Theism vs. Atheism ... will it ever be settled?

JLocke wrote: stonebeard wrote: Preliminary statement: Who the balls cares? If you want to take everyone in the universe and make them atheist (oops--convince them to choose willingly for the more rational belief system---OOPS! OOPS! ... lack of belief system) Then the world would be soooooooooooooo much more boring. As a damn atheist I sure as hell don't want a bunch of us traveling around the world preaching the lack of good news. Maybe it's not a good idea to have militant religious people killing others. Tell them to tone it down, but smacking them upside the face (metaphorically, one hopes) with The God Delusion is not going to solve anything, nor should religion be a thing to solve or fix anyway. Militant, violent religion, sure. Try your best if you care. Folks just want to live and believe what they want. A lot of them do it peacefully. Who the hell is any one of us to try to convert them away from their hopes, revelations, and Gods? I'm not trying to convert anybody. I'm not telling anybody how to live their life. I'm debating my beliefs (or lack thereof) with others. Got a problem with that? I don't really care. Nobody is forcing religious people to listen to us, but plenty of religious figures have forced their agendas on society for centuries. Forgive me if I think that's a bad thing, and happen to wish to voice my opinion.  It's true, many religious folks are able to practice their beliefs peacefully, but all atheists are able to peacefully believe what we will. Don't like what we're talking about? Don't listen to us. I don't see why we are accused of forcing agendas whenever we speak out, but religious folks get a free pass to do the same exact thing.

JLocke wrote: stonebeard wrote: Preliminary statement: Who the balls cares? If you want to take everyone in the universe and make them atheist (oops--convince them to choose willingly for the more rational belief system---OOPS! OOPS! ... lack of belief system) Then the world would be soooooooooooooo much more boring. As a damn atheist I sure as hell don't want a bunch of us traveling around the world preaching the lack of good news. Maybe it's not a good idea to have militant religious people killing others. Tell them to tone it down, but smacking them upside the face (metaphorically, one hopes) with The God Delusion is not going to solve anything, nor should religion be a thing to solve or fix anyway. Militant, violent religion, sure. Try your best if you care. Folks just want to live and believe what they want. A lot of them do it peacefully. Who the hell is any one of us to try to convert them away from their hopes, revelations, and Gods? I'm not trying to convert anybody. I'm not telling anybody how to live their life. I'm debating my beliefs (or lack thereof) with others. Got a problem with that? I don't really care. Nobody is forcing religious people to listen to us, but plenty of religious figures have forced their agendas on society for centuries. Forgive me if I think that's a bad thing, and happen to wish to voice my opinion.  It's true, many religious folks are able to practice their beliefs peacefully, but all atheists are able to peacefully believe what we will. Don't like what we're talking about? Don't listen to us. I don't see why we are accused of forcing agendas whenever we speak out, but religious folks get a free pass to do the same exact thing.

There's a point when the deluge of atheism v. religion topics on a forum more resembles proselytizing than mere discussion. I think we passed that point 2 years ago. I could be wrong, but it seems like it really irritates Mike that people actually are religious. Even with all this science around us! SO MUCH SCIENCE. Of course atheists want to distance themselves from religion as much as possible, so saying tons of atheists want to "convert" people is likely to get a lot of angry "Hey now!"s. But so freaking many of them do. It's plainly obvious. I think it's curious too, because it's a passive aggressive sort of converting. "Hey religious guy, now you're sure free to believe what you want to believe, but have you heard about science? I mean it's totally in your rights to believe what you want, but I mean it's obvious to anyone using their sense that science is The Way and The Light." That last part might not happen IRL, but the meaning is the same.


Edited by stonebeard - July 06 2010 at 16:31

JLocke wrote: Well, I respectfully disagree with that opinion. And guess what? Even if that IS what Mike is all about, it's his right to talk about whatever he wants. Just like it's your right to fight him about it. But in the end, he is still going to make Atheist threads, and you'll always be annoyed by it.

You're writing things that I have never taken issue with and agree with completely. I don't even know why you brought this up!

JLocke wrote: I don't see what good you think strolling over to these threads and jumping on him over it every time will do.

stonebeard wrote: Generalizations help us to be able to talk about anything at all. It's often true that the most pig-headed and vocal tend to represent the whole, but that's why I predicated what I was talking about with "some" atheists, or should have if I didn't. Point is, we all take it for granted that there are outliers, but Dawkins, PZ Myers, Sam Harris, etc. are all very vocal and inasmuch as there is an atheist movement now, I do not regret taking them for the figureheads of it and responding to them as the atheist movement. If I worry about the niggling details, I'd have no time to troll this thread!

Edited by JLocke - July 06 2010 at 16:54

Mr ProgFreak wrote: BaldJean wrote: Mr ProgFreak wrote: ^ @Padraic: Good question. I think that a good argument would be one that one could verify objectively, and which would support a Theistic claim - something that would tie in with other independent claims rather than contradict them. I guess the main point is that an argument is not really good if there are alternative explanations that are simpler and don't require a supernatural component (Occam's Razor). I can't think of anything that qualifies, but then again I'm obviously biased. applying Occam's razor to the creation of the universe is a bit keen, since the big bang hypothesis is as full of holes as a Swiss cheese, and other scenarios science has come up with so far are not really satisfying at all. whats more: even if a hypothesis was good enough to be named a theory there  would be no evidence whatever for this scenario. actually astrophysics is not much more than a smokescreen anyway, the reason being is that none of what astrophysicists say can be verified with an experiment. we can't just go and create a star. we don't even know if the basic assumption  (the laws of the universe are the same everywhere) is really true; for one doubt it. I think it is highly probable that physical constants did not have the value they have today all the time. it might for example very well be that the gravitational "constant" depends on the distribution of mass throughput the universe and hence may change. anyway, that basic assumption "the laws of the universe are the same everywhere" is based on absolutely nothing. so much for "exact science" and the explanation of the origin of the universe. if you are not aware of that, Mike, then you are closing your eyes deliberately None of that has anything to do with me applying Occam's Razor. I don't care how the universe was created, or whether science can prove all the claims. Some are mere speculations and those who make them don't claim to have any proof. Others - like the big bang - can indeed be verified by experiments (e.g. background radiation, large hadron collider). Science is all about making claims and verifying them. Quantum Theory is crazy and counter-intuitive, yet its claims can be verified. Sorry, but this is an old straw man argument that religious people often make ("science claims to know everything"). No matter what science knows, religion knows less.

sorry, but this is NOT the old straw argument religious people often make. "science claims to explain everything but can't explain..." argument; you misunderstood me there. I certainly would not come up with that old hat at all. what I was going on about is that astrophysics is a purely speculative science since we can't make any experiments in it. yes, we can measure all kinds of radiation, but it can have any kind of origin. just because a certain hypothesis predicts this radiation does by no means prove it. but we can't make any experiments in astrophysics. we can't go "let's take a few megatons of hydrogen, wait a few billion years and see if a galaxy comes out of it as a result". that's what I am going on about, and that's why astrophysics is nothing but speculation. it has no more fundament than any religion. but since we live in a world in which we are slaves of the scientists we automatically believe whatever they come up with.
no, the only way we could prove a big bang was if we created one ourselves, and maybe that's the way the last one came about even

jampa17 wrote: JLocke wrote:   Name one time in history when atheists committed murder that was faith-motivated.  Atheists don't persecute. Because our belief (or lack thereof) doesn't matter that much to us. We may like to voice our opinions just like anybody else, but for some reason, we get accused of forcing our agendas or persecuting others. All we're doing is debating. Are you truly so thin-skinned that even the friendliest of disagreements seem persecuting to you?    I know I said I will leave but reading this kind of things, well, Fidel Castro came to my mind about that statement that you did. Well, it's just me, or Hittler wasn't atheist as well...?   Just thinking...

JL, here's one:

seventhsojourn wrote: JL, here's one:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_North_Korea   Again with the ''get out the kitchen'' comment

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: Weren't Castro, Stalin and Pol Pot Atheists?   Didn't Castro, Pol Pot and Stalin Tried to force Atheism in their countries?   Didn't they killed millions in that process?   Then there are atheists (who also are communists) that massacred religious people to destroy their beliefs.   I would be careful to call any position I don't agree as ridiculous.   Iván

Edited by JLocke - July 06 2010 at 17:32

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote:   Attheism was part of his motivation, he didn't believed in a deity and wanted all the people to disbelief as him, as a fact he made atheism mandatory, so yes it's part of his motivation