Atheism

What are the most convincing and reasonable arguments you've come across positing the likelihood of god/definite existence of god? Have all of them been logically refuted (by Dawkins, other prominent scientists/theologians, your own reasoning, etc)? I just want to make myself familiar with the other side of the pond, if you will. I am pretty damn set in my belief that god is indeed a construct of humanity and nothing more. Every argument to the contrary I have seen thus far seems fallacious and falls apart under examination, but if there are any decent arguments from the opposition, I want to hear them and their responses.

The Order of the Stick is an extremely popular, extremely well-written webcomic parody of Dungeons and Dragons that has been going strong for years. In today's strip, Roy (recently resurrected leader of the adventuring party) and his girlfriend Celia (a creature from the elemental plane of air) have just reunited after Roy was raised from the dead.

The webcomic takes a very interesting turn into what I think it an important discussion of real-world religion and morality, and I thought it might be interesting to the folk here.

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0669.html

The key theory, which I've often said myself, is that if people didn't believe in an afterlife there would be far less violence.

I've been going back-and-forth with some creationist on his blog and am having trouble coming up with a good response to a recurring theme in his arguments. He keeps saying things like this :

Even evolutionists rely on a belief in intelligent design without even realizing it. If the universe truly came about without any intelligent design, there would be no reason whatsoever to expect natural laws to exist or behave in consistent patters; there would not even be a foundation for logic. (Emphasis his)

and

If the universe is the result of random, unguided, spontaneous events, there is no rational foundation at all to assume there would be any consistent, rational laws of nature. God is a God of order, logic, consistency and truth, so logic and consistency make sense in a created universe. However, there is no foundation to expect logic, order or consistency in a random, spontaneous universe.

I don't really know what to say to this, other than it is nothing more than an unfounded assumption he is makes to support his worldview. Any thoughts? It seems like something that philosophers of science—or philosophers in general—have probably addressed. I realize that this guy's not going to be swayed by arguments, and that he's just regurgitating the same BS that the ID-creationism crowd drones on about in order to avoid discussing the evidence. At this point I'm more interested in the exercise than anything else.

("Russell's teapot" is a counter-argument to "you can't prove God doesn't exist".  Bertrand Russell wrote that you can't prove that there's not a teapot in space orbiting around the sun either, but that's no reason to believe it.)

I think that Russell's teapot is a counterproductive illustration because it could be disproved. It gives the impression that with sufficient time, resources and technology perhaps one could build a working "God detector" which would show the existence of a deity with a confident BLIP!

So, disproving Russell's teapot is not an accurate parallel to disproving the existence of God.

The trick of the "can't prove God doesn't exist" argument is that it is disguised nonsense. Although it appears to use words which we all understand, any discussion will quickly show that it relies on irrational and/or changing definitions of "proof", "God" and "exist". Likewise, you can't clumble that schlurk doesn't zorf.

Last night my best friend was telling me about an episode of the show "Ghost Hunters" she'd seen that convinced her that ghosts exist.  She found a link on Youtube to an excerpt of the episode in question that takes place at the Stanley Hotel (inspiration for The Shining), and we watched it together.  In the episode, the "Ghost Hunters" used a K-II meter (an EMF scanner) to ask a supposed entity a series of yes or no questions.  The device supposedly responds to changes in the electro-magnetic field.  It doesn't respond to sound, and the Ghost hunters' hands were visible throughout the exchange.

After the meter blinks on and off in response to a series of questions, my friend, an avowed atheist, proclaims that for her, this is proof positive of the existence of ghosts.  I remain skeptical.  Just because some device that I don't understand blinks on and off doesn't, to me, point to a supernatural explanation.  For all I know it was controlled by remote, or on a timer, or any number of other rational explanations.

So my question to you guys is this:  Are being an atheist, and beliving in ghosts mutually exclusive?  For me, if a ghost is a spirit of a deceased person, and I don't believe in souls or spirits, I can't believe in ghosts.  But for my friend it is possible to not believe in god, but to believe in the supernatural.  This confounds me. 

Here's a link to the excerpt if you feel like wasting some time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR1UWmpr_jA

Edited somewhat in the interests of brevity:


Theist: You don't believe in anything! Without morality or purpose or hope, what stops you from just killing yourself?

Me: You're the one who expects to go to heaven! What keeps YOU from killing YOUR self?

Theist: Suicide is a sin. If I die with an unforgiven Sin, I got to hell!

Me: Can't Jesus forgive all sins?

Theist: Not suicide! When you commit the sin, you die! There's no chance to repent.

Me: So? Just jump from a tall building.... and repent on the way down!

  I'd like to start a thread about ideas for responding to religious remarks while still being positive and inoffensive.  Putting people on the spot usually just makes them shut down and go on the defensive.  I like to make my friends think, and remind them that not everybody they may know or like shares their beliefs, but I see no benefit in insulting them or attempting to make them feel bad about themselves.  Sometimes this calls for a little wit and imagination. Bearing in mind that one catches more flies with honey than with vinegar, can you think  of situations or scenarios where this would apply?

Here is the "incident" that prompted this idea, a Facebook update by an old classmate of mine:

 John>   Time for worship and praise.

· Comment ·

Oh cock, just read the damn thing here. I tried to post it but it barfed html at me.

[Edit] Here's another article.

Does anybody know if it's possible to find documented evidence on whether Lee Strobel was ever truly an atheist? I thought I recall seeing something somewhere where someone had found evidence that he had been a church goer for most of his life except for a gap in his teens, but I'm having trouble tracking that down?

( Cut because I didn't realize quite how big it was )

Egyptians cry racism in woman's slaying in Germany (thnx madfilkentist)

CAIRO (AP) — Thousands of Egyptian mourners marched behind the coffin of the "martyr of the head scarf" on Monday — a pregnant Muslim woman who was stabbed to death in a German courtroom as her young son watched.

Many in her homeland were outraged by the attack and saw the low key response in Germany as an example of racism and anti-Muslim sentiment.
...
Christian Avenarius, the prosecutor in Dresden where the incident took place, described the killer as driven by a deep hatred of Muslims. "It was very clearly a xenophobic attack of a fanatical lone wolf."

He added that the attacker was a Russian of German descent who had immigrated to Germany in 2003 and had expressed his contempt for Muslims at the start of the trial.

China Riots: West Descends Into Mob Violence Between Han Chinese, Muslim Uighurs

URUMQI, China — The government imposed a curfew Tuesday night in this regional capital of western China after mobs of Han Chinese with meat cleavers and clubs roamed the streets looking for Muslim Uighurs who had earlier beaten up people in the country's worst ethnic violence in decades.

Rioting in the Xinjiang region broke out Sunday and killed at least 156 people. Tuesday's new violence came despite swarms of paramilitary and riot police enforcing a dragnet that state media said led to the arrest of more than 1,400 people in the often tense region.
...
On Tuesday, some among the Han Chinese mob retreating from the tear gas were met by Urumqi's Communist Party leader Li Zhi, who climbed atop a police vehicle and started chanting with the crowd. Li pumped his fists, beat his chest, and urged the crowd to strike down Kadeer, the 62-year-old Uighur leader.

"Those Muslims killed so many of our people. We just can't let that happen," said one man in the crowd, surnamed Liu. He carried a long wooden stick and said the Han Chinese were forced to take up arms.

( More )

If you start up a business, large or small, so that you can be better off, that makes you a sinner in the eyes of Pope Benedict. His new encyclical, Caritas in veritate, denounces profit "without the common good as its ultimate end." He's on good Christian ground; Jesus talked about how hard it is for a rich man to get into heaven, and he advised people to give away all they had. But his idea of the "common good" doesn't have much to do with economic well-being; he writes against "abandoning mechanisms of wealth redistribution in order to increase the country's international competitiveness."

To accomplish all this, he calls for "a true world political authority" and supports "justice through redistribution."

He doesn't ask why people would risk what they have and put in long hours if their profits are just going to be redistributed for the common good. He doesn't explain what kind of "justice" takes from those who produce and gives it to those who don't.

But he's the Pope, so he's just telling us what God said.

So I've been thinking about this topic for quite a while now, and I still can't find an answer. What do atheists do with their children? is it okay to raise a child to scrutinize all religions?

I consider myself a moderate antitheist. Basically, all religion is dumb, but you can believe what you like- should I pass this sort of 'bigotry' over to my child? (Not that I'm getting one any time soon; but anyway, irrelevant.) Honestly, I probably will end up passing over my beliefs to a T; I can't bare the thought that a spawn of mine would go around claiming that he has a *puke* personal god or something wretched like that.

I can't help but think that that thought is a little specious, though. I have a huge beef with parents labeling a child 'Christian' or 'Muslim' before the kid has enough little grey cells to even comprehend what that would mean. I want to see parents do the hippie thing and let the child choose for themselves, but that isn't always easy if you're trying to stay unobjectionable with the sorts of beliefs I've got. Claiming a child is 'Christian' or 'Muslim' sounds awful, and in a way, so does claiming that a kid is Atheist before he figured it out for himself.

Is anyone else as bothered about this as I am?

The rival to the Bible

( What is probably the oldest known Bible is being digitised, reuniting its scattered parts for the first time since its discovery 160 years ago. It is markedly different from its modern equivalent. What's left out....? The world's oldest surviving Bible is in bits. )

Okay, some of you may have seen the recent Pharyngula post about Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) revealing himself to be both an atheist and a Richard Dawkins fan. What you might not have seen was the following comment in response to this news:

"Meh. He just likes Dawkins because he wants to nail Hermione"

This comment is accompanied by a link to the following image (it's perfectly suitable for work btw):
( Click here to see the image: )

I play in a community band in a suburb of Chicago. This morning our group played in the parade. After we were finished, I watched the rest of the parade and I spotted this atheist "float"!!! It got booed. I don't know who "Rob Sherman" is. At first I thought well maybe this guy is a d-bag and that's why they are booing but then I overheard a guy say "Ugh, atheists" as he shook his head. 

Here's my footage:

Saw this on Bad Astronomy:

The game show is called 'Penitents Compete'. A Muslim imam, a Greek Orthodox priest, a rabbi, and a Buddhist monk try to convert 10 atheists on each show.

http://www.newser.com/story/63439/turkish-game-show-tries-to-convert-atheists.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/02/turkey-penitents-compete-gameshow

The inclusion of Buddhism doesn't make sense though, because Buddhism is not a theism-based religion like the 3 Abrahamic religions are. If they wanted to use a non-Abrahamic monotheist, they could have used a representative from one of the 3 major monotheist Hindu sects (Vaishnavism, Shaivism, Shaktism), or from Zoroastrianism.