Yes, Atheism is a Religion

[Thumpalumpacus]

I simply don't see any evidence for any god and don't extend faith to such fanciful claims.

Simply put, this is the assertion I want to see substantiated.

Lol, let me get this straight -- you want me to show you evidence of no evidence?

I suggest you think about what you're asking before pressing the "submit post" key ... not afterwards, as you surely will be doing now.

[KevinM1]

Simply put, this is the assertion I want to see substantiated.

Lol, let me get this straight -- you want me to show you evidence of no evidence?

I suggest you think about what you're asking before pressing the "submit post" key ... not afterwards, as you surely will be doing now.

I honestly think Delicate is demanding you provide the rationale behind not accepting every theistic argument for the existence of a god.

Nuts, I know.

[Whateverist]

Technically that only matters if you want the twat to have a high opinion of you.

[Cyberman]

I honestly think Delicate is demanding you provide the rationale behind not accepting every theistic argument for the existence of a god.

How about "because I'm not two years old"? That would sort of sum it up.

[Silver]

Did Delicate return or did someone Necro?

[Thumpalumpacus]

Lol, let me get this straight -- you want me to show you evidence of no evidence?

I suggest you think about what you're asking before pressing the "submit post" key ... not afterwards, as you surely will be doing now.

I honestly think Delicate is demanding you provide the rationale behind not accepting every theistic argument for the existence of a god.

Nuts, I know.

I wonder if he'll accept "but Pa, my bullshit detector was going nuts"?

[Cato]

I most certainly did not poison the well. You insisting that I did betrays yet another topic you know fuck all about. If I had said Plantinga is full of shit because he wears his underwear backwards or snorts ground pepper, that would be poisoning the well. Identifying his well known position as an ID supporter is very much germane to the conversation. In addition I told you that it was his penchant for throwing out well worn and well refuted arguments that was at issue.

These arguments are concocted with god in mind and do nothing more than create a placeholder to solve non-existent problems. WLC and Plantinga gleefully fill the placeholder with their notion of god. The primary reason these arguments fail is because the placeholder is always characterized with certain attributes, attributes already arbitrarily assigned to god so many of these arguments are simply begging the question. God can only be presumed to have said attributes because there is no observation of god and therefore no observation of god possessing said attributes.

It's a ruse.

Apparently you don't even know what fallacies mean.

Not to mention Plantinga being an ID supporter has no bearing on what he says in the paper.

Not to mention Plantinga is not an ID supporter:

Like any Christian (and indeed any theist), I believe that the world has been created by God, and hence “intelligently designed.” The hallmark of intelligent design, however, is the claim that this can be shown scientifically; I’m dubious about that.

Not to mention bald assertions without substantiation are worthless. 

It didn't take long to find where you poached your quote without attribution (Wiki). Curious, why did you neglect to omit the preceding paragraphs?

In the past, Plantinga has lent support to the intelligent design movement.[51] He was a member of the 'Ad Hoc Origins Committee' that supported Philip E. Johnson's 1991 book Darwin on Trial against palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould's high-profile scathing review in Scientific American in 1992.[52][53] Plantinga also provided a back-cover endorsement of Johnson's book.[54] He was a Fellow of the (now moribund) pro-intelligent design International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design,[55] and has presented at a number of intelligent design conferences.[56]

In a March 2010 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, philosopher of science Michael Ruse labeled Plantinga as an "open enthusiast of intelligent design".[57] In a letter to the editor, Plantinga made the following response:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Plantinga

The more curious omission was the continuation of Plantinga's rebuttal in which he is clearly adopts the ID position of accepting evolution, but claiming it is divinely guided:

...As far as I can see, God certainly could have used Darwinian processes to create the living world and direct it as he wanted to go; hence evolution as such does not imply that there is no direction in the history of life. What does have that implication is not evolutionary theory itself, but unguided evolution, the idea that neither God nor any other person has taken a hand in guiding, directing or orchestrating the course of evolution. But the scientific theory of evolution, sensibly enough, says nothing one way or the other about divine guidance. It doesn't say that evolution is divinely guided; it also doesn't say that it isn't. Like almost any theist, I reject unguided evolution; but the contemporary scientific theory of evolution just as such—apart from philosophical or theological add-ons—doesn't say that evolution is unguided. Like science in general, it makes no pronouncements on the existence or activity of God.

Here's an article penned by Plantinga himself criticizing the decision in the Dover trial; i.e., supporting ID:
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/902/

Yet again, you are simply wrong; although, you have seemingly added insufferably disingenuous to your CV.

[Joods]

Dover Area School District? As in the one that made headlines a few years back for trying to incorporate ID in it's curriculum? I believe that was in Pennsylvania. If so, I can drive to that school district in thirty minutes. Interesting that that area of the world made it to these threads.

Sorry about the derail. I just found it interesting to see an area that close to where I am made it here.

[Esquilax]

As you know the enormous quantities of unsubstantial garbage atheists post make responding uninteresting. But for substantial posts, why not?

So you begin by acknowledging that you rarely respond, and then you immediately turn around and say that my response lacks substance, as though no responses somehow contains more substance?

The basis of what? What you believe as I correctly described, right? Let's get that out in the open and agreed on first, before I systematically refute your feeble defense for your beliefs.

The basis for my lack of belief in god, as distinct from your "god does not exist," strawman, or your assertion that I believe nobody could have a rational basis for believing in god. See, unlike you, I don't like to make sweeping blanket statements backed only with empty grandstanding; I fully recognize that I can only speak for myself and the things within my sphere of experience. It's possible for someone to rationally believe in god... they'd just have to do it on the basis of an entirely new suite of theistic evidence, since all the evidence and arguments for god that I've been exposed to fail completely. It's not that nobody can rationally believe in god, just that thus far, everybody has failed to do so.

This all, by the way, goes to my central point, which is that it's both hugely presumptuous and rife with inaccuracies for you to begin by telling us what we believe, rather than asking and then building your case based on that, rather than on your preconceived notions. It reeks of painting bullseyes around bullet holes, this idea that you can just construct an argument about why we're wrong without needing any input from us.

Everything else you've posted is equally pointless. You (mistakenly) "know" I've never met atheists...how exactly? Is this another example of atheism's blind faith without evidence?

Do you honestly not see an appreciable difference between the statements "atheists believe," and "the atheists I know believe"? Because you were attempting to make the former case, apparently while appealing to the latter as evidence. But you've certainly never met me, and I'll hazard a guess that you've not met the majority of the atheists here, either. You don't exactly seem interested in ascertaining what we believe before you decide what we believe, anyway. If your whole point was that all the atheists you know work this way, then I'm happy to be excluded from that group, as would all of the atheists here, I imagine, which leaves you without an applicable case to be made here, making this entire thread an irrelevant, pointless ramble.

But then, you never did specify you were only talking about the atheists you know, did you? Instead, you repeatedly use terminology that indicates you were discussing atheists as a whole, which is where the whole thing falls apart. Because you don't know the contents of my mind, and you don't know the contents of the minds of any atheists you haven't met, and yet you feel confident in speaking for them anyway. That is exactly why I asked the question: how did you determine what the beliefs are of atheists you've never met, which I think we can safely say is most of them? Appealing to atheists you've never met doesn't answer that question, and since you didn't specify that you were just talking about those atheists you know, it would have been blind faith for me to assume so, not for me to take your words at face value.

So which is it? Are you only talking about atheists personally known to you, excluding us all from your argument and rendering your entire thread pointless? Or are you talking about us all, as your language would indicate, meaning that my objection still applies?

Take your response that "wouldn't that make everything a religion, under your logic?"

No it wouldn't because not everything is an ultimate concern. Perhaps more precisely you mean to say that everyone has a religion.  That would make more sense. And I think that might be true. So what? It makes more sense than excluding people who worship nature as not being religious because they lack supernatural elements in their beliefs. Wouldn't you agree?

I already accept that there are religions without supernatural elements to them. But they do have other criteria that atheism does not share, like leader figures, dogma, worship of something or other, rituals, designated places of worship, and so on. There's a lot more to religion than just whether or not its adherents possess an ultimate concern, and the definition you're cultivating here is so broad as to be meaningless.

Uh-huh. Sure you would. There's no way in hell you'd move goalposts to dodge belief in God.

If you're just going to make an assumption about what I'd do, without ever seeing me do it, then you're just engaging in fantasy. I get that you prefer that I be this cartoon atheist for whom no amount of evidence will ever be enough, but all you're doing here is making shit up about me, based on nothing, to reinforce the conclusion you'd already decided on before we ever spoke. I don't need to refute the things you imagine to be true about me.

This is my gullible face, so I can believe the charade. ;

Sarcasm and passive aggressive intimations about my character, a person whom you've never met, I'd remind you, don't exactly make for a good counter-argument.

But you miss the point here. The point is that being an atheist bars you from believing certain things while you are an atheist. This is exactly what religions do.

Are you serious? That's a problem with the language, not with the people. By definition, an atheist can't believe in a god, but that's just because the word means "doesn't believe in a god." That says nothing at all about the mindset of the person, and if all you want to do is play word games then you're hardly saying anything at all, are you? You're just showing off how elastic you can make language.

PS- Don't mistake the numbskulls cheering for your post for its quality. A monkey on a typewriter would get atheists cheering if it was wearing a fedora and a neckbeard.

Insults are not arguments.

Seriously unimpressed with your response. I suggest you start smaller. Lay out what it is you believe about whether there can be someone in existence today with a rational basis for believing in God. 

Neither is grandstanding.

[Reforged]

Atheism isn't a life style or a set of beliefs. It is the simple assertion that there is no God based on the complete lack of evidence that has ever been produced as well as the various contradictions between the world around us and the world claimed.
Like a man attempting to mud wrestle himself all you have achieved is a messy spectacle easily cleaned up with a mop and bucket.
You bore me.