Summer means no religion or politics?

[Matti]

Who cares if a dictator or mass-murderer is an atheist as long as he doesn't kill people for their beliefs?

[Khris]

Also note that Hitler and Stalin were known to have eaten bread, thus eating bread makes you become an evil mass-murderer.

Seriously though, the stupidness of the "Hitler & Stalin were atheists"-"argument" cannot be stressed enough whenever it is dragged out again.

[Akatosh]

While we're at noting stuff, keep in mind that believers are not without their mass-murderers. Take a look at the Crusaders or the Inquisition, for example. I am quite sure they would have been at least as bad the modern dictators, had they had the technology. Once a person believes, truly believes they have found the One Way To Salvation Of Humanity^TM, they become capable of nightmarish atrocities.

Atheism has nothing to do with it. Stalin killed for the dictatorship of the proletariat, to save people from The Capitalist. Hitler killed for the dictatorship of the race, to save people from The Jew. The inquisition killed for the dictatorship of Christianity, to save people from The Satan. The taliban kill for the dictatorship of Islam, to save people from The Sheitan, and also basic human rights. See where I'm going with this?

[Babar]

Seriously though, the stupidness of the "Hitler & Stalin were atheists"-"argument" cannot be stressed enough whenever it is dragged out again.

I've seen them brought out by both sides. It really is absurd. The responses are even more absurd. "Stalin wasn't an atheist, he was a nationalist! That is almost a religion!" "Hitler wasn't a christian, he praised the muslims in a text he wrote!".

If you consider the percentages, and the population of Earth in 12th century, Chingez Khan was probably the most brutal mass-killer. Hilariously, he was also known to be equally tolerant (or intolerant? ) of all religions. Therefore, by this threads logic, Shamanism is evil!

The whole name-dropping thing is kinda ridiculous, don't you think?
Stalin was atheist, therefore atheists are evil!
Hitler was christian, therefore christians are evil!
Albert Einstein didn't believe in God, therefore God doesn't exist!
Albert Einstein was a deist, therefore God exists!
Stephen Hawking doesn't believe in God, therefore God doesn't exist!

I'm sorry, but no belief system (atheistic, religious, whatever) has the monopoly on "goodness" or "badness".

[Akatosh]

Aye to that. "But <name> said <quote> about <philosophy>, which makes it <true or false>!" is rather silly when dealing with beliefs.

Still, the unbelievers didn't bring up Nazis first, so we win.

[Khris]

Atheism isn't a belief system, it's about not believing in something without evidence, the very opposite of what followers of a belief system do.
We simply apply our standard of what constitutes reality to everything, instead of everything except stuff written in an old book while aware that more people apply that standard to everything except another old book.

Thus I'd say that the atheist world-view is more healthy than others in a very broad sense.

To put it another way: A person can "justify" doing bad things using religion; an atheist can't.

And Atheism doesn't instill senseless guilt into innocent children.

[SSH]

Atheism isn't a belief system, it's about not believing in something without evidence, the very opposite of what followers of a belief system do.

And Atheism doesn't instill senseless guilt into innocent children.

Ah, but it can only be senseless if you believe there isn't a god. As opposed to not believeing there is a god. Your statements are self contradictory and it comes back to the old thing that most evangelistic (ie..the kidn that would argue on an internet forum ) athiests claim that athiesm is not a belief system but then claim that religion is senseless or evil or wrong which requires a belief...

You'll probably deny this, which just proves my point. 

[Akatosh]

How so? The Atheist line of argument goes that there is no conclusive evidence that hints at the presence of gods, so there is no reason why you should believe they are around. I'm not so sure where belief comes in there.

[Khris]

I don't 'actively' believe that there's no god in the sense that you do there is.
I don't believe there's a god in the same way I don't believe there are unicorns/fairies/etc.
The hypothetical existence of a god is just an arbitrary unimportant concept to me and dismissing it on occasion in an internet debate doesn't influence anything I do in my daily life.

Thus, to me the guilt is senseless in the same way it is senseless to live in fear of falling pianos or chupacabras.

Also, when posting in this thread, I try to correct misconceptions about the atheistic world-view rather than convert believers (which is usually hopeless).
I think if just one believer with an open mind learned something about science or atheism, the existence of this thread is justified.

[SSH]

But if something is unproven rather than known to be wrong, then it can't be senseless to worry about it.

For example, I can't prove that anyone would ever try and break into my house. It has never been attempted so far. However, its a possibility so I lock my door and activate the alarm.

[Lionmonkey]

Atheism and Religion are not very similar. Religions invented a whole universe full of various gods who did all kinds of supernatural stuff and require you to believe things that can't be proved nor disproved.

Well, the sciences invented axioms.

Atheists on the other hand put their trust into a methodology that is built to weed out views that can be disproved.
Thus, truth is approximated and scientists can confidently say that well-developed theory X is very close to the actual truth.

Is there anything that can not be disproved?

The argument that we have to believe what scientists tell us as much as religious people believe in their fairy tales is very flawed because a) it's about the mentioned fundamental difference of the underlying methodology,

Is there that much of it. really?

b) a proper comparison would be "believe a scientist" = "believe a priest", both are human and thus could be lying,

Noted.

and c) in theory, everybody could confirm a scientists findings because experiments that lead to confirmed theories have to be reproducible.

But will the reproductions be genuine?

Now on topic, yes, religion was vastly used in a wrong way (explaining things that seemed bizarre), and science was too. I don;t recall Nacho saying that science  is bad as religion is for the same reason. You say religion is a shiity thing because it was used to take the place of science and it is agreed that it was misused. Wasn't science misused? Wasn't science the cause for more deaths than religion? Did religion cause the WWII? Nope. Science created the weapon, religion often armed the guy.

Maybe it's neither religion or science? Maybe it's humans?

(In case you're wondering, the last statement is based on the fact that the countries with the lowest crime rate and best living standard are also the least religious ones.)

You mean the Communist ones?

You seem to think that science is responsible for a nuclear bomb drop in the same way a religion is responsible for a crusade. It is, however, easy to see that this is not the case.
Both scenarios involve opposing factions, it's just that the first one is based on territorial, political and economical differences while the latter is based on religious differences.

Actually, based on what I was taught in school last year, the latter was also based on territorial, political and economical differences. The religion was just used as a reason for taking war action.

And you don't see armies butcher each other over whether there's a Higgs boson or not. Or atheist suicide bombers.

Just you wait and see what future holds.

I was going to stop posting but HOLY CROW! Is that all you have to say? I can't see how you read what I wrote and then that's all you have to say.

Well I could have stretched it into a coupe of paragraphs, but since I've already done that in a couple of past posts, I simply don't see a reason for repeating myself. I just reminded you about the point, I've mentioned before, which you may have forgotten.

Relative to my information this is the reality that I accept. I can ask myself "Can my information be trusted" and then test it and if it tests correctly then the information is trusted, if there is secretly an angel pushing everything I drop to the ground to test gravity and there is no way for me to know this then I conclude that gravity is causing objects to fall. IF THERE IS NO POSSIBLE WAY FOR ME TO KNOW SOMETHING IT DOESN'T AFFECT MY REALITY. So if I can't verify an alternate reality to the one that is currently showing me I accept that current reality. You do this every day, you know you do this. You couldn't function if you didn't do this. Please, please, please, explain to me exactly the steps I should do when I drop a ball and it falls to the ground. What are the thought processes I should run through and what should my concluding thought be?

I didn't say you had to do anything.  And please don't make me run the "burning man who doesn't feel anything" analogy again. If I don't stop posting same explanations of the same points over and over, it will start looking like spam.

Sorry guys, can we please agree on one point:

- Science just as belief is INNATE!

The main difference is:

- religion is based on things that couldn't be explained in their time and age... while

- science is lookin around, trying to find out what the causes for all the occurrences are...


And I really can't believe what has been said about science in this thread. Science is when a caveman takes a stick and puts something sharp on its end to have a tool to take down a mammoth as well as programming a chip to create something like Skynet.

Science is people. People are science. Please don't try to seperate science from humans like it's some sort of extraordinary subject some crazy fools are learning. In every human there's a scientist.

Correction for all of my previous posts: Replace "Science" with "what most people currently call scientifical fats, theories, etc."
Most usually don't even consider alternative theories "science", so I've put it like that.

Also, Godwin's Law.

This happened so many times in this thread, that I've already stopped noticing.

Of course Stalin was a bigger monster in some ways than Hitler and he was definately an athiest....

Well, he did study for a priest in his youth for some time...

To put it another way: A person can "justify" doing bad things using religion; an atheist can't.

A person can "justify" anything using anything.

How so? The Atheist line of argument goes that there is no conclusive evidence that hints at the presence of gods, so there is no reason why you should believe they are around. I'm not so sure where belief comes in there.

Why no atheist finds the "neener" theory trustable? I find it pretty awesome.

I think if just one believer with an open mind learned something about science or atheism, the existence of this thread is justified.

Isn't that me?

[Khris]

But if something is unproven rather than known to be wrong, then it can't be senseless to worry about it.

For example, I can't prove that anyone would ever try and break into my house. It has never been attempted so far. However, its a possibility so I lock my door and activate the alarm.

Your line of argumentation sounds an awful lot like Pascal's wager. It's okay to instill fear of god in children because he might be watching? That what you're trying to say?
And wouldn't a benevolent, Christian God reward the skepticism of a dead atheist?
There are a million things that are unproven and still senseless to worry about. Is your house raptor safe? If not, why is it known to be wrong that raptors still exist as opposed to unproven?


Lionmonkey:
Science invented axioms. Your point being...?
Stating that "A and B implies A" isn't exactly the same as "The Holy Ghost impregnated a women."

There is an infinite amount of statements that cannot be disproved. Need an Example? "There is a god."

Yes, science's and religion's methodology of getting to truth is fundamentally different.

Yes, if properly conducted, the reproductions will be genuine.

I don't mean communist countries, I'm talking about Scandinavian ones or the Netherlands, for example. Social Democracies, afaik.

Read up on what kings and popes told the people why they wanted to go on the crusades. No matter what other motives they had (if any), the people fought and killed each other to get back the holy land from the respective infidels.
The Quran plainly tells believers to convert or kill infidels.
But did you ever hear about an army of Newtonians raiding a university that teaches relativity?
Wait, you're right, I'll wait what the future holds. It's bound to happen sometime.

One can't "justify" anything using anything, not in the sense I was using the word at least. There are people who think it's OK to kill an abortion doctor because they view him as a mass murderer. These people don't consider themselves wrong or as criminals, they're doing what they think is right and just. Same with suicide bombers. They think that what they do is what Allah expects them to do.
A sane atheist can't justify bad deeds in the same way, he'll always know that what he does is wrong.

I don't see how you learned anything here; and you're still failing basic logic.

[miguel]

Religion to be debated should be on a philosophical level, I believe.
I can't see what science has to do with anything and why it would make someone a believer or not.

[Khris]

Well, like was mentioned a few times before, many religious belief systems do make specific claims that clash with scientific findings (virgin birth, rising from the dead).
Also, there are many countries in which religious beliefs prevent necessary research (stem cell research), beneficial practices (abortions) or oppose the right to live one's life as one pleases (gay marriage), let alone promote lying to children.

So as long as people take their religious beliefs out into the real world to oppress and obstruct other people, the debate will have to address this.
We don't, of course, but every believer should be made aware that he contributes to a society where religious fundamentalism can thrive.

[miguel]

I am aware of that and you should be aware that every religion has organized segments that do not renounce fundamentalist believes.
Speaking about the Catholic Church it is important that you realize that its pace on things like birth control has to be very slow due to millions of follower that don't have the same modern view of our world. Breaking generation habits and cultural day-to-day life is something that must be taken with great responsibility.
My country for example is ageing and is very catholic as you know. I can't just try to change them at this point of their life. It's not fair or just. Time must pass, and such issues should not be rushed. 

[Sam.]

But if something is unproven rather than known to be wrong, then it can't be senseless to worry about it.

For example, I can't prove that anyone would ever try and break into my house. It has never been attempted so far. However, its a possibility so I lock my door and activate the alarm.

I haven't read this whole thread, nor do I intend to, but in response to this tiny snippet, could one not argue that although you can't anyone would ever try and break into your house, it wouldn't take long to prove that SOME people have had their houses broken into?

My reasons for atheism are somewhat personal, but in short I don't see any reason other than fear to adhere to a religion, and I have seen no empirical or logical evidence of a higher power with any interest in us humins and I made a decision.

I have nothing against religious people, and it fascinates me to discuss it. Any attempts to convert people either way irritate me.

[Khris]

Miguel:
I'm okay with old people being stubborn about stuff. But I'm opposed to raising kids the same way.

My sister married a year ago at the civil registry. Her son was born shortly afterwards. A few days ago, she and her husband married in (a catholic) church, getting the kid baptized at the same time.
Before marrying them, the minister asked them if they had pondered whether they want to leave a Christian life and if they themselves made that decision. He never got around to asking the kid the same thing of course, before smearing unction on him while reciting a prayer.
I was reminded of some tribal rite where the shaman smears blood on a goat or something. It was so pointless.

[miguel]

Khris,
parents will always do what they think it's best for them (at least they should), and that can be to decide that their children will have no religious upbringing whatsoever. To me, accepting God as One that can give balance and major guidance to rising children is acceptable when moderate and responsibly done. No harm was ever done that way.

About your sister and her son I can only say that the same degree that you think it was pointless to baptise him returns the same value to her when you disagree.
Anyway, I've mentioned this before, the percentage of kids that had a religious upbringing renouncing it is bigger than ever this days. Religion was never so attacked than now due to cultural changes in our world.

[Nacho]

To me, accepting God as One that can give balance and major guidance to rising children is acceptable when moderate and responsibly done. No harm was ever done that way.

No harm? False... Religion usually is the door where the rest of supernatural stuff enters, like "magic healings", "use this cooper wristband in spite of your regular cancer treatment" or "gimme 5,000 dollars and I will clean your aura".

[Akatosh]

Mh, not neccessarily. It doesn't really require religion to become a victim of magical thinking. In a worst case scenario, it'd more of a symptom than a cause. Well, unless the church itself does the exploiting (Tetzel ring a bell?)...