Interesting ariticle: There Is No God (and you know it)
rigneyclan
Posts: 289
http://chem.tufts.edu/tufts-ssa/Harris-NoGod.htm
Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture, and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of six billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl’s parents believe -- at this very moment -- that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this? ---- No.
The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle. The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job. It carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity. It is, moreover, a job that the atheist does not want.
It is worth noting that no one ever need identify himself as a non-astrologer or a non-alchemist. Consequently, we do not have words for people who deny the validity of these pseudo-disciplines. Likewise, "atheism" is a term that should not even exist. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma. The atheist is merely a person who believes that the 260 million Americans (eighty-seven percent of the population) who claim to "never doubt the existence of God" should be obliged to present evidence for his existence -- and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day. Only the atheist appreciates just how uncanny our situation is: most of us believe in a God that is every bit as specious as the gods of Mount Olympus; no person, whatever his or her qualifications, can seek public office in the United States without pretending to be certain that such a God exists; and much of what passes for public policy in our country conforms to religious taboos and superstitions appropriate to a medieval theocracy. Our circumstance is abject, indefensible, and terrifying. It would be hilarious if the stakes were not so high.
Consider: the city of New Orleans was recently destroyed by hurricane Katrina. At least a thousand people died, tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions, and over a million have been displaced. It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Katrina struck believed in an omnipotent, omniscient, and compassionate God. But what was God doing while a hurricane laid waste to their city? Surely He heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. These were people of faith. These were good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. Only the atheist has the courage to admit the obvious: these poor people spent their lives in the company of an imaginary friend.
Of course, there had been ample warning that a storm "of biblical proportions" would strike New Orleans, and the human response to the ensuing disaster was tragically inept. But it was inept only by the light of science. Advance warning of Katrina’s path was wrested from mute Nature by meteorological calculations and satellite imagery. God told no one of his plans. Had the residents of New Orleans been content to rely on the beneficence of the Lord, they wouldn’t have known that a killer hurricane was bearing down upon them until they felt the first gusts of wind on their faces. And yet, a poll conducted by The Washington Post found that eighty percent of Katrina's survivors claim that the event has only strengthened their faith in God.
As hurricane Katrina was devouring New Orleans, nearly a thousand Shiite pilgrims were trampled to death on a bridge in Iraq. There can be no doubt that these pilgrims believed mightily in the God of the Koran. Indeed, their lives were organized around the indisputable fact of his existence: their women walked veiled before him; their men regularly murdered one another over rival interpretations of his word. It would be remarkable if a single survivor of this tragedy lost his faith. More likely, the survivors imagine that they were spared through God's grace.
Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God, while this same God drowned infants in their cribs. Because he refuses to cloak the reality of the world’s suffering in a cloying fantasy of eternal life, the atheist feels in his bones just how precious life is -- and, indeed, how unfortunate it is that millions of human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgements of their happiness for no good reason at all.
Of course, people of faith regularly assure one another that God is not responsible for human suffering. But how else can we understand the claim that God is both omniscient and omnipotent? There is no other way, and it is time for sane human beings to own up to this. This is the age-old problem of theodicy, of course, and we should consider it solved. If God exists, either He can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities, or He does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil. Pious readers will now execute the following pirouette: God cannot be judged by merely human standards of morality. But, of course, human standards of morality are precisely what the faithful use to establish God’s goodness in the first place. And any God who could concern himself with something as trivial as gay marriage, or the name by which he is addressed in prayer, is not as inscrutable as all that. If He exists, the God of Abraham is not merely unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man.
There is another possibility, of course, and it is both the most reasonable and least odious: the biblical God is a fiction. As Richard Dawkins has observed, we are all atheists with respect to Zeus and Thor. Only the atheist has realized that the biblical god is no different. Consequently, only the atheist is compassionate enough to take the profundity of the world's suffering at face value. It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion -- to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions, and religious diversions of scarce resources -- is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity. It is a necessity, however, that places the atheist at the margins of society. The atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors.
This article (mostly the part in bold) is the most succinctly logical argument shooting down christianity i think i've ever read, and it leaves no room for rebuttal.
Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture, and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of six billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl’s parents believe -- at this very moment -- that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this? ---- No.
The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle. The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job. It carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity. It is, moreover, a job that the atheist does not want.
It is worth noting that no one ever need identify himself as a non-astrologer or a non-alchemist. Consequently, we do not have words for people who deny the validity of these pseudo-disciplines. Likewise, "atheism" is a term that should not even exist. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma. The atheist is merely a person who believes that the 260 million Americans (eighty-seven percent of the population) who claim to "never doubt the existence of God" should be obliged to present evidence for his existence -- and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day. Only the atheist appreciates just how uncanny our situation is: most of us believe in a God that is every bit as specious as the gods of Mount Olympus; no person, whatever his or her qualifications, can seek public office in the United States without pretending to be certain that such a God exists; and much of what passes for public policy in our country conforms to religious taboos and superstitions appropriate to a medieval theocracy. Our circumstance is abject, indefensible, and terrifying. It would be hilarious if the stakes were not so high.
Consider: the city of New Orleans was recently destroyed by hurricane Katrina. At least a thousand people died, tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions, and over a million have been displaced. It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Katrina struck believed in an omnipotent, omniscient, and compassionate God. But what was God doing while a hurricane laid waste to their city? Surely He heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. These were people of faith. These were good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. Only the atheist has the courage to admit the obvious: these poor people spent their lives in the company of an imaginary friend.
Of course, there had been ample warning that a storm "of biblical proportions" would strike New Orleans, and the human response to the ensuing disaster was tragically inept. But it was inept only by the light of science. Advance warning of Katrina’s path was wrested from mute Nature by meteorological calculations and satellite imagery. God told no one of his plans. Had the residents of New Orleans been content to rely on the beneficence of the Lord, they wouldn’t have known that a killer hurricane was bearing down upon them until they felt the first gusts of wind on their faces. And yet, a poll conducted by The Washington Post found that eighty percent of Katrina's survivors claim that the event has only strengthened their faith in God.
As hurricane Katrina was devouring New Orleans, nearly a thousand Shiite pilgrims were trampled to death on a bridge in Iraq. There can be no doubt that these pilgrims believed mightily in the God of the Koran. Indeed, their lives were organized around the indisputable fact of his existence: their women walked veiled before him; their men regularly murdered one another over rival interpretations of his word. It would be remarkable if a single survivor of this tragedy lost his faith. More likely, the survivors imagine that they were spared through God's grace.
Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God, while this same God drowned infants in their cribs. Because he refuses to cloak the reality of the world’s suffering in a cloying fantasy of eternal life, the atheist feels in his bones just how precious life is -- and, indeed, how unfortunate it is that millions of human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgements of their happiness for no good reason at all.
Of course, people of faith regularly assure one another that God is not responsible for human suffering. But how else can we understand the claim that God is both omniscient and omnipotent? There is no other way, and it is time for sane human beings to own up to this. This is the age-old problem of theodicy, of course, and we should consider it solved. If God exists, either He can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities, or He does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil. Pious readers will now execute the following pirouette: God cannot be judged by merely human standards of morality. But, of course, human standards of morality are precisely what the faithful use to establish God’s goodness in the first place. And any God who could concern himself with something as trivial as gay marriage, or the name by which he is addressed in prayer, is not as inscrutable as all that. If He exists, the God of Abraham is not merely unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man.
There is another possibility, of course, and it is both the most reasonable and least odious: the biblical God is a fiction. As Richard Dawkins has observed, we are all atheists with respect to Zeus and Thor. Only the atheist has realized that the biblical god is no different. Consequently, only the atheist is compassionate enough to take the profundity of the world's suffering at face value. It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion -- to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions, and religious diversions of scarce resources -- is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity. It is a necessity, however, that places the atheist at the margins of society. The atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors.
This article (mostly the part in bold) is the most succinctly logical argument shooting down christianity i think i've ever read, and it leaves no room for rebuttal.
7/16/06 7/18/06
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it's not a matter of impotence or evil... that's kinda over-stating the case and as judgmental as these atheists claim the religious are. limited or amoral is more accurate. either he can't control things or chooses not to do good. this is by no means a novel concept.
but ill definitely agree that the judeo-islamic-christian god is pretty vain, petty, and arbitrary.
So are many invisible friends of 3-year-olds.
I don't mind the concept of God when it is in the now. It is the hierarchy of the knowledge of good things, and so obviously, from when you are born and the Godliness of your parents is King, to later in you life when trying to be a better human being is helped along by learning things from others that have been there before..... Gods are before us.
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I think it's possible for a god to love all and still expect them to endure hardships and tragedy.
The key to unlocking the power of atheism is to understand why people turn to religion and god for their moral definitions.
http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.php?t=272825
Some people get tripped up on the "Holy" Bible.
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I am reading The God Delusion at the moment by Dawkins, and it also makes some very strong arguments about the existence of god. He makes a strong point that god can be tested, as a hypothesis. And whilst we cannot disprove the existence of god we can make a statement about the probability of his/her/its existence.
you're thinking in the magical/supernatural. god can exist, as in your own language in this post, without the magical/supernatural and the definitions we have for those things.
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Agreed. And it also comes back a little to what was being discussed about being spiritual in another thread. Einstein, Hawking and a few other prominant atheistic scientists have all used the word god to describe something with absolutely no supernatural connotations. The last statement in A brief history of time, (for then we shall know the mind of god), is actually a reference to understanding the universe, and does not refer to a supernatural god.
I believe atheism is another form of religion. They have dogma, something to worship (humanity and science) and extremists.
Why keep on bashing believers when you could just let them live their life like they feel? "If you hate something, don't you do it to".
I can't speak for all atheists, but I don't really care what individual people believe- I just love a good debate and enjoy putting forward reasoned arguments.
If you or anyone else want to believe in something that is devoid of evidence, that is fine by me. Believe in god, believe in the tooth fairy, belive in ghosts, believe in astrology (if you must)- whatever you do is no business of mine- as long as your beliefs do not impact in a bad way on others.
Organised religion is of more concern to me because some religions can have a larger negative impact on peoples lives- including people who practice different religions or no religion. I know that some organised religions can do wonderful things in society in looking after the less fortunate etc, I just think it is a shame that we need to resort to god as a reason for doing that.
Having said that I would be somewhat dissapointed if there was nobody left to come around on sunday morning and try and save my non existant soul... after all who else would I argue with?
http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.php?t=272825
read CS lewis "the problem of pain". It is a great rebuttal and explanation. Whether or not you choose to believe it is another thing.
...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
Hold your horses there, sport. I, myself, am an atheist and many of my friends are too, none of us despise other people for their beliefs.
If I must form a opinion on someone or judge someone, I'll look at their personality, character instead of their creed, although their beliefs obviously affect their lives.
We do not promote our 'beliefs' (I'll get back to that a little later). If anyone promotes beliefs it's religious people.
It is not. We certainly don't have any dogma and we certainly don't worship humanity or science. Having dogma and worshipping science would be contradictory, by the way.
Atheism is the lack of belief in a deity. I don't feel the need to express that god doesn't exist, because I don't see the point in pointing out something doesn't exist, furthermore there are people who do believe god exists and I think they'd find it disrespectful if I did.
The part about extremists is probably true, however, I have never met a 'hardcore' atheist.
I agree with this. But I think it's logical that there will be resistance when Christians want their commandments placed in public buildings, don't want a seperation of state and church, pushing creationism to be taught in science class etc. They are trying to keep gay marriage illegal, they use the bible (rather than their hearts perhaps) as a tool to judge people and as a guideline for everyone, not just Christians.
And before you get all riled up, yes I know not all Christians are like this.
naděje umírá poslední
I especially agree with these two statements.
naděje umírá poslední
Ok change the word dogma for doctrine it's a synonym. What I ment is this :
you cannot not aknowledge the belief in a higher power, it exists in every culture (at least the ones I heard of), so being an atheist is expressing the belief there is no higher power. I know atheists don't hold reunions to claim the absence of god but as an atheist you have to believe in something, even if it's an absence.
Some actually feel the need to point out that belief, like the author, some are 'hardcore' and try to prove with numbers (their doctrine) that absence. I was aiming at them.
I won't, I'm not religious enough. And I wouldn't want Christians having ID taught in school or banning a whole population out of mariage. I belive in the church/state separation.
http://www.myspace.com/illuminatta
Rhinocerous Surprise '08!!!
Fine, but if you believe in the absence of a higher power, what is left to make the universe run if not science? You (me too) have to have faith in science, and that is worshipping to me.
There is an entire human developmental stage that encompasses those whose worldview is based on scientific achievement. These people consider themselves beyond the mythic/magic phases of traditional religion. According to Ken Wilber's book "A Theory of Everything", these individuals hold 50% of world power.
http://www.myspace.com/illuminatta
Rhinocerous Surprise '08!!!
No problem, we all generalize even if we don't mean to.
edit: see, I'm guilty as well, I don't know if we all do it.
Would you say the lack of belief in the easter bunny, Santa Clause, Zeus, Thor, Monsters under your bed is also expressing a belief?
Fair enough. I don't really get them.
Yes, I have. I am an atheist. But I don't think the word should exist. I don't believe in big yellow, green and purple hippopotami that control the world from a big mansion on the moon, but if someone wants to invent a term that expresses that I'd use it too.
naděje umírá poslední
who holds the rest? are you saying atheists hold half the world's power? i find that tough to believe...
Lucifarians have all the world power.
go ahead,bring on the cries of conspiracy.
and no,i don't believe in a reptile alien race.
"I would rather die on my feet than to live on my knees."
Emiliano Zapata
that's the only thing i could think of... some powerful business persons and maybe some scientists. while i have no doubt they have a lot of power and influence, i dunno if it's 50% a lot...
what's a lucifarian?
satanist.
"I would rather die on my feet than to live on my knees."
Emiliano Zapata
and you think they hold all the world's power or you were just messing? i dont think they quite have the numbers to have the world under their thumb.
crazy?hell yes. but really look into this whole heartedly and you WILL be disturbed.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/archive_bohemian_grove.html
"I would rather die on my feet than to live on my knees."
Emiliano Zapata
I have heard the original poster's argument before: it is called "The Problem of Evil." It says, "If babies can be burned alive in house fires and God does nothing, then he must either be unable to help the baby or he must be evil."
It is problematic at best and I don't think there is any reason to believe it. The atheist would say, "Why does he let that baby burn alive when God is omnipotent and omniscient?" In this case, the atheist ignores the granting of free will by God as a supreme act of goodness. But, he too easily ignores it.
Every time a baby is saved from being burned alive or someone chooses NOT to kill another person, this is a free will act of good. Of course, some people can die by sheer "acts of God." But, if God were to save these people, he would be taking back his gift of free will to mankind. Would it be "evil" if God took that away? Perhaps. When you allow someone to choose between good and evil and they choose good, that is a supreme act of goodness.
The essential problem with the "problem of evil" argument is this: how do we know we live in a world with "too much" evil? We could live in a world with more evil, where people were born only to be burned alive as babies. The problem with the argument is that the level of evil subscribed to is arbitrary. I could think of worlds with far more evil - maybe God keeps us from having that kind of evil? In the end, the "problem of evil" raises to many undefinable limits on evil and therefore, it is a false method for disproving God's existence.
-Enoch Powell