Rise in atheistic fundamentalism

[iranu]

Unless you can prove that the Christians are wrong and that their God doesn't exist,

Actually you can get pretty close, bearing in mind that you can't actually prove anaything (that's why we have beyond reasonable doubt). Simply ask them to define their god. They can't because as soon as they do they run into allsorts of problems of things like free will, the benevolence of an omnimax god etc. You can also look at the scriptures that they quote, namely the old and new testament and show the large number of contradictions that is the word of god. They also run into the problems of interpretation too. Oh this bit of the bible is metaphor and this bit is literal, how does anyone know when no one can know the mind of god? You only have to look at the ridiculous stories in the bible to see how crazy it is. When you match this with the lack of historical evidence for jesus then things don't look to rosy for a christian god.

I don't see anyone on Hexus ripping into christians. I'm sure hexus would clamp down fairly fast. The problem with christian posters is they do not offer a reasoned argument and tend to ignore the questions that others post. This happens not just on hexus, it's endemic.

As for Atheist fundamentalism I find this laughable. It's exactly these kinds of attacks by the religious, using the language that religionists spout to their own kind, that find the derision that is warranted. In the article linked, as so often is the case, the religionist's argument is a non sequiter. Just because someone changes christmas to winterval does not mean that they are atheists, just the same way that atheists do not, in general, seek to ban christmas. I've no doubt that the council involved are part of the lefty PC brigade who, for some unknown reason, are trying to be "inclusive" and think, wrongly, that christmas offends people of other religions (let alone atheists). I have no wish to ban christmas or impose any restrictions on worship just like the majority of atheists. The phrase "militant atheist" also gets bandied about, which too, is ludicrous. When you see large aggressive demonstrations by atheists, persecution of the religious, murder of christians for being christian then "militant" or "fundamentalist" tags will be appropriate. The funny thing is that most atheists are the exact opposite of fundamentalists, most seem to be humanists/rationalists and these are the last people to engage in this sort of activity. It's the religious that are projecting their own values onto people they simply don't understand and falsely see as a threat.

The christians are using the old persecution complex (just as muslims do) when those of us with reason speak up. "You don't agree with us and are saying it. Help we're being oppressed!" The hammer and chisel of logic and critical thinking is happily chipping away at christianity and the christians don't like it. Well perhaps they ought to do more to convince they rest of us rather than moaning and whinging.

It reminds me of this which is in relation to the US

[Saracen]

There is a big difference between something existing that we don't understand and that we don't have an explanation for, and something which cannot be understood and which has no explanation.

If gods were defined as an alien beings who used special 'creation ray' that we don't understand, that would be a rational argument. We could look for evidence and proof, and your position would make sense. The problem with religion is the supernatural nature of gods, making them not just unproven but unprovable.

The stoneage man could look at the effects of lightning, develop a theory as to how it works, build some experiments (and update his wardrobe) and call himself Tesla. Just because he doesn't understand electricity doesn't mean it has no explanation, and our modern lives are a product of that stoneage man's desire to learn more about the world around him. Gods represent 'no explanation', and had stoneage man been happy with that we'd still be throwing rocks. I'm not. I want to look for the aliens!

I certainly don't entirely disagree.

Analogies will only take us so far and usually, if pushed far enough, break down. But with the electricity/lightning analogy, there's a difference between an observable phenomenon, like lightning, and a more subtle and less observable one, like atomic valency. The caveman might wonder about lightning and theorise about its cause, but as he has no way to suspect the existence of atoms, he's not likely to speculate about a valency shell .... and if he did, I feel pretty confident his cave cohabitants would dismiss the idea as rubbish because he can't provide and evidence or proof.

I'd also advocate caution about dismissing things as "supernatural". Chambers defines "supernatural" as

belonging or relating to or being phenomena that cannot be explained by the laws of nature or physics

I'd prefer to see that as "..... cannot be explained by the laws of nature or physics yet."

Even if you take the definition without the "yet", it may still be that a phenomenon is incorrectly classified as supernatural because we don't yet have the necessary laws of nature of physics to understand it.

You say "Gods represent 'no explanation',". I'd have said that he/she/they represent something for which we currently have no explanation. That doesn't mean that the phenomenon, like atomic valency, doesn't exist or doesn't have an explanation - merely that we don't have the explanation .... and/or perhaps don't have the equipment (be they senses, technical tools or perhaps intellectual capacity) to understand it.

Man is rightly quite proud of his intellectual abilities and scientific advances, though that pride perhaps borders on arrogance. I hesitate to quote Rumsfeld, but perhaps it's suitable here

because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know

We've discovered a LOT in terms of what makes the place tick, but can we even be sure that the laws of physics apply as we understand them outside of our ability to experiment and test them? And, of course, that means on our planet and it's immediate environs. What if, for instance, different laws exist outside our solar system, or outside our galaxy? How would we know? Could God be a known unknown, or perhaps even an unknown unknown?

What if the "supernatural" exists on a level our senses can't detect? Doesn't that leave us with a task equivalent to a totally deaf (from birth) person trying to understand Beethoven ... or Atomic Kitten, without assistance from anyone that has ever heard it?. Or a totally blind (from birth) person trying to understand the difference between blue and red, or perhaps violet and a slightly lighter violet?

Does a creature that lives at the depth of our oceans (and can't survive at lower pressures or higher temperatures) have a way to appreciate wind? Could it be that we have some vestigial or deep-buried nascent sense that's just about capable of sensing the existence of something that our much-vaunted rational approach can't explain? Could "faith" be when someone exercises that sense just enough to feel that they can rely on it, and the rest of us haven't exercised it enough?


I agree that the existence of God (whatever he/she/it is) is an unlikely prospect, and I agree about the inconsistencies in religious works, but the latter could just be man's imperfect attempts to express what his faith sense is telling him.

My point (laboured a bit I guess) is that I don't know. And nor do I know anyone who does .... one way or the other.

[ajbrun]

I didn't realise that the non-religious population was as big as that in America. Looks about 20% to me?

[JPreston]

IIRC it's only ~15%

[MadduckUK]

i didnt know that pacman was Christian

[directhex]

you can disagree with someone without insulting them

you can think they're bloody stupid without making a scene

if there's one thing i've learnt over the years, it's that flaunting a perceived superiority doesn't help your point of view in the slightest

[JPreston]

Who's insulting anyone?

Who's making a scene?

And it should be obvious that some points of view are, in truth, massively superior to others.

[directhex]

Who's insulting anyone?

don't be a rubbishrubbishrubbishrubbish. if you don't think you're being CLEARLY condescending and insulting, then you're as deluded as those you spend time insulting.

Who's making a scene?

you, stewart, plenty of people.

And it should be obvious that some points of view are, in truth, massively superior to others.

and? those points of view can be presented without resorting to name-calling, straw-man arguments, condescension, and smugness.

if you need any of those mechanisms to support your argument, your argument is flawed. present an objective viewpoint against an objective viewpoint, and the "massively superior" one will hold its own

[JPreston]

don't be a rubbishrubbishrubbishrubbish. if you don't think you're being CLEARLY condescending and insulting, then you're as deluded as those you spend time insulting.





you, stewart, plenty of people.



and? those points of view can be presented without resorting to name-calling, straw-man arguments, condescension, and smugness.

if you need any of those mechanisms to support your argument, your argument is flawed. present an objective viewpoint against an objective viewpoint, and the "massively superior" one will hold its own

You're too funny. Remind me what's this thread about again? Oh that's right, name-calling, straw-man arguments, condescension, and smugness from a bigoted idiot who is nonetheless given a public soapbox at the BBC by virtue of his professed admiration for a bronze-age magician who was his own dad and now lives in the sky having chosen to make only imperfect contact with the inhabitants of a patch of desert 2000 years ago but now also literally speaks directly to fuddam, on occasion.


'Present an objective viewpoint against an objective viewpoint" - OK then, so if you claim that something is true, I will examine the evidence which supports your claim; if you have no evidence, I will not accept that what you say is true and I will think you a foolish and gullible person for believing it so.


Shall we start with Noah and the great flood? It is the christian's 'objective belief' that Noah built a really big boat and gathered together 2, sometimes 7, of all the animals on the Earth in doing so walking across oceans to two continents that noone had even heard of at the time to get australian kangaroos and american buffaloes, not to mention ~500,000 species of nematode (microbial worms) and millions of pairs of painstakingly categorised beetle (essentially all species on Earth are beetles, give or take a few).

Then god drowned all the little children and wabbits and everything else on the planet, because he is good and really loves us, and finally the waters receded carving out the Grand Canyon (because of course, this could not have formed in the way that geologists believe because the Earth is only 6,000 years old) as they went.

Then Noah lived to be 900 years old and was tricked by his wicked daughters into getting drunk, having sex with and impregnating them thus repopulating the human race. Huzzah! And they believe this to be the literal truth just because some nomadic tribe reckoned it happened thousands of years ago, there is of course not a scrap of archaelogical or geological evidence for any of it.

It is the atheist objective viewpoint that that is complete rubbish, none of it happened.

What do you think then?

[directhex]

What do you think then?

i think you're rude and bad at debating.

you're also presumptive. anyone who hasn't praised you you've jumped on as a mad religious nutter. you presumed Saracen was a christian with a literal interpretation of biblical text, for disagreeing with you. you've assumed the same of me. i'd say "create a false premise then lambaste it" was a pretty good definition of a straw-man argument.

[TheAnimus]

define:fundamentalism - Google Search

can't see on that says an atheist is been a fundementalist by denying god.

Theres a difference between tollerance and fundementalisim. I for instance am interlerent of the welsh 'people'. That does not in any way imply that i am a fundamentalist.

Same way an atheist who says "god can in no way exist qed" (such logic is often flawed by been based on assumption) however you can say "there is no evidence for god", therefore creationism should be kept out of the science class room. That is not preduce, and certaintly not fundamentalist.

[JPreston]

you presumed Saracen was a christian with a literal interpretation of biblical text, for disagreeing with you. you've assumed the same of me.

Where? I don't think I've addressed any of Saracens points anywhere, and I actually assumed you were just an apologist for religion - "hey guys let's all get along, religion has never hurt anyone, be nice to everyone like I am". I never assume anyone is religious for the simple reason that so few people are, something like 5 - 10% of the UK regular attend any religious service of any denomination. In fact I explicitly asked you - "what do you think then?" - to see if you insist on being contrary even when this means that you have to support a clearly ridiculous assertion.

i'd say "create a false premise then lambaste it" was a pretty good definition of a straw-man argument.

Actually that is what it says is in the bible, you know, the literal word of god. Try to keep up, will you?

[directhex]

Where? I don't think I've addressed any of Saracens points anywhere,

you're right, it was Lucio, my mistake.

I actually assumed you were just an apologist for religion - "hey guys let's all get along, religion has never hurt anyone, be nice to everyone like I am".

i'm an apologist for manners. i know they get bad press, but i believe in them. i have faith that manners will be there for me, and are good for society. faith is blind.

I never assume anyone is religious for the simple reason that so few people are, something like 5 - 10% of the UK regular attend any religious service of any denomination. In fact I explicitly asked you - "what do you think then?"

you explicitly set up a straw man first, in a deliberate effort to make me look like an idiot if i showed any affiliation with old-testament religion. it was divisive, pointless, and rude.

to see if you insist on being contrary even when this means that you have to support a clearly ridiculous assertion.

i don't support ridiculous assertions, i reject unpleasant, poorly argued nonsense.

Actually that is what it says is in the bible, you know, the literal word of god. Try to keep up, will you?

again, a straw man argument. my understanding is, your argument goes something like this:
* $religion believes $text is a 100% literal interpretation of the word of $deity
* $text contains sections which appear farcical by modern standards
* therefore $text is farcical
* therefore $religion is farcical
* therefore $worshippers are stupid

i reject your argument as flawed. interpretation of $text is not treated literally by all $worshippers, in fact, generally only fundamentalists believe it. here's the application of scientific method: i believe there are people who believe in $deity who do not believe in a literal interpretation of $text. i have observed results, from this very forum. i each a well-grounded conclusion, that your assertion is wrong.

science (which is what you mean when you talk about atheism, judging by your posts) is not incompatible with religion. religion is an attempt to answer "why", not "how". you're happy to trumpet known mental patents like falwell or bush as the typical religious believers. why not trumpet names like einstein in your argument? oh wait, because that would harm your straw man.

obviously those who assert young-earth creationism are deluded. i wouldn't think to argue otherwise. but what does attempting to "shoot down" assertions made by that group achieve? do you point to a fat man in the street and shout "ha ha you're fat!"?

[JPreston]

i reject your argument as flawed. interpretation of $text is not treated literally by all $worshippers, in fact, generally only fundamentalists believe it. here's the application of scientific method: i believe there are people who believe in $deity who do not believe in a literal interpretation of $text. i have observed results, from this very forum. i each a well-grounded conclusion, that your assertion is wrong.

I don't unstand what's with the $dollar signs but again, what is this thread about? Oh that's right, [atheist] fundamentalism. You do agree that fundamentalism is ridiculous, and that it is purely the reserve of the religious, don't you? And you do understand that this does not imply that all religious people are fundamentalists, something which I therefore never argued?

Of course there are 'weak believers', vicar of dibley types, church only at easter and xmas, the Earth is not 6,000 years old, women are not made of ribs, etc. If anything, I have even less respect for this tier of belief - it's pure hypocrisy. They are explicitly told to believe absolutely every part of their texts and yet instead they try to adopt the mask of rationality and say "Oh but of course I don't believe that part about a man surviving 30 days in the belly of a big fish, that's silly....but I believe this bit about walking on water for no particular reason other than for laughs....and this bit about catering for more people than would reasonably be expected with limited supply of fish and bread is perfectly sensible, isn't it? OK, so the bit about Moses (an almost certainly fictional character of whom there is no evidence other the bible) parting the red sea to lead the jews out of slavery (again, although lots is known about egypt there is absolutely no archaelogical evidence of such slavery or exodus) didn't actually happen but it's a useful metaphor that we can learn from....somehow....".

Once you start to reject bits of the bible as being false - which obviously is the correct thing to do - then you can't rely on the rest of it as being definitely true. In any case the bits that vicar of dibley xtians still believe are still largely absurd. Let them make their 'objective case', why don't you?

science (which is what you mean when you talk about atheism, judging by your posts) is not incompatible with religion. religion is an attempt to answer "why", not "how".

Actually I mean 'atheism' when I say 'atheism' and 'science' when I say 'science'. And science actually is incompatible with religion - a scientist can only produce worthwhile results if he completely isolates his religious beliefs from his work. Form a hypothesis, make predictions, test them....then just assert something patently ridiculous as truth on pure 'faith', which as someone said here is just ignorance made virtue. What sort of chemist would demand a theory be consistent with the 'fact' that the communion wafer literally turns to the body of jesus, just because the infallible pope has said that all catholics must believe this to be literally true? How productive would he be?

If religion is an attempt to answer 'why', it does this in an entirely feeble manner. Why are there earthquakes? Why is there disease? Didn't we burn enough goats? Tell me o lord! Religion just provides the illusion of agency to people who don't know any better.

you're happy to trumpet known mental patents like falwell or bush as the typical religious believers. why not trumpet names like einstein in your argument? oh wait, because that would harm your straw man.

That's 'not even wrong'. I don't say bush and falwell are typical believers (they are/were exceptionally influential believers), I just said that Tony Blair is a similar sort of believer - i.e. irrational and dangerous - isn't he? Your 'argument' about Einstein would not be valid even if it were true - which it is not:

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

(do even the most rudimentary research - Einstein was most definitely not a theist, at worst he was perhaps a deist - and to pre-empt what would probably otherwise be your next point, Hitler most assuredly was catholic, and not atheist)

...but again, any such arguments are nonsense. I can always just point to Prof Richard Dawkins, who as one of the world's premier intellectuals is most certainly more intelligent and knowledgeable than you or anyone else who disagrees with me here, and claim that this therefore means that I must be right, end of story. Is that valid then? Because I did not think it was.

obviously those who assert young-earth creationism are deluded. i wouldn't think to argue otherwise. but what does attempting to "shoot down" assertions made by that group achieve?

To deny them the disproportionate influence that they currently enjoy, despite being dangerous nutcases? If you think this is like shooting slow, ignorant fish in a barrel then why are you so insistent on trying to defend them?

[SilentDeath]

I notice that fuddam has not yet replied to this thread..

....And most of you are talking a load of crap....

However I think the intended link refers more to political correctness rather than ones religious beliefs.
The idiotic DR is blaming atheists for political correctness, which is wrong, becuase not every christian cares for the preaching and **** that goes with it. There are some christians that don't care for the bible yet have there own beliefs of god.

The atheists don't care either way, as long as nothing is forced on them.

If you were to lock up your average christian in a room with forced listening to loud christmassy music for 24 hours you would probably return to find they have committed suicide. For me, just a few hours of not even christmassy music would do it... forced listening to virgin radio last night with repeated playings of old cheese. Luckly I had an mp3 player that goes loud enough to block it out, with some metal.

So what about the non christians? they would surely be very pissed off when forced to take part in christian events, due to the content (not the beliefs which are in many cases very similar to their own) of which much is noisy of the more annoying kind...

THAT is why political correctness exists.. - as well as the impracticle nature of allowing people to express their religious beliefs where it is not suitable.. like for example the extra effort and money needed for school events, hence why some schools dont have them at christmas.. especially where teachers are not christians themselves.


now to quote the article...

He said it advocated that religion in general and Christianity in particular have no substance, and that some view the faith as "superstitious nonsense".

Many people believe that as fact, so why shouldn't they be allowed to express it?

[TeePee]

@Saracen

The absence of a 'yet' is important in the definition of supernatural. Something which is supernatural is not only something which we don't have an explanation for, but something we can't ever have an explanation for. The object of science is to find a set of natural laws to explain and define the world around us. If something occurs which doesn't fit our laws it doesn't mean it's supernatural, just that our laws aren't good enough, and we need to find new ones. From Newtonian physics to Relativity, it's all about explaining things as best we can. Any phenomena has an explanation, even if we have to adapt our perception to understand it. The supernatural are the things which occur outside these natural laws. Not just things which can't be defined by our best theory, but things which can never be defined by any law, no matter how hard we try.

As I said before, if gods were aliens with special creation-rays, that's fine, as an explanation for how the ray's work exists regardless of if it fits within our current laws or not. But gods which exist outside any law - and with the ability to change the laws of nature at will - are supernatural by definition.