In general, dictionaries are written by theists. (This is a generalization based on the fact that for most of Western Civilization, the population has been nearly entirely theist.) Webster's dictionary was founded by a very well known theist that included Biblical references in many of his definitions. Many theists I've encountered cannot tell the difference between simply not believing in their god, actively believing their god does not exist, and hating their god and denying its existence even though I actually know it's there. So it's understandable that few dictionaries are going to portray atheists accurately or even nonnegatively.
On the other hand, one can find definitions that define atheism as the "belief that there is no god and that religion should be suppressed" (http://www.naiadonline.ca/book/01Glossary.htm).
You can see how it's easy to get confused? Fortunately, the atheist population (I hesitate to say community, since any alliances are usually very tenuous and temporary) has defined gradations to allow for the diversity of views within the atheist population. (Note that atheism is simply the lack of belief. Anything beyond that is an individual's philosophy.) The Wikipedia has a very detailed overview of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism
Your whole argument is that atheists actively believe your god is false. I can't see why this could possibly be important to you, since all you're doing is arguing over whether someone can be called an atheist or not.
As to your logic, S -> G is equivalent to ~G -> ~S. The negation goes as follows:
~(S->G) ~(~S or G) ~G and S
Converted back into English, you have: Science can prove God exists and God does not exist.
This is useless to us, since nobody is actually denying the original claim. Not that this is terribly relevant, but I thought I ought to correct your error.
Because it's not a matter of belief, but one of evidence. If the evidence indicates that the universe has always been in existence, then our theories will change to accomodate that. As it is, it seems the evidence indicates that the universe is expanding and was at one point extremely dense, which would suggest that the universe was at one point comparatively small, which lends credence to the big bang theory.
As you approach of the speed of light, objects approach infinite mass. As mass increases, the amount of force required to accelerate increases as well. So the closer you get to c, the more fuel you require, which will also increases in mass, requiring still more fuel, and so on.
(Note that this is derived from the Lorentz transformations. If I recall the various transformations correctly, at c, a body's mass becomes infinite, its size infinitessimal, and it experiences no time. Which, I suppose, is why only energy travels at the speed of light.)
In case you hadn't noticed, the majority of Christians don't try to follow their faith. They choose their favorite parts of the Bible that back up what they learned growing up.
Fundies seem to be particularly fond of the Old Testament, since it's a whole lot easier to condemn someone with Deuteronomy and the Ten Commandments than the Beattitudes.
I would say LOTR didn't overuse special effects. It's not overuse when you're using as only as much as you need (even if that is a fucking lot). They did as much as they could with models and scenary and camera tricks. Sure, they used a lot of sfx, but there was never a point where it felt like they were grabbing your nuts and saying "Look! It's special effects!".
> Atheists have no ground to stand on fighting irrational beliefs. The belief that there is no higher power is just as irrational as believing that there is one.
Bullshit. Atheism itself is not an irrational belief, but the lack of a very particular irrational belief. Is it irrational for me not to believe in unicorns?
I think when you think of atheism, you're thinking of strong atheism, which states that the existence of a particular god/class of gods is provably false.
>The only "rational" answer to the question is that the answer is unknowable, or that you do not know the answer, which is agnosticism.
Agnosticism is hardly more rational than atheism, since it treats the two options as equally likely. You don't meet any agnostics regarding the existence or non-existence of merpeople, yet when somebody talks about an eternal space pixie, people say "it's a valid proposition".
The only "rational" answer to the question is that of the skeptic: disbelief until it has been shown beyond a reasonable doubt.
> When people try to denounce theism with science, they are abusing science and simply engaging in sectarian disputes.
When people try to denounce theism with science, they simply misunderstand the scope of science. This is why atheists traditionally stick to logic to denounce theism, since poking holes in definitions is a lot easier than the impossible feat of disproving the existence of .
Now denouncing a religion with science typically works, since religions make ad hoc explanations of the world, most of which turn out to be wrong, and demonstrably so. But gods are conveniently not subject to any of the standard rules of the universe, such as the tendency of things that exist to leave evidence of their existence.
Right. I considered that. Which is why my post was regarding the literalist sects.
On the other hand, what is the basic faith beyond the replacement for scientific understanding? When you replace everything with what we know now, you are left with essentially two things: morality and an afterlife. The morality that makes sense could be derived from elsewhere, and the rest ought to be thrown out as the garbage it is, especially the rantings of nutjobs with an obsession with when and where you can and can't stick your penis. And the afterlife (as far as I can tell) is just a way to cope with the finality of death. This leads to a fixation on said afterlife to the neglect of the present life.
As far as I can tell, the superstitious religions are deprecated. Don't take this to mean I think science is the answer. Science can't provide a meaning to your life (except for a scientist that loves his work). But you don't need a god or an afterlife either.
If you still need an external source of purpose and meaning, I'd suggest Brianism (http://www.brianism.org/). Its central premise is that we must do everything we can to preserve intelligence.
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Say, I hear bagpipes. Does anyone else hear bagpipes?
Creationism?
Did someone say I AM?
...
*Does a Yahweh jig*
*Looks awkward and goes back to his corner*
I've never met anyone that *didn't* want to run OS X.
Hi.
Christian Death
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Find exactly what you want today.
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I thought perhaps it was trying to be funny. Alas.
It's an article in the MIT paper, so it's being hosted on MITs servers.
Ignore the logical correction on my other post, then. I hadn't seen this when I posted.
In general, dictionaries are written by theists. (This is a generalization based on the fact that for most of Western Civilization, the population has been nearly entirely theist.) Webster's dictionary was founded by a very well known theist that included Biblical references in many of his definitions. Many theists I've encountered cannot tell the difference between simply not believing in their god, actively believing their god does not exist, and hating their god and denying its existence even though I actually know it's there. So it's understandable that few dictionaries are going to portray atheists accurately or even nonnegatively.
m 101.htm
If you want a decent definition of atheism, perhaps it would be best to find it in the atheist population. http://atheism.about.com/od/aboutatheism/p/atheis
Or a more scholarly source: http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=atheism
On the other hand, one can find definitions that define atheism as the "belief that there is no god and that religion should be suppressed" (http://www.naiadonline.ca/book/01Glossary.htm).
You can see how it's easy to get confused? Fortunately, the atheist population (I hesitate to say community, since any alliances are usually very tenuous and temporary) has defined gradations to allow for the diversity of views within the atheist population. (Note that atheism is simply the lack of belief. Anything beyond that is an individual's philosophy.) The Wikipedia has a very detailed overview of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism
Your whole argument is that atheists actively believe your god is false. I can't see why this could possibly be important to you, since all you're doing is arguing over whether someone can be called an atheist or not.
As to your logic, S -> G is equivalent to ~G -> ~S. The negation goes as follows:
~(S->G)
~(~S or G)
~G and S
Converted back into English, you have: Science can prove God exists and God does not exist.
This is useless to us, since nobody is actually denying the original claim. Not that this is terribly relevant, but I thought I ought to correct your error.
Because it's not a matter of belief, but one of evidence. If the evidence indicates that the universe has always been in existence, then our theories will change to accomodate that. As it is, it seems the evidence indicates that the universe is expanding and was at one point extremely dense, which would suggest that the universe was at one point comparatively small, which lends credence to the big bang theory.
It was a goddamn joke. He was poking fun at the very mentality you're criticizing.
Now we can package annoying straight into our pages!
Sounds like it would be more appropriately named a Cookbook.
Hear that?
*whoosh*
Guess what that is.
Erm, compare DNA to what? Besides, what would it indicate? The probability of this DNA spontaneously forming? Nobody thinks that's what happened.
As you approach of the speed of light, objects approach infinite mass. As mass increases, the amount of force required to accelerate increases as well. So the closer you get to c, the more fuel you require, which will also increases in mass, requiring still more fuel, and so on.
(Note that this is derived from the Lorentz transformations. If I recall the various transformations correctly, at c, a body's mass becomes infinite, its size infinitessimal, and it experiences no time. Which, I suppose, is why only energy travels at the speed of light.)
The real question on everybody's mind is: how well does it run Counter-Strike 1.5? I didn't see that test on there.
Would not a well-rehearsed lie reside in memory?
In case you hadn't noticed, the majority of Christians don't try to follow their faith. They choose their favorite parts of the Bible that back up what they learned growing up.
Fundies seem to be particularly fond of the Old Testament, since it's a whole lot easier to condemn someone with Deuteronomy and the Ten Commandments than the Beattitudes.
Why don't they all just f-f-fade away?
You're wrong. His sig is accurate.
Also, if you would, could you use the plural of "it" in a sentence?
I would say LOTR didn't overuse special effects. It's not overuse when you're using as only as much as you need (even if that is a fucking lot). They did as much as they could with models and scenary and camera tricks. Sure, they used a lot of sfx, but there was never a point where it felt like they were grabbing your nuts and saying "Look! It's special effects!".
I think you need to learn to take a joke.
Also, "God is dead" is hardly the same as "God doesn't exist".
> Atheists have no ground to stand on fighting irrational beliefs. The belief that there is no higher power is just as irrational as believing that there is one.
Bullshit. Atheism itself is not an irrational belief, but the lack of a very particular irrational belief. Is it irrational for me not to believe in unicorns?
I think when you think of atheism, you're thinking of strong atheism, which states that the existence of a particular god/class of gods is provably false.
>The only "rational" answer to the question is that the answer is unknowable, or that you do not know the answer, which is agnosticism.
Agnosticism is hardly more rational than atheism, since it treats the two options as equally likely. You don't meet any agnostics regarding the existence or non-existence of merpeople, yet when somebody talks about an eternal space pixie, people say "it's a valid proposition".
The only "rational" answer to the question is that of the skeptic: disbelief until it has been shown beyond a reasonable doubt.
> When people try to denounce theism with science, they are abusing science and simply engaging in sectarian disputes.
When people try to denounce theism with science, they simply misunderstand the scope of science. This is why atheists traditionally stick to logic to denounce theism, since poking holes in definitions is a lot easier than the impossible feat of disproving the existence of .
Now denouncing a religion with science typically works, since religions make ad hoc explanations of the world, most of which turn out to be wrong, and demonstrably so. But gods are conveniently not subject to any of the standard rules of the universe, such as the tendency of things that exist to leave evidence of their existence.
Right. I considered that. Which is why my post was regarding the literalist sects.
On the other hand, what is the basic faith beyond the replacement for scientific understanding? When you replace everything with what we know now, you are left with essentially two things: morality and an afterlife. The morality that makes sense could be derived from elsewhere, and the rest ought to be thrown out as the garbage it is, especially the rantings of nutjobs with an obsession with when and where you can and can't stick your penis. And the afterlife (as far as I can tell) is just a way to cope with the finality of death. This leads to a fixation on said afterlife to the neglect of the present life.
As far as I can tell, the superstitious religions are deprecated. Don't take this to mean I think science is the answer. Science can't provide a meaning to your life (except for a scientist that loves his work). But you don't need a god or an afterlife either.
If you still need an external source of purpose and meaning, I'd suggest Brianism (http://www.brianism.org/). Its central premise is that we must do everything we can to preserve intelligence.