(June 11, 2015 at 7:31 pm)comet Wrote: religion thrives where there is no hope. Atheism doesn't offer hope.
True, but this assumes that false hope is a good thing. It can be beneficial to have something to cling to under certain circumstances. But in general I think it's bad to place your hopes on something that cannot fulfill them. Atheism doesn't offer hope because it cannot, and it shouldn't. Waiting for a non-existent deity to grant your wishes is far less effective than working to get the things you want with your own efforts. I don't rely on either god or atheism to accomplish the goals I set for myself; that's what I'm here for.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
