Quote Originally Posted by leo9 View Post
So did Marxism and Nazism. So, to a lesser extent, do all ideologies: they differ only in their strictness and prescriptiveness.
True, but they did not claim to have the backing of a supernatural being behind them.

And in the second place, I never said I deny the existence of any gods.
My statement was not directed at you specifically. But it is unusual, I think you will agree, for a member of any religion to honestly say that their god might not be the one, true God.


Faith, I think we agreed earlier, is belief without proof.
Which is an altogether different thing from disbelief without proof.

But when you say:"There are no gods. We are here by virtue of a series of cosmic accidents", that's a statement of faith - a belief which you hold without proof, because it's logically incapable of proof.
No, it's a statement of statistical certainty. It's saying that the odds of there being gods, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, are so negligible as to be virtually zero. In mathematical terms, it's stating that the probability of there not being gods is 0.999999999999999999.... Rounded to 1.0

we are both believers, you just believe in fewer gods than I do.
And once again I say, disbelief cannot be equated with a belief in the opposite. It's a lack of belief. Atheism is a lack of belief in gods, not a belief that there are no gods.