>_>

LOL! no no no, I wasn't even talking about your posts! I didn't even read through th thread. My brief post was a quick response to the thread title.

However VGC members do fall in the second catagory. Think you're smarter than us God believers do you

Ok, that's good .

I can definitely see where you're coming from though.

I've always sort of considered myself as a science first sort of guy, and my atheism is just a by-product of that, which also means that socially I don't have much of a problem with religion (except for with a few key issues such a sharia law, but we've discussed this before).

Also, I guess the only time I really get angry with religious people is when I hear of people trying to undermine scientific knowledge with religious motives, which I guess steps more on the toes of my passion for science as opposed to my atheism. I certainly can get a bit over passionate in these situations, and that can easily come off as anger.

But generally I can see what you mean.

Whoops, my bad. The last couple pages of comments were going off each other, so I assumed you were talking to me :P

Carry on!

Ready for the irony of all this?

I'm a biology major XD

I don't know about highwaystar, but you're rockin' my worldview!

Yeah, I know a lot of religious people can accept scientific knowledge as compatible with their religion. I mean I'm assuming that as a biology major you view biology compatible with your faith (Muslim if I remember correctly?).

It's things like the intelligent design movement that gets on my nerves.

Don't feel sorry for having an opinion, debate sites like this would never exist if people agreed on everything.

Think about this for now; why did these people turn from religion? Don't you think that perhaps they experienced something profound or disturbing or at the very least unsettling that causes this hate for religious people? My ex girlfriend comes from a deeply religious family, two of her siblings followed the same path as her and don't believe in a God or deity and three of the siblings are deeply religious like their parents. The parents treat their children differently according to their faith in this family (and many others), causing conflicts and jealousy. The children in this case are left with two choices; conform to their parents' faith and succumb to their "will" or live forever before disapproving glances and frowns from their own father and mother. I'm not saying that this is the case in religious every family, but there are millions of children and young adults faced with this problem all over the world, so to me it is clear to see why there are some atheists who look down on or even hate religious people. If one guy with a turban mugs you, you'll start mistrusting anyone and everyone with a turban (this is slightly exaggerated for the sake of making a point here). Most religious people aren't like this but if a catholic priest molests you when you're young you won't hold catholics in high regard or if an atheist makes fun of you for your beliefs you'll assume that atheists all behave this way. Suggestion and social perception is often based on heavily biased information flow and standalone, personal experience that objectively reveal nothing more than that people are bastards sometimes, regardless of faith or lack thereof.

Personally, I'm fine with people finding God in their life but I think that everyone that grows up should be able to make a choice and observe and interpret based on objective criteria and not what your parents, tradition or some sect or congregation says.

That's not ironic at all!

Scientific knowledge and understanding can be compatible with religious or spiritual belief. Plenty of my colleagues are believers in a variety of religions (Catholic, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Jewish) yet they're all Biochemical Engineers, Biochemists etc. I might disagree with them but that doesn't stop us all sharing the same excitement for bio science.

Science /= Atheism

Personally I dislike the idea of organised religion as a moral code or as an authoritarian and dogmatic belief. I prefer that spirituality be completely individual for everyone rather than children being taught one single religion, all major beliefs should be taught (including the lack of belief in a god) and the choice left to the individual. Of course this is completely unworkable in society, but there we go.

I would agree there is no definitive definition of a Christian, but there are a lot of generalized terms that are similar in this way. This was one of the important things that Wittgenstein recognzied with his idea of family resemblence. When we have generalized terms like science and religion, we usually find they do not have definitive definitions that allow us to delineate between what falls into a category and what does not. Rather, we develop a list of general traits, and something must possess some of these traits in order to fall into each category. The obvious example of a scientific characteristic is repeatibility. While this is a general trait defining all branches of science, it is not considered to be necessary trait. If it was, macro-level evolution would not be considered science because it relies on historical investigation and cannot be repeated. However, we still consider macro-level evolution to be a science because it has many other traits we generally attribute to science.The main point is that many general terms lack clear, definitive definitions and rely on general characteristics for classification. You can also find other examples when looking at the debates about what qualifies as a religions and what demarcates science from pseudoscience.

I do not know what you mean when you say it is hypocritical of a religion to have different beliefs. All different beliefs mean is that separate Christian denominations hold different things to be true. You will find this to be true in most all disciplines. Generally speaking, if someone has written something influential, you can also bet someone has witten something else criticizing it. I would not classify the condemnation of gays and the picketing of funerals as an essential characteristic of Christians. If someone asked me to explain a Christian to them, condemnation of homosexuals would not be one of the defining characteristics I attributed to them. As I said, my knowledge of the Bible is limited, but I think theologians would not agree that the disciples just made up the contents of the Bible. This just seems like too much of a straw man argument to me.