Is Atheism a religion?

There is no more reason to believe in YHWH than there is to believe in Shiva, Zeus, or Allah, according to Yurt's 'evidence'. And Yurt actively believes there is no Shiva, Zeus, or Allah. He is strong atheists in regard to all of them, except for one God whom he has no more reason to believe in. And as I've said before, strong atheism is an indefensible position.

We're weak atheists to all of them. We don't believe in them.
 
Watermark said:
Hallucinations, misinterpreted indigestion, and mythical books are not evidence.
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An ordered universe is evidence of the possibility and any argument that it is not is a belief without evidence.

SCOTUS ruled in 2005 that atheism is in fact a religious doctrine...
 
Watermark said:
There is no more reason to believe in YHWH than there is to believe in Shiva, Zeus, or Allah, according to Yurt's 'evidence'. And Yurt actively believes there is no Shiva, Zeus, or Allah. He is strong atheists in regard to all of them, except for one God whom he has no more reason to believe in. And as I've said before, strong atheism is an indefensible position.

We're weak atheists to all of them. We don't believe in them.
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key words....watermark....

further, what kind of insane logic is it to say that "there no more reason" to "believe" in one thing simply because you don't believe in another....

i do more have more reason to believe in god, you however, do not accept that evidence as valid or truthful....that is your belief...you cannot prove atheism with any logical proof or material evidence, thus, using grind's definition of faith, you have only faith in atheism.

:)
 
Ah, the argument from design. We have all kinds of reasons that it's not valid and all kinds of reason the "order" makes perfect sense.

God, on the other hand, is the ultimate boeing 747:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Boeing_747_gambit


  1. One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect, over the centuries, has been to explain how the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises.
  2. The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself. In the case of a man-made artefact such as a watch, the designer really was an intelligent engineer. It is tempting to apply the same logic to an eye or a wing, a spider or a person.
  3. The temptation is a false one, because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer. The whole problem we started out with was the problem of explaining statistical improbability. It is obviously no solution to postulate something even more improbable. We need a "crane" not a "skyhook," for only a crane can do the business of working up gradually and plausibly from simplicity to otherwise improbable complexity.
  4. The most ingenious and powerful crane so far discovered is Darwinian evolution by natural selection. Darwin and his successors have shown how living creatures, with their spectacular statistical improbability and appearance of design, have evolved by slow, gradual degrees from simple beginnings. We can now safely say that the illusion of design in living creatures is just that – an illusion.
  5. We don't yet have an equivalent crane for physics. Some kind of multiverse theory could in principle do for physics the same explanatory work as Darwinism does for biology. This kind of explanation is superficially less satisfying than the biological version of Darwinism, because it makes heavier demands on luck. But the anthropic principle entitles us to postulate far more luck than our limited human intuition is comfortable with.
  6. We should not give up hope of a better crane arising in physics, something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology. But even in the absence of a strongly satisfying crane to match the biological one, the relatively weak cranes we have at present are, when abetted by the anthropic principle, self-evidently better than the self-defeating skyhook hypothesis of an intelligent designer.
 
BTW, a "skyhook" is what a crane looks like to someone who doesn't understand what they're looking at. So, a religious person look at the universe and sees a skyhook, we look at it and see a crane.
 
watermark....all you're doing is presenting arguments, not proof

yet you mock those who believe in god when they look at nature and see a certain order or what not...you can't even explain how anything came to be, you must simply believe it just happened, bang, poof, kazzam
 
Yurt said:
watermark....all you're doing is presenting arguments, not proof

yet you mock those who believe in god when they look at nature and see a certain order or what not...you can't even explain how anything came to be, you must simply believe it just happened, bang, poof, kazzam
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The annoying cosmological argument.

I say I don't know. It is better to accept your ignorance than willfully fall into error and accept a belief that has no evidence for it. I could pull a similar explanation to yours out of my ass, just like the person you copied your ideas from did, that wouldn't make it any more true or logical.

You have absolutely no reason to believe in God, you have no reason to believe there is no allah. Your position is logically indefensible.
 
Watermark said:
The annoying cosmological argument.

I say I don't know. It is better to accept your ignorance than willfully fall into error and accept a belief that has no evidence for it. I could pull a similar explanation to yours out of my ass, just like the person you copied your ideas from did, that wouldn't make it any more true or logical.

You have absolutely no reason to believe in God, you have no reason to believe there is no allah. Your position is logically indefensible.
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its only annoying because you have nothing better and are bitter for it.....you have no logical proof how the universe exists or what caused it to exist....you have absolutely no reason to believe god did not create the universe as you have no idea how it was created

further, i think you're misunderstanding (at least what i've argued) what has been said here, to my knowledge no one has actually posited the cosmo argument....what has been posited here is the order of the universe, the nature of the universe, not just that we exist so ergo god exists.....it is the fact that there are rules in nature at all is a kind of miracle

do you dispute that it is a kind of miracle?
 
Watermark said:
You can be an agnostic atheist. You can be a agnostic theist.

Again, PMP, have you ever heard of punctuation marks and capital letters? Not ever sentence has to end with a ellipse.
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no....you cannot be an agnostic atheist....an agnostic is someone who says "I don't know if there is a deity".....an atheist is someone who says "there is no deity"......they are inherently in contradiction......and a pox on your punctuation.....
 
Watermark said:
There is no more reason to believe in YHWH than there is to believe in Shiva, Zeus, or Allah, according to Yurt's 'evidence'. And Yurt actively believes there is no Shiva, Zeus, or Allah. He is strong atheists in regard to all of them, except for one God whom he has no more reason to believe in. And as I've said before, strong atheism is an indefensible position.

We're weak atheists to all of them. We don't believe in them.
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you aren't a weak atheist, you're just weak minded.....there is no such thing as selective atheism.....if you believe in no gods except one you are still not an atheist, because atheists state there are NO gods.....
 
Watermark said:
Ah, the argument from design. We have all kinds of reasons that it's not valid and all kinds of reason the "order" makes perfect sense.

God, on the other hand, is the ultimate boeing 747:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Boeing_747_gambit


  1. One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect, over the centuries, has been to explain how the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises.
  2. The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself. In the case of a man-made artefact such as a watch, the designer really was an intelligent engineer. It is tempting to apply the same logic to an eye or a wing, a spider or a person.
  3. The temptation is a false one, because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer. The whole problem we started out with was the problem of explaining statistical improbability. It is obviously no solution to postulate something even more improbable. We need a "crane" not a "skyhook," for only a crane can do the business of working up gradually and plausibly from simplicity to otherwise improbable complexity.
  4. The most ingenious and powerful crane so far discovered is Darwinian evolution by natural selection. Darwin and his successors have shown how living creatures, with their spectacular statistical improbability and appearance of design, have evolved by slow, gradual degrees from simple beginnings. We can now safely say that the illusion of design in living creatures is just that – an illusion.
  5. We don't yet have an equivalent crane for physics. Some kind of multiverse theory could in principle do for physics the same explanatory work as Darwinism does for biology. This kind of explanation is superficially less satisfying than the biological version of Darwinism, because it makes heavier demands on luck. But the anthropic principle entitles us to postulate far more luck than our limited human intuition is comfortable with.
  6. We should not give up hope of a better crane arising in physics, something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology. But even in the absence of a strongly satisfying crane to match the biological one, the relatively weak cranes we have at present are, when abetted by the anthropic principle, self-evidently better than the self-defeating skyhook hypothesis of an intelligent designer.
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the "fail" is obvious.....there IS no requirement that the designer have a designer if the designer is not a "thing".....there is no more improbable explanation than "shit just happens".....
 
have any of you noticed how hard people strive to avoid being considered atheists?....."oh, I'm not really an atheist, I'm just a "weak" atheist....or an "agnostic" atheist"......

atheists deny the existence of deity.....if you aren't willing to go on record as denying the existence of deity, then don't call yourself an atheist.....if you call your self an atheist admit that you are denying the existence of deity......but don't pretend it's a rational decision.....just admit you've made a faith choice and live with it......even if everyone thinks you're a major fuckup......because, if you pretend your faith choice is a rational decision, then everyone will KNOW you're a major fuckup......
 
PostmodernProphet said:
no....you cannot be an agnostic atheist....an agnostic is someone who says "I don't know if there is a deity".....an atheist is someone who says "there is no deity"......they are inherently in contradiction......and a pox on your punctuation.....
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100% incorrect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic_atheist

Agnostic atheism, also called atheistic agnosticism, encompasses atheism and agnosticism. Agnostic atheists are atheistic because they do not have belief in the existence of any deity, and agnostic because they do not claim to know that a deity does not exist. The agnostic atheist may be contrasted with the agnostic theist, who does believe that one or more deities exist but does not claim to have knowledge of such.
 
sorry, poster formerly known as a poster formerly known....

despite what you probably posted to wiki this afternoon, there is no such fucking thing as an agnostic atheist.....anymore than there is such a thing as an Islamic Christian.....or a Communist socialist.......or a Scientologist Freemason......

it's simply an argument from ignorance.....
 
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PostmodernProphet said:
have any of you noticed how hard people strive to avoid being considered atheists?....."oh, I'm not really an atheist, I'm just a "weak" atheist....or an "agnostic" atheist"......

atheists deny the existence of deity.....if you aren't willing to go on record as denying the existence of deity, then don't call yourself an atheist.....if you call your self an atheist admit that you are denying the existence of deity......but don't pretend it's a rational decision.....just admit you've made a faith choice and live with it......even if everyone thinks you're a major fuckup......because, if you pretend your faith choice is a rational decision, then everyone will KNOW you're a major fuckup......
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this has been explained about 10 times in this thread already, it's not our fault you have a tiny brain.

Almost all atheists, if you backed them into a corner, would obviously admit they can't disprove of a non-falsifiable claim. However the probability is so insignificantly small it's just easier to call ourselves atheists. The factor of god just isn't statistically significant.

You don't go around calling yourself a giant unicorn agnostic. It's stupid and redundant, even though you can't disprove of a galactic unicorn.
 
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