No one is trying to take anything away from them, except perhaps the assumption that their particular faith is more important than the faith or non-faith of others.
But that is a very common element in many religions--at least the various Abrahamic faiths. In Saudi Arabia it is
illegal to establish a Christian church because Islam is
more important.
It would be one thing to simply live without God and so on. But evangelical atheists remind constantly that their hatred of religion leads to or is the result of extraordinary ignorance of history, psychology, anthropology, and art.
Huh??? We are keenly aware of history and the myriad eras in which the leaders of the dominant religion in a region persecuted those of other religions or no religion. And as I noted above, one does not have to be a scholar of history to trip over one of these scenarios: all one has to do is read about the plight of the Christians in Saudi Arabia, the Muslims in certain African nations, or the Jews in--well just about everywhere at one time or another (except China, where they were treated so well that they assimilated--a lesson that the Jewish elders in the rather tolerant USA find absolutely frightening).
Once upon a time, evangelical atheists were proud to boast of their intelligence; but once society obliged and paid attention, they proved themsleves as stupid as the religious people they hate with such focused passion. It would be nice to think that atheism is something legitimate, but considering the behavior of the atheists I know in my real life circles, here at Sciforums, and otherwise through the virtual extension to the rest of humanity, such a belief would be an utter and decrepit lie. I would like to think atheists are all they claim to be, but they're not, and that would be okay except they are apparently incapable of recognizing their limitations. And, yes, that makes them as dangerous as the religious megalomaniacs.
Why do you think it is fair to hold atheists to a different standard than the supernaturalists? We're all human beings with the same DNA. Being an atheist is tough; unless one is somewhat isolated in an academic environment or lives in an extremely progressive, cosmopolitan urban area in an extremely "Blue" state like Maryland, one is likely to have few friends, and when socializing with many of them one has to be careful what topics one brings up.
The religionists are allowed to wax irrational anytime they want, because their philosophy is based on irrationality. But we claim to be rational so we have to keep our shit together 24/7. Even under the stress of living in an irrational civilization!
You know there is evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that God is artificial.
This is not correctly stated. The correct statement is that there is NO respectable evidence to support the existence of God. We are even welcome to invoke the Rule of Laplace ("Sagan's Law" for our American majority) and demand extraordinary evidence to support an extraordinary assertion before we are obliged to treat it with respect. The reason it is extraordinary is that it claims to falsify the fundamental premise that underlies the entire scientific method, a premise that has been challenged for 500 years, often with great hostility, and never come close to falsification: that the natural universe is a closed system whose behavior can be predicted by theories derived logically from empirical observation of its past and present behavior.
I suppose this could be reworded in such a way as to claim to present evidence that God is artificial (or "imaginary" as I prefer to call him, since I find little difference between the myth about God and the myths about King Arthur and Robin Hood), but we hesitate to argue in this manner. To do so in
just this one case is to single out theism from all the other categories of crackpottery, pseudoscience and antiscience, and in the long run is probably not advisable.
and there was a post I made recently poking fun at the worship of Haile Selassie in Jamaica. Does that make me a supremacist? How so?
At least Haile Selassie was a real historical figure. Evidence for the reality of Jesus is so minimal--given that the Romans were consummate recordkeepers--that it's only courtesy for us to grant it the status of scholarship.
The anthropological fact of spirits being created by people is well established, is it not?
Yes. See below for more on Jung's model of
archetypes.
Well, here's the thing Spidergoat - religion does have some backing evidence... after all, SOMETHING had to have motivated people, even after the creation of the sciences, to continue to believe in the Almighty. Else, why would humanity have done so for so long, and with so many variations?
Jung identified an enormous set of motifs that recur consistently in almost all cultures in almost all eras. These include images that keep popping up in art, ceremonies that keep popping up in rituals, and stories that keep popping up in legends. He coined the term
archetypes for them.
Basically they are nothing more or less than instincts programmed into our brain hardware. Most instincts serve an obvious purpose. For example, any animal who does not instinctively run away from a larger animal with both eyes in front of its face (a predator) will not live long enough to reproduce, so his species will soon be dominated by individuals who have synapses properly programmed for escape.
The reason for the survival of belief in supernatural phenomena is not so easy to identify. But our genes are loaded with "junk DNA" and perhaps this is an example of that. Until and unless religion becomes a survival handicap, it will be carried along. Considering that the Christians, Muslims and Jews are currently preparing for a three-way Nuclear Holy War, that time may come sooner than we think.
I find it interesting that the elephant in the room is Christian fundamentalism. That is, there tends to be an almost gentile avoidance of the fact that 99% of the time we say "religious" -- esp. here, in the context of science -- we are referencing Christian fundamentalism, almost exclusively in its attacks on science. Unlike, say, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, where both sides have clearly harbored both victims and perpetrators, here it's cut and dry. One side is seeking truth through knowledge and the other side is trying its best to bury the truth in the backyard with all the other skeletons.
This is (probably) a uniquely American perspective, since virtually all of the fundamentalist Christian churches are headquartered here--with a few in Africa.
It's instructive to note that Christianity is on the wane in Europe and the Antipodes. Unfortunately Islam is growing and it's tracking about 600 years behind the development of Christianity, putting it at the beginning of its own Reformation. Unfortunately that euphemistically-named event was in actuality a century of cruel religious warfare.
One of the variations on that theme was Pat Robertson claiming that God sent the Haitians the devastating earthquake of 2010 in reprisal for a pact with the devil, a pact Robertson wants his kindergarten class to think was signed by their colonial-era ancestors.
Only a typical ignorant American Christian could say something so stupid and cruel. In the early years of the Holocaust and WWII, quite a few Jews managed to escape from Germany and its conquered territories. One shipload of them docked in an American port--where they were refused permission to come ashore because before Pearl Harbor the USA tried desperately to maintain a position of neutrality. The Jews were distraught, so in desperation they sailed for Port-au-Prince--a port that had not already warned them to stay away. The Haitians--never a wealthy people and often on the verge of starvation themselves--welcomed them with open arms and shared their meager rations with them.
I would suggest that if anyone wants to see a genuinely "good Christian" who tries very hard to live a life that Jesus would be proud of, they should follow the Jews to Haiti. It certainly ain't Pat Robertson!
I have, and in fact that was part of what drove me to leave Christianity in the first place... I came back to it when I learned that there are, in fact, Christians out there that practice and preach the message of peace and love and to leave the "judgement of others" to God.
Indeed. It is possible to follow the teachings of Jesus without getting mired in the Old Testament crap.
I may be an atheist, but I love Jesus. He's a great role model, with a few obvious wrong turns that can be blamed on the naïveté of his era, such as not understanding the important role that moneychangers play in a robust economy. It doesn't matter that he's not real. I also love Winnie the Pooh, Frodo Baggins and Kermit the Frog. They have all taught me some very important things that (hopefully) make me a better person.
Actually, I think this thread is a big steaming dump in my subforum. I would like nothing better than to delete it (although I may move it), but I have enough trouble with the other staff, so I have to pick my fights.
Ah yes, I was wondering when you'd bring your breathtaking moderation skills to this thread. Of course you'd like to 86 a discussion that pokes holes in your facile arguments in defense of religion.
. . . . depriving their children of the knowledge that their DNA evolved from ape-like protohumans.
No. Humans
are apes, as were our ancestors since
Ardipithecus broke off from the chimpanzee line 7MYA. Gorillas, chimpanzees, humans and orangutans: the
Great Apes. The various species of gibbons: the
Lesser Apes. Anyone who finds it difficult to believe that we are apes has never watched the Olympic gymnasts. And we do all that with
no prehensile toes! (Fully bipedal
Ardipithecus, a textbook case of a transitional species, retained just one on each foot, to make a swift escape into the trees when predators appeared.)
And of course regardless of one's own gender or preference, the repression of any one group is an assault on the whole. It undermines the fundamental principles of human dignity enshrined in our laws and treaties, it damages the harmony that would otherwise hold people in allegiance to their laws, and it glorifies the victimization of innocent people unable to defend themselves from huge adversaries. All of this, just to cling to superstition, myth, legend and fable. What a wasteful enterprise.
There are those who will say that we can't blame religion for all of this. To whom I would point out that in the last 1300 years (since the rise of Islam, what a coincidence
), religion has been the motivator for the majority of government-sponsored killing or "war." Jung put it more bluntly: "The wars among the Christian nations have been the bloodiest in human history." He overlooked Genghis Khan, who killed a full 10% of the people reachable by the transportation technology of his era, but that exception does not detract from the veracity of the statistic. In WWII the combatants could reach the entire planet's population with the transportation technology of that era, and they killed 3% of us--including a large percentage of one demographic group that was not even fighting: the Jews.
And spare me the tired arguments about the depravities of the communists having nothing to do with religion nyaa nyaa nyaa. Marx was a devout Christian and his slogan, "To each according to his needs, from each according to his abilitiy," is an elaboration of a line in the Book of Acts. Imagine anyone but an Abrahamist saying with a straight face that a civilization can survive if what a man takes from it need not correlate with what he gives back? Communism is a fairytale economic system derived from the fairytale of Christianity.
You mean to say there is only one God in all of mythology?
That's what the Hindus say. They insist that all of the "gods" we see in different religions, or even in a single religion such as theirs, are merely the various aspects of the one God. He is simply too big and has too many facets to be able to intelligently discuss him as a single entity. On a PBS series about religion, an Indian lady said that she had nonchalantly prayed in a synagogue, a mosque and several Christian churches, because she knew that she was talking to the same god in all of them.
what proof has science shown you that leads you to believe god is a myth?
What science has shown us is that the
natural universe operates under a set of logical laws that we have been steadily discovering for millennia, perhaps going back to Archimedes discovering buoyancy, and continuing up to yesterday's discovery of relativity and the Big Bang and today's discovery of dark matter and energy. As I noted earlier, this demonstrates that the natural universe is a
closed system, one that is not operated upon by fantastic creatures and unbelievable forces which pop out of an invisible, illogical
supernatural universe at random intervals for (apparently) the express purpose of fucking up the operation of the natural universe and making a mockery of science.
keep in mind this is proof for the existence/ non existence of god.
One of the principles that make up the scientific method is the assertion that
it is never necessary to prove a negative. The burden of proof
always falls on the person who makes a claim. Otherwise the finite resources of science would be dissipated in an endless series of tests of every crackpot hypothesis brought to the gate of the Academy.
you keep forgetting that science has been completely unable to prove/ disprove god.
We don't have to. See above: "It is never necessary to prove a negative." It is the responsibility of the people who assert that God exists, to provide evidence supporting that assertion. So far, the best they've got is a tortilla (one out of millions fried every year) with a scorch mark they claim is the exact likeness of a figure from the Bible--a person of whom
no portraits exist against which to compare it!
