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An article against Atheism

Tiberius

Well-Known Member
That article is full of rubbish, making incorrect claims. When they can get their facts right, THEN i will pay attention to what they say, but for now, it's just drivvel.
 

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
Tiberius said:
That article is full of rubbish, making incorrect claims. When they can get their facts right, THEN i will pay attention to what they say, but for now, it's just drivvel.

Even if they got their facts straight, Tiberius, I'm not sure that I'd personally be interested in a polemic against atheism. As far as I've seen, even the best of such rants are usually petty minded and largely irrelevant to genuine atheists.

I agree with you, however, that the article's rubbish does not speak well of its author, nor of the way his religious beliefs fail to give him adequate guidance on intellectual honesty.
 

Scarlett Wampus

psychonaut
That it has to indulge in the obvious fantasy that Atheism is "poised for extinction" shows just how threatening Atheism really is to the author.
 

PureX

Veteran Member
darkwaldo said:
http://www.breakpoint.org/listingarticle.asp?ID=2251

I found this article while browsing townhall.com. Any comments? I wonder if it is true that 90 percent of Americans consider themselves theist of some sort or another. I always thought we where more secular than that?
You're assuming that these must be mutually exclusive, but they aren't. Lots of people are personally theistic (if not religious) but socially secular. This is to be expected in a country where we have traditionally kept our religious beliefs apart from our social interactions. Most of us have learned to "mind our own business" when it comes to religious beliefs and have come to appreciate the value of everyone doing so.

It's only recently, as the republican party has been stirring up religious resentments, animosities, and prejudices, to help get themselves elected, that the idea that a person can't be both theistic and secular at the same time has arisen.

I'm both a theist and an agnostic. And I think lots of other folks are as well. And although I'm happy to discuss religious beliefs on internet sites designed for this purpose, I don't incite such discussions in the normal course of my social interactions. I believe that most people prefer to keep their religious beliefs to themselves, and I respect their privacy.
 

Abram

Abraham
[SIZE=+0]You Atheist sound like a bunch of Christians getting upset over a newsletter about the death of God. Huh?[/SIZE]

I agree to the idea that naturalism and atheism will be disconnected.


[SIZE=+0][/SIZE]
 

mr.guy

crapsack
abram said:
I agree to the idea that naturalism and atheism will be disconnected.
NOW i'm confused. What do you think will "wedge" the two apart?

While i got ya here, how connected/interdependent do you suppose they currently are?
 

uu_sage

Active Member
In the spirit of earlier posts, this article is certainly, beyond any doubt biased from a fundamentalist Christian perspective with hints of apologetics defending their faith. In its defense they are not going to back off from their unquestioned stance on their worldview.If they want to hold that sort of view so be it. They are free to do as they will so long it doesn't harm anybody. It may soil their reputation and rile up those of us who base our beliefs and our experience on reason (not just atheists but agnostics, Deists, Unitarian Universalists and others)
 

MaddLlama

Obstructor of justice
Does the article perhaps have any statistcal sources for this?

No? Didn't think so.

Next pelase.
 

eudaimonia

Fellowship of Reason
darkwaldo said:

"In a naturalistic universe, choice and free will are illusion. To maintain intellectual integrity, an atheist has but two choices: abandon his conviction in the sovereign self or lose his faith in naturalism."

This is not so. I'm a naturalist who believes in the reality of choice and free will. My intellectual integrity is maintained since I reject event-event causation in favor of agent-action causation, which is not a philosophical view in conflict with the essence of naturalism.

All I can say though is that this article is extremely short on evidence that atheism is on the decline. Reports of atheism's demise are greatly exaggerated.

(BTW, this post is not an "eruption". I'm just rolling my eyes at the author.)


eudaimonia,

Mark
 

PolyHedral

Superabacus Mystic
revealing that the faith required for atheism, and its underpinning of philosophical naturalism, is enormous; in fact, one could say that it’s without rational basis altogether.

The faith required for Athiesm? You need practicly no faith.
 

retrorich

SUPER NOT-A-MOD
Booko said:
As always, consider the source. The author is a member of the Wilberforce Forum, according to the article. And according to Wiki, this is what the Wilberforce Forum is:

"The Wilberforce Forum is a conservative Christian political and social think tank and action group particularly active in the promotion of Christian creationism in education and in biotechnology and bioethics issues, such as human cloning and stem cell research."

Methinks I hear the sound of axes grinding in the background of this article...

"...conservative Christian political and social think tank..."

Isn't that an oxymoron? :rolleyes:
 

Smoke

Done here.
While atheism enjoys wide acceptance in secular Europe and the scientific community at large (including 93 percent of the National Academy of Science membership), theism is embraced by almost 90 percent of Americans and is making sustained gains in the developing world. And with birthrates in the world’s theistic communities outpacing those in secular ones, it appears that atheism is destined to become a victim of its own doctrine of natural selection.
The only thing I can make of this is that while atheism is widely accepted among the best educated people, it's unpopular among the poorest and most ignorant, and the author is cheerfully confident that poverty and ignorance will eventually overcome education.

It seems like a very strange argument to make for one's own point of view, and one hopes what we're witnessing is the just the ravings of a dying lunatic. (Fundamentalism, I mean, not Regis Nicoll. ;))
 

Smoke

Done here.
ΩRôghênΩ said:
atheists seem to erupt over this. your beliefs will be challenged time to time you know
My "beliefs" are challenged many times each day, often by people who assume that my rejection of their superstitions constitutes some kind of system of belief. ;)

I grew accustomed to that kind of thing long before I was a nontheist.
 
Interesting read but for the most part an ill-thought attack on atheism.
I would definately not go so far as to say that atheism is unpopular with the stupidest people. Some of the gretest and most intelligent people I have ever met were religious.
 

eudaimonia

Fellowship of Reason
Silicon Hero said:
I would definately not go so far as to say that atheism is unpopular with the stupidest people. Some of the gretest and most intelligent people I have ever met were religious.

That's a non-sequitur.


eudaimonia,

Mark
 
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