Silent Hunter wrote:Personally I find a lot of people are still pissy with atheists. They cannot take their views being questioned on what is basically a public venue half the time. Some people still treat Atheism like a dirty word, even more so in more higher religious places like the USA, Latin America etc. Luckily it should start to die out.
A big part of the problem with atheists likely being that a lot of people identify themselves as such out of spite for organized religion. The typical response from a decent and wise atheist to being asked about their religion is to answer "No comment," leaving the atheism flag being most notably flown by people who would be better described as anti-Christian or anti-establishment. Atheism is to organized religion what anarchy is to organized government; a title that
could have had significant meaning, but which is tragically adopted instead as an outlet for feelings of angst or to validate any feelings of egocentricity or resentment towards order and authority.
In other words, a lot of atheists are not believers in the true absence of higher powers but instead just hold deep feelings of resentment towards organized (or even structured) religion of any kind. The very fact that we have to debate whether or not Atheism counts as a religion at all might suffice to indicate such.
And for the record, Atheism does count as a religion. Religion is a product of faith, and faith is the belief in things without proof. Christians believe in the existence of God, while Atheists believe in the lack thereof. Neither the existence nor nonexistence can be proven, therefore believing in either can only be done as an act of faith.
And if you'll permit me to be brutally honest, I have to say that there are two other similarities between Christians and Atheists which I find amusing that this thread has revealed:
1) Both Christians and Atheists will claim to have proof.
2) What they claim qualifies as proof is often a big load of nothing.
Christian "evidence" statements tend to come in one of three variations:
1) "You can't prove it isn't, therefore it is."
This makes just as much sense as suggesting that Amelia Earhart must still be alive just because nobody ever confirmed her as dead.
2) "This part can be proven as truth, therefore everything in the Bible must be the truth."
I remember a while back, this one idiot (I forget who, so if it turns out it was someone here at the Pack, I apologize in advance) tried to prove to me that the Genesis creation story was true because Leviticus had some laws concerning the proper conduct for bathing and defecating that can also be found in the average wilderness survival manual.
I'm not discrediting the Bible
as a whole. On the contrary, the sections in which I believe the Bible is insightful are more numerous than the sections in which I believe it's utter crap. But just because
some of it is truth does not mean
all of it is truth.
That would be kind of like if I said: "Milk comes from cows and unicorns come from Cleveland," and everyone responded to it with: "Well, he was right about the milk, so he must be right about the unicorns too."
3) "It's true and I've got all this sciency stuff that I may or may not understand to back it up."
Sorry Alpha, but I can't overlook your "light year days" on this one. I can accept the possibility that the original translation may have been any span of time, but what you've basically done is tried to prove that the Genesis story is true by dividing the (unknown) age of the universe by six and identifying that (also unknown) number as the amount of time the "day" refers to. It doesn't prove anything.
The same person who tried to tell me that Genesis was true because of the Bible's hygiene instructions, I think was also the person who tried to convince me that all the dinosaur fossils scattered around the world were proof of Noah's forty-day flood. Which to me was downright stupid, as it was kind of like saying either Noah screwed up royally up and failed to get
all of these animals onto the Ark, or that God screwed up royally when he gave Noah the measurements for an arc that wasn't big enough to hold them.
And the "tornado in a trailer park" statement? Biggest load of bull of all. Darwin's theory of evolution doesn't dictate that the course of evolution is determined
at random. It states that the offspring of a single generation will vary, but that only the ones best suited to their environment will survive and pass on their DNA to the next generation. The cheetah didn't become the fastest land animal
by chance. The slowest running cheetahs starved to death while the slowest running impala became cheetah food, leaving only those that could run at a sufficient speed to breed, in effect setting the requirements for survival higher for the next generation, so on and so forth to this very day.
I shouldn't have had to explain this since Darwinism is often paraphrased as "survival of the fittest" for just this reason, but "Christian scientists" often forget such because they depend on evolution being randomized to support their theory.
But you know what? I'm not crapping on Christianity in support of Atheists. They're "proof" that there is no God is just as bull. In fact, two of their three common catch phrases are direct counterparts:
1) "You can't prove that it is, therefore it isn't."
2) "This part of the Bible is crap (Jonah, Samson, etc.)
, therefore it must all be crap."
3) (See #1)
So no offense to anyone that's tried to submit proof that their side of the debate is correct in this thread, but all that's been proven to me is how much Atheism and Christianity have in common with each other.
That sure was a long way for me to make a point, but still, point made: Atheism = religion.