If I try to use anything other than capitalism, men in blue costumes will either put me in a cage or murder me. Were this not the case, I would at this moment be openly stealing all the produce from the local Whole Foods and delivering it to food banks and shelters around the city.

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We are the only gods watching over us. Let's hope we're wise and compassionate Watchers. Otherwise...

Incorrect. The "scientific world" (lol) has not come to any such conclusion! Science only asserts that there is no evidence to support any deity claims. Personally, I gave up faith in god at a young age, long before I was very much interested in science or any particular scientific endeavour.

Back then, it was just a gut feeling, and I went with it. Later in life my thirst for knowledge drove me to understanding the evidence, which is all around us*, and inside us**, and the source of that vague feeling I had as a boy.

*comets and asteroids slamming indifferently into Earth

**hundreds of millions of micobes that would kill you within 48 hours if your immune system ever failed

Here's the thing: Everyone using a smartphone is testing the claims of science all the time. Everyone using a computer is testing those claims.

Everyone who sits down inside a 1.5+ ton explosion-powered metal box vehicle is staking their life on the claims of physics that when they push the brake pedal, the brakes will be applied, and the vehicle will come to a stop. The fact that this computer is operating and the internet is working right now are evidence that the claims of science are true.

Allow me to clear up any confusion you may have.

Adolf Hitler: Violent capitalist fascist
World Citizen Beliathon: Reasonable anti-capitalist social-anarchist

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I am the future. Authoritarianism is the past.

Yours in compassion and solidarity,

World Citizen Beliathon

Claim:


Evidence to support claim?

"Have faith in science" is an oxymoron. Faith (superstition) and science (reason) exist as a zero-sum game with one another. They cannot occupy the same space. When one wanes, the other waxes.

I'm gonna have to go ahead and file this one under 3. Attempting to create your own cult. At least you're creative. Fabricating your own dogma is one intellectual step above following the dogma of some guy who died 2,000 years ago. Tragically, you're still trapped in superstition.

Your creativity has spared you my ignore list, young padawan.

In many ways, science seems like a 21st Century religion. It's a belief system that many wholeheartedly defend and evolve their lives around, sometimes as much as the devoutest of religious folk.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Science is not a "belief system" but a process and methodology for seeking an objective reality. Of course because scientific exploration is a human endeavor it comes with all the flaws of humanity: ego, short-sightedness, corruption and greed. But unlike a "belief system" such as religion untethered to an objective truth, science is over time self-policing; competing scientists have a strong incentive to corroborate and build on the findings of others; but equally, to prove other scientists wrong by means that can be duplicated by others. Nobody is doing experiments to demonstrate how Noah could live to 600 years old, because those who believe that story are not confined to reproducible evidence to support their belief. But experiments were done to show the earth orbits the sun, not the other way around.

Here is the fundamental and irreconcilable conflict between the two: science searches for mechanisms and the answer to "how" the universe functions, with no appeal to higher purpose, without assuming the existence of such purpose. Religion seeks meaning and the answer to "why" the world is as we know it, based on the unquestioned assumption that such meaning and purpose exist. The two worldviews could not more incompatible.

Unlike scientific claims, beliefs cannot be arbitrated to determine which is valid because there is no objective basis on which to compare one set of beliefs to another. Those two world views are not closer than we think; they are as far apart as could possibly be imagined.

Religion and science are incompatible at every level. The two seek different answers to separate questions using fundamentally and inherently incompatible methods. Nothing can truly bring the two together without sacrificing intellectual honesty.

We are told that since science and faith are both fallible, both are equally valid approaches to understanding the world and ourselves. Here is what Jeffrey Small says about this:
"Bias, preconceived ideas, academic politics, ego and resistance to change are ever-present in scientific and academic communities and often result in institutional opposition to new theories, especially ground-breaking ones. Many scientists initially resisted Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo because they presented a new paradigm of the universe."

Well, exactly! What this proves is that over time, science is indeed self-correcting while faith is not. While we all know now, due to science, that the earth orbits the sun, the Church is still fighting the battle with Galileo. Even today in the 21st century, the Church claims that Galileo shares blame because he made unproven assertions. Unproven assertions! The best the Pope could muster was that he regretted the "tragic mutual incomprehension" that had caused Galileo to suffer. As the new millennium settles in, the Church still claims that Galileo was wrong. The dissonance between Scripture and fact is not a problem relegated to earlier centuries, but remains relevant today.

Science is indeed fallible, and scientists suffer from all the usual human foibles. But reproducibility, scrutiny from other scientists, the drive for new knowledge, the glory of overturning orthodoxy, all drive science to a better understanding of an objective truth or our best approximation of it; this method of understanding the world is inherently incompatible with faith. Faith cannot be contested: I believe, therefore it is true. All scientific claims are by nature contestable. Those differences cannot be reconciled. Ever.

In reality we need to turn this argument about fallibility on its head. Science never claims to be infallible. There would be no need for more research if scientists believed they had all the answers, and all of them right. But god by definition is infallible. And yet. The Bible's clear statement about age of the earth, off by more than 4 billion years, is one example of an important factual error. Sure, maybe this is a mistake of human interpretation of divine will. But with each new discovery proving a Biblical assertion wrong, the Church retreats to the safety of errors in interpretation or dismissing the discrepancy as unimportant. Yet the ever-accumulating factual mistakes must call into question the certainty with which the Church claims that god, or the Bible, is infallible, since their previous insistence has proven unsubstantiated with glaring factual mistakes. These doubts about infallibility apply, too, to the Church's teachings on morality.

If the bible is the literal word of god, then god has clearly blown it. If the bible is a flawed interpretation of god's will, then the conclusions about morality can be equally flawed. The issue of fallibility is a problem for the faithful, not for science and reason. Never confuse the two.

So are you:

1. A student of science / atheist / agnostic? We can rule out that possibility because you believe in intelligent design despite all the evidence against it
2. A follower of some other religion than Christianity?
3. Attempting to create your own cult here?

Jesus Christ, how does a person even get to be this retarded? I can't even...

Marxism is a political worldview and has nothing to do with religion one way or the other.

For your sake and that of your children, I hope they're gender-normative and hetero-normative. Careful though, I find the universe often has a cruel sense of humor.

This guy gets it.

If the following link works, the answer is yes: http://www.thepiratebay.org/

I will admit, I think compassion, patience, and understanding is always the noblest course of action on both sides. It's easy to become jaded and frustrated at each other, but Carl Sagan said it best:



On the other hand, when I'm under attack by theists for valiantly attempting to liberate their minds from the shackles of superstition, I often find myself feeling this:



I'm sorry, are you disputing the God claims of the Holy Bible? Because the Bible claims that God loves everyone deeply, and wants to save our immortal souls. That's basic shit.

A fair statement would be: There is equal evidence to support the existence of the God of the Holy Bible, as there is to support the existence of Allah, Yahweh, Zues, Gaia, Thor, Obi-Wan Kenobi's blue ghost, Jenova, Jibbers Crabst, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Given that knowledge, I suppose my question for Christians becomes: Why did you choose Christianity over all the other (more interesting) options out there? For me, nothing beats the evidence supporting Norse Mythology.

21 million BTC / 7.5 billion humans = 0.0028 BTC per person. If you control more than .0028 BTC, you will eventually be above average wealthy.

The topic we're discussing has absolutely nothing to do with forgiveness or which species we are. Think about it.

I understand where you're coming from here, but please realize I don't want to "get rid of you". I loathe violence, you see.

I also recognize that modern america is 70% christian and there's nothing I can do about that except wait. I'm relatively young and patient, so be it, I'll wait.

I ask only that you forgive me if I gloat a bit while america slowly becomes a scientific nation. Christianity took my foreskin without my consent, so you kind of owe me.

Being reasonable means one forms judgments and arrives at conclusions by a sound process of logic.

A worldview cannot truly be considered reasoned if it includes any superstitious thought, because superstition is fallacious logic.

If one indulges in fallacious or fantastic logic, one cannot claim to be an earnest student of science.

Oh, you're one of the good Christians who supports equal rights and protections under the law for homosexuals, transgender folk, and the polyamorous, than? Not one of the bigoted hateful hypocrites?

I call it "Christianity Lite", and those weak-spined quasi-pious semi-theists are much more endearing than are the bigots. They're still intellectual cowards, of course.

Is this supposed to be surprising? Because it's not.

One either has a reasoned (scientific) worldview, or a religious (superstitious) worldview.

You keep being an atheist, I prefer to stick to just being a scientist, spreading the message of reason.

While it's true that reason doesn't tolerate superstition, that doesn't make it hateful, it only makes it reasonable. Reason and superstition are like oil and water, they can never mix, can never occupy the same space.

Ignorance creates fear, fear creates hatred, hatred creates violence. Superstition fuels ignorance and impedes knowledge, reason fuels knowledge and impedes ignorance.

Imagine the world as a cup which started "empty", with only air. Slowly, the cup is being filled with the "water" of reason. The more reason we add, the less room there is for violence. Once the cup is full...