Atheism is DEAD!

[Oleg Bach]

IF there is a good...I mean God... I am sure he has nothing but good in mind and does not have a problem with atheists - it would be in my opinion not very important to an all mighty intelligence - It's people that persecute athists - not God -that makes sense to me - a good person is a good person - jerks on the other hand are to be ignored. Atheists are usually those that church and state have a problem controlling.

[Guest TrueMetis]

Atheists are usually those that church and state have a problem controlling.

Church? well duh. State? No need, atheists make up less than a percent of the prison population in Canada and America.

[GostHacked]

Also Toad - if you are so anti-religious then you should be posting on the anti-religion and politics board not the religion and politics section...and nice try at attempting to ban me with your fraudulent bit of mischief - the last person that removed me from this forum - is no longer here and I am still welcome...be careful - I have friends...and apparently you are not very good at winning them.

ATTN GREG !!! We must have an anti-religion thread topic section thingamajog STAT !!!!

[ToadBrother]

Firstly the story is true. I am not saying that all atheists grow tits and drive their young wives to suicide then molest their own children..but this particular person was anti-law and a super liberal thinker. I look at our ancient traditions no so much as religion but law..codes of behaviour..If you do not pervert the teaching of Christ the way religion did then society would fair better. "I have not come to destroy the law but to fulfil every stroke and letter of the law" - to para pharse.

Codes of behavior are part of our makeup. We, like all social animals, function by them. But it doesn't take much of a survey of history to see that few if any of our moral codes are in fact immutable. Even in Christendom, key ones, like the place of women, have changed dramatically over the last couple of centuries.

It appears that human societies require moral codes. It isn't the particular codes that count, but rather that some sort of code exists. Why should any sensible person, atheist or otherwise, believe that we can exist without morality? It's a ludicrous position. What I take exception with is simply invoking moral codes without any rational backing because "God says so". Using the Divine to justify wicked acts is at least as old as religion itself. That was the whole point of the development of notions of secularism by guys like John Locke, that a rational society is forced to come up with logically and rationally defensible reasons for any moral code or law, to avoid long-standing historic abuses (like, for instance, the Catholics suffered in Protestant England).

My mode of communication is provocative in style and don't take it personally please! This prick I mentioned who was a very aggressive and fanatical atheist does not represent most atheists - In fact most atheists that I know are more in tune with justice and law and in fact more Christ like than so-called Christians - most atheists have no use for religion and I agree with them - but I keep the God factor serious and simple. It is a chain of command..

- and I am not God but simply an underling..as we all should be - as our Canadian Charter states in it's spirit which is the pre-amble...The Supremacy of God and the rul of law there under" again to para-phase - this was put in place much as "in God we trust" was stamped on American currency - to make sure a jerk did not start playing God - it is the eccense of democracy and true egalitarianism. Even if you do not believe in God it is good to pretend to do so to keep order!

My mode of communication is as stubborn miserable a-hole. Too often I have been attacked for my atheism rather than anything I'm saying. If I misconstrued, I apologize. Still, dropping bon mottes like "I knew an atheist who molested his kids" is not exactly a way to make good conversation with an atheist.

[wyly]

Church? well duh. State? No need, atheists make up less than a percent of the prison population in Canada and America.

atheists in Canada estimated between 19-34% of the population...the percentage spread is large because of the unknown numbers who are afraid to come out of the closet...in the USA the stigma for admitting being an atheist is even stronger, many people fear being ostracized from family and work for their atheistic leanings...I know a family that still attends church even though each one of them is a confirmed atheist...

[ToadBrother]

atheists in Canada estimated between 19-34% of the population...the percentage spread is large because of the unknown numbers who are afraid to come out of the closet...in the USA the stigma for admitting being an atheist is even stronger, many people fear being ostracized from family and work for their atheistic leanings...I know a family that still attends church even though each one of them is a confirmed atheist...

I think your confusing "non-affiliated" with "atheist". I've never seen any stat that put the percentage of atheists at anything like a fifth to a third of the population.

[Guest TrueMetis]

atheists in Canada estimated between 19-34% of the population...the percentage spread is large because of the unknown numbers who are afraid to come out of the closet...in the USA the stigma for admitting being an atheist is even stronger, many people fear being ostracized from family and work for their atheistic leanings...I know a family that still attends church even though each one of them is a confirmed atheist...

I believe that number includes agnostics and the unaffiliated as well. Though the prison percentage may be a combination of them all as well I can not remember.

I think your confusing "non-affiliated" with "atheist". I've never seen any stat that put the percentage of atheists at anything like a fifth to a third of the population.

Last one I saw said 16%.

[wyly]

Could you then provide some link to any evidence of any kind of symbolism prior to 120,000 years ago? Even the date of 120ky is somewhat contested, with some researchers setting the date much closer in time.

from what my archy' source in the next room next tells me, 50,000 BP seems to get the most concensus after that everything gets hotly debated...even early Neaderthal graves are contested, were they actually graves or just disposing of smelly corpses...bones with cut marks, defleshed in some religious ritual or canniblism...it all depends on which archeologist you reference...

[wyly]

I think your confusing "non-affiliated" with "atheist". I've never seen any stat that put the percentage of atheists at anything like a fifth to a third of the population.

here is link to that says it's at least one in four and thats still not taking into account those who are afraid to say they are...

my experience is that's never discussed openly, very few offer that info up in a group setting that they're atheist...but when someone does it's amazing to see how many others then open up and admit the same when they feel it's safe to do so...I've been in groups settings that when the topic came up we discovered we were actually in the majority...it's personal anecdotal evidence but I've no doubt there are many more than who admit to it...

[davidmabus0202]

Atheist:

have you for but a moment considered that you have adopted a position against 98% of the human race, both past and present?

do you think you are RIGHT and they are all WRONG?

WRONG

now listen to this arrogant puffed up son of a bitch....

little scientist geek who would try to usurp God Himself!!!

Edited December 31, 2009 by davidmabus0202

[bloodyminded]

Atheist:

have you for but a moment considered that you have adopted a position against 98% of the human race, both past and present?

do you think you are RIGHT and they are all WRONG?

WRONG

Virtually EVERY religious person DOES believe that the majority of the human race, past and present, are and have been wrong.

Yes? Yes.

[Shwa]

No one is saying the Venus of Tan-Tan isn't a worthy object to explore, or that it doesn't hint at a potentially earlier date for key modern human behaviors, but there is no consensus, and thus far there's enough questioning of whether it is worked or weathered that trying to make vast leaps of logic over it seems a step too far. It may turn out to be an artifact, and that will revolutionize our understanding of when we became "us" (so to speak), or it may just turn out to be another example of that psychological phenomenon that makes us see Richard Nixon in that fluffy cloud overhead.

Except there are corroborations:

http://www.originsnet.org/pampau1gallery/index.htm

The Venus of Tan Tab could indeed be a weathered stone, but there is no requirement for symbolic objects to have been created specifically for a purpose, just retained. So if H. Erectus also has a similar psychological phenomenon to the one you mention, then seeing figures in stone and retaining that object is as valid as creating it themselves. If enough similar objects are found within the context of occupation it is worth noting. Then it becomes a matter of the weight of numbers.

Harrod also makes the point about ceremonial hand axes, something which is routinely ascribed to with later human cultures. The Pit of Bonessite in Spain is a good example of a rare and interesting find in the context of a puzzling site.

Then there are the so-called beads or pendants from from Austria and Libya:

The perhaps earliest objects with indisputably human-made perforations we know of are the two perforated

pendants from the Repolusthöhle in Styria, Austria. If their age estimate is correct, they are in the order of 300,000

years old. One is a wolf incisor, very expertly drilled near its root. The second is a flaked bone point, roughly triangular

and perforated near one corner (Mottl 1951). Of particular significance are the three fragments of ostrich eggshell disc

beads from a major Libyan occupation site of the Acheulian (Ziegert 1995). They come from the El Greifa site complex

(Wadi el Adjal, near Ubari). There is ample evidence of quarrying of quartzite, and the sites’ lithic inventory includes

generally handaxes, scrapers, borers and burins, but is dominated by large Acheulian types. Dated by the U/Th isotopes

of the calcareous sediments they are from, the beads appear to be in the order of 200,000 years old. The near-perfect

rounded circumference and perforation of the El Greifa ostrich eggshell beads demonstrate that even hominids of the

Acheulian possessed a well-developed technology of working this fragile medium with the greatest possible confidence

and skill.

These examples may not be the smoking guns that some of the more ethusiastic researchers believe they are, but they do provide enough doubt to current theories to ensure that what may first appear as refuse or geological contamination could hold more clues.

[charter.rights]

Atheist:

have you for but a moment considered that you have adopted a position against 98% of the human race, both past and present?

do you think you are RIGHT and they are all WRONG?

WRONG

now listen to this arrogant puffed up son of a bitch....

little scientist geek who would try to usurp God Himself!!!

Nah. They just don't care about going crazy with the rest of you.

[GostHacked]

Atheist:

have you for but a moment considered that you have adopted a position against 98% of the human race, both past and present?

do you think you are RIGHT and they are all WRONG?

WRONG

now listen to this arrogant puffed up son of a bitch....

little scientist geek who would try to usurp God Himself!!!

Methinks you missed the point of the clip you posted. WATCHOUT !!! Another drive by posting.... I have a feeling this is the same person who did another drive by posting in this very thread... who could it be?

[ToadBrother]

Atheist:

have you for but a moment considered that you have adopted a position against 98% of the human race, both past and present?

do you think you are RIGHT and they are all WRONG?

WRONG

Reality is not democratically arrived at. But, at any rate, I'm not against anybody.

now listen to this arrogant puffed up son of a bitch....

Wow.

little scientist geek who would try to usurp God Himself!!!

Science is not atheism, and atheism is not science.

[ToadBrother]

Except there are corroborations:

http://www.originsnet.org/pampau1gallery/index.htm

The Venus of Tan Tab could indeed be a weathered stone, but there is no requirement for symbolic objects to have been created specifically for a purpose, just retained. So if H. Erectus also has a similar psychological phenomenon to the one you mention, then seeing figures in stone and retaining that object is as valid as creating it themselves. If enough similar objects are found within the context of occupation it is worth noting. Then it becomes a matter of the weight of numbers.

Surely you must see the strained logic invoked here. There's little enough evidence that hominids had anything to do with it all. That's rather the point.

[bloodyminded]

Reality is not democratically arrived at.

And even if it were, it's a lost argument...because the overwhelming majority of religious people consider all other religions to be broadly wrong; even, often, an outright affront against a particular God.

[davidmabus0202]

I am the most famous troll in the world...

get off my bridge, you F*CKERS

[wyly]

I am the most famous troll in the world...

get off my bridge, you F*CKERS

amateur

Edited January 1, 2010 by wyly

[Shwa]

Surely you must see the strained logic invoked here. There's little enough evidence that hominids had anything to do with it all. That's rather the point.

Are you saying that the retention of a natural object for symbolic purposes somehow doesn't count as evidence of anything or are you specifically referring to the Venus of Tan-Tan? Both require the weight of numbers, but even a small weight in the beginnings of research does not invalidate a hypothesis.

[Chuck U. Farlie]

Considering the topic of this thread, Atheism is Dead, it seems that PZ Meyers just recently had a blog entry regarding that very notion:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/12/atheism_is_doooooomed.php

I keep hearing people telling me this, but at the same time I keep seeing more and more out atheists, and atheism becoming more and more popular. The refrain is sounding more desperate than accurate — but then, among people for whom wishful thinking is tantamount to a mathematical proof, I suppose just wanting atheism to go away is sufficient to mean it must be going away. I was sent an awesomely pathetic article making just this same kind of weak argument.

There seems to be a growing consensus around the globe that godlessness is in trouble.

"Atheism as a theoretical position is in decline worldwide," Munich theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg told United Press International Tuesday.

His Oxford colleague Alister McGrath agrees. Atheism's "future seems increasingly to lie in the private beliefs of individuals rather than in the great public domain it once regarded as its habitat," he wrote in the U.S. magazine, Christianity Today.

Quoting a few of the usual suspects does not mean you've got a "growing consensus". I don't even know what "atheism as a theoretical position" means — it could imply that atheism is so dominant that it is taken for granted. As for McGrath…sorry, vacuous, mealy-mouthed, and boring are not sufficient qualities to make one an authority. Again, though, I have no idea what he is talking about — of course atheism is a private or personal belief, and what the heck does it mean for atheism to have inhabited the public domain without being part of individual beliefs? These guys are just stringing words together and pretending to be authoritative.

Two developments are plaguing atheism these days. One is that it appears to be losing its scientific underpinnings. The other is the historical experience of hundreds of millions of people worldwide that atheists are in no position to claim the moral high ground.

One: atheism is retaining its scientific basis. I think the authors comment is a veiled and credulous reference to the common claim by intelligent design creationists that they have scientific evidence of a creator. They do not.

Atheism has never claimed to hold the moral high ground; that's religion's schtick. What we have going on right now is growing evidence that religion does not confer morality, either.

This article started stupid, but it just gets worse and worse. Guess who they cite to back up the above claims?

Writes Turkish philosopher Harun Yahya, "Atheism, which people have tried to for hundreds of years as 'the ways of reason and science,' is proving to be mere irrationality and ignorance."

When did Harun Yahya/Adnan Oktar get promoted to philosopher? More appropriate descriptors would be convicted con artist and former mental patient.

We also get senile philosophers pontificating on biology.

As British philosopher Anthony Flew, once as hard-nosed a humanist as any, mused when turning his back on his former belief: It is, for example, impossible for evolution to account for the fact than one single cell can carry more data than all the volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica put together.

But we can account for all that data: accumulated variation for a few billion years will do the job. What is so hard to understand about this?

Other tropes in this amazingly dumb article include the imminent demise of atheism. I think Darwinism and atheism must be in a race to be first to collapse, contradicted only by the fact that both seem to be growing stronger day by day.

The stunning desertion of a former intellectual ambassador of secular humanism to the belief in some form of intelligence behind the design of the universe makes Yahya's prediction sound probable: "The time is fast approaching when many people who are living in ignorance with no knowledge of their Creator will be graced by faith in the impending post-atheist world."

Oh, and of course we have to have science backing theistic claims, with citations of a science journal.

A few years ago, European scientists sniggered when studies in the United States - for example, at Harvard and Duke universities - showed a correlation between faith, prayer and recovery from illness. Now 1,200 studies at research centers around the world have come to similar conclusions, according to "Psychologie Heute," a German journal, citing, for example, the marked improvement of multiple sclerosis patients in Germany's Ruhr District due to "spiritual resources."

Wait…the studies that showed no statistically significant effect are now being used to endorse prayer? O Topsy Turvy world!

I was amused by the citation to that prestigious medical journal, "Psychologie Heute". That's German for Psychology Today, by the way, and the German edition is just like the American one: mass market pop psychology sold at your local supermarket checkout line.

It's just sad that theists are reduced to this kind of feeble justification for their goofy beliefs.

[ToadBrother]

I am the most famous troll in the world...

get off my bridge, you F*CKERS

I was on Usenet in the days of such heady figures as Ted Holden and Ed Conrad. You're an amateur pal. You ain't got nothing on the trolls of the past.

[ToadBrother]

Are you saying that the retention of a natural object for symbolic purposes somehow doesn't count as evidence of anything or are you specifically referring to the Venus of Tan-Tan? Both require the weight of numbers, but even a small weight in the beginnings of research does not invalidate a hypothesis.

I'm saying the evidence that it was preserved as stated is questionable.

[whowhere]

Atheism has always been dead - it has always represented an end to everything - and a certain hoplessness that always leads to death and not life. No I am not religious in the common and institutional sense - but atheism as just as dogmatic and rigid in thought and containing the same restrictions as fundementalism along with ordinary fanatic thought....Goodness and the concept of God free from man made relgions is the way to go - Atheism is a fu*king religion and it is confining - I want to be free to be me and believe what I want - belief is the most powerful thing a human can have - but not if that belief is based in the lie we call politics - great example - Paulism was the basis of modern politics and social engineering - man made - it stinks...What Catholic or other Christian cult makes an effort to get rid of poverty and fear? None! Keep it simple - Good is God and Goodness is God - be good and you will prosper - it's physics - super phyics!

How can atheism be dead? Atheism you beleive in no god or higher power. Given the dynamics of the world it is a valid position. Life is what it is. Atheism is alive and well and is the current trajectory of the world unless an event occurs to alter this. A free mind cant be hampered by superstition and dogma unless reinforced by ritual. Religioun and churches are machievellian excuses for societies to not be just. How often has society blamed God for someones plight rather face the facts that that society is no different than a sodom and gomarrah. Look at Christians, if you don't go along with their thinking you are a devil. As for societies they want to dump virtues onto churches rather than use tribunals and courts to rule over right and liberties. People are not trustworthy and that goes double for the christians who parade around lying, cheating, and sinning because they beleive jesus died so they can be corrupt.

Atheism is valid.

[davidmabus0202]

now listen to this arrogant puffed up son of a bitch....

little scientist geek who would try to usurp God Himself!!!

Atheist:

have you for but a moment considered that you have adopted a position against 98% of the human race, both past and present?

do you think you are RIGHT and they are all WRONG?

WRONG

the atheist sins not only against God, but also against man...