Part 2:

as far as "proving" religions wrong, I'm fine with it. Like i said earlier, there are 1000's of religions out there, and they for the most part disagree with each other (if they all agreed with each other, then it'd be one giant religion ^_^ ).

So a bunch of them are BOUND to be contradictory or just plain out wrong. Strap yourself to a bomb and blow up a bus so you can go to heaven and have sex with like 40 virgins? Err.......

You can tell a lot about a religion if you ARE an outsider and you can look at what I like to call their "fruits", or rather the fruits of their labor. If they claim to truly follow a sacred text, then by their track record, we can really see if they truly adhere to their cause or not.

On the other hand, if a family is religious and they are happy and their kids don't get into trouble and they live a simple peaceful life where they are not in mountains of debt or whatnot, then perhaps there is something to their religion.

@ That Guy: Sorry for the wall of text it was intended to be smaller but.. yeah


I agree with your statement about science but I'm not sure if it reffers to my post? I just pointed out that the way religion gathers it's answers is illogical that's not related to science. I just took science as an example as it is built upon logic (let's say logic here, proof was the wrong word I guess). In science things have to be logical to get attention. I just used science as an example, I could've also used detective work as an example.

Using the way religions try to "proof" their ideas is like a detective trying to solve a case without using logic: Without logic everyone involved in the case could be declared guilty as you "make up the rules". I hope you understand what I try to say (it's a bit late here.) Science is not that important to me and to most atheist neither I think. It is just used as a common example of logic.

I think the way science is often seen as the religion of the atheists stems from the religious people actually - because it makes it easy to say "there's more than just science!" But I think almost no atheist would disagree here. You can be an atheist without science.

Just to point it out: My "personal atheism" isn't related to science. Let me explain.


There are two things that have to be seperated, you could say there are two parts to atheism:

1. The personal believe that religion is doing more damage than good.

For me that means I personally believe the values of most (not all!) religions are wrong or they aren't respecting common values / their own values. This is what I pointed out with the brazilian girl and other examples in my last post. It isn't related to science in any way.

And just to point it out: This doesn't mean there is no moral, etc. There are studies indicating atheists have just as much moral as religious people. Why? Probably because you don't need religion to share common values. That's the case in my point. I even think you shouldn't believe in values because religion says so. In my opinion saying "you don't do that because of religion" is dangerous as you don't actually know *why* you shouldn't do something. You just know you shouldn't.

So there may be something to the religion of the family in your example but you don't need religion for it you could also use something else to teach your children these values.

Now look at it from my point of view: I think religion betrays its own values and thus for me it would be better to replace the religion of the family in your example with something else.


2. The personal believe that there is no god

Ok, there are many religious people thinking "yeah, a lot of religions abuse their own values" but they are still religious and one the reasons why they are still religious is their personal belief in god / jesus / etc.

In this case, though I think it is indeed important to take science into account as this is about "does god exist or not?" and so far the burden of proof is on the people claiming there is a god. Additionally because of the rapid pace science is going forward for me, personally, there is no reason to believe there is a god who created the universe.


Only if both points are true for you you will become an atheist. And one of those points really relies on science as it is a "yes or no?" question. The other one doesn't.

More walls!

1) No argument there. Well I take that back a little bit. Thousands of years of oppression in the name of religion gives it quite the reputation.

If religion did more harm than good, the only thing that proves is that not all religions are good. I can even take it a step further and say that most religions probably aren't good. That doesn't rule out the existence of God, though.

if someone says "i don't drink alcohol because I'm _____", then that's a copout answer. a truly religious person should be able to state reasons and not just say "because I'm _____".

That's just as idiotic as saying "i'm good at basketball because I'm black"

and your moral statement of "you just know you shouldn't" I don't think cuts it for me. Some people really do need to be taught principles such as honesty, etc. etc. It makes complete sense to me and you, but some people live in a world full of dishonesty and do not know anything else.

I'm just saying that morality is usually based on some sort of guiding principle, and its supposed to be religion. You can see by the world today that religion is for the most part failing, so I don't know. I guess you could just say "c'mon man, its common sense;" though I believe that is just as much of a copout as "c'mon man, WWJD?"

2) Why does the possibility of a creator bug you so much? I don't understand the conflict there. Assume that we didn't know who painted the Mona Lisa so we do intense studies and stuff about the paint and art style.

And then BAM, hey we just discovered the Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa. Its not like we would simply give up and say "case closed." We could still analyze the art styles and stuff.

So year, we need figure out some way to prove to ourselves that God exists. However, that evidence many times goes beyond the scope of science. We really can't do repeatable lab tests to prove that God exists or not, much in the same way we can't come up with some lab test to prove that alexander the great existed or not. But there are definitely criteria that we can hold so that we can have a basis for belief.

So at the end of it all, I think its still really tough, deep stuff. We just have to be humble enough to accept that we know very little of this universe ^_^

I agree that we understand very little of this universe and I believe that some of the major organised religions stand in the way of us understanding a little bit more because they have a fear that the science will disprove their dogma.

In no way does science ever disprove or contradict the existence of God, it only ever contradicts certain beliefs in certain religions. Just because the biblical account of creation has been proven to be incorrect does not mean that Jesus was not the son of God or that he is not our saviour or any of the rest of it isn't true. Anything beyond the natural is beyond the scope of what science deals with.

I think the religions influenced by some form of the bible(jewish, islamic, christian) are based on fear, superiorty and controling the weak of mind and have caused more harm than just about anything else man-made.  They also lack any semblance of reason or logic and are rife with ignorance. 

Not sure about other religions, don't know much, they don't seem to have caused the same destruction though.

I have now heard twice in the entertainment industry the same argument (in "The Mentalist", in "Contact").

The argument is when talking with an atheist that in order to be one, we must feel "95% of mankind is delusional". That somehow the fact that 95 out of 100 people feel there is a god is evidence enough that there must be one.

Funny thing is, if I were to list why I am an atheist, one of the top things on my list would be that 95% of the population believes in a god. That statistic helps prove my theory, not disprove it.

My reasoning is because of those 95 out of 100 people, if you were to ask how god made the world, and what they think god is, you will probably get close to 95 different answers. If everyone thought the same thing, or followed the same religion, then I might think there was something to it. But with a thousand religions out there, it leads me to believe people think there is a god, because something genetic inside most humans compel them to think there is one.

I don't know if it's fear of death, or a level of uncomfortableness with not understanding the universe, or if they need to feel they have a purpose in life, but it's obvious to be that a belief in god is something people are driven to. Not something that's necessarily accurate.

I believe it was Jung who postulated that an acceptance of the supernatural was so ingrained in the human psyche that an inability to attribute the incomprehensible to supernatural forces leads to something of a societal neurosis.

I think.

The 95% of people thing is quite funny really, truth isn't democratic.

I mean back in the days 100% of people thought the earth was flat. Boy were they wrong.

I doubt it was 100%.

No the ancient greeks thought that the earth was round. Think about it; they could see the shadow of the earth during eclipses and the shadow was round. They also noticed things like the horizon and ships slowly disappearing in the horizon.

And how quickly forget the statue of Atlas holding the earth on his back! So the idea that Columbus was gonna fall off the face of the earth was 1) a rumor that never died, or 2) those people were just incredibly stupid because people had known the earth was round for at least 1000 years.

I agree with Mafoo in that just because something is widely believed does not make it correct. Though Mr. Mafoo, even if 95% were in agreement, it wouldn't make then anymore correct. Logically speaking, that would be considered argumentum ad populum, or appealing to the masses. (i.e. 9 out of 10 doctors prefer toothpaste X!)

If 95% of the world thought the moon was made of cheese, it doesn't make it true ^_^. Likewise, 95% of the world believing in God does not prove nor disprove anything.

EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus#Navigation_plans yeah it was a rumor that was popularized and the rumor never died out.