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Why would you believe anything until it has been proven to be so?

Looks like someone needs to take Philosophy 101. Scientific proof is available for few things in the human experience. Most of the time one is forced to rely on suppositions. While continual self-examination is valuable, there's as much support for classical theism as for most issues of epistemology.

You seem to be the unreasonable, with a lack of sense and reality. Neither atheism or theism have any particularly strong claim to truth. Both require aspects of faith. Atheism requires faith that there isn't some power beyond our comprehension and ability to examine, and theism requires there is.

So, since deism is really just a subset of theism, we can assume that ~80% of the population is theist/deist, and 20% are atheist.

And this is different from the US, where you claim "theists form a considerable majority," how, exactly?

I'm genuinely curious where you draw this arbitrary line between theism and deism, and how you conclude that having lots of deists somehow means the EU is far less religious, despite the fact that people acknowledging the existence of a creator tops 80% according to your own claims.

You *do* realize that fundamentalist / evangelical christians are a fairly small (albeit vocal) component of believers in the US as well, right?

Not even the most rabid anti-christian historians claim any hint of violence during the first 4 centuries of Christianity. 4 centuries.

That's because Christianity lacked the power, not the desire. As soon as it could, it used every means at it disposal to punish those that disagreed with the church, even on minor points. Arius and others were exiled in 325 over a disagreement on the nature of Christ's divinity. Priscillan was executed for doctrinal disagreement in 385, as soon as the Christian church was given the legal power to do so, the starting point for a long and extremely bloody history.

Even after that, Christianity has always been spread by absurdly small numbers of people.

That's the fairy tale of lonely missionaries spreading the light to remote corners of the world, surrounded by admiring natives gazing up at them. It's historically false. Christianity was largely spread in two ways: conquest by already Christian empires and conversions of rulers (often related to marriage or alliances, sometimes by promises of power and rewards), whose subjects were then required to adopt the faith of their rulers. The initial spread of Christianity was piggy-backed on the Roman empire, and later the Spanish and British empires.

It's all good and well to claim e.g. South America was converted by soldiers, but what I find sorely lacking in that explanation is how exactly ~ 2000 soldiers defeat tens of millions of people ?

There are plenty of books on that. But I don't even understand the question. Fact is that the Americas were conquered, a large percentage of its population exterminated, and the rest forced to convert to Christianity.

Contrast this with how pakistan became muslim : the most modest death tolls are talking about 200 million corpses.

The fact that modern Islam is even worse than modern Christianity doesn't make Christianity a benign or moral ideology. The lesser of two evils is still evil.

And the other choice is what, exactly ? An atheist socialist who acts like the Soviets, sees no reason to not kill a few hundred million people because he has some pseudo-scientific excuse (or military, or he just hates them, or doesn't like their ideology, or ... does anyone have an exhaustive list of reasons the Soviets committed genocide ? It's gonna be a long list). In short I daresay that if this is the difference between a Christian communist and the atheist kind, then I'll take my chances with the Christian kind, thank you very much.

Do you really know so little about history that you think that the only two choices in the world are Christian theocracy or Stalinism?

And did you read anything I wrote? The problem is not with what kinds of beliefs you have in the privacy of your own home--no matter how stupid they may be--the problem is if you try to impose those beliefs through government, by turning nations into "Christian nations" or "communist nations". Christian government and Stalinist government both make that mistake, and the solution is not to make that mistake. Government should be secular and liberal (in the classical sense); it should neither promote theism nor oppose it, it should simply not meddle in religion at all.

As long as atheist "progressives" run amok

The great majority of progressives are Christians in the US and Europe. Large parts of Europe are governed by Christian parties who justify what you would call "progressive" politics with Christian theology, and their government panels are stuffed to the gills with "experts" on ethics sent out by Christian churches. The problem with progressives isn't whether they are atheist or theist (they are some of each), it's that they are unified in their belief that the government should engage in social engineering.
Europe is an object

Thanks for posting from your void-utopia with no particular stances to contradict, and no demographic you consider your stance "responsible for", from which you propose we make a meaningful comparison of the number of negative outcomes we can cite, relative to your non-demographic.

That aside, you are mangling all sorts of issues that actually require particular consideration of one's own context and social context. Which normative system are you suggesting does -not- require contextual application? Certainly not the secular legal system, with its overt contradictions over a much shorter period of time, while lacking the means for resolution theism has long incorporated.

Anyway, you are conflating the notion of requirements for Jews or Gentiles, required versus prohibited versus discretionary, generalities versus extraordinary circumstances, in a manner that, I presume, could only work in your unspecified utopia. Care to elaborate what that system might be?

Until then, we make our best decision based on context and our best understanding of the letter and spirit of the text. If we are wrong in the resulting assessment, we will be corrected. Why do I think this can work? Because it obviously is, as a matter of basic reality, which you aren't going to alter by "talking away" those 2.1 billion practitioners.

Agnostics are just atheists with no nerve to say what they are in fact believing.

I wrote a post a few days ago splitting agnosticism into three definitions. I think I was wrong, I can count at least six in use around the internet.

Atheist is "I don't believe".

Agnostic is "I don't know" OR ("strong" agnosticism) "knowing is impossible" OR "maybe I believe" OR "I don't want to say if I believe" OR "I don't care" OR "I don't believe because I don't have evidence, but will change my mind if I get it". The first two types aren't incompatible with atheism, and don't answer the same question; the third indicates either that you think there's evidence of theism, that you're leaning towards faith instead of rationality, or that you haven't taken the time to think about things; number four is silly; number fives may as well just call themselves apatheists; and six is just the very definition of "weak atheism". From what I can gather agnosticism maybe originally referred to the first two definitions, but since it's being used by people who don't want to identify as theists or atheists (maybe because they believe the whole "atheists are all dickish militant anti-theists" notion), it's nearly useless now.

Theism - a belief in a god, or in gods.

Atheism - the lack of belief in a god, or in gods.

Note the important difference.

Atheism is a belief system in the same way that not collecting stamps is a hobby.

By your definition those statements which are true are completely arbitrary. God could have 'known' something entirely different. You have offered no account of why the truth is as it it is. As such your account of truth suffers from the exact same 'problem' as naturalism does. Only you have demanded an account of the existence of truth, and proponents of naturalism do not. Waving around the word transcendent doesn't get you out of this quandary either.

Science, as a method, has no purpose. Purposes are necessarily subjective and science as a method is not a subject. Scientists can have a purpose in performing science, because they believe it will result in the acquisition of beliefs that the label true, or at least less wrong.

What you are committing is the fallacy of reification. You have treated truth like it is a real concrete thing. Truth is not a thing. It is a property of statements. You cannot go and get me a 'truth'. I no more have to account for the 'existence' of truth than I do the existence of logical absolutes. I don't believe there is such a thing as truth. I believe that there are arrangements of matter which correspond to propositions, and further I believe that these propositions can be identified to have a property I call truth.

When you say 'there is an objective truth', what you are actually saying is that there is a material world independent of subjects. You have, through experience, inferred that there is a material world, and that it behaves in a particular and consistent manner. Statements you identify as congruent with that manner you have labelled truth, but it is not the label you assign ('truth') which is objective, it is the matter and its properties.

Simply put your objection can be reduced to 'naturalism cannot account for why there appears to be an objective reality with properties consistent across subject'. The problem is your account of these properties shifts the problem back one step without answering it, since I can simply retort to your explanation 'theism cannot account for why there is an objective mind of god with consistent properties'. You haven't solved the problem, you've just put it a pretty dress and taken it out for dinner.

I do not deny reality. I do deny that there is a thing called truth. Truth is a property of propositions, not a thing itself. Why you think this is antithetical to science I don't know, and if I am to you will have to explain.

That's not atheism, it's anti-theism. What you're seeing is a reaction to deep-rooted and pervasive evangelism by various religions over the years.

You shouldn't be surprised that when you push people, they push back. If you want it to stop, quit evangelizing.

But assuming you are not agnostic, then you believe there is no god. So you do not have an absence of faith, you have faith in an absence that (IMHO) cannot be proven either way.

Just because something cannot be proven, does not mean it is false. Trees falling in a forest with nobody around, etc., etc.

In philosophical circles, and where people haven't been raised listening to annoying people repeatedly shout that "atheists are all evil militants", the definitions of agnosticism and atheism aren't exclusive. They're:

atheism: I don't believe in the existence of gods
agnosticism: I believe the existence or non-existence of gods to be fundamentally unknowable

You can be an agnostic theist or an agnostic atheist. There's no overlap, atheism and agnosticism are answers to completely different questions; atheism answers "do you believe in gods", agnosticism answers "do you believe that the existence or non-existence of gods is knowable". Notice that "atheist" doesn't mean "I know with certainty that God doesn't exist". That's a subset of atheism we often call "strong atheism", but it's just a subset. So you see, there's no "faith" here. Atheism just means "I have no belief in gods", nothing more, nothing less.

There is another definition of agnosticism and atheism, that is:

Statement: God(s) exist.
Atheist (other): false (with certainty)
Agnostic (other): unknown
Theist (other): true (with certainty)

The problem with this is that we cannot, rationally, consider the existence of anything for which we have no evidence to be false with 100% certainty. Nothing. So you're agnostic towards gods; you're also agnostic towards unicorns, leprechauns, Reptilian Obama, invisible teapots, and so forth, because that's the only rational course. This is a silly way of looking at things, however. You can't live life as though unicorns might exist, just because you don't have any evidence against them. So instead we use the other question: do you have belief in gods? As in: do you consider "gods exist" to be true? Using the other definitions again:
Atheist: no
Agnostic A: no
Agnostic B: Uncertain
Agnostic C: yes
Theist: yes

Okay, you've agnostic groups A and C can be merged in with our normal Atheist/Theist definitions, leaving us back where we were, but with a third category:

Do you have a belief in gods?
Atheist: no
Agnostic (type 2): uncertain
Theist: yes

It happens, it can happen with any belief, but it's shaky ground. In this state, you are considering theism to be potentially plausible. If you're doing this without evidence, this is an irrational state, make no doubt.

Short: atheism means "no belief in gods", not "I believe there are no gods". Agnosticism either means "belief in gods is unknowable" or "existence of gods is unknown" or "I'm uncertain where I believe in gods". The first two aren't incompatible with theism or atheism. The third is a shaky middle ground where one is not atheist, not fully theist, but still seems to be swayed by theism for some reason, which may be as irrational a position as theism.

"Atheism" just means not believing in theism. Talking about all atheists as if they shared a single philosophy is like talking about all non-dog-owners.

I think the jury is clearly still out in regards to free will and many other items relating to consciousness. In either case, I don't think one can chalk up free will to being a plus for theism over atheism. It just happens to be an area that science hasn't had strong input on unlike the many other questions of reality that science has managed to pull away from the grasp of religious explanation (evolution/cosmology vs creation and so forth.)

No, it is not a fallacy, it is a presumption of the argument.

That Judeo-Christian theism is more plausible than the alternatives, would be a premise not addressed by the argument.

Why should an athiest fear a god?

Because they're learning from the experience of other Communist countries? They may be learning the wrong lesson (given that in Poland, the prime example, Catholicism was far more entrenched than any form of Christianity is in NK), but you just need to look at /. comments whenever anything remotely connected to theism comes up to know that many atheists believe in the power of "organised religion".

It's not anti-theist, it's anti USA-theism. Europe has plenty of Christians, after all, as do many other parts of the world, but Christianity as it's practiced in the USA is a very weird and disturbing mix of fundamentalist religion and politics. After all, you can go into any typical American "evangelical Christian" (aka fundamentalist) church and they'll preach about how the USA needs to wage wars in various countries, how you (the congregation) needs to vote for these particular politicians, how we need to worship The Invisible Hand, how rich people are better people than the rest of us because God has blessed them with so much money and "success", etc. Now obviously, not all Christians in America believe this crap, but the numbers of fundies has actually outgrown the number of "mainstream" Protestants in the USA, and they are a very strong political force (esp. since they are so politically involved, unlike most other religions). This of course is completely different from the types of Christianity practiced in Europe for example, where fundamentalism is almost non-existent.

"we inch ever so closer to that every day with each study on how the human brain functions"
The brain isn't the mind. The brain is like a RAM chip, it's the program I'm talking about.

"Logic itself cannot describe our entire being"
Logic exists apart from human beings... which essentially proves theism (ie: disproves atheism... which leaves theism).

"assertion that there's an afterlife," etc.
Why isn't that plausible?

"the assertion that a diety can and did directly interact with the world, but currently does not"
Who claims that?

"the fact that good things happen to bad people while bad things happen to good people"
Why would we not expect that... the Bible says this will be the case. (see Job for example)

"the fact that any "representative" does not hold any additional powers greater than a normal human being"
Not true.

"the fact that there exists multiple religions"
What does that have to do with it? We'd expect that given the Christian worldview.

"If said diety was indeed omnipotent, then there wouldn't be other religions at all"
Why?

"And the one I abhor the most: anti-intellectualism."
Me too.... note though, many of the smartest people that ever lived (and live today) are Christians... hmm.

"And what are the benefits?"
Oh, I don't know... science, hospitals, the education system, women's rights, abolition of slavery... ;) Me thinks you need a history course or two.

Theist : believes in one or more gods, often thinks *his god* is real while yours is nothing but empty idolatry

atheist : believes there are no gods at all, and thinks that makes him superior to the theist

militant atheist : believes there are no gods, and the fact that you choose to believe otherwise annoys the hell out of him

agnostic : says he doesn't know if there is a god or not

hardline agnostic. says he doesn't know if there any god(s) or not, but is also pretty certain that you don't know for sure either.

militant agnostic, says he doesn't know, and is pretty annoyed by attempts by others to convince him otherwise

and finally, what I define myself as:

ignostic : I don't know if there is a god or not, but I really don't see how it makes any difference either way...

A-theist = Lack of theism. One does not have to believe ANYTHING to lack theism. Therefore it does not follow that an atheist must hold a belief that there is no god. It is enough that he/she does not hold a belief that there is.

A person's opinions as to what the weighting of the two probabilities are and what constitutes extraordinary are subjective, highly dependent upon culture, etc. The simple truth is that both theism and atheism require faith in the face of a lack of evidence. Faith in the face of a lack of evidence is not very scientific. Agnosticism is a position of logic based upon a lack of evidence. Logic is more characteristic of science. I think the case can be made that agnosticism is the more scientific.

So it's only through faith that I believe that there are no invisible pink unicorns or that the Earth wasn't created last Thursday? Really?

If a creator independently designed each organism, then lots of stuff that shouldn't be there somehow made it into the finished product.

So? Perhaps God did it for amusement, perhaps he's artistically inclined. Look at the average painter's paintings (and the stuff the doesn't even like himself and destroys/hides), does he produce useful or aesthetically perfect paintings? How can flaws in nature be an argument against creationism any more than they can be used against evolution theory, when evolution supposedly optimizes away flawed designs in the long run?

(before you ask, I'm an atheist/agnostic, but I find it pointless to even debate particular ideas of people suffering from a popular form of mass psychosis)

My sentiments exactly. I am a reformed fundamentalist..now agnostic.. but it I dont think pure anti-theism has to be the only answer to crazy biblical creationists. The facts of evolution (which is simply a process) do not explain first cause and the possibility that could be wound up and allowed to happen by a first cause. Whether that first cause is accident or a creator.. we just dont know.