Atheists' Protocol

[ThisYouWillDo]

The great thing about religion - and I speak as an atheist, not an agnostic - is that, if you believe, it is real, not myth. And there's nothing that a scientist, a pseudo-scientist, or a downright bigot can do to prove you wrong. Even his "science" depends ultimately on his faith that it is a true and accurate description of the world, but that is unprovable.

At least a bigot relies on gut feeling, which is as close to faith as I suppose he can get. Only he, to my mind, has any right to describe religions as fairy tales.

TYWD

[caged]

The great thing about religion - and I speak as an atheist, not an agnostic - is that, if you believe, it is real, not myth. And there's nothing that a scientist, a pseudo-scientist, or a downright bigot can do to prove you wrong. Even his "science" depends ultimately on his faith that it is a true and accurate description of the world, but that is unprovable.

At least a bigot relies on gut feeling, which is as close to faith as I suppose he can get. Only he, to my mind, has any right to describe religions as fairy tales.

TYWD

I can't agree with the idea that only a bigot has the right to describe certain unlikely stories as 'fairy tales'. It's an opinion that any reasonable person has the 'right' to hold and express.

I don't really hold with your treatment of scientific knowledge here either. I can see what you are getting at it, and it's quite a popular view these days, but I don't think it holds water. Science has proven its efficacy by having a tendency to work, and of course in practice most of us live our lives and make many mundane decisions every day using the types of thought processes that science is based upon.

However, I do find the science/religion/"how can we know ANYthing?" debate
very tedious and if my 'fairly tales' comment somehow led to that then I withdraw it - !

[Alex Bragi]

....

By their own admissions, theologians tell us that we cannot know the true nature of God, but then tell us that they know what he expects from us. Unless you truly believe that these people (who include among them adulterers, pedophiles, drug users and murderers) really have intimate contact with God, you must conclude that they are only making things up as they go along.

As an agnostic, I don't conclude anything about religion, Thorne.

I can tell you many of my Christian friends would say anyone can have "intimate" contact with God and I happen to think that's a nice and forgiving (Christian) kind attitude to have.

...I don't have the extraordinary level of self-confidence required to say definitively that god (or gods) does or doesn't exist.

I'm right there with you, cage--open-minded and eager to look at it from all perspectives.

I'm sorry that the term 'fairly tales' miffs you, honestly. I thought twice about using that term, but there you go. It miffs me that beliefs in highly improbable stories lead people to want to persecute homosexuals, limit women's rights, limit my freedom to do things like gamble and so on.

Yes, I understand the point you where making and while it's true what my dear o' dad always told me as kid about, "stick and stones... " it's just a word that, in that context, kind of bugs me--on behalf of my theists friends.

The 'comfort' argument is always an interesting one. I personally care more about whether what I believe is true, or likely to be true, than whether it feels nice to believe it. Still, having once been a born-again Christian I do know how it feels to be a believer.

Been there and done that. Yep, I used to attend church all the time. I have to tell you something else. Yes, it did feel good to 'believe' and I do often wish I still had that faith.

Call me crazy, but I think too, that many theists really do manage to harness, and have an ability to draw on, their metal power (call it pray; call it what you like-- it still the same thing) that many of the rest of us simply don't.

The great thing about religion - and I speak as an atheist, not an agnostic - is that, if you believe, it is real, not myth. And there's nothing that a scientist, a pseudo-scientist, or a downright bigot can do to prove you wrong. Even his "science" depends ultimately on his faith that it is a true and accurate description of the world, but that is unprovable.

You know the thing that always intrigues me most about debates between theists and atheists? It's that, invariably, each side is convinced they are absolutely right and the other side is absolutely wrong.

At least a bigot relies on gut feeling, which is as close to faith as I suppose he can get.

Well, no, I think bigots rely on feeling comfortable with their own ignorance and narrow-mindedness which they, in turn, use to buoy their delusional superiority.

Only he, to my mind, has any right to describe religions as fairy tales.

Ha-ha!!! What twisted irony!

[Thorne]

I can tell you many of my Christian friends would say anyone can have "intimate" contact with God and I happen to think that's a nice and forgiving (Christian) kind attitude to have.

Naturally, anyone can claim to have intimate contact with God. How can anyone prove otherwise?

The great thing about religion - and I speak as an atheist, not an agnostic - is that, if you believe, it is real, not myth. And there's nothing that a scientist, a pseudo-scientist, or a downright bigot can do to prove you wrong. Even his "science" depends ultimately on his faith that it is a true and accurate description of the world, but that is unprovable.

Nope. Not even close. Science says that if you stand in front of a speeding train you will get hit and most likely die. Religion says that if you pray hard enough, God will spare you. Where would you like to place your bet?

Science works because it explains the world accurately and repeatably. If you do this and this and that, you will get those. Every time. Not only that, but anyone can do this and this and that, under the same conditions, and get those. Every time! Religion or pseudo-science don't even come close.

[ThisYouWillDo]

Science works because it explains the world accurately and repeatably. If you do this and this and that, you will get those. Every time. Not only that, but anyone can do this and this and that, under the same conditions, and get those. Every time! Religion or pseudo-science don't even come close.

I have just Googled What can science not explain? and found the following (inter alia). I don't know how credible these statements are, but I suspect there some truth to them, even if only superficially. (The guy has a book to sell!)

1. DARK MATTER of an unknown form makes up most of the matter of the universe. This matter is not predicted by the standard physics models and science does not understand what this substance is.

2. THE LAW OF GRAVITY appears to be seriously broken. Experiments have found that Foucault pendulums (pendula?) veer off in strange directions during solar eclipses. Interplanetary NASA satellites are showing persistent errors in trajectory. Neither of these is explained or predicted by the standard theory of gravity.

3. COLD FUSION. The Cold Fusion phenomenon violates physics as we understand it, and yet it has been duplicated in various forms in over 500 laboratories around the world. Present day physics has no explanation for how it works, but it does work.

4. CHARGE CLUSTERS. Under certain conditions, billions of electrons can "stick together" in close proximity, despite the law of electromagnetism that like charges repel. This indicates that our laws of electromagnetism are missing something important.

5. COSMOLOGY. Quasars, which are supposed to be the most distant astronomical objects in the sky, are often found connected to nearby galaxies by jets of gas. This suggests that their red shifts are due to some other, more unusual physics which is not yet fully understood.

6. SPEED OF LIGHT, has been exceeded in several recent experiments. Certain phenomena, such as solar disturbances on the sun which take more than eight minutes to be visible on the earth, are registered instantaneously on the acupuncture points of instrumented subjects which apparently respond to solar events by some other force which travels at a much higher speed than light.

Evidence has also accumulated in the laboratory that many paranormal effects are real, and can be verified and studied scientifically. I won't bother to repeat these, but if you are interested, go to http://www.synchronizeduniverse.com/

Now you might say, if the above statements are true, they simply reflect the incomplete state of science at the moment. If you do, my reply is, that's your belief, and you cannot prove it anymore than a religious believer can prove God's existence.

This_Will_Do_You

[Thorne]

Now you might say, if the above statements are true, they simply reflect the incomplete state of science at the moment. If you do, my reply is, that's your belief, and you cannot prove it anymore than a religious believer can prove God's existence.

This is a copout. No reputable scientist will ever claim that what science claims is the absolute, definitive proof of anything. By its very nature science questions everything. The whole point is that we truly don't know everything. We try to make the most rational conclusions about observed phenomena that we can and define certain "laws" about them. When something then comes along which seems to defy those laws we must either find out what is causing that to happen or change the laws.
The whole point of faith is to believe something despite what the real world shows. And clinging to that belief even when evidence points to the contrary. A good example is the search for Noah's Ark. Many deeply religious people, including an American astronaut, have hunted diligently for evidence of Noah's Ark on Mt. Ararat in Turkey. Yet the Bible, which they use as their source of information, clearly states that the Ark came to rest in the mountains of Ararat, not on Mount Ararat. And besides, that mountain was not even named Ararat until the 18th or 19th century. This is akin to searching for evidence of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania!
As for the items you noted, I'm going to take some time to do my own research on these. Most of them I "believe" I know the answers to, but since you have taken the time to ferret them out, the least I can do is take the time to respond intelligently.
And please understand, I am not trying to destroy anyone's faith in God or any other belief. My whole point is to try to make people realize that what they believe is not necessarily the whole, absolute truth.