however, the widely-accepted definition of atheism is that it is the simple negation of theism. Under that definition, if you are not a theist, then you are an atheist.
Agnosticism and gnosticism are likewise perfect opposites; you must be one or the other.
Powers &8^]
No. An atheist positively denies the truth of theism. That still leaves the possibility of taking the position that the answer is unknown, or even that it is unknowable.
Absolutely not. Properly speaking, the word “agnostic” refers to the affirmative belief that the question of theism or atheism cannot be answered; however, it has been so often used to mean a simple absence of the decision that it is no longer safe to use it in its original meaning. Gnosticism, on the other hand, is the name of a form of religious thought that probably reached its peak in the 2nd century, according to which knowledge as such is the key to all religion. (It still survives in small sects, such as Kabbalism.) It usually refers nowadays to various pseudo-Christian sects that were in the business of selling holy cheat codes. They were characterized by a strict dichotomy of spirit=good, matter=bad, and often claimed that the God of the Old Testament was demonstrably evil, or feeble-minded, for He created the world, which ought never to have been done.
kneel kneel genuflect stand sing kneel eat drink genuflect triangle kneel genuflect sing recite recite offer square genuflect recite offer kneel up kneel recite sing triangle down square square kneel genuflect
I’ve seen it rendered as an illegal number, but I think I’m safe here.
btw the above code extends the Water-To-Wine feat to Motor Oil, Used Anti-Freeze and Mercon V Transmission Fluid.
I’m sorry, I’ve only just started lurking here (though I did start ask a question awhile back), but this post caught my attention.
The truth is, while you are 100% right, there are atheists that are like that, I could point to dozens of message boards where I’ve debated theists (well, responded to, at any rate) where the exact same description applies to them.
In my experience, people are people, regardless of what they say the believe (or don’t believe). You’re going to find loudmouths in every discussion, regardless of their side. I sincerely hope that this description you’ve posted doesn’t match most of the atheists you’ve dealt with, because it doesn’t begin to match most of the theists I’ve dealt with (or even most of the atheists).
Just my two cents.
Marc
Of course. But then, I don’t expect better from theists who actively try to evangelize, and so am sometimes pleasantly surprised by one who turns out to be thoughtful.
Not by any means. It doesn’t describe me, nor most of the non-religious people I know. That’s why it’s so annoying to encounter the few who are like that, who act like and argue like the fundies they rail against. In their minds, I’m not ‘pure’ enough for them, so I must secretly be a theist.
I’m not sure why I gave this a pass earlier, but it’s a fallacy of equivocation that obnoxious atheists are equally as bad as obnoxious Christians. For one, they’re like herding cats, there’s very little characteristic of atheists specifically to be offended about (other than the fact that they most likely won’t follow one’s particular dogma because they don’t believe it is divinely inspired). The most coherent thing I’ve seen most atheists agree to is revoking the tax exempt status of Churches. Probably secondary to that, but not universally encountered, is that people at high risk of STIs should be permitted to use prophylaxis. Admittedly the most extreme examples from Dawkins are that parents should not be free to raise their children in the same religion as they are. But he isn’t proposing legislation on that matter - Gallup polls show that people are less likely to vote for an atheist than pretty much any other minority - it’s like the collectives in Catalonia - one thing that the fascists, communists and social democracies could all agree on.
What about the fundies then? Well, they’re protesting outside of funerals, setting up groups like the ACLJ that have a free pass at the Republican propaganda channel, using their position to bash homosexuals, consult the president on religious matters and then do drugs and have sex with men and trying to convince Ugandans that homosexuality is an abomination that should be punishable by death as per Leviticus 20:13.
Concrete physical questions can be answered by evidence, though.
True, but where scientists (credibly) disagree, then the consensus is that the answer is unknown.
No, because religions posit themselves as ABSOLUTE TRUTH! Religions are supposed to be true. Hinduism and Christianity cannot be both true. Same for the others. So it’s necessary, when following one religion, to disbelieve the others, logically (and the bossier gods back that up with threats!). It’s not a matter of taste, and religious people don’t see it that way, if they’re following their book correctly.
I went to school in England in the 1980s. At first, we had prayers and sang hyms. Later on, that stopped. I’m not sure what the law is, but I know it happened. I’m prrrrretty sure kids today don’t have to put up with the nonsense I did, but I’d have to ask to be certain. I’ve got a friend who has kids in school, I’ll ask her.
But, like the Queen, who is symbolically the head of the country, and head of the Church of England, England’s official church, nobody really takes it seriously. It’s symbolic. It’s cute, like kids singing carols. Like I said, we’re births, deaths and marriages Christians. And the last one is just because churches are prettier than Registry Offices. They go along with the big fluffy dresses and cute bridesmaids. Mostly it’s women who choose to get married in churches, for the romanticism, and because it’s the “done thing”. The grooms are less bothered, tho I suppose that’s the case in weddings generally, it’s a show put on for the bride.
As I said, church attendances are pretty much non-existent, and it’s started a crisis as the most reliably religious people, the very old, are now dying off at a pretty high rate.
Well according to the British Social Attitudes Survey of 2011 a sizeable minority considered themselves religious (49% said they were religious). While a significantly lower proportion than the professing religious in the US, it still doesn’t compare to the proportion of irreligious to religious in Vietnam for example.
Well, the easiest way I can argue back, is to say that I personally know nobody who goes to church regularly. I know quite a few Muslims who take it seriously, but no white people, who make up most of the country. A few older, first-generation black immigrants take Christianity seriously, but their descendants tend not to.
This is just from living in England my whole life, watching our TV, reading our newspapers, and talking to our people. Basically, my point is, religion MATTERS in the USA. You have people arguing over the religious imposition of this-and-that, religions trying to force people to live their way. And they’re taken seriously. The point of view of religious people in the USA seems, to me, to be important there, they seem to have quite a powerful voice, a powerful lobby.
None of this exists in the UK. As I said before, births-deaths-marriages Christians, and that’s only 49% of the population according to your figures, and that’s without discounting the Muslims and others. If you could get hold of figures for regular church attendance, I think you’d find Islam already has Christianity beaten for that in the UK.
Actually, according to this source and wikipedia, while mosque attendance may exceed Church of England attendance, it certainly does not exceed Church attendance in general. This just demonstrates the necessity of using sources to back up claims, or we’ll believe the dichotomous stuff peddled to us by the Daily Mail.
I can’t argue parity on the importance given to religion in the various countries, but there is still plenty of evidence that religion plays an important role in our society. For example, we still have a monarchy as opposed to a democratic republic - the concept of primogeniture was and is supported solely by a feeble claim of “A Deo rex, a rege lex”. Like America, we have faith schools that have no requirement to give children an adequate understanding of biology and that may in fact defraud them. Unlike America, these schools are publicly funded. The aforementioned bishops actually having the power to vote against proposed legislation or a voice in Parliament at all is a throwback to earlier, more religious times. Likewise is the convention that the Prime Minister can not be a Catholic - based on the ridiculous assumption that they’d immediately instigate a revolution or something. Finally, the Racial and Religious Hatred act probably would be easier to challenge in America based on first amendment rights (legislation Westboro and the KKK would probably run afoul of).
Thank you, you said it much better than I could. See it like this: The terms are about as relevant to me as “Which football team do you root for?” or “Do you prefer automatic or stick shift?” as I am totally uninterested in sports and I don’t drive.
While the existences of gods are unknowable, since it’s impossible to prove something doesn’t exist, given enough get-out clauses; they’re in the same logical category as fairies and orbital teapots. And it’s generally not seen as sensible to believe in them. So an atheist is not making any stronger assertion than someone who says there are no fairies. Which have, in the past, been widely believed in, and appeared in a lot of “factual” literature.
And there’s the alternative hypothesis, “it’s all made up”. If you had to pick between the two cases, then which is more likely?
Strictly speaking the nonexistence of gods is unknowable, like the nonexistence of unicorns. It is quite possible to know if they exist if they would just show up. Same with fairies, of course.