Pinheads are the Enemies of Islam

I would believe that there is likely some reason a body can heal itself that we don't know yet, but I don't insist that a person who believes it was a miracle believe the same.

Who is insisting anyone believes the same?

Is it wrong to argue against the notion that it was a miracle? Should we just accept that other people have different interpretations and not discuss the matter?
 
Damocles said:
Often they have stronger stories than toast. But I get it. However, insisting that a person who has been cured of a cancer with no medical explanation must believe that it was just chance rather than attribute it to a miracle is pretty much an attempt at conversion.

Do you see the difference? I would believe that there is likely some reason a body can heal itself that we don't know yet, but I don't insist that a person who believes it was a miracle believe the same. Those that simply state that others are daft for their beliefs and insist they are right based on the absense of faeries are spreading a belief religiously.
Click to expand...

I don't demand that a person of faith, deny that persons suddenly cured of disease, not believe in miracles.

But, I don't have a problem pointing out to them that the human body is a complex thing, that we still know little about - and a rational medical or biological explanation is at least as reasonable, as assuming some dude who lives up in the clouds caused it.
 
Last edited:
It reminds me of the notion of some atheists that they could legislate religious mumbo-jumbo out of existence. This is impossible.

Religion will be ended only by persuasion and by demonstrating how to cope without a comfort blanket...
 
AnyOldIron said:
It reminds me of the notion of some atheists that they could legislate religious mumbo-jumbo out of existence. This is impossible.

Religion will be ended only by persuasion and by demonstrating how to cope without a comfort blanket...
Click to expand...

Rationality and faith can co-exist side by side, for reasonable people.

Liberal catholics, episcopalians, and other mainline churches, can fully accept the evolutionary, biological, and medical explanations for the body and the natural world - and still ascribe all those rational, natural processes to the greater, grand design of the creator.
 
Any, I am not sure we humans are ever capable of ending religion by any means.

Slowly slowly catchy monkey!

Don't forget that a hundred years ago, Britain was a devoutly religious nation. Now we convert old churchs into cool pubs.....
 
Liberal catholics, episcopalians, and other mainline churches, can fully accept the evolutionary, biological, and medical explanations for the body and the natural world - and still ascribe all those rational, natural processes to the greater, grand design of the creator.

Well, the role of god as 'god of the gaps' has largely gone.

It is 'god, the great comforter' that holds many who would normally recognise religion as what it is.

It's hard to accept the reality that existence is cold, unemotional and nihilistic. It is even harder to overcome that reality.
 
Don't forget that a hundred years ago, Britain was a devoutly religious nation. Now we convert old churchs into cool pubs.....

Religious zealotry has been the downfall of virtually all the great western empires: from the Romans, to the Spanish, to the Dutch, to the British. Its only a mater of time, before relgious zealtory in the United States does the same to us.
 
Religious zealotry has been the downfall of virtually all the great western empires: from the Romans, to the Spanish, to the Dutch, to the British. Its only a mater of time, before relgious zealtory in the United States does the same to us.

I think the expense of WWI and WWII (in manpower and cash), combined with the costs of maintaining a world-wide empire, had more to do with the collapse of the British Empire, along with a growing sense of liberalism in the UK that wouldn't accept the notion of colonialism...
 
AnyOldIron said:
However, if they meet to spread a belief system such as this that takes personal faith to believe in, then yes, they are spreading a religion.

It doesn't take faith not to believe something. It doesn't take faith for me to not believe that the world was created by a giant turtle (for example - giant turtle is no more extreme than a giant creature with human attributes).

It takes faith to believe that the turtle did it.

Does it take faith to believe a political message that you might join a club to propogate? Is that a religion?.

----

You are right, to be totally correct, we should be agnostic. But as I said, there might be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence to support this, so shouldn't we be agnostic about fairies..?

Are you agnostic about fairies?

----

No-one has claimed that a religion-free world would be free from trouble.

It would be a world of people who have come to terms with the cold nihilistic reality of existence and stop hiding behind fictional big brother.

----

You claim that I am proselytizing atheism as a religion.

Again, atheism isn't a religion. A group of people who happen to believe the same thing doesn't make a religion. If anything, atheism is a philosophical position.
Click to expand...
It takes faith to assume that you are right to the point that all others must be daft for believing the opposite. Hence the difference I specifically pointed out. The small "a" atheist and the big "A" religious Atheist.

The assumption that because you see no evidence for something even with the small amounts of "evidence" such as "miracles"...

I am not "agnostic about faeries", however if somebody was I wouldn't assume them to be daft because they were. They may actually exist on some other planet out there, just like unicorns. How would I know? Insisting that they believe as I do, then making groups that will spread that same message, then creating meetings and having teachings on how best to spread the message... That would be a religion...

This is why I made a distinction between the religious Atheist and the regular atheist.

There is far more evidence of miracles than there ever has been of garden faeries, many fantastic recoveries unexplainable by current medical science, people who survive falls of fantastic distances, etc. They choose to see them as signs of something that you choose not to believe in, believing them "daft" because of it and attempting to convert them becomes a religious thing.
 
AnyOldIron said:
Any, I am not sure we humans are ever capable of ending religion by any means.

Slowly slowly catchy monkey!

Don't forget that a hundred years ago, Britain was a devoutly religious nation. Now we convert old churchs into cool pubs.....
Click to expand...
One of the most popular dance bars in Denver is "The Church" it was converted from, of course, a church.
 
AnyOldIron said:
#14 Yesterday, 12:28 PM


There are points of commonality between Manchester United fans in Surrey, England and in NY, NY.

Points of commonality don't make a religion!
Click to expand...
True enough. I was merely pointing out that the statement "there are lots of different kinds of atheists" doesn't mean that these different atheists can't be treated as members of a religious group. Big "A" Atheists, to borrow Damo's paradigm.

Some atheists do indeed proselytize their faith, if you'll pardon the expression. They gather together into organized groups for social and political purposes. These are some of the hallmarks of religion, from the anthropological perspective.

I'd say that atheism was a religion for Carl Sagan, for example. Please note that this is a man for whom I, personally, had almost limitless admiration.
 
Damocles said:
One of the most popular dance bars in Denver is "The Church" it was converted from, of course, a church.
Click to expand...
I think it's undeniable now that post-industrial development and increasing prosperity tend to lead to "secularization" of society. By that I mean religious authority tends to play a decreasingly dominant role in developed societies. At the same time, religious belief tends to become more diverse in such societies.
 
OrnotBitwise said:
True enough. I was merely pointing out that the statement "there are lots of different kinds of atheists" doesn't mean that these different atheists can't be treated as members of a religious group. Big "A" Atheists, to borrow Damo's paradigm.

Some atheists do indeed proselytize their faith, if you'll pardon the expression. They gather together into organized groups for social and political purposes. These are some of the hallmarks of religion, from the anthropological perspective.

I'd say that atheism was a religion for Carl Sagan, for example. Please note that this is a man for whom I, personally, had almost limitless admiration.
Click to expand...

Yes, even if he did blow it on Kahoutec (sp?).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top