religion
Out of context: Reply #1186
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- Wolfboy0
"the burden of proof here remains with the Atheists because it is universally acknowledged that Christianity is a belief and subsequently beliefs, by definition, require no proof. " Morning_star
By getting into semantics and definitions the only thing you are doing is working in definites - something that is very shaky ground for any faith based beliefs.
By coming to the conclusions above, you have lumped all faith based beliefs together; all myths, all stories from history become the same thing. If somebody believes them and that person says they are beyond the parameters of testing they then require no proof. If that’s what you think then fair enough, but the facts as set out by yourself place all major religions side by side with the likes of (as mentioned many times already) Scientology, ancients myths that have passed from religion to historical social points of interest and crack pots like David Icke. It also brings spiritual bollocks like astrology and homeopathy into play as real things that do what they claim to do. By working in the black and whites of definitions you remove all factors such as size of the following of a certain set of beliefs; the christian has no more relevance than the man in a tin foil hat protecting his thoughts from the government.
Now I’m sure it will be claimed again that I’m being obtuse, but your insistence regarding the definition of words and so on draws the line in the sand. For me, all you have done is devalued all faith based beliefs by lumping them together. That’s a much bigger argument for how ridiculous they are than any scientific proof you say must to be provided by atheists.
Oh yes, there is the other side to your semantic grappling; you want to say that atheism is as much a part of this as any of the other beliefs and if you want to feel all smug by proving that with a dictionary then here you go, there’s your pyrrhic victory. See how the world of not believing in myths and stories collapses as they all come to the realisation that they are not non-believers, but believers in something different.
I say fuck all of that and your insistence that entomology holds some kind of key to all this; I’ll just repeat what I’ve already said:
– Atheism is a refusal to believe the stories we are fed from an early age without some form of measurable proof that they are real; this in turn allows the people to seek answers to questions, acquire exciting new knowledge about the world around them and adjust their world view accordingly as civilisation progresses. By this structure, if proof that there is a god became available atheists would accept it and adjust their world view.
– Theism/spiritualism is a refusal to accept that the stories we are fed from an early age can be anything but true despite anything newly acquired information might describe; this in turns means people have to spend their time and effort skewing the information to their world view. By this structure, if proof that there is no god became available theists would deny it and skew the information to fit their world view.