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

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posted on Feb, 5 2011 @ 06:22 AM
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reply to post by Watcher-In-The-Shadows
 


Athiests and christians are the the only two groups that have ever tried to convert me so far. They both seem to do it for the same reasoning too, most seem to mean well. A christian thinks you are going to hell and wants to help out your soul. An athiest thinks you are being stupid or irrational, and wants to "bring you to reality"



posted on Feb, 5 2011 @ 07:02 AM
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Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
reply to post by ADUB77
 


...atheism would exist if religion never existed. It would just be implicit rather than explicit.


Mythological thinking would exist, or else we would all still be mere animals. It was our capacity to think in mythological, symbolic, abstract terms that enabled us to survive and thrive. Without it we would be mere animals, not atheists. Or, if you prefer, animals and atheists.

This atheist/religion dichotomy of yours is false. There is only mythological thinking and its extremes. On one end is atheism. On the other is religious fundamentalism. You can't have a culture of pure atheism because sooner or later, shamanism would spontaneously erupt through someone. It can't be prevented. Thats why every tribal culture has it. Its not that they all just happen to cook up the same sort of ideas and practices while sitting around day-dreaming or indulging in wishful thinking. Its that shamanism is a spontaneous, profound, traumatic psychological event that happens world-wide to people whether they want it or not.

And with that, comes the shamanic, transpersonal altered states of consciousness that put the shaman in touch with the archetypes of the collective unconscious. Then comes symbolism, mythology, the supernatural, the spirits, the gods, and of course...psychic phenomenon. Bye-bye atheism. Hello art, hello ritual, hello mysticism, hello religion. Hello survival of the tribe.


edit on 5-2-2011 by Student X because: (no reason given)



posted on Feb, 5 2011 @ 07:43 AM
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Originally posted by Blue Shift
Atheists can't prove a negative.


A proper Atheist should not have to "prove a negative," because they are not making any claims. Theists make the claim that God exists, and so the burden of proof rests on them.

I've definitely noticed a spike in Theist posts on ATS in general, and I'm offended. Among the real answers about the universe around us, how many came from religion? 0.
All the things we understand about reality have been answered by science. Sectors of the scientific community can be co-opted, infiltrated, or subjugated, but the scientific method itself is incorruptible, and the best tool we have to further our understanding.



posted on Feb, 5 2011 @ 08:12 AM
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reply to post by defenestrator
 


You'd think that would be debate over for most.

One of my favourite speeches from Christopher Hitchens regarding the "Creationism" debate;-




posted on Feb, 5 2011 @ 08:12 AM
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Originally posted by defenestrator

Sectors of the scientific community can be co-opted, infiltrated, or subjugated, but the scientific method itself is incorruptible, and the best tool we have to further our understanding.


The scientific method is limited, clumsy, and flawed. Its only a hammer and not everything is a nail.

Have you heard of a scientist named Freeman Dyson? He wrote the foreward to a book that I think every skeptic should read. Here it is.

Foreword

by Freeman Dyson,
Institute for Advanced Study,
Princeton, New Jersey

"This book begins with an extraordinary story about a harp - one that is typical of thousands of others in which somebody knows something without having any normal way of knowing. This kind of extraordinary knowing is typically called extrasensory perception, or ESP. Since I am a scientist, the story puts me in a difficult position. As a scientist I don't believe the story, but as a human being I want to believe it. As a scientist, I don't believe anything that is not based on solid evidence. As a scientist, I have to consider it possible that Elizabeth Meyer and Harold McCoy might have concocted the story or deluded themselves into believing it. Scientists call such stories "anecdotal," meaning that they are scientifically worthless.

On the other hand, as a human being I find the story convincing. I am impressed by the fact that Elizabeth Meyer is herself a scientist and would normally be skeptical of such anecdotal evidence. She understands why the majority of scientists do not believe her story. She is eager to maintain a friendly dialogue between skeptics and believers in ESP. She feels herself in many ways closer to the skeptics. But she does not have the luxury of not believing the harp story, because it happened to her and she knows it is true. I am convinced, not by the story itself, but the portrait that Elizabeth paints of herself as a scientist confronting a mystery that orthodox science cannot grasp.

The greater part of this book describes the history of ESP research, some of it is based on anecdotal evidence and some based on scientific experiments. The Society for Psychical Research, with branches in England and America, has been the main collector and publisher of anecdotal evidence. The society has been active for more than a century. It has published a large number of well-documented stories in its journal and in a famous book with the title Phantasms of the Living. A phantasm of the living is an episode in which person A at a moment of extreme crisis or danger is seen by person B hundreds of miles away. The society documented these episodes with firsthand testimony from A and B, recorded as soon as possible after the events. The evidence is of very uneven quality, and all of it is anecdotal.

The scientific investigations of ESP have been pursued with dogged determination for long periods of time, initially by Joseph Rhine at Duke University, later by Harold Puthoff at Stanford Research Institute, and recently by many other groups. The history of these efforts is murky, partly because there were some accusations of cheating in Rhine's laboratory, and partly because much of Puthoff's work was sponsored by the CIA under conditions of secrecy. Elizabeth Meyer gives us the clearest account of ESP research that I have seen, with an excellent bibliography of relevant documents. The results of the scientific investigations were in the end disappointing. Investigators claimed to have positive and statistically significant evidence of ESP, but the positive results were always marginal, large enough to be statistically significant but not large enough to convince a skeptical critic.

There are three possible positions one may take concerning the evidence for ESP. First, the position of orthodox scientists, who believe that ESP does not exist. Second, the position of true believers, who believe that ESP is real and can be proved to exist by scientific methods. Third, my own position, that ESP is real, as the anecdotal evidence suggests, but cannot be tested with the clumsy tools of science. These positions also imply different views concerning the proper scope of science. If one believes, as many of my scientific colleagues believe, that the scope of science is unlimited, then science can ultimately explain everything in the universe, and ESP must either be nonexistent or scientifically explainable. If one believes, as I do, that ESP is real but is scientifically untestable, one must believe that the scope of science is limited. I put forward, as a working hypothesis, that ESP is real but belongs to a mental universe that is too fluid and evanescent to fit within the rigid protocols of controlled scientific testing. I do not claim that this hypothesis is true. I claim only that it is consistent with the evidence and worthy of consideration.

I was asked to write this preface because I published in The New York Review of Books a review of a book about ESP with the title Debunked!, by George Charpak and Henti Broch. Elizabeth Meyer read my review and refers to it in her Chapter 12. In my review I said that ESP only occurs, according the the anecdotal evidence, when a person is experiencing intense stress and strong emotions. Under the conditions of a controlled scientific experiment, intense stress and strong emotions are excluded; the person experiences boredom rather than excitement, and so the evidence for ESP disappears. That, I wrote, is why scientific investigation of ESP fails. The experiment necessarily excludes the human emotions that make ESP possible.

After my review was published, I received a large number of angry letters in response. Orthodox scientists were angry because I said ESP might be real. True believers in ESP were angry because I said ESP could not be scientifically proved.

What I like best about Elizabeth Meyer is her eagerness, throughout this book, to maintain a friendly working dialogue between believers and skeptics. I am happy that she and I can disagree and still stay friends."(emphasis mine)


edit on 5-2-2011 by Student X because: (no reason given)



posted on Feb, 5 2011 @ 08:16 AM
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reply to post by Student X
 


All you had to say was "absense of evidence is not evidence of absense" - Science may be faulty, may make mistakes, but if someone can prove them wrong, Science will happily reform it's self, otherwise risk contradicting evidence available.

Most atheists are agnostic, they admit they don't know, It would be irrational if an Atheist would refuse to rennounce his Atheism in light of critical conclusive evidence of God.

But so far, no theologian, no religion, no scientist, no historian, no mathematician, no astronomer, no physicist has ever demonstrated (logically or empirically) the existence of a deity.

If you think yuo have a logical or empirical argument other than "Faith" for it's existence, then please present it to the Agnostic Atheist's open-mind.

Thanks.



posted on Feb, 5 2011 @ 08:16 AM
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reply to post by Student X
 


All you had to say was "absense of evidence is not evidence of absense" - Science may be faulty, may make mistakes, but if someone can prove them wrong, Science will happily reform it's self, otherwise risk contradicting evidence available.

Most atheists are agnostic, they admit they don't know, It would be irrational if an Atheist would refuse to rennounce his Atheism in light of critical conclusive evidence of God.

But so far, no theologian, no religion, no scientist, no historian, no mathematician, no astronomer, no physicist has ever demonstrated (logically or empirically) the existence of a deity.

If you think yuo have a logical or empirical argument other than "Faith" for it's existence, then please present it to the Agnostic Atheist's open-mind.

Thanks.



posted on Feb, 5 2011 @ 08:19 AM
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@Student X: I didn't say it was the only tool, just the best one. I'm familiar with the paper you referenced, and I am not saying science has all of the answers, just all of the ones we have been able to determine so far. Mysticism is far more clumsy and flawed.
edit on 2/5/2011 by defenestrator because: clarification



posted on Feb, 5 2011 @ 08:20 AM
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Originally posted by TKDRL
reply to post by Watcher-In-The-Shadows
 


Athiests and christians are the the only two groups that have ever tried to convert me so far. They both seem to do it for the same reasoning too, most seem to mean well. A christian thinks you are going to hell and wants to help out your soul. An athiest thinks you are being stupid or irrational, and wants to "bring you to reality"


As Atheism doesn't preach hell, heaven or any other afterlife theory, it doesn't beg for convertion.

The only persuasion devices an Atheist has is argument and reason, it doesn't make threats that you may be guilty of being a "sinner" if you refuse to submit.

Anyway, Atheism doesn't take much converting; you either decide to believe before evidence or you don't, it's really that simple.



posted on Feb, 5 2011 @ 08:22 AM
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reply to post by defenestrator
 


At least science makes an attempt at finding answers; and it has quite a brilliant track record of doing so.

Religion on the other hand, nothing. Just guesses. If you oppose those guesses you are accused of disrespect.



posted on Feb, 5 2011 @ 08:22 AM
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double post
edit on 5/2/11 by awake_and_aware because: (no reason given)



posted on Feb, 5 2011 @ 08:25 AM
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reply to post by awake_and_aware
 

Good observation, there is no special penalty if a person doesn't "convert" to Atheism, no scare tactics. Admitting you don't know is the first step, realizing no one else does is the next, and then you realize that because of our relatively limited place in the universe there are certain things we cannot know, and certain questions that cannot be answered by humans. The question of God(s)' existence is one of the questions that has no answer.



posted on Feb, 5 2011 @ 08:27 AM
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Originally posted by Watcher-In-The-Shadows
Thank you. Though I was thinking more on the line what if both beings are simply man's feeble reaching at something that does exist at the edge of what is definable by him. Things do exist independent of what people think and say about them after all. He uses the fact that people once believed in an proposed entity called Thor as if it disproves the possibility of another proposed entity called Jehoviah by virtue of the fact most people no longer believe an entity such as Thor exists. Which as much as I may respect his right to have a opinion I view as silly at best. And quite disproportionately biased given the nature of scientific advance because the statement is made by one who claims to place science above all. After all, as I am sure he will readily agree and no doubt has said before himself, one wrong or misworded theory that was once stated as fact or science doesn't disprove the broader concept of science as a whole.
edit on 5-2-2011 by Watcher-In-The-Shadows because: ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn


My friend, science will never disprove the existence of the supreme being, the great unknown, the intelligence behind what is, was, and always will be. It will never happen. The attempts by science to do so will only carry man forward in his understand of what this existence is, but will be left empty handed in it's own time when it too goes through the transition that religion is going through now.

Science is a method of analysing the observed. The observer cannot observe itself.



Yet...

You are absolutely correct in your assertions.

Thor and Jehovah are the SAME. They are just masks the population used to define the undefinable at a given period of their understanding. Consciousness evolves just like the body does.

With Love,

Your Brother



posted on Feb, 5 2011 @ 08:29 AM
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reply to post by IAMIAM
 



science will never disprove the existence of the supreme being


You can't be certain of that.

Science may even prove it to exist.



posted on Feb, 5 2011 @ 08:57 AM
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Bogomil,take the bible and a bottle of white out or a red pen and cover or cross out every written word that can be used to manipulate your mind and emotions,every phrase and dynamic that can be used to stimulate your core emotions ----THEN U2U ME WITH YOUR OPINION ON HUMANITIES TRUE HISTORY.

The bible,the koran,and all major religous doctrines carry the same story hidden inside them,its just that you need to be a visual-spatial learner to easily identify the story.

I said easily,the bottle of white out or the red pen will help make it easy if you are a different type of learner.

When a visual-spatial learner reads the bible they are viewing a movie the entire time and it is very easy to identify the sad parts the happy parts ect in a movie while it is much harder to identify and define these emotional twitches if you are trying to interpret and incorporate the written word conventionally.So these types of learners immediatly are able to eliminate all emotional dynamics from the written word as they incorporate it into their knowledge base,like a shortcut,bullcrap immunity if you will.

you will find an incredible story in the bible when you choose to eliminate the manipulating dynamics that have been added to it over generations in order that the story be used as a tool to intimidate and control and use other humans.

Co-incidently one of my relatives was a founder of a religon with millions of followers worldwide,he was a man trying to make a living,as simple that---a living to support his family as literally billions throughout history before him were doing through their participation in organised religons.

Had he known the true story he still would have made a living spreading some type of word somewhere you see the world wouldnt change that much for each individual if the truth were know ,we would still gravitate to jobs and things that make us happy.


The reality is that with an unstoppable information source like the internet,the truth is coming fast in every area of our lives,the entire planet has been given a way to learn in a visual-spatial format through the internets format of combining the written word with visual stimulation simultaneously ---while at the same time allowing EVERY ONES PERSPECTIVE TO BE INCORPORATE AS OPPOSED TO BOOKS AND MOVIES WHICH LIMIT YOU TO THE AUTHORS PERSPECTIVE.

Religous people dont need religon or an idea like god,----they need each other and we arent going anywhere soon so if we lose religons as we know them through disclosure of humanities true history ---these people will gravitate to new groups that make them happy very quickly.

However I cant see a religous salesman giving up on the bible that easily,the church will probably claim credit for being the annointed gaurdians of humanities true history and try to re-manipukate their way into retaining power.



posted on Feb, 5 2011 @ 09:23 AM
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Re Plunderpower

Admittedly my own computer-handling is rather primitive, but it doesn't prevent me from knowing and applying the simplest of communication-techniques: As far as possible ordering the various components of a communication in coherent patterns, accessible to others partaking in it.

Your unparagraphed post manifests as rambling between satanism in politics, bible-verses, subjective opinions of your opponents competence, numerology, platonic cosmology, bits of science, inductive categorization, the concept 'intelligent design', postulates of trends amongst scientists, christian persecution complex, chaos- and complexity theory and vague allusions to a grand unifying theory.

That's the abstract part.

Apart from the unavoidable introduction of the fairytale figure of the really, really bad guy, who's responsible for everything preventing the best of all worlds, you ignore the actual content of the manual upholding your self-contained world-wiev-bubble, and the social impact of this content.

Going as far out on a limb as you do, your missing epistemology is also remarkable.

So what you have acchieved is the opposite of what you probably aspired to do. You have strengthened the general impression of a propagandizing fanatic instead of building up christian/religionist credibilty.
edit on 5-2-2011 by bogomil because: spelling



posted on Feb, 5 2011 @ 09:23 AM
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Originally posted by awake_and_aware
You can't be certain of that.


Of this, I AM certain.



Originally posted by awake_and_aware
Science may even prove it to exist.


That's what I said.


With Love,

Your Brother



posted on Feb, 5 2011 @ 09:29 AM
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Originally posted by one4all
Religous people dont need religon or an idea like god,----they need each other and we arent going anywhere soon so if we lose religons as we know them through disclosure of humanities true history ---these people will gravitate to new groups that make them happy very quickly.

However I cant see a religous salesman giving up on the bible that easily,the church will probably claim credit for being the annointed gaurdians of humanities true history and try to re-manipukate their way into retaining power.


Brilliant! So let it be written, so let it be done!

Well said my friend.

With Love,

Your Brother



posted on Feb, 5 2011 @ 09:33 AM
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Atheist - There is no known God!!!!
Theist - There is an unknown God!!!!!
Agnostic - What the hell are you two arguing over again??

Food for thought

With Love,

Your Brother



posted on Feb, 5 2011 @ 09:34 AM
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reply to post by awake_and_aware
 


Straw man! Not all religious people belive in creationsim - only the wilfully ignorant and or mentally challenged. In fact some post graduates biologists are religious. Try reading Jung! His is a more sophisticated view.




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