self righteous atheists....

self-righteous-anything is bad. intolerance is unnecessary

 

which is why the thread is about self-righteous atheists and not atheists in general. i have no problem with atheism at all. its people who consistently accuse people of faith of being inherently stupider than them because of it that i can't stand.

 

i agree, nesta... well-said.

 

often enough that it is a problem. the problem will increase as the demographics shift (as they have already begun to)

it has nothing to do with the religion, it is all to do with how sick the person is in the first place.

 

Church burnings are completely OK in my book.

You people are just hatin'.

 

amen. i get so tired of people who claim to be anti religion because of the wars and intolerance it has started being just as violent and intolerant as the religions they reject. don't get me wrong, i'm not at all religious, but that's just because the idea of god does not make sense to me, just like it makes perfect sense for other people. i used to look down on religious people but then i realized that even if joe redneck didn't have jesus he would be just as intolerant over something else.

anyway the moral of the story is don't worry so much about what people believe and do like jesus did and love your neighbor.

 

No ideas are above criticism, and here I also mean constructive criticism. Some progress has been made. Was it not just a few hundred years ago, in Europe, that one would be killed for being a heretic for questioning or criticising the church?

 

Atheists tend to believe that theirs are.


"you cannot prove there is a god, and so you cannot criticize us"

"you" (as I do not know if you personally are one of these people I will quote this one you, and say, I mean atheists in general who use this argument)

cannot logically prove there is not a god, and so you argue it is a specious argument, stating there is no way to prove there is "not" anything

but, in fairness, it's pretty hard to prove anything exists beyond all certainty.

the theory of relativity would be a law if issac newton had thought of it, not because it would have had more time to be vetted, simply because it became in vogue for a time to make theories that we were comfortable with laws (and some of his math was wrong, and some of his, issac's that is, laws, were amended)


Now, this seems like a pretty out there detour, but, follow me here. k?

now, relativity, is right, we've got 2054 nuclear tests that prove, it's right. we've got god only knows how many fermilab and other particle lab collisions that "Prove" to an incredible degree of certainty that the "theory" of relativity is in fact. fact

but no one wants to call it the law of relativity, because it has not gone through sufficient rigors (even though it's gone through much more than issac's had when they were deigned laws)

so, the burden of proof, and the quantity of proof required, is subjective in the scientific community (something that would never be admitted, but, it is, sucks, but, what you gonna do? it's like canonizing a saint)


This subjectivity proves something, that it is a lot easier for physicists, scientists, etc. to accept laws that they can touch.

and that something "exists" because they say it exists.

it's easier to prove a teapot exists, than it is to prove betlegeuse exists, even though both CLEARLY do.

one is more real than the other, even though they are both VERY real.

I criticize atheism based on the idea that it is being short sighted, just as science has to be to manage to exist properly.

I criticize it on the idea that it is unwilling to accept criticism

and I criticize the fact that it has become a mob mentality.

all of this with a less than organized brain right now, VERY long argument, which I really hope is still coherent when you get here

bottom line, logic is steerable, and the people claiming logic works a certain way, are steering it






Tl;dr I can't prove god exists, but that is as invalid, and as specious an argument as "you can't prove god doesn't exist"

and is it not, right now, that you can get kicked out of classes, or lose a job, or research grant if it is widely known that you practice a religion that is not in vogue.

 

Maybe the question of god(s) existence is irrelevant.

 

I agree. Atheists are very closed minded people.

 

Dawkins is a scientist, not an atheist. You can't be both.

 

I'm curious, which bit's of Newtons maths was wrong? AFAIK his calculus was correct, but only described the interaction of matter to the first and second degree. Relativity accounted for some observational perturbations, so Newtons maths in those instances, and arguably all, was imprecise, not incorrect.

Maybe it's just the way you said it, and not what you mean, I agree with what you are saying overall.

And who doesn't believe in relativity, or want to call it such, if that's what you mean? I never heard of anyone denouncing it as wrong.

 

Do you believe in the possibility of a higher level of conciousness that arises out of the collective minds of all beings on the earth, either in the Jungian sense, or Gaia, or both... or even a Galactic consciousness? Something that is there within us all, that we are not in touch with because we are (most of us) not "enlightened"?

Maybe God is not an old man with a beard, and that is simply an image that has been transposed onto "God" by our patriarchal forefathers, because it was the only language they had to explain it at the time.

Now, modern scientific revelations have offered us a more advanced paradigm for describing the concept of "God", which may always have been embedded in our psyche since the dawn of life. Why it has you would need to ask an anthropologist.

But can we be sure that the new concept of God is any more valid than the old one, just because it seems to make more sense?

The concept of God is very subjective, so the reality of God, or anything really, is no more vivid than the method we use to perceive it.

 

my opinion is that every single person has the right to believe in whatever they want, they too have the right to express their opinion as freely as they decide and say their thoughts out loud. But nobody has the right to judge somebody else and teach him/her what is right and what is wrong for them, what is good and what is bad, what is true and what is fake. every single one of us live in a different world from the rest and that`s why my God will never be your`s and your`s will never be mine.
For me i think religion is created so it can control and manipulate people. Religion is nothing spiritual, because it is created by people who wanted to gain control over the masses of other people, so they can feel like Gods in our human ....so easily brainwashed world.
but this is true for me only and i have not been in a church since i developed a brain and started to think on my own, and i am sure i will never go in a church in the future too.

 

It is true what you say, atheists are entitled to their own opinion. We shouldn't judge them, but they do judge everyone else. Better not to be like that, it's their own foible to be so narrow minded.

But if there is a God, in whatever definition of "God" you choose to adopt, chances are it's the same "God". The same God with a different face for everyone.

 

Most of the time, I'm pretty sure it's the other way around.

 

I definitely judge believers (and I feel I'm judged). But I don't impose my judgment on them nor do I neglect other parts of their being. For that reason, I tend not to think of myself as close-minded.

But even if I am, don't judge me. Judgment Day is my greatest fear. If believers only knew the sick shit I've gotten into over the years :biggrin:

 

Wow.. Very well said.

And can I just say: *Most people have a spiritual side. They may not think they do, but chances are that they do

 

Can I ask, have you ever gone to a funeral?