The God Delusion - Has it persuaded you to be an Atheist?

I believe in God more than ever. More than i did before even.

I have never cared much about others opinion, because i like to do my own thinking. I also like to make my own decisions. If people don't believe that God exists. Than these people don't understand the knowledge they posses.

If a non believer believes that God is a invisible man. Than they have understood nothing.

I dont know how people can brag about their knowledge of science, but still cant see God in every part of it.







[edit on 27.06.08 by spy66]

The God Delusion - Has it persuaded you to be an Atheist?

Nope........ Never gonna happen.....

Originally posted by spy66
I believe in God more than ever. More than i did before even.

I have never cared much about others opinion, because i like to do my own thinking. I also like to make my own decisions. If people don't believe that God exists. Than these people don't understand the knowledge they posses.

If a non believer believes that God is a invisible man. Than they have understood nothing.

So I take it you havn't read the book? Maybe by reading it, you would understand why others do not believe. a learning experience all round. If you say as you believe then reading the book would not change your mind

Originally posted by woodwardjnr

Originally posted by spy66
I believe in God more than ever. More than i did before even.

I have never cared much about others opinion, because i like to do my own thinking. I also like to make my own decisions. If people don't believe that God exists. Than these people don't understand the knowledge they posses.

If a non believer believes that God is a invisible man. Than they have understood nothing.

So I take it you havn't read the book? Maybe by reading it, you would understand why others do not believe. a learning experience all round. If you say as you believe then reading the book would not change your mind

No. I have not read the book but i have seen the episodes on TV.

In my opinion The God delusion tels me how wrong we are about many things. There is no doubt that we humans have gotten religion wrong in many ways.
But that is a human mistake. And we cant blame religion for peoples stupidity. Religion has been used as a tool both by force and by peoples lack of knowledge. But its not the religions fault.

Richard Dawkins is a smug control freak. He doesn't just try to show a different perspective on religion, he purposely insults those he is trying to convince. He is just as close minded on his ideas as he says the religious folk are. He claims science is on his side, but when that science is challenged he gets very defensive; this is where his faith in himself kicks in. Read his book if you want to walk around feeling totally enlightened and better than everyone else because you realize that you are in total control of your own life, only to be hit by a bus crossing the street.

Richard Dawkins needs to take number and sit down; there are enough people attempting to polarize and divide us right now.

I have the book and was thrilled to read it until I did so. The God Delusion is mostly a diatribe against organized religion. Dawkins disqualifies himself in the beginning of the book when he writes about "Einstein's God". His "theory" about memes is as shaky as anything you can read in the bible. I respected the guy, but now think he's a charlatan, albeit a clever one.

Anyway, the God topic is so last century. It don't matter if you believe in Allah, God or Mickey Mouse. What truly matters is your capacity to love and care for your fellow human.

Originally posted by Maddogkull
A universal consciousness sounds more believable.

Sort of like how there is one consciousness within every dream, regardless of how many occupants may appear in our dreams?

Logic would dictate that there is some sort of intelligent design in all of this, everything about this universe makes a lot of logical sense once you understand it.

What could be the issue here is that we all might have one time or another "connected" with that whatever that has created all of this, but what do we call it? A boat load of people seem to merely jump onto the omnipotent deity bandwagon, ascribing to some ancient explanation that was conjured up by a bunch of superstitious boneheads eons ago. Even I don't know for sure what to call THAT which I sense, but it certainly doesn't seem to match with what any religion describes as a god, that megalomaniac omnipotent deity that demands to be praised and worshiped OR ELSE (how petty is THAT, you'd think something omnipotent wouldn't be so emotionally insecure and feel a need to be worshiped).

Anyhow, for the time being, I tend to call that universal consciousness GAIA, mother nature. I can see nature. I can't see religions omnipotent spook. Technically, I would say I'm agnostic, but if I had to make a guess, I'd say the creator is more of a goddess than a god, and that goddess is most likely mother nature .. and all of this could merely be HER dreams, and we're just participants, like those people that show up in our sleeping dreams.

[edit on 31-3-2010 by Divinorumus]

Dawkins is a master of sophistry, rhetoric, and colorful presentation. His philosophical arguments, however, are rather scant.

Personally, I don't see the problem with the so-called "Problem of Evil"

Moral evils are solved by free will.

Natural evils aren't real. If a flood comes as a result of torrential rainfall and wipes out a village of poor people, it's not "bad" or "evil" in a moral sense, it's just an unfortunate thing that happened. It's only "evil" if a person caused it to happen. Right and wrong only come into the picture when it's one sentient being doing something that affects another sentient being. And when this happens, we do whatever WE choose, because we are free actors.

If people are free to make their own choices, then why is God responsible for evil?

Perhaps you could say that God (as a moral actor) is responsible for what he does to us, or, more explicitly, for the world he put us in. But we have no context for good and bad outside our own experience. How do know that this isn't the best of all possible worlds?

Leibniz is a bit of a duns, I know, but he has a point. And it's not simply "sweeping the problem under the rug" I could as well say that the whole problem of evil has been pulled directly from the air.

Before I am forced to prove to anyone that God isn't good, explain to me how you can claim that the world isn't good? All these problem of evil arguments seem to assume that our world is this terrible place, but all I see when I look around me is good, beautiful things.

[edit on 31-3-2010 by RedBird]

Originally posted by Divinorumus

Logic would dictate that there is some sort of intelligent design in all of this, everything about this universe makes a lot of logical sense once you understand it.

You appear to be confusing logic with faith! All you are doing is replacing your ignorance of the universe with god. It's called "The Worship Of Gaps".

Creationists eagerly look for any gap in our present-day scientific knowledge. They then try to fill that gap with an explanation involving God. The worry for believers is that as science advances, the gaps shrink, and one day there may be no gaps left for God to reside within.

The Worship Of Gaps Pt.1



IRM

[edit on 31/3/10 by InfaRedMan]

Well I've been an Atheist since I was a kid really.... despite going to a religious school.... ..... perhaps in spite of... Hmmmmmm

I quite enjoyed The God Delusion to be honest, was a good book.
I've also enjoyed the odd book that is based on or has religion as it's main theme.

Same with some religious films... I don't dislike religious themed art in general... books, media and visual art...


But yeah... I enjoyed the god delusion, it's very interesting book and Dawkins is a pretty insightful and spot on guy.



[edit on 31/3/10 by blupblup]

Originally posted by InfaRedMan

You appear to be confusing logic with faith! All you are doing is replacing your ignorance of the universe with god. It's called "The Worship Of Gaps".

Creationists eagerly look for any gap in our present-day scientific knowledge. They then try to fill that gap with an explanation involving God. The worry for believers is that as science advances, the gaps shrink, and one day there may be no gaps left for God to reside within.

You make a very good point. I understand that, what I don't understand, I do tend to fill up with a higher being. Case in Point: Laws of Physics..Who wrote them? Also a praying mantis resembling an orchid and other mimicry in nature between unrelated species. It just gives me the creeps as I KNOW that it is evolution but I don't understand how the dynamics of evolution could mimic something so perfectly. That is where a Higher Being creeps in. I don't think we will ever know it all and the gaps will remain pretty big. I have experienced some pretty creepy and strange stuff in my life and, if I believe in Ghosts, it is easy enough to believe in a higher being. I still wrestle with it all.

That said, I am just against religion in all its forms. It is there to control and to enrich by a select few and to make it palatable, stories, fairytales and superstitions have been thought up and bundled in a big bad book but that fact alone does not mean that there ISN'T a divine being. I just don't believe that he/she cares or is benevolent.

[edit on 31/3/10 by Lebowski achiever]

Originally posted by RedBird

Personally, I don't see the problem with the so-called "Problem of Evil"

Moral evils are solved by free will.

I presume, from your argument that you are religious. So I will go out on a limb and ask you a few questions based on that presumption.

Natural evils aren't real. ...... And when this happens, we do whatever WE choose, because we are free actors.

If people are free to make their own choices, then why is God responsible for evil?

Perhaps you could say that God (as a moral actor) is responsible for what he does to us, or, more explicitly, for the world he put us in.

Okay, you made your argument. Why, then, do we need God if he is not responsible, not present to prevent Evil, and doesn't punish those who have been evil? It just does not make sense to me. Why is he there?

Before I am forced to prove to anyone that God isn't* good, explain to me how you can claim that the world isn't good? All these problem of evil arguments seem to assume that our world is this terrible place, but all I see when I look around me is good, beautiful things.

*I think you made a Freudian slip there.
I think you are closing your eyes to all that is ugly and nasty and evil. That is fine and I think that it proves that people who are religious tend to put a square peg into a round hole. The funny thing is, they often succeed.

I believe that the origin of life and reproduction simply cannot be explained from a biological standpoint despite numerous efforts to do so. With every passing year, the more that was discovered about the richness and inherent intelligence of life, the less it seemed likely that a chemical soup could magically generate the genetic code.

The difference between life and non-life, it became apparent to me, was ontological and not chemical. The best confirmation of this radical gulf is Richard Dawkins' comical effort to argue in The God Delusion that the origin of life can be attributed to a "lucky chance." If that's the best argument he has, then the game is over.


Prize-winning physiologist George Wald
“We choose to believe the impossible: that life arose spontaneously by chance”


Albert Einstein - humble in the face of a vastly superior spirit

“Every one who is seriously engaged in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that the laws of nature manifest the existence of a spirit vastly superior to that of men, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.” 102

Stephen Hawking – the Mind of God
“… We shall all … be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God.” 97

Werner Heisenberg – science and religion pointing to the same reality
“In the course of my life I have repeatedly been compelled to ponder on the relationship of these two regions of thought [science and religion], for I have never been able to doubt the reality of that to which they point.” 103

Paul Dirac – ‘God is a mathematician of a very high order’
“God is a mathematician of a very high order and He used advanced mathematics in constructing the universe.” 105

Erwin Schrodinger – science is deficient … it knows nothing of good, God or beauty
“The scientific picture of the world around me is very deficient … It knows nothing of beauty and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously. Science is reticent too when it is a question of the great Unity of which we somehow form a part, to which we belong. The most popular name for it in our time is God, with a capital “G”. 104

Max Plank – science and religion fighting the incessant battle against skepticism
“There can never be any real opposition between religion and science; for one is the compliment of the other.” 105

Evolutionist Sir Fred Hoyle—The notion that… the operating programme of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order. [140]



If you dont believe in God do you believe in miracles? Because to say life arose by chance would be nothing short of a miracle.



[edit on 31-3-2010 by ker2010]

SO MUCH for the US 'FOUNDING FATHERS' being god-fearers...& other Thinkers of their Time..

Abraham Lincoln said:

"The Bible is certainly NOT my book nor is Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated Statements of Christian Dogma, which are childish & illogical …but they tell me that I must keep such thoughts to myself, that is, if I am to be elected…’

Thomas Payne said:

"All national Institutions of Churches, whether of the Jew or of the Christian, or of the Turk, appear to me no other than purely human inventions, soley set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize Power & most of all, Profit."

Benjamin Franklin said : "I have found Christian dogma totally unintelligible. Early in life, I absented myself from all Christian Assemblies."

Thomas Jefferson said:

"I have recently been examining all the known Superstitions of the World, and I do not find in our particular Superstition (which we call ‘Christianity’) one redeeming Feature. They are all alike founded on Fables & Mythology."

Napoleon Bonaparte said:

"A belief in a God is excellent stuff for keeping the ignorant, common herd quiet….it also is what keeps the Poor from murdering the Rich….but in the end ALL Religions have been invented by men to make it easier to control them.’

Thomas Alva Edison said:

"‘I have come to believe that there is no God, nor are their gods, nor Lords either... Religion to me is all bunk.’

Albert Einstein said:

"Though the child of entirely non-religious (Athiest-Jewish) parents – I came for a time to a deep religiousness, which—however---reached an abrupt end---at the age of Twelve."

"I myself do not believe in a ‘personal God’. I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly many times in public. If something is in me which can be called religion than it is this alone: the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our Science can reveal it."

"I for one cannot possibly conceive of a 'God' who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we can be conscious.

"An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise--such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls."

Arthur Schopenhauer said:

"A belief in God is the masterpiece of the art of maniupulation, for it trains people like dogs how they should think and act..."


Friedrich Nietzsche said:

"I simply cannot believe in the Jewish god –especially one who wants to be praised all the time."

Sarah Palin said:

‘Well it seems to me that if you don’t have a belief in god and in Christ and in the bible, then to me you’re no better than a Jew.’






[edit on 31-3-2010 by Sigismundus]

If you believe in a higher power people automatically think your a christain or adhere to organized religion..

None of the religions are probably right . I adhere to none of them most are full of hypocrites. But i do believe in a higher power.

Why cant someone believe in a source for the universe and a being or beings beyond time and space and it not be associated with the bible, koran, buddah etc

Even if evolution is real that doesnt disprove a higher being.

I like to think of god as a programmer who wrote a program. He wrote the code compiled it then sat back and watched the program take off.

[edit on 31-3-2010 by ker2010]

I agree with this review.

Imagine There's No Heaven
by: Mary Midgley

Richard Dawkins wants to live in a world without religion because he holds it repsonsible for the world's greatest atrocitities. While Dawkins is clearly sincere, he is labouring under a flawed ideology of his own, says Mary Midgley.

THIS book is one of many that celebrate an allegedly bitter war between Science and Religion, two epic figures representing rival forces between which we must choose.

Different people understand this "war" differently. In the US, the default attitude (that of normal people) is increasingly assumed to be religion, because scientific or Darwinian world view is still taken to mean social Darwinism, the brash, brutak dictrine of the survival of the fittest that Herbert Spencer taught so successfully in the US and which deeply influenced the Nazis. In recent times the sociobiological rhetoric of "selfishness" and "ruthlessness" in natural selection has served to reinforce this impression of meaningless brutality, leaving religion as the only tolerable option.

In the Middle East, however, talk of a scientific or Darwinian attitude stands for something different but no less hateful. It means primarily western materialism: the brash, greddy, uncaring lifestyle of people whose rulers trampled over oriental cultures and who trample them with increasing vigour today. Traditional religion appears the only alternative to this odious attitude.

Thus, once the scene is polarised, once the two vast abstractions are set up, their ideologies turn the debate into incurable conflict. In that spirit, the preface of this book cries out for the abolition of the enemy: "Imagine, with John Lennon, a world with no religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no crusades, no gunpowder plot....."

These examples are, of course, endless, and the thought that removing religion would end such large scale atrocities accounts in large part for the rise of anti-religious movements. Howeverm the regimes they gave birth to during the 20th century included the governments of Nazi Germany, Pol Pot's Cambodia and Stalin's Russia. It is not clear how it was possible for these regimes to commit the three most monstrous crimes of the epoch, but what does emerge is that removing religion had not helped at all The roots of great crimes plainlly lie deeper than the doctrines people use to justify them.

In any culture, rogues defend their actions by professing whatever standards their society respects. Until recently, of course, Christianity was the norm in the west, but Marxism and fascism proved jsut as effective. Science, too, it turns out, can easily be used this way, as both Germany's and South Africa's justification of racism demonstrates.Religion is not really relevant at all, unless we carefully define "religion" to link it necessarily with atrocities.

This. of course, is the tendency of Dawkin's book. Dawkins is no rogue though: indeed, he is sincere in regarding God and religion the enemies of rationality-- and in arguing that they are linked to atrocity to such an extent that they must be resisted. So mush so that he is forced to assert that faiths which do not use the concept of God, such as Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism, are not really religions at all.

He also works hard to exclude scientists, such as Einstein, who firmly and repeatedly used religious langauge to express what are plainly central elements in their thought, from taint of religion.

Dawkins is irritated by the Einstein phenomenon, and complains of a "confused and confusing willingness to label as 'religion' the pantheistic reverence which many of us share with its most distinguished exponent, Albert Einstein". He insists that thus reverence has "no connection with supernatural belief". Pantheism, however, is unmistakably a religious attitude. And when, like Einstein you speak of an immanent god, a divinity pervaiding the world, and when like Spinoza, you equate God and Nature, words such as "supernatural" do not mean much.

Einstein understood this well. His langauge is only suprising if you assume, as Dawkins seems to, that science is the only possible source of knowledge. Thus quoting Martin Rees's remark that such questions as why anything exists lie "beyond science", he simply cannot see what this might mean.

Similarly, when he cites NOMA-- "nonoverlapping magisteria", the acronym coined by Stephen Jay Gould to describe how, in his view , science and religion could not comment on each other's sphere-- and Freeman Dyson's description of himself as "one of the multitudfe of Christians who do not care much for the doctrine of the trinity ot the historical thruth of the gospels", Dawkins declares flatly that they cannot mean what they say. As scientists they must be atheists.

It seems not to have struck Dawkins that academic science is only a small, specialized, dependent part of what anybody knows.
Most human knowledge is tacit knowledge – habitual assumptions, constantly updated and checked by experience, but far too general and informal ever to be fully tested. We assume, for instance, that nature will go on being regular, that other people are conscious and that their testimony can generally be trusted. Without such assumptions neither science nor any other study could ever get off the ground, and nor could everyday life.

When we build on these foundations we necessarily use imaginative structures – powerful ideas which can be called myths, which are not lies, but graphic thought-patterns that shape and guide our thinking. This is not irrational: the process of using these structures is a necessary preparation for reasoning. Thus the selfish gene is a powerful idea, so are the Science-Religion war, Gaia, natural selection, progress, and the hidden hand of the market.

With the largest, most puzzling questions, we have no choice but to proceed in mythical language which cannot be explained in detail at all, but which serves to indicate what sort of spiritual universe we percieve ourselves to be living in. This is the province of religion. Adding God is not, as Dawkins thinks, adding an illicit extra item to the cosmos, it is perceiving the whole thing differently.

For a long time, this kind of language was reasonably well understood. Since the mid-19th century, however, there has been a disastrous attempt to get rid of it, keeping only literal statements of fact. This is, of course, the root of religious fundamentalism, which tries, absurdly, to treat the whole of that strange compilation, the Bible, as literal fact. Yet in so doing it is only responding to a less obvious fundamentalism on the scientistic side, which claims that our knowledge reduces to one fundamental form – the literal statements of science. Both extremes show a similarly crass refusal to admit the complexity of life.

Dawkins is, of course, quite right to express horror at Biblical fundamentalism, especially in the neocon form that centres on the book of Revelation. But it is not possible to attack this target properly while also conducting a wider, cluster-bomb onslaught on everything that can be called religion. Since this particular bad form of religion is spreading rapidly in the world, we urgently need to understand it: not just to denounce it but to grasp much better than we do now why people find it attractive. It is not enough to say, as Dawkins does, that they are being childish.

We also need to ask why they have found the other attitudes that are open to them inadequate. As I have suggested, this means becoming more aware of the inadequacies of our own way of life, which are obvious to them and which put them off the opinions that we profess. What we need, in fact, is a bit more self-knowledge.”

[email protected]

reply to post by Watcher-In-The-Shadows


Thanks for that. I like what she says mostly. However, I would say that ultimately more atrocities are committed in the name of religion than not. That said, it does seem that some humans do not need an excuse to commit murder or genocide. They just need to think or paint the other different and less then human and religion has usually been the most prominent difference between peoples over the ages.

I couldn't follow religions before Dawkins' book and still didn't after. I found the book very entertaining though; I really enjoyed the scientific bits and i general enjoyed the fact that others thought and felt the way I did about religion. Still, I found Hitchens' book on the matter more entertaining and on the mark.

It actually led the path for me becoming a free spirit, I guess you could call it that anyhow.

The problem with the book, and the entire premise of scientism of which Dawkin's propagates, is that it defeats itself. There is a thread right now in the philosophy section on this.

This is the problem, essentially, in a nutshell.

1. Science is claimed by A to be the only rational form of inquiry
2. According to the scientific method, it can not prove Science to be the only rational form of inquiry
3. Therefore, the claim itself is irrational going by its definition of what rational inquiry.