Why do atheists spend so much time arguing about the existence of God?

I could link website after website in proving to your average reasonable human that there are no ghost's.

People like Houdini and James Randi as well as many others have debunked every claim to the supernatural they have run across.

Believe what you want Neo,

So do you believe in ghost's, gods or leprechauns?

 

I'm not making a "sweeping" generalization, I truly believe anyone who say's they believe in a pseudo magical god has a warped world view.

Religion is the great divider of the world.

Sure there may not be AS MANY religious nut's in the states or the U.K but have you turned on the news lately and looked at the middle east?

Religion is bad for people, religion is bad for the world.

 

right, I'm sure you could, and I bet they would offer all sorts of great explanations that really don't prove that ghost don't exist.

This really doesn't do anything for me. Naming some authority figure, and then saying that they "debunked" isolated claims to the supernatural, really isn't any proof that ghosts do not exist.

Once again, this has nothing to do with my personal beliefs. I just find it interesting that you so readily claim that no ghosts exist, when there is no possible way for you to know that. It's a leap of faith, and you can never prove it. It's on par with the thinkings and justifications that the religious give for the reasonings. On the surface, you seem to be at odds with them, but I guess you guys have more in common than you thought.

 

What people are having such a problem with is that I say I'm an atheist when in actuality anti religion would be a closer stance.

Oh well believe what you want.

 

There are three reasons why this is a "sweeping" overgeneralization. (1) Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot were atheists, and their brutal regimes are responsible for more deaths since World War II than any religion, including Islam; (2) you're generalizing from the behavior of Muslims in the Middle East to Quakers, Amish, Methodists, Episcopaleans, etc.; (3) many well-respected scientists say they believe in God; do they have a warped view of the world?

 

Actually no, what people are having a problem with is your continually stating things as facts that can not be proved one way or another and then calling them stupid for not believing what you believe.

 

And Hitler was a Roman Catholic what's your point?

There will always be bad people doing horrid things that's life.

And I don't think there are many "well respected" scientist's who believe in god.

 

If you believe in the nonsense preached in so called holy book's I do believe that you are stupid.

So yeah your right about that.




That is my opinion on this issue.

 

Before you stated "Atheists have killed in the name of things that they do believe in" as a counter argument to claims that religion, faith and God have played a role in in killings. Which of course the latter being an undeniable fact and a pretty damn good reason to try and change the attitude of the common sheeple I might add. As I stated, your comment about any atheist killing is irrelevant. People kill for many reasons, simply not believing in God is not one of those reasons! Your blatant incapacity to comprehend the irrelevancy of your argument and OP reasoning doesn't surprise me in the least and I'm not even typing this for your benefit right now because my point is lost on the likes of you. This is really for any reader who has the capacity to understand what I'm saying.

Now I'll throw in some extra exclamations to distract you from any meaningful thought, because I know it makes you feel like a big boy!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

My point is that it's irrational to blame religion for war and mass murder when atheists do the same thing.

Agreed. It's horrible people who are responsible for horrid things, including horrid versions of religions that others interpret in non-horrid ways.

"Many" is admittedly a relative concept. Surveys by Larson and Wilham in 1996 and 1998 found that 40% of American scientists reported belief in a personal God who answers prayers. That's about the same percentage that said the same thing in Leuba's pre-World War II studies. Others might believe in an impersonal God or a personal one who doesn't answer prayer. Of course, there's the question of how well-respected they are. I don't know, but I can think of some who are well-respected: Kenneth Miller, Francis Collins, Paul Davies (admittedly a pantheist or panentheist), and such Nobel prize nominees as Elias Erey, William Phillips, Henry Saefer, and Arthur Compton. Ecklund and Scheitle's survey of 1,646 faculty of elite universities found that about one-third believed in God (two-thirds didn't, but two-thirds described themselves as "spiritual"..

 

Misfeed.

 

Oh, yeah, that's another thing you do: declare that anyone who doesn't agree with you doesn't understand your point.

Your point is not hard to understand.

 

Well that is a sweeping generalisation. Why would believing in God lead to a warped view of everything? I'd agree that Intelligent Design twats are allowing their belief in the supernatural to warp their worldview. But there are a huge amount of religious people who only use religion to give their lives meaning, and don't try and rewrite science or preach morality to others.

It seems to be dividing you and I right now

See, you say this, but it's been put to you that non-religious ideologies have been far more divisive, which you've not rebutted.

I'd also argue that your simple causal link between religion and violence is extremely over-simplified. If you look, you'll find that most of these supposedly religious conflicts take place in areas of high poverty, for example. You won't find many holy wars raging in affluent countries. To me, this would suggest that at best religion alone isn't responsible. This would not be the first time that something which seems obvious has just been assumed. Most people, if you ask them, would imagine that there's some link between sex and violence in the media and sex and violence in real life (and that there's any reason to group sex and violence at all!), but there's no real evidence of this. Most people still believe it though.

Your argument seems to be that believing in the supernatural is a cause of violence (or at least, that belief in the supernatural is bad, and bad people do violence). But it isn't.

It's not irrelevant that plenty of people who don't believe in the supernatural commit acts of violence because of what they do believe in.

It's not irrelevant to mention that most people who believe in the supernatural never kill anyone.

It's also not irrelevant to mention that, even ignoring those two factors, there is no causal link between religion and violence. There's more to statistics than simply establishing a correlation. You have to provide some indication that the two are linked. This is usually done by showing that other factors don't contribute, that there isn't as strong a correlation as there is to religion.

So far, you've not shown that there's even a correlation between religion and violence, but even if you did, I'd still believe that poverty, social deprivation and global politics have been much bigger factors in most supposedly religious wars, because people of the same religion manage to at least be civil to each other in countries where people have a better lot socially.

 

You say you understand but you still argue your irrelevant point. So exactly what is it that your having trouble with. Let us review:

1 - Faith in God and religion has motivated killing.
2 - Not believing in God has never motivated anyone to kill.
3 - People do kill for many other reasons, completely irrelevant in a religious debate.
4 - Claiming Atheist kill for OTHER beliefs that has nothing to do with 'disbelief in God' therefore nothing to do with being Atheist at all, and is simply a mis-directional, irrelevant, underhanded and desperate claim.

 

Again, the debate is about religion and God, this is a RELIGION forum. We are debating why we should speak out about RELIGIOUS crimes, RELIGIOUS influence in wars, not OTHER Factors. That is so weak!

Correlations are everywhere! Is it a coincidence the same group of Americans that vote for anti-choice religious values are the same group that most strongly supported an unjust war? Is it just a coincidence that that a country with bible and a gun flag has had the highest death rate in the world?



How many soldiers and families of soldiers in this world live day to day drawing comfort and reason from a CONVICTION OF IGNORANCE based on a delusional fantasy that an IMAGINARY BEING will protect their loved ones and THEIR cause is justified? This is how the vast majority of them actually sleep at night.

Zombie tools!

 

Actually, it's your first point that I disagree with, and I've made my argument pretty clearly throughout this thread. If religion motivated people to kill, then you'd see a lot more killing by religious people, and a much wider spread, rather than religious conflicts occurring almost exclusively in areas where there are long running border disputes, mass poverty, corrupt governments, etc. If religion was actually causing this violence, rather than simply being used as an excuse, then we'd expect to see it everywhere religion is, not just in those places.

As to point 4: it's not irrelevant at all. I am merely trying to illustrate that, like atheists, non-atheists very probably kill for reasons that have nothing to do with their beliefs about god/lack of god. I was not trying to imply that atheists kill because they are atheists, but simply that it's as ridiculous to insist that religion is a major motivator towards violence as it would be to say the same about atheism if you have no evidence of a causal link.

My argument is that people will find excuses to do what they want, whether they're atheist or religious. It is entirely relevant to mention atheist causes - eugenics, for example - which have led to mass death, because as has been pointed out, obviously an atheist isn't going to kill someone over a god they don't believe in... right? I am arguing that people will want to kill each other for the same old stupid reasons - x person has what y person wants, be that land, money, freedom, whatever - and if religion wasn't the catalyst for it, something else would be. So if an atheist kills in the name of nationalism or communism or science, why is that irrelevant? It's a belief an atheist holds, therefore it's an atheist belief, right? I mean, pretty much every religion holds that killing is wrong, but people do that in the name of religion. So if we are including killings by religious people in Religion's Death Toll, even when they are not in keeping with the religion itself, why should we not include anyone killed by an atheist over an ideological conflict? Because we want to whitewash atheism, perhaps?

So far, I have not seen a lick of evidence from you that religious people are more likely to kill than non-religious people. If this compelling evidence exists, where is it? You ridicule those of us who reserve judgment on religion, and assert that we should all be basing our beliefs on logic and evidence. So show us some evidence, please? Or make a logical argument? Even if I'm wrong, and every killing by a religious person IS motivated SOLELY by their faith, it hardly matters if they're only as likely to kill or harm others as anyone else. All it would prove was that religion had no significant impact on the likelihood of violence.

 

Sorry, but no. This debate is NOT about religion and God, as I have already stated. As is fairly clear from the title which I wrote myself, it is about atheists. You're attempting to dictate the course of a debate so that you can avoid having to rebut a valid argument that is being made.

Well yes, unless you can establish some actual causal link, it is just a coincidence. Can you actually do that?

I don't really see the point in this rant. Are you incapable of criticising atheists purely because they share your beliefs? Because again, that's fairly obviously what this thread has been about from Post 1, and it's pretty much just you that seems determined to make sure it becomes yet another generic "Relaxxx Tells It Like It Is!" thread.

The whole purpose of setting up this thread was to find out why so many atheists are as you appear to be, incapable of acknowledging any flaw whatsoever in their own beliefs, tending to justify them by slagging off "the other side", and then daring to claim that religion causes wars purely because people assert opinions without basis.

If you have nothing relevant to the subject of atheism to contribute, and are just going to post rant after irrelevant rant about how awful religion is, then I can't really stop you, but I would hope that you will someday understand why, as an atheist, I find people like you so embarrassing.

 

There haven't been many atheist governments in history, but those we have experienced have been brutal and responsible for the deaths of millions. I mentioned Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. Atheism wasn't just some belief they held privately while killing people for other reasons. Atheism was an integral part of their Marxist-Leninist ideology, and they persecuted religious people for being religious. So your point seems to be based on fallacy. Most religious people aren't into killing and violence. I've mentioned Quakers, Amish, most mainline Protestant groups. We could add Ba'hai, Parsees, and most Buddhists. The crux of your argument seems to be a logical fallacy: Some religions are violent, therefore all religions are bad. So we've given you an alternative: some atheist regimes have been violent toward religion; Therefore...?

 

He'll dismiss them all off hand as isolated examples and carry on believing that religion causes violence and atheism is beyond reproach. We both know this.

I find it pretty ironic the way this thread has turned into a standard discussion about religion, given that it was initially meant as a commentary on why atheists ARE so obsessed with debating religion.

 

Going back to this (because this thread's gone to shit), I've found that often debating causes me to question my beliefs. The problem is, most people won't believe that you've questioned your beliefs unless that process of questioning causes you to discard them (ideally in favour of those people's beliefs).

Why should we, as atheists who supposedly prize logic, assume that anyone who is religious just hasn't thought about it hard enough?

Why should we imagine that, when we churn out the same boring lines of copypasta about the age of the Earth or how religion = WARZ, we are presenting them with some new information?

And why should we assume that, because we have not shaken their faith to its foundations and converted them to atheism with a few words, that they cannot have understood our point?

These are questions that I feel atheists need to answer, and so few do that it's pretty tragic.