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A few points here.

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

Occam's Razor says absolutely nothing about likelihood.

Occam's Razor states that the simplest model should be used, -all else being equal-, for the purposes of conceptual economy. That is the only correct inference to what "winning" per Occam's Razor means.

Any difference in evidence whatsoever invalidates the use of Occam's Razor in selecting between two or more models. I assume you consider your model to have greater evidence.

Just to note, it is your position that is "extraordinary" by reason of the fact theism is the significant majority and so, that's the "ordinary".

"Extraordinary" does not mean "things I personally find really improbable".

Since you love wikipedia so much, look up what the prefix 'a' means in English. Theism and Atheism actually aren't opposites, same applies to Gnosticism and Agnosticism.

Theism does not claim there is a man living on the top of clouds that can do magic. Lying about it won't change this.

My logic is generally very good. I presume, for this case, you need no evidence for your claim otherwise.

And no, I do not "need" to do anything. You have no significance to anything, nor any possible theoretical significance. You are a Random Guy on the Internet, and your worldview allows for nothing more.

As a couple of questions you should ask yourself, though, is which genre of music is provably the best? Which political stance is provably best? What things -cannot- happen (things one might consider "magic" or "miraculous") given the permutations of possibility of quantum behavior? You have an extremely weak understanding of even the basics of epistemology, or physics for that matter.

Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities.[1][2] In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities.[3][4][5] Most inclusively, atheism is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist.[4][5][6][7] Atheism is contrasted with theism,[8][9] which in its most general form is the belief that at least one deity exists.[9][10]

And more Wiki:

Agnosticism is the belief that the truth values of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, as well as other religious and metaphysical claims—are unknown.

The GP is correct in this one. The commonly accepted connotation of atheism is the rejection of belief in the existence of deities, or, by forming the converse of that statement, the commonly accepted connotation of atheism is the belief in the rejection of the existence of deities. Furthermore, you falsely take agnosticism (a non-denominational, non-religious, concept) to be the inverse of Gnosticism.

A common characteristic of some of these groups was the teaching that the realisation of Gnosis (esoteric or intuitive knowledge) is the way to salvation of the soul from the material world. They saw the material world as created through an intermediary being (the demiurge) rather than directly by God. In most of the systems, this demiurge was seen as imperfect, in others even as evil. Different gnostic schools sometimes identified the demiurge as Ahriman, El, Saklas, Samael, Satan, Yaldabaoth, or Yahweh.

I think Dawkins would say the role of religion is not to exist. That he would say that theism works against our interests more than it helps, so he would say no Christians understand the proper role of religion.

I'm not sure he would go that far. Remember that Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist, and to him, there is always an explanation for why some feature or trait persists in a species. I think Dawkins would more likely qualify your statement with "now that we have science, we no longer need religion." I've read some of his books and there's a sense that you can justify the existence of religion as a socio-evolutionary trait of humans. Our early society demanded something, an idea both simple and powerful, to germinate around. Something that promoted beneficial traits, like a strong sense of community, and not to ask too many questions, all while "explaining" the natural world. This was religion's role. Something which would promote the survival of one tribe over another, so that the most devout tribe was likely one of the strongest. But, now that we have science, logic, and rational thought, we no longer need religion as the very core of our societies. The social nature of humans is both well established and self-sustaining (barring global catastrophe, of course), and I believe his opinion would be that we're long overdue to jettison the booster-rocket of religion, and rely solely on science and logic to be our main engines from here on out. Pardon the rocket metaphor.

That's my take on him, anyways.

> he would say that theism works against our interests more than it helps ...

Dawkins especially believes that Christians have no business working in science. The oft-quoted example is how years ago, geological strata were described as "pre flood" (or ante-diluvian, to use the right term) and "post flood." This is used as an example of how science was deliberately hampered by religious people who insisted that there was a flood, complete with a boat filled with animals and a guy named Noah.

He's right about that example, but the fact is, there have been cases where anti-theism has done just as much harm to the cause of science. I cover two (of many) examples at my homepage (look for the Introduction to The Case For A Creator, if you're interested).

John Maddox, long-time editor of Nature magazine, is one example. Same as Dawkins, he was convinced that there was no God and that belief in same was actually harmful. During his tenure at Nature, you would NOT see an article favorable to the Big Bang theory (especially after the Catholic Church endorsed it), because Maddox didn't want to give any aid to the "religious nuts." (His term, not mine.) The Big Bang implied a beginning and he hated the very idea.

Hated it with a passion. He allowed his hatred for that theory to affect the objectivity of an otherwise very well-respected journal.

I remember it well. When the COBE results were announced in the 1990's, people whose primary source of scientific information was Nature mag suddenly found themselves a bit behind the curve. :)

I disagree with the idea that religion is merely a collection of beliefs (I would suggest that your definition is a necessary but not sufficient component of religion), but I do agree that atheism is a religion. After all, how can one believe that a supernatural power does not exist except through faith? We have no proven means for detecting supernatural powers. At best, we can provide a lack of evidence of a supernatural power in order to support the idea that one does not exist, but if a supernatural power exists in such a way that is not measurable or quantifiable (and, by its very nature, it would make sense that a supernatural power could not be readily measured by our natural instruments), that lack of evidence means absolutely nothing.

So, at the end of the day, while I would classify atheism as a religion, in that it is founded on a faith-based belief in the lack of a supernatural power, I would not classify agnosticism as such, since agnosticism merely acknowledges that we do not know, rather than making a claim to the contrary. Put differently, both theism and atheism make active claims, though in opposing directions, whereas agnosticism, in its simplest form, makes no claim, other than that it lacks sufficient knowledge. Some forms of agnosticism make the additional claim that we not only lack the knowledge, but that we are incapable of attaining it, which would mean making a faith-based claim, since we have no way of proving that we are incapable of attaining that knowledge.

Mass persuasion is a charged term. As is "ideology". Let us assume, probably correctly, that you believe a certain kind of culture is better than other cultures, then how do you express to people that they should agree? Persuasion on a large scale is a large part of what the United States tried to do when they printed a million common sense pamphlets. "Mass persuasion" is not a bad thing, surely, when we run ads to tell people to use condoms, wash your hands, avoid scams, etc.?

The point I'm trying to make is that Dawkins, and some other atheists, believe that theism is so noxious as to harm society relative to atheistic thinking. You can call it evangelism, or proselytization, or whatever you like. As to the eerieness of it all. How is it eerie if the arguments put forth for the persuasion are not agitprop but rather well-intentioned appeals to self-interest?

First thing one should focus on to learn reason is logical fallacies, and the False Dichotomy, for example, "Reason versus religion", is right up toward the top.

What Dawkins et al are selling isn't reason, it's Logical Positivism, which has rather thoroughly run aground as of about 30 years ago. Not all questions are resolvable by empiricism and scientific method. Epistemology is far wider than that. Is rock music good? Prove it.

I'll get into the Reification Fallacy, that "not-X" is not something, it is nothing, regardless of what "X" is--including theism--another day.

Stop telling the non-Muslims how defective religion is - most Christians and Buddhists that I know understand the role of religion (and when to NOT use religion).

Not so for the Muslims.

I think Dawkins would say the role of religion is not to exist. That he would say that theism works against our interests more than it helps, so he would say no Christians understand the proper role of religion.

As for the spirit of your statements, there are so many extreme Christians in the United States, quiverful, southern baptists, LDS, etc. and so many middle-class average Christians who toy with theocratic ideas, that there seems to be a very real reason to proselytize atheism, if that would be your political desire, as it is for Dawkins. I can see an argument being made that its more important to advance the quality, culturally and intellectually, of the first world countries than to focus on improving other countries.

There may also be more people who are susceptible to ideological conversion and more people who could be affected by their message generally in the "Western" world.

There are language and cultural barriers that would make it less useful to tour the middle east.

you didn't adopt atheism, you un-adopted theism...

I see what you did there.

One need not be "religious" to oppose Theism any more than one need be superstitious to oppose Superstition.

You're an idiot. Anti-theisism is not a religion or faith of any kind. It is the believe that theism in and of itself is bad.

Moron.

Yes, atheism is a much bigger issue than Satanism.

Satanism is like a competing company to theism that is eventually going to get bought out in its entirety.

Satan is not opposition to God. Satan is opposition to humans.

Capcha: repress

Good to hear. I'll consider all these Arguments From A Void that try to point out how relatively bad the results of theism are compared to an undefined non-position of a non-demographic, that non-associatable with anyone, to be cases in point.

That's the Declaration of Independence, a declaration to a Christian nation and potentate. Using a generic term like "creator" seems a reasonable compromise to convey the idea. The argument isn't rooted in Christian theology at all, it is self-evident, and the "creator" might just refer to deism, not Christianity.

Not really compatible with Deism, unless one is arguing men were given rights from "the beginning", that is, before they existed. But you seem to be arguing what you're uncomfortable with, rather than the argument at hand. I said "theism", that is the case. Christianity would be one form. There is no form that makes your argument with respect to rights coherent.

Because evolution happens at the level of species, and a priori, chimps are a species that we are in competition with (of course, they lost long ago). Human social structures, empathy, justice, and morality in human relationships are built into all of us through evolution (our "creator") because they are useful. So, if you want to extend notions of human justice and morality to other species, you need to make a utilitarian argument for that.

Not really. I can instead that that utilitarianism isn't a valid basis for anything regarding answering whether or not rights exists in human or non-human, for or against. Nor, really, a basis for any usable ethics, and devoid of any connection to a metaphysics by which to justify it. Why would a utilitarian answer, even potentially, be the objectively valid one? Nor, is the fact we feel something as an evolutionary byproduct any justification for its validity. Nor, is there any question that "Creator", capitalized, does not refer to non-sentient processes of evolution.

I'm a lapsed Catholic (all of the guilt and none of the Sunday social commitments!) and a militant agnostic (I don't know AND NEITHER DO YOU DAMMIT!)

Actually, a better description of your position would be agnostic atheism. Theism is a declaration of whether you worship a supernatural entity or not; clearly you do not, so you are an atheist. Gnosticism is a declaration of whether the existence of supernatural entities is knowable or not, so you are also agnostic. The two terms are compatible with one another.

Umyeah, thanks for adding another category to my list of 'shit Slashdot pretends to know':

Literature.

More specifically, literary criticism. Especially criticism as dictated by someone that thinks Jeff Foxworthy lacks pretension or that his opinion on literary criticism matters, thinks that the bible is 'grossly underrated' (wrong both in estimating it's current impact and what it deserves) and used the term 'butt naked' (it's BUCK naked, FYI). Let me guess: you also don't like modern art.

Here's the list, FWIW:
NASA & Rocket Science.
Economics.
Intellectual Property Law (not insanely dumb, just a Venn-Diagram of two incompatible circlejerks).
Law, in general.
Most things international.
Ethics vs. Religion.
Theism and Atheism.
* Literature.

I get less worked up about this since I came to my own shitty overgeneralization: slashdot is a large population of mediocre alpha computer nerds who mistake their computer fu for omniscience. Don't get me wrong; I'm still here for the occasional brilliant comment as much as the news itself. Like many good recipes, there's enough spice/quality peppered into the mix for me to rank slashdot miles above the comments in Youtube or 4chan, but it's steadily being diminished by the crap comments as dimmer smug people hold forth at length.

PS: "Just viewed as fiction"?! What the bubbling incoherent fuck else would one view a novel as?

While I agree about the merits of debate on theism and anti-theism, those debates don't belong in a _science_ class.