Another Fucking Religion Thread

[Alter]

Born, baptized, raised, confirmed a practicing Roman Catholic.

.

I got to church on Sundays all the time. I a lot of which is in the bible but I accept the fact that it is not a perfect and has some faults due to its importance over history. There is no denying the fact that SOMETHING else is there and that SOMETHING is happening that is beyond us. Is it the god that I hope it is? I dont know. But I sure hope so.

 

[Krigloch the Furious]

Valhalla when I die.

 

[CAIRATH]

The only problem I have with Dawkins is that sometimes it seems as though his arguments are more suited towards "high school arguments" about religion rather than an actual logical discussion, even if what he says is totally true ("why don't you believe in Thor? The Flying Spaghetti Monster?" These are true but I think it could be explained more eloquently; then again what that is might be just the thing to get people to stop being so stupid who watch shitty liberal media networks like CNN). Otherwise I think he is the number one "celebrity" atheist and a definite great ally to have in the battle of wits re: religion.

He often starts out his arguments with simple comparisons like those but when he delves deeper (which he does in his books, I guess not so much in the documentaries) he is very eloquent. I don't know, I think the hallmark of a popular science writer is to be able to make simple analogies that people can easily understand and go from there. If you immediately plunge into a deep philosophical discussion you lose half your audience before you've even made your point. His strategy is to concisely make his point first and then elaborate on it.

On a funny note, there was part of his article (maybe on the book of his) on Wikipedia that said that some scholars (fuck them I guess?) discount his entire book because it presents no research. I think this is turning a blind eye to the fact that the book is pretty much not claiming to be a compendium of researched and sourced information but rather his own genuine account on the problem. Why use someone else's ideas if your own suffice?

Yeah I've seen this claim made a lot by various religious apologists and it is such a weak argument. The book is largely one man's opinion on our perceptions of reality backed up by scientific discoveries that have already been made. Furthermore the book ends with 8 full pages of references to "Books cited or recommended" and another 12 or so pages of notes where he refers to publications (science journals, books and websites) that are relevant to whatever point he was making. There's like 150 or so of those footnotes all throughout the book. So it's not exactly as if he is throwing around random baseless claims without giving people the ability to look up the source of those claims and research it themselves. For the kind of book that it is, it is extremely well sourced.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

Excellent, thanks for posting about that!

And for someone who has spent an entire semester learning about how to effectively communicate to your audience before throwing down your serious arguments, I feel stupid now that I didn't understand what he was doing. And I did figure he did it better in the book (which I admittedly have not read obviously, and probably won't read simply due to lack of time) than on TV.

 

[Valerie]

Excellent, thanks for posting about that!

And for someone who has spent an entire semester learning about how to effectively communicate to your audience before throwing down your serious arguments, I feel stupid now that I didn't understand what he was doing. And I did figure he did it better in the book (which I admittedly have not read obviously, and probably won't read simply due to lack of time) than on TV.

Did you see him on Colbert? Colbert didn't give him much time to speak because he always interrupted him, which was funny, but Dawkins still managed to own him. I can't remember the exact dialogue, but Colbert was going on about God creating the universe and such, kind of cutting off Dawkins when he tried to say something, but Dawkins managed to get in: "Well who did God then?" and the whole audience was like "Oooooh" and Colbert looked dumbfounded, but said some funny thing to shy away from the fact that he got slammed.

You can probably find it on Youtube.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

Nah, I don't really watch TV at all...

 

[cookiecutter]

There is no denying the fact that SOMETHING else is there and that SOMETHING is happening that is beyond us.

On what do you base this claim?

 

[Valerie]

Nah, I don't really watch TV at all...

Phelps.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

Fine I'll try to find it on Youtube...faggot.

 

[Thoth-Amon]

agnostic

 

[AchrisK]

Christian. "Born again" bible-believing fundamentalist.

 

[~Derek~]

I'm an atheist that is a fan of Anton Lavey's form of Philosophical Satanism, though I was raised Southern Baptist.
But I do feel atheists may get a bad rap becaus eof the more militant ones, I'm really not militant at all, you know, the kinds who think being an asshole to everyone about their beliefs and always bitching about wanting Under God taken out of the flag when we're just a minority afterall, and this is a Democratic society, also ones how feel we need special treatment over things. To me, all I really care about is having people not discriminate against me or not respecting my beliefs, otherwise people doing things like court cases and all this shit like Newdow I could really care about.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

agnostic

Ew, the bisexuality of religion! Pick a side.

 

[The Heartbreak Kid]

Sith

 

[unknown]

...always bitching about wanting Under God taken out of the flag when we're just a minority afterall, and this is a Democratic society, also ones how feel we need special treatment over things. To me, all I really care about is having people not discriminate against me or not respecting my beliefs, otherwise people doing things like court cases and all this shit like Newdow I could really care about.

do realize that the only reason "Under god" was put in the Pledge of Allegiance was to weed out those godless commies during the McCarthy era. (Obviously a huge success)

 

[Thoth-Amon]

Ew, the bisexuality of religion! Pick a side.

it's pretty awesome really... i don't have to buy into the silliness of religion and if one day human beings do provide proof of something beyond our material existence i won't have to go "shit i was i wrong"

 

[AchrisK]

But what if there is something true but unprovable "out there"?

 

[Thoth-Amon]

But what if there is something true but unprovable "out there"?

then i am under no moral or intellectual obligation to believe in it and neither is anyone else... hence the whole "belive in my god for which there is no proof or burn in hell" routine is absurd.

 

[AchrisK]

I'm glad you have it all under control, then. Let's just hope the unprovable doesn't have a different idea.

 

[Thoth-Amon]

I'm glad you have it all under control, then. Let's just hope the unprovable doesn't have a different idea.

seriously... if there is some deity who's going to send you to hell for not believing in something for which there is no proof, he/she/it is pretty despicable...
that's like me going to up to some tribal African and blowing his brains out for not knowing about Beethoven's 9th symphony