Examples of these holes would be insects/ animals that have markings so unique that it would be almost impossible for them to have occured “by mistake�? as darwin or evolutionists stipulate.

There is no such thing as “almost impossible”. Something is either possible, or it is not. By describing the chance that the markings came about through evolution as “almost impossible” you have betrayed your own argument by admitting that it is indeed possible.

I am taking a philosophy or religion class at the moment, the main philosophers for the Cosmological argument are usually considered to be Aquinas and his 5 ways, Al Kindi and Al Ghazali.

The main argument is that the Cosmological argument states that everything has a cause, this argument is void since the argument states that since God is outside the universe he is not affected by the argument . I neither agree or disagree with this argument, so please, dont try and verbally fcuk me!

Oh (sorry to triple post), things are never impossible as such, just not possible by currnet understanding, im sure south american indians believe that it is impossible for iron to float on water, yet we know different. I admit that i am contradictory at points, but arguing with serveral people at once is difficult to say the least.

im sure south american indians believe that it is impossible for iron to float on water, yet we know different.

I must have missed that memo.  ‘far as I know, it is impossible for iron to float on water.  Iron can, however, be used to form a boundary so air can displace water, thus creating a lifting force which acts upon the iron.  It is the air in a ship, not the iron that floats on the water.  (Or if you like the air and iron together form a unit of mechanical property that has less aggregate density than the water.)

Paddy writes…

I admit that i am contradictory at points, but arguing with serveral people at once is difficult to say the least.

You’ve not really put forth much of an argument as of yet. Just a bunch of unsupported assertions. That’s meant as an observation, not a criticism.

Ever had a Christian try this one on you after you’ve politely asked them to stop spouting nonsense?
“If you had a cure for cancer and you didn’t share it, what kind of person would you be?�?
I had that happen to me third week of June this year.  Went on a family vacation where my wife’s grandfather tried that shit.  He got all emotional, teared up and said he’d like to see me join him in heaven etc.  It was quite touching really.  But I found it hard to reconcile this very smart scientifically trained man was so convinced he had it right that he literally would not stop until I told him that I would never say another word to him if he didn’t.

Sadly, yes. Even sadder is the fact that if you come in contact with enough believers that are out and about to ‘save the world’, you hear the same dribble over and over. This lends credence to this statement from the original article:

a public declaration that intellect, tolerance, democracy, reason and enlightenment are of less value than dogma and delusion

.

If most (or even a good percentage) were intelligent, reasoning beings,  one would not hear the same empty arguments over and over ad infinitum.

Of course, it is a double-edged sword for them as those who do think and are raised to believe such will eventually part ways with their faith.

In truth, I care much more about what kind of person someone is than whether or not they believe in myths or mistake a book of fables for a book of divine word.

That being said, the fact that christians are such a power in this country is scary. Between them trying to ensure that the ‘dead’ or ‘unsaved’ follow the tenants of their book of fables by law and the vast majority of politicians serving money rather than the people, I hold little hope for the future that my daughters will live in.

But I found it hard to reconcile this very smart scientifically trained man was so convinced he had it right that he literally would not stop until I told him that I would never say another word to him if he didn’t.

That’s probably the hardest thing for me to deal with… the cognitive dissonance in otherwise sane loved ones. Some of my best friends (all siblings from the same family) are (were?) literally brilliant, intellectually speaking.  Then some years ago they fell prey to the mind virus that is Christianity and it’s as though they suffered some sort of massive head trauma and are now brain damaged!  It makes me SO sad to see such minds go to waste.

On a recent road trip to Vegas, the one who’s my BEST friend and has been for over 30 years now, after blowing my mind by saying she supported the teaching of ID in school, actually suggested I’d “change my mind” about God and ID if only I’d visit the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego.   My response was, “Are you out of your fucking MIND?  Do you WANT me to get arrested?  Because that’s what’d happen when I started going off on what bullshit this ‘institute’s’ ‘research’ is, and berating the visiting parents who are abusing their kids by mind-fucking them into believing such horrific and evil LIES!”

Fortunately, we’ve known each other long enough to be able to agree to disagree on such things.  I guess I can almost understand her being emotionally crushed to know that not only will I never be a Christian but the chance of my ever believing in ANY gods is pretty much nil (cuz y’know, at least when I was a pagan I was still “a believer” in some sort of deity/deities - and might still be swayed to the “right” side ).    I suppose it’s rather like how painfully depressing it is for me to witness such a brilliant mind somehow get switched off or tuned out enough to accept fantastic notions such as Jesus and Genesis as literal, historical fact.

OB that sucks. It is truely a waste to see intelligence get drained away by christianity. It seems as though no other religion expects blind following more than christianity. Which is really too bad because the majority of americans are christian and america is a very powerful country.

Cheers BunBun

I suppose it’s rather like how painfully depressing it is for me to witness such a brilliant mind somehow get switched off or tuned out enough to accept fantastic notions such as Jesus and Genesis as literal, historical fact.

Just a guess, but its got to be emotional.  The comfort that some people find in believing in the whole celestial menagerie probably far outwieghs the conflict they find between thier intellectual and emotional selves.  I know they are different and seperate in me - so I’m gonna generalize it and postulate that this dichotomy is common to most, if not all people. 
I’ll be Frank (I’m Earnest in Chicago) - I find emotional comfort in the idea that there is no god - so in sense I’m as guilty as those people that I denigrate for holding primative beliefs.  I get to feel superior to them because I’m not buying into an idea spectacularly lacking in supportive evidence while I’m comforted by the fact (remember we’re talking my beliefs here) that no diety produced a world so full of strife, violence and inevitable death - it just happened this way - no one did this to us - which means that we can make it better.  So if religion is fount of most evil, perhaps atheism and principaled agnosticism can become the source of of a more just world.

Ok, I’m gonna go hug a tree now.

It seems as though no other religion expects blind following more than christianity.

Not Christianity per se, but fundamentalism within almost any religion.

OB, I did not give you enough credit.

Most people will never see a dead body outside a casket after it has been made up to look like a person peacefully slumbering. Most will never see the dead body of a person who has been brutally tortured. But Hollywood does a good job of depicting the shock and horror of a person who does.

The Church boasts that image with terms like “loving sacrifice,” and so successful has been the Church campaign, it is lost on believers how incredibly fucked up that is, that it is what it is, and people fail to recoil in horror. I don’t know if that has ever hit someone as hard as it hit me, but it left me feeling as if “delusional” may be calling a glacier an ice cube. Knowing the typical Christian defense and/or explanation of that image only made the feeling worse. So successful it has been; so out of control it has become. Again.

I’m going to go heal my new brain lesions, and probably hug a tree now too.

Not Christianity per se, but fundamentalism within almost any religion.

In my experiance (which I admit is probably quite limited) I have found that christian fundies are the worst of the lot when it comes to blind following. I’m not saying that other fundies from different religions are not bad, too. But I just think that christians are the worst.

Cheers BunBun

In my experiance (which I admit is probably quite limited) I have found that christian fundies are the worst of the lot when it comes to blind following.

Well we can thank Muslim fundamentalists for 9-11, and my grad assistant says both Hindu and Muslim fundamentalists tend to start shooting when offended.  And both want to control the daily lives of people outside of their own religious circle.

I’m not letting Christian fundies off the hook by any means; just giving them a lot of company.  My theory on this is that religion itself doesn’t make anyone good or bad, but that fundamentalism is bad, and that bad people gravitate toward fundamentalism.

Justice, thanks…

From the Soldiers of Christ II article you linked to above:

I can’t help but recall the words of my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, Dr. James Luther Adams, who told us that when we were his age, and he was then close to eighty, we would all be fighting the “Christian fascists.�?

He gave us that warning twenty-five years ago, when Pat Robertson and other prominent evangelists began speaking of a new political religion that would direct its efforts at taking control of all major American institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government, so as to transform the United States into a global Christian empire. At the time, it was hard to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously. But fascism, Adams warned, would not return wearing swastikas and brown shirts. Its ideological inheritors would cloak themselves in the language of the Bible; they would come carrying crosses and chanting the Pledge of Allegiance.

I’ve spent that same 25 years watching this happen - and telling anyone who’d listen that the Christofascists were organizing, gaining momentum and bent on codifying their beliefs into American law.  For my trouble I’ve been laughed at, called paranoid and a Christian-basher.  Is it any wonder that I’ve had to “kick it up a notch” now that these enemies of freedom have made their way into the highest offices of our government, and the very things I’ve feared have come to pass?

They’re unapologetic and bold in their vocal commitment to wage war on secularism, and as far as I’m concerned it’s time for those of us who believe in TRUE religious freedom - including freedom FROM religion - take a lesson from the Jesus Freaks and fight as hard and as dirty as they have been.  Our being “respectful” and “tolerant” of Christian fundamentalists for the past 25 years was the best thing that could’ve happened to them - it allowed them to take the country away from the sane and rational majority and indoctrinate an entire generation into believing that the constant and inescapable bombardment of Jesus-y god-talk of the fundy minority is how it’s ALWAYS been.

They’ve gotten too powerful to ignore, and hopefully it’s not too late to stop them.

OB, I’m sure you are right. And I agree with what you’re saying, but Pat Robertson is not fighting atheists.
He is fighting Jews.
He and others are very much affraid that if he doesn’t unite americans as a christian group that can stand together. The jews will take over.

I have questions for you Les, OB, DOF, and anyone else who claims atheism is not so much a belief that there is no god, but more of an absence of a belief in a god.

If there is simply an absence of belief, how do you reconcile that with the idea that the belief in a god is silly? Don’t you have to think the belief is wrong to go so far as saying it is silly, and wouldn’t that mean that you do, in fact, believe there is no god?

(I apologize if I seem to be coming from different directions. I’m obviously confused. But I am also obviously trying to understand. I appreciate your patience and willingness to oblige.)

——————

OB, I have mentioned those articles to people, and quoting verbatim the fanatics in them still gets me looked at is if I just said, “Groups of aliens have landed and they are taking over, and it says so right here in The Enquirer!” That reaction concerned me as much as the fundamentalists with a plan. I asked one of the most educated and intelligent free-thinkers I know how close he thinks we are to seeing it happen, and he said, “We already are.” It would seem accurate.

I want to think there was no way Americans—Americans!—would let it happen. But then someone as articulate and intelligent as you is laughed at and thought nuts when you point it out, and I think back to the Presidential Election 2000, and really, the last five years. My faith wavers. Crashes, actually.

Why is everyone so quiet about it? Are there no other thoughts on this? Or has this come up before on SEB? If so, would someone please direct me to that thread?

I hit submit and not preview. Forgive the errors.

Don’t you have to think the belief is wrong to go so far as saying it is silly, and wouldn’t that mean that you do, in fact, believe there is no god?

.

No.  The belief itself may or may not be true.  However, there is no way to know, and the -act- of believing anyway, when there is no way to know—that is silly.  The more extreme the belief, and the more serious its impacts, the sillier the act of believing becomes.

It’s silly to throw spilled salt over one’s shoulder.  But it’s not crazy silly. 

It’s silly to stone someone to death because they committed adultery.  And it’s batshit fucking crazy silly.

  I’m not sure if there’s a God or not.  I don’t know if god-belief is true or false.  In the absence of any compelling evidence, it’s -reasonable- to assume that there isn’t a God: for the same reason that it’s reasonable to assume that an infinite multitude of other unevidenced possibilities are also false.

Otherwise, you have to just arbitrarily choose what you believe in by flipping a coin, or by whether or not it ‘feels’ true.  Not a very pragmatic or productive methodology (and there -is- evidence for that conclusion).

My point==It’s not silly to acknowledge the possibility of deity, it’s silly to assert that possibility as truth, even though there’s no convincing evidence.

And it’s -really- silly when one starts making idiotic claims about how God is going to punish (or wants us to punish for him those who eat shellfish, wear polyester blends, work on the Sabbath, etc.

I don’t have any problem with the quiet and introspective faithful, who are filled with a sense of wonder, and humbled by the awesomeness of the Cosmos.  Hell, they’re practically atheists.

I have a serious problem with the loud and angry and un-self-reflective faithful,  who are absolutely positive that God speaks to and through them, and are willing to make sure that you feel God’s love too, even if it kills ya.

In other words, I don’t believe there is a God, but it’s not a belief I hold with any great conviction— show me some compelling evidence, and I’ll change my mind.  I certainly won’t call someone ‘silly’ just because they believe that there is a God (or Gods).  It’s when they start claiming that they know that God is a natural blonde that I break out the “I’m with crazy” T-Shirt.

Here’s a nickel.  I expect three pennies in change.

Nowiser, I understand. Now that you have explained it, I think others have attempted to get that point across. Thanks for your time.

I don’t know if it is worth a whole three pennies, but I have noticed a difference between the responses I get from Atheists and Agnostics, and the responses I get from the religious, though my access to different groups is limited right now. On the religious, Atheists and Agnostics have (mostly) been quick to separate those who leave them alone from those who cross their personal boundaries, and to express everything from tolerance to fondness for the first group, disgust to defiance for the second. On Atheists and Agnostics, the response from the religious: From Wiccans to Buddhists, they seem to be more philosophical about a person’s character rather than judgmental about a person’s religious label (although there seems to be a lot of resentment toward Christians in general among Wiccans and other groups under the Pagan -capital P- umbrella.) I haven’t gotten to the Jewish yet, and I am not sure I will ever get to Muslims (as a woman, I have issues with Islam). Satanists apparently view absolutely everybody as weak and pathetic. When I can get Christians to stop quoting the Bible (stop that, I say, tell me what you think) I occasionally find some who think as long as you have a good heart you will be okay, but all too often it comes down to one bottom line: You are all in big fat trouble and you’re going to Hell.

Nowiser pretty much said what I would’ve said. Probably said it better than I would’ve as well.   Which is good as I don’t have time at the moment to go into a lengthy response.

I want to think there was no way Americans—Americans!—would let it happen. But then someone as articulate and intelligent as you is laughed at and thought nuts when you point it out, and I think back to the Presidential Election 2000, and really, the last five years. My faith wavers. Crashes, actually.

I wanted to believe Americans wouldn’t let it happen, but I lost my faith years ago in people’s ability to see religion (especially Christianity) as anything but benevolent and beneficial; rather than the tool of control it has always been, and has become more so over the past few decades.

Why is everyone so quiet about it? Are there no other thoughts on this? Or has this come up before on SEB? If so, would someone please direct me to that thread?

Speaking only for myself, since the moment I realized what was happening, I’ve never been quiet about it… in fact it’s caused me to be distrusted and disdained (as well as incessantly prayed for) among some of my friends and family members.  But I don’t care.  If they want to obsess over the afterlife while their rights in THIS one are being trampled, that’s their problem.  As a member of a minority whose persecution and denigration is not only acceptable, but codified in many instances (“In God We Trust”?), I can’t afford to give up the fight in order to keep peace with believers - even when they’re loved ones.

In another discussion the other night with my best friend, I had to point out to her that just as she has every right to voice her opinion that religions other than her chosen flavor are bullshit, atheists have just as much right to say that hers (and every other) is bullshit too.  To her mind, it’s less of a “sin” to believe “wrongly” than to not believe at all.  She pulled out the argument, “If, when you die, Jesus is standing in front of you, how would you choose?”  To which I had to say, “If Jesus is so concerned about my believing in him, and God is all-knowing, then they should know my becoming a believer would be dependent upon some proof NOW… not when I’m dead… so until one or the other of them appears to me directly, I can only conclude that they’re figments of the imaginations of believers.”

In spite of any problems it might cause in my personal relationships, it’s too important to me that my country remain free of “godly” rule and bible-based law.  It’s my duty to stand up for myself, and for all those who share my beliefs but cannot afford to be vocal because it might cause them to lose their jobs, or their kids, or their very lives.  It’s never easy to be the voice of reason, but it’s certainly not as dangerous to be a vocal and activist atheist here in Los Angeles as it is in many other places in America.

I’m not letting Christian fundies off the hook by any means; just giving them a lot of company.  My theory on this is that religion itself doesn’t make anyone good or bad, but that fundamentalism is bad, and that bad people gravitate toward fundamentalism.

Probably because its easy (resolve all of your problems - just sign on the dotted line!) and also, because you get to lord it over those who are not in the fold.

Rite, totally off topic, but does anyone else think that having a Nazi indocrinated Pope is just asking for serious trouble, i know people say that he never believed it, but i think thats total shite, i mean my gran is like 80 and she dusnt believe shes raicist but f00000k me, the way she speaks to coloured people it hilarious!lol, sorry the KKK came through again didnt it?

If there is simply an absence of belief, how do you reconcile that with the idea that the belief in a god is silly? Don’t you have to think the belief is wrong to go so far as saying it is silly, and wouldn’t that mean that you do, in fact, believe there is no god?

Yeah, put me down for “what Nowiser said.”

(dusts off hands)  “Ahhyupp! That was easy!”

Nahh, I gues it wasn’t.  There’d be only a few millivolts off a thermocouple sandwiched between having no belief in a god and believing there is no god.  They’re pretty close to the same thing.  (Grins, ducks rock thrown by Brent Rasmussen)

But there have been some interminable discussions on such difference as there is.  Where’s Brent’s matrix graphic on atheism/theism?  I wasn’t able to find it just now.