Delusion isn't the word you're looking for. While religious people are deluded because they base their beliefs on absolutely nothing, people like me have educated opinions that might be wrong, but are still rational because they are based on evidence.

And yeah, Bill Maher is agnostic. He doesn't deny that there could be a god, but he has a problem with people who claim they do know the answers, because they couldn't.

...so then he is?

...

Religious people have something called faith.

he's a agnostic. an agnostic is different from an atheist in that atheism is the assurance that there is not a god (just like christians are assured that there is a god). agnostics are mainly defined by their belief that it simply does not matter.

And about your accusations that atheists are more bigoted than religious people, i beg to differ. I'll focus on Christianity since that's the religion under discussion at the moment. If taken literally, and followed exclusively and entirely, the bible is an incredibly exclusive group of teachings. It excludes people of other religions, it excludes ***s, people who have sex before marriage, people who divorce, I could go on. And no, many intelligent (key word there), rational Christians realize the absurdity of this. What Bill Maher did was to expose the VAST amount of bible thumping bigots, who use religion as a tool to justify their own intolerence. Atheists CAN be just as hateful and bigoted towards those kind of religious people, and in truth, some are just as bigoted towards anyone who believes in a deity. But there is not the vast numbers of bigoted atheists as there are bigoted bible thumpers.

What's this post supposed to do?

It's not to convince you of anything, I just don't like how you make it out that religious people have no reason to believe in anything.

But that is his belief. You can't just throw the word "Faith" around as if that makes religion an off-limits subject. He is stating his beliefs just as you are stating yours.

Christians base their beliefs on the Bible. Since there isn't proof on whether it is true or not, and many people think it is bullshit, the Christian needs faith.

Let's not turn another thread into a religious debate.

Well, I'm done here. If I was just misinterpreting streetwaves, I apologize for the trouble.

So you admit there's no proof for the Bible, but you (I'm assuming you're Christian?) have faith. Unfortunately, that argument means absolutely nothing to anyone rational. Every theist has faith in their religious beliefs, and an equally absent amount of evidence to back them up. Faith is not a good enough reason to choose one religion over another, or to believe in any of them at all. Religious people will undoubtedly stick to the same old arguments as long as these conversations are had, but I wish at some point they'd realize that their points hold zero weight. I can have faith in any number of things, and you wouldn't be able to prove me wrong, but that doesn't mean that I'm not. I mean no disrespect, but it's hard to sound nice about these things :o: (for me, at least).

It's sort of unrealistic to hope that a thread about *** marriage is going to be clean of religious debate, considering the opposition to equal rights is primarily religious. It'd be impossible to ignore the elephant in the room.

Yes, I am a Christian.

Your argument makes sense, and yes, I admit, there is no proof for the existance of God.

No offense taken.

Touché.

A self-identified agnostic or apatheist.

Anyone else read the thread title as "Oy vey"? :laughing: :|

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents... some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new Dark Age."

- H.P. Lovecraft

Honestly, it doesn't even matter whether or not someone believes in the existence of a God or not. We'd all go mad simply from trying to comprehend an infinite entity in the first place, much less obtain evidence of such a being.

I always keep thinking that we will move forward, and we can't be that worse than Europe of social reforms, and then this shit happens...

In my SS class when we have discussions about politics I 'discussed' gay marriage to the point of where I stopped talking because my friend was getting really pissed at me.

Marriage simply means union. A marriage of two words is a phrase sometimes used. A marriage is a union between two people. A long history of religion giving us the idea that it is ONLY between opposite sex has drilled this crap into our heads.

Gay marriage is so gay.

He is an agnostic.

Did you see Religilous?

So................. :crazy:

What do you think about gay marriage?

Why the hell haven't I posted this yet? I could have sworn I had.

This man sums up my views on this Proposition perfectly.

Hatred and bigotry seem to bee thrown around quite a bit here, but maybe the reason it didn't pass is more along the lines of ignorance and fear. Is the fear founded? no, but fear is fear. There are still people that have only been exposed to homosexuals on TV and they aren't always portrayed in a positive light. I'll grant that some votes were cast based on hatred and bigotry, but many were cast out of ignorance. Some people seem to still believe that same sex marriage will destroy what "conventional" marriage stands for. I can say that my marriage will mean no less when (I say when because it will become legal) two men are legally married. Education is key, show people why they are wrong rather than just protesting and yelling that they are hate filled bigots.

Hatred and bigotry are usually the product of ignorance and fear.

great point, I completely agree that the solution to hatred and bigotry is with education, and yet I can not absolve the people who voted this in of blame. This is not a backwater village in a third world country. education, enough education rather, is available for those who want it, and who value it. Your right that the problem is fear, but I just can't acquit people of having a lack of human decency if they voted in a proposition to deny someone a right that will have no effect on them whatsoever.

You met french anti-american *******s. I feel sorry that's how you see french peoples, now.

I've never heard about atheist killing thousands and thousands of people because they are religious.

And french politic system isn't religious, or atheist : it is laique. That mean that nobody can say "this new law is against my beliefs", even if he is catholic, atheist, jew, muslim ...

Or more. Which is also why I'm all for polygamist marriages, but thats not happening any time soon.

Why would aethists kill because their religious?

If you're saying you've never heard of aethists killing anyone; Hitler, Pol Pot, Castro...

You silly boy. Athiests have never killed in the name of atheism or because they are atheists. Why would they? As for Hitler being an atheist, that's often disputed. Don't just call him an athiest to try to make some point (as invalid as it is), he contradicts himself too much for almost anyone to say.

There's a quote that I think sums up this sort of thing perfectly:
"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things it takes religion."

TheBig3Something -> The difference is Hitler didn't killed people in the name of atheism.

Ooooh

To be honest, I didn’t really get his point.

Hitler does in fact contradict himself, though the fact that he created a church where in place of the traditional iconography he had pictures of himself hung, I think it’s a fair bet to say he’s an atheist. But who knows, I’m just silly and using facts.

As for your quote, It’s nice to hide behind well placed platitudes but good people have done evil for many a reason.

Before I go on, I feel as if the resentment toward my statements is because we have many a pronounced “atheist” here and I’m guessing its never been proposed that they were in anyway reprehensible. If not all, certainly some, and I’d ask that before you knee-jerk defend the position to look at my point. Atheists aren’t, as a group unassailable and one of the more dangerous traps people can fall into intellectually is to believe any one group is without flaws; or merit.

We’ve dodged my Bill Mahr comment even in the face of statements like (in regard to Ted Haggard, a decidedly reprehensible figure) “he couldn’t even conjure up a stupid old fairy tale in order to steal peoples money.” Look guys, I’m no friend of what we know as “religion” but I didn’t just look at the crusades or the middle east and say “to hell with it all.”
We’re now dancing around the real issue saying what atheists ought to be, not what they are. We’re putting in a glass case, ideas that we find value in, and like communism we know that in practice, thee ideas are horribly warped.

To the person who asked earlier why we should be civil to a
(paraphrase) “group of people who’ve slaughtered millions” I say two things:

1. It’s a good bet that persons actually killed no one

2. That we should never sink to a level we ourselves don’t find
admirable.

Why civility needs an explanation I’ll never understand, but if we take nothing else from my argument here, its that we grasp firmly the differences of proposition and practice and that we only serve to further corrupt that which we refuse to acknowledge

Are you for them, or against their restriction?

Either works for me. I don't care if the state stays totally disinvolved or chooses to include all forms of marriage, but one or the other needs to happen.

I am pro-fucking.

Edit: Wasn't Hitler openly a roman catholic?

no one's dodged your bill maher comment. you called him an atheist, which is is not. we corrected you by telling you he was an agnostic, and I then explained what the difference was in case you were confusing the two. how is that dodging your comment?

"We’re now dancing around the real issue saying what atheists ought to be, not what they are. We’re putting in a glass case, ideas that we find value in, and like communism we know that in practice, thee ideas are horribly warped."

What exactly are you trying to say here? You've alluded to the fact that atheism is just as divisive, potentially dangerous, and exclusive as religion, but you have not as yet given any proof other than to throw out hitler and pol pot among other. both of which I could refute very easily. Hitler often used the Christian religion as a tool to inflame the population against jews. one of his quotes is as follows:

"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."

That quote appeared in the second chapter on Mein Kampf, doesn't sound much like an atheist now does it?

As for Pol Pot? yes, he wiped out any religious practices, but he didnt do it in the name of atheism, his rule was one of the most extreme and brutal forms of comunism. He wasnt ruling out religion because of an atheist "crusade," he was wiping out anything that had to do with the western world, as well as anything that distinguished a person as different from another. It was why he killed anyone that spoke another language, why near the end he rounded up people for slave labour for simply wearing eyeglasses.

You seem to be trying to argue that atheists have been just as reprehensible as religious figures using their brand of god-worship to justify mass killings. That argument is simply historically false.

The only part that I agree with is the last part. Obviously the people who are religious, who are not obnoxiously pushing it down other's throats, deserve the same decency and common courtesies that everyone else does. I may not agree with what they believe, I may think it is irrational, but I can still respect them as the good people they are.

Also Hitler wasn't an atheist.

"To whom should propaganda be addressed? … It must be addressed always and exclusively to the masses… The function of propaganda does not lie in the scientific training of the individual, but in calling the masses' attention to certain facts, processes, necessities, etc., whose significance is thus for the first time placed within their field of vision. The whole art consists in doing this so skilfully that everyone will be convinced that the fact is real, the process necessary, the necessity correct, etc. But since propaganda is not and cannot be the necessity in itself … its effect for the most part must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree at the so-called intellect… it's soundness is to be measured exclusively by its effective result". (Main Kampf, Vol 1, Ch 6 and Ch 12)

They had a shot of Hitler once, and he had his arm around the bust of Nietzsche with this "atta boy" face on. Thats about as emotional as you'll get from hitler.

If Nietzsche is your guy, i don't know that we need to look much further. Zarthustra or otherwise.

That quote I'm citing likely tells you that what hitler says isn't always the truth. Should we look to Chamberlin and his...

"I have in my pocket a letter from Chancellor Hitler; there will be no land war in Europe"

to prove that point?

As I've stated prior, we have people who see an idea they identify with being show for what it is (atheism) and they are suspending logic to defend it to the death.

Come again friends, I'm ready for your fight because you're wrong.

So wrong that you've started trusting the written word of Hitler.

Yeah, it just means union. It can be used like a marriage of two music ideals, marrying punk and ska to make punk-ska sorta...ok that was a bad example but you know what I mean.

The argument you have set up here is that we really can't trust anything Hilter said or did because it's all just propaganda and manipulation, and there really is no way of knowing what he actually believed in his heart of hearts. And then you claim to know he's an atheist based on some photo-op with a bust of Nietzsche. Does it occur to you that having his photo taken with a bust of one of Germany's most famous philosophers might also be an example of propaganda? Your argument undermines itself. If we really have no way of knowing what he believed based on anything he did or said, then you have to basis for making the claim that he was an atheist.

I guess I’m going to be the monumental douche of this thread but I love linguistics, and whenever we start getting into what words mean, I start to froth at the mouth.

Any time you’re never sure what a word mean, I suggest using the American Heritage Dictionary because it has the words etymology underneath the word.

I will say however, this one is a bitch, Marriage from marry from Wed. Now we’re off on a whole new tangent. Heres ultimately what I’ve found:

Origin:
1250–1300; ME marien < OF marier < L marītāre to wed, deriv. of marītus conjugal, akin to mās male (person)

I'm basing that claim in the fact that he tried to create a church where he was essentially christ.