I still dont see it. The only view a strong atheists has that can be called atheistic is there is no God. All other views my be influenced by that but they are not atheistic in and of themselves.

I disagree with this. I know a lot (and I mean a LOT) of people who just simply don't care about whether there is a god or not. Some say maybe there is, but they just don't care and it doesn't affect their life. Some say they don't think there is, but it doesn't matter because it doesn't affect their life. A bunch say they think there is, but they don't care and it doesn't matter because it doesn't affect their life. And a bunch say that they believe there is, but it doesn't matter because it doesn't affect their life.

Exactly, my atheism does not dictate my moral beliefs. My atheism is not responsible for me thinking gay marriage is acceptable and should be allowed, my atheism does not dictate whether a woman should or should not be allowed to have an abortion, either in my life or the lives of anyone around me. The only thing my atheism does is lead me to believe there is no god. Therefore, it is entirely incorrect to call atheism a worldview unless you are distinctly referring to the view that there is no god.

Not believing God outlaws homosexuality etc. is really just the absence of a theist worldview. Jib wants to classify anything that isn't in his Christian worldview as being an "atheistic worldview".

+1 on whats been said. but you won't ever convince jib that he's wrong about this one.

I just want him to post a reply in this thread acknowledging that he has read this last exchange so that maybe he won't continue posting that atheism is a religion.

That won't happen, because Jib believes that it is a religion. Just reading your opinion isn't going to change his mind any more than reading yours will change his. Even if he has read the exchange (and I assume he has) it just goes like this:

Him: Atheism is sometimes a religion.
You: I disagree. No it's not.
Him: I disagree with you.

/thread.

Life is like that, sometimes.

I'm still waiting on ChuckyChess to explain how not believing in gods is illogical.

I believe that atheism is illogical because it cannot account for the existence of complex informations systems. I believe that only theism can do that. The fact of evolution, for example, is one of the strongest arguments in favor of the existence of God. If you can convince me as plausible that all of Beethoven's symphonies could have arisen by chance, then I will concede that it is not inherently illogical to be an atheist.

How did God create the universe?

Complex information systems cannot arise without gods? What exactly do you mean by "complex information systems" and why do they require a god? Also note that there is a difference between "doesn't account for" and "cannot account for".

And it's not "atheism" that doesn't account for it. I'm talking about not believing in gods here. What you probably mean is that science doesn't account for the creation of the universe.

Cool.

Again, why?

False dichotomy. There are not two options - gods or random chance. You must realise this, since you just mentioned evolution. Nice try to attempt to shift the burden of proof to me though. Instead of having the onus on you to prove "not believing in gods is illogical" you try to get me to prove something else which is entirely pointless.

Either you are being very disingenuous, or you don't understand how evolution works.

But it seems like your entire argument is: "I just don't see how it could work without God, it doesn't feel right to me." This is an argument from ignorance, and is of course, no argument at all.

idk

There are two options: Either the universe was planned or it exists fortuitously (see C.E.M Joad's Guide to Philosophy). Beethoven symphonies are obviously planned. When I see a computer, I know that it was designed by someone (something?). The universe is trillions of times more complex than a computer. Hence, it seems reasonable to assert that the universe had a designer. (Of course, this "designer" wouldn't have to be the Christian God. This "designer" would have to be eternal. Something in the universe has to be eternal, unless one believes that something can come from nothing. God clearly reveals Himself in His creation. I don't see how you can believe in a fortutious universe without also believing that Beethoven's symphonies could have reasonably been created by "chance." Ultimately, there really are just two choices: God or Chance. (Of course, creation could be a function of both, but something had to be created to "get the ball rolling", so to speak.)

So then you're no closer to answering these questions than an atheist.

You say God most likely did it, but you can't explain how.

I say "nature" most likely did it, but I can't explain how.

So you believe that an all-powerful God/creator has less of an appearance of design than an atom?

Blaming religion for evil is a lot like blaming the food that has been poisoned by an assassin for murder. It's evil people that twist and turn the intent of something good and noble to serve their insidious agendas.

Nice wall of drivel you've got going there. Comparing things of unknown origin (the universe) to things of known origin (man made objects, art) due to complexity. Very logical. Even more hilarious considering we know of a completely natural process that can produce extremely complex organisms. Design is not a requirement for complexity, nor does complexity necessarily suggest design.

Just because human designed objects can be complex does not mean all complex objects must be (human) designed, or are even likely to be.

Beethoven's symphonies are "obviously planned" because we know it's unlikely for sheet music to write itself. It is a man made thing. Music did not exist before we started writing it. On the other hand, we have no idea what way universes come about.

I see you're also continuing to reiterate that the universe can only come about via God or chance, yet you have not specified why.

The universe could have come about via some natural process that facilitated it's progress. Perhaps the original starting point was pure chance, or maybe it was actually quite likely. Unlike you, I don't claim to know.

why is it reasonable to you? What experience do you have with undesigned stuff? You're looking at it through your experience with man-designed things.

Its a horribly unreasonable assumption to assume that complexity requires design.

??? This also doesn't follow. If there was a designer, its conceiveable that it created the universe then died. There's nothing to suggest it would have to be eternal. You're asserting things you have no reason or basis to assume.

perhaps. It would seem to me that this would be the case. But even here, we're speculating about things we know nothing about and trying to wrap our limited understanding of things onto subject matter. There is a possibility that things can come from nothing and we just don't yet understand that mechanism.

Your use of the word clearly is bad since millions of people would disagree.

That does not follow. I don't know why you are unable to comprehend that the existence of undesigned things does not exclude design.

Just because man can create complex things does not follow that all complex things must be made by an entity. There's NO basis for this. This is argument from ignorance.

I don't think an eternal universe is described as 'chance'. Also, the fact that you think there are only two choices demonstrates nothing more then the limits of your imagination. Perhaps there are millions of choices and our limited brains simply haven't thought of them.

You're doing a classic God of the Gaps-ish act; you don't understand everything so, that which you don't understand you attribute to God. In the old days, they explained viruses as "demons and witchcraft", bad weather was no doubt "an angry God". The things attributed to Gods was huge. This has narrowed as people have learned more about how things work. But you still want answers that are beyond the scope of our current understanding. Rathar then be comfortable not knowing, you do what people did to explain volcanos erupting centuries ago... must be god.

I don't assume religion is good and noble (or evil.) Religions is the product of a lot of things; man trying to explain his world AND man trying to control man. Religion certainly can do harm (and evil, if you prefer) without be twisted and turned.

You are assuming that one of the functions of religion hasn't always been to bind people together, to set them against other people, to control people, to create "us" against "them", etc.

According to "Guns, Germs and Steel", religion arose when societies grew to a certain size. It was one element that was developed to maintain order and control has populations grew very large.

Nature doesn't have to create the universe. It just is. The problem is with how humans perceive time. They think that something that wasn't here before that is now had to be created. But time is a dimension. If dimensions can have boundaries, then so can time, which if so, means it is possible that there was never a time that the universe didn't exist because before the big bang, time itself didn't exist. Of course there is no proof of this, but it is a natural explanation from where I am sitting.

People might not be able to perceive time not existing before the big bang, but that doesn't mean it existed. People might not be able to accept that there are no negative square numbers in reality and it is much the same thing.

Bind (unite) people, yes. Turn people against each other? No. Religion, by intent, does not dichotomize people; that's merely an emergent property of it when you include its influence on culture. Religion is intended to be independent of any peoples or cultures. You could argue that it assimilates other groups of people, but that's just a negative spin on saying it unites people.

That's an educated opinion, not fact. Diamond makes valid points and inferences, but that doesn't mean it's truly the case.

when the supposed creator of everything tells you you're the choosen people, how can that be spun as uniting people in general?

so, the OT tells commands people to kill nonbelievers, slaughter the men and take the women on as slaves. This is not pitting people against each other?

When the OT tells people how to treat slaves, this is not an element of the religion?

When the Koran commands it followers to conquer non believers, its not an element of the religion.

As pointed out, when your religion tells you that you are the chosen people, it will certainly unite the followers against others.

You can't blame man for abusing the religion when the holy guides to each faith dictates that the others are wrong, are sinners and possibly needs to be killed or enslaved.

When believers think others are going to hell because they are blaspeming their God, it does not unite them.

To hold your view you are forced to ignore the very texts that are the guidebooks for the religion.

I'm not talking about the OT, or Christianity, or any one specific religion for that matter, I'm talking about the philosophy behind what religion is. But thanks for cherry-picking anyway.

Let's try a different route: We both differ in what we think the objective of religion is. You seem to think that's it's nothing but an organized system of control engineered long ago by conquerors to pit people against each other for the sake of their own rule and power. And that it's designed to herd people into groups through other similarities like tribe so that they can be easily steered for political purposes. I get that.

I'm saying that religion is a form of spiritual guidance that unites people through shared systems of morals and values. It is neither political, nor ethnic/tribal, nor personal.

You seem to be adding the implication that because a certain people are "chosen," that everybody else is automatically inferior by default. Religion doesn't do or say this implicitly, like you seem to be keen on pointing out.

Who's fault is that, the person's, or a book's? If the book doesn't explicitly tell them to do so, then the person is acting on their own volition.

It's clear you haven't studied religion, the philosophy of religion, and/or don't understand it.

This has been done many times before, but it might as well do it one more time: You're ignoring context when you're cherry-picking mention about texts and verses which direct followers do to hostile things. Religion doesn't come out of nowhere and say something ridiculous like, "kill all those bastards that don't believe." Instead, it says something like, "if those bastards try and kill you, defend yourselves, be they whomever."

You can't seriously think that the fundamental doctrines and precepts of religion are anti-social and xenophobic? They are ideas like altruism and piety. How do you happen to overlook something as simple as that?

If I chose you to do a task, am I separating you from everybody else? Am I making you special? Sure, I gave you a specific task. Does that mean you're more important than others? No, because that task is precisely for the others. What if the task was to unite everyone?

You are a Christian, right? Why is it cherry-picking? He was being specific to the beliefs of the overwhelming majority of theists on this forum.

He's addressing a particular subject. I must have missed the part where he said it's "nothing but..."?

If God really did "write" the Bible, perhaps he didn't intend for it to be political, but it most certainly plays a huge role in politics in this country.

It also is ethnic/tribal for a lot of people.

I don't know what you're saying when you say it's not intended to be personal? Could you elaborate a bit on that?

I can be used as a trump card in certain situations. Why would God even allow someone to use this against someone else? If they're chosen by God, and I'm not, what's the reason for that? Again, perhaps the intention wasn't for it to mean others are inferior, but you absolutely cannot fault someone for taking it/using it the way kurto is suggesting.

Also, it wouldn't, I don't think, make me believe in the Bible, but I think it would be a lot more credible if the "chosen people" were people other than the one's who wrote the frickin thing. Especially coming from the time period it did. That point, combined with a lot of others, fits perfectly in the puzzle that makes up my reasons from being 100% that Christianity is made up by men.

I'd like to think a creator such as the one described in the Bible would leave less room for interpretation.

Flat out ridiculous statement.

Well Israel has been killed a lot of people in the process of claiming the land the Bible stated as theirs. (I don't mean this to come off as me saying they're all barbarians fwiw)


Answered above. But I'll add this: why did any people need to be deemed the "chosen" people by God?

Also, do you think schools would allow a certain race of kids to be deemed the "chosen kids'? No, and the reason is because it implies they're special compared with the rest of the pack.


WARNGING: I am quite drunk. Some of this might now make snse and I'll attempt to come back tomorrow and clean it up and/or answer any questions you might havec.