(January 2, 2012 at 1:31 am)chipan Wrote: agreed atheists have no religious doctrine or beliefs morally (unless you count humanism) but how can you reject someone you don't think exists? and if you don't think he exists then that is a statement of your spiritual beliefs not science.
I'm just going to be quick to point out that atheists have their own morals. We are not without a moral center.
How can I reject someone I don't believe exists?
Huh? Your question is phrased in a confusing manner.
I reject the tenets of the christian faith because the claims made by those who hold those tenets to have not met their burdon of proof.
IE they claim in an all-knowing creator, the divinity and sacrifice of Jesus, and the truth of the bible, god, jesus, the holy spirit, and so forth but since those claims haven't been proven, then I soundly reject those claims for that reason.
As such, stating "I don't belive that god exists" is not a positive claim - it is a wholly reactionary claim to the claim that there is a god and he has a son and he died for my sins.
It's a positive statement because it is a conclusion but it is not a positive claim.
Therefore, atheism is not a belief, spiritual or otherwise.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
