The Satanic quality of the Internet

In either case there is a collective mind set of shared ideals, convictions and goals. Of course not all Atheists would share these ideas. I'm sure that there are some Atheists who don't know who Sam Harris is and could care less. But many do and follow him and others with great zeal. Still others could be considered activists for this cause and some could even be referred to as militant. This is all very natural with any movement or ideology.

Wouldn't Dawkins be a better example than Harris?
People clearly believe what they read in his writings and appear to accept it as true without question, they even make an effort to spread the word of the truth he teaches to convince others of the way.

[Skybird]

An agnostic is somebody who claims that one cannot know.

An atheist is somebody refusing to believe in the concept of theistic deity. This is not so much an active act of belief, but the refusal to actively believe. It thus is somewhat passive an act.

Hitchens would also separate the (passive, Skybird) atheist from the (active, Skybird) anti-theist who - according to Hitchens - is (actively) convinced that God does not exist. Such would be a somewhat active act.

But the problem there is that Hitchens probabaly is wrong in this detailed distinction he makes between atheists and anti-theists. As I said repeatedly now and say again here, logic has demonstrated that the non-existence of something cannot be proven for 100% certainty. Logically, that is not possible to be demonstrated.

I changed my mind a bit, since for some time I tended to see it like Hitchens, but I corrected my opinion there.
I now tend to follow Dawkins who said that due to logic demonstrating that the non-existence of something cannot be proven by evidence, an atheist in principle always can only be an agnostic who is 99.99999...% sure that theistic entities do not exist, but you can never be an atheist in the meaning of knowing 100% for sure that theistic deities do not exist. For Dawkins, as for me, the issue is one of probabilities. Is it probable, is it likely that there is a god? I see the chance as infinitely minimal. Because there is no proof or evidence. Because there is no need for a god since he does not add any explanatory value to what we know about how the universe's functions. Because the existence of a god himself also would remain unexplained and his origin again would be object of belief only. And because the existence of a god would even be contradictory to what we have learned about how the universe functions so afar. So, to me everythingn really everything speaks against a god existing. I also do not see it as desirable that the god as depicted in the three desert dogmas, or in the stories about the Rom,an gods, or the narcissists sitting on Mount Olymp, or any other, do exist. I think we are much better off without these sick, deeply disarranged, miserable individuals. Only that the non-existence of something cannot be proven for total certainty makes me stopping short of the 100% certainty mark. I am 99.9999...% sure that gods do not exist.

U-crank has not been the first demanding me to explain what my "belief" is, what my "faith" or "dogma" is. And he is not the first simply ignoring when i answer that I have none. It seems that theistic believers have extreme problems to imagine that there can be people who do not replace theistic belief in some entity with believing in something different, but simpyl are rejecting to follow the belief in a theistic deity - and maybe defending themselves from being turned into subjects that shall in public space give ground to demands of theistic claims for influence and legislation.

The burden of proof is on the theistic believers' side anyway. They raise the claims that there is a god - so it is up to them to bring up the evidence for their claims. Until they do, things remain to stay the way they have been since 14 billion years: no god to be seen, heared, smelled, tasted, felt anywhere, by anyone. So, the burden of proof is with the believers, not the sceptics. A simple implementation of the originator principle.

I have no "atheistic belief" or "dogma". I cannot even imagine what an atheistic belief should be. That is like demanding a "bended straight". I fight against religion not because of a dogma that I believe and that demands me to do it. Or because of a faith that I wantg to topple theistioc faith. I fight against relgion because of self-defence - I do not wish to live under the ruling of a theistically dominated education and legal system, I do not wish believers turning the world around me creepingly into theocracies, and I do not wish to leave children weak and defenceless to the mental mauling and abusing that religion is giving them becasedu their parents got brainwashed as children, too, and thus hand their own kids over to the executioner as well. What the three desert dogmas are doing to children, I rate as a crime against humanity, and one of the most monumental, barbaric and inhumane crimes against humanity it is. The active amputation of the intellect and the mutilation of free independent thought - that is a nightmare of a crime for sure. I dispise theistic religion because it teaches people to be stupid, righteous, intolerant and uncompassionate - and be satisfied with that. So I meet it with the same level of tolerance it meets others - I meet it with no tolerance whatsoever.

So, maybe there is a dogma indeed behind my reasoning, then. It would be called humanism. Rationality. Reasonability. Kant's Golden Rule. Compassion for the weak and abused who are to be circumcised right between their temples by religion. The desire to know instead of just blindly believe something unproven, untested.

If that makes me a dogmatic person, i will wear this accusation with pride and confidence, and I crave for becoming even more dogmatic, hopefully. In the end, I know that there are things that we do not know. We gain knowledge, and by that also discover new questions. Dressing lacking knowledge into the cloths of belief, does not give us any more knowledge, but is a fantasy. Knowledge that is not known, but believed ("I believe I know that..."), is no knowledge at all - but only completely belief for sure.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Skybird

An agnostic is somebody who claims that one cannot know.

I sometimes wonder where that leaves me. I don't know whether anyone can know these things or not. All I can say for certain is that I don't know. I do question whether anyone else knows. So far no one has been able to show me that they actually know any of the answers, so I keep asking.

Not a believer, not a non-believer, just a questioner.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Not a believer, not a non-believer, just a questioner.

Which is not the unhealthiest of attitudes, as long as it does not stop you from deciding and taking responsibility for the consequences.

Zen spirit - beginner's spirit.

In the end, all world, and all that we call event and universe, is just inside our head, a dance of electric pulses that chemically and electrically race down our neurons' network, and for some reasons we do not know our brain from all that chaos forms not an image of chaos, but comes up with an idea of higher order, shows colour and clear form, sound and taste, emotion and perception. Our eye is uncapable to produce clear images, the lense and all that does not allow that, is not clean and precise enough. Nevertheless our brain forms a clear image. How can that be when it never has had opportunity to experience anything that could serve as a precedent example for standardisation of later visual input to make it appear "clear and sharp"?

The world is in our heads. We do not discover reality - we construct it. It's all maybe only pure mind, pure idea.

Pure mystery, or pure magic, if you want. Much more fascinating than anything written in holy books. Why is all this so? Who is looking through my eyes? Who is the witness, the one who is even watching at himself when I become aware I reflect about myself?

We all are just like that boy "playing on the sea-shore, and diverting himself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before us."

[u crank]

Originally Posted by Tribesman

Wouldn't Dawkins be a better example than Harris?
People clearly believe what they read in his writings and appear to accept it as true without question, they even make an effort to spread the word of the truth he teaches to convince others of the way.

Probably. I didn't want to be too obvious, but yes Dawkins is certainly one of the most well known of the prophets of Atheism.

Probably. I didn't want to be too obvious, but yes Dawkins is certainly one of the most well known of the prophets of Atheism.

If you take that story of his Sky used as an example you wouldn't have to try hard to find to find hundreds of atheist/humanist/free thinker sites which repeat it as truth and believe it without question in their effort to spread their message.
In fact you would find it harder to locate those sites who didn't just simply believe what they read and repeated it like a sacred mantra
Perhaps Dawkins himself did the same as he took that story from another writer.

[Sailor Steve]

What's interesting to me is that you spend a lot of time talking about what others believe, but you have yet to say what you believe. Do you have anything positive to add to this?

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by u crank

Probably. I didn't want to be too obvious, but yes Dawkins is certainly one of the most well known of the prophets of Atheism.

Defamation of science and reason this claim is.

A prophet is somebody who claims to deliver the message of a supernatural entity, whose will is revelead to the prophet in visions or intuitions.

Dawkins is biologist. If one has read one or several of his books (i know two), one knows that he argues on the basis of reasonable calculation, loogical argtiument, and scinertiifc fact. He also makes no prediction, but desribes present and past. Finally, he seems to be an extremnely kind and polite character who delivers his arguments with determination, yes, but avoids agressiveness and confrontation, and he even points that out and describes his experiences in talkshows, meetings and podium discussions that in his opinion debate even with a total opponent of his positions delivers more results and has more chances for creating something positive, constructive, than confrontation. His books reflect that very strongly in style, and I see it also in the videos that I have seen by him. Especially his book on religion is determined in argument, but by far the most friendly in expression and style of all the recent critical books on religion that went through the beststeller lists.

In this, he is very different in style than Christopher Hitchens, who fight his debates with vicious intellectuality and wittiness (yet politeness and splendid contenance) but also sometimes with quite some aggressiveness where needed, and he is of course very different to Pat Condell who really drops verbal daisy-cutters like clouds drop raindrops.

The claim that science is just behaving like religion or atheism is behaving like religion, is just an attempt to try to bypass arguments they raise that the religious cannot counter and show wrong. When he cannot deal with the message, he tries to defame the messenger instead. That way the message should get devalued, by bringing it down to the low and inferior intellectual level that religious only-claims are operating on. Once that is accomplished, the debate can get hjijacked by focussing on the messenger and the evilness of science/atheists behaving oh so religiously, and the orginal message is no longer an object of public awareness. Mission accomplished!

There is one problem these religious hypocrites time and again seem to miss. When you try to bring down the reputation of science or atheism by comparing it to the reputation of religion - what does this tell you then about the reputation of religion?

"Rohrkrepierer", we call that in German.