Looking for an intelligent, rational discussion re atheism

[Fred]

The guy spends a Saturday night in a cafe talking about this shit instead of trying to get laid?

Religion will really fuck you up.

Heh. Ain't it tragic? Waiting to die is kinda like that. Only worse. So it goes, huh?

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What about Brahman? The Upanishads postulate Brahman as an "everything" answer, which is precisely why it is a "nothing" answer. The people who put forward these theories (and that's what they were) were deeply and profoundly ignorant of the world around them by any standard of today. Even within Hinduism atheism is one of the oldest schools of thought. Nastikas and Cavarka. Actually, (and I just wrote something about this..lol) a Hindu "brahmin" is the first person in history on record as an atheist. Brahman is an ambiguous word isn't it, it either means the ultimate spirit, or a priest (rendered as brahmin). It's amusing, because Cavarka thought the "divinity" and "priests" were one in the same, IE, that it was a load of shit designed to feed priests.

Hinduism FTW!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charvaka
(check out those "core beliefs")

I'm not clear what you mean by an "everything" answer, so maybe you could elaborate. As to Brahmin and Brahman being the same, that hasn't been my understanding of it, but I'm not a linguist, so I don't know.

The notion that the rishis were profoundly ignorant about the world around them is akin to the "they were just a bunch of stupid goatherders" line tossed out so often, but there ya go. Anyone who can read Indian philosophy and proclaim those folks ignorant of the world around them has a different yardstick than I do, so it should be interesting to see how you might back that one up. Anyway, it's time to move this discussion out of the intro section, so I will start a thread elsewhere and we can continue there if you wish.