Yes, absolutely. I hadn't touched a drop. My life has "meaning" in terms of personal and social fulfilment - e.g. serving family, kids, friends and those around me - I don't need religion for that, apes and many other animals have evolved complex enough brains too and behave in the same way. It doesn't mean my life, or any other life, has any greater or higher "meaning" though, why should it? That's pure wooo. Everyone is born atheist. You simply don't need to qualify it. Is it divine intervention that children happen to adopt their parents religion, largely dependant on which country they are born in? Highly unlikely. Atheism is supported by reason and evidence - "I don't think it's true" is good enough.
I strongly disagree. One is born religious, and 'trained' to be atheist (through logic and reasoning). The large majority of the world is religious, not because their parents were, but because religion is inherent to humankind. We always tend to seek reasons, until we are taught they aren't necessary. Together with seeking comprehension and ways of manipulation ("how?"), finding - and fabricating! - reasons ("why?") has been one of the main driving forces of human kind throughout all of its existence. Religion is just a system built of these reasons.
"Congratulations Mr. & Mrs. Pliqu, it's definitely a baby. We haven't sexed or weighed it yet, its just in the middle of saying its prayers, but as soon as it's said its Amens we'll get right on it." I'm pretty sure worship of a higher being is a taught thing.
I would love to see some evidence to back up your first statement there. I'm not saying your wrong, I've not seen any research to indicate either way, but it's an insanely bold statement to put out there without even a modicum of backup. As Nexxo has pointed out, religion can serve a large number of psychological purposes entirely regardless of the particular flavour. Just because a human might be born predisposed to belief in a divine isn't actually any kind of evidence that there is in fact God, it's entirely a statement about the human condition. Your last statement is so hilariously contradictory as to be unreal. As someone who has switched from one camp to another, I find myself putting a lot of store about making sure that the points being argued are correct, regardless as to whether the argument is something I agree with. That statement is an embarrassment and bizarrely enough actually manages to concede the logical high ground to anyone running round with a holy book, because they at least have that as evidence of their position, however flimsy that evidence may be. "I think ..." is never good enough on its own.
No, I challenged your arguments for atheism. There's a difference. Since you seem to conflate atheism with science, I think we should adopt the scientific approach of testing our hypothesis by challenging it. Hey, it's your idea. I just try to apply scientific rigor. If your atheism is based on sound logic, you should have no problem defending it. Else you are no different from the religious folk you sneer at for their blinds, illogical, unsubstantiated belief. My point is: how did you arrive at this meaning? Do you have any scientific proof that this is what your life means, or was it just a personal decision? The things that are most important to you: your love for your partner and children, your family, your friendships, are not scientific facts or concepts. They are human experiences. So Science is a powerful tool, but it does not have the answer to everything. Scientists know this, which is why no wars are ever fought over scientific theory. Religion is basically also a tool, but for a different purpose: it is a cognitive coping strategy and a social bonding strategy. Some religious folk make the mistake of thinking that it has the answer to everything (like some people believe science does) and end up fighting wars over it. As Pliqu says, the belief in supernatural causes is wired into our thinking from birth (for lots of evolutionary reasons --divine intervention not required). The culture that we grow up in will of course shape that to the prevalent cultural religious beliefs, as culture does with all our thinking, feeling and behaviour. But his is why we have so many religions all over the world, and have always had them. There are a few small tribes who don't (the Piraha tribe in the Amazon, for instance), but that comes at a price. No metaphysical conceptualisation = no imagination = no creativity = no progress --and no science! No stories about gods and monsters means no thinking about the nature of life, the universe and everything. Superstitious thinking is a stage we have to go through to prepare our mind for thinking scientifically. We need the stage of cave paintings to get to the stage of molecular diagrams and blueprint schematics. There are a lot of cognitive developmental reasons for why this is so, but that makes for a long post. It is only as we grow up and our brain develops and we learn to think logically that we are capable of abandoning superstitious beliefs. Some people don't make it --the majority of the population is incapable of thinking beyond the level of a 12-year old. And even bright adults still read horoscopes, play the lottery and drive a car even though they are 100.000 times more likely to be killed in a road traffic accident than win the lottery. No, as TheCherub says, only "I don't think it's true because [logical argument and/or scientific proof]" is good enough. And if you get all uncomfortable at my challenging your atheist beliefs, then perhaps you need to think about your position a little more.
Atheism is the opposite of Theism neither of them have any proof, it's impossible to either prove or disprove the existence of a deity. IMHO both theists and atheists stand on very shaky ground. If you are basing your belief purely on reason and evidence are you not Agnostic ?
Believing in Santa is the opposite of not believing in Santa. Neither of them have any proof, it's impossible to either prove or disprove the existence of a Santa. etc etc. I will break it down, in strict scientific/logical speech, then you can't prove non-existence. You can prove existence however. This is for everything and anything, including Santa, fairies, Thor, psychic powers, etc... All we can really say, is that it is "unlikely" or "implausible" that such a thing exists, even when the chances are infinitesimally small. However, when we talk in a colloquial manner. Then we approximate, and we state "Santa does not exist". This is how we get on in life. Occam's razor and such. However the religious argument, mixes both views. It uses the rational to say that it could exist, and translates that colloquially as a plausible possibility. A better way to explain it is to use the famous Russell's teapot. If I were to tell you that there is a teapot orbiting around Jupiter, and that we have no powerful enough telescopes to see it. It would be ridiculous to believe me just on the basis that I cannot be proven wrong.
If you cannot prove or disprove the existence of something, you cannot make statements about its probability either. The Russell's Teapot argument does not apply. We know that teapots exist --I have one on my kitchen shelf. Being a physical object, it is subject to the laws of physics. Hence we can make statements about the probability of one existing in orbit around Jupiter. If we cannot prove or disprove the existence of an entity, we basically cannot say whether it exists or not, hence we cannot make meaningful statements about where it exists or not, or indeed the probability of it. This is why science does nor concern itself with God. God's existence is not falsifiable (it cannot be proved or disproved) hence it falls outside the bounds of science. Moreover, logically reasoning, if God created the Universe, He came before it, hence He is (at least partly) outside of it. Since we can only scientifically observe and conceive of what is inside our universe, God lies again outside of its domain. And that's fine: why agonise about something that has no observable effect on our physical realm of existence? It's kind or irrelevant.
But to say there is not a teapot orbiting around Jupiter would be just as ridiculous as saying there is. Without being able to prove it either way, would it not be ridiculous to say there is or is not a teapot orbiting around Jupiter. Yes it maybe improbable, unlikely, or implausible, but that is not a good enough reason to discount it as not true. I CBA to research on the matter, but i would hazard a guess that somethings we now know as fact seemed improbable, unlikely, or implausible in the past.
This is wrong, you can. This was the whole thesis of the God Delusion by Dawkins. We do it with statistics, we do it in judging culpability. We don't know "for sure" whether man caused climate change, but we put a probability on it even if this relationship does not exist. The point of Russel's teapot is that lack of proof of non-existence is not sufficient (far from it) to claim existence. The burden of proof resides with whoever makes the existence claim, not with who refutes it. If think it was Hitchens that said (paraphrasing here): "that which is stated without evidence can be refuted without evidence". I said it before, this is what we call the "Deist" viewpoint. Not the religious one. The religious one, for example the Christian one, claims that Jesus walked on water. This is "disproved" scientifically. The religious believe in a lot more on top of the Deist viewpoint, angels, hell, trinity, resurrection, virgin birth, miracles, Earth's age, etc etc. All things that are "easy" to debunk scientifically. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFaBbndExzg I hope we can at least agree to the above. Now, as for the Deist viewpoint, it takes more refinement to debunk and I am not sure I am the best person to do so. Roughly, you are assuming that the First Cause is "intentional" by calling it God. This is "possible" but, it is possible among millions and millions of other unproven, but possible, solutions. We can just dismiss it and focus on the "educated guesses" (another description of Science), rather than the wild ones.
No, it's the other way around. You don't need to believe in it just because someone said so and it can't be proven false. Using your logic you cannot discount "anything" as not true. Ever.
I think that is the point of us being intelligent, self aware creatures with will. We can choose to do and believe in whatever we like. There is never going to be proof for 'God' IN MY OPINION but that doesn't mean that someone won't prove me wrong. But I believe in science because there is more that I can see with my own eyes. Nobody can completely proved the Big bang or what happened at the beginning of the universe and I can't say that that's undeniably true, either. Most people go with what they believe and what their will tells them. I don't like religion because 'God' normally doesn't actually come into their points. If they use God, it's a defence to something they can't deny.
Correct, you can never discount anything as not true, much in the same way as you can never say something is always going to be true. All you can do is base what is currently believed to be true or false on the best available information at the time. If new information comes to light that disproves the currently held "truth" then that "truth" gets replaced with the new "truth" It's what is called scientific truth.
We've just got back from a trip to the coast - it was really beautiful today and there's nothing like a stroll along the shore to blow away the previous night's excesses. Hopefully I've explained my position clearly and honestly enough throughout this thread. I don't think there's any more I can contribute without repeating myself, and that's boring, so I'll bow out. I'll leave you with a little song that sums up my feelings on this pretty well.
Because we can operationalise a scientific testable hypothesis around it, we can express its probability based on the observable evidence. We can't do that with God. At which point basically nothing meaningful has been said either way. No, that people can walk on water is disproved scientifically. It is logical to extend that to Jesus, but unless a scientist is able to travel back in time, we will never know for sure (although the alternative hypothesis, that superstitious people will tell tall stories, is on balance much more probable. Unless Jesus just knew where all the pier poles were. ). All except hell. Again: metaphysical realm, outside our physical universe, hence unprovable and irrelevant to the scientific perspective. You keep mentioning the Deist viewpoint, but I am arguing from a scientific viewpoint. I'm not assuming that the First Cause is intentional; I'm saying that we can never find out one way or the other. God is outside the physical realm, so it's pointless to speculate about something that has no observable effect on the physical realm and we have no way of testing. This is why you won't find any scientists trying to disprove God any more than prove Him. Dawkins needs to take a chill pill, by the way. He is starting to sound like a prophet more than a scientist.
