Both take faith

Does it take faith to believe in things you know are true? Is faith still necessary where evidence, logic, and reason give a rock solid explaination? I do not need faith to be a non-believing athiest any more than I need faith to believe that stars are giant burning nuclear reactors.

But back to the subject at hand. I think scientist have a duty to speak out against religion at least once in their career so as to at least help ensure the survival of their field of study for future generations. Well known scientist in the past have done a lot of good to lend their clout to the struggle against oppressive idiologies like Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Had their way, God explains everything and we should stick to the plow, microscopes and telescopes are for infidels.

I am a Dawkins supporter to the point of almost being a militant athiest. But using force and violence would only make me as bad as religion itself, so I steady my hand and use my words instead. With people dieing everyday for religious reasons, you almost want to fight fire with fire. We need a change and I see it coming. Two of my kids are athiest and I'm working on the third now. Do I force the subject and turn them against religion? No. I simply point out the facts and teach them all the options and all the religions. Thats something you can't get from a school nowadays. There's a start to fighting the good fight, indoctrinating kids to think for themselves. Get them before the priest do, because we all know what happens then..

P.s. Christians are ignorant. Really, 95% haven't even read the Bible except what the Sunday priest points out. And 99% of them know nothing about the roots and history of their religion or of religion in general. Only half of them really believe in it and the other half just show up for appearance credit. *My figures are from a sampling of at least 1000 church going people I've known over 38 years as a "christian", before I finally seen the light. My indoctrination as a baptist child was very strong, but thank evolution my mind was eventually stronger. I used to work in the kitchen, but now I'm a high income software engineer, guess that explains it, I got smarter. Proof that disbelief is beneficial to life.

Both take faith

I would be interested to hear what, in your opinion, it is about atheism that requires faith. Do you believe that all beliefs (whether relating to the supernatural or not) require faith?

Thanks,

James

A much simpler answer, though yours is quite valid; more and more science to back their assertions.

I don't think it is rude to criticize someones beliefs. I am talking about how one goes about it. I don't know if you have ever dealt with people of faith - most any - that are trying to proselytize you. Some of them start off in an inflamatory manner and turn a person off from the start. Others get quite condescending and obnoxious when the person they are "witnessing" to isn't interested or dissagrees. Neither of these tactics is effective - in fact they make most people who encounter them hostile to the ideas being portrayed.

That is why people who are assholes about criticizing religion, rather than productively helping the cause of protecting science education and the move to a secular society, are quite counter-productive instead. I understand that many of them are loud, obnoxious and agressively so, when attacking evolution and atheists. Does that mean that we have to adopt the same moronic tactics that we rightly criticize on a regular basis?

To be clear, I am not advocating "shut up and put up with them and their beliefs." I am advocating civility. Civility dictates that even when you are right and they are so obviously wrong, one does not adopt an air of superiority. The ability to be gracious in the face of absolute ignorance or even condescention is it's own superiority. Why take the bait? Why show that you have as little control of yourself as they do? If they are being aggresive, spear them with your wit, don't resort to their own barbarism. You aren't going to convince them that way, but you come out looking a lot better than they do, which might convince others, or at least weaken their faith. After all, it was their brother or sister, who was cursing, not you. It was their brother or sister, who was rude, while you were polite and gracious throughout.

I feel much the same about politics. It does nobody any good to call a conservative a fucktard or simpering imbecile. It may feel good, but what pratical purpose has been accomplished? Mostly a loss of credability on the part of the one doing the name calling - it certainly isn't going to incline that conservative to want to listen to their attacker, nor are they likely to want to listen to another liberal who might explain the position better and make them change their mind. But why listen when their epierience with liberals is so damned abrasive? Or why should the guy at the next table, who really doesn't have a firm opinion, take the side of the jackass resorting namecalling?

I'm not saying din't criticize, I'm not even saying don't rip peoples beliefs to shreds. I'm just saying don't adopt the tactics of ignorant morons or you look like ignorant morons - no matter how right you are.

But do Dawkins and the other atheists add anything to a vigorous tradition of skepticism and unbelief that includes the witty satire of Voltaire and the brilliant cultural and psychological probings of Friedrich Nietzsche? What is so new about "The New Atheism," as the November cover story of Wired magazine dubbed the phenomenon?

This is a weird argument I've heard elsewhere. "There's nothing new here; all these atheists are saying has been said before."

Ugh. Man is that irritating to hear. If that were a valid criticism, then why exactly are thousands of new books on Christianity or any other historical religion published each year? Rarely to any of them have anything "new" to say. And indeed, lots of religious authors make BANK by simply rehashing things other religious thinkers--or even things they themselves--have said dozens of times before?

There are thousands of tenured, salaried theologians in this world. NONE of them are producing anything "new." There are, I dunno, what, a dozen or endowed chairs of atheism at all of the universities in the world? Any religious folk whose criticism of new atheist books amounts to "Heard it!" are definitely earning the skewed glance of the Gods of Irony.

The problem is that, again, it will generally be seen as a personal attack by the person so criticized. Many people take their religion very personally indeed and are unwilling to separate a criticism of their religion from an attack on the person.

Furthermore, if you present a clear and decisive refutation for what they claim are the reasons they believe in their religion, and they continue believing just the same anyway, how can you *not* call them, at the very least, unreasonable? They demonstrably *are* unreasonable. And there are plenty of religious people making demonstrably false statements - is it an intolerable personal attack to say as much?

I'm not sure what you mean by "condescension". As far as I know, both Dawkins and Myers believe that in theory, any theist, even really committed ones like the pope, could see the light (so to speak) tomorrow and realize that they had wasted a large part of their lives. This is very unlikely, because people are more willing to rationalize their positions than to abandon them, but it is possible; nobody is claiming that some people are just inherently incapable of seeing the world as it is. People who are deceived can be undeceived; people who are ignorant can learn. What's condescending about that?

I think some people define "rudeness" in a way that precludes substantive criticism in *any* form. By declaring the content of the message, and not its form, "rude", they can attempt to exclude ideas they don't want to deal with. If this is done unintentionally it is at least a major error that deserves to have attention drawn to it; if it is done intentionally it is dishonest.

Anyway, one thing that I know I should clarify more often is that what I generally mean when I speak of "stupidity" would be more precisely characterized as "intellectual negligence"; that is, I am not referring to a deficiency in mental functioning capacity, but rather to the individual's actual mental functioning in a given instance falling far short of their potential (particularly if it results in behavior with adverse consequences, whether for the party guilty of committing stupidity or innocent bystanders). There are probably other terms like this that could use a clearer definition. Can we think of any?

BTW, Adam, do you have any idea why I occasionally find that when I've typed a comment and I click submit comment, nothing happens and neither the links on the page nor the refresh button seem to work?

I enjoyed working with them getting progressive elected. I respected their energy and conviction.

On the other hand there no point in soft peddling my ideas, for instance saying I'm agnostic when I am certainly an atheist. The same in discussing bible inconsistencies and church history only drawing the line at rudeness.

It isn't an argument about whether or not someone should criticize religion. It is an argument about attacking people, because of they have religious beliefs.

I am dead set on fighting to keep church and state seperate. In that I fight to remove religious dogma from legislation - if no reasonable argument can be made, outside of religious dogma, to support a law, it should be eliminated. I also fight to improve science education and to keep religion out of it. Regardless of how many insults are thrown in my direction by assholes like Dawkins, Myers or Moran, I will continue to fight. But I have no interest in working with people that insult me, nor will I.

It is simply a sad state of affairs that a more united front cannot be risen. I have met people at meetings for interfaith alliances for the seperation of church and state, who have an incredibly hard time putting their dogma aside to work with people of other faiths or no faith at all. The people who usualy have the easiest time with it are the atheists. It is sad to me to see atheists who have the same problem as the people of faith who can't handle those meetings. Every one of the people that I met, who couldn't handle it, I would consider fundimentalists, including Protestants, Catholics, Orthadox Jews and Muslims.

To be clear, I do not appose questioning or even tearing at the foundations of mine, or anyone elses spiritual beliefs. My point is, it needn't be personal and it's a lot more effective if it is civil. For the record, condescention is not civil. You are not possibly going to carry the weight of the argument with your superiority, the arguments superiority should be able to stand without pre-supposing your own.* It really boils down to; being an asshole about it, hurts our side.

*I am not directing that at you specificaly Chris, this is my suggestion for "appeasing" evolutionary theists, while maintaining the integrity of your position.