Atheism

Originally posted by UB2120
I was trying to show how children naturally start the foundations for religious faith. You don't have to put a name to God to believe in the existence of something bigger than yourself, nor do you have to belong to a religion.

But why would you? Why would a child create an imaginary omnipotent being.

I can understand a child creating an alter-ego of themselves - - - but applying to to something beyond themselves - - - that I don't get.

reply to post by awake_and_aware


Of course not. Now, those guys with PhDs and maybe labcoats. Their word shall not be denied. My problem is with anybody be they theist, atheist or cookiemonsterist is when they wholeheartedly agree to accept any bit of information from any source. It's ALL coming from humans and it is ALL potentially flawed.

reply to post by Annee


In the end. What does it matter? It does not prove in any sense the existance or lack of any as you put it "imaginary beings". It may or may not point one in a certain direction, but it is it any sort of proof either way? I tend to think not. Perhaps mankind is reaching towards a existant yet silent god or perhaps not. All that we really know is that there are people do if not us all at some point.

reply to post by UB2120


I believe in Shaq, who is bigger than myself, he is not a deity.
All babies are atheists, they're merely exposed to and indoctrinated into a conception of a deity.

Does the idea of a deity arise naturally? Well, someone had to think it up, but the possibility of imagining something doesn't lend anything to its reality.

reply to post by HunkaHunka


Matt Dillahunty, head of The Atheist Community of Austin almost went into seminary as a baptist preacher.
Professor Bart D. Ehrman is an agnostic atheist who knows the Bible better than most theologians and writes books on the subject.

Oh, I'm a publicly atheist person who reads the Bible...not all the time or obsessively, but I see a few passages every month (often as a consequence of this very website) and I've gone through the whole thing a few times.

reply to post by HunkaHunka


I do like that your response to someone showing you're wrong is to claim that they don't know the book they're quoting and then completely ignore the other person mentioned.

Isaac Asimov, the great sci-fi writer and public atheist, wrote a two volume guide to the Bible, you can get them as a single 1295 page book.

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


Dualist thinking at it's worst. All babies are agnostic, not atheist. Atheist denotes a choice, a stance, a answer of no.

Life is a spectrum not a duality. And sometimes it's even a 4D grid perhaps even all the time. Just to take our and mine innate limitations into account.

reply to post by Watcher-In-The-Shadows


Isn't that why someone brilliant came up with the scientific method? We have that method for the very sake of preventing human flaw from entering into science. Sure, it's not foolproof, but we added as many layers as possible: Double blind studies, research guidelines, peer review, publication.

The great thing about science is that it doesn't matter if it's flawed. Any flaw found in scientific understanding is inevitably a step towards greater understanding.

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


Wholehearted faith in any system is a flaw in and of it's self my friend.

reply to post by HunkaHunka

Originally posted by HunkaHunka
reply to post by madnessinmysoul

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but atheists also seem to have a general disdain for any proverb, allegory, fable, or parable from the past....

You're wrong. Atheists have varying opinions on the issue because they only definitively agree on not accepting deity claims. I find all of the above to be great teaching tools, but I'm not going to say I embrace all forms of them. I find a lot of parables silly, same with a lot of fables. I still enjoy reading Aesop and probably won't stop doing so, but that has nothing to do with my atheism and more to do with my enjoyment of literature.

as a cultural anthropologist this seems ludicrous to me, but I see it daily... atheists don't see any value in the allegories contained within ancient texts, which just befuddles me to no end...

No, we do find value, it's just a historical, cultural, and literary value. We don't find necessary truth value unless there is a verifiable demonstration.

The one thing Atheists do believe though... is that they are right...

Another false claim. I only believe that I'm right in so far as I can examine the evidence presented to me, which is why I always ask people to prove me wrong. I don't do it out of arrogance or conviction in my position, I do it out of a genuine knowledge that I've been wrong before about other things.

double.

reply to post by Watcher-In-The-Shadows

It's ALL coming from humans and it is ALL potentially flawed.

I know who i trust more between the scientist and the preist. At least the scientist is honest about what we currently understand about how the universe and reality works.

Nowhere in their scientific endevour has someone concluded "And so that is evidence of a supernatural being behind the scenes who'll save us all and answers our prayers".

Funny that no scientist is willing to propose such a theory, if the evidence was so blindlingly obvious; where's the logic that such an entity exists, where's the demonstration that religion A) B) or C) is true?

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


Yet you do believe you're right MIMS. Your atguments revolve around it. You're certain. Arrogance etc is not the only ways people arrive at what I argue is false certainty *please remember I accuse your opposites of the same thing*.
And please don't feed me the line that you'd accept evidence and change your stance accordingly. Whoever makes that claim is lying. After all, proof in this larger question could maybe *strongly doubt* be produced and easily dismissed as advanced tech, or the eccentricities of the human mind. And some argue has.

reply to post by awake_and_aware


You see. We look at the world vastly different.

Be they a priest or a scientist. They're all just human. Just like you and I.
Sure, a priest can and probly is lying through his teeth for self serving purposes. A scientist can be completely sincere. But does that mean anything in the larger scheme of things? I argue not. Could still be at least partially right or wrong despite despite themselves.

Just how I look at things. Just makes us different. It would be silly hubris of me to attempt to judge it.

reply to post by Watcher-In-The-Shadows

You see. We look at the world vastly different.

Of course we do, i wouldn't be responding to you if we didn't. There'd be no need for this debate if everyone all thinked alike.

Be they a priest or a scientist. They're all just human. Just like you and I.

Indeed..

Sure, a priest can and probly is lying through his teeth for self serving purposes. A scientist can be completely sincere. But does that mean anything in the larger scheme of things?

There can be insincere scientists, but it's normally helpful to be honest. Of course there are bad atheists, just as there are bad christians, or bad islamists. I agree, we are all human. It's wrong to claim superiority to Atheism, but atheism isn't about morality.

On the other hand, religion claims is moral superiority, there'd be no need for priests and believers to insist upon it's merit, of course, if you believed it was "the word of God" you would think non-believers were sub-par humans.

Just how I look at things. Just makes us different. It would be silly hubris of me to attempt to judge it.

No problem. They say variety is the spice of life.

reply to post by awake_and_aware


Only one small comment. Religion in general does not claim moral superiority. Some or maybe most religions do, but not all of them. And some atheists do claim moral superiority as well. You know this. Both stances are a mixed bag. I view such claims as little more than a silly game of "my dog's better than your dog" that completely ignores the fact that for whatever reason a person does a good thing it's still a good thing.

"A Monkey asks for evidence to prove that ancient ruins are man made. Humans tell them that it is, man made methods were used to create them. The Monkeys reply, but nature can also produce such structures, we don't need a creator to explain their existence, because natural methods can also produce such structures. Humans reply, well show us one example where natural methods have produced such structure, the monkeys reply, "the ancient ruins"."

Discussions with Atheists are as bad as discussions with ignorant creationists, no offense.

double.

reply to post by confreak


Exactly like the blind watch maker anology;

Man finds watch in desert, but knows that it isn't a construct of nature; nature doesn't put arbitrary objects and shapes together like that; it obviously has a designer, someone with forsight, nature has no forsight, evolution is has proved this ireffutably, the legacy of the genes remains, whether they are defective or not (our appendix is an example of this).

To assume creation has a designer is to agree the designer is also imperfect, and is unable to "go back to the drawing board". (The laryngeal nerve of the giraffe is an example of this)



Based on this information, and the "blind watchmaker" anology; i find your monkey/ancient structure anology to be less than progressive.

I don't think the atheist is as "bad" as the theist, in the sense that the atheist only relies on evidence, not superstition and assumption, and not belief formed by ancient men and written down in a book, in a time where evidence was little, and questioning priests was considered "sinful".

Originally posted by Watcher-In-The-Shadows
reply to post by madnessinmysoul

 

Dualist thinking at it's worst. All babies are agnostic, not atheist. Atheist denotes a choice, a stance, a answer of no.

Life is a spectrum not a duality. And sometimes it's even a 4D grid perhaps even all the time. Just to take our and mine innate limitations into account.

edit on 11-6-2011 by Watcher-In-The-Shadows because: (no reason given)

Nope....

Agnosticism says that you are not completely sure whether there is a God or not...

A baby doesn't even have any notion of a 'God'....

A baby is born atheist.