Yes.It is the logical default. the starting point.
It’s not something that needs to be “proven,” because it makes no positive assertion. It’s an absence of belief, not a belief in itself.
His “position” is simply that there isn’t any evidence for sky gods. That’s not anything that requires evidence. It’s just an observation that theists have not produced evidence for their own extraordinary claims.
Pretending to false respect for foolish beliefs, lying about how you consider their viewpoint just as reasonable, not complaining about or arguing against conversion attempts, putting up without complaint with anti-atheist disdain and insults, publicly agreeing with the lies of religious apologists in order to fit in.
Acting as though religious beliefs deserve to be treated differently than any other sort of belief.
IMHO, more specifically: Acting as though religious beliefs deserve to be treated differently than any other sort of [ridiculous] belief.
Except of course that in authentic religion, the ego isn’t comforted. The ego is toast.
Are you this confrontational even with close relatives and friends?
Hmm… Kind of odd. I wasn’t at all trying to brag.
Actually, that is what I mean. Those times when decisions are made or actions performed are the times at which I have agreed to state my opinion and leave it at that.
Sure, I enjoy debating and arguing as much as the next Doper. But, my goal is not to win at all costs, lay on the snark, and ride into the sunset with my chin in the air. Rather, I legitimately enjoy productive dialog. For example, my girlfriend and I both have an environmentalist side to us. She was able to convince me that being a vegetarian is far more ecologically sustainable than eating meat every day. We debated it, I researched it, and I came to the conclusion she’s right. I now eat far less meat.
What I find dissatisfying is the agreement to rule out any chance at such dialog with my significant other on the topic of religion. At the same time, if the alternative is breaking up, I’ll choose to keep my mouth shut.
Yes, I do this on occasion with people. Though I recognize there are certain people and/or times for such verbal jousts.
“Golly, since we can’t know for certain who is right, why don’t we just agree to disagree.”
Which is something most people wouldn’t say to someone who put forth that electricity was really caused by magic spells thrown by invisible wizards, even though this is a damn sight more believable than some of the self-contradictory stuff put out by a lot of religionists.
Have I said it is necessary? No, what I am saying is that Dawkins is wrong to use his own happiness as an example as he exists in a highly, highly unrepresenative situation.
Again, no I’m not. I’m saying that people living in situations far better than the vast majority of the population of the World perhaps should not be preaching to others about what they do and don’t need to be happy.
And how is it relevant if they do?
Maybe I am misrepresenting Dawkins postion slightly here as what he actually said was “How can you take seriously someone who likes to believe something because he finds it ‘comforting’?” in response to Peter Kay’s statement that he believed in God because he found it comforting. Still he is extremely dismissive of people who use religion as a comfort.
My opinion is that it is a belief, at least in the form that Dawkins espouses. I am not a religious person myself, but often don’t see much difference between Dawkins’ zealotry and the zealotry of those he opposes.
It is not a result of first order logic as there is no reason to make a special distinction between a statement and it’s negation. They are both equally statements with the special relationship that if one is true then the other must be false.
Well this is it for me. I don’t see much difference between believing in an unprovable statement and believing in the negation of the statement, which must be equally unprovable.
What if they are incoherent. It doesn’t go anyway to proving the atheist psotion.
Physics, I believe, is a process by which empirical results are used to formulate mathematical models which make empricial predictions. For me the belief that this is the path to higher truths is just that, i.e. a belief.
I think physics doesn’t really have much to say about God, other than in regards to specific claims made by some religious people.
That is of course not what he said. First, very few or no atheists claim to be able to prove the nonexistence of god, since there are so many god varieties out there. Some classes of gods are logically inconsistent, and trivial to disprove, others are basically equivalent to no god at all, as far as we can tell.
If you believe by faith, then by definition you do not believe either through facts or logic. If you claim that logic and/or facts support your god belief, please present them - and also be sure to able to explain why whatever process you use to support your belief can’t be used to support the beliefs of those who accept quite different gods.
I haven’t said I believe in anything. I suppose my postion simply is that I can’t think of any great reasons to give primacy to the atheist postion.
I don’t think this is necessarily true. If I lost my right arm, I’d be unhappy about it. But I’d still be missing my arm.
There are devout people who lose their faith. They may go through the motions of their religion afterwards but they can be desolated by the feeling that it no longer means anything.
How about a homosexual whose religion teaches him homosexuality is a sin? Or a person in a bad marriage whose religion teaches her that divorce is a sin? They might be happier if they lost their religious beliefs and didn’t have to worry about the supernatural consequences of their actions.
How about if you say:
Look, I’m not going to convince you and you’re not going to convince me so it’s utterly pointless to keep arguing about this. Instead, less discuss something less heated and divisive like abortion or gun control.
She sounds like I did up to about ten years ago. I was uncomfortable talking about religion, though I would have pinky-sworn that I totally believed in God. Totally! I just didn’t need to talk about it, man, because well, I totally believed!
But I hated going to mass and I hated when anyone mentioned God and I hated saying grace and I hated praying (and never did it), and I hated reading the Bible and I hated every single thing about all religious expression except Christmas carols.
And when I finally thought about it, I realized that I was an atheist in Catholic clothing my entire life and that I had been avoiding that topic alone because I knew it was so tenuous in its hold on me. I woke up a Catholic and went to bed an atheist, and I’ve never looked back since.
I’m not saying this is true of her, but boy did that look familiar. 
Or, even more likely in my experience: It’s pointless to keep arguing about this, so let’s discuss the best pizza joints in town.
He doesn’t use his own happiness as an example.
It’s not preaching to say you don’t need something, and it’s said in response to people telling those same people they DO need Relion X to be happy.
Because it’s fair to call bullshit on them when they do. which is all Dawkins does,
He’s correct in saying that it’s difficult to take someone seriously who shows such a lack of intellectual rigor or self-reflection.
Your “opnion” is factually incorrect. Atheism is not a belief. If you disagree, please tell me exactly what belief it expresses.