We might have evidence that suggests evolution, but there is no evidence supporting the fact that life started.
We do have actual scientific experiments, such as the Urey-Miller experiment, and the ones that followed (and confirmed that it was indeed possible, at the same time addressing criticisms of the original experiment).
Having a proof or evidence of gods existence negates any requirement for belief and faith, hence making religion unneeded
So what? Why do we need religion? If God showed everyone that he exists, everyone would believe. Why would that be wrong? Is it the completely moronic stance that blind faith is good?
What, Lazarus being brought back to life after being dead for days doesn't count? Or do you just discredit sources with which you disagree?
No, that doesn't count because the source is useless. It's a book of fairy tales.
The interesting thing about Catholicism is that we've found that science often confirms our faith.
How?
I find it odd that while I (a Catholic) have little problem accepting scientific theories, most atheists have a very difficult time understanding and accepting scripture.
That's because science deals with actual observations/facts. Scripture deals with baseless claims with no evidence what so ever.
It would seem there's some circular logic going on in atheist circles - an atheist will argue that no credible source has verified a miracle; yet any source which mentions miracles is immediately disqualified from discussion as being "religious" in nature.
There is no circular logic here. A source isn't necessarily a good or reliable source. In the case of the Bible, it is a terrible source, as it is unverified and based on blind faith.
Both groups are willing to exclude from consideration sources which originate from those who hold viewpoints with which they disagree.
The difference is that atheist sources are based on observations/facts and logic. Religious "sources" are groundless claims withoout a shred of evidence.
Is an atheist able to comprehend that sometimes, explanations just don't exist, or are sometimes beyond the ability of human reason?
That's exactly it. An atheist must accept that we cannot currently explain everything, and we must keep looking for answers. A religious person just says "God did it" and forgets about it.
I would like to see atheists take the same approach to religion; just because you personally have not seen evidence of God doesn't mean that others have not.
First of all, you are ignoring the fact that many or most atheists used to be religious. Second, if there was evidence of God, then scientists would have been all over it.
But my heart goes out to atheists who cannot, or will not, understand the Universe from anything other than a scientific standpoint. Those who cannot confront ambiguity and contradiction will find themselves simply dismissing observations which do not fit into their preconceived notions of how the universe should be. And unfortunately, such a situation precludes any enlightenment or increase in understanding.
Typical theist nonsense. Avoid having to deal with reality by attacking a group and fending off their arguments in some sneaky way.
But moderation is not done on the reputation of the person, but on the post.
It's a gray area. As someone else pointed out, the comment was made by someone who actually knows what he's talking about. If he thinks it's a good story, one can just about assume that it is, seeing as this is his area of expertise and all. That makes the comment valuable to people trying to determine if the story has any merit or not. "Appeal to Authority"? Maybe, but in this case it's allowed:)
Perhaps no one will be killed, but threats are bad enough. As are demands that the group be taken down. The reaction from the Muslims was oh-so predictable...
What I find interesting is that someone can shoot himself so thoroughly in the foot by not even understanding what free speech is all about. Criticizing someone's speech doesn't make it less free. Get a clue, Bush lover.
Mozilla is not to be trusted. They may be all about open-source, but they sure have some nasty methods when dealing with the competition. They've been caught lying about Opera many times.
"Automatically updating block lists, Opera doesn't have that."
No, but you can easily add it. In fact, I believe there is a program which does keep Opera's list up to date.
"Flashblock displays an inline play button over all flash content so you can choose to play something instantly."
Can be done with User JavaScript.
"Noscript gives you an icon right at the bottom showing what domains are allowed and what are blocked from running scripts and you can white and black list things through the same menu."
Sounds like clutter to me. Why do you need to change those settings all the time? Disable JS globally, then enable them only for trusted sites. Once, and that's it. And can be done in Opera
"Opera doesn't even come close to matching these features natively
Actually, most extensions can be done in Opera in some way or another. You might not get 100% the same functionality, but that's usually not needed.
And I'll kick in Down Them All plugin that I can't live without now.
Ctrl+J to show all links (in 9.23, the shortcut changed in 9.5)?
I wonder how some one who doesn't believe in God can be offended when some one who does says they are going to hell.
They are? Hell is eternal torment, right? So basically, what you wish for them is eternal torment. Even though someone does not believe in eternal torment, I am sure there are people who would be offended that someone can be so fucking evil as to wish for someone else to have eternal torment. I personally am not offended. I just feel sorry for the irrational fool making such statements.
I seriously doubt the 'atheist' would be offended if a buddhist said they were going to come back as a roach or a follower of Zeus says they're going to be two bits short of a trip to hades.
So you are not offended if I call you a no-good shit-for-brains religious moron? Even if you aren't, you will probably realize that words can offend, not because I actually think you have poop in your head instead of a brain, but because the intention was to insult you.
It's like Americans who constantly point out every thing negative about America. It's easy to be a critic, it's a lot harder to create something that persists. I'm not knocking atheism, I am one on most days.
Create something? Who is supposed to create something?
But my point is that if I have an experience then it happened regardless of if I can prove it to you. I have my own personal evidence that God exists through my own religious experiences.
And I have already countered this point by pointing out that even if the experience seems real to you, there is a naturalistic explanation. "Religious feelings" are felt by people of other religions as well. Does that mean that their religions are true? No. The reason is, again, that it's got nothing to do with anything supernatural, but rather physical reactions in the body that one can, in fact, recreate with controlled experiments.
The bottom line: Such experiences are not evidence. "Personal feelings" are not evidence.
You cannot prove that God is not real just as I cannot prove to you He is. You cannot prove that all religions are false.
The burden of proof is not on me. It's on you. You are claiming that he exists, then you come up with the evidence. So far there is none, and all attempts at producing evidence have been debunked. On the other hand, there are huge amounts of data to suggest that there is no god.
Actually, you don't know shit about science, particularly in that you used the word "fact" concerning a part of the universe's history that we know very little about.
I did not. Read it again. Facts in science are observations. I never claimed that specific theories were "facts". Facts are not theories. Facts are what support those theories. Get a clue, fundie.
most string-theoretic versions involve some sort of brane collision incident in higher non-spatial dimensions, that caused everything (where "everything" is a very very small bit of space) to literally pop into existence
No, energy/matter has always existed.
Saying that energy and matter "always existed" doesn't explain their existence.
The explanation is that they always existed. You want to know "what made them always exist", or "which god made them always exist", but that's nonsense. Stop thinking like a religious person, and accept that there is no higher purpose. It always just was. No particular reason.
In my experience, I have seen plenty of scientists hold onto their theories in the face of the facts, with blind faith.
These won't be holding on for long. The scientific method and the scientific community make sure of that. And it is not blind faith. Their theories, even if wrong, are based on actual facts/observations.
I'm somewhat surprised that you know so much about what I experienced given the limited description I gave of it
When scientists can explain the mechanisms behind it, why would your "experience" be any different, when all those others that have been researched turned out to be purely naturalistic?
And let me guess, these theories are in principal unverifiable through the scientific method. Kind of like God.
No, they are very much subject to the scientific method. Not like God at all, because these hypotheses are based on actual observations. Not so with God.
Something does not have to be proveable for it to have happened.
But if there is no evidence for it, and if the claimed evidence turns out to be bullshit, then one can safely assume that it didn't. Note that car crashes are very common, so we know that they can happen. That makes it more likely that the car crash is real than God being real.
You can also observe the effects of religion.
Yes. That's because religion exists. God does not.
You can see how it has changed people's lives.
So has a lot of other things. That doesn't mean that there is anything divine about them.
Perhaps scientists can replicate what some consider a spiritual experiences but there are some they cannot replicate.
Scientists know what happens when people have things like "religious experiences".
To be consistent, you need to be honest that ideas of "purpose" are just as imaginary and arbitrary as the idea of a "God," if you are an atheist.
Not at all. Objective, global purposes, maybe. But not my own personal purpose. I can have my own goals/purposes in life, and there's no need for a god, nor are my goals/purposes imaginary.
Let me try to get at this a different way. "You", as you understand yourself to be, is a convenient fictional construct. In reality, there are a bunch of processes going on inside your brain that very well might be competing against each other, influenced by various hormone levels at that particular instant, what you happened to have for dinner, how much sleep you've had, and many other factors.
Certainly. But why are you apparently trying to use the logical fallacy called "appeal to consequences"?
Which all goes to say, the very idea of human "purpose" is self delusional bullshit.
A global human purpose, yes. But that doesn't mean that we can't have our own personal purposes.
In fact, the very idea of a real "self" is likely self delusional bullshit
Not at all. There is a "self". It might not be anything other than a biological machine, but it is still "self".
Here I've been going around thinking that what scientists were doing was wishful thinking. For example, "I sure hope the Scientific Method is a valid technique to verify what the universe really is
There's no wishful thinking involved. The scientific method has proven itself again and again and again. The computer you are using right now is a direct product of science. If science is wishful thinking, then apparently your computer is too. Hilarious.
I'm perfectly willing to allow you to use the Scientific Method to verify the Scientific method, but, in fairness, I think I should require you to allow me to use the Bible to verify the Bible.
This comparison is bullshit. The scientific method has proven itself time and time again. The Bible has been disproven time and time again.
That analogy doesn't help me much as I've never hit any heroin.
It does, because just because something feels good doesn't mean it's right or true.
True, but doing heroin doesn't give insight as to how to live your life, how to treat those around you and how to deal with life's unforeseen problems.
Nor does religion.
I don't see a lot of heroin addicts feeding or the poor, housing the homeless, finding homes for orphans or giving Christmas gifts to children whose parents can't or won't afford it, all while demanding absolutely nothing in return.
Lots of atheists do such good deeds. There is no need to involve religion. In fact, it is quite disgusting how religious people prey on the less fortunate to convert them to their cause.
Some of the greatest minds in history believed in God.
Some of these great minds lived at a time when there was little room for non-religion. Today, however, we have a lot more knowledge, and the pathetic arguments religious people use are getting more pathetic by the day.
So, the TFA's notion that your denying of faith adds credence to it is not because it keeps it in the limelight, it is because you have a such a disdain for those who believe in something that you do not understand at all, there must be something to it.
Ah, I get it. Anti-racists have such a disdain for racism that they must really believe that there is something to it. That racism is the Right Thing(TM)! Otherwise they wouldn't be fighting it!
That example you gave us is obviously satire. No atheist will use that as a serious argument.
Why shouldn't atheists be allowed to show how stupid the idea of God is when religious people constantly go on and on about their religion, and how everyone must be "saved"? Or are you saying that religious people on Slashdot aren't really religious, but more likely to be garden variety anti-atheists?
Slashdot Mirror
No, that doesn't count because the source is useless. It's a book of fairy tales.
How?
That's because science deals with actual observations/facts. Scripture deals with baseless claims with no evidence what so ever.
There is no circular logic here. A source isn't necessarily a good or reliable source. In the case of the Bible, it is a terrible source, as it is unverified and based on blind faith.
The difference is that atheist sources are based on observations/facts and logic. Religious "sources" are groundless claims withoout a shred of evidence.
That's exactly it. An atheist must accept that we cannot currently explain everything, and we must keep looking for answers. A religious person just says "God did it" and forgets about it.
First of all, you are ignoring the fact that many or most atheists used to be religious. Second, if there was evidence of God, then scientists would have been all over it.
Typical theist nonsense. Avoid having to deal with reality by attacking a group and fending off their arguments in some sneaky way.
Perhaps no one will be killed, but threats are bad enough. As are demands that the group be taken down. The reaction from the Muslims was oh-so predictable...
What I find interesting is that someone can shoot himself so thoroughly in the foot by not even understanding what free speech is all about. Criticizing someone's speech doesn't make it less free. Get a clue, Bush lover.
Nope. Like Mozilla, Opera makes money every time you use the search field in the browser.
Opera does have better standards support than Safari.
Mozilla is not to be trusted. They may be all about open-source, but they sure have some nasty methods when dealing with the competition. They've been caught lying about Opera many times.
No, but you can easily add it. In fact, I believe there is a program which does keep Opera's list up to date.
Can be done with User JavaScript.
Sounds like clutter to me. Why do you need to change those settings all the time? Disable JS globally, then enable them only for trusted sites. Once, and that's it. And can be done in Opera
Actually, most extensions can be done in Opera in some way or another. You might not get 100% the same functionality, but that's usually not needed.
Ctrl+J to show all links (in 9.23, the shortcut changed in 9.5)?
Ah hah hah... I just had to post in this epic blog spammer exposure thread. LOL. "Boo hoo, you didn't pick my spam blog over the original source!" :-D
The bottom line: Such experiences are not evidence. "Personal feelings" are not evidence.
The burden of proof is not on me. It's on you. You are claiming that he exists, then you come up with the evidence. So far there is none, and all attempts at producing evidence have been debunked. On the other hand, there are huge amounts of data to suggest that there is no god.How does that fantasy make you a better person? You don't need to believe in God to be a good (or great) person.
That example you gave us is obviously satire. No atheist will use that as a serious argument.
Why shouldn't atheists be allowed to show how stupid the idea of God is when religious people constantly go on and on about their religion, and how everyone must be "saved"? Or are you saying that religious people on Slashdot aren't really religious, but more likely to be garden variety anti-atheists?