It is a good book. 
Shermer doesn’t attempt to refute God in it. Shermer’s position, at least in ‘Why we believe’ is that of an agnostic atheist. Until he sees reason to believe he doesn’t (basically).
How many people are actually atheists around here? Are we using the term correctly? I would imagine most people being defined by others as “atheists” here are more like myself, being folks who don’t assert absolutely the non-existence of a Supreme Being of suitably god-like nature to warrant the title. They lend no credence to the existence of this Being, but rather await the sufficient evidential proofs (which are not impossible to provide, should such a Being actually exist and choose to reveal Itself in a credible fashion). Likewise, finding the sundry religious traditions of the world wanting for sufficient evidence to support belief, they lend those no credence either. How many here actually assert, with the same confidence displayed by the faithful, that there is no God of any kind, and that this is irrefutable? It’s not clear to me that anyone here does, but I could be wrong.
What the heck is an agnostic atheist? Are there agnostic theists? Isn’t agnostic sufficient for descriptive purposes?
This point has been made over and ovber again, that the evidence for a deity is not sufficient to compel belief. This has had no effect on the folks who call any honest expression of lack of theistic belief “arrogant and condescending.”
[nitpick]Not necessarily.[/nitpick]
We mouthbreathers lack the intellectual subtlety to recognize the difference between hostile generalizations about fundies and prejudice.
Tris
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” ~ Carl Jung
You’re right. I’d ask a mod to change it, but they’re probably sick and tired of it already.
This gets a little nitpicky but technically agnosticism is a belief that the existence/non-existence of God is a question which cannot be known. It doesn’t necessarily mean that an individual agnostic cannot have an opinion, just that he/she does not believe it’s possible to know.
Atheism genericall is simply a lack of theism but it can also be divided into “hard” and “soft” atheism. Hard atheism would be an assertive that God does not exist. Soft atheism is just the position that one does not personally hold theistic belief but does not necessarily assert that God does not or cannot exist. In popular usage, the term “agnostic” seems to be used quite often to mean a soft atheist position. People seem to think being agnostic means “I don’t know,” or “I’m undecided,” when it’s more precise meaning is that “I don’t think it’s possible to find out.”
So you can be an agnostic with an opinion on the existence of God.
I’m not sure it’s fair to blame the actions of the morons who believe in a religion on the religion itself. In one of gobear’s most recent Pit threads, I mentioned that most of the things done in Jesus’ name would probably cause Him to puke in his soup. Just because someone claims to be doing something in Jesus’ name (or Allah’s or Buddah’s or the IPU’s) doesn’t mean that they are.
Recent events have shown me that - A lot of good is done in the name of God.
IANA Theist but I recognise the usefulness of belief. Society would either fall apart or be communist without belief. I wonder what percentage of aid-workers are Atheists? I wonder what percentage of Tsunami donators are Atheists?
People who buy into the Jenkins/LaHaye nonsense are mouthbreathers. Those books are bad theology, badly written, and aimed at peddling a blinkered, literalist reading of the Revelation of St. John. Anyone who sees those books as having merit is at best uneducated and at worst a blithering moron.
And I have no respect for fundamentalists. Period. That goes for fundie Jews and Muslims as well as Christians. If your beliefs give you a code of ethics to follow and make you a better person, good for you. But the fundies aren’t content with their freedom to believe; they want to compel everyone else to follow their religion to the point of wrecking the science curricula in our schools and subverting the separation of church and state. They are the enemy of fredom in this country, and I will never make peace with their pernicious agenda.
And yes, religion serves as an enforcer of community mores as well an explantion of natural phenomena, going all the way back to Ug the caveman.
I think the “arrogant and condescending” part comes in when we state openly that we find belief in anything so evidentially unsupported, and consistently refuted (when the claims achieve the level of refutability) delusory. It appears to matter not at all that this is in no way an abuse of that term, nor that it needn’t be taken as disrespectful, since it in no way reflects on any intrinsic quality of the believer that we can discern. To say one is deluded in this fashion is not the same as saying one is stupid, or insane. The beliefs themselves may be worthy of derision, but that needn’t extend to the believer. If one is so emotionally invested in the beliefs that any honest critique of those beliefs garners feelings of insult, I would counter that those people, in condemning this free exchange of ideas, may seek to stifle debate.
As has been said above, the issue is not as simple as “live-and-let-live” because some theists, it would seem, are bent on compelling everyone within their sphere of influence to behave as the theists would have them, regardless of the fact they have abosolutely nothing to provide by way of a rationale except their belief system, which, as has been clearly shown again and again, is devoid of factual evidence to support it. If non-believers take umbrage, we’re called arrogant and closed-minded. Our tone isn’t sufficiently “civil”. I honestly don’t understand this hypocrcisy at all, nor do I hold much sympathy for those who feel I have no cause myself for feelings of affront. To be a non-believer in the world of believers is to make compromises on a daily basis, and ask nothing in return but to be given a reasonable amount of self-determination, free from the irrational dictates and restrictions of the deluded majority. We are not poor citizens, we do not, generally, act in an unethical manner. We show a great level of decorum, considering the circumstances, yet that’s not enough. We can’t express our doubts as freely as others express their love of God, because this hurts the theists feelings. Well, when did anyone have a right not to be annoyed?
When did respect require uncritical acceptance and unquestioning aquiescence? And what about our feelings? When we are expected to tacitly approve of, and even sometimes participate in, the rituals of the theists who surround us, so as to preserve what they define as a civil society, we have no cause whatsoever to feel we bear a larger burden for the sake of the fragile sensibilities of those who demand our accomodation? This to me is arrogance and intolerance of the highest order, because we are expected to willingly and happily suffer the tyranny of a majority, if that majority choses to weild their power over us. Truly, the gall of some theists is nothing less than shocking, but far be it from us to commit the disrpectful act of simply stating we do not wish to comply because we find their belief system to lack merit.
Oy, gum --you are missing the point. The argument could and has been made (and not just in this thread) that those who do the above in the name of God or Allah are not acting in a manner appropiate to their belief system .
IOW, they are using their faith as a tool to further their own political/cultural agenda–and it is as prevalent today as it was in the Crusades, people are just a bit more sophisticated in their smiting etc.
It is the ABUSE of faith and the world religions that brings so much hell on earth, IMO.
Another example: Communism was intolerant of faith/religion–there was no better standard of behavior for those who did not/would not “fit in” with their creed/agenda whathaveyou. In essence, be it religious or political, abuse of power and the oppression of others is not exclusive to any religion.
I do not see where atheists/agnostics have a superior moral stance than religious/faith based folks. And the CONVERSE is also true. IMO, people tend to forget that.
Sure we can, at least as much as we can prove that the earth is round and that it goes around the Sun.
But I’m curious what you do believe. You say you believe in a god because of the Blind Watchmaker argument, which I don’t buy but do understand. But how do you get from there to the Bible? The only creation story(s) we got there are wrong. If you don’t think so, we can start a creationism thread. Why couldn’t the world have been created by the Titans, or Krishna, or even some god for some other people? Besides the fact that you grew up in a culture believing in God, why him?
Actually that’s not what an atheist is, definitively. An atheist is someone without God belief. It doesn’t matter how certain the atheist is.
A=without, theos=God, ism=belief.
You can be a weak atheist, otherwise known as an agnostic atheist; as in an agnostic= someone who believes that it is impossible to know whether God exists or not, and atheist as in someone who has no beliefs in God.
Or a hard atheist, who says that, without a doubt, there is no God.
Again, that’s not technically an atheist.
I’m going to guess that you think agnosticism is a ‘middle position’; which isn’t the case. Agnosticism addresses a different question then either theism or atheism. Agnosticism addresses certainty in beliefs, not whether you still have them. You can be an agnostic fideist (believe despite certainty) or an agnostic atheist (disbelieve despite certainty).
An agnostic atheist is someone who doesn’t think there is sufficient evidence to be able to say whether or not God exists (the agnostic part), and does not have any beliefs in any deities (the atheist part).
Yes there are agnostic theists, and even agnostic Christians. Typically they are called fideists.
No, agnosticism isn’t sufficient because it doesn’t answer whether the person believes in God or not-it answers a different question: Whether it’s possible to know whether God exists or not.
Because humans are physically incapable to absolutely believe anything 100% (it would require 100% trust that our senses are being ‘truthful’ to the brain) I believe it is somewhat redundant to use the term ‘Agnostic’ to refer to strong atheists like me. It is pedantic.
OK. I was never good at keeping all these philosophical terms straight. I guess I’m at something of a loss to catagorize myself then. I suppose I must be an agnostic atheist, or a “soft” atheist, as DtC mentioned. I find it somewhat oxymoronic to say someone lacks certainty about God’s existence, yet believes. I would simply put all folks on a continuum of belief, or lack thereof, but language fails us when it comes to rendering accurate descriptions in such a framework, I suppose. I put myself in the “Who truly knows?” catagory, with the caveat that those who think they do know lack proofs, and hold no special insight.
I’m quoting the whole thing since it is now way back in the thread (don’t you people ever sleep? )
I’m assuming that you are arguing for a true god, not a god as assembled from the myths of various peoples - myths which I do agree say interesting things about the world, and are beautiful in themselves.
What I don’t get is why a god would need to present what is intended as factual material in such different and contradictory ways? If the Sabbath is so vital, why did not all the creation myths have a Sabbath? The worldwide flood is another example.
Nor do I see why a god would be so sensitive at presenting this information to people without a creation story - and he could have done it early enough so this is the case. Think of god’s moral commands. Are these done to match what the tribe is doing, or do they reflect some higher moral values? Is God such a wimp that if a tribe was conducting human sacrifices, He wouldn’t tell them to stop for fear of hurting their cultural sensitivities
Granted that a creation story would not include quantum physics, would it be so hard to just say it all happened a long time ago? And get the order right? The Hindu story did - are you calling my ancestors in Israel too stupid to get it? 
We don’t know the motivations of those who wrote Genesis, not totally. Enforcing the Sabbath was one. Did they include the creation myths then prevalent, since telling the people that what they knew was correct was easier than making up something new. I’m sure that they didn’t have the facts about how it really happened. They might have believed the myths, or thought the myths were bogus and put them in anyway. Who knows?
And the creation story of the West is not trivial. How much of Christianity is based on Adam and Eve’s sin? In Hebrew school I learned it as an explanation of why we work and why childbirth is painful, so it not being true is no big problem, but if Christ’s sacrifice is necessary because of original sin, and original sin comes from a very specific decision by the father and mother of us all, kicking away the prop of Eden is very significant. I know how the Catholics now handle this, but it seems kind of slapdash (though I respect them not rejecting clear evidence.)
The bottom line is: if you just arrived here from Proxima Centauri, and had no preconceptions, would the plethora of beliefs and morals and teachings about gods in the world suggest a single godhead or either tribal gods or tribal stories?
[QUOTE]
As has been pointed out in this thread stating “there is no God” is only asserting the non-existence of *one more * God than most theists assert do not exist. All monotheists are atheists when it comes to every other God. Would you be offended if I stated “There is no Zeus, no Vishtar, no Great Spirit, no Odin”? Atheism is a *necessary component * of monotheism, by definition.