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[LegoLord]

I'd just like to say that banning missionary work is equivalent to banning political activism.

But there is a separation of Church (or any other house of belief) and state.

Does anyone else think Sordid is just trolling at this point?  He's already said multiple times that he amuses himself by trying to convert people to his brand of atheism.

[¿]

Then quit impressing it on people like there's a gun pointed at your head. Seriously. You're worse than I am on a bad day.

I have already addressed this line of objection, so only briefly: Words to the effect of "no".

So you don't reject that you are doing what you say is childish, and you refuse to stop?

It is because the calculator is unrelated to art. If I handed you two boxes and told you to prove the contents of the other box by merely observing what was in the first, could you? Everything we have is irrelevant outside of our box.

What part of "No it isn't, because there's nothing to disprove about art, it doesn't make any claims about the world. Religions, on the other hand, do." did you not understand?

Art claims beauty. Art claims ugly things. Art claims things about the world that whatever the artist decides to capture and display. Happy? Now:
What I want you to address still is how you plan to make any conclusion about the second box.

No. You do not disbelieve either. Right there at the bolded, your are contradicting what you claim atheism to be. So it's a good thing nobody here is saying that, isn't it?

Isn't it?

Now I have to say it. There is nothing to believe OR disbelieve.

There's a difference between claiming that there is nothing and rejecting a claim that there is something because it is unsupported by evidence. I have already said so, you must have missed it.

Rejecting the claim is wrong. You already said this. Disbelief is wrong. By disbelieving you are rejecting the claim.

You have a definition of "atheist" worthy of a politician's doing. You are making the definition of atheism to be something it's not.

Right back at you.

I am a Buddhist because I meditate. See? I can make up my own definitions too because they are vaguely related.

I am sorry, but you're simply going to have to at least try to be coherent and not self contradictory if we are to have an intelligent conversation. Perhaps you would understand my statement better if you bothered to read the rest of it that you ever so conveniently failed to bother with:

outright believe to be wrong, which isn't even in your definition of 'simple lack of belief' atheism.

I do not bother with the irrelevant, so please stop your pathetic attempts at derailing the discussion. Thank you.

[/quote]
I do not have a lack of belief in the various gods you listed. I have a claim, an outright belief, that they are wrong. That is not your 'atheism'.

[Sordid]

So you don't reject that you are doing what you say is childish, and you refuse to stop?

I don't remember saying anything about being childish, and yes, I'm not inclined to stop discussing atheism in a thread about ahteism just because you want me to.

Art claims beauty. Art claims ugly things. Art claims things about the world that whatever the artist decides to capture and display. Happy?

What did I tell you about being coherent? If you want me to respond to that point you're going to have to rephrase it into something comprehensible, because I'm really at a loss what "claiming beauty" might mean.

Now:
What I want you to address still is how you plan to make any conclusion about the second box.

Haven't I already explained to you why that analogy is totally bogus?

Rejecting the claim is wrong. You already said this. Disbelief is wrong. By disbelieving you are rejecting the claim.

No, I'm simply dismissing it as unfounded. There is a distinction, which I'm sure you will realize if you stop to think about it.

I am a Buddhist because I meditate. See? I can make up my own definitions too because they are vaguely related.

That is what you've been doing all along, as far as I can tell.

I do not have a lack of belief in the various gods you listed. I have a claim, an outright belief, that they are wrong. That is not your 'atheism'.

Um... congratulations?

[LegoLord]

Sordid, you are not discussing atheism.  You're ranting about how "wrong" religion is, which you fail to actually prove, simply saying something is bogus without saying why (I did not personally understand why the box analogy was bogus:  At this point I think you are simply denying everything we say on the basis that you did not say it).

By your logic, we should deny any possibility of faster-than-light travel simply because we have no knowledge on which we would base the technology.  Do we actually know if faster-than-light travel is possible?  No, we have insufficient evidence to suggest it is either possible or impossible.  Is an omnipotent being possible?  We lack sufficient evidence to either confirm or deny this.

[¿]

Well, that does it. You just don't want to have a discussion. What did I tell you about being coherent?

I can pull out a dictionary for you, but you seem content on making up your own definitions. Disbelief by the way is generally defined as a refusal of denial of or unwilling of a belief. It requires a rejection of the belief. If you do not believe, the blandest definition of disbelief, you are still rejecting the belief because you do not believe it. It is inherent.

I said beautiful arts claims there is beauty because art is an imitation or likeness so beauty is required for it to be so a piece of beautiful art is claiming there is that beauty, so you would get past that analogy and on to the next one. Which you refuse to. If you respond to that statement, you are intentionally sidestepping what I want you to answer.

The analogy, according to you, is bogus because art (which was not in the box analogy at all, and was in fact a separate analogy entirely) does not make claims. Now tell me how you can believe or disbelieve anything about the second box. There can be ANYTHING (to the extent of the box metaphor) in there.

Dismissing it is also wrong, by the way. There is nothing to dismiss.

I'm not inclined to stop discussing atheism in a thread about atheism just because you want me to.

You were not merely discussing atheism. You slander with it.

I don't remember saying anything about being childish

Then maybe you should try to remember what you post.

The ole claim that something doesn't exist without evidence is childish bullshit as well.

Oh absolutely, I couldn't agree more. So it's a good thing nobody here is saying that, isn't it?

    Then quit impressing it on people like there's a gun pointed at your head. Seriously. You're worse than I am on a bad day.

I have already addressed this line of objection, so only briefly: Words to the effect of "no".

You did not deny strongly implying it.

[Virex]

I would like to point out one last thing:

You do not have the right to say whatever you want in America.  You do not have the right to go up to someone and say "I'm gonna beat the crap out of you."  Even if you never carry it out, you have committed the crime of assault.  Assault is not the use of force.  Battery is the use of force.  Assault is the threat of force through verbal or physical intimidation.  By threatening to beat the crap out of someone, you have committed a crime.  Assault can also be a tort (which in case you do not know, is a crime dealt with in a civil trial, as opposed to a criminal trial), but the tort of assault is much more difficult to prove than the crime, because it is based on the victim's interpretation of events, which may not necessarily involve an obvious threat.

To add in a note of myself: This shows pretty well that one can't just observe the laws of a country one by one. What one always has to take into account is that some laws may take precedence over others and that this hierarchy is just as vital as the laws themselves. I believe that this is true both for laws and moral rules, though moral rules are usually way more diffuse.

Another question I've been pondering has to do with why religion exists in the first place. The most common answer is that religion is a way of explaining the world, but I think that's a far too limited view, because that would mean that man would always tend to accept the religion that is closest in line with what they observe, which seems a bit odd at times. So I think that religion is more important for giving the world a hierarchical structure, and by extension of that, giving everything a moral and metaphysical place (in search of a better description), in relation to oneself. Even hard-liner atheists have such a hierarchical structure, but that's usually based upon the laws of nature and either chance or determinism. It doesn't happen often that someone referes consiously to this system becasuse it is a fundamental part of his or her framework and usualy obscured by everything that is "mentaly stacked" upon it.

What I also think is that this hiearchical structure is a fundamental part of how someone precieves the world and gives everything meaning in relation to oneself. Now, I assume that most organised religions have a clearly defined structure of the type I have described and this structure differs between different religions.
Here comes the part I have been pondering: If someone is brought up with a certain religion (I count atheism as a religion for this argument), then he or she will usualy have a framework very similar to the framework given by that religion. But this isn't always the case, since this framework, like most mental constructs can shift and adjust to new needs and insights. This means that people will eventualy create an unique framework. What I now expect to happen is that people will naturaly tend towards the religion who's framework is closest to that of their own.

What this implies is first of all that all humans naturaly tend towards a certain belief system, or they will create their own if no fitting system exists. But the most important consequence of this is that there is, from a psychological point of view, no best religion for everyone, but rather each person has a best religion, and this religion is determined by their experience and personality. So in principle it should be possible to predict what religions would fit with a certain person even if that person doesn't know of the existence of those religions.

The whole reason I'm posting this is because there is a distinct lack of the psychological and sociological side of the discussion in this thread. Karl Marx said that religion is like opium for the masses and based upon what I described above here, I'd dare say that if there would be a right religion when view from the question "What is true" then that religion might not be a good religion for everyone, even though it is right, because it could well be a religion that has a framework that conflicts directly with your own (the example of a child sacrifice craving god being real has already been given), which then again means that there might not be one right religion even though there could be one true religion. Other religions could be and probably are neccesary for many to stay sane. An extension of that effect is that it provides a way for peopel to comunicate the described frameworks to others without having to examine them (which would happen rarely), and thereby it enable people to alling these frameworks and as a result their moral systems.

To conclude: Many religions could very well be neccesary to keep people sane and help them alling their moral systems, even though they might aqctualy be wrong. Thus even though religions can be causes for concern, they do have an important psychological and social value.

[¿]

The whole reason I'm posting this is because there is a distinct lack of the psychological and sociological side of the discussion in this thread.

Fine. I'll cut to the fun part. I just wanted to make him a bit more pissy.

Sordid, you agree with the claim that belief without evidence and rejection without evidence are both wrong, yes? You already agreed to the several times for both halves of that. You say this is 'atheist' for 'disbelieving' because that does not reject it (while when refusing to believe something you are inherently rejecting it anyway), yes (ignoring my parenthetical sarcastic comments)? Lets ignore semantic argument, and look at the heart of what you are saying instead (forget the word "disbelieve"). You are using your "disbelief" as neither belief nor disbelief (or "refusal" as you like it) because you cannot believe or reject without evidence as you already called that childish or agreed to it as such. You merely set belief and refusal aside (though your use of "disbelief" sounds like it leans strongly towards refuse) but lets have it as you claim "disbelief" is. In which, you nod some approval that there is uncertainty for both accept and reject and so you've forged a sort of middle ground (which you call this by the name of the same grounds people outright refuse God under and use a word strongly associated with reject, both ideas of which you called childish). You accept that, yes (while still ignoring all my sarcasm in parenthesis)?

If that really is the case and you did not lie before, then you do believe you cannot prove or disprove God, yes?

I propose to you that you are in fact not an atheist, but simply associate yourself as such. I propose that you are in fact, an agnostic, not an atheist. Pick any definition you like off that page. More than one suits you.

[LegoLord]

Eureka (shortened for lack of redundancy)

If anyone can come up with any way to attack that, then he's trying too hard to troll.  It all sounds pretty solid to me.

[Toady One]

A few people in this thread can afford to cool off a bit.  I'll be sending out warnings if you continue to attack each other instead of having a discussion.

[¿]

I can post for Idiom if I don't skew his viewpoints. One of his biggest is in fact that:

To conclude: Many religions could very well be necessary to keep people sane and help them alling their moral systems, even though they might actually be wrong. Thus even though religions can be causes for concern, they do have an important psychological and social value.

Though it met much resistance here he told me when he first proposed it.

Though I do not agree that all religions for the sake of the individual be prioritized over the sake of the whole. Most though.

A few people in this thread can afford to cool off a bit.  I'll be sending out warnings if you continue to attack each other instead of having a discussion.

Actually I'd be kind of tickled. I've never received a PM without it being a reply.

[RAM]

I use The Constitution of the United States of America because that's where I live, and those are the laws I follow.  It's not about morality.  It's about working with your fellow man.  A person's morality is judged by the law for the greater good.  This is an important interpretation if you are to understand where I stand on this issue.  No religious (or perceived) right shall ever override another man's rights.  Period.

Fair enough, but understand that some people feel that that constitution is flawed and will disrespect your opinions that are based upon it. Fellow man is a bit of a stretch, it includes many people who violently oppose each other, and sometimes get away with it. There is a perceived right over others inherent in the law, everyone in the United States of America has the right to freedom from being deliberately killed by others, yet if you put a portion of the community together in a court room then they have the right to decide if someone will be killed by the state. They may not be personally killing someone, but they are still citizens choosing to terminate the rights of other citizens. But state induced murder is a very controversial subject, the same can be said of imprisonment, which when applied privately is illegal. While the need of a legal system to enforce it's laws is implied by the existence of a legal system, it still consists of one community deciding to terminate the rights of others, a fact which can, and evidently has, been abused.

I must say however that I respect your stating the source of your morality. It makes arguments much more reasonable if people know each others positions. My own is somewhat undefined at present, which is much of the reason I argue so much, I would like to deduce a better morality, as all those I have encountered seem too flawed to tolerate...

The freedom to walk is opposed my the limitation that one cannot obstruct the walking of others. The freedom to murder is opposed by the limitation that murders cannot be opposed. Introducing subtlety complicates matters, but this is most likely true.

There is no freedom to walk, but walking into someone else could be construed as assault, in which point there are rules about "right of way" that have to be considered.

Exactly, those were possible examples to illustrate a point, not suggestions. Instead of the right to walk or the right to murder you have the right to not be assaulted, which in turn limits you from assaulting others, and you are limited to following the 'right of way' rules, which gives you the right to have others do the same.

Lesser forms of freedom exist, where one community possesses freedoms over another. Such as with slaves, who, while the property of others,

Slavery is the violation of the Right to live.  It is also illegal as stated in the Thirteenth amendment, though I think the Constitution and Bill of Rights themselves make the Thirteenth redundant.  The Constitution is a document of the people.  All people living under it, not just slave owners and the Bill of Rights grants all people who abide by the Constitution the right to be free people.

Yes, but dumping a bunch of former slave with no money into a situation where the only employment they can get is in a factory with a high death rate due to unsafe conditions, where their wages are minuscule and infrequently given is not such a violation. They are not forced to do anything, they simply choose to be mercilessly exploited due to their alternatives being illegal or starving to death along with their families...
There are things that are covered by laws, for everything else there is absolute freedom for those with the power to take it.

I live in a Federalist Republic.  A person's wealth does not obtain them more rights than another.

And of course there are humans and non-humans

I'm discussing human rights.  If cows want their own laws and country, they are free to form them.

What about the Taliban, and Saddam Hussein? What about Fidel Castro? They formed their own countries with their own laws, didn't work out so well for them... What about communism, or undemocratic regimes, which can take many forms. And that is just the philosophical differences, no need to bring up any 'influence' applied to countries with unfavourable economic dispositions...

And 100% freedom is impossible, even at the cost of the freedoms of all others. No monarch can feed their people only because they choose to and no religious leader can ascend into the sky simple by the force of their will.

I'm talking about freedoms of life and living.  Beyond that "realist" scope is purely religious preference and non-evidential possibility.

But yes, 100% freedom is impossible.  That's why we have laws granting you your freedom up to said points.  In order for humans to work together in harmony, they have to respect all other human's rights and allow for their rights to end where the other person's begins.  That's the key.  You're right to preach your belief ends at another human's right to be ignorant of your belief.  We all voluntarily accept this to live within the protection of it.  And yes, limitation of another person's right to infringe on your rights is all the protection you really need.

Well, yes, but that was an absolute assessment, if you limit it to such an extent, then yes, 100% is possible, it is just at the expense of everyone else.
Wait, you have a right to be ignorant? That would mean that nobody can share any information without obtaining permission from the recipient. Do you have a right to be ignorant of the community's belief as it pertains to laws...
They are born in your country, there is nothing voluntary about it, and if they don't like it they will be prosecuted. There is no guaranteed avenue for those who oppose your laws to establish their own country or to seek an existing one that suits more of their beliefs...
But that protection is limited, there are many avenues for one will to invalidate another through brute force, be it financial, political, social, or whatever. There are many cases where someone can do something and actively prevent others from doing the same. And if you disagree on that particular set of rights, and lack the power to change them, then you will "need" much more protection in order to feel free.

It is because the calculator is unrelated to art. If I handed you two boxes and told you to prove the contents of the other box by merely observing what was in the first, could you? Everything we have is irrelevant outside of our box.

What part of "No it isn't, because there's nothing to disprove about art, it doesn't make any claims about the world. Religions, on the other hand, do." did you not understand?

Art claims beauty. Art claims ugly things. Art claims things about the world that whatever the artist decides to capture and display. Happy? Now:
What I want you to address still is how you plan to make any conclusion about the second box.

If one have prior experience of similar matters, then there are any number of method that may be used to assume the nature of something, be it the virtue of an artwork, its subject, or the contents of a box. If all that there was in my world, was myself, two boxes, the inability to determine the contents of one box, and the need to provide an assessment of that content. Then, reluctantly, due to my hatred of assumptions, I would inspect the one box, and then assume that the other, as it is also a container, is identical in all aspects that cannot be verified. So god is a human who has no detectable contact with other humans, so is probably insane by now, if not from the loneliness then from the frustration of nobody hearing them properly...

But dropping the weak metaphors for a moment. In order for it to have any significance a religion must have aspects. Be these demands, observations, histories, descriptions, or whatever, there will be aspects. Aspects which can be compared to similar aspects and assessed for viability. So you have a book that says something happened several thousand years ago. There are methodical investigations of the past, religious evidence can be compared to other forms of evidence to determine if it is an effective source of information.
Laws about how to live, well that is easy enough, it can be compared to the myriad of laws that exist, or simply compared to life, does it have any glaring flaws?

No. You do not disbelieve either. Right there at the bolded, your are contradicting what you claim atheism to be. So it's a good thing nobody here is saying that, isn't it?

Isn't it?

Now I have to say it. There is nothing to believe OR disbelieve.

Anybody can say they are an atheist, short of announcing a definition and demanding that everyone assume that definition within the argument there really isn't anything you can do to stop it. I can only guess that the orignal poster asked why people do not believe in an immaterial(sort of) being that holds authority over them and/or the rest of known existence. However, speaking on behalf of others is a clear sign of someone who is willing to claim knowledge that they do not possess...

There's a difference between claiming that there is nothing and rejecting a claim that there is something because it is unsupported by evidence. I have already said so, you must have missed it.

Rejecting the claim is wrong. You already said this. Disbelief is wrong. By disbelieving you are rejecting the claim.

In some legal systems, there is a concept that the accused is not considered to have committed a crime until they have been legally proven to have done so. Of course the public at large are free to come to such a conclusion after a 30 second television news broadcast...
If you want credibility, then you should only assume that something is true after demonstrating that it is, at least, the most probable explanation, or decided that there are insufficient resources(mostly time) to reach a satisfactory conclusion. But obviously, there is nothing stopping you from believing your favourite scenario...

I am sorry, but you're simply going to have to at least try to be coherent and not self contradictory if we are to have an intelligent conversation. Perhaps you would understand my statement better if you bothered to read the rest of it that you ever so conveniently failed to bother with:

outright believe to be wrong, which isn't even in your definition of 'simple lack of belief' atheism.

I do not bother with the irrelevant, so please stop your pathetic attempts at derailing the discussion. Thank you.

I do not have a lack of belief in the various gods you listed. I have a claim, an outright belief, that they are wrong. That is not your 'atheism'.

If you want someone to present their definitions, and maintain them, then I suggest you ask them to do so, with as little critique as you are able.

[¿]

If one have prior experience of similar matters, then there are any number of method that may be used to assume the nature of something, be it the virtue of an artwork, its subject, or the contents of a box. If all that there was in my world, was myself, two boxes, the inability to determine the contents of one box, and the need to provide an assessment of that content. Then, reluctantly, due to my hatred of assumptions, I would inspect the one box, and then assume that the other, as it is also a container, is identical in all aspects that cannot be verified. So god is a human who has no detectable contact with other humans, so is probably insane by now, if not from the loneliness then from the frustration of nobody hearing them properly...

But dropping the weak metaphors for a moment. In order for it to have any significance a religion must have aspects. Be these demands, observations, histories, descriptions, or whatever, there will be aspects. Aspects which can be compared to similar aspects and assessed for viability. So you have a book that says something happened several thousand years ago. There are methodical investigations of the past, religious evidence can be compared to other forms of evidence to determine if it is an effective source of information.
Laws about how to live, well that is easy enough, it can be compared to the myriad of laws that exist, or simply compared to life, does it have any glaring flaws?

I wasn't really meaning that for any religious texts. The boxes: One is everything we know and are capable of. The other box is inaccessible due to our technical limitations and is quite beyond us. Anything that even applies in the first box may not in the next box, whatever higher planes of existence or heavens it may be in. You can't assume anything from the first box to be in the second.

In some legal systems, there is a concept that the accused is not considered to have committed a crime until they have been legally proven to have done so. Of course the public at large are free to come to such a conclusion after a 30 second television news broadcast...
If you want credibility, then you should only assume that something is true after demonstrating that it is, at least, the most probable explanation, or decided that there are insufficient resources(mostly time) to reach a satisfactory conclusion. But obviously, there is nothing stopping you from believing your favourite scenario...

I'm not quite sure if that's commentary, agreement, disagreement, or a mix. Your first sentence could have been done in "innocent until proven guilty". Shorter and more direct please?

If you want someone to present their definitions, and maintain them, then I suggest you ask them to do so, with as little critique as you are able.

No, I wanted him muddled so I can propose to him what I did.

[Sordid]

Sordid, you are not discussing atheism.  You're ranting about how "wrong" religion is, which you fail to actually prove, simply saying something is bogus without saying why (I did not personally understand why the box analogy was bogus:  At this point I think you are simply denying everything we say on the basis that you did not say it).

How many times do we need to repeat that there is no evidence for the eixstence of any god? That's the one thing everyone here seems to agree on, the only discussion is about what conclusion to draw from that fact. And I really can't explain my reasoning any clearer than I already have.

By your logic, we should deny any possibility of faster-than-light travel simply because we have no knowledge on which we would base the technology.  Do we actually know if faster-than-light travel is possible?  No, we have insufficient evidence to suggest it is either possible or impossible.  Is an omnipotent being possible?  We lack sufficient evidence to either confirm or deny this.

Wrong, we have plenty of knowledge about the nature of the universe to know that FTL travel is impossible by conventional means, the only way to achieve it would be to sidestep the laws of physics by warping or bypassing spacetime itself, such as through wormholes.

I propose to you that you are in fact not an atheist, but simply associate yourself as such. I propose that you are in fact, an agnostic, not an atheist.

Well the line between atheism and agnosticism is a blurry one, and I suppose I'm straddling it a bit, but I have to disagree there. Agnosticism in its strong form insists that the existence of God can never be known, in principle, while I maintain that it can but currently isn't. The reason I identify as atheist is that yes, I'm leaning more towards refusal (or whatever you want to call it) on the simple basis that it is the default position when no evidence is available. As I have illustrated several times already on the example of the invisible pink unicorn, I'm not going to feel my way cautiously through my room for fear of impaling myself on its invisible horn, no, I'm going to walk right through on the basis that since I see nothing then therefore there probably is nothing. The absence of evidence is obviously evidence of absence in the case of fairies, dragons, unicorns, and all manners of other mythological beasts, I see no reason why gods should be treated any differently, quite the contrary. It's a simple question of intellectual honesty. The existence of a being who created the world and so on and so forth, depending on your particular religion, is a far more serious proposition than the existence of small people with wings on their back, and so should be viewed with more skepticism, not less. I'm not going to call myself a fairy agnostic anytime soon, so identifying myself as an atheist is the only appropriate option.

[LegoLord]

Sordid, you are not discussing atheism.  You're ranting about how "wrong" religion is, which you fail to actually prove, simply saying something is bogus without saying why (I did not personally understand why the box analogy was bogus:  At this point I think you are simply denying everything we say on the basis that you did not say it).

How many times do we need to repeat that there is no evidence for the eixstence of any god? That's the one thing everyone here seems to agree on, the only discussion is about what conclusion to draw from that fact. And I really can't explain my reasoning any clearer than I already have.

And yet you act as though I am wrong for drawing a different conclusion than you, which I do because we also have this idea that there is no evidence suggesting he can't.  In spite of that you say that we should reject religion on the basis that there is no evidence.  We have no evidence that wormholes or any other method of warping physics are even possible.  They could be, but there is no evidence.  There is no evidence against it.  But that, on the other hand, you suggest that we should not reject.

[¿]

I'm leaning more towards refusal (or whatever you want to call it) on the simple basis that it is the default position when no evidence is available.

But earlier you discredited refusal on a lack of belief. Waffler. You really are right on the line. Call yourself something else. Athnostic if you like.

All atheists I know assume the position of refusal in the face of evidence, but you however know you should waver.

someone who is doubtful or noncommittal about something

Teehee. An agnostic atheist I say.