Atheism is the absence of reason..

[downbeatplumb]

[Esquilax]

And dependent on an existing mind and minds are just the output of physical processes in the brain. So the thoughts can indeed be material.

Let me know when one of my thoughts whacks you in the head.

If I monitored your brain to map the specific configuration of chemicals of a given thought and replicated them once I removed your brain, in a very real sense I could indeed slap someone in the face with the physical components that your thoughts represent. Did you just think there wouldn't be an answer to such a flippant, dismissive answer?

I can't whack you in the head with a projection on a movie screen either. Doesn't mean that the projection is immaterial, just that the nature of the physical properties that make it up precludes overt physical violence with it, on a scale that we could perceive. Projected images are composed of light, even if I can't slap you with them. Thoughts are composed of neurochemistry, in exactly the same way.

[robvalue]

Sure, the laws of logic exist in the form of memory in the brain. They don't exist external to anyone's brain. I would say the same of god, there's no evidence it's anything other than a concept. The way everyone interprets god differently and the way god seems to agree with everyone while they disagree with each other gives weight to this idea.

[Iroscato]

Can someone please explain to me why the majority of atheists give this the benefit of the doubt, namely that God certainly doesn't exist? It seems a bit dogmatic.

Well, I for one am atheist, but I cannot 100% definitively prove there isn't a god who created everything. I'm pretty bloody close to sure (even more so about one that controls everything, has a cosmic plan, can hear the thoughts of every living thing in the universe and will welcome you into his arms when you die (as long as you were a good little christian/muslim/jewish/mormon/etc soldier)), but I cannot be 100%, as no method available to us today can actually disprove the existence of God.

[Excited Penguin]

You're very welcome!

I hope you stick around, and good luck drumming some sense into that guy

I don't think drumming sense into them always works. People are different. Some need a kind of emotional assurance to leave their toxic faith. Atheists can sometimes be robotic like that - we tend to beat them over the head with logic and expect wonderful results every single time. How many times has that worked? Has any atheist ever released a religios person from his mental ilness(figuratively speaking) by talking to them as he would talk to himself?

We need to take a stronger stance. We need to say we know for a fact that religion is bullshit. We are only 11% convinced atheists right now [source:Demographics of Atheism] This number needs to be universal in scope, not representing a minority. I'm amazed we've made it this far into the 21st century with this kind of global mania still alive and well in the 3rd millennium.

My position is, it's not about anything else anymore. It's about survival itself. It's about unimaginable possibilities in a fully rational world. It's about a total eradication of suffering and violence through massive education and ideologically oriented enhancement and updating.

[Iroscato]

That smacks of arrogance, EP - the kind of arrogance that's one of the reasons I dislike religion so much, but expressed in the other way. Religion IS declining, and it's a trend that will most likely continue. We have made remarkable progress - 150 years ago, publishing a book that claimed animals evolved from baser forms, and humans shared ancestry with apes was absolutely scandalous - and that was in Britain, the most economically powerful and one of the most socially advanced countries in the world at the time. The zeitgeist has shifted, and will keep shifting.
Too much change too fast can cause all manner of problems, unfortunately these things can only be dealt with generation by generation.

[Whateverist]

You might do better to concede the point if not the argument. Indeed atheism is the lack of reason, more specifically, a reason to believe in gods.

[LastPoet]

The smartest guy in the room is an idiot. We do not need to cram disbelief in gods, we only need them to think more. To analise their beliefs. Lying isn't going anywhere and solipsism proves you wrong. I can be a product of your imagination, something only here to ride your ass EP. If anything, I want people to arrive at atheism for a reason, not by force, physical or argumentative. This is the greatest flaw of anti-theists, they forget to attack the reasoning for the satisfaction of point and laugh. Attack the belief, not the believer. Only humans as far as I know, can undertand your words

[I_am_not_mafia]

How I can have a belief or even a strong disbelief in something which people cannot even define?

People ask "do you believe in God?". They never specify what exactly a god is.

But if you look at the few things that they do implicitly agree on such existing outside of creation / time and space or omniscience/omnipotence/omnipresence then these are meaningless concepts. It's like asking do you believe True = False?

Add to that other assumptions, such as thought and work being performed without the existence of matter, and violation of the laws of thermodynamics, these are things that have never once been observed and which cannot be true otherwise modern society would not exist.

Furthermore, we have plausible, falsifiable and testable explanations for everything that has formed since the Big Bang which means that the gap for God to exist in is so small that a god would be irrelevant.

I think that's reason enough to say that we know that God does not exist. Anything else is just being pedantic.

[Aoi Magi]

How the heck am I to disprove god when there is no clear or coherent description of one to begin with? I can only take a stance on the claims and definitions presented before me...

For example, in your own case EP, what am I to say to a pantheist who is just labeling the universe as god without any actual reason or additional attributes to differentiate between the two, and hiding behind the concept that since the universe exists, his meaningless re-labeling must be valid too.