Atheism Thread

From the latest edition of Viz, that hotbed of theological debate:

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P.
 
Please tone down your troll-like manner with me in this thread. It is making me feel like I am being asked to defend every post I am making. This is creating a hostile environment for me.

And so ends the debate with the heavy hitters. :rolleyes:
 
Also, pardon me for addressing this late but it's bothered me. I worked in the book industry for eleven years, I'm no stranger to the book trade, real books made out of paper. :)p). You wrote that Hitchens, "like Dawkins, has published hundreds of articles and dozens of books... some best sellers." Christopher Hitchens did indeed technically publish about two dozen books, because he put his name on anthologies, long essays published as books (a short history of Thomas Jefferson that historians laughed at, the short book of Clinton conspiracy theories, collections of his reviews of books he hadn't actually read), etc. These books were all so short and trivial that when his memoir appeared a year before his death, under the awful title Hitch 22, it was greeted as practially his first attempt at a major work. You also said that Richard Dawkins wrote "dozens" of books. He wrote eleven books, not even a dozen. What I'm wondering is if you've actually read any of them. :squiffy:

I'm not sure why I am even responding to this as it is one of your troll-like posts aimed at getting me riled up and putting me on the defense. But being that I prefer to tie up loose ends rather than leave things unanswered, I will respond.

First off, your employment in the book industry lends no strength to your interrogation/argument. Anyone can learn what books Hitchens and Dawkins have written by perusing their Wikipedia pages.

I have read many of these authors' books and own several in print form... and all of both authors' entire bibliographies in electronic format... I really do. And if you care to read any of them, I am willing to lend you any ones you want.

I do own a huge collection of print books. But I currently have them in storage as my apartment is too small to showcase them.



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This explains my current preference for eBooks. I simply don't have the space right now for books and bookshelves. But I do love paper books. Always have.




Here is one shelf of one bookcase with some of my Hitchens and Dawkins books...

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These are the Dawkins books I have read so far...

The God Delusion
The Magic of Reality
The Blind Watchmaker
The Selfish Gene
A River Out of Eden
Unweaving the Rainbow


Books I have read by Hitchens...

god is Not Great
Mortality
Hitch-22
The Portable Atheist
For the Sake of Argument
The Missionary Position
Why Orwell Matters
A Letter to a Young Contrarian


And although you didn't ask about Sam Harris... a slip that shows your grasp is weak, as Harris is a major player in atheist circles and discussions about the Iraq war, here are the books I have read by him...

The End of Faith
A Letter to a Christian Nation
The Moral Landscape
Lying
Free Will

PS-Don't accuse me of being a showoff. You did ask.
 
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What does that mean? I wonder what lyrics you will use to answer? :squiffy:

If you are saying we have no right to talk about your boss here, then why did you bring her up? Or is that not what you mean? I guess I'll have to wait for the lyrics.

I'm pretty sure CG is referring to God when she talks about her Boss.
 
That's all they talk about. If you tell an atheist you believe in God they think you're a Christian. If that happens to be the case would I also have to "justify" why someone would accept differing viewpoints? Or what? They get stoned in the public square? Whatever I believe about anything I'm entitled to that belief. It's only in imposing it on others that someone is in error. People have different reality tunnels. Yours is ultimately not verifiable. We know what our instruments tell us but how do we test our instruments. Science is a process and a way of thinking but there is no time when science will explain everything because everything we learn opens up new possibilities to learn even more.

I personally can't imagine how something that is dead (the universe) somehow generates life. It seems it wasn't dead. So was it always alive? Then it's immortal. Whatever condition it is that allowed life to occur seems miraculous to me. Is it just time? But then where does the "stuff" come from that everything is made of? I think that if you don't put anything in the oven it doesn't matter how long you cook it, Sunday Dinner is not going to happen.

Then to go beyond that, this stuff that we don't know where it came from sits around for billions of years and then decides to invent a single-celled organism. The single-celled organism wants to be a monkey and then decides to write Hamlet. To me that progression shows that there is potential that we might have a hard time understanding.

The problem is when anyone claims to know something about the nature of "God" and wants to sell it to you or use it as excuse to tell you how to live. Religion is dangerous but a belief in something greater than humanity is not in itself.


Fantastic post.
 
The problem is when anyone claims to know something about the nature of "God" and wants to sell it to you or use it as excuse to tell you how to live. Religion is dangerous but a belief in something greater than humanity is not in itself.

Agree!
 
Thinkers, not bullies.

I'm a bully because I brought to light an aspect of Atheism you're not comfortable (or equipped enough) debating? I sense a trend. Atheism is a form of control. "There is no omniscient being that has control over me" is the battlecry of the non-believer, which is fine, to each their own. But it;s quite laughable that in a thread designed to discuss Atheism, the topics for discussion must be limited to a narrow scope of "God is bad. WAH!" and not war. Not Atheist credibility. Not closed-mindedness. Not public policy. Not modern application of Atheist principles to the general good of the people. Nope, Atheism Thread is for discussing how intellectual Atheists are. How dare I bust your filter bubble, "SHE'S A BULLY!"
 
I'm a bully because I brought to light an aspect of Atheism you're not comfortable (or equipped enough) debating? I sense a trend. Atheism is a form of control. "There is no omniscient being that has control over me" is the battlecry of the non-believer, which is fine, to each their own. But it;s quite laughable that in a thread designed to discuss Atheism, the topics for discussion must be limited to a narrow scope of "God is bad. WAH!" and not war. Not Atheist credibility. Not closed-mindedness. Not public policy. Not modern application of Atheist principles to the general good of the people. Nope, Atheism Thread is for discussing how intellectual Atheists are. How dare I bust your filter bubble, "SHE'S A BULLY!"

Atheism is not a form of control. Atheism is defined as non-belief in a god(s).

A=not. Theism=belief in a god(s). Therefore, atheism=not-belief in god(s). You are a fan of Chomsky the linguist. You should understand the structure of words, no? Or have you not read any of his books? :lbf: Another hoisting, I gather.

You are erroneously attaching ideologies to the concept atheism. Stalin was an atheist. He was also a totalitarian dictator. His totalitarian ideology is what stimulated his warmongering, not his simple lack of belief in a deity. And Hitler was a Catholic. He did believed in a god, as did Osama Bin Laden. Both Hitler and Bin Laden believed they were doing god's will.

We can talk about war... and totalitarianism, Islamism, and fascism in another thread if you like. Start a thread... god(s) and atheism will surely be mentioned. But this thread is not about POLITICAL ideologies that LEAD to WAR!

atheism≠war
 
What. Are you Zorro now? :straightface:
 
Atheism is not a form of control. Atheism is defined as non-belief in a god(s).

A=not. Theism=belief in a god(s). Therefore, atheism=not-belief in god(s). You are a fan of Chomsky the linguist. You should understand the structure of words, no? Or have you not read any of his books? :lbf: Another hoisting, I gather.

The etymology of "atheist" is irrelevant to my (attempted) discussion of The New Atheists, a group of political activists who've contributed nothing new to the body of arguments against deism. I know little of Chomsky's extensive and diverse work in linguistics, but I do know, unlike you, that Chomsky has written NOTHING about the "structure of words." His approach to language focuses on syntax, and this is the most basic thing that anyone could possibly know about his work. In fact, his fame as a linguist rests on his having totally replaced vocabulary-focused linguistics with a focus on syntax.

This thread isn't even about Atheism anymore. It's about "The New Atheism" and it's greyhaired pin-ups. They have made their views clear largely in connection with political issues so it's batshit crazy to say "no politics." You applauded a post about TSA pat-downs. Why do you feel THAT belongs in this thread? A nod to the Noam might be the thought if you dislike terrorists, quit creating them. :rolleyes:
 
A recent edition of Horizon (UK TV show) had genetic modification as a subject, specifically all the things science could do but the bible bashing halfwits in various seats of power won't allow. One of the most striking things was the company in America who could alter genetically the properties of a certain yeast so instead of alcohol, the by product of brewing would be a cellulose that could be readily turned into petrol. They can literally brew up petrol like they do vodka, but because it meant Genetically altering a living organism, yeast they couldn't get the process licensed to do it industrially, because congress cant get any laws passed which would allow science to alter genetics, because baby Jesus's daddy didn't make it like that in the first place.

I think it is more likely that the real reason this is not finding legislative support is not due to religious beliefs but because powerful and very wealthy oil lobbyists will not allow it.

GM products are an anathema in the US. It's used as a convenient and popular smokescreen to mask the reality that once again corporate America and their fat wallets are pulling strings behind closed doors.
 
On October 5th, 2012, Seth Andrews joined a group of skeptics for a tour of Kentucky's infamous Creation Museum. These are the Top Ten Lessons he took away from that experience.


 
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