Can’t we just oppose ignorance and cruelty, be it stemming from communism or religion or sports fanatacism or high-school pecking orders? They all kinda mush together, anyway.
Amen. Or sending affirmative thoughts or whatever. 
In the interest of fact, neither the Philippines nor Nigeria can be described as “Islamic states”, being vastly Christian - though I believe that both allow Shari’a courts some jurisdiction. And while I’m not claiming that women’s rights in Bangladesh and Indonesia are anything to praise, they are comparable with majority-Hindu India, and both nations have had female rulers in the recent past.
Regarding the condemnation of the entire religion, again I take some exception to that, given that the many Muslims I know would agree with our outrage.
That aside, regarding the OP, I share in your disgust. My (atheist) friends’ three-year-old kid has a cuddly dog called “The Little Baby Jesus”, and so far they haven’t been sentenced to flogging.
Atheism isn’t based on faith; it’s based on the rational assumption of nonexistence without evidence that we apply everywhere else but religion ( which is why The Invisible Pink Unicorn and Flying Spaghetti Monster work as counterarguments/mockeries ). Nor does it have an ideology, or a worldview. It’s simply a single, isolated belief; that’s not a religion or even close to it.
*Bolding mine
Der Trihs
I agree with you, but wouldn’t it be a lack of belief? Everyone does it to some extent but I hate the thought that I’m running any aspect of my life based on belief.
Regards
Testy
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Besides, I have all the evidence I need. Sorry if you don’t. It’s also not the case that atheism is a single belief, the proof of which is the fact that there are many atheists here who disagree with you about quite much. Unless you’re saying that you’re the One True Atheist or something.
You have absolute faith that what your senses show you about the world-what you see and touch and taste and feel-is all that there is, and your ideology and world view are based upon that. That’s your definition, and by it, your atheism is a religion.
Okay, I got lost in the flurry of posts.
<tongue in cheek>Using that logic, would it be fair to ask that it would only take one evil Christian organization to invalidate the claim that Christianity is inherently good?</tic>
I suppose it depends on if you consider a lack of belief a belief in itself. I’d call it disbelief myself, now that I think about it; the only real way to have no beliefs on God/religion would be to never have heard of the idea.
When there’s no evidence that the thing in question is even possible, and when it’s asserted qualities violate known physical laws, yes it is. And in general, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” is exactly how people operate; I don’t need to prove to you that an invisible Dungeons & Dragons Orc has materialized behind you and is about to bash your brains in. There’s no evidence of such a thing, nor that such a thing is possible, and it would violate various physical laws; so you aren’t even going to consider it possible. Which is the same attitude you should take towards religion, but won’t.
You have no evidence at all. And no, masturbatory philosophical arguments aren’t evidence.
:rolleyes: Of course they disagree with me, because I’m right about atheism not being a belief system. If they all agreed with me on other things besides the nonexistence of gods, then you’d have a belief system; but then you wouldn’t have atheism any more, but a belief system than had atheism as one of it’s components.
Except that that is not faith, but a reasonable assumption, based on massive overlapping evidence, the fact that it’s the simplest alternative that fits the observed data, and the practical fact that it works. It’s not based on faith at all.
And once again, the defenders of religion are pushed into solipsism. Always pathetic.
One of my friends once said,“Whomping on religion is the only good thing the Soviets ever did.” I tend to agree, even though it clearly didn’t work.
You just refuse to listen. You hear nothing but your own voice. Like I said, I have evidence. YOU don’t have evidence. That sucks for you, but I’m sorry. There frankly is no evidence that you are reasonable.
And yet that is exactly the sort of argument you’re offering here. Except that yours is a logical fallacy called denial of the antecedant. (For your convenience, the cite is an atheist website.)
"If the God of the Bible appeared to me, personally, that would certainly prove that Christianity was true. But God has never appeared to me, so the Bible must be a work of fiction."Fallacy.
I’ve seen people try to explain the difference to you between B~G and ~BG. You’re a B~G guy. You believe in Nogod.
How quaint your ignorance is. The observational methods you worship are based on a philosophical principle called “falsification” which itself is not falsifiable. I have never seen a more mystical worldview than materialism.
Backfired even. Russia is one of the world’s fastest growing hotbeds of religion. (Cite..)
The problem is that you have no evidence either which would explain the phenomenon of life itself and how it came into being. In other words, secondary beliefs conflicting with known physical laws notwithstanding, you have no firmer evidentiary ground to stand on in your assertion that there is no God than those who assert there is. Until such time as these questions are answered, atheists cannot claim that their beliefs are any more accurate than the beliefs of those who do believe in God.
Seriously, Gods exist as we do not know the exact mechanism of how life began over 3 billion years ago?
We have already seen reproducible lab test where ribozymes can reproduce themselves. We seem to be working closer to theories of how life can start.
What physical laws are being violated BTW?
I am not an atheist, but your post is just plain silly.
Jim
The real difference is that you make up stories that make you feel better, then you actually believe your own stories. We have the guts to to admit that we don’t know, and the courage to seek the answers. Now, I hope you enjoy your stories and get some kind of satisfaction from them-I’m going to keep looking for answers.
Religion itself is rather neutral, regardless of which religion. The problem is extremism. Extreme teddy bear worship would be just as bad.
Even if you name him Muhammad?
Well, not in any version of English I read or speak. Religion is, by definition, a set of beliefs concerning supernatural explanations for the nature of the universe. Communism is not a religion, and many people who embrace it will cite evidence that supports its merits.
If anything you have faith in is a religion, any number of absurd things can be classified as “religions.” I have faith in my wife; does that make our marriage a religion?
Hardly. The problem with your post, Czarcasm, as well as yours, What Exit?, is that you are both so eager to claim the intellectual high ground and fling insults that you expose your own considerable ignorance. It’s perfectly obvious from both your posts that you haven’t the vaguest idea as to what I believe, for while I do indeed believe in the existence of God (and to a certain extent intelligent design, given that I’ve been given to believe–and have even seen it expressed on this board–that evolution is adaptive, not creative), I simply find the notion that creatures so complexly constructed as those here on earth simply evolved somehow from primal ooze to be more of a strain on credibility than the belief that it was created by God.
Further, whether life on earth is the result of seeding by aliens or lightning bolt from the sky or ribozymes or whatever, in my mind none of it discounts the possibility of the existence of God, for who is to say that God didn’t create the mechanisms that made them possible. So in a sense, it’s turtles all the way down in terms of my belief in God, unless some way is found to totally disprove the possibility of his hand (metaphorically speaking) having been at work in the creation of life and the universe itself.
You apparently brought up that life violates physical laws, care to expound upon that statement that I called silly.
I agree, scientific proof of how life began does not disprove God, but you seemed to raise this as proof that God exist. This is what I found silly. If you believe in God, believe in God, don’t look for unknowns in Science to prove God.
Jim