What is with all the threads attacking atheism/atheists lately?

reply to post by zombiesC4


Any study into religious knowledge shows that atheists are more knowledgeable on general religion than people who are actually religious. Please, demonstrate how atheists don't know what they're talking about.

reply to post by imjustlikeyou

Originally posted by imjustlikeyou
Looks like the mighty Christians are close to claiming yet another victory over the bumbling New Age Atheists.

I love it when religious people claim victory when they haven't.

It seems a little too easy these days to beat the Atheists as they are now using the same tired old arguments (YAWN).

I'm sorry, but we're not using the same tired old arguments, we just don't have anything new to argue against. Theists haven't come up with many new arguments to support their claims in the last few hundred years.

Richard Dorkins

Ad hominem attack.

needs to release the new updated Atheist bible so the free thinking Atheist followers can have some fresh ideas.

Newsflash: I became an atheist at least a year before that book was released. It is not a Bible for atheists. It isn't even the most insightful work into the subject.

> PROVE that Dark Matter / Energy exists <
Dark matter and dark energy, by their very nature, are impossible to detect and can only be hypothesized by secondary evidence. Just like God. Science believes in something it can't prove! (lol)

Actually, dark matter can be observed through gravity. Science fail.

To my continually beaten Atheists brothers and sisters, don't feel alone as being labeled as "fools" by God. You are not alone......

Continually beaten? I'm sorry, but religion is losing the argument on all fronts. And the only reason for this is because the atheists are no longer afraid to actually engage in it.

" The atheist Communist Party of China came to power in 1949. It viewed traditional religions as backwards "

Wow, so you're going to play that card? I'm sorry, but atheism doesn't lead to totalitarian communism.

" Christianity is potentially one of the biggest problems facing society."
—Adolf Hitler (NOT a Christian)

Citation needed. I've done a quick search and can't actually find a source for this quote.

And Hitler may or may not have been a Christian, but he was most certainly not an atheist. There are more than two options here, do not use the logical fallacy of the excluded middle.

I'm only on page 4, but there have been two things mentioned that I'd like to clear up:

Originally posted by WalterRatlos
I thought you can't prove a negative?

That's why I am agnostic!

This explains the "can't prove a negative" claim:

Another common claim of the New Atheists is that you ‘can’t prove a negative’ – where what is typically meant is a negative existence claim of the form ‘X does not exist’. Rhetorically, this claim functions to legitimize the idea that evidence needn’t be provided for God’s nonexistence. After all, if evidence cannot be provided for a proposition it would be irrational to expect one to provide some, and so reasonable to believe that evidence isn’t needed. But the claim that you can’t prove a negative cannot help the atheist. That is because, on each of two possible ways of interpreting what it means to ‘prove’ something, it is generally false that you can’t prove a negative (and often true that you can’t prove a positive). Consider first, proofs which deliver certainty, as in mathematics or logic. Such proofs are sometimes possible for negative existence claims, such as the claim that there is no greatest prime number. One can also prove with certainty that there are no Xs whenever the concept X can be shown to be incoherent (like the concepts round square, or 3pm on the sun). Of course, it is true that many negative existence claims cannot be proved with absolute certainty, but the same holds for positive existence claims, for example, from science or common sense, such as that there are electrons or tables and chairs. So there’s nothing special here about negative existence claims. Turn next to proofs which aim to establish only the probable truth of their conclusions. These are the sorts of proofs which result from successful scientific and other empirical investigations. In this sense of ‘proof’, it is easy to prove the non-existence of many things: for example, that there is no pomegranate in my hand, or no snow-capped mountains in the Sahara Desert. And while it may be difficult or impossible to even in this weaker sense prove the non-existence of many things – goblins, sombreros in the Sombrero Galaxy – the same goes for many positive existence claims – that Aristotle sneezed on his 20th birthday; that there is a transcendent deity; that there is a sombrero somewhere in the Sombrero Galaxy. So, again, there is nothing unique about negative existence claims. The unfortunate saying that one can’t prove a negative should be dropped.

Originally posted by Annee
Ya really think so? Lets deal in facts. First off Atheism is not a belief.

And this clears up the "atheism isn't a belief" claim:

It is often said by atheists that atheism is not a positive position at all – a belief or worldview – but merely a disbelief in theism, a refusal to accept what the theist believes, and as such, there is no belief or position for there to be evidence for. Evidence is not needed for ‘non-positions’. While the word ‘atheism’ has been used in something like this sense (see for example Antony Flew’s article ‘The Presumption of Atheism’), it is a highly non-standard use. So understood, atheism would include agnosticism, since agnostics are also not theists. However, on the common understanding of atheism – no divine reality of any kind exists – atheism and agnosticism are mutually exclusive. Some insist that this non-standard sense of ‘atheism’ is the only possible sense, because a-theism means without theism. But if that were a good argument, the Space Shuttle would be an automobile, since it moves on its own (mobile=move, auto=by itself). Ditto for dogs and cats. Yet none of that really matters, for even the non-standard sense of ‘atheism’ does nothing to neutralize evidentialism’s demand for evidence. As we saw, evidentialism applies to all ‘doxastic’ attitudes toward a proposition P: believing P, believing not-P, suspending judgment about P, etc. Therefore evidentialism says, with respect to the proposition God exists, that any attitude toward it will be rational or justified if and only if it fits one’s evidence. Now it is true that if one had no position whatever regarding the proposition God exists (perhaps because one has never entertained the thought), no evidence would be required for that non-position. But the New Atheists all believe that (probably) no God or other divine reality exists. And that belief must be evidence-based if it is to be rationally held, according to evidentialism. So insisting that atheism isn’t a belief doesn’t help. In what follows I will use ‘atheism’ in its standard sense.

Source of quotes: www.philosophynow.org...

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


i will agree and say there has been a lot of anti atheist posts recently but i guess just take it with a pinch of salt you have to remember that the people who are posting it are heavily god fearing individuals blinded by their faith.

Originally posted by Johovo
reply to post by madnessinmysoul

 

i will agree and say there has been a lot of anti atheist posts recently but i guess just take it with a pinch of salt you have to remember that the people who are posting it are heavily god fearing individuals blinded by their faith.

You could say that Atheists are heavily science-fearing individuals blinded by their faith *shrugs* it's more or less the same.

Atheism is usually a primitive form of science also, based on the Newtonian laws of motion.
Anyone that knows Quantum-Physics delves into the realm of magic,
anyone that delves into M-Theory must admit to spirits,
or dimensional co-existing entities.

If they don't then they haven't applied the science to their own lives.
Once you open yourself up, to what's going on in your mind,
then you become free, able to think for yourself.

Able to transcend the boundaries set by book-religions and materialist-atheism.

As user autowrench aptly put it in the inner-theism thread

Let me break it to you gently, friend, when one becomes a Mystic, religion and the dogma thereof slips away, and fades into a past that is soon forgotten. I think, in fact I strongly believe this is available to each and every individual soul on the planet. It is simply a matter of time before more and more pick up on this. It is called Ascension.

here is the original thread, contrasting outer-theism with inner-theism:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by Condemned0625




There are more senses than sight and sound. Faith is the belief in something you can't see or hear or smell. You just feel it. So, friend, we have faith in God because to us we feel his persence everywhere. I see him when the wind blows through a tree, when a child is born, every morning I wake up and see the sun. God said that Noah saved the animals so we as Christians believe and that's it. If you choose not to believe then don't, but don't hate us because we do. You never know, if we met on a plane or were neighbors you'd be surprised and might just become my friend afterall. I'm a physical phitness nut, I fish, play tennis, was a Geology major in college, was in the USAF, ran a Boy Scout Troop for 12 years, but just because I have a belief system that centers around an omnipotent God you hate me? Well I don't hate you.

The natural order of the world is atheism

Our ancestors were natural atheists as are new born babies.

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
reply to post by zombiesC4

 

Any study into religious knowledge shows that atheists are more knowledgeable on general religion than people who are actually religious. Please, demonstrate how atheists don't know what they're talking about.

They will say Christianity is stupid but they don't have any evidence to back it up why they said that (by the way I'm not christian)

Originally posted by mr-lizard
The natural order of the world is atheism

Our ancestors were natural atheists as are new born babies.

IS that why they all had shamans, Holy men and a plethora of gods. Prove your statement please.

reply to post by mr-lizard


Newborn babies are not atheists. A baby knows nothing of such things. You may wish to ponder or research a bit more before you post again.

reply to post by cLOUDDEAD


Wow, hack apologetics, that's really going to be something that demolishes atheism...

You cannot prove a negative statement until the positive statement has been elaborated upon. In this case, there is absolutely no argument for the existence of or definition of a deity that can be acted upon by a counter-proof from the negative.

Certain claims of deities can be addressed by negative proofs. If someone were to say 'god is a rational being who is omnipotent and omniscient' I can easily disprove that by arguing from a lack of free will in an omniscient being and that omnipotence presupposes free will. This lack of free will means that the being is either not omnipotent or not omniscient and thus doesn't exist as described.

Only specific claims can be addressed, there is no single specific claim of god, there are varying ones of varying potential for disproof. The most common Abrahamic claims are not actually open to disproof, though they would be perfectly open to proof as the common claim is that this being intercedes in the natural world.

In fact, your source seems to disagree with the very basis of scientific empiricism in forcing a skeptical position on a reality claim to provide proof that the reality claim is wrong. Skeptical positions do not require evidence unless evidence to the positive is presented.

On the second issue, your source is entirely wrong. For some reason, this person who holds a philosophy position seems to think that agnosticism and atheism are mutually exclusive, when they are not. In fact, he seems to be of the opinion that atheism can only exist as a reality claim, when it, like theism, is a claim of a position on a subject. There is also an argument from tradition, a logical fallacy you should expect a paid philosopher to avoid, in calling the non-standard definition necessarily wrong. So what if it's non-standard? If you can support it logically, it is valid. The common understanding of this word is wrong and it can be shown to be. It is not a reality claim, it is an expression of skepticism. Now, if you were to claim that you know a deity does not exist, that would be a reality claim, but none of the 'new atheists' actually make this claim so far as I know. As an atheist we do not claim "God does not exist" we claim "We have no good reason to believe in any deity".


The whole thing rests upon semantics and a poor application of evidentialism. And this is coming from someone who is only a third year philosophy minor. In applying evidentialism in a manner that a skeptical rejection of a positive claim which lacks evidentiary support requires evidence itself you are basically turning rational discourse on its head. It would require evidence to support disbelief in any proposed idea, including ones I made up on the spot. Carl Sagan knocked this idea out of the park with his garage dragons.

reply to post by madnessinmysoul

Actually, dark matter can be observed through gravity. Science fail.

Actually you are wrong as it is only inferred. It is a working hypothesis. There are leading astrophysicists that actually disagree with dark matter. The question of dark matter has not been scientifically proven. There is a strong counter hypothesis that was discussed in several popular astronomy magazines.

Based on your analysis of dark matter which I consider to be flawed can I assume that you are not a astrophysicist? I am not attacking you as you certainly put the idiocy of creationism to shame.

My point is that atheists and sceptics often cite science as you have done without having the full grasp of the current state of play. Instead what many seem to do is to to show blind faith in science as a universal explanation. Science is great but unless you have done a degree in science I would argue you have no understanding as to the limits of science at the leading edge. Why shouldn’t there be psychism? Why shouldn’t there be spiritual entities? All that can be said from the most able scientists (many of whom taught me) is that “It seems unlikey”. Meanwhile the les academically able atheists rsuh out and just yell prove it when they cannot disprove their own flying spaghetti god!

Cheer up. By the time you have read this post science has advanced by another tranche of peer-reviewed papers. It is the peer review process that acknowledge the scientific proof at the level of academic science. Richard Dawkins’s book was a popular book as opposed to an academic paper or book hence was not peer reviewed. If he was reviewed by an academic theist say a theologian what would have happened?

Anyway I look forward to suporting you in your battle against the creationists

reply to post by zombiesC4

They will say Christianity is stupid but they don't have any evidence to back it up why they said that (by the way I'm not christian)

A chrisitian will often take the word of another man who who may have died a thousand or so years ago, without leaving any trace of himself, on blind faith , without requiring a shred of corroborating evidence nor skeptical inquiry.

That my friend, appears to be the height of stupidity.

Insisting or depicting human beings happily cohabiting the planet with the dinosaurs takes stupidity to the level of retardation.

hahahahaha this thread has given me such a laugh!! thank you everyone for enlightening my day with this debate!

Personally, I dont believe in any religions or gods etc etc, which is great because I'm having too much fun in my life to worry about such trivial time consuming things....

However I dont think I would fit into the Atheist or Agnostic class either, because far from the fact that I simply dont believe in an all-knowing, all seeing deity thus then spending my free time convincing the rest of the world the same thng...... its more to the fact that I simply dont care...

If a 'god' does or doesnt exist, it has no bearing or impact on my life whatsoever, never has and never will do.

If you lot want to argue away about it then fine, if it makes you feel better, but all your doing is banging your heads on a brick wall.... however, I must admit that it is highly entertaining!

So again, thank you :-) hahahahaha

reply to post by lowki

Originally posted by lowki
You could say that Atheists are heavily science-fearing individuals blinded by their faith *shrugs* it's more or less the same.

I'm sorry, but science and faith are mutually exclusive.

Atheism is usually a primitive form of science also, based on the Newtonian laws of motion.

What is it with anti-atheists assuming that atheists reject any 20th century scientific thought? And how is atheism based in Newtonian mechanics? Newton was a theist for the love of calculus! I accept the claims of quantum mechanics as they have been tested and proven. I accept the claims of Einsteinian mechanics as well for the exact same reasons.

Physics didn't end with Newton, it just started getting interesting there.

Atheism has nothing to do with science! It has to do with philosophy.

Anyone that knows Quantum-Physics delves into the realm of magic,

...no...anyone that thinks quantum physics delves into the realm of magic has no idea what quantum physics is.

anyone that delves into M-Theory must admit to spirits,
or dimensional co-existing entities.

I'm sorry, but the existence of 11 dimensional spacetime doesn't necessarily imply its inhabitation by entities. Hell, there doesn't seem to be any evidence of what could exist in those other dimensions, if anything exists at all.

Furthermore, M-theory still exists in the realm of competing theories. It isn't necessarily proven, though the experiments at CERN might shed light on it.

New Age science fail.

If they don't then they haven't applied the science to their own lives.

...I'm sorry, but you don't seem to understand science.

Once you open yourself up, to what's going on in your mind,
then you become free, able to think for yourself.

I'm sorry, but how is 'accepting claims without evidence or understanding or reason' opening yourself up?

Able to transcend the boundaries set by book-religions and materialist-atheism.

Atheism is not inherently materialist. I am a materialist separate from my atheism.

As user autowrench aptly put it in the inner-theism thread

Let me break it to you gently, friend, when one becomes a Mystic, religion and the dogma thereof slips away, and fades into a past that is soon forgotten. I think, in fact I strongly believe this is available to each and every individual soul on the planet. It is simply a matter of time before more and more pick up on this. It is called Ascension.

Wow, that's a silly statement. It's just an unsupported assertion.

here is the original thread, contrasting outer-theism with inner-theism:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

edit on 3/2/11 by lowki because: original thread

Tis a silly thread.

reply to post by Christian Voice


There are two categories of people:

1: People have heard of at least one deity claim.
2: People who have heard of no claims for deities.


Theists and deists all belong in category 1: they have heard of at least on claim of a deity.
Furthermore, a great number of atheists do as well. These are explicit atheists.

Babies, on the other hand, belong to category 2, as do some isolate aboriginal cultures found throughout the world who have no supernatural beliefs to speak of. All members of category 2 are implicit atheists, as they have no belief in a deity.

In syllogism form:
1: We cannot believe in a deity until we have heard the claim of a deity's existence.
2: Babies have never heard of a deity claim due to their inability to comprehend such claims.
3: Those who have never heard a claim of any sort are unable to believe that claim.
4: Those who do not believe any claim of a deity are atheists.
5: Therefore, babies are atheist.

Q.E.D.

You might want to do some logical thought before telling people to do some research.

reply to post by tiger5


I'm sorry, but where's the evidence of H. Habilis, H. Erectus, A. Aferensis, or any other pre-H. Sapiens Sapiens having any form of religion?

And all babies are atheists, as I proved above via syllogism.

reply to post by zombiesC4


Le sigh...

When studies have been performed in the west, it is shown that most atheists have a greater knowledge of both Christian theology and history than their religious counterparts.

If I were to say Christianity is stupid, I can actually back it up with argumentation and evidence.

Now, can you provide me with evidence that shows that most atheists who claim that Christianity is stupid are doing so without evidence or proper argumentation? If not, I will dismiss this claim.

reply to post by Christian Voice


So God tells you something that contradicts (and you should know this as a geology student) all the physical evidence, is logically impossible for multiple reason, and violates known laws of physics? And you believe it...why? Why is God, the all-knowing being, telling you something that is clearly false by evidence?

Now, as for there being more than 5 sense...thanks for actually pointing that out. Most people leave out equilibrium, limb position, and others. 5 is just the basic framework that Aristotle outlined..and since he's one of the most highly esteemed philosophers of all time...well...they caught on.

Of course, you 'feeling' your deity's presence in all of these good things is evidence of nothing. It could be due to desire to believe, it could be due to all sorts of other, far more rational explanations than this deity existing. It's also contradictory because it is the exact same sort of statement made about basically every single deity ever. The Norse saw Thor in the storms and Odin in songs and warfare, does this make their claims any less valid than yours?

You are making a claim without evidence...when there actually should be evidence. If you are a Christian there should be evidence of the claims outlined in the Christian scriptures for which there is none. There is no evidence of a global flood, there is evidence that directly contradicts it. There is evidence that contradicts the first two chapters of the book as well.

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


I'm sorry. here is a definition of an ancestor.

en.wikipedia.org...

Trust me by this definition your ancestors were tribal. I can use science to prove my allegation. I never mentioned a thing bout babies.

Your point regard our non human relatives is valid and I have not seen evidence to prove or disprove them having religion. As an aside were they self conscious? if they were they would have had religion.