Atheist Sign Included in Holiday Display on Public Property:
An atheist sign proclaiming that “Religion is but myth and superstition” has been included in a holiday display on public property in Olympia, Washington. The display at the Washington state capitol building also includes symbols put up by religious groups.
Some of the more stupid attacks on atheism make the claim that atheism is just as much a “religion” as any other faith.
Well, okay, then. If so, it should have the same rights to freedom of exercise - and display - as any other.
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If atheists are celebrating holy days, then haven’t the religious people won? I already have religious observances. It’s not my petard what got hoisted there. ;)
I’ve got no problem with atheists putting up signs in holiday displays, but I think they’d benefit their cause more with a positive message of reason and tolerance. What they’ve done here is only a half-step up from the “I’m with stupid” t-shirt.
Atheists don’t, in general, proselytize, so there is no “cause” to benefit.
Atheists basically just want religious people to stop trying to run their lives for them. If that’s a cause, it’s on the same order as, “I just want the lunatics to leave me alone.”
And only a lunatic would think that is a cause.
I’m sorry, was that a troll?
Heh, heh.
If you have to ask….
More serious answer: Not really.
People who believe that Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and Gods exist are, by definition, irrational. (Lunatics is a harsh, but not entirely inaccurate, rendering…) These are precisely the people who think that atheism, which is nothing more than a refusal to believe in the existence of gods, is some sort of religion - or cause.
I don’t “believe” that if you drop a one pound lead weight, it will fall upwards. Does this therefore make me a follower of the “cause” that gravity sucks?
Their arguments are as irrational as their beliefs.
Not all atheists are part of a cause, this is true, but there are certainly atheist causes out there. Michael Newdow and the FACTS are a cause, constantly suing to remove “God” from every aspect of the US government. Educating people who wrongly conflate atheism with immorality is a task that some atheists have made their cause. Most of the “holiday creche” legal fights that pop up every year at this time of year are initiated by atheists who could be said to be fighting for a cause, whether that cause be strong separation of church and state, or just equal time in the public square for atheists.
That said, I think that atheism is fully as irrational as theism. All we can confidently say is that science has not detected proof of the existence of a divine being or beings. To hold the negative statement “God does not exist” is irrational, because absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. You can claim with high probability that none of the Creation myths are literally true, and that none of the holy scriptures were actually written by divine beings, but not with certainty. You can punch holes in dogma and point out contradictions in scripture and tradition every day, and twice on (insert “holy” weekend day here). What you can’t do, logically, is hold the fallacy “All human religions are flawed, therefore there is no Creator.”
Therefore, only the agnostic position - we don’t know if our universe got started by some first cause or if it is eternal, we don’t know if it was created by anything we would recognize as a will or an individual, we don’t know all that is in it, we don’t know whether it has any purpose, and we don’t know what, if anything other than extinction, happens to our minds/souls when we die - is the only rational position to take. Anything stronger, in any direction, presumes facts not in evidence.
I think you misunderstand what I wrote. I said that atheism, per se, is not a cause. It is a rational lack of belief, no more. Newdow et al, (and though they are a handful is irrelevant) have various causes - separating church and state, removal of religious symbols, whatever - that they have taken up as personal crusades, but the observation that gods don’t exist does not demand that those who make this observation - atheists, in other words - follow Newdow’s causes.
Nor is that my position. My position is that I don’t think gods exist. I am an atheist, not an anti-creatorist,or an anti-human religionist.
What I can do, rationally, however, is say that not one shred of testable evidence exists that proves the existence of gods, and I therefore don’t think that gods exist. Nor, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, do I think that gravity repels rather than attracts. In order to challenge my rational observations, you must offer some evidence to their contrary.
Ah. The only rational position is to claim ignorance. Well, that is certainly useful. Here’s the flip side of that position: I do know that gods don’t exist. And you cannot prove me in error - or demonstrate that I am irrational - by claiming, “Well, I just don’t know.” You can only do so with tangible evidence, not faith, belief, or ignorance. And you have none. The existence of the universe is tangible evidence of nothing more than the existence of the universe.
My stance is that gods don’t exist, because nobody has ever offered credible evidence that they do - and, in fact, the existence of such would contradict just about everything we do know about the real world.
Your position is that you are ignorant.
Which of us is more rational?
Rationality becomes your faith, then. Everyone has to believe in a given framework through which they view the world; saying that “nothing exists unless it can be proven” is no less valid a framework than “God created that which I can prove exists.”
So, in taking rationality to its logical end, you have declared that only that which can be proved to you (presumably by science, rather than logic or philosophy) exists. This is as much a system of belief as any other - it just happens to lack a god, and replaces it with science.
The validity of either framework cannot be discussed without stepping outside the frameworks to do so. Trying to argue for the existance God using only science is futile, because by defintion God would be outside of science. The only way to engage him rationally would be with abstract logic and philosophy, which is quite a different ball game than the physical sciences.
This thread is becoming a logical, philosophical, and epistemological quagmire.
Bill, I would not use the word “know” as you did in your statement “I do know that gods don’t exist.”, because I disagree that anyone can know any such thing. Given the choice between admitting ignorance or claiming epistemologically unsound knowledge, I choose to admit my ignorance. You can believe it to be so, and you can certainly point out the lack of credible evidence for God or gods, but your argument must necessarily be founded on probability, not certainty. An assertion of universal negation is disproven by a single existence case, and so hangs by a thread forever.
Furthermore, “gods” is a poorly defined term. To argue the premise of the existence or nonexistence of “gods” we would have to specify what that term means more carefully.
Gravity appears to be always attractive since there has never (yet) been demonstrated either negative mass or negative spatial curvature. We’ve never found magnetic monopoles, either. We don’t even know if the seemingly scientific terms “negative mass”, “negative curvature”, or “magnetic monopole” have any relationship to anything real or potential in our universe. Those concepts might be artifacts of theoretical misconceptions and have no actual relationship to reality.
I think it’s a category error even to compare phenomenology to ontology. Gravitation is a phenomenon that can be demonstrated to work a certain way, at least in the slice of space-time near our planet and over the course of our recorded observations. In fact, all of physics has been built up through empiricism. However, no empirical argument can settle the debate between teleology and naturalism. “God willed the natural law of the universe to be that way” is a non-falsifiable statement, and so is not science and cannot be dealt with empirically.
And all you have to do is present the single existence case. Be my guest. Until then, I know gods don’t exist.
And stop handwaving about existential, ontological, and epistemological quagmires. I personally think most philosophical questions - and arguments - are horseshit in terms of relevance to the real world. Not one of them will make any difference to the statement, “Nevertheless, it moves.” Which, as far as I am concerned, is the best refutation to religious - and most other philosophical - dogma yet.
Yeah, yeah, blah, blah, my refusal to believe is belief, blah, blah.
Old, tired, meaningless. Hanging a name on something doesn’t make it that something.
But I’m sure such silliness makes you feel good, so enjoy yourself. I really don’t give a shit how many irrational things you can swallow before breakfast.
Bill, from years of reading and discussing (or argueing) about this, I have concluded that quite a few people also come to athiesm by an irrational process.
I read Dawkins “The God Delusion” last year. I was expecting reasoned, logical constructs or something on that order. Instead, it struck me as a diatribe against the evil that is the Anglican Church….you know, the one that believes in God and Hell and punishment for all non-Christians - not the one that actually exists.
Perhaps, I will reread it again, just to make sure, but most ‘athiests’ I have talked with appear more to be foul weather Christians reacting against having to go to church when they were kids.
I suspect most of the ones who waste taxpayer dollars suing over chreches and such are in this category. For the rest of us, we ignore it, just as we ignore astrology, crystals, and the other crap traps out there.
Try some of the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s writings, Lemuel. I particularly recommend Just Pretend. It’s written for children, so even most godstrokers should be able to understand it.
Before this goes any further, I have to tell you all that my lack of interest in debating the existence of gods is almost as great as my lack of interest in debating questions of angels and pinheads, or the existence of Santa Claus.
I understand that I cannot disprove the existence of gods. On the other hand, I am not the one asserting the existence of omnipotent, omniscient, supernatural creator beings who violate every natural law we’ve ever been able to discover or prove. It seems to me that those making such assertions might feel impelled to offer some, you know, evidence, but since they can’t, well…shrug. I feel no urge to take their faiths seriously, except as irrational beliefs that, if acted upon, might threaten me or my liberty in the real world.
No, of course I don’t “know” gods don’t exist - but I see nothing that indicates they do, and so I treat the possibility of their existence they same way I treat other things for which I can find no evidence of existence. I ignore them unless they threaten me or my liberty in some way.
If you feel happy with an agnostic position, have at it. It’s not my position, nor is it likely to be. My only concern with religious belief is the extent to which it may forcibly impinge on me and my freedoms.
I personally believe the the reason atheists drive god-believers nuts is that atheists merely say: “We don’t believe, because we see no evidence of such a thing. Can you provide any evidence?”
The answer is always no, and the believers feel a great rage that something in which they so strongly believe offers no tangible evidence of the sort even the most amateurish scientist would accept.
I may not “know” that gods don’t exist, but in an epistemological sense, it may be impossible for me to know anything.
In which case none of this has any meaning. I prefer to deal with the world on the basis of objective reality, and leave it at that.
I am pleased to be in such company, martinra.
I have made the argument before that the only rational stance is ‘we don’t know’.
I think it is that open admission of ignorance that vexes Bill.
And yet, despite years of trying, that ignorance remains. We can theorize back to a ‘beginning’ of this universe, but we are still left without causation.
And that is where religion lives. In the question ‘how did all this come about?’ Since we can barely get to the beginnings of THIS universe, the question infinitely recedes–there is always a place beyond what we can see or find that has enough room for God to stand on.
Based solely on that, I suspect that what we will eventually discover is that ‘gods’ DO exist(and their undiscoverability is a creation of the monotheisms, so the ‘need’ for faith is not really an issue). And that discovery will kill most religions–because, like Creation, the gods will turn out to be vastly different from what has been preached. They will look, to he science of that time, as if they are simply a part of the whole, something that occurs naturally.
But here is the worst part. Even a discovery such as this will not totaly wipe out faith.
Because there will still be room, beyond even that knowledge, for a god to set angels rollerskating.
jack, the “God in the gaps” argument, while not fallacious, has never really satisfied me. All of the actual religions on Earth (with the possible exception of some of the Eastern philosophies, I’m not an expert) claim that God, gods, or supernatural forces intervened in the history of mankind. Why would he/she/they just coincidentally retreat to the gaps as our ability to detect them increases? Sure, one can then make the argument to ineffability, but that one also feels like a cop-out. Why would a benevolent God help his people in unmistakable fashion in the past, but not now? Ineffable.
I may have more tolerance than Bill does for pure philosophy, but once we cross over into theology, I’m done.
Who says they’re gone?
‘God’ has been redefined to conform to the monotheistic model. Omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. The gods man spent most of his existence with were none of these things.
Use the older definition–with all the good and bad implied, and Katrina could have been a reprisal for some ‘god’ getting ripped off on Bourbon Street.
Maybe we’re looking in the wrong place…
And ‘maybe’ is the problem with all of this. It’s ALL maybes.
Which brings us back to that single, logical chain of reasoning that ends with ‘I don’t know’.
No, it ends with, “I can’t know.” Which implies: “Then so what? It’s all irrelevant to the real world.”
“I can’t know” is a statement of faith. There is no reason to assume that we will not be able to eventually answer the question–the notion that ‘god’ is unknowable, that god existence requires man t not question that existence and simply believe, is a product of religion.
No rational person should accept it.
Yo.
Religion has nothing to do with the question of the existence of omnipotent, omniscient creator entities that violate all known natural law.
I can’t prove a negative - which means I can’t prove that gods don’t exist. Which means I can’t “know” they don’t exist.
On the other hand, nobody has been able to prove the positive - that they do exist.
On balance, it would seem more rational to assume they don’t exist - since that assumption is entirely supported by objective reality - than the “single logical chain that ends with ‘I don’t know.”