In this particular case I'm only concerned with the rules we play by here.

I completely agree. I like being polite, and I like debating things. I don't expect everyone to feel the same. My comment to Sammi only concerned the rules here.

Sammi, you're doing fine.

You sound like my old maths teacher of many many years ago.
I think that was about a theory too.

As the positive proposition is that of the theists, it is their burden of disproof if you like, not sure quite how you worked the switch around there. And you cannot propose a Theory which is an explanation of falsifiable facts, if you do not have them. [edit2] Upon re reading your post you do clearly state that the religious ideas are unscientific but I didn't miss it did I, - ninja edit :cool:

As (A)theism is a lack of belief which is dissimilar to belief, Am I to be defined as an (A)trainspotter and an (A)tennis fan, as well as all the other things I am not? Atheism simply means I am unconvinced by each and every argument and their sum total I have ever heard for theism.

Theism or religious belief is a position that requires a complex personal construction of varying degrees of imagination about metaphysics, oft containing contradictions to established scientific facts. This is very difficult for discussion as the facts have already been shown to be falsifiable, and everyone is encouraged to repeat or renew the process. The facts may be false of course and we still might never know, but until this is demonstrated we will remain more confident that the fact is true.

As both are words describing ones position of belief, neither are mutually exclusive with Agnosticism which is a word describing ones position on knowledge.

This is why I say, doubt is the most redeeming feature of humanity. I always retain doubt in absolutely all things - I am 99.9^10% sure the sun will come up tomorrow, but I can easily imagine a whole bunch of vastly unlikely scenarios in which it wouldn't. This is also why I challenge the very idea of faith in religion, which is held up as the primary virtue. Faith can be virtuous when it is in people and the good in them, but with religion it comes startlingly close to voluntary gullibility. This is not an insult- it is how it appears to me, and I hope if someone has a measured response they will say it. Doubt has been keeping cautious people (as well as a lot of not so cautious people as a by product) alive since people were people or before, not to mention animals. The lack of doubt regarding the safety of human competition in the environment has led to the extinction of entire species in relatively recent history.

[edit] I should add, faith in governments or nations appears to me to be indistinguishable from faith in religion.

Thanks Steve - you're a gentleman to me I appreciate it. :salute:

I'll agree about Hitchens, but then I'm biased, having a great distaste for his style. Where Dawkins is concerned, no less a scientific authority than Neil DeGrasse Tyson would disagree with you. That he respects Dawson and his opinions carries a lot of weight in my book.

I disagree to a point. Evidence is not proof. On the other hand proposing something for which there is no evidence is not science at all. You need evidence to have a hypothesis in the first place.

Yes you can. I have often proposed the hypothesis that there are little bug-eyed blue men from Atlantis living in the ocean. There is no proof for this, nor even the slightest bit of evidence. The only proof I have is that you can't disprove it. Based on that alone you should believe me, because I say it is so.

Not so. You don't have to prove anything to me, but if you want me to believe you then you suddenly do. If a believer wants his faith to spread, then he needs to provide something that will convince his listeners. The atheist, on the other hand, merely needs to ask for that proof. He doesn't have to disprove anything, any more than you have an obligation to disprove my little bug-eyed blue men. If I want you to believe it then I have to show some evidence. If I don't care whether you believe it or not, then why would I tell you about it at all?

Very true. When it comes to the origins of the earth it becomes a different story. Creationists want their faith to get equal time in schools with the Theory of Evolution. To do this they attempt to bring down Evolution by finding flaws in it. What they fail to do is to apply the same tests to their own version. Therefore they want a faith-based conception with no evidence to back it up at all taught equally with a valid and accepted scientific theory. In this case the burden of proof is very much on them.

And that's where I ended up, though I don't like that label. Where God, or any supernatural being is concerned, there is no evidence, one way or the other. None at all. The question for me is this: Is it more logical to believe in something for which there is no evidence, or to not believe in something for which there is no evidence. I have ended up with the conclusion that the rational answer is the latter.

My only question here is whether you stole my philosophy or I stole yours. I used to be a believer, and the thing that led me to my present postition was doubt. I've been wrong so many times about so many things that I realized I could be wrong about my faith as well. Other things led me to stop thinking about it at all, and when I did I tried to believe again, but had too many doubts. I tried to be a devout Atheist, if you will, but knew I could be as wrong about that as well. At that point I started asking questions, and the more questions I asked the less answers I had.


Again I agree. I put my take on it into a song I wrote a few years ago.

Nope. All the universe was compressed into a single point, the singularity, which then expanded. Whether you think it sounds too incredible to be true doesn't really matter, what's important is the evidence -- and it points towards the so-called "big bang". Which of course wasn't an explosion at all, despite the misleading name of the theory.

I was brought up firmly agnostic, neither position on belief was encouraged or discouraged, for which I am grateful. Over my 34 years I have phased in and out of entertaining various metaphysical imaginations, none bearing any resemblance to any religion or scripture, apart from the soul concept, which between the ages of 11-16 I was more than confident in the truth of it. In those time I had a worldview roughly along the lines of a bad cosmic joke, that nothing that gradually evolved could become so ludicrous and contrary.

As you are agnostic, I feel comfortable relating one of my imaginations that stuck with me for a long time after the accidental death of a close school friend when I was 12. It was the first time I'd experienced that total numbing of emotion that occurs when a psychologically traumatic event is first felt, possibly as a shock absorbing mechanism. I cried for days but I felt nothing. It was a truly bizarre experience for me. The phrase 'I think therefore I am.' is more accurate if think is changed to feel. Anyway, after about a week, the emotions started to surface again one by one. Anger at the lorry driver and a furious desire to know the exact circumstances of his death came first, then later that week of course the grief set in, not having said goodbye etc. and upon learning the circumstances (like the trucker had his own 9 year old son in the cab with him, it was a complete freak accident on a warm sunny day, the truck was passing on the opposite lane and for some eternally unknowable reason Stanley on a bicycle suddenly swerved right out in front of him.) all anger and fury at the driver immediately melted into real pity for him and his son. I heard he stopped working and acquired an alcohol problem for a while but happily not too long, and with not much damage.

Now the first part of my imagining stems from a dream I had shortly thereafter. I was in the house I grew up in, and Stanley was there. Only he was all busted up in my imagination from being squashed by a truck. I said something like, 'Woah, Stan. You look awful, are you Ok?' to which he replied 'I feel [expletive] awful, what you think?' I felt another pang of grief and woke up. I thought for a few days about the feeling of his presence and at that time I was pretty convinced his soul had actually visited me, for which I was grateful, but a bit bemused about the circumstance of the dream. It wasn't very nice. Then a week later on the dot, I had another dream.

If you have read the 'Winnie the Pooh' books then you'll know about the final goodbye tea party at the end of the final book, in a light fir tree wood with a late afternoon sun shining through underneath the branches. A long wooden table with 2 long benches and a chair at either end. Symbolically this story is about Christopher Robin growing up, and leaving behind his childhood fantasies of talking stuffed pets, who are all the guests at his meal of honour. In my dream I was in the place I had imagined from my childhood reading. Stanley was there, absolutely back to his old self, smiling, mischievous. My parents and sister were also guests as were his parents and brother. I had such a warm feeling, it is very hard to describe, but without any doubt I knew that this was Stans goodbye tea party. I remember no more, but I will never forget what I do remember about it.

When I awoke from this dream, the grief was still there, but somehow inhibited. It had the edge taken off. The funeral was bloomin' tragic, inevitably under the circumstances. the hymns in the church had just about everyone in uncontrollable tears. Over the subsequent years I mused on my dreams and my boosted conviction in the concept of the soul, and I came to the imagination that -

Imagine that there are an infinite number of alternate dimensions or realities co-existing simultaneously, but crucially each and every soul exists in all of them. When you make choices you step into realities limited by your choices. When in one reality a soul is subjected to an unnatural or unfortunate death, its experience is immediately and seamlessly Shifted into a reality where its choices did not lead inadvertently to its death. I had personally had a few real experiences that did not immediately occur to me that I was inches, or seconds, from my own painful death until afterward, and this seemed to support my imaginary world.

The implications of this metaphysical fantasy are quite profound. Every living thing gets to live a full natural life, without ever experiencing the pain of a premature or unnatural death. Maybe the last transference leaves you in heaven, I don't know. I have never liked the concept itself alongside hell, and I firmly believe that the scriptural meaning of these are symbolic descriptions of life in reality. Now, disregarding my lack of need for heaven, is that not a nice comforting thought? I don't often tell people about that as to my mind it would appear quite irrelevant to them being based on my own unfalsifiable experience. Of course I do not believe it now, I never truly did. It still brings me comfort to remember though. My current conclusion on the whole matter is that my subconscious mind built those dreams for me, in order to heal the grief wound. It didn't quite work the first time, so I got another, much more powerful and vivid one.

When I was 22, I read and re read Catch 22 - alongside Slaughterhouse 5 and found my favorite books of all time. Shortly after I met the first person in my life that would simply not entertain the concept of the soul, under any circumstances. That was intriguing to me as it seemed so rare, and at first I could not understand how anyone could deny the existence of souls. That was the start of a gradual slide to where I am now, with no conviction in metaphysics at all, a few old comforting imaginations, and no weight on my back.

So we came to similar conclusions after having life experiences half a world apart I guess. As a born agnostic and grown atheist if you will, I assume our experiences are markedly different. If I may ask, did you find any part of your transition unpleasant in any way, and how long did it take you?

It would gladden me to hear that you did not suffer.

Those are groovy lines Sailor Steve, I am a singer/guitarist myself of sorts though I tend to (not always) play covers. The best lines I ever came up with were;

Born with vision, learn to be blind.
Born to freedom, become self confined.
Lose the way, find it hard to find,
A little peace of mind.

Born to passion, gives way to lust.
Born to love, betrays mistrust.
All I am is worth my weight in dust.
Do what you must.

Not much I grant you, but I like it.

P.S. sorry for the text explosion I don't quite know how I became so verbose. I really enjoy discussions on this forum, like no other.

Again you are absolutely right.
I am not so great at laughing at myself admittedly, it always comes off a little forced. I am fully aware that people may find me or my views amusing or silly, however, and I genuinely am glad of it if it brings them any from of happiness. To critically analyse myself, I would say the silliest characteristic I posses is that of a 'drama queen' :wah: - I feel therefore I am, and my emotions are often severe. This results in me getting rather too involved in things as you pointed out, and I can see the amusing side. I had a very hard time learning to develop relationships with women, as I would tend to profess my bare feelings totally and immediately, which generally is a very scary prospect I imagine for a girl expecting a night of fun. I often wondered as the years ticked by, whether or not you could become ill through lack of sex, - well you know you hear these stories about celibate priests. I often despaired that I would die alone and childless... but as John Cleese once said, 'It's not the despair. I can take the despair, It's the hope...':har:

Nowadays I don't particularly worry about any of that. In view of my recent experience I think dying alone would be acceptable, and possibly the least I could do to spare my friends and family the stress of it all.

I think about the Japanese concepts of Bushido, how death is immediately accepted and welcomed from the moment you enter your masters employ, and how having a graceful, honorable death was something to think about and prepare for, since it defined your status upon reincarnation. I would not go that far, I appreciate the beauty of achieving nirvana at the heightened sense at the moment of death, but I like humour better. If I could make someone laugh through the event of my death, I would be truly proud (were I still alive) and if I can die hearing that sound, I will have had my cake and eaten it. That or if I managed to rig some Wallace and Gromit style contraption that automatically tidied my own body away and left nothing for anyone else to clean up.

Neon,

have you ever actually read Dawkin's "The God Delusion"?

I would agree that Hitchens is the more aggressive of the two, he is more polemic and he did not hide that that was what he wanted to be - which does not mean that his intellectual arguments are weaker for that reason. They are not. The videos that occasionally were linked here by me or others, showed that.

The book by Dawkins I have read myself - and in parts twice. I am aware of the criticism and attack against him, Google easily finds you plenty of that stuff. But since I know the book quite well, I know how intentionally misleading, demagogic and often simply wrong these criticisms are, especially when they come from pro-church/faith/God/religion activists of any kind, and that should not be of surprise to anyone. Often the claims are simply wrong and can easily be shown wrong by just referring to the book itself. Sometimes it is blatant lies told about the book, and what should have been said in there.

I also fail to see Dawkins to be arrogant, he certainly is no in the book, and by the many videos I saw him appearing in on youtube, I must say that mostly he usually speaks very calm and friendly, witty and humorous, and very much british gentleman-like. That must not mean there may be films where he bites like a rabid dog. But I am not aware of these, I have not seen them, if they would exist.

And finally, his scientific standards. Well, the book on God is very rationally arguing, and very scientific in approach, forming two hypothesis (God exists, God exists not), and then comparing what can be found about their probabilities of being true. The formulation that God most likely does not exist, is by Dawkins. He does not say God exists, he says that the matter is scientific for two reasons: first, that is showing in his approach, and second, because religion has played such a suppressive role in trying to prevent science producing insights into life and cosmos that the church did not like. What he finally concludes, is this: the probability for a godf existing, is so small that it does not jusatify to take it as a possibility he wishes to seriously deral with, and also, according to Ockahm'S razor that demands to keep explanations as simple as possible, God also is not needed for explanations. Dawkins asks at one point whether it really would be less pleasuring to enjoy the beauty of a blossoming garden if not assuming that there are fairies living in the underground there?

So when you base your assessment on just some propagandists throwing mud at the man without knowing how he has structured the book and how he argues there, you necessarily must consider him to be violating scientific standards, and I can only recommend you then start to care a little bit for his book itself instead, to get your facts right.

BTW, his early book on genetic evolution (The selfish gene) is today seen as an academic standard work, the university of Oxford installed a new chair just for him to mediate science better to a wider public ("public understanding of science"), and beside writing many books he assisted media and government as scientific advisor. He is often referred to as one of the most influential biologists of modern times.

Before you start to attack him over his standards, make sure you really got your acts together properly. Chances are he easily outclasses you, me, or anyone here. I have seen him doing that in many discussion fora on stage, friendly, calmly, elegantly. I can understand if somebody does not like Hitchen's determined cavalry charges, although they are well founded as well, but Hitchens and Dawkins really were two very different men. One should not try to compare the two.

Its not cavalry charges it is stand up comedy and mockery for the benefit of the show and ego of the viewers.
It is show business otherways why even bother watching him if you are atheist...or some what like the money making TV American churches.
You don't need really self assurance about your stance do you and it is not that he comes up with something unique.
In short dumbest atheist can feel like Nobel prise nominee on his show.:haha:

This is at least the second time in a week you have said this.

I say bullcrap.

Seems pretty clear to me. You can say what you want. Anybody else can say what they want.

Its you talking bullcrap - XXL size. Freedom of religion necessarily also means freedom from religion for those not interested. Else it would be religious dictatorship that enforces religion even on people not wanting to have something to do with it.

Your freedom ends where you start damaging mine. So do your religion, if you want that, but in a way that others must not be bothered by it. Keep your religion to thyself.

You just illustrated the bigotry that religious people time and again show: a heavy bias to claim freedom for religion, but not caring for the right of others to be free from religion.

BTW, all three countries have a wider legal context that limits your freedoms. If you claim your religion's freedom is to rip the heart out of other people and sacrifice it to your deity, you will nevertheless get locked in a psychiatry for lunacy, or thrown into jail for murder. Religion does give you immunity from the simple fact that your freedoms end where you start to damage the freedom of others.

I also have a right to play my TV or radio. But if I pump up the volume too much, sooner or later relationships with neighbours detoriate, and sooner or later the police will appear on my doorstep.

You ARE free to be religious. Like you are free to walk around fully naked - in the privacy of your own private sphere where nobody must see your nakedness. I you walk naked in the public city center, you will get into trouble soon.

...and considering Skybird said nothing to the contrary:-?...

I also recommend the documentary version, "The Root of all evil?" (the TV producers chose the name, not Dawkins). It was on Google Video last time I checked.

I guess that sort of applies to me as well. I like to say that I was brought up nothing at all. Nothing was ever said about it one way or the other.

Yes, no, maybe, maybe not. My stepmother made me go to chuch a couple of times. I've never been sure why, because she didn't go herself. Maybe she thought it would do me some good. When I was seventeen I became a Mormon. This was in Los Angeles, and it happened not because of any quest on my part, but because my best friend was doing so and they made it look pretty cool. This led me to spend a year in Utah at Brigham Young University. I hated it, not because of anything particular, but because college wasn't for me. I joined the navy. I got out of the navy. I moved to Utah. I met a girl who was a Born-Again Christian. I like her church, because it wasn't a church. On Sundays we met in a very large park and weekday bible meetings were at people's houses. I ended up married for eleven years. I was never an aggressive person, so my wife sort of guided everything we did. I gave up music for her, and pretty much everything else I liked. I started suffering from depression (a side note here: looking back I think I probably had a very real depression problem going back to childhood), and withdrew into myself. She thought I wanted a divorce and gave it to me. I was so far gone I didn't really care anymore. I didn't even grab the chance and start playing music again for another six years.

Since then I've come to realize that I really don't have any answers to any of the major questions, and I wonder if anyone else does. Everyone I've met who claims to have answers seems to be operating within a very narrow framework, usually clinging to one answer which seems to work for them, so they claim it's the only answer and insist it will work for me too. I don't blame anyone else for my disaffections or my problems, but I don't trust anyone else with them, especially people who say they know what's wrong and what can fix it.

Sorry, but I've left out a lot. Suffering seems to be what I do best.

Not bad at all. Do you have music for it? A link?

Introspective people sometimes have to let it out. Others think "He just likes to talk about himself", but it helps.