ciberido: EZ1923: Plonk.

Void_Beavis: This.

Religion of peace my ass.

Sabyen91: You might not know what plonk means.

Palestinian
Liberation
Of
North
Korea 

The time has come.

I LOL'd.

Sabyen91: spacelord321: Ready-set: Lee Jackson Beauregard: Ready-set: Action>Words.

Proof, arrests, trials, convictions. That's the only way. Otherwise there will be more boots than the group of Marines already on their way over.

So, then, you, and all the other teahadis baying for Libyan blood, will be willing to:

* enlist, if you are able, and
* support and pay the taxes needed to pay for yet another war with the Scary Mooselimbs,

right? Right?

Why tea? Is that a straw man argument? I'm mostly libertarian. Everyone do what they want unless it hurts others.

Embassy grounds are officially the land of the country represented. These perps invaded US soil and killed US citizens. It's ok to let the blood boil a bit when that happens. Innocent men killed by a large mob. Justice, then healing. Imagine it was your father over there, murdered for something he didn't do. ACT.

If it were my father I still would not subject whole nations of people to war to satisfy my hurt.

Buy the ticket... take the ride.

You don't get it. If it were your father it should be all out war. Don't you love your father?

Joe Blowme: RodneyToady: St_Francis_P: They probably don't claim to be fluent in English.

Tea Partiers would probably claim to "speak American" rather than "speak English."

And yet they still have less rape and death at their protest than do muslims of Occutards.

It's hard to rape some one on a hoverround. Who would want to rape a 65 year old? ugggg

bdub77: Lest we forget Congress is full of people who are totally f*cking worthless.

Err... That part is true. ;)

Gawdzila: I think you're equivocating the word "belief". That word is bandied about and used in so many different ways that it really just muddies the entire discussion. This misunderstanding of the difference between the types of beliefs that people have is at the very root of your mis-characterization of atheism as being like a religion.

I'm not equivocating the word. The word means what it means. Religions are sets of beliefs. Beliefs can be scientifically verifiable or ridiculous conjectures about turtles. The problem is that people misconstrue religion as only belief in a God or Gods, or as you would say, faith without evidence, when it can in fact incorporate universal truths, morality, philosophy, and even as you said it, belief based on empirical evidence. The problem lies in the very definition of religion. Is Buddhism a religion? Some would say no. Some argue whether atheism is a religion. I tend to think it is, even if it's guided on scientific principles.

The origins of the universe to me are and will remain as inexplicable as anything. We have yet to tie the universe together in a nice neat knot, and even if we did, it's a system that exists. Why does it exist? Is there meaning to it? If not, why? This has nothing in fact to do with whether or not someone believes in life after death - I tend to side more with atheists about brain death. On the other hand, that does not explain away that we live in a system that has rules and apparently some sort of origin if you believe in time and don't believe we live in a universe that expands and then collapses over and over - and if it did so, would everything play out exactly as it did the time before? In that case wouldn't that be pretty fricking amazing if not divine? To me, Occam's razor really cannot apply to the origin of the universe because there is no simplistic explanation for its very existence other than it exists and will forever exist.

Do atheists have beliefs? Yes, of course. But they have beliefs that are grounded in some verifiable knowledge. It is not necessary for this knowledge to be 100% complete and unimpeachable (no perfect theory exists in science anyhow), it is only necessary that it be grounded upon reliable observations. Just as importantly, these beliefs are subject to change if presented with reliable contradicting evidence.

I reject most religions based on observation but again, I reject that scientific evidence can explain everything. This is not denouncing science, simply observing that we cannot explain everything.

This is a fundamentally different type of "belief" than one that is rooted in religious faith. A belief held on faith is held without regard to any objective factual evidence either for or against. A religious person may use positive evidence to try and convince people, but it is not why he believes it. Contradictory evidence is generally either denounced, ignored, or explained away in the manner of an apologist, treating the belief as more primary than the evidence.

See I think you're twisting words here. The point of faith is its absence of evidence. The whole point of religion is that it doesn't fit into a tidy little observable box. You are trying to apply a scientific methodology to something that might not be observable phenomena. And because it's not observable, you think the simplistic solution is the absence of it, despite the fact that we continue to find through scientific method, as another said, plenty of additional teapots out in space. Note that not all religions denounce or apologize for contradictory evidence. It's fine to observe particles and fields, but why do these things exist in the first place? What governs their properties? No one has given me a satisfactory answer to this, and no one will. It has nothing at all to do with evidence. It's sans evidence.

The other important thing to realize is that lacking 100% proof does not make something an assertion. It is still a belief grounded in evidence, as opposed to one that is not. While you may debate the quality of the evidence, it is not held on faith. An atheist who believes that our entire sense of self is only in our brains may not be able to prove his position 100%, but on his side he has a veritable mountain of objective, independently reviewed clinical evidence.

That's the real key here anyway, that atheism is rooted in science, in which God cannot exist because of Occam's Razor, the simplest explanation is the best. I reject most religions because in many respects I happen to agree with you. And there's nothing wrong with your beliefs being based on scientific observation, even lacking proof. Hey maybe brain death is brain death. But to me there is something wrong with simplifying our existence in such a complex system because of the limited observation powers of the human species. And so I treat atheism as a religion. If you want to call yours better because it's based on knowledge as opposed to faith, that's fine. Doesn't mean it is.

jaytkay: bdub77: atheism is rooted in science, in which God cannot exist because of Occam's Razor

Occam's Razor is not science.

You're falling into the deep-seated need for religious people to believe that lack of belief is a belief.

It's like this - I don't follow football. I can't name two players on my city's professional team, the Chicago Bears. I do not know if they have won games this year. I have no idea if they had a good or bad season last year.

And you're the enthusiastic Bears fan saying, "Well if you don't like the Bears, are you a Packers fan? Vikings? What team is your favorite?"

And I say "none".

And you keep insisting that I have to be following SOME team.

Where does agnosticism fit into your analogy?

Instead let's use an annoying math analogy. Atheists think that religious people are 1, they are 0, and agnosticism is either in between the two or some imaginary number. The truth is, no one believes nothing, no one exists in a state of 0. And by belief I mean, an opinion on something that is unknowable.

Girion47: You must have trouble accepting the idea of infinite. Time stretches in both directions infinitely, there is no beginning, and there will never be an end, just different formations of matter. If Atheism is a religion, what are our tenets of belief? What do we worship? Is logic my faith?(you can't say yes unless you're going to somehow convince me that paradox can exist) Where is the proof of a deity? The order argument doesn't work because I can argue that all the order you see is a series of coincidences that have happened to bring us to this current place in time, and based on Chaos Theory, it is possible, even plausible considering our existence. Plus order would exist between molecules whether we existed or not based on chemical structures and physics.

Infinite is easy to understand. But the statement 'Time stretches in both directions infinitely, there is no beginning, and there will never be an end, just different formations of matter' is not based on any observable phenomenon, it's just an assumption.you've chosen to make based on what you can observe, which is apparently very little when you consider how much of our universe is made up of dark matter.

The tenets of atheism vary among believers, but the primary belief is that there is no God and therefore you obviously don't worship one. Most atheists base their belief on lack of empirical evidence in the universe and your understanding of human cognition. Whether it is a religion is irrelevant, it is a set of beliefs. If nothing else atheists seem to cringe at the concept that their belief, whether single or many, is in fact a belief, because then they would somehow represent some sort of religious order. So it's all denial based on their definition of religion. At this point it's all about how you define words. It wants to be neither a religion nor a philosophy while having all of arguments of one.

There is no proof of a deity, just as there is no proof that there is no deity. I don't need an order argument. Why does order exist on any level?

Obviously the atheists here on Fark want to have the last word on this, so have at it, this has grown tiresome and has not gone anywhere.

jaytkay: bdub77: Where does agnosticism fit into your analogy?

Instead let's use an annoying math analogy....

It doesn't and let's not.

Coming up with new ways to misunderstand atheism is not entertaining, interesting, productive or insightful for me.

There's no misunderstanding here, just a bunch of people who want to be argumentative because they think their logic is infallible. But you are correct, it's not productive or interesting anymore.