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What this is, I suspect, is the Catholic leadership realizing that the window of ignorance is just about to close on their fingers, so they're scrambling a bit to retrench a little further outside of their normal run of indoctrination.

It seems inevitable if a particular branch of theism wishes to survive much longer outside of third-world countries. Not much room for superstition remains outside of the ever-shrinking classes of the susceptible.

So then Libertarians and free-market atheists are not "Right"?

Antifa would disagree.

Free market libertarian types don't give a f**k about those examples - and except for a limited few no one on the right wants to make laws regarding blasphemy. Sexually explicit material is fine for most except for being front and center to children - that limitation is not on the item but the presentation. Remember we're talking about the "Right" in 2017, not 1957.

Remember "Right" doesn't mean anything. It just means "Not Left."

Why do I say that? Because individualism != collectivism.
Atheism != Theism
Free Market capitalism != Corporatism != State Regulated Economy

So if an individualist, atheist and free market person such as Ayn Rand is Right Wing then a proponent of a state regulated economy, a collectivist, and theist, such as Patrick Buchanan cannot be Right Wing (and vice versa).

As mentioned earlier "Right Wing" today simply means "Not Let". And "Far Right" means "Really, Really Not Left".

and atheist (right and wrong aren't enforced socially in the same manner as Western countries)

Hogwash! For one, China is largely Buddhist (or variations of), not atheist.

Buddhism is by definition, atheist. Atheism is the absence of belief in a god (opposite of Theism, the belief in god or gods). Buddhism does not contain a god or higher power that controls everything. Buddhism is about the universe responding to what you do, whether you're resurrected as a higher or lower being depends on how you've lived your life, not what $_.Skyman allegedly says (lets ignore that every single one of his directives was written by the hand of man).

Buddha was a man who, according to Buddhism, achieved enlightenment. Buddha does not control or influence from beyond the point of enlightenment and it's the goal of Buddhists to reach the same level of enlightenment. Buddhists religious texts are treated more like guides than unquestionable directives.

Buddhism is not the only major religion to be atheist, and despite being rather non-authoritative compared to theist religions they have also been abused by those in power. That being said, I'd much rather sit next to a devout Buddhist than a devout Christian. Unwelcome proselytising is not the done thing for Buddhists (its a personal journey and all that). Buddhist being atheist is about the only thing the GGP got right though.

Second, the USA started off industrialization in a similar poorly-regulated dog-eat-dog kind of way. Europe used to rib us about it. Poor people take more risks because they have less to lose. Read about "Muck Rakers". Tape-worm eggs were sold as diet medicine, for example, and nobody did anything about it.

It wasn't just the USA, Europe was pretty messy too although we did it earlier than the US. The thing is, for Europe this was well over 100 years ago where we used kids to clean smoke stacks. For China, there are many people who remember when Mao told them to make steel in their back yards (which resulted in massive amounts of pig iron, which is too brittle for most applications requiring steel). Much like Europe and the US, China's middle class are rising.

Lets get this straight, people: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GOD!

citation please.

Your absolute arrogance of certainty Trumps reason, you possess no evidence either way.

As an atheist it reminds me that I am not represented and that people would still be happy to come at me with their torches and pitchforks.

Booo Hooo, why don't you go off and cry and wait for the world to say sorry to you. As an atheist any foundation for your moral behavior comes from the bible you criticize, as a nihilist your moral platform is empty as everything is meaningless.

All it shows is that you are too stupid to understand the messages in the bible that are separate from theism. I doubt you've ever read it to have a platform for your position. May God bless you and fuck your depressing ideology.

That's why I think atheism is a non-scientific stand as much as theism is. The only correct stand for a properly science minded person is to be agnostic regarding the whole matter.

You are making a fundamental mistake here: The ideology you are talking about is a quasi-religion in this form. A bit different in its "theory", but basically the same thing. And no, they are not representing atheism and neither is atheism an important characteristic. That was just something they adopted to fight competition for authority from theism.

> Theism is the belief that god or gods exist.
> Atheism is the belief that no gods exist.
> Agnosticism is the lack of either belief.

Agnosticism is the position that knowledge of God is unattainable by man. It has nothing to do with belief; there are agnostic believers and nonbelievers.

Also, authors in philosophy of religion have described active nonbelief vs. lack of belief as positive/negative, strong/weak, or explicit/implicit atheism. You're picking one definition and declaring it the sole definition.

You should stop pushing your POV as fact and educate yourself. Read some non-religious works for a start.

You are failing to understand the etymology of "theism" and how an inverse would reasonably apply to it.

Theism has a root word that comes from the Greek word "theos", which simply means god. Negating that with "a-" literally means "not god". The -ism suffix refers to a distinctive practice or philosophy, and atheism, carrying that suffix, would reasonably be the distinctive belief that no god exists. Theists are followers of theism, and atheists are followers of atheism... by definition.

The lack of any belief in god is certainly a subset of atheism, but is not atheism. People who abstain from any belief in god are simply not followers of theism, but that does not make them atheists.

Theism is the belief that god or gods exist.

Atheism is the belief that no gods exist.

Agnosticism is the lack of either belief.

There are other things that can govern how you behave in life other than one's beliefs about god (or gods) Religion only refers to the set of beliefs that one has about any gods which do so.

Atheism is also not merely the absence of any belief in a deity, it is the actual belief that no deities exist, and as such is certainly a religion.

You can further have a religion with being religious. This applies equally to theism as well as atheism.

No... atheism is not simply the absence of a belief in the existence of any god, it is the specific belief that no god exists.. Suggesting that atheism is not a religion simply because it is the very opposite of theism is like saying that if joy is an emotion, then grief is not one.

It's stupid to insult people based on their having religious beliefs.

Not at all; in fact it's probably one of the most reasonable and sensible things to insult people over.

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Neither theism nor atheism is falsifiable, so what you're saying is that you believe certain unprovable things and anyone disagreeing with you is delusional.

No, but thanks for trying to put words in my mouth. If you're an adult and you really, really believe in the whole religious backstory, then yes, you qualify as delusional. It may be a result of you being mislead or lied to as a child, but as an adult you should be able to reason to some degree, and believing in magical fairy tales that have no basis in fact is delusional.

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In fact, those friends are some of the best human beings I know.

This adds precisely nothing to your argument. Someone can be a good friend, a nice person, a benefactor to your community, and still be delusional.

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More interestingly, you seem to believe that religions are delusion, which would mean you aren't Christian. You don't seem to realize the variety in Christianity.

Variety, oh yes, it's good to have lots of varieties of the One True Way. :) But you're correct in that I'm not a Christian. I never could bring myself to believe in any religion, I just can't suspend my disbelief that far. Except for my firm and non-falsifiable belief in the God Anubis. That dude is real for sure- I mean, how could anyone not believe in a wolf-headed god who was (among other things) the Guide of Souls? Obviously it's perfectly rational to believe in Anubis, isn't it?

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However, you're willing to tell Christians what Christianity is,

I'm willing to tell them they've been mislead and lied to in order to get them to believe in a lot of ancient nonsense. I'm willing to tell them that once you realize there is no god, the world and the universe as a whole start to make perfect sense. It all behaves exactly as you would expect it to if was just a big, dumb mechanical universe without any intrinsic purpose behind the scenes or any supreme being directing events.

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Some theologians think there is a contradiction and (probably more) think there isn't, so there's a clear contradiction?

Yes, if after reading the same book some theologians think "A" and some think "B", it seems clear that they contradict each other. The fact that one can interpret the bible to mean practically anything and then come to completely opposing conclusions should be your first clue that it's not something to be relied on.

It's stupid to insult people based on their having religious beliefs. Neither theism nor atheism is falsifiable, so what you're saying is that you believe certain unprovable things and anyone disagreeing with you is delusional. In fact, those friends are some of the best human beings I know.

More interestingly, you seem to believe that religions are delusion, which would mean you aren't Christian. You don't seem to realize the variety in Christianity. However, you're willing to tell Christians what Christianity is, and how they should be interpreting the Bible, and why they should be doing it in a stupid way, and how irrational Christians are when they do what you ignorantly think they should.

Religion is just part of the gold standard in stupidity. Ideology is more general. There's lots of rigid ideologues on Slashdot, and they say stupid things because they let their ideology substitute for actually seeing what's going on, and most of them don't appear to be very religious.

So the Bible is vague enough to interpret in a sense that it's compatible with evolution, and therefore it contradicts evolution? Some theologians think there is a contradiction and (probably more) think there isn't, so there's a clear contradiction? I'm not convinced.

Also see Big Tobacco's decades-long war on research into the dangers of tobacco smoke and nicotine, or the more recently revealed sugar industry's war on research showing the dangers of refined sugars to human health.

Creationism was probably the first really sophisticated propaganda war on science, but it has inspired several later pseudo-scientific propaganda wars. Creationism's intentions were more to protect Christianity from the perceived threat that if science could provide answers to the life we see today, it was going to chip away at the edifice of Theism until Atheism reigned supreme. I'd also argue that for at least some branches of Protestant Evangelism, there was the more real threat that the vast amount of social control those churches wielded being undermined if they were forced to accept that vast swathes of the Bible became understood as being metaphorical, and not literal.

The story is a bit different for the tobacco, sugar, and fossil fuel industries. For them, a general acceptance of science has material costs. People reducing sugar consumption would lead to significant drops in profits. Of course, we know just how much damage the defeat of the tobacco companies has cost their investors. As for the fossil fuel industry, well it's the biggest beast of all. The entire global economy, and some of the greatest accretions of wealth ever known to humanity, are tied up in the continued exploration, extraction and use of hydrocarbons. If there is a significant shift to alternative energy sources, the fossil fuel industry will find itself a lot poorer for it, with the long-term outlook not exactly healthy.

Cut it any way you want it but atheism is just as much a BELIEF as theism is.

Nope - you are just not capable of seeing it any other way.

People who have a belief in say, the exact word of god as given to man in the form of the King James Bible cannot have any other belief.

On th eother hand, I have confidence in matters. That means that if I say, have confidence that we cannot harness zero point energy, I'm pretty darn sure that we can't.

But if someone comes along, and proves that we can, I'll abandon my confidence that we cannot in the face of evidence.

That is something that can be easily seen in the Theory of Evolution, where despite all evidence to the contrary, despite the entire field od biology and modern medicine validating Evolution, and despite physics validating it, there are still peopple who have great faith theat th world is some 6000 years old.

You just cannot understand the difference in mindset of people who need absolute unshakable belief, and people who have confidence in things, yet are able to change their minds as new evidence comes forth.

Cut it any way you want it but atheism is just as much a BELIEF as theism is. There is no proof one way or the other to the question of a god or gods. The only honest answer is "I don't know." If you feel so inclined I have no problem with you tacking on "and I don't care" after that. Aside from that you're all making gross assumptions based on nothing. That is illogical.

While I don't consider myself a theist I do find some of the ideas and questions of faith interesting in their own way. It's funny that "Science!*" herpers always ramble on about the search of alien life as "It's like having a glass of water from the ocean as your only sample and claiming whales don't exist." Atheists, IMHO, do the same thing with the question of gods. Our knowledge and ability to detect a lot of things is known to be limited so you want to draw conclusions based on an ignorance that science even confirms as ignorance then tie it up with a string made of your assumptions of how a god would or would not work? That's rich. It's on par with the same kind of "logic" people who would deny climate change or the theory of relativity would use to argue their ideas on the matter.

*By "Science!" herpers I'm talking about the Discovery Channel crowd that actually thinks that they're knowledgeable enough to sit down and poke holes in science concepts armed with little more than the 9th grade Rocks for Jocks understanding of the subject. These are the people who endlessly share memes of NdT and Sagan and bash religion like it's their life's work but can't sit down and actually discuss science on the technical level. They're a real treat. Many of the people who are beating on religion in these threads are the same people I'm talking about. They like to think they're science geeks but the closest they've ever gotten to discussing science is talking around the watercooler about last night's episode of The Big Bang Theory.

At first he describes the subset of the more zealous atheists, who simply lean on faith for their atheist beliefs, and blindly assert against theism as passionately as any crusader.

Eventually he brings up the what the agnostics sit on: "we can neither confirm nor deny"

Agnostics are pretty much the absence of a claim; the only thing they're committed to is being noncommittal, the only thing they assert is a lack of assertion

As the bowl of petunias said, "Oh no, not again."

Nice try at shifting the burden of proof. How times have theists tried it? It must be into the millions by now.

Atheism is from the Greek prefix 'a-' = without, and 'theos' = god, in other words the absence of theism.

Atheism is simply the absence of (theological) belief. It is not up to atheists or anyone else to prove a null hypothesis; it is up to theists or those proposing a hypothesis, to provide proof.

Not that we're holding our breath waiting for it.

"Your fallacy, like all institutionalized Churches, is assuming Free Will and Fate are mutually exclusive.... They are both true."
Read closer, my claim is that they are both false. That way they are not mutually exclusive. I repeat: There is no such thing as "Free Will", as understood in Christian religions, and there is no such thing as Predestination. In fact, I went to some care to illustrate the contradictions in one or both of them being true.
Your little Bean Machine is particularly off the mark- that is a demonstration of Statistical Distributions, which is a very odd way to express Religious concepts.

"Trading the ignorance of Theism for the arrogance of Atheism is still blindness."
"Atheism is the blind man telling everyone else they are crazy and irrational."

Nope. Boy do you need to study some History and Philosophy. There is no Arrogance in Atheism, just in some of the more obnoxious followers, what are termed "Militant Atheists". Nutjobs come in a wide spectra.
You also left out the Agnostics, which most Atheists really are:
-There is zero Material evidence to support any form of Supernatural Influence, and we really don't care anyway. What you believe, as long as your beliefs don't infringe on my right not to believe, is your business.-
Religious people tend to take offense from Atheism, as if it was directed specifically at them and what they personally have Belief in. It isn't. Atheists no more don't "believe" in God than they don't "believe" in Tarot or "The Matrix". They is all equally irrelevant: no material effects on the Universe.

You also left out the Deists, an interesting offshoot of the end of The Enlightenment, that believes that God probably does exist, but either no longer cares to interfere in Human Affairs, or is no longer able to. Deism had a strong effect on the way that the US Government was formed. Franklin was a Deist, while Jefferson was so strongly a Deist as was understood back then, that he edited his version of the New Testament so as to take out all Supernatural references. (Both still characterized themselves as Christians from a Philosophical viewpoint. This is not a contradiction.)

"The mystic is the one seeing in color wondering "When will both sides will shut up and stop arguing their relative truth and realize a) the fact that everyone has faith in their beliefs...""
That Mystic just has porridge in his brain pan. There are more than two sides, and not all of them involve Faith or Beliefs. And Believe is an awfully abused word: "I believe that I'll have a second Martini.", (Ugh.), is not the same as "I believe that the experimental results bear out the hypothesis.", which is not the same as "I believe in the Immaculate Conception."
Best not to use the word at all.

There are some branches of Sufi Mysticism that completely internalize Jihad, which has given the Sects the reputation of being non-violent. But then there are other Sufi Mystical sects that are as bloody as they come. That's the problem with porridge- sometimes one gets raisons, and sometimes one gets nuts. Mysticism is generally laziness; a lack of self-discipline.
This especially applies to "New Age" Mysticism, ("New Age" rhymes with Sewage.), which is basically a rijsttafel of odd notions and odder neuroses; just channel what you want from the table: all portions are equally valid.

Your fallacy, like all institutionalized Churches, is assuming Free Will and Fate are mutually exclusive.

They are both true.

One truth does not negate another truth. This is the very definition of a paradox.

Here is an example to illustrate. Take a Quincunx (or Galton Board) and flip it vertically:

Picture
Flash Animation

In this analogy:

* Fate = Gravity,
* Free-Will = Choice to move left or right

e.g.

* You are fated to die.
* You have free-will to die sooner or later. i.e. You can commit suicide (and thus get placed in God's Penalty Box) or live a long life trying to do the 1 and only commandment to the best of your ability.

The choice is yours.
For a limited time. (TM)

> This is the core of Atheistic Libertarianism,

Trading the ignorance of Theism for the arrogance of Atheism is still blindness.

i.e.
Theism is the color-blind man proselytizing to others his faith that "colors" exist.
Atheism is the blind man telling everyone else they are crazy and irrational.
The mystic is the one seeing in color wondering "When will both sides will shut up and stop arguing their relative truth and realize a) the fact that everyone has faith in their beliefs, and b) experimental knowledge one lives is the only real truth."

--
Javaschit, noun, a fucked up programming language designed and implemented in only 10 days. HTML5 requires the "use strict" hack to turn on type safety! WTF?!