It would seem that way, but I know many happy theist families who do not frown on homosexuality or get involved with politics and other opinions about stem cell research.
So it would be easier to say we don't need religion, but that's not reason enough to fight against theism.
Those who are frowning on homosexuality or getting involved with politics and other opinions about stem cell research does give reason to fight against it.
I never said that did I? I implied that we should push all religious beliefs away from the centre stage of society but I never advocated ridding the world of religion entirely.
I agree wit this.
Right. Atheists do not believe in a deity, so the majority of them "believe" in the many theories, laws, and concepts of science. But let me clarify. Belief does not mean faith. It takes the smartest person in the world to realize there's always more to learn.
I prefer to accept rather then believe in scientific theories, but the statement is accurate, the only thing you don't believe to be an atheist is a deity. So someone can be an atheist and believe in ghosts, an afterlife, alien visitation, pink unicorns, magic pixies...etc. and still be an atheist.
Quotes man! Quotes around believe! Supposed to have a different meaning XD laff
Hmm...pretty much all these posts have been covered, which is a refreshing change for once.
With that....
Fundamentalism
Some people just believe in their concepts 100%. Some people go further and believe in the leaders of their religion, such as the fundamentalist Christians and the Pope. I really have no other word to say, other than SHEEP. I may be pragmatic in scientific concepts, but I still say WHY and HOW dangit! I don't follow it to the point that everything else is wrong!
I may be pragmatic in scientific concepts, but I still say WHY and HOW dangit!
A simple (and objectionable) way of looking at this separation is that science tries to answer the how questions, while religion tries to answer the why questions. The problem, of course, is that religion has done it's fair share of trying to answer the how questions - at least historically. Now many theists try to spend their time deconstructing scientific arguments and theories without offering any positive accounts of their own.
no you shouldn't unless that belief is 100% flawless,logical which cuts out most beliefs because almost everything has flaws.
I agree with Mage that that is a far too restrictive notion of belief. My belief is fallible, and I'm fine with that. If you hold some sort of infallibilist notion of belief, I don't see what epistemic value knowledge has for you. And with problems of induction and skeptical scenarios, I'm not sure we could get any belief at the 100 percent certainty level. Just a quick example: in Euclidean geometry, the fifth postulate is known as the parallel postulate. You can Google it if you want, but just trust me that it seemed for thousands of years to be absolutely true. And not just any old kind of true but analytically true. Then, with non-Euclidean geometry came a counterexample to this postulate, which we now know to be false.
With all this in mind, perhaps the atheist does require a bit of "faith" to accept beliefs about the external world. But this point is still moot, I think, simply because the atheist does not accept propositions about God's existence. To be a theist, you have to believe in the right sorts of things. Just like to be Christian, you have to believe that Jesus was the messiah.
you also have to believe that an old man built an ark big enough to house two of every animal on the planet and then actually got them all on the ark.
Well, plenty of other faiths have similar stories. Since that story is found in the Old Testament, it's reasonable that Jews also believe it.
But is that really all you got from my post? You're quoting an example I give to support a response to a much broader topic. We're assessing each other's arguments here, not Christian belief.
A simple (and objectionable) way of looking at this separation is that science tries to answer the how questions, while religion tries to answer the why questions.
not to mention we can answer the why questions with science.
What would be an example of "with scientific advancement, we keep answering these questions we don't know?"
We didn't know why the planets moved in the way they did, we didn't know how lightning was produced, we are still learning but we have a far better understanding of how our own brains work, and this is just a small sampling.
