RE: The most important reason anyone is a atheist
October 9, 2013 at 10:22 am
(This post was last modified: October 9, 2013 at 10:24 am by Brian37.)
(October 9, 2013 at 1:12 am)Lemonvariable72 Wrote:(October 8, 2013 at 4:43 pm)John V Wrote: Hold on there, cowboy. The fact that religion is widespread across time and cultures shows that it meets the evidential standard determined by convention or community. This definition goes against your position.
That is called argument ad populum and is a logical fallacy, so you begin your argument based on a fallacy. Furthermore religion varies wildly across time and places, and there are atheistic religions that predate Christianity and were very widespread, in fact Buddhism and communism still are.
Also the one religion stance that is the oldest and appears in every culture is atheism.
In fact here is a list of atheistic schools of thought from many cultures that predate Christianity and in some cases monotheism
Buddhism
Cārvāka
The Sophists
Epicurean-ism
Taoism
Pythagoreans
Confucianism
Primitive atheism (such as recorded in "don't sleep there are snakes" by Daniel Everett.
Sorry, those are superstitions too. Not having an invisible friend to pray to does not mean their rituals or clubs are free from their own bullshit.
Nothing those eastern religions have constitutes them inventing human morality or inventing biological evolution.
The only thing I agree with is that they are older. "I was here first" does not mean they had any better an understanding of modern science than any other bullshit club.
Evolution was around even before these eastern religions. And they as well have had and still have their sectarian beefs centered around the stupid idea that "I am special because of my religion". If the world were all Buddhist, or Taoist, you'd still have human division. If those religions suddenly were given up on, you'd still have evolution and people would still fuck and make babies.
There is nothing special about religion, none of them.
Epicurus was about the only one on that list who made the best guess, but even then he had no clue how right he was. He had no way of knowing.