“Atheism - celebrate reason” while absconding from reasoning

Examiner.com ^ | March 4, 2010 AD | Mariano Apologeticus

[MarianoApologeticus]

...atheists in Australia appear to have demonstrated that they have more money than they know what to do with by wasting it on bus ads that read “Atheism - celebrate reason.”

Atheists have, again, come very close to quoting that which the Bible has stated for almost 3,000 years, “‘Come now, let us reason together,’ says the LORD (Isaiah 1:18).

The ads are occasioned by the upcoming “Global Atheist Convention” in Melbourne a convention that is being titled, “The Rise of Atheism” and billed as the “biggest ever atheist event in Australia’s history.”

This convention will feature the best and brightest atheists; the most erudite amongst us. They who are the very same people who have been challenged by Christians in Australia to engage in debate while they are down under. They who, as if with one voice, refuse to debate and prefer to preach to the choir.

This was detailed in the essay, Yet Again, the Most Intelligent, Well Informed and Vociferous Atheist in the World Cower from Debate.

Reason? No, merely self-aggrandizing and self-professed pseudo-erudition.

[ClearCase_guy]

If someone is an agnostic, and says "I just don't know", then I would grant that they have a reasonable position. No one can "know" about God, or "prove" that He exists.

If someone is an atheist, they are basically saying, "I believe -- with every fiber of my being, down to the core of my soul -- I have complete faith that God does not exist." It's simply an unreasonable position. It's a religious stance, just like my faith in Jesus.

[JudyinCanada]

I’d be a little nervous to be in close proximity to this event....

[SnakeDoctor]

Atheism is a philosophy which rests on a contradiction — that all assertions require proof, except the assertion that there is no God. “If I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist” is the philosophical equivalent of putting your fingers in your ears and shouting “lalalalala”.

SnakeDoc

[OB1kNOb]

bus ads that read “Atheism - celebrate reason.”

[Perdogg]

why is this in breaking news?

[massgopguy]

The Age of Reason aka The Reign of Terror

[Goldsborough]

If someone is an atheist, they are basically saying, "I believe -- with every fiber of my being, down to the core of my soul -- I have complete faith that God does not exist." It's simply an unreasonable position. It's a religious stance, just like my faith in Jesus.

This statement is logically faulty. A disbelief in God is not a profession of faith in such, it is a declaration that a null state exists. The burden of proving something exists is upon its proponents, not the detractors.

Were I to say something along the lines of, "UFOs exist and we have been visited here on Earth by bug eyed gray aliens. . . ." it would not technically be correct to categorize your sarcastic, "Sure they have." as some profession of faith that these events have not transpired. If anything, you are simply incredulous.

Atheism is simply the furthest outpost of skepticism--which you somehow grudgingly respect when it comes out in agnostics.

[stormer]

Atheists do not “cower from debate”. They have chosen not to waste the time and energy expended in dealing with the young earth creationists who have challenged them. Theology aside, people that believe existence is 6000 years old are simply too stupid to bother with.

[stormer]

You cannot prove a negative.

[left that other site]

“If I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist”

Precisely!
We know Gravity exists because we see its effects.
We know quarks and nuetrinos exist because of the effect they have on other subatomic particles.
We know there are planets orbiting around certain stars because of the perturbations in the star's activity.

The Psalmist said:

The heavens declare the Glory of God,
And the Earth, his Handiwork.

That's pretty reasonable, in my humble opinion.

[wendy1946]

The biggest problem is that there’s almost no way to be an atheist without believing in evolution, and evolution has been massively disproven and demonstrated to be a crock of BS.

[Goldsborough]

Your graphic should serve to make it simplicity itself to answer the following question: Where did God come from? After all, it is beyond question that something cannot be made out of nothing or that something can spontaneously make nothing into something out of nothing and all that.

That is, unless one illogically maintains for some first mover a special exemption from such paradoxes.

[Nosterrex]

Atheism is a religion, and it is treated as a religion in college courses. It is based upon a faith that God does not exist. Activist Atheism is nothing more than fundamentalism as we see in all religions. This is why, for instance, that Dawkins knows that life was not created by God, but most likely by aliens from another universe leaving their garbage on earth. Our universe can be explained by an infinite number of parallel universes although we have no evidence that such universes exist. We even have dark matter and dark energy although we have no empirical proof that either exists, but Atheists know that God did not create the universe. How rational or reasonable is this?

[ClearCase_guy]

Atheism is simply the furthest outpost of skepticism

I disagree. I do not consider atheists to be "skeptical". I believe that they are making a positive assertion that they know there is no God. It's silly. They can believe that if they want, but they can't prove it.

Agnostics are skeptical. I understand skepticism. What I don't understant is a faith-based belief system which asserts that faith is wrong.

[SnakeDoctor]

But, if science is your thing (which always seems to be the case with atheists), in order to definitively state a negative, you must prove it. Science does not allow for supposition.

The existence of God cannot be scientifically proven or disproven — so the truly scientific response is to have no opinion on the matter.

I have weighed the non-scientific circumstantial evidence of God’s existence, and determined the He does exist — thus my faith. An atheist has weighed the circumstantial evidence and come to a different conclusion — thus their faith. Neither conclusion is based on science.

SnakeDoc

[freethinker_for_freedom]

“Makes perfect sense.”

Nothing makes much sense. The fact that we are here is unbelievably improbable, but we are here nonetheless.

If it makes you feel better to believe that a god created you and that’s why you are here, then go ahead and believe it, but don’t try to pretend that it is somehow more logical to believe in god.

My basic problem with the god hypothesis is that I would have thought a god would have done a better job of it. And to get mad at his creations for not being what he wanted them to be? Talk about making no sense.

[freethinker_for_freedom]

“and evolution has been massively disproven and demonstrated to be a crock of BS.”

Somehow I missed this stunning development—the whole basis of modern biology has been overturned. Who did it and when? We’re talking at least one Nobel prize here. Please fill me in.

[Goldsborough]

I would offer that you do not understand atheism because you have allowed so-called "militant" or "evangelical" atheists to cloud what atheism really is to most of the people who profess to be such. As an agnostic myself, I see atheists fall into one main camp--they do not care enough to proclaim their conclusion that there is no non-faith based evidence "proving" the existence of God. On a daily level, little time is wasted pondering the question.

Then there are the evangelical or militant atheists, who are outliers. These folks are rather run of the mill attention seekers. They have many exact counterparts on the religious side of the equation. People of faith find guys like Richard Dawkins as offensive, tacky, pretentious, and infuriating as I find Pat Robertson and other televangelists to be.

[stormer]

Ah, I see you know nothing of science.