Well, I choose not to be an atheist and I want to wish eveyone a very Merry Christmas.
Posted on 12/24/2006 8:04:05 AM PST by shrinkermd
The article begins thusly:
SEVERAL POLLS indicate that the term "atheism" has acquired such an extraordinary stigma in the United States that being an atheist is now a perfect impediment to a career in politics (in a way that being black, Muslim or homosexual is not). According to a recent Newsweek poll, only 37% of Americans would vote for an otherwise qualified atheist for president.
Atheists are often imagined to be intolerant, immoral, depressed, blind to the beauty of nature and dogmatically closed to evidence of the supernatural.
The article then lists 10 things allegedly attributed to atheists but which are wrong. It then concludes with this paragraph:
We have made considerable moral progress over the years, and we didn't make this progress by reading the Bible or the Koran more closely. Both books condone the practice of slavery — and yet every civilized human being now recognizes that slavery is an abomination. Whatever is good in scripture — like the golden rule — can be valued for its ethical wisdom without our believing that it was handed down to us by the creator of the universe.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Logical positivism (logical empiricism) is completely reliant on objective data; hence, there is no room for any metaphysical or spiritual considerations.
Logical positivists despair over people of faith since to them people of faith seem primitive,superstitious Neanderthals who lack even an elemental understanding of the real world. Sam Harris and the ten defenses not withstanding the logical positivist argument misses the point of religious belief which is not dependent upon empirical data.
Is this the same Sam Harris who wrote a book telling children to go on line and proclaim their atheism with a personal photo?
I used to be an agnostic, which means I had no faith at all, but I could never imagine being an atheist. It takes too much faith!
Its one thing to say "I don't know if there is a God", but to say "There IS no God!", that takes faith.
There are a lot of Christian Libertarians, just as there are a lot of pro-homo and pro-abortion Republicans.
Sam Harris can kiss my Christian arse.
What an ass. Notice he didn't have a "Athiests are smug assholes" entry to attempt to debunk.
Apologies to local athiests but this guy is exactly why you all sometimes get grief here on FR.
On Christmas eve, too. Nice.
Wow, what a nice little anti-Christian rant to get in the Christmas Spirit. God Bless the LA Times.
Which is precisely the problem with absolute atheism. It is a contradiction in terms -- just as I believe that there is a God, I cannot "know" there is one, because belief is not the same as knowledge.
But I defy anyone to demonstrate that there is no God. It simply cannot be done.
Yes that was a cheap shot on my part. I do believe the majority of Libertarians are atheists but I have no way of proving that. I feel even stronger that the Objectivists are also mostly atheists but, again, no way to prove it. IN any case my comment on this was not germane.
You have my apology
Sammy needs to knock off all the urinating, whining and moanin'. It's very unbecoming for a lowlife, godless bass turd to be saying this on Christmas Eve. That 37% is a higher percentage of voters than the smartest "village" lady in the world would get. As long as Sammy and his godless, atheist amigos stay away from the pink pantsuits and crooked land deals, they'll do okay in the elections.
Merry Christmas Sammy! Now go sit in the corner and play with your Festiva pole.
Many people...far too many...mistake atheism for agnosticism. People need to learn and use the distinction. I shouldn't have to say it here...but agnostics believe that there IS something, just not necessarily the Christian (or any other organized) God. Atheists actively believe that there is NO God. If more people learned and used this distinction...
People of faith often claim that the crimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were the inevitable product of unbelief. The problem with fascism and communism, however, is not that they are too critical of religion; the problem is that they are too much like religions. Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.
Oh, so:
Religious dogma = nationalistic dogma = Hitler
I can't even believe any major newspaper would allow such hate filled vile in their newspaper at anytime, let alone on Christmas eve. How thoroughly disgusting.
Umm. Me thinks the taxes that bureaucrats steal from me in return for nothing qualifies me as a slave. If I refuse to fill their pension coffers with the gold of my labor, they will put me in prison. That is slavery you ass.
"Free-thinkers" we have had with us since the dawn of Christianity, and probably these same variety of literal-minded people, who tend to believe only in what is tangible to their senses, were around when their neighbors were worshiping trees and large rocks.
God, and all of divinity, requires a leap of faith, a belief in the intangible, the unseen, the realm beyond the stretch of the feeble few senses we are possessed of in this life. Yet the trained men and women of scientific discovery continue to identify new and astonishing facts about how things work, by using only a relatively few tools of mathematics and logic, as if there were a deeper design beneath, and not merely accidental interactions of random particles over time.
And the saddest part of the atheist's disbelief in God is still, to discover there IS an afterlife, for which absolutely no preparation has been made. Now, maybe, there IS no afterlife. But then, all that happens, is that lights go out, and the life spark disappears like the flame from cold ashes.
But how can the atheist be so sure?
"But I defy anyone to demonstrate that there is no God. It simply cannot be done."
I was talking last night to people from different countries about politics (most were ferociously anti-American, of course) and one girl from Russia said that they used to have a course in college called "Scientific Atheism" in which students tried to prove that there is no God.
They would have hard time proving that. I honestly don't know how it could be proven.
It's one thing to say "I don't know if there is a Santa Claus", but to say "There IS no Santa!", that takes faith.
Sorry, but if I can be fairly certain that Santa and Leprechauns are myths, it's no great leap of 'faith' to rank God among them.
Does the LA Times publish anti-Muslim articles on the eve of Ramadan? Don't think so.
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