“An atheist believes that a hospital
should be built instead of a church."


The churches were responsible for starting and maintaining many of the early hospitals and universities and charities and helping to end slavery. To this day many hospitals are affiliated with a religion.

check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role_of...n_civilization to see the ways that religious groups helped improve the state of humankind.

This kind of stuff really infuriates me. Humankind helped improve the state of humankind not religious groups. Implying that without religious groups there would be none of the above listed in bold is laughable and makes me angry that people think none of it would have happened without religious groups.

Yes with snip. Not believing in god because of evil always seems to me to be a particularly dumb reason to be an atheists.

However using this as a launchpad to attack atheism is as clear a case of a strawman as you are likely to find.

Personally I find such atheists to be the majority rather than the minority. However this could be personal bias as I socialise disproportionately with scientists and similarly overeducated individuals. Do you have any reference for your atheist demographic?

Some certainly.

Why do you not paint the entire picture and not just cherry pick something positive? Religion has killed so many people too? Do you not realise this, or is it now that you decide to burry your head back in the sand?

^

Are you saying children have NDE's of Santa Claus? Do you agree that Santa does NOT exist? If so can we not conclude that NDE's of adults who see RELIGIOUS FIGURES is the same of that of children who see Santa?? Both must be false, or not? If we agree that Santa does not exist, NDE's are simply just illogical brain activity, maybe something the person WANTS to see.
I think your logic is flawed here. It is your perspective that poker is gambling. It is an all other story if you actually ask other people if poker is gambling!

I think through experimentation one can rule out the fact that the universe is not made in your head. For example you can ask a fellow human being if she sees the same things you see. You could put your head in a blender and see if that experience is real! If you do not feel anything and do not need scientific help ie a doctor/hospital then you might be right. Do not try this though, it will hurt and you will need help!

So you have no decided that we are of topic and the real topic according to you why nobody believes in an evil god. Does it matter what god is evil or good? Either she exists or does not!

Who then created these aliens you speak of?

Do you not believe in free will? To a certain degree I must admit that free will has been taken from me. For example I can not just put a trillion dollars on my bank account. I am not sure god has anything to do with that though.

That is exactly the difference between an atheist and a theist. Theists simply believe without proof. That is called wishful thinking. You are turning this round, how is an atheist practising wishful thinking?? It is wishful thinking to take something on board without proper evidence.
You are so wrong in your assumption. Many atheists think that way. Many theists are on the fence too!

What is your religion XXL?



I am multi quoting!!! Hurray for me!

If he did not want us to have any evidence, then why on earth does he write books about himself, convince the weak minded that he is real? With his prophets and his son jesus? Actually, why are we still paying the price as humans? Did jesus not pay for our sins already?

Are you saying the books of religion are fake? All that has happened in the name of religion was not part of god's plan?

I do not want any fallacies to be concealed. I do not care if I am wrong or if I am corrected because I learn and grow by trial and error! You still haven't pointed any fallacies out though!

Do you believe in god? If so what is your religion?

So now who is entering the minds of atheists?? How do you know what many atheists would rather believe? I think you have come to a verdict that if god exists then he must be evil? Am I right?

There is also a lot of positive things going on in this world. How do you explain that if the god you describe is evil? Hugh Heffner would disagree with you, I think ****ing 6 playboy bunnies every night, living the good life is not exactly something an evil god would allow for some random human!

I am not sure we both have the same definition of real atheist. I do not agree with you once again. Even agnostic atheists who are not 100% sure are still atheists!

He made no such implication. He was simply responding in a very rational and polite manner to the previous post. He never said that nothing good would have happened without religious groups, only that some good would not have happened without religious groups.

Presumably the next time someone blames religion for 9/11 you will also become infuriated and point out that members of humankind attacked those buildings.

This is not quite true. Everything is ultimately perceived within your consciousness. If you ask another person if they see what you see, their response is perceived within your consciousness in the same way that all of your experimental results are perceived. There is no experiment you can conduct that can distinguish between an external reality and a artifact of your own consciousness.

That said, I certainly behave under the assumption that an external reality exists. I would not try or recommend your blender experiment. But it is important to always remember what you know and what is an assumption, however reasonable. If you are trained as a scientist they actually hammer that into pretty hard.


If you truly examine what constitutes proof you will find that everyone has beliefs.

Kudos! In all sincerity it does make it a little easier to structure a response to you.

I do not think there are many people who believe that books like the Bible were actually written by God. After all, many of the chapters of the Bible are designated by their human authors. The typical thought process is that they were divinely inspired. But such inspiration does not constitute evidence, as I am sure we both would agree.

By the way, I will as a good will gesture refrain from insults in this post. If you will respond in kind perhaps we can converse showing old fashioned civility. I realize it has fallen out of style, but I still prefer it.

As far as "God's plan", I do not know what that is or what it means.


OK. I think I have, but apparently that is arguable.

I do believe in God. For the record, I am Roman Catholic.

You have to understand though that believing that there is a God is not the same as knowing that there is a God. If I knew, I would not call it a belief. I would say in answer to your question, "No, I do not believe there is a God. I know that there is a God. If I was being careful with my language which I try very hard to do on this site. In loose colloquial English the meanings can get a little fuzzy.

I can see hospitals happen without religion. I can't say the same for 9/11 style attacks.

I'll wait for what he has to say because I read it several times before making that post. He was online viewing the thread after I made the post and I'm assuming otherwise till then. It wouldn't be the first time that I've seen people make the claim, I assume he did make which infuriates me lol. I actually don't see how you can say he made no such implication but might as well wait for him to clear the air.

That is a prejudicial blindness on your part. But nothing I could say would ever change that.

Right cool, you're right I sometimes get overly emotional about things that I am passionate about. I'll try and refrain from any more bad language too!

I think he makes a valid point though. Throughout history people have committed crimes in the name of religion. You might not agree with them or think they are not religious, but they are!

Do you disagree with the first, the second or with both sentence(s)?

Certainly they have. But he was asserting that religion is the only way that massive crimes are committed. I simply do not believe that it is. Frankly, he is not stupid so I doubt if he truly believes that either. But it plays well on an atheist website (which this is of course). He can count on support.

I also would question whether religion is the driver in some of the crimes that are done in the name of religion. I tend to think atheists overlook other political, economic, etc. factors, at least when they are discussing the matter with theists. In a less prejudicial setting I would bet they are a little less dogmatic about it.

The second. That does assume by "9/11 style" you mean mass murder with high risk of death to the attackers in a backdrop of asymmetric warfare. If by "9/11 style" you mean an attack by persons with a common religious background and some element of religious motivation then your statement becomes a tautology without value.

Why would atheists even think to create charitable hospitals for the poor like the Christian Churches did? What principles would atheists base their actions on? There aren't any, are there?. It is irrational to give away some of your wealth in return for nothing. Only dumb religious people do that.

^ Are you serious?

You are implying that atheists do not have any morals? Can not do something for somebody else without expecting anything in return! Why is it irrational for atheist to give part of his/her wealth to a good cause?

You are overthinking and actually putting words into his writing. He does not state that "religion is the only way that massive crimes are committed." He simply replied to a comment being made from another poster, think his comment was more to prove to the other poster that he might be wrong.

Sure I would question *some* of the crimes too! I am sure that there's more to it than meets the eye. You still should not deny that religion still plays it's part in these crimes. Suicide bombers think they'll go to paradise and have 72 virgins if they blow themselves up and kill innocent bystanders? This is religion based murder, you can't deny it!

I am saying that your counterpoint about nasty atheists is not nearly as important as my original point. Which is that theists who are almost sure that their religion is correct (at least half of all theists) are in fact on average substantially dumber than those who don't feel that way. And that this dumbness is a lot more dangerous to society than extreme atheistic contempt toward theists in general.

I think you are mistaken. I am pretty sure that he was responding to my comment and that his statement implied that religion was the only way that massive crimes were committed.

The basis of the crime was the politics of the Middle East more than anything else. I guess without religion there would not be an Israel and the sequence of events that have created the current Middle Eastern conflict would not exist. But I do not see people calling for an end to Israel since it was created in response to a demand by a religious group.

I think that they are equally important. More accurately I do not think either of them is very important, thus the equality.

Again you were talking about IQ. I was willing to concede a few points, but "substantially dumber" seems much stronger. I am not sure that is the case. And even if it is, whether those people believed or not, they would still be stupid. Unless you are claiming that the belief is a cause of stupidity and not an effect. In that case, you have not got a leg to stand on at all.

Stupidity is probably somewhat dangerous to society, but it would be there in any case. The data show a very small bias to higher IQ (a few points at best) in favor of atheists, but not enough to preclude a large number of stupid atheists running around also. So your religion point does not go anywhere.

If you want to make a point about religious belief and its effects on society than you have to drop the whole IQ thing as a dead end. Again unless you want to call religion causative of stupidity which I would need to see you say to actually believe that you could think that. Assessing the effects of religion on society is not a simple problem because there is not a lot of actual evidence of a society devoid of religious influence. It would also take some discipline to avoid confirmation bias.

[QUOTE=RLK;46710906]Again you were talking about IQ. I was willing to concede a few points, but "substantially dumber" seems much stronger. "/quote]

While it might be tempting to say that theists are, as a whole, are less intelligent, I am not aware of anything that definitively supports this.

There are numerous polls and even studies which show a definite correlation between education and atheism (atheism increases even more dramatically at the post graduate level, while theism is much more prevalent ). However, there are myriad of reasons other than IQ or overall intelligence why this might be. In America, there are many affluent theists left, but I'm pretty sure it can be shown that people from impoverished backgrounds are much more likely to be religious.

With all that said, I have to admit I have difficulty understanding how an intelligent, educated person who has actually put reasonable thought into the question, can come to any other conclusion than that there is probably no one invisible father figure in the sky looking after things or who's having sex with who.



I

Dumber people (low IQ or less educated) are more likely to fall for the details of their own religion. The religion doesn't cause them to be dumb, but it does cause them to believe or act in harmful ways different from how they would act or believe if they weren't religious.

(Actually upon further thought I would say that religion can indeed cause dumbness. There is little doubt in my mind that some people opt to learn less chemistry than they would otherwise because they believe their god will take care of such details.)

Isn't smart atheism is one-hundred times more dangerous than dumb theism?Stalin and Mao Tse Tung and Kim Jung Il are the smart champions of modern atheism. They eliminated religion in their countries. They also each killed and tortured and starved and persecuted tens of millions of their own people in order to promote a godless state. They took away individual rights. Given these real life examples, it would not be ureasonable to think that genocide fits perfectly within the principles of atheism. Human life ceases to have any value when there is no God to tell you it is wrong. Don't like somebody's beliefs? Then kill them. Does anybody who is without power or wealth want to live in the atheist havens of China, Russia, Or North Korea? No.
Religion has its flaws, but atheism produces the nut low.