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Topic Title: Hey Mr or Miss Athiest! Are you smarter than ....
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Created On: 08/26/2016 06:01 AM
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 08/26/2016 06:01 AM
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waveaddict

Posts: 1072
Joined Forum: 07/24/2003



Dear Friends,

There's a depressing new Pew Survey out, showing that about a quarter of Americans have no affiliation with any religion, and 49% of those who left their church or religion say they "don't believe" anymore. Many claim it's because science has convinced them there is no such thing as God or miracles.

This is sadly ironic, considering that other surveys show how poorly informed most Americans are about science. Maybe the problem isn't that God is so hard to believe in, but that people are getting an incomplete and warped education in science, one that stresses atheism (a religion in itself) over the miraculous nature of so many things all around us in the universe. This intellectual trap was summed up best by Francis Bacon, who said, "A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringest men's minds about to religion."

Albert Einstein is often held up by atheists as an example of scientific genius negating the belief in God, but here is what he wrote in a personal letter:

"You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist. ... I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being."

I wonder how many people who've decided they know too much about science even to entertain the possibility of God's existence would seriously argue that they're smarter than Albert Einstein?



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Think and seek and you shall find.....
 08/26/2016 06:16 AM
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scombrid

Posts: 18020
Joined Forum: 07/24/2003

Originally posted by: waveaddict showing that about a quarter of Americans have no affiliation with any religion,

"You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist. ...

I don't see how this quote from Einstein is an indictment against people that have no affiliation with any religion.

Just because they don't believe doesn't make them "professional atheists".

Einstein's language here can really be taken as an indictment against fundamentalism in general and that probably applies to evangelists that think they have some great nugget to share on a surfing forum.



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 08/26/2016 06:20 AM
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scombrid

Posts: 18020
Joined Forum: 07/24/2003

The full quote:

I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being



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 08/26/2016 06:21 AM
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Greensleeves

Posts: 20478
Joined Forum: 07/22/2003

The survey isn't new. 

The notion that science stresses atheism comes from where?

Scom you probably summed up a lot of those with no affiliation.



Edited: 08/26/2016 at 06:53 AM by Greensleeves
 08/26/2016 06:22 AM
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WG

Posts: 37257
Joined Forum: 03/10/2005

The increased lack of interest in religion is due in part to its inability to adapt to discovered truth.

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"The truth is incontrovertible.
malice may attack it,
ignorance may deride it,
but in the end,
there it is." -Sir Winston Churchill

Edited: 08/26/2016 at 06:38 AM by WG
 08/26/2016 06:23 AM
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scombrid

Posts: 18020
Joined Forum: 07/24/2003

Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression. Mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude toward the convictions that were alive in any specific social environment - an attitude that has never again left me, even though, later on, it has been tempered by a better insight into the causal connections.
- Albert Einstein, Autobiographical Notes, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp

Einstein on freethought

 

 



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 08/26/2016 06:27 AM
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scombrid

Posts: 18020
Joined Forum: 07/24/2003

Originally posted by: WG The increased lack of interest in religion is due in part to its inability adapt to discovered truth.

Preachers that cling to fundamentalism that counters discovered reality drive people away. That creation museum in Kentucky is a good example. Those preachers will tell you that the Noah story is literally true and that there were dinosaurs on the ark with the same sincerity with which they profess that God is real and that Jesus is the savior. Their truth claim about biological history is demonstrably falsified but they insist on presenting it as gospel truth. Why should we believe anything they tell us?



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 08/26/2016 06:47 AM
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WG

Posts: 37257
Joined Forum: 03/10/2005

"The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the power of all true art and science.
He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead.
To know that what is inpenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and
the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms -
this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness.
In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the rank of devoutly religious men."


NO, I am not smarter than this

-------------------------
"The truth is incontrovertible.
malice may attack it,
ignorance may deride it,
but in the end,
there it is." -Sir Winston Churchill
 08/26/2016 06:49 AM
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johnnyboy

Posts: 25071
Joined Forum: 07/22/2003

It's not a religion, it's a relationship. Guys on here that take a high profile stance on behalf of their religion and proceed to insult, demean and cherry pick biblical quotes to justify all kinds of reprehensible behavior are part of the decline. The decline is a good thing. It forces the decliners to question their beliefs and their lack of beliefs. The believers have a smaller groups but those groups will probably be better because there are less people there that are forced.

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"One of the reasons why propaganda tries to get you to hate government is because it's the one existing institution in which people can participate to some extent and constrain tyrannical unaccountable power." Noam Chomsky.

 08/26/2016 07:07 AM
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RegularJoe

Posts: 3679
Joined Forum: 11/20/2011

Originally posted by: johnnyboy

It's not a religion, it's a relationship.


^Mostly that, but a little of both.

1 Pt 3:15 Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,


Emphasis #1: Give an answer focuses on the "why," not on the "what."

Emphasis #2: "with gentleness and respect"

You can see about 50 different translation here,, but notice the other words used in place of gentleness and respect include meekness, gentleness, humility, fear, reverence, etc... I didn't see pompousness, arrogance, or condescension on that page.

The relationship and the belief are formed and maintained by experience, not by "smarts." As is the disbelief in most atheists.

 08/26/2016 07:10 AM
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RustyTruck

Posts: 33300
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Religion can be useful in so much as it provides some people a framework to view the world and act ethically, but often we see it used as an instrument of oppression and a machine used to enforce an unjust social order.

The rejection of man made "religion" is not at all synonymous with denial that there are mysterious and unknown forces in the universe. Since I gave up trying to find a formal spiritual doctrine with which to be affiliated, I feel liberated. I'm free to experience what I think religious people call "god" in every living thing, in the weather, in the sea, in the sky, in the forest. The energy of the universe flows through everything, we just lack the vocabulary to define it.

In many ways, religion is a cynical attempt to co-opt it for questionable and sometime immoral purposes.



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Capitalism is based on the ridiculous notion that you can enjoy limitless growth in a closed, finite system.

In biology, such behavior of cells is called "cancer".
 08/26/2016 07:12 AM
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Greensleeves

Posts: 20478
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"but often we see it used as an instrument of oppression and a machine used to enforce an unjust social order. "

Sounds like education done did it agin!

 08/26/2016 07:22 AM
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RegularJoe

Posts: 3679
Joined Forum: 11/20/2011

Originally posted by: Greensleeves
Sounds like education done did it agin!



Sounds like you cherry-picked half of Rusty's quote, and implied your belief and meaning in it are the same as his.
 08/26/2016 07:33 AM
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RustyTruck

Posts: 33300
Joined Forum: 08/02/2004

My meaning is that athiest is not necessarily aspiritual.

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Capitalism is based on the ridiculous notion that you can enjoy limitless growth in a closed, finite system.

In biology, such behavior of cells is called "cancer".
 08/26/2016 07:39 AM
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3rdworldlover

Posts: 22495
Joined Forum: 07/25/2003

Do we need religion in order to see "the miraculous nature of so many things all around us in the universe?"

I define atheists as agitated agnostics.
They've experienced or witnessed something negative about religion, and/or some have been made to feel victimized, judged, abandoned, outcast, deceived, manipulated...
 08/26/2016 07:44 AM
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havanabama

Posts: 3719
Joined Forum: 07/23/2003

I was raised a Christian and I was questioning it even at 6 years old, by college I had stopped going to church and now at 59, and after studying how religions came to be and their early purpose, I am now completely non religious, non thiest. They may have been good when man didn't know shit about the world, but it is useless now unless you are so stupid you need a GOD to help you get through the day and help control your life. To understand religion and toss it aside and become comfortable with the thought that no one knows what happens after you die so fuck it, don't worry about it and don't let some jack off with words from a book written by goat hearders from thousands of years ago tell you what to believe, religion is laughable now. I feel that I have grown as a human because what I have learned and comfortable about what I don't. I raised my first two boys with no religion and they are such awesome men now. No ghosts, no spirits, no soul, no buggyman.... Just study how tribal men created Gods for different reasons and how later it got rolled into a governence tool. Religions don't want to study that, only their doctrine, ask yourself why.

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Ah, religion, bigotry dressed up as morality.
 08/26/2016 07:47 AM
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Greensleeves

Posts: 20478
Joined Forum: 07/22/2003

Ah irregularjoe.   "Cherry picked" sounds like you think I meant to make some sort of point that only you understand cause I sure as heck can't figure it out.   

 

 08/26/2016 08:06 AM
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Cole

Posts: 68176
Joined Forum: 07/22/2003

How about this:

I believe what I believe.

You believe what you believe.

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I was right.
 08/26/2016 08:09 AM
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Greensleeves

Posts: 20478
Joined Forum: 07/22/2003

"How about this:

I believe what I believe.

You believe what you believe."

 

 08/26/2016 08:11 AM
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RegularJoe

Posts: 3679
Joined Forum: 11/20/2011

Greenie, your choice to quote Rusty's "oppression" comment, and not the other part ("is not at all synonymous with denial that there are mysterious and unknown forces in the universe") came across as implying education would cure one of believing in "mysterious and unknown forces." That's what I took from your post, but not from Rusty's.

My bad if I read too much into it, and didn't respond clearly enough.
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