Atheists' Protocol

[Thorne]

Thorne. The point is not that I am gullible, but that until you prove faith is powerless, I am entitled to believe, if I want to, that it will give me the keys to heaven, and that nothing is impossible if my faith is pure. No scientist has the right to gainsay me until he can demonstrate, scientifically, the opposite. He has to agree to disagree, as you seem to do in other threads.

I'm not trying to say you're gullible. Just trying to get rid of that damned bridge. And I really don't have a problem with people who have faith. But placing faith before reality seems, to me, a bit risky. I am reminded of the woman who was told to leave her home because of a flood. "No, God will protect me," she replied. When the water reached the first floor of her home a boat came by and the people tried to get her to leave. "No, God will protect me," she told them. When the water reached the second floor another boat came by, with the same results. Soon after a third boat came by and they tried to take her from the roof of her home. "No," she said again. "God will protect me."
Soon after she drowned. When she arrived in heaven and saw God she asked him, "Lord, why didn't you protect me?"
God's answer? "I sent three damn boats! What more do you want?"

I reject utterly that I have "copped out" of something or other: if science cannot prove God does not exist, He might. If, as you say, no scientist will ever claim that science has the answer to everything, what are we arguing about?

Science can never prove that something does NOT exist. It's not possible. They CAN show that there is no verifiable, objective evidence available to prove that something DOES exist, which is not quite the same thing. And I don't believe we are arguing. We are having an open and frank discussion. Our beliefs are different, which to my mind makes these discussions that much more interesting.

No doctor has ever brought back anyone from the dead. If you know of one claiming to have done so, and you are sure he is not the Messiah, refer him to your Medical Council so they can strike him off as a quack.

How would you define "death?" If someone has no heartbeat, no respiration and no apparent brain function, I would have to say he is dead, wouldn't you? Yet there are people who have been immersed in freezing water for upwards of twenty minutes, dead by any definition we might use, who have been revived. Call it restoring vital functions if you wish, but they were clinically dead.

Faith is not flying in the face of the truth - that is fanaticism. Faith is believing in something that has not yet been proved or disproved. Faith in science is believing that it is capable, eventually, of answering everything within the laws of nature, some of which may yet await discovery. When science is able to provide all the answers, that faith will have been justified. Until then, you have to accept the possibility that God is responsible for something that science cannot explain, even if you will not believe it until it has been proved.

Believe it or not I can accept the "possibility that God is responsible for something that science cannot explain." I don't believe it's likely, but it is certainly possible. I can also accept the possibility that there are alien cultures scooting around our world in UFO's. Again, I don't think it's likely but it is possible.
I think my biggest problem is not with faith: certainly people are entitled to believe whatever they wish, whether I think it's a viable belief or not. My problem is with religion, or rather with those people who embrace the tenets of a religion unequivocally without truly understanding what those tenets are saying. Too many religions claim to be the only TRUE path to God and tend to regard those who do not believe as they do as something less than human. This despite the fact that none of those religions have any more, or less, foundation in fact. That is truly the road to fanaticism.

Are you SURE you don't want your bridge back?

Happy New Year.