Hmm, this was an interesting bit:

"A Marxist must be a materialist, i. e., an enemy of religion, but a dialectical materialist, i. e., one who treats the struggle against religion not in an abstract way, not on the basis of remote, purely theoretical, never varying preaching, but in a concrete way, on the basis of the class struggle which is going on in practice and is educating the masses more and better than anything else could."

Let's have some more education; that's the way to rid the world of these charlatans.

Michael, the fact that the USSR was an atheist regime is beyond doubt, and I agree with you when you say that we have to recognize the errors of the past "as we are the ones who can help prevent them from ever occurring again". But I think you are making an over-generalization in this case.

Most (if not all) of the atheists on this board are non-believers for reasons that are completely different from those of a Leninist/Stalinist. A Soviet Communist had to accept the dogmatic doctrine of the party, even in matters of science, which (I guess you know, since I get you are a Biologist) led to disastrous results pretty much everywhere, though an interesting example is the Lysenko case.

Now, I think it's very clear that the only thing in common between a modern day Western atheist and a Soviet is well... the lack of belief in gods. But it's not being an unbeliever that counts; for instance, to me being an atheist means being capable of thinking critically and being open-minded about other people's opinions. "Atheist" is as broad a category as "Theist". I wouldn't blame, say, a Buddhist, for the evils of Islam, or an Episcopalian for the evils of the Inquisition. But that's what I get when you write about "Atheist ideology": you blame the whole category for the wrongdoings of a bunch of greedy, totalitarian nutjobs.

@ your op Brian, fellow Abba fan: you're saying your mind is closed and you're certain that you can never be convinced and that there is nothing that you do not know (paraphrasing). This isn't the statement an open minded person would ever make. If your expecting respect from a theist, you ought to grant them the same grace that you would wish to be granted to you. I really want to understand how someone can logically support their atheist position. I'll keep on trying to understand it, if only to make sure that my own conclusions are correct. I'm angry at injustice too. We should all be. I'm angry at misplaced judgement such as yours.

NO my mind is not closed. I simply do not live in the past. You don't use kaleidoscopes when you have telescopes. It really is ok to throw bad claims into the trash can. If you cling to those bad claims you preclude yourself from progressing to possible new knowledge.

I think you do Brian. You condemn an idea with no good reason, is my opinion. I don't condemn you though. I think there's always a chance that you might see reason. You grant your opponents no such opportunity.

(September 8, 2014 at 3:02 am)fr0d0 Wrote: I think you do Brian. You condemn an idea with no good reason, is my opinion. I don't condemn you though. I think there's always a chance that you might see reason. You grant your opponents no such opportunity.

I condemn ALL god claims because science says cognition does not occur outside biological evolution. I condemn all god claims because we have plenty of evidence that humans make them up. I condemn all god claims because evolution produces flawed perceptions humans mistake as being real.

No i do not grant them such opportunity anymore there is a debate about the shape of the planet. We do not debate Thor making lightening. We do not debate Poseidon being the cause of hurricanes.

Do not expect me to use wishful thinking and kaleidoscope thinking when we have much better tools to measure the nature of reality.

Human psychology explains why people come to false conclusions. Just like you accept that the Egyptians falsely believed in their polytheistic gods. You'd like to believe you are not making the same mistake in your perceptions, but the truth is you are.

You are the one being closed minded and preventing yourself from using real tools of observation. Gap filling with religion and gods and the super natural is hardly new to our species.

There is nothing wrong at all accepting that "all this" not only does not need a god, on top of that there is no evidence for one. Religion did not get us to the moon, or create the computer you are responding to me with. Science did that.

Science in the future will give us answers to what we do not know now. Religion however, will do what it always does, adapt through marketing not facts to back up their claims.

Now I am being completely fair to you because I make the same challenge to you that I do of anyone with any type of super natural or god claim. Get your claims to the patent office and win a Nobel Prize then you'll have something everyone can use. But it is not my job to do your homework for you.

Science is wonderful, and there's nothing at all in my belief system that challenges it or says anything different. You seem to want a scientific religion to satisfy your religion hole. All religious ideas to me are anything but scientific in nature. I've just come back from watching the film "Lucy". It reminded me of a Kubrick epic. Exploring the idea of untapped human potential. Ultimate potential is apparently a timeless and omnipotent state. Who knew. People have drawn the same conclusion to the problem for thousands of years. Science hasn't trumped that. Science just give us a different language to express it. The expression didn't get better, just updated.

If you revised your statement to say that gaps in knowledge don't equal God, I'd completely agree with you. To say that you include me and everyone who believe as I do in your generalisation that I/ we believe in something in the realms of the scientific method when we describe God, then I'd say that you're well off the mark.

Big Brian, big man.

He picks on all the retards, not just the gingers.

(September 8, 2014 at 12:29 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: Science is wonderful, and there's nothing at all in my belief system that challenges it or says anything different. You seem to want a scientific religion to satisfy your religion hole. All religious ideas to me are anything but scientific in nature. I've just come back from watching the film "Lucy". It reminded me of a Kubrick epic. Exploring the idea of untapped human potential. Ultimate potential is apparently a timeless and omnipotent state. Who knew. People have drawn the same conclusion to the problem for thousands of years. Science hasn't trumped that. Science just give us a different language to express it. The expression didn't get better, just updated.

If you revised your statement to say that gaps in knowledge don't equal God, I'd completely agree with you. To say that you include me and everyone who believe as I do in your generalisation that I/ we believe in something in the realms of the scientific method when we describe God, then I'd say that you're well off the mark.

You do not have a "belief system". You have a personal bias to a god with absolutely NO evidence of this claimed god.

If your holy book matched science you'd be able to use it to confirm all the fantastic claims in that book and even the concept of the god itself. You are fine with science up and util it conflicts with what you want to be true.

That book magically pops adult men out of dirt, magically pops adult women of a man's ribs. It treats the sun and moon as separate sources of light. It has stories about talking snakes and talking bushes and unicorns. The bible has more in common with Hobbits, Harry Potter and Dungeons and Dragons, than it does with science.

Don't sit there and say you accept science. You don't accept all of it. You stop when it challenges your god claim. There is no "Thor theory" of lightening in science either.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAViJCFecHw