Atheists are sounding more like evangelical Christians.

[Pariah]

You know who else doesn't like Atheistic Materialists?

Who's that? Let me guess, some Christian/IDC advocate/ YEC?

If I remember correctly, he made the creationist "museum"

[Kai]

Ah, Ken Ham. What a crazy primate.

[Iason Ouabache]

But the initial question doesn't make a claim either way.


"Is there a supernatural God?"


The question cannot be answered, because a valid test cannot be devised.  Therefore, to hold a position of either Yes or No indicates a belief without evidence.

This seems like a bit of Special Pleading to me. How much faith does it take to not believe in something when there is no positive evidence for it? Do you have faith that Russell's teapot doesn't exist? Or the Invisible Pink Unicorn? Or the dragon in Carl Sagan's garage? Or Thornie's ogres? Or Eris?

[Pariah]

Why do all the kooky Creationists get the cool beards

[Iason Ouabache]

they can be fun to troll, they cant win against the argument that they are a religion and that the absence of god requires as much faith as the existence , and eventually some of them bring the soft atheists Hawkins scale crap out and they  define there beliefs exactly like agnostics do but they want to measure how unconvinced in gods existence they are...

Atheism doesn't fit into any definition of "religion" that you can give. It has no dogma, no clergy, no holy books, no rituals, etc. It is a religious viewpoint akin to theism. You are either one or the other. There is no in between.

And technically everyone is an agnostic whether they want to admit it or not.

[Iason Ouabache]

Ah, Ken Ham. What a crazy primate.

Yes, the irony that the guy screaming that he ain't no monkey looks exactly like a caveman.

[Pariah]

But the initial question doesn't make a claim either way.


"Is there a supernatural God?"


The question cannot be answered, because a valid test cannot be devised.  Therefore, to hold a position of either Yes or No indicates a belief without evidence.

I would consider myself a Agnostic Deist (with a little bit of Sufism thrown in there for good measure). It's rather impractical to say without any certainty there is or isn't a God. In my case I'm about 51% sure there is.

[fomenter]

they can be fun to troll, they cant win against the argument that they are a religion and that the absence of god requires as much faith as the existence , and eventually some of them bring the soft atheists Hawkins scale crap out and they  define there beliefs exactly like agnostics do but they want to measure how unconvinced in gods existence they are...

Atheism doesn't fit into any definition of "religion" that you can give. It has no dogma, no clergy, no holy books, no rituals, etc. It is a religious viewpoint akin to theism. You are either one or the other. There is no in between.

And technically everyone is an agnostic whether they want to admit it or not.

evangelical Fundy atheists might make the no dogma claim tough to prove

i have done it using dictionary definitions but an exact fit and being sufficient to troll the dogmatic Fundy's are two different things 

[Kai]

Ah, Ken Ham. What a crazy primate.

Yes, the irony that the guy screaming that he ain't no monkey looks exactly like a caveman.

Thats Homo neanderthalis to you! 

[Template]

Yes but the claim of God is the claim. Like I said the default position is non belief in the claim till evidence.

It goes the other way like I said. If you said there is no God, then that claim is rejected as well.

But what is disbelief in disbelief?
So the only claim that can be considered is the affirmative claim that there is a God. Just as my leprechaun example. The leprechaun is the claim not the lack of the leprechaun.

[Golden Applesauce]

This thread is about a couple different things so I'll try to comment on all of them:

On Atheism's status as a religion - Atheism, especially the stronger reductionist/materialist brands certainly can be, but I don't think that not holding a belief in some form of the divine is the same thing as having Faith.  If the question of "Is there one or more Gods?" is an important question to you, then the way you answer it will be important to you, quite possibly religiously so.  But if you don't think the question is especially interesting or worth answering - if it just isn't a topic that you think about often, if at all - then I don't think it quite counts as Faith.  I would say that it is entirely possible not to have an active, strong or even well-formed belief one way or the other, and to disbelieve in a God in completely areligious way, just like people who go to church every couple of years on major holidays when invited by friends may technically acknowledge God if you ask them directly about it aren't really religious.

On the question of God's existence, or lack thereof - I agree that the question "Is there a God?" is meaningless - but it could be given meaning with a proper explanation of what the question asker means by God.  Some specific formulations are falsifiable, and some are self-contradictory, or even true by definition.  For those questions, a answer can be given without requiring any serious faith or belief.  For example, if the question goes "Setting someone on fire is wrong.  God is a being who sets people on fire for eternity, and who never does anything wrong.  Does God exist?" has a pretty obvious answer.

On the testability of God - If God is relevant, God is testable.  If something does not interact with anything in existence, then it is functionally the same as not existing.  If it does interact with something, then that interaction can be tested.  In the first case, a God who is sufficiently massless, chargeless, spinless, tiny, far away, invisible, quiet, etc. and never does anything is functionally the same as a God who doesn't exist.  So if someone asks you if such a God exists, you don't even need to answer - it's the same both ways.  Just keep thinking whatever requires the least effort and get along with your business.

On personal reflections of belief in one or more Gods - Most of the time I don't believe in a God, sometimes I believe in the absence of Gods, and very rarely I even believe that a God could quite possibly exist, although he'd better have a pretty damn good explanation for all of this.  That said, I'm the kind of guy who was never entirely convinced (when he was younger) that the aliens from the Animorphs series were fictional, and that the world really wasn't being run by gray brain-infesting slugs, and who always wondered if the reason he couldn't move/set on fire things with his mind was because he just wasn't concentrating hard enough.  I still wonder about the questions "Do other people have inner lives?" and "Did the past really happen?" which is apparently not commonplace?

[Thurnez Isa]

On personal reflections of belief in one or more Gods - Most of the time I don't believe in a God, sometimes I believe in the absence of Gods, and very rarely I even believe that a God could quite possibly exist, although he'd better have a pretty damn good explanation for all of this.  That said, I'm the kind of guy who was never entirely convinced (when he was younger) that the aliens from the Animorphs series were fictional, and that the world really wasn't being run by gray brain-infesting slugs, and who always wondered if the reason he couldn't move/set on fire things with his mind was because he just wasn't concentrating hard enough.  I still wonder about the questions "Do other people have inner lives?" and "Did the past really happen?" which is apparently not commonplace?

My mom says when they told me about Santa Claus when I was 4/5 I pulled an all nighter and set traps by the tree, which ironically actually worked and somehow injured my fathers leg, or knee or something. Then when my father tried to tell my baby sister about Santa Claus four years later I immediately ruined it for her...


I think Im incapable of belief lol

[Requia ☣]

Its possible to not have religion and not believe in god, and its possible to not have religion and still believe in god (this used to be very common, simply because it seemed necessary for a god to exist).

The fundie atheists are still fundie religious nutjobs though, regardless of what they do or don't believe in, that kind of thing is a lifestyle.

[Requia ☣]

Ah, Ken Ham. What a crazy primate.

He owes me a quarter million dollars  

[Kai]

I honestly don't understand creationists. I can understand the religious (I'm one of them, in any case) but I don't understand supernatural creation scemes that go so far from the current scientifically revealed reality. It seems like wishful hoping that reality is wrong. But furthermore, how is creationism satisfying to anyone but the most small minded? To be told your place in the universe instead of seeking those answers yourself is stiffling to the circuits of any person, especially when those answers turn out to be false. It's only really possible to keep creationist when you have an insular community backing you up. Science can operate in isolation, somewhat, because it is at least based on real measurements, but a creationist among non-creationists who has no community of creationists to run back to will quickly be unable to operate in that society under their held beliefs, unless there is some sort of change of worldview and acceptance of other ways to see the universe.

Unrelated tangent, of course. This thread was about evangelical atheists.