JackC

As one who is 1/2 way through a Masters in Counseling, I know a little. While Freud and others may call "religion" a form of death denial - few reputable pyschologist desribe people's spiritual experiences as pyschotic. It really doesn't bother me what you think. It leaves me wishing you had a better understanding of things spiritual. Few reputable psychologists would describe hearing voices as psychotic? You have got to be shitting me. Or did you mean non-halucinatory spiritual experiences are not psychotic?

I went to church a few times when I was six or seven and I remember listening to the pastor and thinking "you're talking complete bollocks mate". I've been an atheist ever since.

So I take it you're not an atheist? Because atheism is faith by the same definition that believing in God is faith; it is a "belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence." I consider myself to be an atheist (for lack of a better term). I don't _know_ that there is no god (how could I?), but I _believe_ that there is no god. So with no proof or material evidence of the nonexistence of god, it seems that my disbelief is a form of faith. I think you answered your own question. Like you, I am an atheist. I don't know for a fact that there is no god and I recognise that I am unlikely to ever know. But evidence suggests to me that a supreme being is an extremely unlikely possibility. There is no argument I am aware of that suggests that god is necessary and for all practical purposes, god is indistinguishable from his own non-existence. So it makes no sense to put faith in him. I think that many people use the "god does not exist" definition of atheist, commonly refered to as strong atheism. They seem to ignore the "I place no faith in god" definition known as weak atheism. So faith does not necessarily have to play any part in atheism, rather the lack of it. That's why I'd class agnostics as weak atheists. As for me, on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being "I know god exists" and 10 being "I know god does not exist", you could put me at about 9. I doubt that many atheists would put themselves at 10, but a good many theists put themselves at 1. However, I am more than happy to change my tune if anyone can provide a compelling argument or good evidence that I'm wrong.

I think it goes a bit deeper than that. In another thread, one poster is trying to get people to buy into his idea that universal moral absolutes exist and this implies a creator. He cites murder as a prime example. He then goes on to concede that what constitutes murder is defined (and redefined) as needs be by the people of the day. So he is trying to say that the moral absolute of murder (which isn't absolute at all) means that god exists. Now his argument is riddled with non-sequiturs and circular reasoning and yet he is oblivious to these flaws, instead insisting that we "don't get it" and that morals imply god. Now if one poster on some obscure forum can't spot a non-sequitur or circular argument because of an unsupported assertion that they personally think is unquestionably true, how many other people are suffering the same situation and about how many things? It's tragic. It's bit like those optical illusions you get where you look at it and you see a picture of a pretty young girl but if you look at it another way, you see an ugly old woman. At first you can only see one or the other, but at some point your brains flips the switch and you see it for what it really is... an illusion. Faith is like tunnel vision, it stops the brain from flipping the switch to see the illusion. It puts an unquestionable, authoritative block right in the way of rational thought. There's no arguing with faith, no compromise with faith, it just is and if you don't like it that's tough. That's why I think faith itself is a dangerous and abhorent concept. The nutters who want to push their faith by the bomb and the bullet are just a particularly shitty side effect.

Even if we accept stealing as a universal moral faux pas, how does that imply god exists? Why can it not just imply that people don't like having their crap stolen? You're still begging the question.

Please read and inwardly digest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

It's a well known fact that cheap disposable cigarette lighters are fair game. I'm amazed you haven't spotted the great gaping hole in your argument yet.

Well the Devil might be a bastard, but at least he's an honest bastard.

Not necessarily. "I don't know" is an underrated answer in situations like that. But being willing to alter course when presented with evidence is the real necessity. Too many people aren't. Not if that faith is unshakable when presented with a compelling argument or evidence. It's then a mill stone around your neck. Religious faith prides itself on just such unshakability. I don't think so. Faith is faith, it's all the same stuff at the core level. Well, there may not be categorical proof that god doesn't exist, but the evidence suggests that he's very very improbable indeed. And if it wasn't for other peoples faith shaping my future, I'd agree with you.

Can you explain why please?

It's not the end result of someones faith that's the problem, it's the willingness to kowtow to "revealed" knowledge over empirical evidence, it's faith itself.

Actually my theory (not argument) is: There are universal morals To me that logicaly points to a universal creator of morals. No. You're still begging the question. All you've got is that there might be some universal morals. You might just as well conculde that having 10 toes is the root cause of morals, or having opposable thumbs is the cause of morals, or liking ice cream causes morals. It's a shit theory.

There are several problems with your argument. 1) You haven't shown that there are universal morals. You might think murder is one but there are plenty of murders carried out each year. Even governments have authorised them. Historically murder has been used as a tool for political purposes. It is a very popular passtime. 2) If some moral codes do transcend cultures, that doesn't imply any external moral giving entity, merely that members of a speciies share behaviour common to that species. All dogs lick their balls, all birds shit from a great height etc. 3) You're begging the question. In order to asign the cause of X to entity Y, you first have to prove that entity Y exists and would be capable of causing X? You cannot assume God in order to prove God. Your argument is basically: God is the source of universal morals. Some morals are universal. Therefore god exists. It's a shit argument.

No. I'm not sure that any moral codes are universal and even if they were, it would only indicate that humans are similar and share similar moral values not that god hands them out. In fact, the moral sands shift in time quite readily, think slavery, womens rights, the death penalty, whereas god doesn't change much at all over the ages (2000 years since the last update, 1600 if you're muslim). Morals apear to be independent of god.

These are arguments against a specific form of supreme being. The all knowing, all seeing, all caring, all good one. That's a lot of assumptions in your hypothesis. The first applys only to the omnimax god (obviously), the second applies only to the omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent god, and the last applied to any type of creator. But if you limit gods abilities, from omnimax to almost omnimax, he gets a bit less god like with every snip. You can scan your garden with a sonar machine, and we can take a look at saturn, but we have no way of looking for a supreme being. There's no solid evidence for or against because we haven't found a way to look for it yet. You can't scan every garden in the universe. You can't look at every possible orbit of saturn. They could be invisible faries or undetectable teapots. Again, why does god get a special pass? Fair enough. My appologies. I always thought that if you don't actually believe there is a god, that would make you an atheist. Perhaps we have different definitions, to me atheist is "doesn't beleive in god", of which "believes there is no god" is a subset.

That's not really right. Your first sentence is close. The second is very jaded and just wrong and a disservice to those that are faithful (remember, I claim agnosticism - not antagonistic atheism). 1 - No evidence is the BASIS for faith (pretty well the definition) - so your first bit is close to target 2 - that precludes both evidence for or against so your second comment is goofy again, it is confusing a mature faith, with a less healthy 'blind faith' that we attribute to children you're still attributing blind faith (which is certainly very present in the world) as the default for all those that are religious I really think steveorino wants to talk about adult faith, not immature faith. I think very few agnostics or atheists are equipped to actually have this conversation. Neither, however, are the multitudes of the 'blindly' faithful types. These types are just in training for fanaticism anyway. You see it in politics also. I think religion will die out as the blindly faithful become more and more prominent as the other forget how to teach this to their children. actually, ditto for the strongly atheistic types too, as it's just another religion with the same symptoms At the absolute bottom line, to believe in the existence of a creator is pure unadulerated faith. There is no evidence in support of the god hypothesis and all claimed knowledge of this being is just unsupported assertion. Every method I am aware of to detect real "things" fails miserably to detect a god of any kind. God is indistinguishable from his own non-existence. No matter how you dress it up as mature faith (whatever that is) or immature faith (ditto), you still end up with the same problem. Belief with no evidence (or in spite of) is faith. The usual course is to dismiss my allegations by saying I don't understand the nature of faith. In my experience, this "mature faith" you speak of is a wooly ill-defined concept that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. But if you know different, then please explain it to me.

No evidence is needed for faith to exist. In fact, faith means that you believe X despite any and every piece of evidence that proves X false. To maintain faith you either have to willfully disregard any conflicting evidence (intellectually dishonest) or not think about it at all (willfully ignorant). Neither is a positive position in my opinion. Here's something for you to think about. Is there any evidence, even in principle, that would make you change your mind about the existence of god?

I totally disagree. Faith is only possible through the suspension of rational thought. Beliefs held with faith aren't there due to analytical thinking or evaluation of the evidence, they're there because of dogma and unsupported assertion. Faith teaches that it is OK to believe something and that thinking is completely unnecessary. That is just stupid.

Actually there are some very compelling arguments for the non-existence of god. An omnimax god is illogical, the problem of evil, infinite regress etc. Fairies might exist. There may be a purple teapot orbiting saturn. Presumably, you discount these possibilities as absurd but somehow god gets a special pass. Why? What is so special about a supreme being that gives it more credibility than other equally preposterous ideas? I think that making the statement that "for all practical purposes, there is no god" is perfectly logical. So for all practical purposes I'm an atheist and, I suspect, so are you.

Well, presumably jesus' dad did the creatin' Does this mean that god thinks jesus is an asshole? Boy, bet I'm gonna regret posting that.

You know the ones, Mary in a lump of chocolate, Jesus' face on a piece of toast, that sort of stuff. What do you make of this one?

I used to work for a company that manufactures very high quality optics and the short answer is it depends on the man and the machine. A very experienced and highly skilled man with the right equipment can make optics more accurately than your average run-of-the-mill CNC machine. But if you want the absolute best, you need a million dollar magnetorheological fluid lens grinding machine. Joe Bloggs in his shed with some wet'n'dry and a tube of Autosol wont get close.

I think the verdict is quite obvious, independent of whether she believes her own rhetoric or not. She uses hate to make money. On any scale you care to think of, how is that good?

Not as a rule, no. I don't need to, I can walk or bus to most of the places I need to go. So are you going to do something or just pick on me for not doing enough?

I don't own a car. Your turn.