For the sheer unadulterated hell of it, would you read my posts in context?
I’ve been doing that. The benefits of religion you listed (unity, concretion of money, etc) either aren’t actually benefits, or have secular equivalents that are equal or superior. The problems religion causes can be duplicated by things like nationalism, but they needn’t be. That is to say, if the generation being born right now worldwide turns out to be overwhelmingly atheist, there’s no reason to assume that they will take up tribalism or romantic militarism as a substitute and have the some problems they’d have had with religion. They might just be peaceful, productive, and prosperous, like places in the modern world with a lot of atheists and agnostics. Looking at that map, would you rather live in a random blue country, a random purple country, or a random brown country?
Read 'em and weep, then take a look at the list at the beginning of this thread for further illumination.
Actually worse than I expected…Charles Babbage was a Christian, therefore Jesus was a divine being? Saints preserve us.
Here’s why people were questioning your reading: ealier, when it was pointed out that atheism by itself can’t be the reason people do anything, you took this to mean that an atheist will do nothing. Do you see the huge difference between those two?
And now, when it’s explained that religious beliefs are not rational, but it’s explicitly pointed out that religious people can be rational in other areas of their lives, you somehow take away the meaning that a theist cannot be rational about anything. Do you see the huge difference between those two?
I take it that English is not your first language, but that’s not an excuse for these errors.
I don’t know how he attached a percentage to it, but here’s an answer why the world would be somewhat better off:
Because we wouldn’t have these:
Also the Ku Klux Klan, which belongs in this list but you left it off for some reason.
am our
You seem to be having a big problem distinguishing criticism of a belief from criticism of the believer. Here we can insult posts but not posters, and that is more or less what people are doing in terms of theism.
Humans are good at compartmentalizing their thoughts. Many otherwise sane and rational people are Cubs fans, to use an extreme example. In fact psychology shows that a fair amount of irrationality is inherent in us. You can’t defend theism by taking attacks on it as attacks on theists.
Newton is an excellent example. He was a great physicist but also a total kook about alchemy and astrology, stuff that I’m sure you think is nuts. In science we evaluate work based on the work, not based on the people doing the work.
For many of the people you mention being an atheist would have been hazardous to the health, even worse than being Jewish. Who knows how many people in the past would have been avowed atheists if they could have been exposed to the ideas, seen criticism of Christianity, and not been fearful of their lives.
Look up the experience of Tom Paine, who wasn’t even an atheist but rather a Deist, but a big critic of the idiocy of the Bible.
Not sure if they has been brought up before, but would a world ruled by adherents of Astrology be atheistic? Or Numerology?
Would you like to offer an Atheist book that is better than the bible?
Thank you for your contribution. Can you expand on this?
For the umpteenth time, the only thing atheists have in common are a disbelief in deities. We don’t have a guidebook or a common set of rules to live by. What is your problem?
I wonder if the world could be ruled or guided by a disbelief in deities with no common set of rules to live by?
Better at what? “Principia Naturalis” is better at physics than the bible. “On Liberty” by Mill has a whole lot less appreciation towards slavery than the bible. “If I ran the Zoo” is much better at describing how best to capture a nerd.
I’m not sure we need to go on about this completely unrelated tangent though.
Please detail the common set of rules to live by that can be found in theism.
gloaming…what’s with the oddball posts? Your last few across several threads have been downright nonsensical. Explain it or stop it.
No warning issued, just puzzlement.
The Joy of Cooking.
one is not ‘guided by disbelief’ -
THe ‘common rules’ would be decided without the preconcieved notion of ‘what god wants’
There would be no ‘prophet’ that has a ste of tablets declaring "GOD REVEALED THIS, THEREFORE IT IS GOOD’
You are again not debating honestly.
I think the bible encompasses all that.
I see the words in the sentence, and I understand the meaning of each word in the sentence, but the way you string them together make absolutely no sense to me.