Unicorns are real, they are big and gray and we call them rhinoceroses.
Yeah, and if I call my personal emotions “God”, God exists. Shame you’ll all be without a god when I die too.
Yes, even Dawkins, poster-boy of modern atheism, has stated that he cannot know for certain that no god exists, but believes that the probability is nearly indistinguishable from zero and that he lives his life on the assumption that there is no god. This seems very similar to the Bertrand Russel quote up-thread where Russell draws the distinction between being (technically) agnostic to an audience of philosophers and an atheist to the general public.
Having seen, smelt, touched, and fed giraffes at the zoo I’m prepared to treat them as real for all practical purposes – which I guess make me a hard-giraffist… along with being a hard-automobilist, hard-gravityist, etc. 
Agreed. Although if you had started the same piece by saying that you had a hunch that it *was *an intelligent being then Deist wouldn’t be a bad label.
Indeed. And the explanations for why not aren’t exactly convincing are they?
Skeptic: “If god wanted us to know these were the commandments why didn’t he just carve them into a mountain in 300 foot high letters of ever-burning flame?”
Theist: “Proof would undermine faith”. Or, “god works in mysterious ways”. Or, “don’t put god to a test!”
Skeptic: “Oh pull the other one, it’s got bells on!”
Or, perhaps, Pragmatic Skeptic: “Can I interest you in this genuine holy relic?”
No, he was motivated by Christianity.
They are less likely to do wrong because they have fewer reasons and fewer excuses. Atheism isn’t a good thing; religion however is a bad thing, and that makes atheism better.
Nonsense. Atheists only react that way when it is an obvious attempt (such as this thread) to pretend that atheism and religion have equal plausibility by using the same label for them. An attempt to pretend intellectual equality between the two positions. I’ve been known to refer to atheism as a belief* - but not when someone is clearly using the term as a rhetorical trap, and will jump in and say “Ah-HA! you admit that atheism is just another religion!” if I use that word.
- Mainly because referring to it as a “non-belief” is usually needlessly confusing. Normally, phrases like “I don’t believe in vampires” and “I believe there are no vampires” are interchangeable. But religious apologists like to play semantic “gotcha” games.
I’d agree with that. And I would give Darwin a big thumbs up for getting rid of most of that kind of thinking. Why Christians would think evolution is a dangerous idea… well, that’s what you get when your ideology is not based in reality.
I hate this excuse. Beyond the bounds of the historical record God parts the water, burns bushes, and Jesus walks on water and acts like a traveling BevMo. But anyplace where the claim can be check God starts acting shy.
I can press a ton, but I only do it when no one is watching. Give me my Olympic Gold Medal, already.
Why is it that theists use the same kinds of arguments that get five-year-old kids laughed at?
Do you think that it is profoundly important? Does anyone?
My point was this: Theists have beliefs, and atheists have beliefs. And those beliefs affect how we address big ideas and big issues.
In another thread, Most people are agnostic, you say:
(Emphasis yours.)
And this:
(I’m pretty you just made a small mistake in writing “believe” instead of “belief”.)
The implication is that atheism is a coherent, well-thought-out belief.
We agree in principle. 
Also, I found it amusing that, in that same thread, you said:
And, in this thread, I said:
When you brought up universe-destroying trolls, were you making ontological or epistemological claims?
I’m not quite sure what you mean by this. IIRC in Darwin’s day the clergy (at least the Church of England clergy) were very interested in the natural world and the great chain of being; trying to deduce truths about God by observing and understanding his creation. Evolution and Deism don’t seem in conflict – or even have anything to do with each other – until you want to discuss the possible causes of abiogenesis.
But many, many Christians don’t think evolution is dangerous, or that it endangers their religion. (My father-in-law is a Methodist minister and theistic evolutionist).
Aside: I’ve come across this odd idea on the 'Dope before, and it seems to come from the US-centric nature of the board, where I understand acceptance of evolution is actually a minority view… something that continues to boggle my mind.
Where did I say that I think that the universe has to have a meaning and a purpose? My post included some comments on the role of “god-belief” in theists’ lives. Athiests have other beliefs.
Why?
I agree.
Many theists believe that. But not all. In any case, their beliefs affect their outlook and their actions. Same as with atheists.
That sort of thing comes and goes, it always ends with the believers deciding it’s a bad idea because of how awful the brutality of nature makes God look and because it rubs into their face just how unnecessary gods are to explain anything.
Deism is carefully designed so that it is as irrelevant to the real world as possible. A deistic universe looks like the real universe, so it doesn’t conflict with evolution, but neither are most believers deists. Nor is deism consistent with the Bible.
Historical revisionism. Evolution devastated Christianity by destroying one of its major claims and justifications for believing in it (the lack of any other explanation for the complexity of life than “goddidit”). People like your father in law are basically sitting in the rubble of their religion and telling themselves it has always been rubble. Evolution (and science in general) not only endangers religion, it has beaten it half to death in much of the world.
America is a very religious country, and therefore heavily invested in the denial of reality.
I meant that Darwin - in addition to earlier naturalists, but Darwin really was the last big pint in the bucket - more or less destroyed the refuge of the deist proposition - which was the proposition of the majority of Christian-seeming scientists at the time - by demonstrating there was no need for a divine plan. Darwin also exploded the “great chain of being” at the same time.
I am not talking about the general theistic populace, since they can’t - and probably shouldn’t - be persuaded by evolution at all, unless they’re biblical literalists, in which case, they’re just - and probably willfully - ignorant.
Theistic evolution is a myth that explains nothing, but yeah it’s compatible with theism to a point.
I’m European, so it takes some effort for me too.
This would be such a part of the world. I’m not sure about rubble exactly, but I do agree that compared to the sweeping Gothic cathedrals of yesteryear religion around these parts is more a tiny country chapel.
Yes, as a 'Doper explained it to me some time ago, this is why the US needs such a strong and high wall between church and state.
In that case, go ahead and jump.
Well then in that case, Vishnu, Buddha, Allah, and Thor all must exist because people believe/believed in them in a way that changed their lives.
If people stop believing in God will he not exist? He’s starting to sound more like Santa.
The evolution thing vs. the creationist thing is all wrong. There is nothing contradictory in believing that there is a god and that evolution is real. The conflict arises from people who want to look at a book and the cult built around it and say “it is written, therefore it is so”. When you talk to more liberal folk the answer is “the bible is a collection of stories designed to help us move towards god” then we get closer to what I am talking about. The science that is mentioned in the bible has to take into context the Roman era and to a lesser degree the Iron Age of the first testament.
So do I think that a being said “poof” here is the universe? No I don’t, but doesn’t stop me from being religious. It does stop me from being a batty American style literal Christian.
Atheists in the past have had a go at me, saying that how can I only accept the bits of the bible that I want to? There is no pleasing a fundamental Atheist. All I can say is that I am following a line of religious thought that goes back thousands of years and as all things should be you must look at the content and the context of the situation that it was written in.
The search for truth will continue for as long as there is man as it has from the start. Some say science is the only way towards truth, I say it is only part of the carriage taking us to full awareness.
And guess what? I am not here to say my way or the highway. You will take your path and I will take mine and we will end up where we end up. The only thing I will evangalise on is this “Once we accept we are part of this universe, then we must move towards selfless love and not self love”.
Except that it goes against the claimed actions of the gods people actually believe in.
Except that inevitably leads towards skepticism and atheism. If you stop insisting that all of the book is true, then there’s no reason to take any of it seriously since there’s no evidence for any of its claims. As for taking it “in context”, that is just another argument against it being divinely inspired and another argument for it being just a book of myths. If it really originated from a superior being then the context would be irrelevant.
Nonsense. That term is meaningless. And they are pointing out the obvious; since all religious claims are equally baseless, how can you justify picking one and not the others? Claims that God exist at all are just as baseless as claims that God created the world in seven days. If you reject one, there’s no rational reason not to reject the other.
Religion has nothing to do with any search for truth, it is the denial of truth. It is picking a fantasy and sticking with it not matter how illogical, how baseless, how destructive it is.
Why? The universe is full of particles and forces trying to annihilate each other. Why isn’t realizing we are part of the universe make us more vicious so that we can last longer than another grouping of particles before our short term orderly arrangement is ripped apart and forever lost?
“Why do you support racial segregation?”
“Well, the last thing I want to do is accidentally bump into a black guy and explode when we mutually annihilate!”