WTF are you talking about? I haven't mentioned Christianity OR religion once!

Edit: Unless you count my reply to Spendour who made very specific claims about a personal god and I addressed those.

Ugh don't know why I even replied on this. Dumbest argument ever. atheists will never convince christians, and christians will never convince atheists. Waste of time arguing.

I mean the argument atheists are like communists because marx was an atheist, is such a stretch. I've been an atheist for 10 years now. Im still a conservative. I didn't suddenly realize there is no god, and therefore communism is great. Anything else we want to compare atheists to?

Semantics? Trace an idea to its source? Black and white thinking?

You are saying apples are fruit, thus fruit is like apples. Or rather, communists are atheists, thus atheists are like communists.

I mean, do you think this is a debate? That you have somehow presented something that resembles an argument?

I'm done.

Time for a long vacation.

But remember the bible does have a rights argument. Christ died to secure everyone's eternal right to life.

People just have institutionalized theological terms to such a degree they don't realize it's there and it has to be protected, too.

The scope of this thread was atheism, and you said atheists were like communists because communists are atheists. There is no use in sulking behind some made-up insult to the Bible merely because you get called out on such, frankly speaking, utterly basic errors of communication.

You wanted to demonize by allegiance, and you brought a lousy argument. You are not the one that was somehow wronged. You claimed 700 million people were pro CCCP-style state communism because they don't believe in God.

This one is on you and nobody else.

On your sabbatical take some time to discover science and what it really is (which is the best available methodology for discerning truth). I know you think it's better found in a 2000+ year old book written by bronze-age men. But hopefully, you'll reconsider. Good luck!

Nope, not true.

I just pointed out the communists promoted atheism. If there's no relationship why the promotion?

I only did what atheists do when they historically criticize religion(s).

I learned this technique from atheists 7 years ago in SMP. I hardly ever linked atheism with communism in my mind before encountering atheist historical-critical arguments against religion.

If you're going to dish it out then you've got to learn to take what you dish out and you've got to expect someone will check out atheism's record.

Man's nature is really the culprit. The bible's right there, too.

Bye!

Well, you mentioned crusaders and inquisitors as an example earlier. Feel free to find one example where someone says crusaders or inquisitors are Christian, thus Christians are like crusaders or inquisitors.

You can link it here.

Nothing pisses me off more than when a Christian gives a quote from the bible as if it adequately supports their point. "god says so, guys!!! it says right here in this textbook!!!!"

actually, this is very close to scientists saying x is x because I can prove it by doing y or because it is the same as x. They use a system which they believe in and reject views they dont believe in (or test with their valued belief), the value/belief a scientist puts on his science claim will be somewhat the same as a religious person (x is x because I can prove it by showing part x of book x of the bible or whatever.). The words in the bible are not something that is valued by a scientist as results from a test or experiment wont be valued by religion. This makes argueing between both hard because there is hardly any mutual accepting of facts or moreso, their origin.

Errrrrrmmmmm, no. Just no.

How do they differ in the mind of the rejecter ?

Because one readily admits that they believe for reasons of faith (Read: they have no proof) and the other believes because they have scientific data to back up their claim.

The point is that to religious persons the scientific data (proof from the perspective of the non religious person) isn't proof of anything at all. Also religious persons will often show proof through the argument of the existence of the bible and/or the large amounts of persons being religious or even sediments as proof of the story of Noah. Also things as 'the magic of life' can be so called proof for some religious persons.

To clarify:

vs

I was just trying to show the user that posted this that these feelings probably arise on both sides of the spectrum and should be viewed as somewhat equal in such a discussion.

/derail

Yeah, that's fine so long as the more clever among them realize this makes their argument invalid.

sjieez I recommend you stop while you're ahead, because you appear to know little about the way scientists think. Their mindset is completely opposite to that of a religious mindset.

This is because the aim of the scientific process is to falsify an idea, rather than to prove an idea. Only when all exhaustive efforts have been made to falsify it, and they realise they're incapable of doing so - because of overwhelming evidence - only then do scientists say - "yes, there is some truth to this, but as with any hypothesis, we can quantify (using statistical significance or w/e) that there is still a chance that we are wrong".

Do you see anything religious-like in this process?

Good to hear you agree with me. Iam not equating scientists to religious people, its the religious people themselfs who do that by probably being equally serious when repeating the darwin quote vs the bible/textbook one. I reject the thought of a god by logical reasoning but allways like to feel like i respect the believers .

*didn't read any posts besides the OP*

I disagree with people like Dawkins who say, "God is as unlikely as fairies" or use the flying teapot analogy. Fairies existence or nonexistence does not affect whether we exist, so the flying teapot analogy can be used for fairies. But for God, there is STILL a lot we don't know about science, and you must admit there is at least an appearance of design in nature.

I'm an atheist but I admit I'm taking a leap of faith. Atheism is not just, "lack of belief either way" and the "default position you should have". Atheism is a positive claim that God does not exist and it DOES require a leap of faith to take it. Existance of God is not analogous to the existence of fairies or hobgoblins. It doesn't take a leap of faith to disbelieve in fairies or hobgoblins (because you can use Russel's flying teapot example for these), but it does require a leap of faith to disbelieve in God.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

You can explain why humans exist without requiring fairies, making disbelief easy. To disbelieve in God, you need to explain why humans exist without the aid of God, and I believe Neo-Darwinism explains it. That's why I'm an atheist.

Your friends seem like apatheists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apatheism

Well, your protest isn't really that relevant. Even if we assume modern science is utter BS (not saying you did mind you), this simply doesn't validate religion.

It's a common fallacy to think "science" is somehow the deck of cards of some atheist materialist faximile who needs physical laws like wasps need sugar - but it really isn't. Atheism is a superior proposal to theism even if you have no idea of how you or the world came to be.

I think theism is a superior proposal to atheism if you have no idea how things came to be. Things don't just come out of nowhere and generally there is a cause for every effect. If the effect displays organized complexity, then it's reasonable to assume the cause was intelligent.

That's why I can't imagine how one could be an atheist before Darwin came along. Darwin showed that there IS a cause for organized complexity, but he showed the counterintuitive idea that the cause doesn't need to be a mind/intelligent agent.

Nonsense, if things just don't come to be a first creator is by implication false.

To be fair most religious texts are a car crash of conflicting and nonsensical drivel, most sensible people should've been able to at least see through issues such as virgin births, resurrections, walking on water, talking snakes, etc, etc, etc.

So, because a stance on the existence of God has implications on our own existence, it can't be compared to the existence of fairies.... What if I told you that God created our universe, from within some other parallel universe, but has somehow been killed since then, by some other omnipotent being/alien, so he no longer exists. This has implications on our own existence, but am I taking a leap of faith by rejecting this notion? or am I simply suspending any belief/faith until evidence of otherwise?

I'll give you another example. Let's say God did create our universe, and was made omnipotent, as well as granted the knowledge of everything that exists/has existed, except for 1 little tiny detail that he can never find out - that he himself was created by a higher being. Am I taking a leap of faith by rejecting this notion? or am I simply suspending any belief/faith until evidence of any of this?

Well, these are both pretty odd scenarios you've presented and I've never thought of either of them. The Christian generally believes God is "beyond time and space", meaning he doesn't need a creator and he is alone in this other, supernatural dimension. This means both your scenarios are impossible, since God can't even be killed, and because he's not a being that needs creating.

But in both scenarios, yes, God is something that explains why things are the way they are today (to the Christian. Again, I'm an atheist), even if God was somehow killed, say 60 years ago before you were born. God explains why humans and all of reality exists, flying teapots and fairies don't, so that's why I think Russel's Teapot analogy fails.