Quote Originally Posted by Hanna View Post
Nobody KNOWS any of this for sure because it's not possible to prove it!
So there is no need to be too dogmatic about atheism, or about any faith.
So then why do the literal and fundamentalist religious always threat their scipture as if it was absolutely true even in the absence of any evidence, whereas contradciting science which is based on a lot of evidence is seen as false? It's very noble to not be dogmatic about faith, but dogma is, after all, a religious term. At least atheists have some evidence going for them.

All educated people know that religious texts are full of events that contradicts the law of physics etc.
What about contradicting itself internally? Can you still believe that God created the world in six days and created man last, and ALSO created man first and plants etc. afterwards? Because that's in the Bible. Must be true. Both. And I thought, quantum physics was weird.

Really, one should read the Bible with one's brain switched on. Even the churches do. I have here before me the offical ecumenical German edition of the Bible as released by various official, church-supported organizations. Regarding the above Genesis dilemma, it says in a footnote to Genesis 2,4b -24 (my translation): "This is an older creation myth, in which the focus lies on the creation of humanity (...). The last editor of the pentateuch combines such different myths to show that he is not concerned with scientifical facts but religious ideas."

That's something all the literalists today are missing. And if it can be clearly demonstrated that such a text is internally inconsistent (never mind physics, simple logic and causality are sufficient), then it can't be literal truth. Provided we accept that there can be only one truth to reality.

That doesn't mean that someone believing in a certain god can't beahve like a decent person. And maybe some may even behave more nicely for it. But you can reach the same point by simple ethical thought and deduction, and that being based on reason rather than faith is in my view a much more consistent and stable view. Especially as there is nothing reasonable about denouncing other humans by dint of faith or race or origin. Religion does that. Atheism does not.

Do you realize that none of the freedoms you enjoy would exist today if during the period we call the Enlightenment people had not begun to think rationally about their situation and discard the thrall of religion for the most part? Europe would be no better than the Taliban regime if that had not happened. Really, I see no single society anywhere in history or even today, governed by the principles of a religion, which was free and safe for the individual and the surrounding societies.

Yes, that includes the USA, where they say that state and church are separate, but faith (and quite fundamentalist at that) seems to be a prerequisite for any politician who wants to be elected, and a president who declares war on Afghanistan and Iraq with words such as "God is on our side" is no better than a crusade-calling pope in the middle ages.