Is compromise possible between militant atheists and religious believers?, page 1

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Topic started on 7-10-2009 @ 05:06 PM by silent thunder

Could a compromise be possible? This New York Times Op Ed guy seems to think so:

"Believers could scale back their conception of God's role in creation, and atheists could accept that some notions of 'higher purpose' are compatible with scientific materialism. And the two might learn to get along."

More at source:
www.nytimes.com...

reply posted on 7-10-2009 @ 05:29 PM by sirnex

I honestly don't think it is possible myself. Just for the very fact that there is no evidence of any higher power of any kind that has had any hand in humanity. It's like forcing kids into adulthood to still believe in the tooth fairy despite knowing it was all made up to begin with.

reply posted on 7-10-2009 @ 05:33 PM by jimmyx

atheists don't rail against common god believers. it when god believers try and make laws and rules for the rest of us to live our lives by. having a religous belief and forcing a religous belief are 2 different things.

reply posted on 7-10-2009 @ 05:36 PM by reticledc

Religious=live and let live.
Atheist=live and let live.
So what's the problem?

Enough is just never enough.
There are some smart people here who know exactly what that means.

reply posted on 7-10-2009 @ 05:36 PM by sicklecell

I dont think a compromise is possible because atheists believe there is no god, so it would be hard to accept the idea tht god played a part in anything. Agnostics maybe but not atheists.
Religion in my opinion is a collection of myths and should stay behind closed doors, within churches and far away from science.

Also i think it might create lazy scientists who when confronted with something too hard to solve could simply say "well i guess god did it" and eliminate the need for further investigation.

reply posted on 7-10-2009 @ 05:38 PM by blujay

It's like different languages trying to communicate the same saga.

There are many ways back to Source, no one way is the right way.
Those science minded folks will one day find something in their labs that convinces them of something. Those holy rollers will one day realize that their path is not the only path home.

I've was on the science side most of my life until my awakening nearly two years ago. Once you have this experience, it doesn't matter what anyone says, you just KNOW. Then you can sit back and watch all the bickering with a smile. Everyone will get there eventually.

reply posted on 7-10-2009 @ 05:43 PM by newworld

reply to post by silent thunder

compromise in science is impossible. Science is mostly secularist; meaning it tries to explain the world without having to rely on any deity. Of course this does not mean that individual scientists are not religious, many of them are, but when dealing with their work they separate religious belief from science when formulating theories and explanations.

However, compromise can easily exists in a community between the religious people and atheists/agnostics. they can both live and let live. It's the extremists from both groups who are the problem- militant atheists who would discriminate against religious folks and try to close churches, and militant religious people who want to place their religious beliefs in the classrooms and the law.

Basically, compromise in science is not possible, but in society as a whole it is. It's just a matter of both groups staying out of each others way (more groups when you take into account religions argue with each other often).

reply posted on 7-10-2009 @ 05:48 PM by sirnex

reply to post by blujay

Oh please, that personal experience argument is used and abused by every single different form of religious thought and has been used since the dawn of man. Every religious though claims to be the one and only true religion due to the personal experience argument. Obviously that can't be true, and considering they are all man made, then none are true despite personal experience.

Man used to have personal experience that rain was caused by the rain gods, obviously this is wrong and we know better thanks to new knowledge we never had when we threw it to the gods. Usually, at least from everything I have learned about religious thought, a god or gods is called into play when someone doesn't have an answer or is trying to gain control over a populace through fear of that god, such as the monotheistic faiths.

As for there is no wrong way, total BS. The universe only got here one way and one way only. It didn't get here through different interpretations of observations. You have to be literally an imbecile to suggest that there is more than one correct path to one solution. The god path and the naturalistic path are so insanely different that they can not ever be reconciled into one grand unified theory of idiocy.

reply posted on 7-10-2009 @ 05:56 PM by newworld

reply to post by sirnex

As much as I agree with many of the things you are saying, I do believe there is a school of thought that tries to unify religious belief with scientific knowledge.

You can easily combine the naturalistic path with the religious path. Examples; god-guided evolution, goddess guided big bang theory, god guided laws of physics, etc. Some people who work in the scientific field and are also religious follow this guide of thinking, so saying it's impossible is incorrect.

This does not contradict my first post, science in general is secularist, but some members of the scientific community try to unify their beliefs with current scientific knowledge.

reply posted on 7-10-2009 @ 05:57 PM by blujay

reply to post by sirnex

Like I said, everyone will get there eventually.

Many like you, may take several more lifetimes. Keeping such a closed mind must be so drab.

reply posted on 7-10-2009 @ 06:07 PM by john124

Religious beliefs deserve no more attention than any other unproven assertion. For example: believing in a giant flying mushroom is no different to believing in a deity.

Athiesm is not believing that god doesn't exist, it's just the dis-belief or disregard of religious beliefs. You don't have to believe anything to dis-believe, it's simply arrogant of anyone to assume that you have to.

Athiest don't become really wish to impress their dis-belief on anyone until somebody attempts to force their beliefs on them. They would see no point in doing so, as any talk of god to them is pointless, so why would they even think about talking of their disbelief unless somebody attempts to indoctrinate them? Think about it logically and in the majority of cases this is how it is!

reply posted on 7-10-2009 @ 06:11 PM by john124

Originally posted by blujay
reply to post by sirnex

It's not closed-mindedness, as we are not stating that religious beliefs must be untrue, we're only stating the lack of evidence and so lack of proof in such beliefs, much like any other unproven assertion. Anything is possible, but not everything we can imagine will be true! We can believe whatever we want, but it's fruitless to attempt to impress those on someone else who wishes to live by critical thinking and science - which is evidence based and not a belief system like religion.

I've had a few unexplained situations occur to me which science cannot explain, notably UFOs and possibly what people describe as ghostly encounters. That doesn't mean I automatically believe in folk-tales, just that science hasn't explained these incidents yet. I doubt mythical stories can account for the understanding of these phenomenon. It's just as likely that the human perception of god wasn't a creator, but just a manipulator from another planet.

[edit on 7-10-2009 by john124]

reply posted on 7-10-2009 @ 06:15 PM by sirnex

reply to post by newworld

I know there are some 'efforts' to reconcile the two thoughts, but bringing in religion asks us to throw away a lot of science that has advanced mankind to where we are today, has been observed and show experimental evidence for being true.

Say we throw god into evolution, well now we need to show a mechanism of evolutionary theory that would not work at all without some outside force. Fact is, there is no such example and the processes involved rely heavily on biology, chemistry and environmental factors. Even *if* we throw god into the environmental variable just so we can preserve all knowledge of biology and chemistry without exclaiming all advances in the field are impossible now because of the god variable, we're still left with a problem. If god modifies and environmental variable, then we have to show this to be the case with observational evidences, again none exist as god is a man made concept like the tooth fairy. It's 100% impossible for the religious folks to come up with a god driven evolutionary theory.

Same goes for the big bang, as it stands trying to reconcile god into the BBT is just ridiculous. Using assumptions to prove assumptions is just about the most idiotic thing a person can do. First of all, the BBT hasn't actually been proven 100%, there are other equally viable theories floating around with similar predictions and observations that don't call for a bang. The BBT assumes the redshift is a constant and can not be variable through the expanse of space, but if that assumption is wrong, then the BBT has a lot of problems. So, until both thoughts are proven, it's also impossible to arrive at an absolute answer as being true with them.

I mean, they can try all they want to unify god into the universe, but it's still impossible. God just doesn't exist, so how can you combine a non-existent entity into a working model of the universe? Until they prove the existence of a god and prove that man didn't make it up despite thousands of years of archeological history showing we did, then it just can't happen. So I still stand by my statement that it's impossible.

Besides, personal experience isn't proof of. I had personal experience when I was a kid for the tooth fairy being real and santa clause being real, but that past personal experience born from lack of knowing otherwise doesn't mean it's possible they still exist. The religious folks just don't know that god doesn't exist yet.

reply posted on 7-10-2009 @ 06:19 PM by moocowman

reply to post by silent thunder

Here's a nice easy workable compromise -

I promise to keep my no belief in something to myself unless inquired of, if you promise to keep your belief to yourself unless I esquire of you.

We shall govern ourselves and develop moral values that are acceptable to an overwhelming majority of people that actually have a body.

I promise not to take offense to anything you say if you promise not to take offense (even on behalf of an invisible man in the sky) to anything I say.

How's that then, I am now offering my hand out in friendship looking forward to a peaceful future.

reply posted on 7-10-2009 @ 06:28 PM by happygolucky

reply to post by silent thunder

Is compromise possible between militant atheists and religious believers?

The title of the thread sux...

How about Is compromise possible between militant atheists and religious zealots?

At least the thread title would be balanced...otherwise you label the atheists with a negative connotation right away.