Atheism is a faith.

[Ginarley]

Right, that's it! I'm voting ACT next election - fend for yourselves ya bastids!

Ha, as if a vote for ACT will help - we'll still be dealing with a mediocrity government of Nats/Labs

You really are a ####-stirrer aren't you?

Haven't stirred hash for many a year...

I'm with you entirely on the cop-out and fence-sitting.

I guess you could argue agnostics have to have faith that god/s is/are actually unknowable, because that is an odd opinion. The gods we've had rise and fall to date have all been pretty avaricious, jealous and demanding types who not only want their views to be known, but have carved them in stone. Agnostics hold a completely contrary view to that. This is getting dangerously close to going back to where we were when we tried to define "faith". Do you have faith that the sun's going to rise tomorrow?

Actually I don't think (true) agnostics have faith in anything - they are too busy balancing on the #8 wire to have time to have faith in something.

 

[CapelDodger]

If atheism is a faith, then there is another one: antidragonism. People, who believe there are no dragons. Very good faith, almost religion.

There's are shops in Cardiff that sell dragon fossils. So there. Very convincing they are too.

 

[Ginarley]

There's are shops in Cardiff that sell dragon fossils. So there. Very convincing they are too.

Do you think we should tell them about the NZ-Welsh Order?

 

[Deus Ex Machina]

the "no substance" hits the issue that has been bugging me. There is a conceit to atheism that is just as negative as that of theists. It's the rapid dissmissal and belittlement of anyone's faith outside there own that seems to me to be the common thread.

Well hmm. You keep returning to the word "faith". This is a fungible word - i the context of Christianity it has a large metaphysical meaning where it encompasses the act of embracing a concept that you can never (whilst alive) see or prove.

Then there is faith in something that has been proven to you. Faith that involves the trust that something will happen based on rational observation - the one I have seen the most in these arguments is "faith that the sun will rise tomorrow".

These are not the same concepts nor are they the same definition.

So conflating the two is a logical error.

There are "faiths" which are called "faiths" because the profess a belief in the unknowable. In fact it is the unknowable that makes them a faith. If what they professed was knowable - it would not require faith.

Therefore calling a system of belief that only insists on the knowable "a faith" is an oxymoron.

Atheism is not a "faith". I guess you could call it an "unfaith". LOL.

perhaps that's what i see when I say atheism is a faith.
atheism is just as likely to denounce anyone else (under the guise of being right) as any other faith is.

see above.

 

[Dogdoctor]

Hey I have an idea. Why don't we make fun of people who don't agree with us? Yeah that will make us feel like we are the best and put them lowlifes in their places.

 

[The Atheist]

There's are shops in Cardiff that sell dragon fossils. So there. Very convincing they are too.

Not only convincing, they're a great conversation piece, too. Very neat. My Mrs likes dragons - odd coincidence, ever since Sean Connery played one in Dragonheart.

I assumed, when you said you would, that you were being ironic. That's action beyond the call of duty.

Aha, but then I'd miss the odd opportunity to have a look at this!

There's a match coming up. We are so gonna get slaughtered ... and I'm still looking forward to it. (Wales played Pacific Islanders on Saturday, beat them handily, and the biggest cheer in the Stadium that day? At the tannoy announcement that Argentina were ahead against England .)

I bet! Mate, I'd say you know that most Kiwis would actually love it if Wales (or anyone else) could actually give us a decent game at the moment. Very close to our hearts, the Welsh rugby team. If only you'd been at Rotorua in 1987, Wales v Australia, crowd of 35,000. 34,990 of them highly vocal Welshmen, all strangely, who lived in Rotorua. 53 years, has to happen sooner or later. Good luck for the boyos on the weekend, they are going to need it.

Quality TV, that'd be.

Well, I'm negotiating with Huntster on a crack at the lions, but he wants a weapon! Shall we give him a go at the Lions instead?

 

[The Atheist]

Do you think we should tell them about the NZ-Welsh Order?

Oops, just did!

 

[CapelDodger]

(abstruse pun intended)

Abstruse or not there should still be shame, that's what I was taught. Indoctrinated with, even.

I agree with you to a great extent. But I also recognize that the line between arrogance and confidence is a fuzzy one. Person 1 may defend their position with a combination of articulation and knowledge, and it will sound very much to the Person 2, on the opposite side of the issue, that Person 1 is being arrogant. In another thread I was accused of being arrogant because I was sharing what I had learned in my major field of study in college. The response was on the par of "you are an arrogant SOB because you are acting like a college degree makes you smarter than me." Sigh.

I, on the other hand, strut my stuff quite deliberately. I am arrogant. I ain't conceited, I'm convinced. I feel no shame about it - that I wasn't indoctrinated with.

However, I will venture to say that anyone who takes the stance that they are 100% correct (on any issue) is being brazenly arrogant. Do we know anyone like that? Hmm...?

Innuendo is unattractive, you know? Any anyway, apart from him there's me, quite up-front about it.

I disagree with your take but only in statistical terms. I would hasten to point out that the more intelligent a person is, the more they realize how much they don't know, thus leading to a lesser liklihood of arrogance. But again, we are aware of the tails.

"How much [we] don't know" is valid in general, but not always in the specific. Some subjects, some questions, are resolvable. Some conclusions can remain unbreached long after any innovative assaults have been launched.

If somebody approaches such a position of mine with a question - how do you answer this? - I'm positively avuncular. Approach my position intent on using the same old design of trebuchet and I'll get arrogant on yo' ass.

 

[The Atheist]

These are not the same concepts nor are they the same definition.

So conflating the two is a logical error.

There are "faiths" which are called "faiths" because the profess a belief in the unknowable. In fact it is the unknowable that makes them a faith. If what they professed was knowable - it would not require faith.

Therefore calling a system of belief that only insists on the knowable "a faith" is an oxymoron.

Yep, I believe we've been there and done that.

 

[CapelDodger]

That's an interesting dichotomy, hatred of arrogance versus hatred of hypocrisy. I wonder how many of us fit into one camp or the other?

Arrogance dosn't bother me particularly. At worst I find it irritating, often amusing and occasionally even admirable. At least its honest. Hypocrisy, on the other hand makes my skin crawl.

We might well get on famously. But I don't think joobz intended a dichotomy at all, he was adding arrogance to hypocrisy. Nobody condones hypocrisy. Someone of joobz's age will usually have had more experience of arrogance than of hypocrisy, thus it looms larger. Someone of my age - fifties - has seen a lot more hypocrisy, and identifies rather more with the arrogant types we grew up with. It doesn't take three years of undergraduate Philosophy to work that one out.

 

[CapelDodger]

I've adopted the label of agnosticism.

I suspect that in practice, most of us are pretty much the same thing...

... but not CapelDodger, obviously.

 

[RandFan]

I, on the other hand, strut my stuff quite deliberately. I am arrogant. I ain't conceited, I'm convinced.

Then I think your definition of arrogant is quite different than mine. I don't always agree with you and we have had some pretty strong debates and not once did I ever think of you as arrogant. If you have been condesending or patronizing I never saw it. You have never been rude or exagerated in your rhetoric to me that I can remember or even to others. Most importantly you have a tendancy to state your case making logical argument focusing on the subject at hand rather than attacking the individual. Though to be sure you can be quite forceful in making your case.

I'm not saying you never engage in the personal or that you are never condesending I would just say that it is not typical of your style.

If you are arrogant then I need another word to describe some of the posters on this forum.

 

[CapelDodger]

I suppose I should say I am talking about the kind of behaviour that is commonly labelled as "arrogant". I've never actually accused anybody of arrogance and I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean. It's an accusation that is usually wielded by people who have lost the argument and are out of all other ammunition.

I've often used it against "So where did the Universe come from?" stuff, as in "I'm not so arrogant as to claim to know, but not from some god's armpit". Which implies arrogance in my protagonist. Thinking back, I tend to use "jumped-up" instead of "arrogant" in direct speech. As in "I don't need some jumped-up suit with an MBA telling me what the constraints are, I'm telling you what they are". And so on.

Someone once said to me - it's true! and I wasn't even being nasty - "It's easy for you, you've got all these facts!". Straight up.

 

[The Atheist]

Hey I have an idea. Why don't we make fun of people who don't agree with us? Yeah that will make us feel like we are the best and put them lowlifes in their places.

I use the Jehovah Index^TM. Anyone displaying ideas/arguments/faiths/beliefs/etc., which would be worthy of a door-knocking Jehovah's Witness gets it, both barrels. No superiority issues, plain old possum hunt [turkey shoot].

 

[T'ai Chi]

The organized skeptical movement calls them believers, woos, and dims, not lowlifes.

 

[CapelDodger]

Then I think your definition of arrogant is quite different than mine.

From mine .

I don't always agree with you and we have had some pretty strong debates and not once did I ever think of you as arrogant. If you have been condesending or patronizing I never saw it. You have never been rude or exagerated in your rhetoric to me that I can remember or even to others. Most importantly you have a tendancy to state your case making logical argument focusing on the subject at hand rather than attacking the individual. Though to be sure you can be quite forceful in making your case.

You aren't going to see it because the way you debate doesn't provoke it. If I'm up against you in the tilt-yard I am not going to engage in strutting or grand-standing, I'll be focused

I'm not saying you never engage in the personal or that you are never condesending I would just say that it is not typical of your style.

It shoos the mayflies away. Some of them.

If you are arrogant then I need another word to describe some of the posters on this forum.

Come on, we've both got plenty for each of them .

I disagree with almost everything you say, but I will defend to the death my right to tell you so. While squishing people who try to interrupt.

 

[RandFan]

From mine .

You couldn't let than one slide?

You aren't going to see it because the way you debate doesn't provoke it. If I'm up against you in the tilt-yard I am not going to engage in strutting or grand-standing, I'll be focused

Ok, I'll keep an open eye.

I disagree with almost everything you say, but I will defend to the death my right to tell you so. While squishing people who try to interrupt.

I think we have more in common than you might admit especially when it comes to science, skepticism and the increase in religious influence.

 

[CapelDodger]

Do you think we should tell them about the NZ-Welsh Order?

Did you get clearance from the Grand Dragon to bring that up? JREF is terrain for surreptitious recruitment, not frickin' propaganda! That's YouTube - can you not tell the difference? Cheeses ...

Next thing you'll be spilling the code behind the Wales v All Blacks score-line on the 25th November. Get yourself in hand, for Draco's sake.

 

[CapelDodger]

I think we have more in common than you might admit especially when it comes to science, skepticism and the increase in religious influence.

We used to meet in Politics. That's one rough pub. I don't go there any more, it's much more relaxed out here.

 

[Tricky]

"Arrogance" means the outside toe on a feline's front right foot. I'll stick to that.

You totally suck at "Balderdash".