Daystar

[Kyuuketsuki]

The NTS risk for me is that I am using logic that flaws my own view that most theists who claim they were once atheist were not so much atheists but disillusioned believers.

In your case that is obviously not true.

Why is that obviously not true?

Because you said you were brought up atheist by atheist parents ... is it not that obvious then?

"Atheism" (like "theism") is just a label and atheists, like JJ pointed out, can be any colour, any culture, come from all walks of life and typically have very, very little in common ... they also tend (my opinion) to be intelligent and willing buck trends. That doesn't make for a good cultural or community feel especially in a society that is largely theistic to some degree or other.

I don't think atheism will ever carry any philosophical or cultural implications.

I don't understand why in order to be organized you all have to have a great deal in common other than whatever goal you would aspire to. Most militant atheists have nearly everything in common. Colour, culture etc. are of no more real import than eye color or nationality. The JWs did it.

The majority of you militant Atheists are political. Unite and organize as a 'religion.'

The point is that we have no common belief system, in essence nothing at all, no reason to organise ... I could argue, given that the prevailing view is that there is a god, that we're all rebels! It doesn't make for a good community feel and, trust me on this, I have tried both with my recent "Science, Just Science" campaign and with my older "Freedom of Intellectual & Scientific Thought" group.

Based purely on experience all you can ever get out of atheists is a loose group of people that come occasionally together to whinge about what's wrong with [a theistic] society. We dream of organising, we try very hard to do it but it never really works and because of that we can't form a culture or community.

Kyu

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Luke, I agree with your position on creation in the schools. It shouldn't be taught for three reasons. 1) It would be too difficult to present a fair and unbiased teaching on the subject and 2) No one really knows if we were created or not, and 3) I don't trust teachers to teach their way out of a paper bag.

Point 1 is almost irrelevant because no one claims (or should claim) there isn't bias in teaching science ... granted there isn't anything else but science education should most definitely be biased towards teaching science. Point 2 sure and if creationism were to be taught in science class equal time would have to be given to the creation myths of other religions too. You don't trust teachers? Yes there are poor teachers but a good teacher is truly awesome ... I'm tempted to suggest that if you have so little faith in education that might explain some aspects of your world view.

Religion has, in the past, had a conflict with science because religion used to have the power to enforce its sort of myopic interpretation of scripture especially when it disagreed with the Bible. Today, those misrepresenting the Bible continue to do so.

Not entirely sure what your last sentence means but yes, broadly speaking I agree.

Why is science potentially more dangerous than religion? Many people have killed in the name of God through religion, and for the most part that has been thinly veiled through political means granted to religion.

I'd agree with that although religion does act as a very convenient vector for conflict.

The same could easily apply to science but I think that the destruction science brings is through the technology and biological applications of political necessities. We are far more likely to be destroyed by means of science than religion.

"If you want to do evil, science provides the most powerful weapons to do evil; but equally, if you want to do good, science puts into your hands the most powerful tools to do so." Richard Dawkins

The 'days' of the Bible were not literal 24 hour periods, they were unknown periods of time. The geological evidence of a flood could very well be there floods have been mistaken for glaciers etc. in the past. Science won't give any evidence they find of a global deluge to the Bible, they would say it was something else because they think that the Bible is myth.

All of that, as discussed before, is a stretched interpretation ... the Genesis account says "days" (not weeks, months, years or any other period) and there is no rational reason outside of wishful thinking to assume that the writers of it meant anything else but days. If the bible really was a God's word you'd have thought it would have been a lot more careful about the way such important information was transmitted.

What interests me is that you want me to answer your question without using scripture because you wouldn't consider that as 'evidence.' I would like you to tell me if primitive people around the earth who have had discoveries of paintings on cave walls hunted buffalo without using their paintings as evidence.

The bible is evidence, what it isn't is validatable evidence ... in other words it is correct to consider the bible a historic source, it is not correct to consider it a literal history. It has value, just not the true value some wingnuts think it has.

I was giving instruction. I see political affiliation or tendency as pretty much the same. I have some pretty weird ideas about what religion is, apparently, and should have learned to keep them to myself. It tends to cause a great deal of distraction.

Political? Atheists can be fascist, communist, liberal, right-wing, left wing etc. etc. in addition to supporting all kinds of ideologies ... how on earth would you form such a group into a single political movement?

Religion to me is organized gatherings to one unified and common purpose. It doesn't have to have a deity.

You see there's this thing called language OK? It has words, phrases and so on and the general idea is that it facilitates this thing called "communication" ... are you with me so far? Now communication is a good thing but generally speaking only works if the language that communicators use is the same or can be understood so if you say something is blue and I say it's red then (if you assume other stuff like that) we're not going to get very far when we communicate are we? A religion is not a common interest group (though it can encapsulate common interests) it has a number of definable characteristics that atheism utterly lacks.

Religious thought is different. It is simply a strict set of beliefs adhered to. Everyone is religious.

Atheism isn't a set of beliefs, it's a label defining people who reject some specific theistic claims namely those of the existence of a god or gods.

Kyu