The non-thinking that is Religion.

[AlanG]

Originally Posted by alien_syndm

There seems to be alot of what I call evangelical atheism going on here. It's the very aggresive kind which states that if you believe in God (or some sort of deity) then you are stupid. It implies that if you look at the evidence and don't reach the same conclusion as the atheist then you are dumb.

I don't think it's "if you believe in god you are dumb" more "if you believe in god you aren't rational".

It must of course be because you don't understand science and are not as smart as the atheists, otherwise you'd reach the same conclusion as them.

What has understanding science got to do with atheism? You're mixing up arguments and "creating strawmen" as you later complain of having levelled at you

That in itself is a rather worrying/dangerous school of thought surely and I don't think I have been unfair in representing the way certain atheists seem to argue their case. Of course not all atheists are the same, just as all Christians, Muslims, Sikhs etc are not the same either.

It's not a school of thought at all, just your mixing up different debates into one jumbled mess.

Your world view will affect how you interpret evidence, no matter how much you try to be unbiased. Two people can look at the same piece of evidence and reach totally different conclusions.

Yes, I can look at a red ball and conclude it is an object which is "red". You can look at it and say it is "spheroid". If however we have contradictory conclusions: you say it's red, I say it's green", then at least one of us is probably wrong. The one famous example of two different conclusions which seem to be contradictory is wave/particle theory of light. Both of these were later found to be correct though.

Atheism is a religion too, in every sense of it. You have to BELIEVE there is no God.

No you don't. You just lack belief in a god. A Christian is an atheist in respect to tens of thousands of deities, an atheist is atheist towards one more. I don't BELIEVE there is no god any more than I BELIEF there are no fairies. I don't care either way. I don't waste time worshipping either of them.

Many atheists are very protective of their religion as this thread demonstrates.

This thread isn't defending atheism [what you wrongly call a religion], it's taking apart the poor critical thinking of advocates of religion. (at least that's how I percieve Alex's reason for starting it.)

They are out there preaching their gospel, just the same as Christians, Muslims and everyone else is. The atheist religion is usually tax supported though !

Can you point to any state funding of atheism? Churches get tax relief, we pay for religious instruction in school. We pay for ministers in the armed forces etc.

Dawkin's name always seems to come up alot. I have the God delusion and have read it. If that's the best argument atheism has to offer then I'm not particularly impressed. The entire book could be summed up by "If God made the world, who made God ?"

You have that the wrong way round. He looks at the arguments for religion and concludes the best one is "god created the universe". When you ask the question "who created god" it is waffled away with no real explanation at all. He isn't focusing on the best argument for atheism, merely a huge gaping hole in the best argument for religion.

That's Dawkins argument.

That there is no answer to this basic question, yes you could probably say that's the main thrust of that book.

There is of course numerous rambling about various gripes with Christianity and pages and pages of nothing more than conjecture about how this religion "virus" has infested our minds, perhaps via some mis-firing meme.

ramblings about conjecture? evidence?

Now Dawkins and his many disciples believe that the universe just appeared out of nowhere with no intelligent input.

So you haven't actually read The God Delusion at all have you? Dawkins doesn't know that it did or did not, he probably doesn't care either way, but would be interested to find out. I don't know of any disciples he has so can't answer for them.

A spinning singularity exploded and began the universe ? Where did this come from ? Nowhere, it just appeared out of nothingness.

You are confusing atheism and science again.

Of course science merely doesn't understand it yet, it will one day of course right ? From this explosion matter formed itself.

Probably will. But at least scientists are working on finding out.

Of course quite how natural selection is supposed to act on non-living matter is anyone's guess.

No it isn't, its a well documented theory. What this has to do with religion is anyones guess though. Perhaps you would like to start a thread on science or a branch of science?

This matter then went on to form stars, planets, galaxies etc. From this life somehow managed to create itself and then gradually began to evolve into more and more complex forms over billions of years.

More science

All this happened by itself with no intelligent guiding force. That's quite a leap of faith, no ?

All this happened by itself with no purple paperclip guiding force. That's quite a leap of faith, no ? See how you can try to project the burden of proof. If you want to make the claim that some intelligent guiding force did it that's an argument that needs to be made, not the default any more than purple paperclips guiding it is default.

Just as big, if not greater than the leap of faith needed to believe it was created by an intelligent creator surely. If I made a model of the solar system and asked people to come round and view it and I was asked who made the model........if I replied "It formed itself" noone would believe me, yet they are quite willing to believe the actual solar system did indeed form itself.

Blind Watchmaker by Dawkins rips this argument to shreds far better than I have seen done in a forum post. I suggest you read it.

The thing is Dawkins calls religious people stupid and says he is smart.

citation please?

What started the big bang ? Where did all the matter come from ? What was before the big bang ? Answers ? They don't have any but if you believe something else you are stupid.

I will go check some articles first before rreplying to this point if Les hasn't by time I return to it.

How does that work ? Who made God ? Well I would say God is infinite and outwith time.

That's wonderful, what you believe and all but it doesn't answer the question.

There has to be something infinite in the universe. Something outwith time, something beyond time.

How does there?

Perhaps matter/energy is infinite and has always been there. I think it makes more sense to believe that an intelligent creator is infinite and created the matter and energy.

What exactly do you mean by "infinite" when you are using it in this post?

Why do Dawkins and his discipiles label themselves the smart ones though when their beliefs sound just as "silly" if you will

I assume by disciples you mean "people who disagree with me". I don't think it's that they label themselves smart, its that people who go "I don't understand your argument so disagree with it and claim that you are wrong" are considered to have poorly structured and generally internally inconsistent and internally contradictory arguments.

[qoute]
There is actually a movement for atheists who want to be known as "brights".
The Brights' Net - Home Page
Hey check us out, we're the clever people who don't believe in God !
[/quote]
As a movement they are not very well respected by most non-theists. You are pointing to a minority within atheists and using it to smear all atheists with the same brush.

It's an amusing side note where the word universe came.
Uni = singular, verse = spoken sentence. God said "Let there be..."

Do you have a source for that. I quickly googled and could find no reference to that. Wikipedia for example lists the etymology as

"The word "universe" is derived from Old French univers, from Latin universum, which combines uni- (the combining form of unus, or "one") with versus (perfect passive participle of vertere, or "turn"). The word, therefore, means "all turned into one" or "revolving as one" or "orbiting as one"."

[RiseAgainst]

im sorry but ANYONE who believes creationism IS stupid. end of. that really does require no discussion.

[Thee Alex]

Originally Posted by alien_syndm

Strawman this, ad hominem that. Yes I have heard it all before.

And yet you persist on wheeling out the arguments that have been so roundly trounced in the past? How strange. If I'm proved wrong, without any shadow of doubt, and have my arguments shown up to be foolishness, I tend not to use those arguments again. Something that Creationists/theists would be well served to think about.

Originally Posted by alien_syndm

Refute away if it makes you feel intellectual. One side seems to be getting the lion's share of the coverage in this discussion and I thought I should perhaps redress the balance.

That's only because the non-theists have backed up every single point with masses and masses of evidence. The theists have just gone 'I believe it, so it must be true', and then run away.

Over and over I've asked Christians to defend their faith from a Biblical viewpoint, they've repeatedly failed to do so.

Perhaps you'll answer the question - do you support slavery? And, if you're Muslim, do you support the killing of non-believers? (cos your holy book pretty much commands you to kill those you cannot convert)

[Thee Alex]

It's an amusing side note where the word universe came.
Uni = singular, verse = spoken sentence. God said "Let there be..."

It's an amusing side note where alien_syndm got this idea from. He clearly thinks that 'Universe' is derived from the two syllables meanings in english. Possibly the most dunderheaded thing I've read in this entire thread (and he's had some VERY stiff competition)

[LesMts]

Originally Posted by Rebelius

hey... he does science... in a lab... he must be right.

That would be an utterly preposterous and cringeworthy claim for me to make.

[AlanG]

<quote> etymology </quote>

This is widespread. People persist urban myths such as the origin of "fuck" as an acronym when acronyms haven't been around for very long. Probably because etymology is such a niche and academic subject requiring lots of knowledge of Greek, Latin, French, Italian etc.

An example to show how silly this logic is: the word shit.
this is made up of "sh" and "it", "sh" meaning be quiet and "it" meaning the object in question. Therefore "shit" means "quiet object". I did a shit and it was a quiet object, woohoo I was correct.

[LesMts]

Originally Posted by AlanG

This is widespread. People persist urban myths such as the origin of "fuck" as an acronym when acronyms haven't been around for very long. Probably because etymology is such a niche and academic subject requiring lots of knowledge of Greek, Latin, French, Italian etc.

An example to show how silly this logic is: the word shit.
this is made up of s"h" and "it", "sh" meaning be quiet and "it" meaning the object in question. Therefore "shit" means "quiet object". I did a shit and it was a quiet object, woohoo I was correct.

Ned as well. Ned is not an acronym for non-educated delinquent.
I wish people would stop saying it is.
Non-educated isn't even a thing. The word is uneducated.

[Thee Alex]

'God' is made up of 'G' and 'OD'. 'G' is an exclamation of disbelief ('Gee, that sounds kinda hokey') and OD stands for Overdose. So 'God' means 'Disbelief Overdose'!!

Alien_smgbaheb might be onto something here....

[RiseAgainst]

Originally Posted by LesMts

Ned as well. Ned is not an acronym for non-educated delinquent.
I wish people would stop saying it is.
Non-educated isn't even a thing. The word is uneducated.

ive always found that aspect highly ironic!

[humndislocation]

Originally Posted by alien_syndm

Atheism is a religion too, in every sense of it. You have to BELIEVE there is no God. Many atheists are very protective of their religion as this thread demonstrates. They are out there preaching their gospel, just the same as Christians, Muslims and everyone else is. The atheist religion is usually tax supported though !

Sorry, but no it isn't. Atheism is simply the lack of belief in a god.

If atheism is a religion, then "not playing the violin " must be a hobby, which is really cool, because I am awesome at not playing the violin.

In fact, I may be among the best in the world at my hobby of "not playing the violin".

You may have a point in saying that the subset of atheists that actively assert god doesn't exist are religious, but you'd be a hypocrite to do so unless you also concede that not believing in fairies is also a religion.

Originally Posted by alien_syndm

There seems to be alot of what I call evangelical atheism going on here. It's the very aggresive kind which states that if you believe in God (or some sort of deity) then you are stupid. It implies that if you look at the evidence and don't reach the same conclusion as the atheist then you are dumb. It must of course be because you don't understand science and are not as smart as the atheists, otherwise you'd reach the same conclusion as them.

With all due respect, you claim that you've looked into the evidence for evolution, understood the evidence, and believe it is faulty, and yet, you've repeatedly demonstrated on this site through your arguments, that you have absolutely no understanding of speciation, one its most basic concepts.

You're perfectly free to reject evolution, but the evidence for evolution is so overwhelming at this point, that denying evolution is like denying gravity.

(Although given that you seem to think that atheists argue that the solar system just happened to come together for no reason whatsoever, it seems you lack an understanding of gravity too!)

Originally Posted by alien_syndm

The thing is Dawkins calls religious people stupid and says he is smart. What started the big bang ? Where did all the matter come from ? What was before the big bang ? Answers ? They don't have any but if you believe something else you are stupid. How does that work ? Who made God ? Well I would say God is infinite and outwith time. There has to be something infinite in the universe. Something outwith time, something beyond time.

Ah, the old "the universe had to have been made by something, but god didn't have to have been made by something, because god like, exists outside of time and stuff man".

*Cough* cop out.

Either it is possible for something to exist without requiring a creator, in which case the universe doesn't need to have been created, or it can't in which case god can't exist.

If you can say that god doesn't need to have been created because "he is outside of time", then could be equally possible for the universe to have been created by some non-intelligent set of circumstances that also "exist outside of time".

Sorry, you can't have it both ways.