These discussions get pretty hectic. Hope I didn’t miss any posts but I’m sure I must have.
Your post is incoherent, but I’ll assume you are trying to say that you are not stupid because you haven’t killed anyone (???) and that stupidity wouldn’t make you happier (?).
My point was theoretical. Supposing stupidity made you happier, would there be anything wrong with being stupid? The answer is obvious.
Then the answer to your question of why are “so many Atheists are so incredibly driven to denigrate faith” is because it has a history of being destructive, hateful, regressive and other negative adjectives qualities that go along with it that aren’t fun like believing there are goblins in our pants and we’re all going to take a ride on a unicorn to visit the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
This is the SD. The mission is about eradicating ignorance, not “letting up” on beliefs.
That was my point. You said:
You say you really want to know and no one has given you an answer, and it’s because of what you just mentioned- what are the ideals of the FSM? If you ask the same question regarding “God”, you’ll likely get answers.
I can’t help you with that other than to tell you you may be mistaken about so many atheists being “so incredibly driven to denigrate faith” if the faith is in the harmless. But it’s sort of like asking, “why do so many people care about people carrying guns if I do but I’m sure I’ll never shoot anyone?” We’ve seen massive negative effects caused “religious type” faith and we don’t like it.
For the purposes of the this thread, the definition is “blind faith”, which is pretty much all religion has.
Add “default position” to the long list of surrogates for “I don’t believe…”
Faith is the crutch of the ignorant. It interferes with real learning. It holds us back as a species. Faith holds back and even rallies against scientific research that could cure horrible diseases and foster a better life for everybody. It has historically ignored, and in most cases even supported murder,bigotry,oppression,slavery,child abuse(sexual and otherwise),torture, and genocide.
But most of all, It is cowardly. The only reason it has any foothold in our time is because people fear death and will go along with any ridiculous myth rather than grow up and face the fact that one day, you will simply cease to exist.
I’m seriously interested in how you’d counter my post at #65. I know I may be forcing you to defend a stance you don’t personally take, but I still would like a rebuttal.
Your ignorance of his other statements is frightening. Read his Oct 1927 Saturday Evening post statements sometime. That’s because you glean your quotes from biased sources. NOTE my qualification - “in his early years.” You are just as ignorant of ALL Jefferson’s or Adam’s statements because you haven’t read them all. I have
You do realize, I trust, that your statement is illogical, don’t you? The default position is the one supported by evidence. The default position for the existence of trees is they exist, because we can see, feel, smell, and taste them, and they have a demonstrable, testable, measurable, and repeatable impact on our world. It would make no difference if I believed trees didn’t exist, even if somehow I could be convinced of such a thing, the fact is they exist and can be proved to be, and that, my friend, is the default position. The default position is gods don’t exist because there is no evidence to support any contention that they do. Whether or not I believe in gods, or fairies, or unicorns, or Spiderman, is not, at all, the point.
You don’t like what I’m saying, and probably feel a sense of satisfaction twisting my words into something I didn’t say and don’t mean, so hey, have at it.
Actually I have read all of Einstein’s, Jefferson’s, and Adam’s known letters in great detail. This is an interest of mine. What on earth do you think you are getting at? You are coming off as an utter fool.
He’s referring to the step before that: the default position regarding the existence of trees is disbelief. It is only after you experience the evidence that trees exist that the burden of proof has been satisfied and you can now rationally say you believe in trees.
On to the personal insults already?
Well no you haven’t read all of them because my Einstein quote is not only accurate, it is just a small piece of the positive things he said about Jesus personally. I seriously doubt you know what Jefferson or Adams said about Jesus himself either. But if you do know, please let the readers know what they did say. That way I won’t have to do have to do it for you.
Perhaps we should end this out of respect for the thread starter or begin a new thread.
sigh
FWIW, I’ll gladly post as an atheist, agnostic or theist if you’d prefer. Your example assumes (apparently) that an a temporal being (and not any a temporal being—supposedly The Big Cheese; the One who created everything we see/experience) must by necessity have the qualities of a tree.
I suppose I could stop there, but why? If this High Octane God exists, he is not subject to our limitations. It’s absurd to imply that only what I can see exists.
As a young parent I was interested to learn that a new born doesn’t cry when you leave the room because the child hasn’t yet made the connection that you exist outside his/her observation. It’s only later that a child is aware that you exist outside their observations and so will begin to cry when you leave.
The fact is, there are many things that we have become aware of that were previously unknown—from planets and galaxies to sub-atomic particles. Did they simply not exist? Of course not.
The only rational scientific default position for the existence of an supernatural God being sought in the natural world, using the only tools available by temporal humans,( in the natural world) is **silence. **
Isn’t that the case? Isn’t science silent on the existence of a super natural God?
Once you take the evidence (and you appear to be confusing ‘evidence’ for ‘proof’) and apply your subjective beliefs you’ve created a belief system.
Some people call that faith.
jinty take a look at Baboonanza’s statement above for an example of what I was talking about. He reserves tolerance for those people with conditions that cannot be changed but feels that faith is something that can be changed and is therefor fair game.
This is the same attitude you find in people who view homosexuality as something that can be changed and should therefor not be protected against discrimination.
The very same sort of bigotry.
Fortunately, anti-discrimination laws are clear in their protection of religious views in the same manner that race, sexual orientation, disability, etc. are protected. Probably every Evangelical Atheist on this board works under an anti-discrimination policy at their job that would preclude the behavour that they exhibit here on this board if they tried expressing the same anti-religion views in the workplace.
That is what I was trying to say.
I now return you to the dog pile on the Disgruntled Penguin.
Let’s distill this down a little.
Would you say that the existence of trees is accepted* as an objective fact?
Would you say that the existence of God is accepted as a subjective belief?
How would you characterize the *non-*existence of God? Is it an objective fact, or a subjective belief?
What say you?
If you can convince all the theists to stop making claims about the properties of hypothetical supernatural beings then I will happily do the same.
The non-existence of God is as much an objective fact as the existence of trees. In both cases it’s the hypothesis the best explains the evidence at hand, although both assertions are open to falsification if new evidence presents itself.
If you asked me to judge, I’d personally be *less *surprised to discover that *trees *are an illusion. Faking trees wouldn’t require violating fundamental laws of the universe. I’ve even seen some pretty convincing examples of fake trees. I’ve never see anything remotely God-like ever.
Why?
Science is silent on the matter.
From there, we’re all witnessing.
Whether one realizes it or not.
Because we don’t have a word for people who don’t believe in flargs. (Which are ill-defined non-material entities that are necessary for the existence of the universe … but which are not gods.)
If no positive assertions were made about the god concept then it would be ontologically equivalent to the flarg concept, i.e. it wouldn’t exist at all. So there would be no need to argue against it.
What’s your position on flargs, by the way? Yea or nay?
Are you suggesting that anything I might make up about an after-life should be taken seriously? I’d quite like a tub full of nubile girls covered in double cream.