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Originally posted by Shadowflux
All of the normal arguing aside, I am getting a little tired of hearing so called atheists complain about how persecuted they are.
Maybe it's just me but i honestly can't see how or where they're being persecuted. Maybe you guys have never been to New York City, or the southern NY area in general. Talk about persecution, you just try and bring up anything closely Christian and you'll get a slammed from all angles.
Anyway, perhaps I'm just not reading the right material here but I've found 90% of atheist arguments to show a poor understanding of the religious texts they're deriding. Basically, I'm a Christians because all the arguments i've heard to the contrary have been pretty poor. (obviously it's not the only reason)
However, the atheists will never gain a proper understanding of say the Bible, because they are incapable of having a spiritual experience. If you haven't had one, if you haven't felt that sudden loving oneness with creation and with God then you will always view the Bible as somthing untrue and outside yourself and always compare it to what you deem as science and logical thought.
I had trouble understanding and believing what I had read and felt until I had a spiritual experience or two, now it all makes perfect sense to me.
But it's pretty much hopeless to try and convince atheists to change their mind, they're usually pretty dead set on thinking what they want and knowing they're right. Plus, many of them become atheists so they can rebel against their parents or teachers or whoever else.
I always like arguing the existence of atheism with "atheists", I always start it off by saying somthing to the effect of:
"If you honestly, truly, in your heart believe there is no God, no soul and no afterlife, then why do you feel the need to argue it so strongly? I think you're an agnostic."
They never see the irony in arguing the existence of atheism.
Originally posted by IAF101
Also if you do understand Atheists in general they are more informed about religion than most people who claim to be religious.
That is primarily due to the emphasis of reason and logic in Atheism over blind faith.
Also there is the constant challenge that atheists face and therefore reading up and being informed in a necessity.
As an atheist I dont believe in the myth of divinity just as I dont believe all people are equall. But I understand the purpose of the concept and its role in society. I am sure some atheists would agree but then again I believe in fate!
Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
Originally posted by CaptainLazy
Well why should I respect a belief that says I am scum, that says I am a fool, says that I will burn for eternity in a lake of fire?
Originally posted by RWPBR
Many Atheists I have met are really Deists in denial.
Washington, DC—American’s increasing acceptance of religious diversity does not extend to those who don’t believe in a god, according to a national survey by researchers in the University of Minnesota’s department of sociology. The study will appear in the April issue of the American Sociological Review.
From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.” Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.
Even though atheists are few in number, not formally organized and relatively hard to publicly identify, they are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public. “Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years,” says Penny Edgell, associate sociology professor and the study’s lead researcher.
Edgell also argues that today’s atheists play the role that Catholics, Jews and communists have played in the past—they offer a symbolic moral boundary to membership in American society. “It seems most Americans believe that diversity is fine, as long as every one shares a common ‘core’ of values that make them trustworthy—and in America, that ‘core’ has historically been religious,” says Edgell. Many of the study’s respondents associated atheism with an array of moral indiscretions ranging from criminal behavior to rampant materialism and cultural elitism.
Originally posted by Shadowflux
Good post Melatonin.
I think you should add intellectual elitism to that list at the end of your quote.
It comes down to the fact that I can't "prove" God exists anymore than an atheist can "prove" he doesn't exist.
And that is why your god is equivalent to an invisible pink unicorn or a celestial teapot.
Originally posted by Shadowflux
I fail to see your logic Mel.
Can you disprove the existence of a higher power? Maybe I've missed the news story that said science has finally proven the non-existence of a higher power.
I know atheists have trouble not taking statements at face value but what I was saying is that your "evidence" or "proof" that leads you to not believe in God is just as flimsy as my evidence that there is a God.
I know there is a God because I feel it in my heart, because I've spoken with God all my life, because my prayers are answered, because I can clearly see him working in my daily life.
Your god of science is equivalent to my God in many ways, the science in which you put your faith is as complex as the theology in which I place mine.
You can't explain to me how the resonant frequencies of super strings affect the fabric of space time, yet you still believe in it.
You can't even prove the existence of strings at all.
Should I stop believing the physicists just because I can neither understand it all nor prove it beyond a reasonable doubt?
There are many things we can't disprove. That is the point. We also can't disprove that invisible pan-dimensional pixies are involved in intelligent falling. However, we can take a sceptical position - the lack of evidence does not warrant belief. It is not a 100% absolute proposition, like yours is for the existence of a god.
Originally posted by Shadowflux
This is my point, that the basis for your belief in the non-existence of God is as sturdy as the basis for my belief in God. If you choose to believe there is no God simply because you have not seen enough evidence for it, because you haven't been convinced yet, you have based your belief system simply on your own opinion.
No one is arguing the belief in magic pixies, I'm not even arguing a belief in Jesus (though I am Christian). The debate between "atheists" and "theists" is essentially the debate between the existence or non-existence of a God, no matter what you want to call him/her or how you imagine him/her to appear.
....
However, there is as much "hard evidence" against God as there is "hard evidence" for God. To simply take the atheist position because it's easier to not prove something than to endeavor to prove something in the lack of "hard evidence" seems to me to be a bit of a cop out.
Agnostic atheism is a philosophical doctrine that encompasses both atheism and agnosticism. While the concepts of atheism and agnosticism occasionally overlap, they are distinct: atheism is generally defined as "a condition of being without theistic beliefs" while agnosticism is usually defined as "an absence of knowledge (or any claim of knowledge)". An agnostic may identify as an atheist or a theist in certain circumstances (see Agnostic theism).
One of the earliest explanations of agnostic atheism is that of Robert Flint, in his Croall Lecture of 1887-1888 (published in 1903 under the title Agnosticism):
"The atheist may however be, and not unfrequently is, an agnostic. There is an agnostic atheism or atheistic agnosticism, and the combination of atheism with agnosticism which may be so named is not an uncommon one." (p.49)
"If a man has failed to find any good reason for believing that there is a God, it is perfectly natural and rational that he should not believe that there is a God; and if so, he is an atheist... if he goes farther, and, after an investigation into the nature and reach of human knowledge, ending in the conclusion that the existence of God is incapable of proof, cease to believe in it on the ground that he cannot know it to be true, he is an agnostic and also an atheist - an agnostic-atheist - an atheist because an agnostic... while, then, it is erroneous to identify agnosticism and atheism, it is equally erroneous so to separate them as if the one were exclusive of the other..." (p.50-51)
Individuals may identify as agnostic atheists based on their knowledge of the philosophical concepts of epistemology, theory of justification and Occam's razor.
If you make a proposition that something exists, you need to show evidence. I do not need to disprove it. Until the evidence is produced, I do not hold a belief in that something.
Originally posted by Shadowflux
But here in lies the problem, the evidence that is produced is almost always rejected by skeptics and atheists such as yourself. Your example of the grays is a good one, you say there is no evidence for the existence of grays so you do not believe in them. However, there are many who do believe in them and believe there is plenty of evidence but people like yourself deny it.
It is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This is what agnosticism asserts.
--- Thomas Huxley, Letter to Charles Kingsley ---
And if you note my Huxley quote in my sig., you will see I go where evidence leads. Like any good scientist.
Originally posted by Shadowflux
But if we were to only study, research, and follow that which there is already enough hard evidence for we would not have many of the things we do today.
If the journey of science is not a journey into the unknown then what is it?
Science is about discovery, you can't discover something you already know all about.
If there were not aspects to life that indeed had no evidence at all then we would not have science to begin with.
Edit: I understand Mel, I was simply saying that I believe atheism and agnosticism to pretty much cancel each other out.