I would highly highly HIGHLY recommend reading "God is not Great" by Christopher Hitchens. Very similar to the God Delusion, but with Hitch's signature wit and prose, which can be a bit lacking in Dawkin's writings.

You people miss the whole point of a what the real job of a minister or priest is. You seem to think that the job is to teach about the bible. That is only a part of the mission - the real job of a minister is to LEAD PEOPLE TO GOD.

Kind of obvious that you need to believe in the destination in order to lead others there.

If these people not only lose their faith in God, but decide there is no God, then they obviously should quit the job and find something else to do. That is not oppression of athiests, just fitting the basic job requirements.

Garry as an Atheist I would agree with you there, I definitely dont think any atheist should try and lead people to god, it sounds weird to do that while not believing in it themselves.

I would much prefer it if he left the church and then tried to lead people AWAY from god.

I hear ya, ViLSE!

The link i posted upthread is to a podcast from Seth Andrews, a former christian broadcaster now producing video and internet radio content as youtube user TheThinkingAtheist. In that particular 90 minute podcast he talks with Dan Barker, former evangelical preacher and christian musician who, after deconversion, founded the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

They speak of The Clergy Project. The podcast provides a thoughtful discussion of the issues facing religious leaders that have, over time, come to dismiss their supernatural beliefs. Before judging active clergy in this very difficult situation you should hear the other side of the story. Again, the link to that podcast:
http://youtu.be/rYMxSLuO6YY

Relevant links:
http://clergyproject.org
http://ffrf.org
http://www.thethinkingatheist.com

btw I know many (perhaps all) of you will not make time to listen to that 90 minute podcast. Sadly the entire story cannot be told in a 3 minute sound bite. So I submit a sampling of 3 to 5 minute videos by Seth Andrews found at his youtube channel:
http://youtu.be/N0Ii_D3uDDY
http://youtu.be/1Rwioe1SGkQ
http://youtu.be/4zZytbe1a9s
http://youtu.be/_J4ZuHEYXkk

Atheists might be dillusional... you never know ;)

Perhaps, but belief in an invisible man in the sky that loves all human beings while sending 99.9999999% of them to burn for eternity IS delusional.

That's what some beliefs say... I don't.

lol +!1

I did not read any of these posts, nor did I read the original article. The sheer volume of posts renews my faith in my lack of faith. No christian ever believed any more devoutly in their faith than your average inca, ancient egyption, or even your run-of-the-mill celtic. Like the aforementioned defunct religions, christianity will either become assimilated by the next big thing or it will become a historical footnote to be chuckled about by future generations.

Sorry archaic but your wrong... Maybe none of these religions aren't even remotely correct but maybe their is a hint of truth in every one of them. While we are alive we will never truly know. That is why I dont follow religion but I do have faith. ;)

vilse puts far too much effort into hating christianity.. i think somebody was inappropriately touched while a choir boy and is just lashing out :P

It does seem odd for an atheist to be a preacher. However it would have to be difficult to up and leave a job which many have been training for for their entire lives. It is much more than an occupation and more of an identity. There would have to be some sort of feelings of guilt and worry as to how their decision to leave and out themselves as an atheist may effects their followers. Even if they don't believe, they may not be ready to or want to give their followers a reason to challenge their faith.

Nah Braden, its not "hatred", its more like "contempt". And dont worry I have an equal amount of it for most religions (although some are actually a bit nicer than others).

Its just that Christianity and Islam are the two religions that are around here the most and thus where the more interesting discussions are. If people started up a thread about Hinduism on this board Im sure I can go there and post some fun stuff too, at least some of their gods are a bit cool looking. Sure beats good ole' Zombie-Jesus. :-)

lol at this thread

Heh... I read the Bible front to back and back to front. Quite interesting when you read it starting from Revelation 22:20.

but it is intolerance, vilse, and you should be nicer than that- notice how i disagree with your stance, but don't call you foolish and delusional and mock the basic tenets of your belief :(

Conversational intolerance, in which personal convictions are scaled against evidence, is not only needed but absolutely required where intellectual honesty is demanded equally both in religious views and non-religious views.

Prove it.








exactly

Prove abiogenesis.







Exactly.

Just because proof of the exact origin of life has eluded science does not mean that we should base our decision making on a choose your own adventure book of fairy tales.

Therein lies the problem with zealots, they only accept absolute arguments. At the first sign on uncertainty, they go and burn somebody at the stake. The real world is filled with uncertainty, its ok to embrace the complexity. Once you accept that you DON'T have to fabricate answers to all of the questions by creating some paranormal mythos to explain away your fears, you'll be much better equipped to sit back and enjoy the ride.

It also does not mean we should simply assume the commonly held scientific fairy tale that we all spawned from a puddle of primordial goo despite zero evidence of that being the case. And yet this story is taught in virtually all biology classrooms unchallenged. I can absolutely see why religious fundamentalists would have a problem with the double standard there. Oh you want absolute proof only when it applies to OUR theories of the origin of life. When YOU come up with some half fluffed unsubstantiated theory it's okay to teach it as fact because it's SCIENCEY!

Please tell me how a bunch of legos assembling themselves into a self replicating life form under extremely inhospitable conditions is not science's version of a paranormal mythos.

braden: It is only an intolerance to stupid ideas (ie. religion) not an intolerance to people. I fully respect everyones right to believe and think whatever they want, and I would even fight tooth and nail for your right to believe whatever you want (be that god or unicorns or whatever!).

All I want is to keep religion completely away from public life. So rather than label me an Atheist (which in itself isnt wrong) I would prefer to call myself a "Secularist" as that is where I think the most important fight will be.

But just so that you know I think that if you believe in something completely ridiculous you should be ready for people like me to come around and ridicule it. So if you believe in "God" I WILL equal it to believing in the "Tooth Fairy" and other things that can not be proven / does not exist.

BUT I fully respect your right to disagree with me. Thats what makes these arguments so much fun. :-)

TheORKINMan that is just ridiculous in itself, Evolution has loads and loads of evidence for it. It just tends to be that religious people chose not to read it or just discount it because they have an aversion to proof.
Perhaps take a few biology lessons or read up a bit hmm?

I'm talking about abiogenesis, not evolution. Abiogenesis is not supported by evidence whatsoever and yet is taught in science classrooms as fact.

This is exactly what I'm talking about and why I think many atheists who are anti-theists are supreme hypocrites. They believe in fluff that they have no idea about just the same as theists do. They have just deluded themselves into thinking that they don't and thus "are more rational". You consider God zapping a bunch of zebras into existence to be ridiculous. I consider the idea that the building blocks of life magically assembled themselves into a self replicating life form to be absurd as well.

OK, so you don't like the first page of the story, I'll give you that. But once life did start, the evidence from page 2 on is pretty much based on rock solid science. I'm a geologist and I don't like page one of my own teams story either, but I'm willing to accept that I don't know it all and probably never will.

Your team on the other hand is pretty much spinning from page 1 all the way through, and you guys are not willing to acknowledge any of the flaws in your story. Thats the difference tOM, flexibility and willingness to adapt to change versus dogmatic adherence to a flawed argument. Sounds kind of like an analogy to something else huh?

Orkin: I think your main problem is this "...building blocks of life magically assembled themselves...".

You make it sound like it is a magic trick (which incidentally is what religion does and NOT science). Evolution works over a very very long time period (and yes, the earth is faaaar older than some 6000ish years!) little by little and in the end you get a human or a plant or whatever else.

Just that you have found yourself unable to accept abiogenesis (which is the first step to overcome before the more obvious parts of evolving life steps in) is just a bit weird. There are experiments made and advances happening even with abiogenesis, its as any other science something that takes a while to fully prove and to flesh out the theory. But at least the scientific theory is there and proof and experiments are being made. I am sure you can find plenty on google if you hvae a look. And as this is science you can be sure that people will keep working on it to try and prove it better and eventually they might even be able to show you exactly how it happened.

Just because everything isnt explained and proven in detail you cant MAGICALLY ASSUME that then "god-did-it".

I certainly don't see it that way. The scientific community has found itself extremely rigid and unwilling to embrace new scientifically sound theories themselves because it unsets their commonly held beliefs(See: Solar Wind). My point about abiogenesis is not to say that we need to be teaching fundamentalist creationism in science classrooms, but to dispel this myth that scientists and atheists are the fonts of reason and logic in the world who are always open to new ideas and whom base all of their beliefs upon rock solid scientific evidence. I guarantee you that if a school board passed a rule tomorrow that said schools would no longer teach abiogenesis until such a time as there is actually evidence for it that atheists and scientists would be out there picketing THE NEXT DAY saying this is a religious assault on them. Scientific flexibility (while it certainly exists) is vastly overstated by it's own adherents.

But you are mistaken how Scientific theory works, it simply states what the best possible explanation is that we have currently. Some scentific theories are very very well proven such as Evolution.

Whereas some are less so, perhaps abiogenesis is one such, I honestly dont know enough about it to be able to judge it at the moment. However from a brief google around it doesnt sound too shabby on proof of the theory there either.

However the beuty with Science is that you keep working at it, if someone comes up with a new theory tomorrow that completely wrecks the current theory of abiogenesis then so be it, the science books will be re-written, we will need to teach our children the current best theory we have based on the proof that are there.

This way we keep teaching our children the best of what we know all the time. This way we actually advance our own civilization and our own lives.

It by far surpasses the very stale and backwards striving religions which really tries to stop progress and stop us moving forward. I can see absolutely zero merit to religion in comparison to science.

The thing is I DO keep up with science. I read up on the latest as much as I can. I enjoy reading about it and in another life I would have loved to have been a physicist. Abiogenesis doesn't have squat for evidence. The experiments you speak of are a bunch of yahoos saying they have made some proteins under extremely controlled circumstances that we cannot even verify are similar to early Earth conditions(what those conditions were with any specificity is contested as I'm sure archaic will confirm :P). The complexity of even the simplest prokaryotic cells is such a far leap from what scientists have been able to reproduce that it makes my highly skeptical that these particles floating in solution would have been able to assemble themselves together into something that functions much less someone that was capable of replicating itself. Do I know with any degree of certaintly what started life? No. But that doesn't make the primordial soup theory any less fanciful then the idea that "God" a being with some intelligence assembled them.

Whether people can lead moral lives without religion nowadays or not, I think there is pretty rock solid evidence that monotheistic religions did a service to the world by infusing a degree of morality in the general populace that was unprecedented in human history. I can guarantee you no atheist today would want to live in a world with the morals of antiquity (or earlier).

I certainly gather and agree with your argument that many organized religious hamper scientific progress and that that is a bad thing. I personally view things differently. I don't really see the incompatibility that both sides appear to see in one another. If you look at the account in Genesis of the creation of Earth and life (from the perspective of viewing events from Earth) I find it fascinating how much our current understanding of planet formation lines up with the description(For instance light would have reached the surface of the Earth prior to the sun/moon being visible in the sky). Even with evolution the Bible actually gets the order in which life evolved on Earth correct(with the lone exception of birds). Maybe it's just a crazy coincidence but I have not found that coincidence extant in any other ancient literature.

As I said just because you dont like the current best theory out there you should NOT automatically then claim that "god did it".

I have no problem with you rejecting scentific theories, or even totally disagreeing with them. But it most certainly does not prove that some magic man did it instead. From the little I read just over the last half hour it doesnt seem that abiogenesis is quite as badly proven as you make it out to be but as I mentioned my knowledge on this specific subject is currently limited. :-)

Instead what I would suggest you could do is pick up a degree at university and then start working on proving it yourself. Or if you prefer start producing some valid proof that the standpoint of "God-did-it" is valid. I would LOVE to see some real scientific evidence for that one. And I promise you if you can get some of that proven, and peer reviewed by the sceintific community then I will read it and re-evaluate my own beliefs based on the findings.

I am not interested in proving something that is unproveable :P As I've stated scientific laws and observation have their own limitations by their very nature that make the answers to certain things unknowable, at least for you and me. What came "before"(a term I'm using simply for linguistic convenience) the Big Bang or what caused the Big Bang cannot have a default theory or a "best theory" because once the laws of nature have broken down we have absolutely nothing to go on as far as what is likely.

"I have no problem with you rejecting scentific theories, or even totally disagreeing with them. But it most certainly does not prove that some magic man did it instead."

THIS! This is the exact point I have been making about abiogenesis and other unproven theories that are taught as fact(like punctuated equillibrium). Just because a magic bearded man in the sky didn't literally zap things into existence it doesn't mean that everything is caused by Earth hitting the statistical lottery over and over again.

No of course scientific theories can be improved on or even disproved and bettered in many countless ways. But a proven scentific theory I would say is valid to teach to children in school, you of course have to explain science and how scentific theories work and how they constantly improve and are changing depending on the latest discoveries. But as long as that is all done (which I definitely hope is done) then I see nothing wrong with teaching abiogenesis or any other scentific theories out there. We should always teach the latest out there as far as possible and try to get our children to be curious about what elst they may yet have to discover. Who knows it could be your children that end up curing cancer or discovering what must have happened prior to the "big bang".

That sure as hell beats the snot out of reading one book and thikning that that is the absolute truth and nothine else will ever happen and everything that is is just because "god-did-it".

"But a proven scentific theory I would say is valid to teach to children in school, you of course have to explain science and how scentific theories work and how they constantly improve and are changing depending on the latest discoveries. But as long as that is all done (which I definitely hope is done) then I see nothing wrong with teaching abiogenesis or any other scentific theories out there"

Not sure how y ou can say proven scientific theory and abiogenesis together like that :P Abiogenesis does not rise to the level of a theory. It's just taught/spoken about that way.

archaic nailed it above ("first page" analogy) and TheORKINMan has been avoiding that ever since...

Since when did "atheism" or "scientific theory" == "abiogenesis"??? There are tons of unproven scientific theories out there. To claim that they are unchallengeable shows a very poor understanding of how science works.

Just recently we had the stories of particles moving faster than the speed of light and thus violating Einstein's THEORIES... Further experiments have been run and the anomaly results have since been explained. But people didn't "ignore" the results just because they differed -- on the contrary, they got lots of attention and additional experimentation and attempts at verification.

Your whole pushing of this "abiogenesis" thing sounds like a straw man. You have purposefully identified one single theory proposed that is (by your own accounts) unprovable (at least without an identical planet, at that stage, and a few billion years to wait for the results) and you are using that one thing to argue science vs. religion??? What???

I don't need to... It's called faith for a reason.

"faith for a reason" oh man that's an awesome phrase LOL but it totally lacks intellectual honesty. Gimme a reason for a faith!

Gods - all gods - are gods of gaps. Gaps in human knowledge of the natural world.
At one time gods were needed to explain thunder, earthquakes, the sunrise, birth, death and the sniffles.

Not any more.

Your gods are getting much smaller as the gaps are filled by scientific inquiry. Likely there will always be some gaps in human knowledge. How small and irrelevant must your gods become before they share status with Poseidon and Ra?

Well at least Poseidon and Ra are a bit cool compared to the almighty sky-daddy that seems preferential at the moment. :-)

Other than that I like Atryn's point above. That is kind of what I was trying to get to as well.

and if you replace religion, or faith, with civil rights for blacks.. or women.. vilse, i don't think it would quite fly like your intolerance to ideas, not stupid ideas mind you, but ideas that don't quite jive with your own.


"and you are using that one thing to argue science vs. religion??? What??? "

kind of like how we're expected to be able to prove the existence of god, and when we can't we have "stupid ideas"?

The trick atheists use for attacking Christians (see: Vilse) is that they take the extreme positions of fundamentalists Christians that very few Christians actually hold and beat up on those positions as if they are beating up Christianity as a whole. I can beat up a blind retarded child too but why would I?

Well that must be the stupidest thing youve said yet braden, civil rights, freedom of speech and equal rights for women and anyone else is absolutely what a secularist is all about and I support all those things. They actually make sense compared to religion which does not make sense in any form whatsoever.

Religious people however tend to be against many of the things you just listed and it is one of the main reasons I am so against religion in the first place. In America at the moment for instance they seem very keen on totally trampling womens rights back to the stone ages again which is entirely the religious rights doing.

And yes, if you have a stupid and ridiculous standpoint that you believe in a magic man in the sky then I will ridicule it. Because simply put your position is totally ridiculous and just because its to do with "religion" im supposed to keep my mouth shut and just accept the crap youre trying to feed me. Not happening mate. :-)

If youre curious here is the organization that I belong to feel free to have a read, it is very straightforward and the main focus is to let people believe in whatever religion they want but to keep their beliefs out of public life in any shape whatsoever.

http://www.secularism.org.uk/

This one might explain it a bit clearer to you if you dont find it:
http://www.secularism.org.uk/what-is-secularism.html

This is beyond stupid. Religion is a set of ideas that can be replaced with a more "logical" system of thinking. Black is a skin color you're born with. A better comparison would be that trying to replace religion with science is like trying to get rid of discrimination against black people. In the sense that both are actually ideas that don't have a sound basis...

If there is a clear line separating religious fundamentalists from religious moderates please enlighten me.

Even if that line were clear, there still exists the dilemma of the religious texts. While it is true that many/most religious moderates may not affect my freedoms and my life directly, they provide a 'cover' for the fundamentalists (aka fanatics) that believe their purpose on earth is to influence the society I live in to fit their particular ideology.

Religious moderates cherrypick the 'good bits' from their ancient texts, ignoring those bits they find immoral archaic and absurd.
But it is precisely those bits that a fanatic will use to justify everything from killing infidels to firebombing planned parenthood clinics, from denying condoms to HIV stricken areas of Africa to the subjugation of women. Etc etc etc.

I'm well aware of much of what is in those ancient texts, and it's quite apparent that these fanatics are in fact 'closer to their god' than the religious moderates. They study those texts and act unreasonably and at times in violence not because they misinterpret those texts, but because they interpret their meaning precisely.

The problem I have with religious moderates is that rarely do they challenge the lunacy within those texts.

I'd wager that even a child would challenge 'The Book Of Santa Claus' if it stated that the followers of the Easter Bunny must convert to Santa-ism or be thrown into a pit to burn for eternity.

"immoral archaic and absurd"

Aaaw ya! the trifecta of awesomeness!

You guys are very close minded. What I find annoying is that supposedly I am being close minded by my belief in ancient and "dillusional" ideas. Anyways... The topic is about atheist preachers, I dont think a preacher should be allowed to preach if they don't follow that faith. That could be construde as fraud... couldn't it???

haha yeah archaic i actually thought of you when writing that. Thought of changing it because i didn't want to associate you with absurd.. but knew you would understand ;)

Rogue8, you were the first to mention 'dillusional' on this thread, and it was in respect to atheists. Note that even after I responded with the correct spelling of that word, without calling you out on it, you didn't "see the light". Is that to be construed that you are not, in fact, open minded?
ok that was an intentional jab, and tbh i'm almost sorry for it.

More to the point, if you are indeed open minded and care so much about atheist preachers, i suggest you may want to hear the the situation from the atheist preacher's point of view? I did post the link in two separate posts upthread.
Or, in your open mindedness, do you not need that information before calling fraud?

Atryn summarized some of what I was planning to post pretty well.

2 things in addition:



I've read my share of biology in highschool, and we dedicated some weeks to evolution. I don't think we had any classes on abiogenesis though, probably had a very short discussion about how it could have started. So clearly not all secular schools teach this for a fact.



The nice thing is that no magic is needed. We know for a fact that there exists atleast one (actually many) combination of these building blocks that form self replicating life forms, and that the building blocks are present. The rest is just about probability.

You may of course state that this probability is diminishingly small, and given a time frame of our modern history and the limiting it to the Earth, it may well be (which is why we won't observe it happen outside of labs). You should also realize that you don't really have the capacity and knowledge to make a high quality assumption about the whole of the universe, for it's whole existance.

"Because simply put your position is totally ridiculous and just because its to do with "religion" im supposed to keep my mouth shut and just accept the crap youre trying to feed me."

yes; self respect, respect for others, and tolerance. i shouldn't need to force this crap on you :(

"Religious people however tend to be against many of the things you just listed and it is one of the main reasons I am so against religion in the first place"

I have an entire church that entirely disproves this. where is your evidence, outside of spanish catholics five hundred years ago?

"In America at the moment for instance they seem very keen on totally trampling womens rights back to the stone ages again which is entirely the religious rights doing."

when given the choice between removing the absolute choice from somebody, and keeping somebody alive, i will keep the person alive. life is more valuable than the right to end it, even if you're a woman.

"it is very straightforward and the main focus is to let people believe in whatever religion they want but to keep their beliefs out of public life in any shape whatsoever."

then you must feel equally strong to keep what you believe entirely out of public life in any shape whatsoever?

go meet christians, and meet them with an open mind and an open heart; break bread with them, ask them what brought them to gods word, and respect what they say. i think they will surprise you :(

LoL @ braden... I don't agree with what everyone said in this thread, but you just stated "where is your evidence" and then provided it in your next point... At least with regard to women...

I understand your religious belief that life starts at conception, but you are forcing your "belief" on others... It just sounds like you said, "yes, but that's ok in this case because I believe it very strongly"...

ummmmm ok....

I am not sure you and ViLSE were using the same definition of public life... I cannot speak for ViLSE, but my problems are when religious practices, beliefs and testaments are forced on others by gov't (federal, state, local, etc.) or given tacit endorsement over other beliefs by same.

Indeed thanks Atryn, I am in full agreement with you on that one.

If your religious belief brings you to think that life starts at contraception (what about the sperm? Is it mass-murder everytime you wank off or does it only apply to women?) then that is your belief and if you have a wife that thinks the same as you then please feel free to keep every child you ever conceive. However you can NOT force this belief onto anyone else.

That goes for any religiously based belief, they simply do not belong in the public life and should under no circumstances be forced upon others.

Women fought long and hard for their rights in the Suffrage and Im pretty damn sure they dont want to loose their rights any more than we want to start forcing black people to sit at the back of the bus or have job applications with "Irish need not apply" and similar things like that.

As I mentioned before, a SECULAR society will ensure that everyone are treated equally, religious and non-religious both. Its the only way we can all live together fairly. That way you can keep your beliefs as much as you want and I can still live my life just fine without any supersticious nonsense interferring with it.