Re: intolerance Christians vs. atheists
Think about it, if with education comes atheism doesn't that mean that with more intelligent people comes atheism? Perhaps you might want to mount an argument that it's mere wealth and not education, that's what I'd do.
Not necessarily. Christianity has a set of morals that not everybody wants to subscribe to and a lot of people would choose not to if they could think of a good reason to not believe in God.
This is imo hogwash, christians all have different morals and will claim different morals are the moral foundation of christianity. If you don't want to prescribe to X moral stance, you simple don't - See church of england. Also, the idea that someone would accept the existance of God yet not like the moral circumstances which come with his existance, so just flat out deny it, seems fatally stupid.
Dawkins described evolution as a means of being an “intellectually-fulfilled atheist”. This doesn’t mean evolution is proven
So what if that statement doesn't mean evolution is proven? That fact is that it is as a strongly proven scientific theory. All that Dawkins is talking about there is that evolution has provided another possible avenue by which to explain how all this life got here.
and proves God and is therefore more intellectual;
No it doesn't, non-sequitor and you're also rambling a fair bit here.
more than evolution is an intellectual means of atheist apologetics which protects his atheist beliefs.
It doesn't protect atheist beliefs, that's not what he's saying. If evolution didn't exist it wouldn't hurt philosophical atheism, all that it does is provide a naturalistic explanation for how we came to be on earth. It bolsters atheism, but is by no means a foundational aspect.
If the African nations were richer and therefore better educated they mightn't necessarily have the same levels of religion as in Europe. America doesn't.
Doesn't it seem odd to pick out the statistical anomoly and say 'Well maybe they'll all turn out that way if they were more educated?' Also I can bring up studies of the US that show that in the US atheists are more educated, on average, than theists. Which shows that while perhaps an educated country can have educated religious people, those whom are irreligious statistically are likely to be more educated.
Yes, so basically, whether or not someone is atheist could be relevant or irrelevant to them being more logical.
No, in other words while we can say group X (atheists) shows common characteristic (stupid), that corrolation doesn't mean that atheist theory is stupid. Atheism is merely non-belief in God, Atheists as a whole may have some other common beliefs.
Yep, but it could also be someone who questions something and decides to accept it. Questioning is good.
Perhaps, but I'd say often such questioning that doesn't lead you at least temporarily down a path of doubt/uncertainty is probably nothing but an excercise in making yourself feel better about what you already believe.
Sorry, what exactly are you saying here?
- Your average atheist is probably slightly smarter than your average theist.
- However it's important to keep in mind that this could merely have been due higher access to education (the rich tend to be more likely to be atheist).
- As there are so many christians, chances are there are many brilliant christians who will be smarter than you as an atheist, so you'd be a fool to brag.
A) I do NOT believe a person should ever be coerced into faith. But I DO think Christians should be willing to share and defend their faith, in accordance with what we believe Jesus said. Please note that this does not imply force conversion.
I imagine what she's talking about is forced prayer in schools or some such notion. You can have prayers, just don't make me do the same.
I think religious belief should be more personal than corporate, but I don’t have a problem with its existence.
Personally, I see 'personal' spiritualist movements as a way for people to still hold onto their religious beliefs without having to suffer the secular attacks/arguments as they can justify it as not an attack on their own beliefs.
Communists knew it would be important to destroy the “Christian soul” and Christian morality of the people to be able to have their hearts and minds.
Evidence? I think there might be some truth to this statement, but it comes off as untruthful due to the specificity of it. It wasn't an attack on 'christianity' but on basically all sources of power which could challenge the state.
This is different to say, the Crusades, which had very little religious justification, and the unnecessary violence which was actually an aberration of Christian faith.
Would you claim the inquisition had very little religious justification? Anyway, such matters of 'religious justification' are incredibly subjective. If they were doing it under the firm belief that they were doing it for religious purposes, it matters little what your interpretation of the bible says about their acts.
Does this mean atheism --> bloody deaths? No, of course not, there are many peaceful atheists. But in the example of communist Russia, I do not believe you can separate it’s atheism from it’s violence.
All you seemed to write about here was how atheism was a goal of communist states (really, the abolishment of all rival power structures is a better expression) and how they went about reaching their goals in a violent fashion. Of course there's a connection, but why does that really matter?
I imagine you're trying to insinuate more than you're actually writing.
Lol, so religion doesn’t kill people, people kill people? Lets face it, there are some religions which, in their most literal reading, encourage death of non-believers. And there are some religions which most certainly do not. Ultimately, every human has personal responsibility with whatever they choose to do, including killing someone, regardless of how they try to choose to justify it.
You mean like a reading of the bible where you don't hold the old testament as useless?
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Not necessarily. Evolution can be defined as change over time. In that case, almost any change, including natural selection is called evolution. Which is cool but this is not what is under debate in the scientific and religious communities.
True, but this was merely to show that even if evolution can be shown to have gaps, some parts of the theory will still survive insofar as it works.
For example, natural selection is decreasing genetic information in a group over time, not increasing it so even diehard Creationists accept and promote belief in it.
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http://www.nmsr.org/nylon.htm
But when ID-proponents bring this up its always “yes, we just haven’t found a way of showing how evolution can do that YET- we will”. This is why so many people claim that the theory of evolution is accepted more on the basis of faith than on meeting a burden of proof.
Give me an example of something irriducibly complex that has not been answered or at least is not claimed by scientists to have yet been answered? Bacterial Flagelum i'm guessing you'll use?
Scientific theories are always changing, so by definition you should take them with a grain of salt (this is the best idea we can think of to naturalistically explain the universe at the moment, until we can find a better one).
They are always changing, however whatever is currently in the best standing is what is currently the best established fact. This is accepted by all scientists...
It may be true, it may not, we really can’t know yet.
We really can't know EVER, actually.
Whereas religious beliefs make claims that are accepted as true
Religious beliefs make often unfalsifiable claims through the use of the 'supernatural'.
and are maintained down the generations which theoretically, if they do originate from God, should not change over time (major problems if they do, which is not the case for science).
I don't see that whether or not they've from god changes the possibility that they'll change over time.
So in essence, yes, the two types of beliefs are different.
One accepts the reality that we can only base our knowledged based off of the best evidence at the current time, another uses the veil of supernaturalism to make their claims unfalsifiable. They are indeed extremely different.
