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I was raised Christian, so I always had a hunch that this was indeed the case, that God made us genetically likely to look for Him.

Of course, you're asking about the other direction. I would ask, where would this genetic trait have come from? The article seems to indicate it isn't an "evolutionary adaptation," so it was either put there by a force other than evolution, or its an entirely random accident that didn't have enough of a negative side effect to be weeded out - and managed to dominate over the lack of this trait in other strands of humanity. I think the former case is more plausible.

It seems to me that if the conjecture of a genetic basis is right, then this probably does little to help agnostics like me decide whether or not God exists. Here's why...

If God doesn't exist, then a genetic basis gives a potentially adequate explanation for religiosity. So the genetic basis doesn't disprove atheism.

If God does exist, then this is consistent with the theology (Christian, at least) that God has built us to know Him. (Assuming for the sake of argument that God can and does work through evolution and genetics.) So the genetic basis wouldn't seem to disprove Christianity (and thus theism in general) either.

I dunno... what do you guys think?

Am I equating all Christians with fundies? No. Most regular christian's don't go out of their way to insult and deride people because their beliefs are dissimilar to their own. But I do hate fundies, probably as much as they hate me, and the fact that you feel the shoe fits in your case, is not my problem. It seems more to me like you believe that all non-christians are crazy athiests in order to justify your theism. Don't lump me in with the radical fringe, if you do not care to be so lumped.

I am interested in which country you live in where being christian is a problem. China? Japan? Former Yugoslav republic?

No, I don't care about your religion. Frankly, while I am open to the idea that there is a god, I have issues with the judeo-christian-muslim religions, and am perfectly capable of writing them all off in my head as incorrect. I find most organized religion to be unpleasant, and that's speaking from a wealth of experience.

I'm not really in favor of any sort of religion course to be taught in schools. I think it's a can of worms best left unopened, and I think the odds of getting a qualified philosopher of religion to teach that course are almost non-existent...You'd get a pastor's wife or something, and the course would develop a bias, and a biased course would (rightly) provoke people like me into decrying the whole mess, as an unbiased course would probably do the same for the fundamentalists.

Well, he IS an atheist and as such his belief is that theism is a mass delusion.

But if you have an entire ocean's worth of the chemical broth, with various energy sources (solar, lightning strike, geological) to drive some of the necessary exothermic reactions then the likelihood approaches 1 that some self replicating aggregation of chemicals will eventually arise.

You don't get it: it is far more "possible" to be able to engineer this in a lab(and I'm not talkng about a soup dish) then it is to depend on some arbitrary reaction in the oceans. Yet that too has proved practically impossible so far, despite our very strong biochemical capabilities. The likelihood of a living cell forming does not approach 1 at all - the "self-replicating aggregation" you speak of is composed of several complex structures/solutions that support the genetic material, and the first RNA/DNA needs to actually describe those same structures. Nobody knows how exactly the first cells formed. There are only logical guesses at some "spurious chemical activity" that produced the first living cell, but how exactly that happened is not clear, otherwise we would have been able to artificially produce the same compounds again. A respiring, reproductive cell however is a lot more than an aggregation of chemicals. There is a reason why Pasteur once said that the organic cannot arise from the inorganic.

As for the jokers who modded the first post down: why? Is the passing mention of theism in the end too painful to bear?

Ugh. I can't believe how many people reply to a sig. It's a sig, people! What my sig is saying is that, before anyone flips out about how 'evil' fundamentalist religion is, and that happens often, that person should sit back and read about the various eugenics programs, not done in the name of atheism, but done in the name of evolution, which is synonymous with atheism, not unlike various bad things were done in the name of God, and that neither eugenics nor, say, murdering Native Americans for being 'godless heathens' should reflect on either atheism or fundamentalist religion, and that the the lesson we should learn here is that people will twist anything to justify their own hatred. I'm not trying to bash atheists or anything, I just want the wild eyed theophobes to see the correlation between theism and atheism before spurting anti-religious crap. Anyway, isn't it funny how everything degrades to some sort of flamewar on /., especially when someone mentions religion?

....and that man (self) is ultimately the only thing that matters......

Exactly and that self(ishness) is what many worship and that is religion. Theism is belief in God. Some word (from the Greek) mean the opposite if an "a" is in front of them. When you go to an (a)musement park you go to a place wher you do not "muse" which is to think. So then atheist is simply a religion whose adherents do not believe in a God. Believing there is no god doesn't automatically make such a one an indescribably evil, (a)moral or even immoral person. It simply means they are only accountable to themselves and whoever they choose to be or are forced to be accountable to. So I agree with you entirely.

These nihilistic views (in which I include theism) miss a basic fact about life: the only moment of life I ever experience is RIGHT NOW. So worrying about the "point" of those future RIGHT NOWs, which I am not currently experiencing, makes no sense. Give purpose to RIGHT NOW, and you win.

And RIGHT NOW my purpose is to take a Chemistry final, heh---not for the future experience or grades or whatnot, but because it should be interesting. See, it's all in how you frame things in your mind.

Being concerned only with "right now" is a perfect example of what I was speaking of: a good coping strategy in reaction to the oncoming train of your inevitable suffering and death.

Besides, what do you say to people who are in agony Right Now, but hope for things to be better, either ten years down the road or perhaps in the "next life"?

nihilistic views (in which I include theism)

Theism - the belief in a god or gods - is quite the opposite of nihilism. Nihilism can be considered a small portion of atheism, although most atheists believe in society, the rule of law, common courtesy, rational and critical thinking, and so on.

These nihilistic views (in which I include theism) miss a basic fact about life: the only moment of life I ever experience is RIGHT NOW. So worrying about the "point" of those future RIGHT NOWs, which I am not currently experiencing, makes no sense. Give purpose to RIGHT NOW, and you win.

And RIGHT NOW my purpose is to take a Chemistry final, heh---not for the future experience or grades or whatnot, but because it should be interesting. See, it's all in how you frame things in your mind.

An agnostic (a-gnostic) comes to us via the Gnostic heresy. The Gnostics were a group of Christian heretics who believed in a 'revealed truth' -- that is, if you sat down and closed your eyes and quieted your mind and listened hard for that "still, small voice" then the holy light would shine in on you and you'd receive the wisdom of God and the universe and everything. Religions are generally somewhat little-g gnostic, since pretty much all of them accept that there is a revealed truth, at least for some people who are usually called prophets. Agnostic means that you do not accept revealed truth. It implies a belief in God as ultimately unknowable and utterly beyond our understanding.
  Athiest (a-thiest), however, simply means "without a theism." It is the default option of not believing in what someone else tells you. The difference between so-called 'strong' and 'weak' atheism is just the difference between "I don't buy it" and "I REALLY don't buy it; you're a nut." "Weak" atheists are just people who too polite to go about pointing out internal contradictions and logical inconsistencies in other people's beliefs.
  Anyone who does not accept a belief without evidence is atheist, at least with respect to that specific belief.

Name one case where a credible scientist has found a fact which he claims proves atheism.

Name one case where a credible scientist has decided not to investigate a subject on the grounds that it might support theism.

Defining Atheism
You do not understand the definition of atheism. As the wikipedia article you cited points out atheism is "the positive assertion that deities do not exist." It's not an "I don't know"... it's a "I know for sure". Saying "I believe I'm reincarnated or I believe there are Thetans, but I don't believe in Shiva" is not athiesm. Atheism denies all that is not physical.

I suppose you stopped reading at the end of the very first sentence. Here is the full quote: "It is commonly defined as the denial of theism, amounting to the positive assertion that deities do not exist, or as the deliberate rejection of theism. However, others--including most atheistic philosophers and groups--define atheism as the simple absence of belief in deities (cf. nontheism), thereby designating many agnostics, and people who have never heard of gods, such as newborn children, as atheists as well. In recent years, some atheists have adopted the terms strong and weak atheism to clarify whether they consider their stance one of positive belief (strong atheism) or the mere absence of belief (weak atheism)."

See here for a philosophical definition of atheism and 3 unprovable presuppositions.

The replies thoroughly refuted his argument.

The term "saints" does not mean people who do miracles. These are people who are highly regarded, elevated up as examples of the belief system.

No, saint has long been a clearly defined religious term. You are redefining it as a non-religious term to justify associating it with atheism, then you are using the "they have Saints, just like religion!" argument to try to show that atheism=religion. I can't even think of an example that would exaggerate the stupidity of this argument any further than you already have. Regardless, if you're redefining saints to include "people who are respected and seen as good", you'll have to drop the association of saints with religion. It is a human trait to respect people who are perceived as doing good things, and that has nothing to do with religion, even if you believe that everything has something to do with a religion.

Atheists absolutely do evangelize. /. is a perfect example... their are myriad of examples were atheists present and argue for their viewpoint, there are sigs here with atheist slogans... atheist may not be as formal as the Roman Catholic church (which is not surprising considering atheism reactionary history). They fight to win over hearts and minds to their point of view.

If you had read the definitions of evangelize you would know you're not going to convince me by using logical fallacies, such as this repeated use of fallacies of definition. Once again, evangelizing is a purely religious term. If you want to redefine it as "showing support for a cause" or "explaining why you support a cause" or even "trying to recruit people to a cause" then you are simply destroying the current definition of the word. But you can not redefine it and then claim that atheists are religious because they engage in evangelism because evangelism is a term that used to be religious, is still associated with religion, but has been redefined for the purpose of confusing atheism with religion. Unless you want me to start explaining to you why you're not really a christian because you don't burn witches or molest altar boys, since that's the new definition of christian.

I'm not sure whether you're even aware of how dishonest you are being right now. Perhaps your mind has been so warped that you can't see what you're saying is contradicting itself or perhaps you feel the ends outweigh the means. Regardless, atheists aren't evangelizing. For thousands of years theists have been killing and torturing anyone who refused to bow to their religious beliefs and indoctrinate their kids to follow

Yeah that's a cute bumper sticker. I stated in my post and in more detail in later posts atheism isn't simply the non-adoption of another philosophical viewpoint. It is the categorical statement that only the physical world exists. There are no gods, there are no souls, there is no after life, everything was caused by natural repeatable predictable processes.

Theism is a religion in exactly the same way that acknowledging the existence of stamps is a hobby.

Religious practices are anchored in philosophical viewpoints. As I stated in my post, on top of the basic assumptions and arguments of atheism a layer of religious-like practices have formed. Organized atheism behaves like a religion.

Yes! That is absolutely true. The problem is that people tend to lump agnosticism in with atheism and theism as while it is really not the same thing. The best way to describe people's belief in god is not with a line such as:

     atheism      theism
        |-----|-----|
         agnosticism

A far more accurate model is a two dimensional graph:

             faith
               |
               |
  atheism -----+----- theism
               |
               |
          agnosticism

If you look at it this way, you can see that atheists and theists alike can have faith or be agnostic. I myself am an atheistic agnostic. I have friends who are theist agnostics as well.

And, redundantly, most atheists -- or better, most or all of the vocal and active atheists -- are really involved emotionally with atheism just as theists are involved in their respective theisms.

And? Does vocal, active and emotional involvement in something equate to theism?

Are political parties now religions? Are supporters of sports teams religous groups?

Is there a difference between a atheist vocally and actively refuting eg astrology and a theist vocally and actively refuting the same thing? Are the same thought patterns and methods of reasoning behind each of their arguments?

Would those atheists be vocal and active athesists if they had never come into contact with a theist? Would there even be such a thing as atheism without theism? Conversely, would those theists still be theists if they had not come into contact with atheists? Does it work both ways?

You're the one who needs to look things up.

Atheism is from "a-" meaning "without" and "theism" meaning "belief in god". It literally means, without a belief in god.

Agnosticism was defined by T.H. Huxley, who was quite specific as to his meaning: An agnostic is someone who believes that we do not and cannot know whether god exists.

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/sn-h uxley.html

First things first: (A) seems like an axiom to me; I would like you to demonstrate or elaborate that unconceivable entities cannot exist, if possible.

But, furthermore, even if A is a truism, A+B just would prove that if there is a Deity, it's not supernatural -- it's part of the Nature. IOW: A+B = (so-called Supernatural entities/events) is contained in (Natural entities/events). Now, substitute "Nature" for "Next-level Deity" and you have a theism again. Remember that some theisms consider that our Universe is contained in the Deity -- part of it.

You are right that "philosopy is not faith", but faith, OTOH, is a philosophical stance. And to firmly believe in the non-existence of any Deity without any evidence whatsoever that it's true is a faith statement, instead of simply a philosophical statement. Now, not believing in the existence of a Deity (nor believing its non-existence) is a simple philosophical statement, because the subject is not believing something despite the absence of evidence (which would be the definition of "faith").

A philosophical position is not the same thing as an article of faith. While you could argue that a given philosophical position is not "proven", inasmuch as you (or perhaps someone besides yourself) may not be convinced by the arguments in it's favor, others may find the argument absolutely convincing such that any disagreement with it seems necessarily irrational.

I wouldn't call myself an atheist exactly (I'm a sort of pantheist), but I'm certainly a naturalist, so lets look at that first "article of faith" you listed:

1) that nothing exists but natural phenomena (matter)

I assume by "natural" or "material" phenomena, you (or they) mean observable phenomena, as in 'observable in principle'; you could by some means, perhaps not *yet* technologically possible, empirically tell whether or not that phenomena in fact occurred. That is, there is some observation you could make, some experiment you could do, that perhaps we are presently unable to do due to practical limits, which would tell you whether the sentence describing that phenomenon was true.

Given that that is what is meant by that, it seems patently absurd to conclude that anything non-natural exists (which is the same thing as to say that there are unknowable truths), on the basis that:

(A) Conceivability is possibility (and vice versa). Something is logically possible if and only if it could be conceived of; if you couldn't even conceive of what it would be for something to be the case, then you clearly have no idea what it even is that is in question, and so that non-idea cannot possibly be true.

(B) One can only conceive what one could, hypothetically, perceive. Consider someone asks you to conceive of "a foo upon a fweep". You have some rough notion of something placed on something else, but in order to conceive of these things, you have to ask "what is a foo?" and "what is a fweep?", and the descriptions which follow in response must ultimately cache out in some sort of perceptual terms (it looks like this, it sounds like this, it feels like this, etc). So to conceive of something, you must understand what it woud be to perceive it; thus, you could only conceive what you could (if such a thing existed) perceive. (As an aside, this does not mean that you must undertake the act of consciously imagining something every time you are asked to conceive of it; it is merely enough to note that "yes, that is a sort of perception I could have; now what about it?")

From A and B, it deductively follows that the only things logically possible are things which are perceivable (a.k.a. observable); so if "natural" or "material" phenomena are understood to be just such observable phenomena, as it seems they are, then it deductively follows that only natural/material phenomena are logically possible. From there, the atheist can perhaps derive his other two items of doctrine, but my point here is not to defend atheism; it is to defend philosophy from the accusation that it is mere baseless comparison of different articles of faith.

Now... maybe you can find some flaw in my argument there. Maybe my premises A and B are false somehow, and I've overlooked something. Maybe my understanding of "natural" or "material" phenomena is not correct, and those terms rightly denote something other than what I take them to. Maybe you can't find any flaws but you just don't buy it anyway. The point is, there is good, some (like I) would say irrefutable evidence to support such a position. I certainly consider such a thing quite easily proven; I have just done so. So to accept naturalism is hardly an article of faith; and it seems that something like atheism - or at least, something quite unlike the supernaturalist theism common to most modern major religions - logically follows from such a position. So the atheist (of a certain variety at least) has good grounds by which to claim that his position is not one of faith.

Now, there are some logical arguments for the existence of God as well, which I'm sure you're aware of; the ontol