Arvestaked

If you live in L.A. and you enjoy this sort of acoustic rock you should go out tonight to Hotel Cafe in Hollywood and 9pm to support Melineh Kurdian. Her Myspace page...

The lines between atheism and agnosticism are quite blurry. That is why I do not consider myself to be either.

I've decided that the Armenian skeptics should hang out together.

I couldn't remember what side of the fence you were on and was too lazy to go back and check so I just responded in case it was relevant. Sorry.

From Google's home page one can link to a vote for Google Doodles (you'll know what that means when you get there). There is an Armenian girl who has an entry in Region 10's grades 10-12 group. Hopefully you'll like it enough to vote for her! http://www.google.com/doodle4google/vote.html

Keep in mind The Hitchhikers Guide is a comedic book and the Douglas Adams was a staunch atheist and good friend of Richard Dawkins.

You must be joking. What hope is has nothing to do with truth in the supernatural! You can't just ask random meaningless questions and expect that you are somehow revealing my flaws! Hope has nothing to do with this epistemological discussion! What the phuck are you getting at? Again, you're asking a bunch of meaningless questions that have nothing to do with the truth value of supernatural beliefs. Clear cut? That is a vague phrase. I can't even respond to it. You know what? You're wasting my time. I'm not going to respond to you anymore because you have no idea what your talking about. And I could not care less what you believe about me at this point because I don't respect your intellect enough for it to matter. Say what you will. think what you will. Good bye.

I have already answered this. My explanation was simplified but the concepts are not simplistic. And even if they were, what difference would that make? Yes. Most people who have religious beliefs have never lived without them so they think they need them when they really do not. And I think a lot of people who have religious beliefs deep down do not really believe them. As a Christian, if someone close to you died and you were very upset, this tells me that you are not entirely convinced that they went to heaven for an eternity of joy and that you will one day join them. Anyone who really believes in the Judeo-Christian-Muslim afterlife should be either unaffected or happy by such a death. But you are not because you have certain rational qualities there are left unsatisfied by the beliefs. And even then, religion has such an ability to cause pain and suffering that its ability to console is left in the dust. And further still, and this is something I have said before, my position is about whether something is true or not. Consolation doesn't make the beliefs true. They are still not facts. And yet people tout them as knowledge. This is wrong. Hope is hope. It doesn't matter anyway. It's not a "solution"; it's just knowing when something is or is not true and accepting it for what it is. Unavoidably, some humans exploit other humans and the solution to that, if one is possible, has nothing to do with the question of truth in the supernatural.

This question begs an enormous response I don't feel like providing and in some ways can't provide. There are many opinions on this and not necessarily mutually exclusive ones. I'll throw a few sketches out for thought. Humans evolved from an earlier form that lived in smaller, pack-like groups, with alphas, or leaders. In these groups it was beneficial to be predisposed to listen to the alphas. If the alpha says don't go over the mountain because a bear will kill you, those who listen don't die and those who do not, get killed. Once the groups got larger and developed into society, there were no real alphas but the genetic desire to listen to an alpha may have remained, leaving a perfect little whole for religion to fill. The perpetuation of religious thought may be explained similarly. It is beneficial for an animal to be born with the predisposition of trusting its parents. If the parent says don't leave the cave until it's light outside, the babies that listen live and those that don't may die, making it more likely that a majority of the animals would be predisposed to trusting their parents. but the prediposition doesn't discriminate: if the parent says a god exists, a child would be just as likely to accept that. It could also come from curiosity. Man developed a curiosity which developed their intelligence which became a beneficial survival trait. (Picture here the apes from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.) However, a side-effect of said curiosity may be discomfort with ignorance that cannot be satisfied at which point speculation becomes fact. There can be many examples such as these. However, it doesn't really matter why people believe because that doesn't add to the truth value of the beliefs. We already can understand that believing is illogical so the believing itself is no proof otherwise. (I won't go into the fact that many religious beliefs are incompatible and therefore not all of them can be right which means that the act of believing cannot be used as a proof.)

I'm assuming that this is to what you want me to reply (it's all I could find) so I will give it a try... One thing you need to understand -- and this is something that vociferous believers always ignore -- is that science does not need to prove anything to show religion to be wrong or unreasonable. Logic defeats religion by showing that there is no reason to believe in the things religion posits; it does not need to defeat religion by alternate proofs (though sometimes it can if things are know). Another thing vociferous believers always fail to understand is that science does not claim to have all of the answers; it only claims to be the best way to gain knowledge. That doesn't mean it already has the knowledge. These are two different things. And for that reason it is illogical for one to think that by demonstrating gaps in scientific understanding they somehow prove an opposing belief. Some of the questions would best be answered by actual scientist and for others I can say that there is no answer. But you must understand that just because there is no answer yet doesn't make religious beliefs true. I don't need to answer these questions because I am confident that there is no logical reason to have beliefs in the supernatural and I can have that confidence without the answers to those questions. I hope you understand this because it is quite clear and basic. Humans always will have the potential to be corrupt, with or without religion. I am confident that any corruption in such a scenario would be because of human nature and not because of non-theism. A non-theist can be corrupt but not because he is a non-theist; but a theist can be corrupt becuase of his theism.

What in Darwin's name are you talking about?!

There is no reason to believe that pagan religions are inherently morally inferior to Christianity. "Pagan" is simply not Christian, Muslim, or Jewish.

I don't believe religion was important in that way. As a matter of fact it did more to compromise our morality. So my answer to your last question is yes. We may even have been better off.

It may not work but not because I'm incorrect but because people refuse to understand me. I'm not expecting to convert anyone any way. It is just my responsibility as a rational human being to promote these ideas. I don't call myself an atheist. I don't see why people keep calling me arrogant as though it's going to affect me in some way and make me feel bad. It won't. And I'm not the only right one: Sip seems to be doing well for himself. I don't know why I even responded to this post.

This has nothing to do with arrogance. I already said it's not my intention to appear humble; it is to be right. And I still am. Takoush is just not interested in understanding that there is no connection between religion and morality/love/devotion/caring. It's not my problem if she ignores my points to maintain her beliefs but throwing around words like "arrogant" as if they had some kind of epistemological merit is absurd -- what this basically means is that you cannot gain an understanding of the universe and of nature by assigning arbitrary labels to arguments. Ashot, the only reason what I say won't mean anything you is because you don't want to understand it. The incorrect beliefs you, your friends and your family have always held are important to you because you feel they are important to have. And when someone comes along to inform you that they are not important and there is no reason to have them, the reaction is classic textbook stuff. And one of these classic things is to make me seem like a bad person so that you can validate ignoring all of the arguments posed. If you think I didn't expect all of this you're wrong. Edward there is nothing wrong with anything I am saying including my delivery. I expected the attempt to discredit me by rhetorical arguments because the logical ones didn't exist.

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Now you're just making things up and ignoring my position. I hope you find yourself entertaining.

Religion and morality have nothing to do with eachother. Religion and love have nothing to do with eachother. As long as you keep incorrectly insisting I am wrong and implying that I cannot love and devote and care, you will be toots.

Religion has nothing to do with morality. we have morality because it is necessary for society and that pre-dates religion. You have an inherent morality that is completely uninfluenced by your religion.

Sorry, toots. I'm nowhere near being wrong. My words do not even resemble something that could be confused with wrongness. You're throwing me a bunch of horse crap; the love and devotion poetry that seeks to create positive connotations where there are none; rhetoric fed to people to sell religion by making it seem like it has benefits and responsibilities that are untouchable. You are wrong. Your parents are wrong. Your priest is wrong. It is terribly frustrating for religious people to have the audacity to imply that I don't have the capacity for love, devotion and caring because I am not a faith-oriented person. It's just sick.

Believing in things in which there is no reason to believe is a problem.

Love, devotion, care, etc. have nothing to do with faith. The connection people make between faith and these things is meaningless. You're just being poetic (and cornily so, if I may coin a word). You know love exists because it is a label you assign to a feeling you have. Devotion and care are similar and they all have their origins in evolution. The faith that people use to explain away their belief in stupid things is a totally different concept. I'm sick of people throwing around words like faith to create these strange attempts at the validation of supernatural thoughts. a + b = e doesn't prove that c + d = e... or that b = f or that b + e = r or that c + a = q. Quit that rhetorical crap. It has no place in a philosophical discussion about the truth values of supernatural thoughts.

I recommend you read "God is Not Great" by Christopher Hitchens; he's quite thorough when he deals with the old and new testaments.

My interests do not lie in being considered humble or gentle; I only care about being right, which I am. Most people are not aware that someone can hate religion and be vehemently against it while not considering himself an atheist.

I think I have sufficiently illustrated that this is absolutely not my logic and if you still cannot accept that then you are beyond help.