Avowed

Apparently I hit "Preview" twice, instead of post, so my first reply didn't post. Crap.

Anyway...

If we're going to get petty, you misspelled "since", and used "your" when you meant the contraction of "you are", "you're". Plus, you challenge me to use my senses without the "anthropomorphic filter", which I'm sure scored you points somewhere on the "use big words even if you're not sure if the usage is correct" board, but doesn't make any sense. How can I, as a human, remove the "anthropomorphic filter" that I use when I use my five senses? For someone who posts stupid shit like that, you sure have a lot of nerve telling someone like Hank to think about what they post before they post it.

Well, that's enough pettiness for this round. I'm sure we'll find more in the future, but for now let's address your... argument (for lack of a better word.)

Gravity, relativity, string theory and the like are known by observing (seen) and, in some cases, touching the evidence of their existence. Do you really not get that? If not, say so now so we can both stop wasting our times. I don't make it a habit of arguing with someone who hasn't achieved at least a third-grade level of intelligence.

I will admit that I am unaware of either of those "concepts" being discoverable by smell, hearing, or tasting, but other things are. I don't know of any knowledge we have, as a species, that doesn't come from those five senses. Not any reliable knowledge, anyway.

In case you think you successfully pulled a fast one, though, forget it: you still owe me an explanation of the revelation you received from your god that doesn't involve those five senses. You think I didn't notice that you didn't even come close to attempting that?

Rob Miles
--
There are only 10 types of people in the world;
those who understand binary and those who don't.

Also, if I remember my comics and Nordic mythology correctly, I believe Oden was the main guy, Thor his son.

We can only do what we can do George. I would never allege that I have positive proof in a classical rational sense that one or more gods exist or that my God exists. That is why it is called faith. Why is it so frightening for atheists to self examine and see that they are in the exact same rational boat?

Have a good weekend

Joe, bravo for admitting to your own private perceptions of what atheists think and do. Christians frequently appear to believe things about atheists that aren't true, but then most of them who say those things also appear not to know any real atheists. It's nice to know that some of you get at least part of the way toward realizing that these things are happening in your head, and may not have any factual basis in the real world.

And it's touching to know you fear for us. I always worry that I'll have to go through a whole week without some nice Christian going to the trouble of telling me how much it worries him that I have my own mind and have reached my own conclusions about what's real and what's not. You've expressed yourself well, and the condescension barely comes through at all.

As to Darwin, I'm glad to tell you that you're absolutely right about him. He was a believer ... early in his life. He grew up in a society in which nobody really had any choice about it. But later, as he made clear in his writings, he found that he could no longer believe. His research and his reason made it impossible. The scientific revolution he helped make possible in the wider world was a reflection of the revolution in his own life and thinking. Both are matters of historical record, based on Darwin's own writings, but also those of many other people in his same time. In fact, Darwin was accused by many at the time, by people who believed much as you probably do, of being an atheist.

As Richard Dawkins has observed, “It is true that Darwin declined to call himself an atheist. But his motive, clearly expressed to the atheist intellectual Edward Aveling (incidentally the common-law husband of Karl Marx's daughter) was that Darwin didn't want to upset people. Atheism, in Darwin's view, was all well and good for the intelligentsia, but ordinary people were not yet "ripe" for atheism. So he called himself an agnostic, largely for diplomatic reasons.”

I won't be surprised if you refuse to believe it. Still, it’s heavily ironic that the same religious sect that once called him a godless unbeliever now want to claim him as one of their own. The further irony is that modern Christians claiming Darwin was a devout believer probably don’t actually realize their own motivation for doing so.

In Darwin’s time, when Christianity ruled the thoughts of almost every living European, he was accused of being an atheist to steal reputability from him. Nobody wanted his revolutionary ideas heard, and branding him an unbeliever was a potent tool to poison his image and turn people against listening to him, or reading his book.

Almost the exact reverse action, but the same motivation, shows up in your claim that he was a Christian. If you can get people to accept that he was a devout believer, you force them to question the idea that science and religion are at odds. If Darwin himself, the man who formulated some of the most potent arguments to make atheism intellectually defensible, was a Christian, then we have to ask if there’s any rift at all between science and religion. So Darwin is now accused of being a Christian in order to steal reputability from his WORK.

However, the claim itself is proof that evolution, and more generally science, and more generally still, reason itself, is a threat to religion – here in the west mainly to Christianity. It’s also a subtle statement that the devout themselves believe they’ve lost the battle of facts and ideas, and know they can only stay in the game at all by lying and obfuscating.

As to the Jesus fish, we should probably all be awfully sorry about that. It's just that when you have to live in a society of people who are so in-your-face about their religion, plastering it on billboards, blasting from radios and TVs, building monuments and little shrines along the roadways, taking over school boards, and even getting religious statements on our money – not to mention enjoying special protected status that no other large organization enjoys (such as the ability to build tax-free castles in every city in the western world, and to be immune to the bookkeeping requirements of other nonprofits, while continuing to receive all the benefits that tax-paying organizations enjoy) – well, sometimes you feel you want to make a small, quiet statement of your own by making a joke of one of their lesser symbols. Sometimes it’s the only way to show that all those shouting, goddy voices, the owners of the castles, don't speak for you, that in fact you find them ridiculous and even more than a little scary.