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So they started atheist crusades? They sent out inquisitors specifically to root out non-atheists? Is a government limiting religions deemed a threat any different than us rooting out the Taliban or religions we deem "cultist" ? Just because those who are limiting religions happen to be atheist doesn't mean that it's an atheist action. Especially when the same actions are taken regardless of faith across the world and history.
Have there been anti-religious movements? sure; definitely. But pinning anti-religion actions on all of atheism is no different than pinning the acts of Islam on all of theism. You don't see many atheists blaming, say, Catholicism for the actions of the Taliban (outside of the "fedora" make-fun-of-atheists-by-exaggerating-it crowd, that is)... Also, please stop throwing the word "terrorist" around. The people you mention definitely do not qualify as "terrorists." You disagreeing with their actions doesn't meet the definition.

The problem with this line of argument is it isn't actually an argument applying to mainstream theism.

That position is that God has always existed, so analysis of the probability of him "coming into existence" is inapplicable.

One might make an argument against the notion of something "always existing", but that would be a much different argument which, in addition, would also equally apply to the Cyclic Universe and Steady State Universe models well-accepted by astrophysics in terms of the fundamental concept's viability.

As for comparision with the probability of a "hot spot", the main argument would be regarding not the probability of something arising spontaneously with energy, but rather the probability that of all possible permutations of physical laws, we would, on (as far as we have evidence for) the first and only try, produce intelligent life rather than something akin to "spacetime goo".

Again, you're stuck on the idea that theism and gnosticism are marks along the same scale.

They describe two different things. Belief in the existence of a deity or deities, and the belief in your ability to know about the nature of deity or deities. Two different things. Semi-independent variables. Role for character creation.

atheism is specifically the belief that no deities exist

No. It's the absence of belief that deities exist. It may extend to active disbelief, but it isn't required. Someone who's never heard of the concept of god(s) is an atheist.

Agnosticism is the absence of the belief that knowledge of god(s) is possible. The two terms are referring to different things. Ie, there is not a scale running Atheist < Agnostic < Believer < Gnostic; gnosticism and theism are not on the same scale.

So an agnostic can believe there "must be something, some Being, responsible for it all, a Prime agent" and is therefore weakly theistic, even though they disclaim any possibility of religion knowing anything about the Prime Being. Or they can believe that "no one can know", but they happen to not believe there "must be something", so they are a simple atheist. They accept the possibility that there might be "something", but they don't believe in it currently, so they are an atheist.

Many political atheists are what's called "strong atheists" or even "anti-theists". That's an active disbelief in the possibility of god(s).

Put like that and *all* religions answer the causation question perfectly. It *is* circular reasoning when someone is unwilling to believe in a Universe that "just came into existance with no purpose, no cause, no rhyme or reason" and yet accept that same explanation when applied to the Creator of that same Universe. I mean, where did *he* come from? Who created *him*? *Why* does he exist in the first place? That's what I meant with adding another layer to the circular reasoning: you go right around and wind back where you started -- "something is because it is, without any need for a reason, a cause".

As for all religions that do have origins stories, the problem is still there, it's just disguised by all the colorfulness of the mythology. Ancient Greeks had a very complex theism, but even Zeus was the son of a Titan, Cronus, who in his stead was the son of Gaia (the earth) and Uranus (the sky, sort of -- and Uranus was also, sort of, both husband *and* son of Gaia so you see how this muddles it up?). At the root of it all, if you can find someone who can even weave the narrative that far, you will find a point where stuff was just pulled out of the proverbial divine buttocks taking you all the way back to "it is because it is/we have no frakkin' clue".

I'm also reminded of the story behind why Terry Pratchett chose to have the Discworld be carried through space on the back of a giant space turtle.. It was a nod to some actual real world belief that the Earth trudged through space atop a giant turtle. When the oldest elder was asked what that turtle stood upon she supposedly eventually replied "It's turtles all the way down".

That is the essence of circular reasoning (although with religion or mysticism in general, there's also usually a good dose of cognitive dissonance in the mix).

Though I am neither Catholic nor do I want to defend the Inquisition in any way, it is not clear that atheism per se was much of a target. The Inquisition was apparently much more interested in suppressing -other forms of theism-, than direct non-belief.

In fact, when it did happen, people making anti-religion statements were typically accused as "Protestants"!

Most of them were in no sense Protestants...Irreligious sentiments, drunken mockery, anticlerical expressions, were all captiously classified by the inquisitors (or by those who denounced the cases) as 'Lutheran.'...

If looked at from the perspective of the Inquisition's political objectives rather than theological ones, this makes sense--a competing political party is a much more "dangerous" thing in all forms of politics than those not participating.

Your "get murdered" characterization is a bit of an oversimplification as well, there was opportunity to recant and only a very small percentage of times were the "crimes" considered to be worthy of the death penalty in the first place, but I'll leave that aside...

So far as I can tell he has never managed to []

That's an interesting choice of words. If he really was more tolerant, you would say "he doesn't want to". But you didn't, because he isn't. He wants to abolish all theism and impose atheism, he has said as much many times, he takes advantage of the tolerance of others in order to advance his agenda, and he can get away with it because he doesn't dare go where there is true, "we will behead you" intolerance. And that was the point.

The term "atheist" is embedded in a language framework that considers theism normative and thus "a"theism as aberrant. (Theism: noun: belief in the existence of a god or gods, esp. belief in one god as creator of the universe, intervening in it and sustaining a personal relation to his creatures.)

I reject this entire language framework, and its framing of theism (belief in god) as normative.

I would prefer to think of myself as someone aspiring to be a rational, appropriately skeptical realist.
While I agree with a right to freedom of thought, I take a dim view of the prevailing "irrational supernaturalist" (theist) mindset.

Followers in organized "irrational supernaturalist" religions should wake up and realize that the top leaders in their hierarchies don't actually believe in god. They believe that maintaining the pretense is a great way to maintain inordinate amounts of social and economic power. These leaders, if intelligent, are clearly manipulative cynics of the highest order.

Even atheism is faith. Oh yes it is. You can't prove or disprove the existence of deities and the various frameworks created around them. It isn't falsifiable. An atheist is not inherently correct even when you only apply well reasoned logic to it. It's the choice to only make decisions upon that which is falsifiable . That is a matter of faith that nothing else is operating that can affect your conclusion.

Atheism is falsifiable, a God merely needs to present him/herself (Or a significantly witnessed old school miracle or magic).
Theism is not practicably falsifiable, an omnipotent all powerful but shy super being that you meet (and are judged by) only after death is not a measurable thing

Occam was theist. As the best possible implementor of correct application of Occam's Razor, theism was his conclusion.

And it might have been mine, given the knowledge of the 14th century. I very well might have believed that heaven was up there in the clouds and hell down below the earth. But thankfully science and philosophy has come a long way since the middle ages.

Occam's Razor has survived because of it's value as a principle in it's own right. Not because William of Occam was infallible. His personal belief in God and thus unwillingness to apply his own principle to religion is neither here nor there.

Leave aside your disdain for the term--what is it that you consider fundamentally different, epistemologically, between religious faith and, say, the "undemonstrated belief" that String Theory is valid?

String theory is a worthwhile exercise because it potentially explains a real gap in our knowledge. If true, it could explain the discrepancies between quantum mechanics and general relativity. Eventually the models will become sophisticated enough and technology will advance to the point where something testable will fall out. And if it doesn't, theoretical physics is a small investment that has paid for itself a million times over already.

God on the other hand is not needed to explain any natural phenomena. If there is a phenomenon we cannot currently explain, saying "god did it" does not actually increase our understanding.

I have tested it using the recommended methodology for testing for spiritual phenomena

There are only phenomena, and the recommended methodology is the same for all phenomena. The scientific method. Valid observations have to be repeatable, verifiable by third parties, and if you're going to accept or discard a hypothesis they have to be compatible with only one truth value for that hypothesis. Your proposed method fails all of those points.

How does that matter?

It matters if you care about accuracy. If I weigh an object, and get 5 kilos, then you weigh the same object and get 8 kilos, we'd throw away the scale. It's not a reliable tool.

On the other hand, if you ask your deity how old the Earth is, and a Hindu asks his deity how old the Earth is, you'll get different answers. Your measurements are unreliable, yet you're not willing to throw away your instrument.

What is true is contingent on what you've personally seen?
Not at all. That was not a claim that religion is false because I have not seen evidence. That was an invitation for you to present evidence.

I just posted peer-reviewed information supporting the veracity of theism.

You posted a peer reviewed paper supporting the existence of subjective experiences during extreme hypoxia. That is entirely consistent with a naturalistic explanation of consciousness.

I also posted information regarding its predictions (i.e. "prophecy") along with a survey of proposed improbability if it were random guessing.

Self-fullfilling prophesies, generous readings, confirmation bias, and retconning.

e.g. I'd be surprised if there weren't a dozen individuals who fit the very nonspecific description in that first prophesy, but were not successful enough for record to survive.

e.g. for the second prophesy, what evidence is there that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, besides gospels written decades after his death by people with a vested interest in linking him to messianic prophesy?

e.g. You don't think it's likely the author of Matthew engaged in some poetic license? How would he have known exactly what the cost of the bribe was?

And so on...

That doesn't mean that it can't be, that is, that there is a correct resolution to the question, and that scientific method cannot address.

Again, just because the scientific method can't address a question doesn't mean it's OK to make things up.

And how do you make this determination of what is "worth consideration" a priori?

You don't. You follow the evidence. You observe the world and make a model of it based on those observations. Then you look for predictions made by that model, and see if they match further observations. So far there are no observations that require a God to be part of our model, and our model makes no predictions about the existence or non-existence of God. As LaPlace apocryphally said to Napoleon, "I have no need of that hypothesis".

If I see Bill shoot Steve in a back alley, I have all the evidence I need that Bill shot Steve. I do not need to replicate the event for you or prove it

Perhaps you should take your own advice, Mr. AC. Here, I'll help =)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism

Thomas Henry Huxley said:
Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle...Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable.[8]

Philosopher William L. Rowe states that in the strict sense, however, agnosticism is the view that humanity lacks the requisite knowledge or sufficient rational grounds to justify either belief: that there exists some deity, or that no deities exist.[2]

So, agnosticism (even agnostic theism) holds that rational understanding is worth more than blind faith. How is this not a "rationality-based belief system?"

Your argument would be plausible if what one experiences after death were the -sole- line of evidence for theism.

My argument would be plausible? Dude, I'm saying that you can't use observation X as evidence to support your explanation of observation X. If I a scientist said, "The reagents react together to produce a jelly. I hypothesize that angels are creating the jelly. The jelly is produced, therefore the angels hypothesis is supported," We'd all say he was nuts. And I wasn't arguing that it was the *sole* argument for theism. I was addressing just that one because it's a particularly bad argument.

Fulfilled prophetic claims are another.

How does one keep score on fulfilled prophetic claims? Like, how does, say, the Bible stack up against Nostradamus or the Koran?

Willing martyrdom of contemporaries is another.

The fact that people believe in something hard enough to die for it also isn't really very strong evidence that it's true. Are we saying that Islam is getting more plausible by the day?

I will say this--if a religion says that you experience X when you die and X looks nothing like the near death experiences people report, that's good evidence that the religion in question is not true. But failing to reject a hypothesis when the hypothesis was written to explain the observation is not exactly a big win. As they say, you can kill sheep with witchcraft if you also feed them arsenic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

Hard to explain it much better than that...

Both atheism and theism are making assertions so both have a burden of proof. An atheist asserts that the universe and self replicating life came into existence purely via natural means. That is a claim and thus has just as much of a duty to show proof as assertions to the contrary.

Your argument would be plausible if what one experiences after death were the -sole- line of evidence for theism. It is not. Fulfilled prophetic claims are another. Willing martyrdom of contemporaries is another.

Given that, I suggest a simpler explanation.

What the religion says one experiences after death, and people experiencing what religion says they will after death, are explained by the fact the the religion is -true-.

We have zero technology that could only have been created by faith.

Here is where we fundamentally disagree. I would assert that we have zero technology that could be created without faith. Leave aside your disdain for the term--what is it that you consider fundamentally different, epistemologically, between religious faith and, say, the "undemonstrated belief" that String Theory is valid? Do you advise dismissing all work and investigation of it, on the basis that we cannot currently test it?

Also, I do in fact fundamentally reject your notion it is testable. I have tested it using the recommended methodology for testing for spiritual phenomena, that is, asking the relevant entity to experience it. The test confirmed my "hypothesis". What you are saying in reality is not that it is not testable, but that it isn't testable according to -your preferred methodology-. Fair enough. How does that matter?

I'd like to see some of that information that leads you to be confidant about the existence of anything supernatural. I've never seen any.

What is true is contingent on what you've personally seen? I just posted peer-reviewed information supporting the veracity of theism. I also posted information regarding its predictions (i.e. "prophecy") along with a survey of proposed improbability if it were random guessing. While some of these are indeed debatable on a "deliberately creating the predicted outcome" (e.g. by allowing oneself to be crucified to "prove one's point"), by no means are all, or even the majority, open to such objections. A statement from Genesis giving a specific upper-bound of age for man, by a supposed uneducated nomad knowing perhaps a few hundred people, lacking any broad statistical information, has stood as accurate across billions of future-unknown people to the significant digits specified, to this very day--as one example. How does this not translate for you as evidence greater than null?

The problem with that is that "good" is not well defined.

True enough. That doesn't mean that it can't be, that is, that there is a correct resolution to the question, and that scientific method cannot address.

A better example concerning unprovably true statements would be Godel's theorems.

These are observations regarding the limits of the formal system of language. They do not demonstrate that there are actually things in reality that are neither true nor false.

That unprovable statements exist does not imply that they are all worth consideration.

And how do you make this determination of what is "worth consideration" a priori?

your opinion about objective reality is worth nothing if it is not supported by evidence.

I have been given evidence. It is in fact not necessary for evidence to be presented to you, or to be replicable, for it to be evidence--though your stance does indeed rely on this being the case. If I see Bill shoot Steve in a back alley, I have all the evidence I need that Bill shot Steve. I do not need to replicate the event for you or prove it for it to be evidence. You have no valid way to claim there is "no evidence" other than as a claim you have universal psychic powers to review the minds and lives of all -other- people on Earth, to verify the universal absence of events providing them evidence.

Because public discourse is strictly verboten (by death in some cases) in these countries.

By no coincidence, so is belief in religion.

So, mod up parent. Someday the author's of the documentary are going to miss the days of free thought. They'll be sure to learn the difference between theism and totalitarian government.

"created with apparent age" is how they explain that...done...**dusts off hands**

Ah, but what apparent age? If it was created 5000 years ago to look 4 billion years old, it could just as easily have been created 5 seconds ago. Why choose one over the other?

Because the bible says it was 5000 years old? Well the bible could have been created 5 seconds ago to make you think the Earth was created 5000 years ago.

And now they're ruined by their own "logic". Allowing the miracle of "apparent age" doesn't actually strengthen their position at all. The more miracles you allow, the more potentially true things there are, and the less likely it is that your specific version of events is true.

just stop the whole line of thinking...

And that's why theism is harmful. It requires you to stop thinking. Never stop thinking.

stop trying to disprove something with logic that is personal opinion....

Stop having personal opinions about factual claims about objective reality.

Theism concerns faith (in gods) and gnosticism concerns knowledge.

A- means "lack" or "non".

A-Theist has no faith in gods.

A-Gnostic has know knowledge of gods.

So someone who says "I don't know if god exists, but I have faith" they are an agnostic.

Your interlocutor is 100% correct and you are 100% wrong.

Certainly, Atheism has no formal organization, but neither do many religions (see also "Wicca" as an example), so that cannot be a usable guideline. But there is even more damning evidence here: Atheism does have "saints" and "preachers" (e.g. Mr. Dawkins), it does have a dogma (centered around a fairly particular definition of "reason" as its central coda, I believe, yes?), and it certainly have its zealots (oftentimes more irritating than Mormon/JV missionaries, truth be told.) Also, they seem to have the same smug self-assurance that many religious folks carry.

Only religious people think Dawkins is a preacher or a saint. You'll find Atheists that disagree with him and you'll find he'll happily debate with them.

You cant do that to a Christian preacher.

Further more, there is no code nor dogma. A lot of theists who dont understand what atheism is try to ascribe these things to atheism but only demonstrate their own ignorance. You cant really blame atheists from getting upset here, they're a diverse group of people with no common beliefs and you're trying to shoehorn them into a box that doesn't fit because someone who is atheist does not fit your world views. It's like if I were to say that all theists were kitten eating Hitler worshippers because I know this one guy who believes in god and who may or may not have eaten a kitten and has a picture that looks a bit like Hitler if I squinted at it.

But I wouldn't say that because I know how ridiculous it sounds and oddly enough, it's more sensible than your argument. That is the kind of wisdom that reason gives me, not a blind belief in a greater power but the ability to figure things out for myself.

I daresay that there are times when Atheism is just as much of a religion as

No, Religion is a belief, atheism is the lack of belief. To use the old example, to say atheism is a religion is to say that not collecting stamps is a hobby.

Atheism describes a lack or absence of theism. this is a very large area that covers everyone from non-religious to Buddhists and leVeyan Satanists. The only thing in common is that they dont believe in god but have radically different philosophies.