I'm getting a lot of contempt here, and not a lot of evidence. This is the normal response of atheists when I reject their faith: they can't provide evidence, so they spew contempt. Debate Tactics 101: when the facts are not on your side, make an ad hominem attack.
There's a lot of contempt here, all right. And the vast majority of it is coming from YOU.
You are like that friend of mine in the SCA, who couldn't wrap her head around the idea that I'm atheist. She would rather I believe in or worship
something, even pantheistic faith, than nothing at all.
I wonder if you're in the same league as my own mother, though, who reacted with utter disgust when I told her. You're putting on a very dramatic act here, but at least it's not as personal as it is when members of your own family act as though you've said something filthy... and they're not that morally perfect themselves.
I don't owe you "evidence." I'm reminded of someone I once had a two-year-long interaction with on a Richard Dawkins/Lawrence Krauss YT page (the one in which an Australian physics student says obnoxiously to them, "I'dliketoquestionyourreligion" and proceeds to accuse Dawkins of setting up a "cult of Richard Dawkinism") and this woman just would not shut up with her insistence that even though she was from New Orleans, she knew more about Canada than I did (among other things informing me that "there's an abortion clinic on every street corner" - no, there actually isn't) and demanding that I "give evidence" for atheism.
I didn't owe her evidence for my worldview, and I don't owe it to you, either. Of the two of us in this conversation, one of us understands what it means to be atheist. That person is not you.
LOL!!! Isn't that the core of the atheist faith? Everything just "happened"? If you start thinking creation isn't "random", then you veer into agnosticism.
That's the beauty of the scientific method. There are these people who study science, and there's a standard procedure they use to figure stuff out. Sometimes the stuff they're trying to figure out is so complex that it takes a long time. Sometimes it takes longer than a single human lifetime to figure out. That's why patience is necessary. It never ceases to amaze me how there are so many creationists who insist that since we don't know the answers NOW, that means "goddidit."
Let's step back a bit. Those of you who are atheists, and are pursuing this matter with the intensity of a door-knocking Jehovah's witness, ask yourself one question:
Yeah, I can see it now... picture me, with my hardcover copy of Carl Sagan's
Cosmos, going doorknocking at 8 am on Saturday morning, dressed to the nines, and accompanied by a 4-year-old in a frilly little dress (presumably to lessen the chance that whatever irate person who is profoundly annoyed at being awakened at such a crazy hour on a weekend won't use the "f-word" in front of a cute toddler)... and it's not gonna happen.
Why are you doing this? Why does it matter to you the way it does?
A. The noble, heroic desire to spread enlightenment to the foolish heathens, whether they welcome your interference or not.
B. You're lost in the choking blackness of nihilism, and determined to spread your misery to others.
C. You feel dangerously insecure in your own beliefs, and it occurs to you that there may be something greater out there, and it scares the crap out of you. As a result, you are outraged when someone questions them.
Don't answer that.
Too late. You posted this in a public thread, on a publicly-visible forum. I will answer if it pleases me to do so.
I have no idea what your hysterical bolded text even means. Atheists aren't the ones with tax-free buildings with charitable status, preaching about what they believe. Atheists aren't the ones will bullhorns and bibles, standing on street corners and screaming at people passing by. Atheists aren't the ones doorknocking at insanely early hours on weekends and refusing to leave when told "not interested" (I had to threaten to call the cops in a couple of cases because they just would not leave). Atheists aren't the ones fleecing the followers in huge, gaudy televangelist events. I could go on...
Now to your list...
A. You do realize that if you hadn't had to learn basic science in school, you would probably have done something by now that would likely have made you either really sick or really dead, because you didn't follow the instructions on the labels of food packages (as in don't eat certain foods past the expiry date) or cleaners that tell you not to mix certain chemicals because if you do, they'll go BOOM! right in your face and probably kill you?
B.
C. I don't know "what's out there." It's so weird that you're taking such a hysterical and insulting attitude on a Star Trek forum, of all places. Presumably most of us are into Star Trek and SF/science in general because we're NOT scared of knowing "what's out there".
I've been comfortable with self-identifying as atheist since I was in high school. That was over 40 years ago. I don't need you to 'splain it to me, thankyouverymuch.
Amazing. It's like you just don't get the idea that in a public thread, you can't control which part of your post that might spark a response in someone else, from that other person's perspective.
I'm not obligated to view your "freedom of speech" thing in the way you view it. Your constitution and mine are different, with different things emphasized. Your rah-rah-praising of it falls on deaf ears as far as I'm concerned.
If you keep insisting on taking my posts so personally, here's a suggestion: don't read them. And don't presume to 'splain the political system here to me. I know how it works. You don't.
Go for it. The rule against contentious issues in Misc hasn't been a thing for a while now, as evidenced by this very thread.
Thanks. I'll think it over. After all, this is a real-time situation, and what happens with the schools is also tied up with how the pandemic situation is being (mis)handled.
Besides even if we posit that a god exists, it's still a very far cry from proving that there is any kind of afterlife. I've noticed that most people associate, the two so readily that they are not even aware of it.
I must admit that it would be nice if the Rainbow Bridge were real.
Except I support evolution as fact. Science clearly indicates that living things evolve via natural selection. What I refuse to do is put FAITH in the existence of yet undiscovered scientific principles that explain that life can just "happen". If science currently says "A", it is an act of faith to say that it will one day say "B". I don't have that kind of faith.
So you think the scientific method is an "act of faith"?
Is it an act of faith when you try a new recipe and it either works or it doesn't?
See, the scientific method is a lot like cooking. You have a hypothesis: If you add one ingredient to another, and do something with them, something should happen that's either a good and valid result, or it's a horrible result and you need to try again - either with different ingredients or a different methodology. If you discover something that works every time, no matter who does it, congratulations - your hypothesis has become a theory.
That's one reason why I find it so odd that so many atheists defend their beliefs with such ferocity. If you truly believe that we're all doomed to eternal oblivion anyway, why do you care if someone else disagrees?
It would be fine if you disagreed and kept it at that. But so many of you don't have the good manners to keep it at mere disagreement. It's people who shoehorn their religion into science and health classes, force public school students to engage in religious rituals they may not believe in, insert their beliefs into the courts, the hospitals, who actively harass and threaten women and girls who just want to access legal health care, etc. who take it waaay beyond "disagreement."
You don't have to answer that, either. Just food for thought.
Oops, too late.
That is, sadly, not merely an issue of the religious. The very secular Soviet Union slaughtered 15 million of its own citizens, after all. Human beings seem fond of killing and abusing each other for any number of reasons.
Ah, yes. The Soviet Union committed mass murder, therefore all atheists are evil bullshit. I refuse to accept blame for what happened on the other side of the planet before I was born, that supposedly makes me just as evil.
