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RE: Systematically Dismantling Atheism
November 24, 2014 at 10:39 pm
She's got a thing about poultry, I think.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
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RE: Systematically Dismantling Atheism
November 25, 2014 at 7:14 am
(November 24, 2014 at 6:57 pm)Asmodee Wrote: I can see I'll have to get used to your personality.
That's not the first time Rhythm's heard that line. It might be the first time it wasn't because he was pointing a shotgun at someone, though!
"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
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RE: Systematically Dismantling Atheism
November 25, 2014 at 9:08 am
(This post was last modified: November 25, 2014 at 9:09 am by Whateverist.)
I consider myself agnostic regarding the existence of gods for reasons similar to Asmodee. I find the definition of gods to be so inadequate as to allow for something inconsequential whose existence I would have no trouble conceding. I've even manufactured such a version myself. Of course I don't actually think of my version as a 'god' since that word adds nothing usefully descriptive. But when I talk to someone who seems intelligent and thoughtful yet remains enraptured with god belief I like to suppose it is my version of 'god' which animates their belief. They have merely dressed it up to fit in with some traditional folklore. No harm in that really, as long as they don't go imposing it on others. Of course some versions of god, like that of fundamentalist Christianity are badly divorced from what we know of the world and ourselves. Those who proclaim certainty in such a god are at least a little deranged.