Granted, every person is different, but strip 1289 is basically the usual silly criticism against outspoken atheists in caricature form.
I was about to post this. Any atheist should be smarter than uttering what Penelope said.
Two differing views aren't equally substantial just because they're both views.
In that vein, I don't see how being an atheist can seriously be called religious as it sometimes is. Is it a belief? What does that even mean? The semantics of the word allow it, yes. Still, believing in what I can see, reproduce, calculate, deduce, etc seems a better way to get to grips with the world than a world view thousands of year old and ill-equipped to deal with modern problems.
Can God's nonexistance be proven? No. Neither can I disprove faeries, Russel's teapot, Sagan's invisible Dragon, dolphin channeling, etc. So why believe in god if so many things that are not disprovable are available? Because I was born in a society that happens to be heavily influenced by an ancient Empire that adopted a middle-eastern religion influenced in turn by countless other local religions for political reasons?
It's also about respect for another's beliefs. Do you think that calling someone a buttfucking-stupid idiot is going to make them any more amenable to your claims?
Of course not, that'd be counterproductive. But religion doesn't deserve respect just because it's religion. (That's actually what Russel was illustrating with his teapot, iirc.) Also, disrespecting someone's beliefs is vastly different from disrespecting the person.
"There's no way there is a god because a set of universal rules set by old smart dudes hundreds of years back said so." Objectively speaking, Christianity and Atheism's definition of the world and afterlife are just as plausible as one another. It's just as plausible that our chunk of rock in space has grown life because we're placed just right in this particular solar system (which is basically a mathematical impossibility) or because some otherworldly being of all-importance wanted to make us just because. It's all about the individual's decision of what makes sense.
@ first statement:
There may be some slight variations in the methodology employed. Nobody really believes in the gravitational law because some dude said it. We believe in it because it seems to describe one specific part of the universe with a precision that allows for moon landings.
Many of those old dudes never said there wasn't a god, either.
@ second statement:
It is not as plausible. Science has meticulously erected a system of what appears to be correct. Correct enough for now to put up quantifiable results both in describing how (not why) the universe works. There are gaping holes in those descriptions, yeah, and many may prove wrong or insufficently accurate, but the part of it that works has put men on the moon, developped readily available and cheap cures for diseases that routinely eradicated countrysides, and given humankind the way to kill itself a dozen times over. Am I "religious" in preferring to trust such a system than one that has given us, at best, some moral guidelines?
If believing in the sacredness of cows or monkeys (or playing WoW 16 hours a day, or shooting heroin, or casting curses) makes sense to me, is it therefore valid? More importantly, should I be preaching it to others, passing it on to my children?
Note that I am not asserting I am wholly correct. But I do assert that being correct 30% is better than being correct 10%.
Invariably, Occam's Razor comes up.
I'm not trying to undermine your argument here, but you might want to be careful when invoking Occam. The version most often used boils down to "simple explanations are more likely to apply". Here's what Occam actually said:
"Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity." It has nothing to do with differing explanations being correct at all. All it states is that a description should be brokn down to its simplest terms (4x=8x-4 should be expressed as x=1) and is a rule of thumb in any case as a needlessly complex explanation can be as correct as a simple one.
I think this thread makes atheists look a lot worse than Penelope does.
How so? Penelope said the dumbest thing she possible could've under the circumstance, while there are several good points n this thread.
I should really mention that I tried to be concise and if I come across less than friendly, that's the likely reason (plus, English is my third language, so ...).
I'd like to stress again that there is a great difference between holding an untenable belief (whatever it is) and being an idiot, and that disrespecting some facet of someone doesn't mean disrespecting him (although he/she might interpret it that way).
But I strongly disagree that everyone should just do whatever works best for them if that means passing it on, especially to children. Believing (or not) in an afterlife will have a tremendous impact on how someone lives their life. Telling your kids there's no macro-evolution means they're less likely to believe a new kind of pandemic is possible. Those kids will become scientists that are less observant of empiricism and thus work less efficiently than those in, say, China. The list goes on.
