Daystar

[Daystar]

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

From what I understand most of the atheists here were disillusioned believers who became atheists.

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 organizing, we try very hard to do it but it never really works and because of that we can't form a culture or community.

When at first you don't succeed ... L. Ron Hubbard would have said. As you know he was hardly insane, he was a science fiction writer who just thought it would be interesting to test his theory that you could form a religion with an obscure god for the sake of making money. I think that you have a great deal more in common than you think, you just have too many hang ups about religion. Organize yourselves to the common goal. Education, politics and association. You don't have to be intellectual clones but there is more there then that you don't believe in God. Even I could see that. I am somewhat good at organizing and the most important thing that I could advise is to forget about God. You people think more about God than most Xians I know. There is more to you than that. Set it aside, let it go. Your main goal would be to promote the atheistic society. Most people think there is a god only in a very vague sense. A simple enough thing to deal with.

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.

I am very much against teaching creation for that same reason for teaching evolution. Not science. I know everyone here believes evolution is science, the distinction is that evolution as well as creation can't say for sure how we got here or what happened between here and now. They both can only say this "might have happened this way." The only real issue is that both via for their own interpretation to be dictated. Both want nothing more than to promote their own world view. Xians want God representin' and Evolutionists want science representin'. God should be taught in the home and not in the school and science, in this case the possible applications that evolution might have in (as Luke or Adrian, I can't remember which, pointed out) medicine etc. can be taught without teaching evolution.

Personally I don't think this is a terribly important issue because most of what they teach in school here in America is bullshit anyway and the kids forget everything within hours after testing.

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.

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

My world view ... I taught myself to read before I ever went to school, my world view was formulated by my atheistic family and friends who were full of shit. By the time I was 6 years old I realized that nearly everything they told me was bullshit. Most of it a political, traditional and cultural vortex - nonsense. My homosexuality, democracy, and social prejudice. I did great in school up to a point because it didn't take much to figure out what they wanted to hear. I was raped by a Catholic boy of good caricature who only had to confess and be forgiven by someone else. All the good sons were binge drinking and doing drugs when I wasn't and they were all told to stay away from be because their ignorant parents thought I was the one doing that shit. By the time I was in seventh grade I was bored with school. I do regret that I didn't learn math and grammar as well as I could have, but other than that I have no regrets. My sister graduated from college and has much more difficulty than I do with math and grammar. When I studied with the JWs it was school all over again. My personal studies dwarfed their theocratic ministry school and they bored me.

I think education can be a wonderful and very important thing, but I don't think it is done very well when sold or granted to the public without consideration for specific application. Someone who wants to work in a factory doesn't need to educate himself as a rocket scientist or brain surgeon.

In America, education is like a new car, a status symbol almost otherwise completely void of purpose for 90% of the people. Extra curricular amenities are for more important than learning something. You do your time, get your paper and you are free. I have seen people warned that they wont find work without a college education only to supervise those who did buy it four years later.

In my line of work (I am retired now) I came in contact with many educated and uneducated people and came to rightfully expect that the educated ones were intellectually inferior. To be frank, dumb as hell.

I have talked to secular professors on a casual basis and I can understand how my opinions could have formulated, and I have talked to "Bible scholars" whose abilities are dwarfed by young JW kids. It is all bullshit. If I had to sum up the abilities of man in a noble fashion I would recite King Solomon's Ecclesiastes. With a more simple and to the point approach I would simply say "Bullshit."

My last sentence meant that religion has always and still is used as a tool through the misapplication of the Bible but it is loosing its effect.

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

Well, yeah, but only through political and social power. All the more reason for Atheists to organize.

"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

I hate that smug little prick. The same could be said for religion. It is more about politics than either. They (science and religion) are tools for political means.

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.

You made two myopic statements there that are incorrect.

If I read you a quote from someone in the 1920's that calls someone else "gay" you have the sense to know that that word meant something different than it does today. To read that quote knowing that it is from a time when that word had a different meaning while interjecting the modern day usage is just stupid. To do it with a word that was translated from the ancient Hebrew into at the worst, old English and at the best uninformed modern English is even more stupid. It is, dare I say, "stupider." I know that the term "scholar" and "Bible" don't jive in Atheistic terminology but there is no reason why that should continue as such. If atheists didn't fuck it up so bad I wouldn't be here talking with you now. I could never understand why Atheists insist upon being nothing more than the opposite side of the same coin as Xianity when it comes to knowing the Bible. Learn it or shut up about it would be my advise to both.

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.

It is the only literal history of that which you deny, and you are grossly ignorant of it. If that doesn't speak volumes to your 'religious' position I don't know what does. Your obvious downfall is a complete inability or unwillingness to reconcile that with your political position.

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?

Set the ideologies aside, much like religion has. What would be your political agenda?

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.

Religion has certain benefits and amenities and very little actual definition. The atheist pigeonholes religion by definition. Be a religion with political interests. Have you ever heard of the German Turnverein? The Massai of East Africa? Learn from them.

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.

Which, in my opinion is just stupid, but that is beside the point. I think that the language barrier would be a simple thing to deal with. You people are not completely stupid when you remove god from your minds.