shakran

Well, we can start by not talking about wanting to eradicate religion. We can start by not saying they're stupid to believe in it.

I'm not worried about offense if the offense is caused by ideas. The Copernican model of the solar system was highly offensive to the church, and I'm fine with that. If Copernicus had, however, danced around yelling "you bunch'a damn jackasses! You're all stupid!" then I'd have looked on him as a social, if not complete, idiot.

If the offense is caused by being a jackass, it's another story.

You have to understand where the religious people are coming from here. I had the (from my perspective) advantage of having parents who, while they believed in god, didn't make a big deal out of it and never went to church.

But look at it from the perspective of someone who has been raised all their life to believe in god and the teachings of the church. You can have the smartest person in the world, but if they're raised from day one to believe in something, even if it's not true, it's going to be awfully hard to convince them otherwise.

Look at it another way. You have been raised all your life to believe that gravity is keeping you firmly attached to the earth. But what if gravity doesn't exist? What if instead it's electrical attraction at the atomic level that holds you to the planet? If I told you, right here, right now, that gravity doesn't exist, would you believe me? What if I said you're a moron for thinking gravity exists. Would that help to convince you?

Of course it wouldn't. And if you had been raised all your life, from day one, being told there was a god, you'd very likely believe in god right now unless you had at some point gotten around to questioning that belief.


No, not at all, and I'm not trying to establish credibility for any religion here. However, that history speaks to the likelihood that people will believe in it. The flying spaghetti monster wouldn't last very long as a religion because no one believes in it. Unless you're prepared to say that everyone that ever lived who believed in god was a moron (and that, by the way, includes Einstein, Hawking, Newton, Jefferson, Franklin, and most of the other great thinkers of history) then you have to acknowledge that it is *understandable* that people might believe in their religion.


We all have. But when I had that minority opinion I didn't march up to people holding the majority opinion and open my arguments by calling them stupid and ridiculous.

And rather than hurl insults at those who believed in a flat earth, intrepid explorers instead went out and proved that it wasn't. That is the challenge I gave to Yakk. Instead of just sitting there and insulting people, either go out and prove they're wrong, or keep your insults to yourself.

Not in and of themselves, but it does lend at least the semblance of credibility to the argument. For instance, if you were driving down a road, and 1 crazy looking guy with wild hair and twigs in his beard told you not to drive any further or you'd die, you'd probably ignore him. If 20 people told you not to drive any further because the road was washed out and you'd go over a cliff, you'd probably believe them - even if you didn't have concrete evidence that the cliff was there. In fact if you were smart you'd believe them enough to hedge your bets - you'd proceed as though there were a cliff there until offered direct evidence to the contrary.

Well here we have millions of people telling someone that if they don't believe in god they're going to be set on fire forever. It is not unreasonable that they hedge their bets and proceed as though that were true until offered direct evidence to the contrary.

No, but you're failing to think critically about this yourself. There are very powerful signs that god exists, if you're looking for them and you want to believe in god. I went on a hiking trip in the rockies once with a good friend, and she stopped halfway down a mountain trail, overlooking a valley of aspen with a sparkling lake in the middle, and told me that surely nothing this beautiful could be accidental. I of course disagreed, but I understood why such a sight would be a reinforcing sign that god does exist.

We all do that. We believe something and then search for evidence to prove our belief. The natural tendency is to discard or find fault with evidence that is contrary to our belief. It doesn't mean we're stupid - just that we're human.

It is not way out of line to QUESTION religious belief. It is way out of line to question religious belief by being a jerk. There's a big difference.

If you want to reason with someone, it is not wise to start by insulting them.


(I snipped a large part of your post because my response to it would have been redundant. This post is gonna be long enough as it is)

No, as I already explained, their religion tells them to preach the gospel. English teachers are instructed to teach english. That does not mean they have to come to your house and ram it down your throat, and it does not mean they have to get laws passed saying you MUST use proper grammar. You can preach the gospel without hindering anyone's life.


If you want to get into the comparitive jackass game, it's a pretty easy one to play. I can kill someone and claim it's not that bad because at least I didn't pull a Dahmer and eat them.



We are not in the position to conclusively prove that we cannot travel faster than light any more than Pa Ingalls could have conclusively proved we can't travel faster than the speed of sound.

Of course you can question. Do it nicely. It's really not that hard.



I already said in this thread that I would jump on them.

Yes, Dawkins has decided that anyone who isn't an athiest is a moron. Including agnostics. Dawkins also isn't exactly winning a lot of friends or converts with this approach.

True, but writing a book proclaiming there is no god will create plenty of controversy. Plus, Dawkins doesn't need to sell books - he's quite wealthy from the ones he's already sold.

You may be right, but does he want people to read his book or does he want to convince them to see things his way? Because even I, as an agnostic, was not swayed to his point of view - - but then I quit reading the book only a couple of chapters in because the guy's such an insulting jackass that I lost patience for him.

1) I'm not trying to convince the UFO believers that there aren't any UFO's.

2) I'm not asking you to respect the christian belief. I'm asking you to respect the individuals who believe it.


Do you want to be right, or do you want to win? You can be a jerk about it all you want (and calling their beliefs stupid is being a jerk about it) but approaching it that way is not going to convince very many, if any, people that you're right and religion is wrong.


I would ask the same of you. Please stop insulting people just because they're religious.

But see that's my point. It may be a crazy belief from your perspective, but it certainly isn't random. They didn't just witch this idea up out of the back of their minds one day. There's absolutely NOTHING random about people in society believing in religion.


You didn't use that term. but you do have faith in the nonexistance of god. Since you can't prove god's nonexistance, you must take it on faith that he does not exist.

But until that evidence arises your faith has not been proven or disproven and is therefore in the same boat as religion.

No, it means you can toss in this idiotic spaghetti monster crap all you want and it won't change the fact that you're being rude to the religious people.

I do not agree with those beliefs. I feel those beliefs are wrong. But I, apparently unlike you, understand that if you have been taught, or if you prefer brainwashed, since you learned to talk, that these things are true, that it is quite understandable that you would believe in them.
If you could, and you got that information out to the people, then yes, I wouldn't have a particular problem with you saying it's ridiculous for people to believe in that which has been proven wrong. I don't have a problem with someone saying members of the flat earth society are ridiculous. It's been proven conclusively time and again that the earth is round.

Now, take up the challenge. Prove the catholics are wrong, or stop ridiculing them.

Do you not see that calling religious people ridiculous, and saying their religion is stupid, is not the best way to endear them to your point of view, and is therefore unlikely to help you accomplish your goal?


No. See above.


All of these acknowledgments merely prove my point. While the actual belief may or may not be stupid, it is understandable that people would believe in it, and it does not necessarily mean they are stupid for doing so.

No, it couldn't have. They eliminated that possiblity with the way their experiment was designed.
I'm all ears.
and I've already explained those limits - believe anything you want, but when your beliefs start infringing on my rights, we have a problem.

As long as they're not harassing or hurting me, they can believe in anything they want. I really don't care.

Harsh as it sounds, that's their perogative. As long as it's a suicide cult and not a homicide cult, then they can do what they want.

Here clearly we have an infringement of others' rights.


Probably not. After all the jews were not only told their religion was wrong, they were told by the Nazis that they could, and probably would, die for it. Didn't stop them from believing. What are your "stupid and silly" arguments when put up against the gas chambers?


Nice try, but that isn't science quality at all. Get that peer reviewed and you'll be laughed out of the room. In the first place your b section is faulty. The implications of a deity are many, not the least of which is the possibility that we will continue to exist in some way after we die.

In the second, no true scientist would consider a hypothesis disproven simply because he couldn't think of something that would be effected by its truth. Otherwise I could hypothesize that the sky is blue, and if I were unable to come up with any implications of that hypothisis, you would then declare that the sky is not blue. Rather silly, don't you think?