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Why do you assume that the natural world had a beginning?
@Chuck: "life can't begin without life."
If that were true, there wouldn't be any life. But evidently there is life, so your statement is both logically and empirically wrong.
Just about every religion in the history of the world has ascribed the origin of life to an act of creation by one or more gods. As an atheist, I find that explanation unsatisfactory because it's too trivial, and because instead of providing an answer, it adds another question. Where did god(s) come from? Perhaps gods came out of nothing or have always been there? But doesn't that sound a little like the Big Bang or an eternal universe, arguments that theists tend to reject?
The question of the origin of life is simply too important and too interesting to let religious fairy tales obstruct our quest for the real answers.
The truth is nobody YET knows how life began, least of all the creationist nitwits. Science seems to be getting closer to understanding the processes involved and perhaps replicating them. I'm not sure what the answer will be, but I'm betting it'll be grander and a lot more interesting and exciting than a magic trick by an old bearded guy sitting on a cloud.
Your quip about a bottle of peanut butter is invalid. The primeval Earth was far bigger and more complex than a bottle of peanut butter. Its seas were a chemical soup heated and irradiated by geothermal activity and the sun and constantly bombarded with comets and other space debris. Chemical reactions were occurring constantly in an almost infinite number of locations for hundreds of millions of years after the formation of the Earth. Surely even you can see that the vast number of locations involved and the huge period of time reduce the odds against life dramatically. Leave your peanut butter out in the sun for a few hundred million years and see what happens.
"To be an Atheist you don't believe in God right?
So how did life began?"
-----------------------------------
Explain it to us, I mean properly explain it, in exact detail, not just goddidit with magic, but publish your explanation, get it peer reviewed, and scientifically validated. Otherwise you no more know the answer to how life began than those you dishonestly accuse of claiming to know this, so a double liar.
----------------------------------
" It's why you can open a brand new bottle of peanut butter and not worry about life being in it."
It's hard to reason against profundity that prodigious.
---------------------------------------------------
" Life can't start from rain falling on rocks or on the backs of crystals as some morons have suggested. "
Who ever said it could? Though I should like to know how you claim to known this, as opposed to simply claiming it, the favourite pastime of creatards it seems is to sneer at claims atheists and scientists haven't made, whilst blithely claiming as fact things they can't evidence and couldn't possibly know.
------------------------------------
"Yet they have no proof. So to reiterate, you have to have MORE faith to believe that life began without life. Now do you get it?"
No, what has that to do with atheism? I think you need to learn what atheism means before you proceed, and you might then stop making idiotic assertions that have nothing to do with atheism. Then you might explain how life begins with magic from a deity based in a bronze age superstition, and why after centuries of insisting faith was not just enough to believe this bilge, but was to be lauded above reason and evidence.
Now it seems theists have at last come close to demonstrating a miracle, by pretending that faith is 'not' believing in magic without any evidence.
" when I realized it takes faith to believe what most Atheist's believe, I understood that it really is a religion."
What an atheist believes does not define atheism, atheism is not what atheists believe, it is the one thing they don't believe.
Atheism
Noun
disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.
You're adding beliefs to atheism by using the common logical fallacy 'argumentum ad ignorantiam', you should Google that as well. I don't know how life started, I don't need to know how life started in order to reject any and all claims about how it started that don't demonstrate evidence commensurate to the claim.
It's the latest theist fad it seems, trying to reverse the burden of proof as if pointing out that atheists don't have all the answers to how life began somehow validates belief in magic, based on bronze age superstition. Evolution of course no more needs an answer as to how life started than Photosynthesis does, these are established scientific facts independent of how life originated.
However the physical material world and universe are real, and we know natural causes are possible and exist. Unlike the hokum of claims for supernatural causes, which no one can demonstrate any proper evidence for, so that makes a natural physical phenomenon infinitely more plausible already. So sneer all you want, but atheists are not the ones making claims involving magic apples, talking snakes, and virgin births, or humans created instantly using magic that offers no explanatory powers at all. Your sneering comment about rain falling on rocks is very telling as well, even though it is of course a complete straw man as no one has made any such claim, it is worth pointing out that water is an essential ingredient for life, unlike magic, and rocks hurtling around the universe have been analysed and found to contain the raw building blocks needed to start life.
"For the first time, scientists have directly detected a crucial amino acid and a rich selection of organic molecules in the dusty atmosphere of a comet, further bolstering the hypothesis that these icy objects delivered some of life's ingredients to Earth.
The amino acid glycine, along with some of its precursor organic molecules and the essential element phosphorus, were spotted in the cloud of gas and dust surrounding Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by the Rosetta spacecraft, which has been orbiting the comet since 2014."
https://www.space.com/33011-life-building-blocks-found-around-comet.html
Many a true word spoken in jest...now would you like to demonstrate some real evidence for magic and the supernatural? I'm sure we're all agog with anticipation...
It isn't that we "don't believe" in God, it is that we disbelieve theists claims that there is one, we don't have "faith" that there isn't a god. We couldn't care less, we believe in what can be demonstrated to be true. We are looking for that logical begining. Faith is a more closed minded belief.
And here we are to the classic theists argument "how did life begin?" "I don't know." "Haha! That must be proof that only God could have started life!" Once upon a time time men didn't know what the Sun was, where the wind came from or how the oceans stirred so we invented Gods to explain how and why these things are. Now 5000 we know what the Sun is and why the wind blows and what makes the seas stir, so these deities are not necessary. Just because science can not answer the question of how life began, doesn't you theists a right to fill the knowledge gap with your deity. To do so stops the pursuit of knowledge. If we had taken that attitude, we would know about the Sun, wind, ocean.
When you look at the notion of God logically, you realise that the main reason why we've needed Gods and deities, is because have a yearning to understand the world around, and when we can't explain something, we blame/attribute it to God/s. God is a knowledge gap filler.
Just because we haven't found the right conditions for biogenesis doesn't mean we should give up and blame it on God. You, me and every living thing on this planet are nothing more than chemicals reacting with each other. How this unique chemical reaction started, we can't be sure. What I am sure is I would rather honestly not know than believe to know an untruthful answer.
Edit: one farther not. You said it takes more faith to believe life started without because there is no evidence of. This is a misrepresentation. We don't gave faith life started without life, we reasonably assume that there is a logical reason for the existence of life.
Wait.... Atheism is a religion now??? Aw, crap. Uh, does that mean we're gonna have to build a church or something? If so, I demand we have soft and cushy recliners in there instead of those hard-ass wooden pews. The pews always made my butt raw. Oh, and I REFUSE to get up early for services every Sunday morning. Hey, how 'bout we all just pick a different bar to meet at every Saturday night? Karaoke sermons would be AWESOME!
@Tin-man: "does that mean we're gonna have to build a church or something?"
Actually an atheist church would be nice. When they're not peddling spook stories and sucking money out of pockets for grandiose buildings, etc., churches can offer all kinds of benefits to their members, including networking, fellowship and mutual support. Maybe atheists could form something along the lines of Rotary or Ben Franklin's Junto club.
You should look it up on the internet. I have even seen an interview on a news channel. So your a little behind. There are claims of over 70 around the world. And I thought Atheists new everything lol. Maybe your not a real Atheists?
@ Chuck "I thought atheist new (correction "knew") everything."
That is where you are completely wrong! Like everything else you've stated about atheist/atheism. Atheist don't have all the answer, and never have we claimed to. We simply believe it what can be demonstrated to be true. There are still mysteries left in the universe. What we do know is infinitesimal compared to what we don't know.
But what we don't do is make false claims, some unsubstantiated, some proven wrong.
Like I said in previous posts, you were never an atheist.
Atheist don't have all the answer, and never have we claimed to. (Correction "answers " lol)
I know you don't have all the answers, I was being sarcastic.
Sorry to say but there have been many unsubstantiated claims by Atheists and I've pointed several out. Your claims are out of your world view and not out of truth. I have stated many times that we all believe that way. And I've given examples to that degree.
As far as myself being an ex-atheist, all you would need to do is talk to those I grew up with. They are available, though I would prefer for you to meet them face to face so you could see they are not made up. My family and friends and religious people that I argued with would be happy to inform you of how I believed. And before you consider I may have them to lie, you will find that at least most of my family and friends don't want what I have now. Even though they don't claim to be Atheists either.
@Chuck Re: "...thought atheists knew everything"
*chuckle-chuckle* Such a lovely false assumption on your part. Granted, I have encountered a few folks here I would consider to have genius-level minds, but I would imagine even they would never claim to know everything. Generally speaking, it amounts to the fact that a majority of the folks here are just really damn good at research and following logic to lead to reasonable conclusions. As for myself, I KNOW that I do not know everything, and have never claimed otherwise. I will even go so far as to admit I absolutely suck at research. Never really been my gig. And I have never considered myself to be a genius, even though various IQ tests over the years have indicated otherwise. Basically, I am just an average dude who prefers to think for himself rather than have his thoughts and actions dictated by some imaginary entity or by some organized global conglomerate of overly-pious religious "scholars" who claim THEY alone have all the answers for mankind. Now, with all that in mind, quite frankly I do not care whether you think I am "real atheist" or not. At least my life isn't controlled by a schizophrenic master who seems more concerned about the types of clothes you wear than he does about basic human rights.
See you don't get it at all. I'm set free from bondage. You believe that God just wants us to follow a bunch of rules. Yet he doesn't punish us when we fail at those rules. Let me ask you a question, do you have kids, or if you did have kids, would you expect them to obey your rules? I’m going to assume you would, because you would most likely care about them right? Most people want their children to be well behaved don't you think? Usually people associate what kind of a parent someone is by how their kids act. And if a parent is doing their job correctly they try to steer the child to stay out of trouble and not treat others wrong. They also make them take bathes and wear clothes. A good parent doesn't steer their kids to steel or to do drugs or other harmful things. And God does the same. Nothing He asks us to do is out of our ability. And it’s not to much to ask. You see if we act and dress like the world then there would be no distinction between the worldly and Christians. Also the more someone who is under another's authority, like a child and parent, loves that one the more they will obey them. A child with a good parent that loves them will trust that the parent knows what is best. God's relationship with His children is the same. We trust Him and love Him, so we obey Him for the most part. Thankfully He knows us and knows we will fail Him. But He doesn't cast us away.
"You believe that God just wants us to follow a bunch of rules."
He's an atheist, so no he axiomatically does not believe that.
"A good parent doesn't steer their kids to steel or to do drugs or other harmful things. And God does the same."
A human parent is neither omniscient nor omnipotent, they are not in my experience omni-benevolent either. Do you see why this makes parenting analogies meaningless drivel? And it is steal, if you mean theft, steel is a man made alloy of iron and carbon.
"Thankfully He knows us and knows we will fail Him. But He doesn't cast us away."
So you don't believe that after a few decades of him not showing me a single shred of credible evidence that he is any more real than Zeus or Thor, he will cast me into an eternity of unspeakable torture? I don't believe this obviously, but we have gentle Jesus meek and mild to thank for the rather loathsome concept of hell. Since you have resorted to my least favourite analogy in the rather bare apologists armoury, namely parenting analogies, perhaps you can tell me what you would think of a human parent that tortured it's children, FOREVER, because they failed a test it had set them?
I know what I would think, and as I said human parents don't have the advantage of limitless knowledge, power and therefore choice.
Religion
Noun
the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.
Only an imbecile would fail to see that atheism is entirely incongruous with the definition of religion, and this is even after mendacious theists have tried to redefine atheism as holding certain beliefs about how the universe and life originated, rather than atheism just being the lack of a single belief, that a deity or deities exist.
I'll dumb this down as much as I can for you, since researching simple word definitions seems to be beyond your ability. Even 'IF' atheism was defined so that all atheists must also be materialists, this still wouldn't make atheism a religion, or even mean it required any faith based beliefs.
You simply put yourself in the place of God or whatever is most important to you. So the God effect is still there.
Who is this meant to be directed at? How does an atheist put themselves in place of a fictional deity exactly? What is the 'god effect?
Why do religious apologists always become so cryptic when you start to debate their claims?
Look Chuck.
The thing I don't like here is your presumptions about what atheism means to me and other atheists.
I can't speak for every atheist, but for me I don't have "faith" that an intelligent designer to the universe doesn't exist. I have a reseasonable assumption that one doesn't exist. Given our need to explain the world around us, when answers can't be found, we invent God/s to explain the unexplainable. Many gods have been proven to be false. It is a reasonable assumption that any God can eventually be proven false.
Of course if it were demonstrate to me, beyond a reasonable doubt, that an intelligent designer is real, I'll be a believer.
With evolution, the big bang, string theory etc, they don't hold all the answers, but I have a reasonable assumption there is truth in it. My reasoning comes the fact that it comes from multiple, independent sources. More importantly, when a long standing theory is proven wrong, it is immediately put out there. Giving a reason to why it was disproved, so that it can be verified by other independent scientists. There is a high level of scruntiny to the process. When these independent sources say that science, up to this point, had it wrong and this is now this the current theory. It reaffirms the reasonable assumption that, a) what I am being is the truth, and b) that there is no hidden agenda, it is solely for knowing the truth. Science isn't affraid to admit when it's wrong.
To me, religion is about faith. Believing the unreasonable. Atheism is about believing in the reasonable, which in it's very essences, requires absolutely no faith.
It's the difference between making your world fit your beliefs, or making your beliefs fit your world.
I am sorry to say but you appear to have been conned, by the likes of Ken Ham, into believing that Atheism is a secular (Anti-God) religion, my friend.
I suspect that Ken Ham and other creationists, try to redefine atheism, so they can fight it on their terms, because fighting atheism on it's terms can't be done (for reasons stated in my previous post). A religion, they know how to fight, reason they just simply can't.
This is why I accuse you of never being an atheist. Because how you define atheism, is so far removed from my, and most other atheists' definition of atheism, I simply can't believe that you truly, rationally, disbelieved in the exists of God.
I do hope that if you "turn your back on atheism" (for want of a better phrase) you do it for the right reason, i.e. you have faith in your God, and not that you believe atheism to be a religion, because it really isn't.
Chuck: "And I thought Atheists new everything lol."
You've got all back to front and inside out, Chuck. It's Christians and other deluded religionists who claim to know the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Atheists are people who've gone back to the blank slate and weighed up our knowledge of the world from a more logical perspective. On that scale, Christianity weighs about as much as a flea's fart.
As Ben Franklin said, "The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance."
I also like what Bertrand Russell said: "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
But thank you for hint about looking up atheist churches on the Internet. I'll give it try.
Well, in that case, Algebe, would it be BYOB, or would everybody just chip in to the collection plate to fund an open bar up near the altar?
@Tin-man: "would it be BYOB"
Definitely bring-your-own. Bring a six-pack and some deep-fried peanut butter sandwiches and we'll do an Elvis communion.
@Algebe
WHAAAAT???? Elvis is DEAD???.... Oh, dear. Then who was that young man I saw in Vegas last week?
This guy chuck is a troll. If there actually is a god as described in the bible, he deserves to be put to death a thousand times over. If I found out Jesus was real and had come back to life, I would tell him he's a twat and kill him again. Bibles are good for one thing, kindling. Christians are good for one thing as well, a laugh when they come into a lion's den like little mice with Napoleon Syndrome. This sad little being is just turning the arguments against religion and trying to use them against rationality. It's childish, and so pathetic that it makes me sad for the human race that people such as this waste precious oxygen. Go to church and raise your hands or something chuck. Your god doesn't need online word soldiers that make utter fools of themselves. He needs more little boys for his priests.
atheism = a-theism = anti-theism = NO theism
So Chuck basically claims that being non-religious is the same as being religious. He claims that atheism is theism.
If atheism is a religion, then "not collecting stamps" is a hobby. If atheism is a religion, then "Off" is a TV Channel.
What do you call a person that never plays football. Ah, yes, an Anti-footballer, or short, Afootballer. So, according to Chuck's "logic", someone who never plays football, is a footballer.
You can't get any more wrong than that. It's like saying that 0 = 1
That's how these deluded, brainwashed fanatics argue. That's what brainwashing does to people. You lose your ability to apply reason and common sense. You will have no concept of reality.
Typhoon
Those play on words are just silly. But I suppose you think you are smart. Let me show you simply why your not. First of all God's thoughts are so much higher than ours, and He can give me whatever is needed to debunk anything you or anyone can come up with. Please note I'm not claiming to be that smart but my God is.
So here is what he gave me.
You for some reason believe that to be religious you have to be a theist. Wrong!
You see Christians are a double positive religion. While certain Jewish sects are single positive, were they believe in God but not in an afterlife. Some Buddhist's are single positive, were they don't believe in a God but they do believe in an afterlife.
Atheists are a double negative religion.
You deny both by faith, because as you claim we can't prove either, you can't disprove either until you die.
Did you know that a Supreme Court in 2005 heard arguments on this very subject and found Atheism is a religion? I'm sure you probably didn't.
Also I copied this info from a website and it's address that has a good explanation. Oh and there are more you can go to.
http://debunkingatheists.blogspot.com/2010/07/atheism-is-religion.html?m=1
(Atheists)
They have their own worldview. Materialism (the view that the material world is all there is) is the lens through which atheists view the world. Far from being the open-minded, follow-the-evidence-wherever thinkers they claim to be, they interpret all data ONLY within the very narrow worldview of materialism. They are like a guy wearing dark sunglasses who chides all others for thinking the sun is out.
They have their own orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is a set of beliefs acceptable to a faith community. Just as there are orthodox Christian beliefs, there is an atheist orthodoxy as well. In brief, it is that EVERYTHING can be explained as the product of unintentional, undirected, purposeless evolution. No truth claim is acceptable if it cannot be subjected to scientific scrutiny.
They have their own brand of apostasy. Apostasy is to abandon one’s former religious faith. Antony Flew was for many years one of the world’s most prominent atheists. And then he did the unthinkable: he changed his mind. You can imagine the response of the “open-minded, tolerant” New Atheist movement. Flew was vilified. Richard Dawkins accused Flew of “tergiversation.” It’s a fancy word for apostasy. By their own admission, then, Flew abandoned their “faith.”
They have their own prophets: Nietzsche, Russell, Feuerbach, Lenin, Marx.
They have their own messiah: He is, of course, Charles Darwin. Darwin – in their view – drove the definitive stake through the heart of theism by providing a comprehensive explanation of life that never needs God as a cause or explanation. Daniel Dennett has even written a book seeking to define religious faith itself as merely an evolutionary development.
They have their own preachers and evangelists. And boy, are they “evangelistic.” Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens are NOT out to ask that atheism be given respect. They are seeking converts. They are preaching a “gospel” calling for the end of theism.
They have faith. That’s right, faith. They would have you believe the opposite. Their writings ridicule faith, condemn faith. Harris’s book is called The End of Faith. But theirs is a faith-based enterprise. The existence of God cannot be proven or disproven. To deny it takes faith. Evolution has no explanation for why our universe is orderly, predictable, measurable. In fact (atheistic) evolutionary theory has no rational explanation for why there is such a thing as rational explanation. There is no accounting for the things they hope you won’t ask: Why do we have self-awareness? What makes us conscious? From what source is there a universal sense of right and wrong? They just take such unexplained things by … faith.
[internet atheists] There are days when evil and suffering are hard to explain, even for the most ardent follower of God. There are questions we cannot answer. There are days when every honest Christian will admit doubts about some specifics, but we don’t become atheists. It is because our soul JUST KNOWS that God is there, because God revealed Himself to all of us. Romans 1:18-23
And maybe because atheism is a religion that requires too much untenable faith.
Not only is Atheism a religion, the entire premise is a negative proof fallacy.
So, if I can get my head around all of that, long story short, it would seem we have faith because we DO NOT believe in something? Well. Hmmm... Fascinating. With that in mind, I do not believe there is a leprechaun waiting for me at the end of a rainbow with a huge pot of gold. If I start to lose faith in believing that, does that mean I can soon go get my pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? If true, then this metal man right here has ZERO faith in NOT believing in leprechauns and gold at the end of a rainbow. (Woooo-hoooo! Papa's gonna be a rich man soon! YES!)
Speaking of rainbows, interesting bit of trivia here from a guy who lived above one for a good portion of his life: While down here on the surface, children are taught to use the ROYGBIV method of remembering the rainbow colors. In Munchkin Land and in the Emerald City, however, children are taught to use VIBGYOR to remember the colors. I suppose it's all just a matter of perspective.
Do you have absolute undeniable prof that God doesn't exist? Claiming He doesn't just because you don't believe because you have no evidence in your world view, isn't prof.
I have all the evidence I need from the moment He opened my eyes to the truth. In which before that moment I believed just like you that not only was there no God but the notion didn't even make any sense. I had debates with others about it. I told one of my friends that if there was a God that when I stand before Him I would slap Him in the face. At that time I was angry about all the bad things that happen in this world if there was a God. So of course like so many of the posts in this forum from Atheists, I too got mad when someone told me there's a God. But when He opened my eyes to the truth, my outlook and my life changed.
Let me ask you something here, I have read other posts here were some have talked about certain real life realities happening in nature that has no bearing on man kind. And they'll show their anger over that if there is a God, because then it's His fault. But I'm wondering if they and possibly you feel that way, do you all have that same anger toward nature? Because it's still happening with or without God right.
But the only thing I read from all you angry Atheists is that your only mad because some people claim there is a God. By the way I've said this before, most of you talk more about God in whom you claim doesn't exist, more than some of the Christians I know. How funny is that. He knows how to make even non believers talk about Him lol.
So let me explain to you what not being religious really is.
It's not talking and spreading your beliefs to others, it's not having thoughts and ideas about anything that can't be proven just because your world view makes you believe you have prof. It's like having a life that you live in the moment not having any care about anything. It's like as you go through your day looking at things without forming an opinion. Simply because you don't know the truth and you don't care what the truth is. You simply wouldn't push idealistic issues that others have. You would simply be an observer of life with no opinion. Because somethings just can't be proven one way or the other.
I can't prove to you what God did to me through salvation. Yet He changed my life for the better. And you can't disprove God. Especially to those that He has changed.
It's kinda strange He would arrange things to work the way it does. But if you decide to find out the truth for yourself, you have to do it His way. For you'll not find it any other way!!!!
@Chuck: "tergiversation.” It’s a fancy word for apostasy.
No. It's a fancy word for a dishonest flip-flop. When a politician opposes something one day and then says the next day that he's supported it all along, that's tergiversation.
Thu, 12/14/2017 - 20:38 (Reply to #796)Permalink
Chuck "Those play on words are just silly. But I suppose you think you are smart. Let me show you simply why your not."
Don't you just love the irony of someone telling you why you're not smart then showing they don't know the difference between an abbreviation of you are, and the word your.
-----------------------------------
Chuck "First of all God's thoughts are so much higher than ours, and He can give me whatever is needed to debunk anything you or anyone can come up with."
Yet he can't help you abbreviate you are, or to find the shift key, or indeed when to lay off it, it would seem. Another hilarious piece of irony.
---------------------------------------------
"So here is what he gave me. You for some reason believe that to be religious you have to be a theist. Wrong!"
Indeed you are wrong, as Typhoon said no such thing, he never even implied it. This has to be a windup? Or your deity is taking the piss out of you of course?
---------------------------------------------
" While certain Jewish sects are single positive, **were they believe in God but not in an afterlife."
Oh dear, another 'gift' from your deity?
------------------------------------------
"Atheists are a double negative religion.
You deny both by faith, because as you claim we can't prove either, you can't disprove either until you die."
Where to start, firstly you mean atheism not atheists, secondly religion is defined as "the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods", and only an illiterate retard would even try to claim that the lack of a single belief is therefore a religion, ahem. Lastly you have ended with a common logical fallacy called argumentum ad ignorantiam, the fact that something is unfalsifiable doesn't validate that claim or idea, quite the opposite, try disproving there is an invisible unicorn in front of you, that cannot be detected in any empirical way. Now ask yourself if you believe it is or even might be there, just because no one can disprove it is there. Dear oh dear...
--------------------------------
"They have their own worldview. Materialism (the view that the material world is all there is) is the lens through which atheists view the world."
Nope, this is untrue, not all atheists are materialists, and atheism requires one thing and one thing only, the absence of a single belief, that a deity or deities exist. I am a materialist as it happens, as no one has ever been able to demonstrate any evidence for anything supernatural. Most of the people who espouse this verbiage don't even know what falsifiable means or agnosticism or as we see here in your case, what atheism and religion mean.
------------------------------------------
"Far from being the open-minded, follow-the-evidence-wherever thinkers they claim to be, they interpret all data ONLY within the very narrow worldview of materialism. "
So we can add the phrase open minded to the ever expanding list of things you don't understand. It is defined as "willing to consider new ideas; unprejudiced." Why exactly should people consider the existence of the non-material and / or supernatural magic to be true? As that is what theists believe, when no one can offer proper evidence for it. If you could offer evidence you would, but then you wouldn't need this endless and pointless diatribe to deflect from your lack of evidence, by shrilly insisting the supernatural exists UNTIL SOMEONE DISPROVES IT. If you are open minded, then I wonder how you applied this criteria to Zeus, Thor, Apollo, garden fairies, et al and dismissed them as fictions? I apply the same criteria to all deities, and all claims, that is open minded, is it unbiased, you use faith to believe one versions of one of them is real, that's closed minded by definition.
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"They have their own orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is a set of beliefs acceptable to a faith community. "
Actually orthodoxy is defined as "authorised or generally accepted theory, doctrine, or practice." Now one more time for you, atheism is the lack of a single belief, atheists are people who lack that single belief, beyond that they can believe what they like, and yes they could even be religious, though generally atheist are not, and atheism is no more a religion than not collecting stamps is a hobby. Again only an illiterate cretin would even try to claim atheism is a religion, or a troll of course. I have to say I don't think you're a troll.
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" Richard Dawkins accused Flew of “tergiversation.” It’s a fancy word for apostasy. By their own admission, then, Flew abandoned their “faith.”
Actually it's primary definition is "1 : evasion of straightforward action or clear-cut statement : equivocation". Dictionaries are not your strong point are they? I suspect if your claim about Professor Dawkins is true, and I have every reason to doubt all such theistic vitriol aimed at PRD, but nevertheless I'd bet a years wages he was using the term with it's primary definition intended. Though of course PRD is dedicating a lot of time and energy to debunking religions, whilst championing reason and education, and quite obviously views that as a 'cause', this in no way implies atheism is a cause, but rather atheism is the result of the cause. can it really be a mystery to the ignorant and superstitious that the most elite scientists having spent a lifetime in education and the pursuit of knowledge for it's own sake, invariable end up atheists? CAUSE & EFFECT Q.E.D.
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"They have their own prophets: Nietzsche, Russell, Feuerbach, Lenin, Marx."
Nope, I accept or reject what anyone says based on the merits and validity of the statement or claim, irrespective of what they believe. Though I'll not mirror your pathetic theistic hubris and try and claim to know what other atheists think, unless they tell me of course. Since atheism has no dogma, no doctrine, and no religious texts or texts of any kind they must adhere to like the hapless flock that bleat out their indoctrinated mantras in churches, temples, mosques and synagogues the world over, whilst sententiously (and hilariously) claiming they have free will.
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"Darwin – in their view – drove the definitive stake through the heart of theism by providing a comprehensive explanation of life that never needs God as a cause or explanation."
What explanation of life can be remotely evidenced that requires at it's core magic and superstition, and in what way is that flimflam even remotely explanatory of anything?
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"They have faith. That’s right, faith."
No I don't, that's right, no I don't.
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"The existence of God cannot be proven or disproven."
Well as has been pointed out, neither can the existence of invisible unicorns be disproved , how much gravitas does your inability to disprove the existence of invisible unicorns lend to the claim they exist exactly, I'm curious? Since you keep arrogantly asserting atheists are not open minded, one assumes you apply the same weight to the unfalsifiable nature of invisible unicorns as you do to the existence of your fictional deity? Or can we add breathtaking hypocrisy to your CV here?
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"The existence of God cannot be proven or disproven. To deny it takes faith."
Possibly, but I don't need to deny it any more than I need to deny invisible unicorns exist, I simply don't believe those claims, as no evidence has been demonstrated for either claim.
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"Evolution has no explanation for why our universe is orderly, predictable, measurable."
Neither does the theory of gravity, or germ theory, or calculus, or Pythagoras's theorem, or the theory of relativity, are they all wrong as well then? Or is it just scientific facts that contradict the dogma and doctrine of your superstition that you laughably cherry pick as false?
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" In fact (atheistic) evolutionary theory "
It's neither atheistic or theistic, it is a scientific explanation of and for the diversity of life and the origin of species. Also the largest Christian church and by far the worlds largest denomination of monotheists accept the scientific fact of evolution, which makes no mention of or claims about the existence or not of a deity. Are you trying to appear this ignorant and or dishonest?
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"There is no accounting for the things they hope you won’t ask: Why do we have self-awareness? "
You don't have self awareness, that is axiomatic, unless your goal here is to deliberately make yourself appear superstitious, gullible, sententious, obnoxious, chippy, and woefully ignorant of even the most basic scientific facts.
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"From what source is there a universal sense of right and wrong? "
There isn't a sense of universal right and wrong, and again I'm stunned at the stupidity of the claim.. There are certainly moral imperatives, and none of these requires religion, let alone a deity. I can see the benefit in societal moratoriums on murder and rape, and equally view them as pernicious and therefore repugnant behaviours, I think it is very sad that in the 21st century there are people who are so amoral they have to be 'told' such behaviours are wrong, and can't reason this for themselves.
Also why does your bible endorse slavery, and rapine, and murder, and genocide, and infanticide, and ethnic cleansing, and the sex trafficking of young virgin women and girls captured in warfare? Is that really your idea of morality?
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"There are days when evil and suffering are hard to explain, even for the most ardent follower of God. There are questions we cannot answer. There are days when every honest Christian will admit doubts about some specifics, but we don’t become atheists. It is because our soul JUST KNOWS that God is there,"
Just as the Muslims who immolated themselves and thousands of innocent men, women and children on September the 11th "knew god was there" and said so at the moment their evil and indiscriminately murderous plan culminated in their own deaths, and of course just as they absolutely believed they'd be rewarded with a lifetime in paradise and 72 virgins, replenished daily. Their belief is as absurdly devoid of evidence and reason as yours of course, but as Voltaire is claimed to have said “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities”. The difference is that in the developed west our post industrialised societies have largely neutered the powers of religions after centuries of their abhorrent violence. In America this was encompassed in a written constitution whose purpose was to avoid religions persecutions experienced for centuries in Europe, by creating a wall of separation between church and state. You should be proud of the almost prescient foresight of your founding fathers in that regard.
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"Not only is Atheism a religion, the entire premise is a negative proof fallacy."
What superhuman power does atheism demand people believe in? it doesn't does it, so one more time for you then, atheism is the absence of a single belief that a deity or deities exist, it is not therefore a religion, and only an illiterate retard would try and claim it was. Atheism has no burden of proof as it makes no claims, merely rejects one. Do you have separate faiths for all the deities you don't believe in, like Zeus, or Wotan? what do you call each of these faiths?
You are funny...Now, give us your three best pieces of evidence for the existence of your chosen deity...
Ok. I admit it. I did not read all 27 pages of this insanity. I read four plus the last one.
I don't think I have any adequate words (a rarity for me). I'm literally stunned speechless at the thought that Chuck may actually be sincere.
At first I thought it was a joke. Or a troll. Or maybe a cult of frat boys with too much time on their hands and not enough booze (it being a seminary fraternity). But now I'm not so sure.
How can a thinking human behave the way Chuck does? For YEARS?! On the same fucking thread?? I don't care if he wants to worship a imaginary immortal train wreck of a god, I don't care if he's a true believer and has had a direct revelatory experience from Yahweh himself.
I would just like to establish that basic facts are in fact basic facts. Like dictionary definitions of words. Actual observable natural phenomena...y'know... existing. Little things like that.
I feel like I stepped into the twilight zone where black means sideways and up means blue.
If this is a troll it is a supreme act of dedication. I salute you Chuck. But if you really don't know how to find out what words mean or have any desire to really learn or know anything, and if your only ability is to misrepresent the doctrine you supposedly hold dear (yes, I was a Christian for nearly thirty years and your handle on theology is weak at best), then I am back to being speechless.
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