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Atheism & agnosticism

P.J. Denyer said:
Britain, where for a recent example, a criminal convicted of a violent assault was given a suspended sentence by the wife of our ex-prime minister because he was a 'man of faith'.

Stamp collectors haven't blown up London transport, driven cars into airports, called for the ability to choose pro-stamp collecting judges to sit on cases where someone's stamp collecting has got in the way of their paid employment. Stamp collectors aren't handed state financed schools or given tax breaks and public money. Stamp collectors don't claim that non-stamp collectors have no morals.


(Or +1 to Yomero's post :D)
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And theists didn't kill tens of millions with communist revolutions and farm collectivization programs.
 
I was watching Atheist experience on youtube and a narrator said that an atheist believes anythings possible including a God. However based on evidence that is no evidence for, there is no god. The narrator went on to say that he wouldn't worship a god even if there was one and I agree with him.
 
Malerin said:
:rolleyes:

Suck it up, atheist. A billion Chinese living under an atheist regime are laughing at your "discrimination".
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Ah, I see how this works. Because the Chinese government is opposed to religion, that makes it ok for the US to oppress atheists. Good, sound Christian logic.
 
Sledge said:
Ah, I see how this works. Because the Chinese government is opposed to religion, that makes it ok for the US to oppress atheists. Good, sound Christian logic.
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Using mal mal's brainless "logic",
any secular regime is apparently an atheist regime.

I'm willing to accept that the US is an atheist nation.
 
Personally, I think we are getting(have got) to the stage whereby we have a pretty good understanding of things and the available space for a God has become smaller and smaller to the point where He is more of a bystander, the fat wheezy kid who didn't do games at school or the super shy person who stands at the side in discos and watches everyone making an arse of themselves trying to dance.

If I must, I guess I'm an Atheist who can't dance.:blush:
 
Malerin said:
And theists didn't kill tens of millions with communist revolutions and farm collectivization programs.
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And believers have killed many, many more. Sometimes those murders have been directly because of religion. Stalin was probably an atheist, but his crimes were not done in the name and for the glory of atheism.
 
yomero said:
And believers have killed many, many more. Sometimes those murders have been directly because of religion. Stalin was probably an atheist, but his crimes were not done in the name and for the glory of atheism.
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They did it so they could introduce personality cults (Mao, Stalin) to replace said religions as the focus of popular worship and blind obedience.

The atheists (of which I am not one) on JREF are atheists because they simply see no empirical evidence of a deity.

This is very different from a government which creates a state worship system in which people are supposed to believe many many many things about their leaders blindly, and without emprical evidence to back up these claims.

I think Scandanavia is a much better example of actual atheism in practice, because these are nations which are mostly secular, but it's not a situation in which worship/blind obedience of/to a God has been replaced by worship/blind obedience of/to the state or of a public figure.

** Is this a "No True Scottsman" fallacy, or does that argument seem valid?

It also just seems to me that if you go by what things people DON'T believe in, then you could blame anyone for anything. By that litmus test, you could say that Malerin is in the same category as Stalin, because they both don't believe in Hinduism.

Yeah, Malerin, you non Hindu person you. How do you possibly justify your non belief in Hinduism when Stalin also didn't believe in Hinduism, and look at all the bad stuff he did! Hindus didn't kill tens of millions with communist revolutions and farm collectivization programs, but a non Hindu person such as yourself did!
 
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Sledge said:
Ah, I see how this works. Because the Chinese government is opposed to religion, that makes it ok for the US to oppress atheists. Good, sound Christian logic.
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No, it makes it pathetic when atheists bitch about "discrimination". The atheist regimes of the 20th century were some of the most violent and oppresive in history.

This cracks me up:

"Atheists are Discriminated Against in Politics:

Perhaps the most obvious example of how atheists are discriminated against is in politics: people are less likely to vote for atheists than they are for any other minority — women, blacks, Jews, Muslims, or even gays. No atheist is likely to be elected on any level anywhere in America and no politicians are likely to specifically appeal to atheists’ votes by defending their interests. Some even openly express bigotry against atheists, for example President George H.W. Bush."http://atheism.about.com/od/attacksonatheism/p/AtheistBigotry.htm

No one has a right to be voted for. Want more cheese with that whine?
 
Malerin said:
No, it makes it pathetic when atheists bitch about "discrimination". The atheist regimes of the 20th century were some of the most violent and oppresive in history.
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Sure. Evil mean regimes...what about it again? Would you like to define what an "atheist" regime is?
Is that any none-religious government?
Is that any government that persecutes religion?
Do tell.
This cracks me up:

"Atheists are Discriminated Against in Politics:

Perhaps the most obvious example of how atheists are discriminated against is in politics: people are less likely to vote for atheists than they are for any other minority — women, blacks, Jews, Muslims, or even gays. No atheist is likely to be elected on any level anywhere in America and no politicians are likely to specifically appeal to atheists’ votes by defending their interests. Some even openly express bigotry against atheists, for example President George H.W. Bush."http://atheism.about.com/od/attacksonatheism/p/AtheistBigotry.htm

No one has a right to be voted for. Want more cheese with that whine?
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How cute.

I completely agree with our bigot here. No one has the right to be voted for but then it seems that no one is claiming that except our master of strawmen arguments and master of stupid based philosophies.

But people have the right to NOT BE DISCRIMINATED AGAINST because of their religion or lack thereof. It's in the US Constitution. I know Idealism allows for you to make up what ever nonsense you desire but do try to keep up.
 
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Darth Rotor said:
Not in the same time frame, to be nitpicky. :cool:
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Yes, in the same time frame. Stalin was a genocidal murderer and claimed to be an atheist, Hitler was a genocidal murderer and claimed to be a Catholic. Almost all of his followers were Christians. Stalin's crimes were not done for the glory of atheism just as the Nazi's crimes were done not in the name of religion.

There have been several genocidal events in modern history that indeed have a religious foundation. An example can be the partition of India in 1947 exclusively along religious lines, wich brought the killing of aproximatelly half a million humans.
 
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Who killed the most people, in the atheist v. theist sense, is an exercise in foolish argument. The religion or lack thereof in the 20th century of a nation's leaders and its people had little to do with any conflict, as can be found in any basic history text.

For example, Hitler didn't kill Jews and others for their religious belief, he believed them to be an inferior species detrimental to the German nation. Stalin didn't implement farm collectives and prison camps because farmers were religious and he was not, he did it to try and push Russia into his socialist ideal. World War I and II were not fought for religious reasons, they was fought for nationalist ones. These conflicts and policies resulted in tens of millions of deaths--and none of them can be attributed to religion or lack thereof.
 
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Malerin said:
No, it makes it pathetic when atheists bitch about "discrimination". The atheist regimes of the 20th century were some of the most violent and oppresive in history.
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I don't understand why you feel the need to rephrase what I said. You do realise that you're not disagreeing with what I said? You're simply continually saying that you're ok with the US discriminating against atheists because other countries have treated religious people worse.
 
Sledge said:
I don't understand why you feel the need to rephrase what I said. You do realise that you're not disagreeing with what I said? You're simply continually saying that you're ok with the US discriminating against atheists because other countries have treated religious people worse.
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The need to rationalize bigotry?
 
I just find it an odd way to rationalise it. I could follow the reasoning if he tried to deny there was discrimination. I'd disagree with it, but I'd understand the reasoning. Claiming that other countries do worse doesn't make any sense. It's like saying it's ok to kick someone in the balls because worse things happened in the Holocaust.
 
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fls said:
For example, when I state that the 'four humours' as a description of health and illness is wrong, I don't feel a need to qualify that with, "but we haven't searched the entire known universe and there may exist somewhere an entity whose states of health and illness are best described as a balance or inbalance of four discrete substances, so I remain agnostic on whether this description really is wrong".
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First, I am not familiar with the term "four humours" of health and illness. But I assume you are referring to Homo-sapiens here on Earth? Then you refer to an "entity" elsewhere in the universe that is not homo-sapien? Huh? I fail to see your analogy.

fls said:
So then you would say that you are agnostic about the Four Elements or the Four Humours, rather than agreeing that those ideas have been shown to be wrong? Interesting.
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Not familiar with the term "four elements' either. Sorry. I'm saying that if an atheist completely denies the existence of a supreme being (a God like entity) in the universe, it would behoove themselves to conduct proper due diligence and go out and search said universe before coming to such a position of denial. Until that search is conducted, IMO, one cannot dismiss the possbility of a "God" , given the vast quantity of traces of wonderous complexity we call the universe.
 
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