But what makes it flow?
Is it explainable by science or is there some mystic force?
Did Santa create christmas?
Lots of people believe in Santa and its in lots of books so it must be real.

Interesting distinctions. In my understanding agnostic and atheist are two separate classes, the atheist being one who believes there is no God, and the agnostic being unconvinced either way.

Semantics will get you every time.

@ Steve, hey man, Merry Christmas. Hope everthing is going well for you.:salute:

There are people who do not know whether or not gods exist - but they simply refuse to care for the question. they are not interested. Most oftehn this is what is meant with "atheism".

Then there are people who do not only refuse to believe in gods, no matter whether they exist or not, but who are sure they do not exist indeed. This is "anti-theism".

Both atheism and anti-theism usually do not get properly separated in language use, resulting in confusion and misunderstandings quite often.

Some people say that the truth of religious or areligious claims cannot be known for sure. they make a strict distinction between belief and knoweldge. Usually this is referred to as agnosticism. But as far as this leads these people to not care for these questions alltogether, they belong to the first group of Atheists.

And some people simply have not formed an opinion. This also sometimes is called agnosticism, but that simply is misleading. In the meaning of that they do not care enough to form an opinion, they are desinterested, and by that qualify for the description of atheists.

these are the major categories to which the terms atheist, anti-theist and agnostic refer, but sometimes the borderline especially between atheism and anti-theism is blurred, or terms get reversed. For example often the term atheism is used in the meaning of "being sure that no gods exist".

However. Saying that atheism is a belief is like saying that a statement like "There are no pink elephants on the backside of Neptune is a belief, too. What we know is that there is not the smallest reason whatever to assume that there are pink elephants on the dark side of Neptune. To claim this scepticism already is a belief, would give the term "belief" such an inflationary diversity of possible contexts and meanings, that the term by that is rendered meaningless, since it could mean all and everything, then.

Atheism/Anti-theism is no belief, like science is no belief either. The demand that the non-existence of God must be proven in order to falsify the claim of atheism being a belief, is a reversing of the burden of evidence.

It is theist believers claiming that there are things and beings existing whom nobody ever has seen, ever has checked, ever has gained the smallest real evidence for, so since it is believers adding something unproven and unseen to life and all the world beyond man'S mind never has heared of and never has cared for, the burden of evidence is with them - they must prove that their claim of gods existing is correct, not us sceptics must prove that their claim is wrong. And that scepticism is no attitude of "belief" of ours. Nevertheless claiming that it is, just tries to raise the reputation of theism by minimising the reputation of atheism - by lowering it to religious standards. you can see the same mechanism at work in the climate debate, when GW sceptics try to shake scientific results by labelling the science behind them a "belief" only.

When you claim there are invisible green dragons flying around us all the time, and I deny that, then this denial of mine is no belief. Only your claim of green dragons flying around invisibly - only that is the belief.

I didn't say the bible was "true", in fact I have pretty much claimed the opposite. No, I said "had value" and there's a difference.

I see your point Steve. Change that to "operates on a cosmic level" which is probably a better way of putting it.

I didn't mean the bible, but the belief in a god or gods as a whole, should have been more clear, my bad.

I lol'd. Partially because I'm hungry.

http://i50.tinypic.com/2qtwnye.jpg

Then I would say that anything that has been believed by billions of people is probably something you ought not to be so quick to dismiss.

Argumentum ad populum is a logical fallacy.

I never said you had to believe it yourself. You athiests seem to like to misunderstand believers and i'm beginning to think it's deliberate.

He never insinuated anything along those lines. All he's saying is that it doesn't matter if the majority of people believe in something or not; believing in something is still rooted in a faith-based thought processed, not in actual observation and factual grounds. Which is precisely what the argumentum ad populumlogical fallacy states. It's a case of: "If a lot of people believe it to be so, it is/must be so."

Which, once again, I did not say. Just repeating it doesn't change that.

Buyt what about Santa? he is popular......

"Then I would say that anything that has been believed by billions of people is probably something you ought not to be so quick to dismiss."

There's little correlation between that and:

"I never said you had to believe it yourself. You athiests seem to like to misunderstand believers and i'm beginning to think it's deliberate."

I was talking about the former when I said:

"If a lot of people believe it to be so, it is/must be so."

"It is/must be so" is not at all the same thing as "lets not be so quick to dismiss". Since you seem to be unable or unwilling to understand the difference I see little reason to keep discussing it with you.

So what did you say then? :-?

I understand it the same way antikristuseke does.

Well actually you didn't say "lets not be so quick to dismiss". You said "anything that has been believed by billions of people is probably something you ought not to be so quick to dismiss". With that "probably something" in there, you're basically saying that we shouldn't dismiss something believed by a large number of people/majority precisely because so many believe in it. Specifically, the "probably something" insinuates that there is in fact some credence and validity to their beliefs. You didn't give any other reason for us to think otherwise. So if you do mean something else, please, in addition to Fish's request, elaborate as to what you meant by this statement.

You're splitting hairs and bringing down my Christmas spirit so I don't think I'll play this game with you any more. Enjoy Christ's gift to you of a day off tomorrow.

Splitting hairs? I'm doing no such thing. I'm just simply trying to figure out what kind of cryptic message you're sending. One thing to another. Why you refuse to just give me a sentence or two for an answer is beyond me. Not that it matters at this rate. I mean, you said you weren't going to talk this over anymore. Honestly, I don't even know why I'm even typing this specific post. But whatever.

Merry Sol Invictus, everyone!