here's a video which is one of my favourites on youtube. If you haven't seen it yet , smoke a fat one and try to wrap your mind around the numbers of time and space mentioned. With the knowledge mankind has gained just within the last 22 yrs due to the Hubble space telescope, it makes me sad to think that not everyone on the planet has seen these images. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzaAQ6dw6Zc]Science Saved My Soul - YouTube[/ame]
i don't understand why people's abhor for religion drives them to atheism. it is just a religion against god. why can't you abhor mass organized religion and still see the god in the universe? this utterly immaculate beauty in no way speaks to randomness and chance to me, that is intelligent beauty, that is art, that is intelligent design. why are people so afraid to encounter a more intelligent, more powerful being alone? they must in some way associate with either religion 'for' god or religion against god. this science becomes so much more beautiful when it's realized it's an interactive gift from a creator.
[quote name='"chronicchthonic"']i don't understand why people's abhor for religion drives them to atheism. it is just a religion against god. why can't you abhor mass organized religion and still see the god in the universe? this utterly immaculate beauty in no way speaks to randomness and chance to me, that is intelligent beauty, that is art, that is intelligent design. why are people so afraid to encounter a more intelligent, more powerful being alone? they must in some way associate with either religion 'for' god or religion against god. this science becomes so much more beautiful when it's realized it's an interactive gift from a creator.[/quote] I feel bad for you. I'll pray to Science for your concious..
[quote name='"Mantikore"'] I feel bad for you. I'll pray to Science for your concious..[/quote] My concious is fine. I sleep soundly every night and I'm happy and content. Thanks for the prayers though brother! I believe prayers are more for the personal concious anyway so continue on as you please.
Atheism is not a religion. I continue to see this on a regular basis on here, it is simply one of the most ignorant assumptions theists make. You talk a big game on spirituality. I wasn't much different than you many years ago. I shed my indoctrination slowly, going from religious to spiritual, to spiritual without a defined god (complete rejection of all religious dogmas) to atheism. Like most freethinkers, I'm very open to more intelligent, powerful beings as soon as there is evidence for their existence. I do not fear them, I hope we find them. I think your generalizations are a mistake and inaccurate. And if you are practicing any science with the "realization" that it's a gift from a creator, then you aren't really practicing science.
religion, including atheism is all silly in my opinion. much like the cliques in high school, religion was invented by man and forced people to "pick a side". if you didnt agree, you werent with them, and people faught over this, which is clearly stupid, but its human nature for most people i guess. was the invetors sole purpose of relgion to seperate peoples or truly just to worship in peace, who knows. imo, there is one creator for all of us, for all of everything, and ill call him just that, the creator. i believe in the big bang or the supernova, which basically spewed life and energy around and created space, and then these little life forms landed on the rocks or planets and if they could adapt to the enviornement the planet provided, like earth, where the water isnt frozen or boiling and the air isnt gassious and too toxic to adapt to, they evolved and transformed into us and all the living things around us. science can prove all of this, for example, the people that live closer to the equator are darker and hand down these genes, and the peoples that spent more time in the water have more webbing between their fingers, and usually narrower longer noses. this is science and evolution before your eyes, but what science cant tell us is, who setup that super nova that created time space and life? this is where my "faith" or my belief in a creator emerges. the supernova didnt just collect from energy in space, because space didnt exsist before the superova, so someone put his hands out and created this mass of energy. therefore we are all related, we are the same, but we may look different becuase of where we live in the world becuase we change to that environment directly. asian have better use of their brain power becuase their ancestors took time out of the day to rest and focus, and they ate lots of fresh fish. blacks are stronger and can run and jump higher and have wider noses for more air intake becuase they had to run to hunt for food. you can go on and on thinking about the subtle changes between humans, and the way our bodies evolved. our appendix isnt used as frequently anymore because we dont eat as much raw meat or plants anymore. the appendix was a stronghold for our bacterial makeup to help digest and help recover the gut (immune system) after an infection, but now that we take so many antibiotics, the bad bugs are evolving and getting stronger, and our gut is getting weaker its kind of crazy when you think about it, and you can trace any part of the body back and watch how it evolved, from the joints, to the skin, to the internal organs. hell bones remodel and adapt to the enviornemental circumstances in our bodies right before our eyes! they get stronger with stress, they grow bone spurs to try and fill subluxed gaps, they are ever changing that being said, i dont believe in aliens that are of a super intelligence. remember, we adapt to our planet, not the other way around, so we are only as smart or as strong as our enviornemnt forces us to be. in order for aliens to exisist, the life that we were made from (out of the nova) would have to have survived on planets with posinious gas, that has an unstable crust, and not only would they have to have survived there, but they would have to strive, which i find very unlikely. now, with super telescopes on satellites we are finding that there are many galaxies and solar system setup like ours, where a big star pulled in rocks (planets) and setup itself, and i think for each one of those galaxies, there could in fact be 1 or 2 planets like earth, just the right distance away for life to have survived and strive. i would like to know if theyre behind in their stages of development, or if theyre a bit ahead of us for reasons unknown (due to enviornment) becuase remember, we are all from the same seed
[quote name='"bmeat"']now, with super telescopes on satellites we are finding that there are many galaxies and solar system setup like ours, where a big star pulled in rocks (planets) and setup itself, and i think for each one of those galaxies, there could in fact be 1 or 2 planets like earth, just the right distance away for life to have survived and strive. i would like to know if theyre behind in their stages of development, or if theyre a bit ahead of us for reasons unknown (due to enviornment) becuase remember, we are all from the same seed[/quote] By your estimation there would be nearly a trillion earth like planets with life. Many of these planets would have been at our stage millions of years ago. Do you find it unlikely that any intelligent beings could have survived and kept evolving to become much more intelligent than humans? I think it's certainly possible.
from wikipedia: Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. or in other words, atheism the belief that no deities exist from m-w religion 2 : a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices 3 archaic : scrupulous conformity : conscientiousness 4 : a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith not an assumption and not my words but wikipedia's and merriam webster. atheism is a religion whether you like it or not..
Do I really need to point out your failure here? A rejection of belief isn't a belief. Religion makes a claim, an atheist rejects that claim. Atheism is the negation of a positive. A belief is a positive. All you are doing is turning lack of belief or rejection of belief into the positive (belief) and then adding another negative (NOT believing in god). Just because you do that it doesn't make atheism a belief or a belief system. The first two sentences of your post are entirely illogical and plainly obvious. You don't even hide your failure on this subject well. Sorry man, whether you like it or not atheism is not a religion. That is fact. Just because you don't accept facts or enjoy twisting them in your own mind to fit your needs is not my problem.
Oh so you also don't understand burden of proof. We aren't born with knowledge of a creator. It is a positive claim made without evidence. A claim requires evidence, not for someone to find counter evidence to an unvalidated claim. I can say I can fly like superman and it wouldn't be your job to prove I can't. I'm beginning to think you aren't worth my time. No offense, but I prefer to discuss and debate with people who apply unbiased logic when dealing with important topics.
you didn't answer my question and you are being highly evasive. you can't prove god exist and you can't prove he does not exist. you can believe he exists or believe he does not exist. we can't know for certain, and i don't know that for certain. don't be so dogmatic, that is very christian of you...
Still changing the negative. I know it's common sloppy English but it doesn't mean because you don't speak it properly you can change the meaning of the sentence. Atheism is simply, LACK of belief in a deity. So I can believe gods exist or I can reject that belief. If I were saying I believe there are no gods then perhaps you could call me an antitheist at best. Atheism by clear and precise defintion is a LACK of belief. I don't believe anything when it comes to god. No beliefs, zero! This is a grammatical thing that you just aren't getting and that's important because you are redefining a word and you are wrong.
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities.[1][2] In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities.[3][4][5] >the position that there are no deities if you click position it will take you to the thesaurus on dictionarydotcom. if you then scroll down you will see this: Main Entry:\tposition Part of Speech:\tnoun Definition:\tbelief, point of view Synonyms:\t angle, attitude, color, judgment, opinion, outlook, slant, stance, stand, standpoint, view, viewpoint you are trying to draw a line where there is no line. everything has an opposite. light and dark. on and off. go and stop. belief and disbelief. however you want to chalk it up you are trying to play with semantics, but the lack of belief is a belief. if you are trying to claim that you don't know if there is a god or not and don't have a position. that would be agnostic and we are talking about atheism. and atheism is the belief that there is no gods, therefore it is a religion.
I've found that certain theists often find some textbook definition of atheism and use that to argue against atheists despite the fact that the definition being used is often not one used by most actual atheists. Atheists will then point out that their beliefs are different or more nuanced than what the dictionary outlines. The theists will often ignore such counters while continuing to use and argue for the strict textbook definition in their critique of atheism. They also like to omit definitions that don't suit their agenda. As seen above, chronicchthonic copied what Wikipedia has written, even italicizing the part relevant to his argument. Conveniently omitted is the line that follows (in bold), which reads: I've said it before, but if the position you're arguing against isn't held by any significant amount of people (let alone the people you're actually arguing with) then any point against said position is a rather empty victory. And if absence of belief now equates to religion then just about every person on the planet is practicing a large, if not infinite, amount of religions. I apparently belong to the religion of not believing in the tooth fairy, the religion of not believing in leprechauns, and the religion of not believing the world is secretly a big watermelon. Apparently having any belief or position at all is akin to religion going by chronicchthonic's "logic." Edit: Wow. After all of chronicchthonic's attempts to define atheism as a religion, he posts this in another thread: How is it that "atheism is the belief that there is no gods, therefore it is a religion," but also "the definition of religion i was taught was the practice of the relationship with god. if you are not being benevolent and beneficial you are not practicing a relationship with god, therefore you are not practicing religion."
belief is belief is belief is belief. you can call it however many different ways you want, the absence of belief is still belief. the belief in the absence of belief that any deity exist. idk who you think i'm arguing with or arguing for, i stated one belief, a belief in a higher power, a creator, god. you can pull out whatever definition of atheism you want, it is a belief. you either are certain or you believe. as i already said, you can't be certain and i'm not certain of that. so you believe in having no beliefs about gods because it's pointless, or whatever the conclusion is for an atheist. it's still a belief, therefore a religion, like it or not.
Yet in the other thread you said the definition of religion i was taught was the practice of the relationship with god. therefore, if you are not being benevolent and beneficial you are not practicing a relationship with god, therefore you are not practicing religion. Atheism is none of those things.
thats true! so maybe those mammals or (whatever other vertebrate speices may be faster evolving over there, for whatever reasons!) evolved into now are much more advanced than us! still not advanced enough to travel from galaxy to galaxy, becuase i havent seen them hell, the dinsours de-evolved when their habitat was whiped out, and the clan that made it through (probably becuase they could fly) are know known as the bird family
the other thread is a discussion of beliefs, and i was making a dichotomy between religions that i stated was a belief. here we are talking about dictionary, commonly accepted definitions. you insist on taking what i say out of context and twisting it and refusing to have an unbiased, intellectual conversation. i am through responding to you. have a good day sir.
You keep accusing me of twisting your words, but I'm literally quoting what you say. I even include your post for context, which is more than I can say for you wiki references. If we're posting dictionary, commonly accepted definitions here then why not post religion's definition. Let's see if atheism matches up. religion |riˈlijən| noun the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, esp. a personal God or gods Atheism is neither the belief in, nor the worship of personal gods. • details of belief as taught or discussed I suppose certain forms of atheism could fit here, but belief is such a broad term that literally anything could be classified as a religion. Believing chocolate is better than vanilla could be religion, but to say it is religion in the same vein as Christianity or Buddhism is equivocation. And it's worth noting that the Wikipedia article, which you cited first, includes the absence of belief under the umbrella of atheism. Though you conveniently left that part out in your citation. I wonder why.. • a particular system of faith and worship Strong atheism could be classified as a system of faith I guess, but certainly not worship. • a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance This could apply to pretty much anything, and as said above, to equate and important interest to something like Christianity under the name of religion is disingenuous and equivocation.