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juldeaWell, Attorney General John Ashcroft made a speech yesterday to some religious broadcasters group that has a lot of people in an uproar (at least according to CNN today at lunchtime). Certainly I understand why. Apparently I'm not a civilized person. :(
For further giggles, check out the Concerned Women for America. I found them because one of their spokesMEN (it was a woman, but I'm being difficult on purpose) was talking on CNN about Ashcroft's speech.
I wonder if I'll be shot for being an atheist somday.
For further giggles, check out the Concerned Women for America. I found them because one of their spokesMEN (it was a woman, but I'm being difficult on purpose) was talking on CNN about Ashcroft's speech.
I wonder if I'll be shot for being an atheist somday.
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bah
on 20 Feb 2002 14:16 (UTC)Re: bah
on 20 Feb 2002 16:16 (UTC)Re: bah
on 20 Feb 2002 16:31 (UTC)i guess that makes me a wimp.
Re: bah
on 20 Feb 2002 16:55 (UTC)Re: bah
on 20 Feb 2002 16:47 (UTC)Re: bah
on 20 Feb 2002 16:53 (UTC)Re: bah
on 20 Feb 2002 17:00 (UTC)Re: bah
on 20 Feb 2002 20:10 (UTC)Re: bah
on 20 Feb 2002 17:47 (UTC)"...what naturally seems the more logical path" is just your opinion of what is true.
Logic involves taking facts and coming up with conclusions. Taking a lack of evidence and coming to a conclusion doesn't involve logic at all.
Fact 1: I can't prove God Exists
Fact 2: I can't prove God Doesn't Exist
If you admit that you accept those two premises you can't take them together and come out with 'God Doesn't Exist' from any logical system I know.
The same applies to dragons, unicorns, invisible polkadotted gremlins, whatever. The best you can say is 'I believe God doesn't exist', but please don't say it's logical.
Re: bah
on 20 Feb 2002 20:14 (UTC)However, INductive reasoning is also a method of coming to a conclusion. True, in reality there's always a possibility of the conclusion reached by inductive reasoning being wrong. And the actual validity of inductive reasoning as a whole could be challenged. However, the fact remains that inductive reasoning works pretty damn well. I have seen just as much proof for a god existing as I have seen for the ancient Greek gods existing, or a unicorn, or the lost city of atlantis, or invisible polka-dotted gremlins - and I don't believe in those, either. Because there's not even enough proof there to even INductively reason that they exist.
Re: bah
on 20 Feb 2002 20:41 (UTC)"if I see no proof that god doesn't exist, then god exists. I see no proof that god does not exist. therefore, god exists."
the merit of an inductive proof rests entirely upon the merit of the premise. and, as far as I can judge, these premises are equally invalid.
Re: bah
on 21 Feb 2002 06:18 (UTC)Re: bah
on 20 Feb 2002 19:44 (UTC)no subject
on 20 Feb 2002 17:08 (UTC)Re:
on 20 Feb 2002 20:01 (UTC)no subject
on 20 Feb 2002 21:19 (UTC)http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/local/2695235.htm (http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/local/2695235.htm) patenting the organisms that are supplying our food, and last I checked were trying to privatize the water supply, Bill Joy (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html) and other smart people suspect that we'll all be wiped out by nanotech or superior machine intelligences of our own creation before the century's out, and Pat Buchanan's making sense (http://www.townhall.com/columnists/patbuchanan/pb20020218.shtml) this week.
Ain't life grand.
no subject
on 21 Feb 2002 10:18 (UTC)I do agree with all the people who claim that the existene or nonexistence of God is unprovable. However, I don't think that an atheist is defined as someone who is 100% sure that god doesn't exist, and can prove it... Certainly deists are not people who are 100% sure that god exists and can prove it. (Well, either or both can be 100% sure, but that doesn't mean they can prove it.) Deists are people who believe in god, atheists are those who don't. There are very few things that can actually be proven or disproven without a shadow of a doubt, outside of the realm of pure mathematics; even there, things are problematic. But I think it's generally healthy to go ahead and believe or not believe in things anyway. In particularly, having seen what deists and atheists have each wrought upon the world, I think it's healthier not to believe in god. That meshes quite nicely with the fact that I have seen no evidence for god that isn't (at least) equally well-explained by other things, which each have other evidence for them. So those things are what I believe in. I do admit the possibility that I'm wrong... But that doesn't make me an agnostic, I don't think, unless you want to argue that everyone is an agnostic in every way, at which point I think the term has been overgeneralized into uselessness.
But for other people, who honestly do wonder whether there is a God, I think it's fine to be an agnostic. There are lots of cases where I hear about something, but can't decide whether I believe it's true or not. This just doesn't happen to be one of them.
Re:
on 21 Feb 2002 10:53 (UTC)Re:
on 21 Feb 2002 22:57 (UTC)no subject
on 21 Feb 2002 19:45 (UTC)no subject
on 21 Feb 2002 12:31 (UTC)no subject
on 21 Feb 2002 14:48 (UTC)