Famous Atheists

Please let me know if there is somebody you would like to see added to this list.

Famous Atheists by surname A

Douglas Adams (1954-2001)
Website | Wikipedia Entry

Douglas Adams was a British writer who wrote the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and several episodes of Doctor Who. He described himself as a ‘radical atheist’ in order to distinguish himself from agnostics. In 1999, Adams explained that:

‘I really do not believe that there is a god – in fact I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one. It’s easier to say that I am a radical Atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously.’

In his final book, The Salmon of Doubt, published in 2002, Adams addresses people who believe that God must exist because the world so fits our needs. He compares them to an intelligent puddle of water that fills a hole in the ground. The puddle is certain that the hole must have been designed specifically for it because it fits so well. The puddle exists under the sun until it has entirely evaporated.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali (born 1969)
AHA Foundation | Wikipedia Entry

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Somali-Dutch feminist, writer and politician. A prominent critic of Islam, she wrote the screenplay for Theo Van Gogh’s movie Submission, which led to Van Gogh being murdered and death threats against Ali. She has written The Son factory, The Caged Virgin and Infidel. In The Caged Virgin, she wrote of her atheism:

‘ September 11 was a turning point, but it was not until six months later, After I had read The Atheist Manifesto by Hermann Philipse, that I dared to admit to others that I no longer believed. I had been given book in 1998 by my boyfriend Michael but didn’t want to read it at the time. I thought: an atheist manifesto is a declaration of the devil. I could feel any resistance. But recently I felt ready. The time had come. I saw that God was an invention and that subjection to His will meant nothing more than subjecting yourself to the willpower of the strongest.’

Natalie Angier (born 1958)
Website | Wikipedia Entry

Natalie Angier is a Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer with the New York Times, who has written four books including The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science. In 2001, Angier wrote:

‘So, I’ll out myself. I’m an Atheist. I don’t believe in God, Gods, Godlets or any sort of higher power beyond the universe itself, which seems quite high and powerful enough to me. I don’t believe in life after death, channeled chat rooms with the dead, reincarnation, telekinesis or any miracles but the miracle of life and consciousness, which again strike me as miracles in nearly obscene abundance. I believe that the universe abides by the laws of physics, some of which are known, others of which will surely be discovered, but even if they aren’t, that will simply be a result, as my colleague George Johnson put it, of our brains having evolved for life on this one little planet and thus being inevitably limited. I’m convinced that the world as we see it was shaped by the again genuinely miraculous, let’s even say transcendent, hand of evolution through natural selection.’

Carmen Argibay (born 1939)
Wikipedia Entry

Carmen Argibay is a member of the Argentine Supreme Court of Justice. She was awarded the 2007 Gruber International Justice Prize for promoting gender equality and eliminating corruption. When Catholic activists opposed her nomination to the Supreme Court, Argibay responded:

‘I believe that saying up front who one is or what one thinks is an indication of honesty, which is the first step towards impartiality. My beliefs, or lack thereof, should not interfere in the judicial decisions I take.’

Isaac Asimov (1920-1992)
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Isaac Asimov was a Russian-born American writer and professor of biochemistry, whose prolific output of over 130 books covered science fiction, mysteries, popular science, history and memoirs. In 1982, Asimov said:

‘I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I’ve been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn’t have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I’m a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally I am an atheist. I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time.’

In 1994, Asimov speculated that:

‘If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.’

Famous Atheists by surname B

Bjork (born 1965)
Website | Wikipedia Entry

Bjork is an Icelandic singer and actress whose first solo album, Debut, was named Album of the Year by NME. In 1994, she said:

‘I’ve got my own religion. Iceland sets a world-record. The UN asked people from all over the world a series of questions. Iceland stuck out on one thing. When we were asked what we believe, 90% said, ‘ourselves.’ I think I’m in that group. If I get into trouble, there’s no God or Allah to sort me out. I have to do it myself.’

In 1995, Bjork said:

‘I do not believe in religion, but if I had to choose one it would be Buddhism. It seems more livable, closer to men… I’ve been reading about reincarnation, and the Buddhists say we come back as animals and they refer to them as lesser beings. Well, animals aren’t lesser beings, they’re just like us. So I say fuck the Buddhists.’

Dave Barry (born 1947)
Website | Wikipedia Entry

Dave Barry is an American humorist who has written almost forty books and two films. He is also an internationally syndicated columnist. In 2001 he said:

‘I decided I was an atheist early on. My Dad was all right with that. We argued about it all the time, but it was good-natured. He was the most open-minded human being I’ve ever known.’

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)
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Simone de Beauvoir was a French existentialist philosopher and author of more than twenty books, including the major feminist work The Second Sex. In 1958, describing how she became an atheist while reading Balzac when aged fourteen, she wrote:

‘I no longer believe in God, I told myself, with no great surprise… That was proof: if I had believed in Him, I should not have allowed myself to offend Him so light-heartedly. I had always thought that the world was a small price to pay for eternity; but it was worth more than that, because I loved the world, and it was suddenly God whose price was small: from now on His name would have to be a cover for nothing more than a mirage… I was not denying Him in order to rid myself of a troublesome person: on the contrary, I realized that He was playing no further part in my life and so I concluded that he had ceased to exist for me.’

Richard Branson (born 1950)
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Richard Branson is a British entrepreneur whose Virgin group includes more than 350 companies. He is also involved in humanitarian projects and holds world records in long-distance ballooning. Writing in his autobiography about one of these balloon trips, he said:

‘I do not believe in God, but as I sat there in the damaged capsule, hopelessly vulnerable to the slightest shift in weather or mechanical fault, I could not believe my eyes.’

Bill Bryson (born 1951)
Website | Wikipedia Entry

Bill Bryson is an American writer of travel, language and science books, including Notes from a Small Island, The Mother Tongue and A Short History of Nearly Everything. In 2005, he said:

‘I’m not a spiritual person, and the things I’ve done haven’t made me one, but the one thing I did appreciate when I was writing A Short History was that conventional science and a belief in god are absolutely not incompatible. You can be a scientist and believe in god: the two can go hand in hand. What certainly struck me during my research was that the very fundamental creationist views – the literal biblical interpretation of how the world was created – is much, much less exciting than real science. If you believe in god, it’s much more fantastic to believe that he created this universe billions of years ago and set in motion this long train of activities that eventually resulted in us. I think that’s so much more satisfying, more thrilling, than the idea that it was all done in seven days.’

Gabriel Byrne (born in 1950)
Wikipedia Entry

Gabriel Byrne is an Irish actor who has starred in almost forty films, including The Usual Suspects, Miller’s Crossing, Stigmata and Into the West. In 2007, he said:

‘I spent five years in a seminary and I suppose it was assumed that you had a vocation. I have realised subsequently that I didn’t have one at all. I don’t believe in God. But I did believe at the time in this notion that you were being called.’

Famous Atheists by surname C

George Carlin (1937-2008)
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George Carlin was an American comedian, actor and writer. In a 1997 routine, he said:

‘Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man – living in the sky – who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ‘til the end of time! [Pause] But He loves you.’

Carlin said that he worships the sun, because he can see it, and now prays to Joe Pesci, because he seems like someone who can get things done, adding:

‘I noticed that of all the prayers I used to offer to God, and all the prayers that I now offer to Joe Pesci, are being answered at about the same fifty percent rate. Half the time I get what I want. Half the time I don’t. Same as God: fifty-fifty.’

Famous Atheists by surname D

Richard Dawkins (born 1941)
Website | Wikipedia Entry

Richard Dawkins is a British evolutionary biologist and writer who holds the Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford. He has written nine books about evolution and atheism, including The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, Unweaving the Rainbow and The God Delusion. In 1986, he wrote:

‘An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: ‘I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn’t a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.’ I can’t help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.’

In 1996, Dawkins said of belief in God: ‘By all means let’s be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.’ In 1999, he said: ‘I don’t think God is an explanation at all. It’s simply re-describing the problem.’

Daniel Dennett (born 1942)
Website | Wikipedia Entry

Daniel Dennett is an American philosopher who is the Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University in Boston. He has written fifteen books, including Consciousness Explained, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea and Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. In 1995, he wrote:

‘The kindly God who lovingly fashioned each and every one of us and sprinkled the sky with shining stars for our delight – that God is, like Santa Claus, a myth of childhood, not anything [that] a sane, undeluded adult could literally believe in. That God must either be turned into a symbol for something less concrete or abandoned altogether.’

And Dennett wrote about faith:

‘I certainly grant the existence of the phenomenom of faith; what I want to see is a reasoned ground for taking faith as a way of getting to the truth, and not, say, just as a way people comfort themselves and each other (a worthy function that I do take seriously).’

Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992)
Website | Wikipedia Entry

Marlene Dietrich was a German-born American actress, singer and entertainer who starred in nearly sixty films. In her autobiography, she wrote of her tours to battlefronts as an entertainer for American troops:

‘Back in my early childhood I learnt that God doesn’t fight on any army’s side. So there was little point in praying. Nonetheless, before every battle, prayers were read, all kinds of incantations were incited, staged by all sorts of preachers. We attended these ceremonies and I saw how all the soldiers stood in place, as though they couldn’t believe their ears. I couldn’t believe it either, but I counted for nothing… Since then, I have given up belief in God, in a ‘light’ that leads us, or anything of that sort. Goethe said, if God created this world, he should review his plan.’

Amanda Donohoe (born 1962)
Wikipedia Entry

Amanda Donohue is an American actress best known for playing CJ Lamb in the TV show LA Law. Her film roles include Ken Russel’s Lair of the White Worm, in which she played a pagan priestess who had to spit at a crucifix. In 199, she said of that scene:

‘I’m an atheist, so it was actually a joy. Spitting on Christ was a great deal of fun. I can’t embrace a male god who has persecuted female sexuality throughout the ages, and that persecution still goes on today all over the world.’

Roddy Doyle (born 1958)
Wikipedia Entry

Roddy Doyle is an Irish writer whose novels include A Star Called Henry, The Woman Who Walked into Doors and the Booker Prize-winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. His Barrytown Trilogy of novels, The Commitments, The Snapper and The Van, have been made into films. In a review of Ireland’s 1990 World Cup performance, he wrote:

‘Italy next, the quarter-final in Rome. The Republic squad met the Pope. I am an atheist and I think that the current pope is a bit of a bollix – I don’t like the man at all – but I couldn’t fight down the lump in my throat as the lads in their tracksuits lined up to meet him.’

In 2002, he said: ‘I feel very comfortable being an atheist. It used to be a problem. You had to justify yourself. It’s a long time since it felt abnormal not to be Catholic.’ In 2004, he welcomed the widening ‘rift between Church and state’ in Ireland, saying: ‘It has happened, it is happening, and for me that’s a great thing. As an atheist, I feel very comfortable in Ireland now.’

Famous Atheists by surname F

Jodie Foster (born 1962)
Wikipedia Entry

Jodie Foster is an American actress, director and producer who won Oscars for her roles in The Accused and Silence of the Lambs. In 1997, when she played radio astronomer Eleanor Arroway in the film Contact, Foster said:

‘I absolutely believe what Ellie believes; that there is no direct evidence, so how could you ask me to believe in God when there’s absolutely no evidence that I can see? I do believe in the beauty and the awe-inspiring mystery of the science that’s out there that we haven’t discovered yet, that there are scientific explanations for phenomena that we call mystical because we don’t know any better.’

In 2007, when asked if she was religious, Foster answered:

‘No, I’m an atheist. But I absolutely love religions and the rituals, even though I don’t believe in God. We celebrate pretty much every religion in our family with the kids. They love it, and when they say, ‘Are we Jewish?’ or ‘Are we Catholic?’ I say, ‘Well, I’m not, but you can choose when you’re 18. But isn’t this fun that we do Seders and the Advent calendar?’

Famous Atheists by surname G

Bob Geldof (born 1951)
Website | Wikipedia Entry

Bob Geldof is an Irish singer, songwriter, actor, entrepreneur and activist. He founded the Boomtown Rats, starred in the Pink Floyd film The Wall, founded a television broadcasting company that made him a multimillionaire, and has raised money, consciousness and political action for humanitarian work in Africa through Band Aid, Live Aid and associated projects.

In 2006, when asked if he was a saint or a sinner, Geldof replied:

‘Being an atheist, I can’t be either.’

Ricky Gervais (born 1961)
Website | Wikipedia Entry

Ricky Gervais is a British comedy writer, director and actor. He played all of these three roles in the award-winning TV shows The Office and Extras. In 2005, he said:

‘Being an atheist makes someone a clearer-thinking, fairer person… Atheists are not doing things to be rewarded in heaven; they’re doing things because they’re right, because they live by a moral code.’

He added that, although he doesn’t believe in God, he thinks that God would like him.

Rachel Griffiths (born 1968)
Wikipedia Entry

Rachel Griffiths is an Australian actress who starred in the films Muriel’s Wedding and the American TV shows Six Feet Under and Brothers and Sisters. In 2000, when asked about her religion, she said:

‘I was raised Christian. I’m an atheist, with a slight Buddhist leaning. I’ve got a very strong sense of morality. It’s just a different morality than the loud voices of the Christian morality…I can’t tell you how many films I’ve turned down because there was an absence of morality. And I don’t mean that from any sort of Judeo-Christian-Muslim point of view. I’m not saying they’re wrong and can’t be made. But, fundamentally, I’m such a humanist that I can’t bear to make films that make us feel humanity is more dark than it is light.’

Famous Atheists by surname H

Sam Harris (born 1967)
Website | Wikipedia Entry

Sam Harris is an American writer who has written The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason and Letter to a Christian Nation. In 2005, he wrote:

‘Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious… It is worth noting that no one ever needs to identify himself as a non-astrologer or a non-alchemist. Consequently, we do not have words for people who deny the validity of these pseudo-disciplines. Likewise, atheism is a term that should not even exist. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma.’

In 2006, Harris wrote:

‘The President of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.’

Nina Hartley (born 1959)
Website | Wikipedia Entry

Nina Hartley is an American porn actress and director, who has also appeared in the Hollywood film Boogie Nights and defended the porn industry on the Oprah Winfrey show. When asked on her website if she believed in God, Hartley said:

‘No, I don’t believe in God. I was raised with no religion, but a lot of morals. I definitely think that sex is natural and healthy, and that people have the absolute right to pursue their sexual preferences with other consenting adults without government or church intervention. I can do what I do to share my enjoyment of sex with all my viewers out there. If I can help any person or persons have a great sex session, then I’ve done a good job! I believe that society changes and that we can take what is good from the world’s religions and leave behind what isn’t so good, and forge a new say. I’m one of the forgers, I like to think!’

Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003)
Wikipedia Entry

Katharine Hepburn was an American actress who won Oscars for her roles in Morning Glory, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, the Lion in Winter and On Golden Pond. In 1985, Anne Edwards, in her biography of Hepburn, wrote: ‘God was a concept too vast for her mind to consider, but she believed in the lessons of Jesus Christ despite her feeling, shared with Marx, that religion was a sop for the masses’. However in 1991, Hepburn herself said:

‘I’m an atheist, and that’s it. I believe there’s nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for people.’


Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)
Website |
Wikipedia Entry

Christopher Hitchens was a British American writer and public speaker. He is a columnist at Vanity Fair and has written or co-written over twenty books including God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. In The Portable Atheist, he wrote that:

‘The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.’

Famous Atheists by surname J

Neil Jordan (born 1950)
Website | Wikipedia Entry

Neil Jordan is an Irish filmmaker and novelist, who won an Oscar for The Crying Game and whose other films include The Company of Wolves, Michael Collins and Breakfast on Pluto. In 1999, talking about people who linked his work to Catholicism, Jordan said:

‘It’s not anything about Catholicism. I was brought up a Catholic and was quite religious at one stage in my life, when I was young. But it left me with no scars whatever; it just sort of vanished… We do have this need for mysticism. That is in my movies. And I always like to do stories about gods and monsters and imaginary beings of all kinds, because God is the greatest imaginary being of all time. Along with Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, the invention of God is probably the greatest creation of human thought.’

Famous Atheists by surname K

Wendy Kaminer (born 1950)
Wikipedia Entry

Wendy Kaminer is an American lawyer and feminist writer whose books include A Fearful Freedom: Women’s Flight from Equality and Free for All: Defending Liberty in America Today. In 1996 she wrote:

‘Like heterosexuality, faith in immaterial realities is popularly considered essential to individual morality,’ and: ‘When the inner child finds a guardian angel, publishers are in heaven.’

Kaminer has also said about her atheism:

‘I don’t spend much time thinking about whether God exists. I don’t consider that a relevant question. It’s unanswerable and irrelevant to my life, so I put it in the category of things I can’t worry about.’

Famous Atheists by surname L

Tom Lehrer (born 1928)
Wikipedia Entry

Tom Lehrer is an American mathematician and musical satirist, who wrote and performed in the 1950s and 1960s. His songs include the Elements song, the Vatican Rag, National Brotherhood Week, Poisoning Pigeons in the Park and We Will All Go Together When We Go. In 1996, when asked if he was a fan of organized religion or a spiritual person, Lehrer replied:

To say that I am not a fan of organized religion is putting it mildly. My feeling about even disorganized religion is summed up in James Taylor’s immortal line in “Sweet Baby James”: “Maybe you can believe it if it helps you to sleep.” I have no desire to promote secular insomnia. As for being spiritual, not in the New Age sense, certainly. I find enough mystery in mathematics to satisfy my spiritual needs. I think, for example, that pi is mysterious enough (don’t get me started!) without having to worry about God. Or if pi isn’t enough, how about fractals? or quantum mechanics?…

In the same interview, when asked if he was an atheist, he said:

No one is more dangerous than someone who thinks he has The Truth. To be an atheist is almost as arrogant as to be a fundamentalist. But then again, I can get pretty arrogant.

However, by 2000, he had told Cosmik Debris magazine:

I used to think atheists were arrogant, but now I am one and I like it.

Famous Atheists by surname M

Alexander McQueen (1969-2010)
Website | Wikipedia Entry

Alexander McQueen was a British fashion designer who had boutiques in London, Paris, New York, Milan, Tokyo, Beijing and fifteen other cities. In 1996, he was asked who he would like to dress more than anyone else in the world, and he answered:

‘Oh my God no, because I’m an atheist and an anti-royalist, so why would I put anyone on a pedestal?’

Butterfly McQueen (1911-1985)
Wikipedia Entry

Famous atheist Butterfly McQueen was an American actress and dancer whose roles in a dozen films ranged from maid Prissy in Gone With The Wind to Ma Pennywick in The Mosquito Coast. In 1989, McQueen said of her atheism:

‘As my ancestors are free from slavery, I am free from the slavery of religion… They say the streets are beautiful in Heaven. Well, I’m trying to make the streets beautiful here… When it’s clean and beautiful, I believe America is heaven. And some people are hell.’

John Malkovich (born 1953)
Wikipedia Entry

John Malkovich is an American actor, producer and director whose films include Places in the Heart, Dangerous Liaisons and In the Line of Fire. In 2000, when directing a play about Sigmund Freud, Malkovich said of Freud that:

‘I also particularly like him because he was an atheist, and I grew tired of religion some time not long after birth. I believe in people, I believe in humans, I believe in a car, but I don’t believe something I can’t have absolutely no evidence of for millenniums. And it’s funny – people think analysis or psychiatry is mad, and they go to church.’

Tim Minchin (born 1975)
Website | Wikipedia Entry

Tim Minchin is an Australian comedian, actor, composer, songwriter and pianist whose songs include the politically incisive Peace Anthem for Palestine, the inanimate love song Inflatable You, the environmental mega-anthem Take Your Canvas Bags and the self-deprecatory career-crisis confession that is Rock N Roll Nerd.

Minchin is also responsible for probably the most comprehensive atheist-related song lyric in the history of song lyrics:

‘And if anyone can show me one example in the history of the world of a single spiritual person who has been able to show either empirically or logically the existence of a higher power with any consciousness or interest in the human race or ability to punish or reward humans for their moral choices or that there is any reason other than fear to believe in any version of an afterlife, I will give you my piano, one of my legs and my wife.’

Cillian Murphy (born 1976)
Website | Wikipedia Entry

Cillian Murphy is an Irish film and stage actor who won an IFTA best actor award for his role in the Neil Jordan film Breakfast on Pluto. In 2007, when playing a scientist in the film Sunshine, Murphy was advised by the film’s scientific consultant, Dr Brian Cox, a professor of physics who worked at CERN (the Centre for European Nuclear Research) in Geneva. Afterwards Murphy said:

‘Sunshine is a film that highlights the fragility of the planet and how briefly we are on it, but how much we contribute to its future. It got me thinking about life and religion, science versus religion, and all that. I was verging on being an agnostic and this film confirmed any of the atheistic beliefs I had.’

Famous Atheists by surname N

Taslima Nasrin (born 1962)
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Taslima Nasrin is a Bengali-Bangladeshi doctor, poet, writer and feminist who lives in exile in India after death threats by Islamic fundamentalists. She has written almost thirty books in various genres, and her work highlights the treatment of women in Islamic countries. In 1998, she said:

‘I don’t agree with those who think that the conflict is simply between two religions, namely Christianity and Islam…. To me, the key conflict is between irrational blind faith and rational, logical minds.’

Nasrin has also said about religion:

‘I believe that if the silent majority were to protest against those who believe in irrational blind faith – who want to go backwards instead of forward, who are for tradition not innovation, who oppose individualism and plurality of thought – then the world would become a truly civilized world in which to live.’

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964)
Wikipedia Entry

Jawaharlal Nehru was a politician who served as the first Prime Minister of Independent India from 1947 to 1964. In his autobiography, which he wrote while in prison in 1936, Nehru said that he did not believe in a god of any kind. He said of religion:

‘The spectacle of what is called religion, or at any rate organized religion, in India and elsewhere, has filled us with horror, and I have frequently condemned it and wished to make a clean sweep of it.’

Nehru also said that:

‘I want nothing to do with any religion concerned with keeping the masses satisfied to live in hunger, filth, and ignorance. I want nothing to do with any order, religious or otherwise, which does not teach people that they are capable of becoming happier and more civilized, on this earth, capable of becoming true man, master of his fate and captain of his soul. To attain this I would put priests to work, also, and turn the temples into schools.’

Randy Newman (born 1943)
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Randy Newman is an American singer-songwriter, pianist and composer best known for satirical pop songs such as Short people and Political Science, and film scores such as Toy Story, Parenthood and Pleasantville. His 1972 hit God’s Song includes the lyrics:

‘And the Lord said: I burn down your cities – how blind you must be. I take from you your children, and you say how blessed are we. You all must be crazy to put your faith in me. That’s why I love mankind… You really need me… That’s why I love mankind.’

When Newman was a child, a local parent uninvited him from a dance, explaining: ‘I’m sorry, Randy, my daughter had no right to invite you because no Jews are allowed.’ Newman had to ask his dad what a Jew was. He then studied comparative religion and became a devout atheist ‘except when I’m sick’.

Famous Atheists by surname O

Madalyn Murray O’Hair (1923-1995)
Wikipedia Entry

Madalyn Murray O’Hair was an American activist who won a case in the US Supreme Court challenging the practice of prayers being said in schools. She went on to found American Atheists. In 1989, she was asked whether she supported religious freedom, and she answered:

‘Oh, absolutely! I feel that everyone has a right to be insane. And that they can do this any place at all. If they want religious schools, build them! My only problem with that is, do not ask for the land to be tax-free. Do not ask for a government grant to build them. Do not ask for money for teacher’s salaries, or more books, or anything else. Just go ahead and do your thing, and do it yourself. Just exactly the same as if you were a nudist. Somebody doesn’t get a tax break for being a Mason, or whatever they’re interested in.’

Famous Atheists by surname P

Penn and Teller (born 1955 and 1948)
Website | Wikipedia Entry

Penn and Teller are American entertainers who use comedy and illusion to debunk magic, pseudoscience and superstition. Their most recent such television series is Penn & Teller: Bullshit! In 2005, Penn said:

‘I believe that there is no God. Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I’m not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more… Believing there’s no God means I can’t really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That’s good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around… Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-o and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have.’

Penn added, about the challenge of proving there is no God, that:

‘You can’t prove that there isn’t an elephant inside the trunk of my car. You sure? How about now? Maybe he was just hiding before. Check again. Did I mention that my personal heartfelt definition of the word ‘elephant’ includes mystery, order, goodness, love and a spare tire?’

Famous Atheists by surname R

James Randi (born 1928)
Website | Wikipedia Entry

James Randi is a Canadian-American stage magician and writer, and debunker of pseudoscience and paranormal claims. He has written twelve books, and his James Randi Educational Foundation offers $1,000,000 to anyone who can demonstrate evidence of any paranormal, supernatural or occult power or event, under test conditions agreed to by both parties. In 2005, he said:

‘There are two sorts of atheists. One sort claims that there is no deity, the other claims that there is no evidence that proves the existence of a deity; I belong to the latter group, because if I were to claim that no god exists, I would have to produce evidence to establish that claim, and I cannot. Religious persons have by far the easier position; they say they believe in a deity because that’s their preference, and they’ve read it in a book. That’s their right.’

Salman Rushdie (born 1947)
Wikipedia Entry

Salman Rushdie is an Indian-British novelist whose fifteen books include Midnight’s Children, which won the Booker Prize, and The Satanic Verses, which resulted in the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini called for Rushdie to be killed for blasphemy against Islam. In 1985, Rushdie wrote:

‘God, Satan, Paradise, and Hell all vanished one day in my fifteenth year, when I quite abruptly lost my faith… afterwards, to prove my new-found atheism, I bought myself a rather tasteless ham sandwich, and so partook for the first time of the forbidden flesh of the swine. No thunderbolt arrived to strike me down… From that day to this I have thought of myself as a wholly secular person.’

In 1990, Rushdie said: ‘The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas – uncertainty, progress, change – into crimes.’ In 1996, he said: ‘If I were asked for a one-sentence sound-bite on religion, I would say I was against it.’

Famous Atheists by surname S

Captain Sensible (born 1954)
Website | Wikipedia Entry

Captain Sensible is a singer and musician with The Damned and Dead Men Walking, who also had a hit with Happy Talk. He has said of religion:

‘How many times have religions of the world been damaged by some discovery or other only to move the goalposts and carry on as before as though nothing had happened? They gave Gallileo a hard time for saying the world was round… somehow God seems to have forgotten to tell his ‘flock’ about our planet revolving round the sun and all that. Then there was the theory of evolution – the teaching about which in schools was fought against in a courtroom in the USA and is still disbelieved by a majority of Americans, incredibly. There’s also no mention of dinosaurs in the bible either. Perhaps it’s not inspired by an all-knowing being after all and is, after all, just a cracking good work of fiction? No – I’m afraid none of that faith thing holds any water for me.’

Julia Sweeney (born 1959)
Website | Wikipedia Entry

Julia Sweeney is an American comedian and actress who was a cast member of Saturday Night Live before creating three stage monologues, God Said Ha!, In the Family Way, and Letting Go of God. In 2005, she said of becoming an atheist:

‘It was a long process. I just became a stronger agnostic, and then I started to realize that everyone who was saying they were agnostic really hadn’t thought about it that much. Still, I went with agnosticism for a long, long time because I just hated to say I was an atheist – being an atheist seemed so rigid. But the more I became comfortable with the word, and the more I read, it started to stick.’

Famous Atheists by surname T

Linus Torvalds (born 1969)
Website | Wikipedia Entry

Linus Torvalds is a Finnish software engineer who developed the Linux operating system kernel. In 1999, when asked about his religion, he said:

‘I am an atheist. I find that people seem to think religion brings morals and appreciation of nature. I actually think it detracts from both. It gives people the excuse to say, ‘Oh, nature was just created’, and so the act of creation is seen to be something miraculous. I appreciate the fact that, ‘Wow, it’s incredible that something like this could have happened in the first place.’ I think we can have morals without getting religion into it, and a lot of bad things have come from organized religion in particular. I actually fear organized religion because it usually leads to misuses of power.’

Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Website | Wikipedia Entry

Mark Twain was an American writer whose sixty books included The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. In his last book, Letters from the Earth, Twain wrote:

‘You have noticed that the human being is a curiosity. In times past he has had (and worn out and flung away) hundreds and hundreds of religions; today he has hundreds and hundreds of religions, and launches not fewer than three new ones every year… One of his principle religions is called the Christian. A sketch of it will interest you. It sets forth in detail in a book containing two million words, called the Old and New Testaments. Also it has another name – The Word of God. For the Christian thinks every word of it was dictated by God. It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies.’

Famous Atheists by surname Z

Frank Zappa (1940-1993)
Website | Wikipedia Entry

Frank Zappa was an American musician who self-produced almost sixty albums with The Mothers of Invention or as a solo artist. In 1989, he said of religion:

‘If you want to get together in any exclusive situation and have people love you, fine – but to hang all this desperate sociology on the idea of The Cloud-Guy who has The Big Book, who knows if you’ve been bad or good – and cares about any of it – to hang it all on that, folks, is the chimpanzee part of the brain working.’

And in 1993 he said of Christianity:

‘The essence of Christianity is told to us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the Tree of Knowledge. The subtext is, all the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just kept your fucking mouth shut and hadn’t asked any questions.’

More…

Please let me know if there is somebody you would like to see added to this list.

519 thoughts on “Famous Atheists

  1. Dear Michael
    I was just wondering if you were aware of the Ancient Hebrew writing ( Dimensions 300 kilometres long X 120 kilometres wide) written on the sea bed just off the west coast of Ireland?

    Kind Regards

    Ian Robinson

  2. Hell is truely here on earth…Watching the insanity of the human mind cling to whatever makes itself feel more safe and less vulnerable is a v ery very sad view. If anyone who may be reading this is questioning there religion, just take the other foot and clearly step over the line of religion…there is an entire world your missing…filled with unregrettable memories, tears and beauty…all driven by the proof and evidence that has been sitting in front of you the whole time….Never beg…Never bow..And most importantly…never forget that you need to Die..Stop being afraid and let your mind wander into new ideas…Every human on the planet will die..so stop wasting time and exercise the right to actually be free…it feels wonderful

  3. “Hebrew Writings” doesn’t come from god, it came from Hebrews. Ancient Hebrews by far, in evidence, history, and archaeology, are not the geniuses of the Cosmos.

  4. I don’t believe in god because
    I’m Mexican and god and the
    bible are all a white mans
    fairy tale.
    God was born in long ago times
    when people were ignorant
    and uneducated.
    By the way, the Shroud of Turin
    why is the image covering his
    private parts? In ancient times people
    did not understand dreams so they
    thought they were seeing their loved
    ones talking to them from another
    world.

  5. Excellent in that you identified accomplishments, opinions and quotes of the listed group. I am writing a book on addiction recovery and God’s role in it. 5% of addicts recover and 95% of the treatment programs use 12 step principles. No real correlation but what value does religion have in repairing a chemically and genetically altered brain?

  6. Sonnet for an Atheist

    O, how free was I when I went my way,
    Each dogma cast as grit beneath my tread!
    And how the simple facts in order lay,
    When rid of every falsehood in my head!
    Atheist I am called for my worldview,
    Denying lies which render theists blind,
    Seeking the path toward all that is true,
    With a stalwart heart and resolute mind.
    But I have more than rejection of lies
    And cowardly comfort of endless breath,
    Which religious fools and liars devise
    To dull away the sting of certain death.
    Rich in the lavish lap of truth I live,
    Possessing gifts that gods can never give.

    ~ Daniel F Mitchell

  7. No person on earth can prove “GOD” was real only stories past down from generation to generation and knowing humans people can bend the truth from person to person and how can the bible stay exactly the same from the old testiment to the new one??????? Its not like “GOD” came down said write this then came back a long time later and said o no wait rather write this and call it the new one! Honestly people waste time by saying believe this or get brought up into this religion when the can’t prove a single thing!! Thank you

  8. Reading up on more atheists: Stephen Fry, Bruce Lee, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Wozniak, Warren Buffet and Sigmund Freud (he was mentioned in the John Malkovich bit but not on his own)

    I’m a proud atheist. There never has been an all-powerful god, nor will there ever be one. The beauty of the universe is the evolution of all things (from microscopic organisms and atoms to galaxies, stars and black holes) and life itself.

  9. There is a difference between religion and faith. If you call yourself an Atheist, your faith is in science and your religion is nature. Neither of which can explain the wonders of life. In other words, your God is hypocrisy.

  10. I am an atheist of long standing, i also am a member of the British humanist association most members of my Sutton Surrey group are either atheists of agnoistics i think. I have met many non-religious people in my travels and i can honestly say most were not arrogant to my mind yes they had strong views on religion and their lack of beliefs in it and they felt that science had many of the unanswered questions and not religion regarding life on earth etc (ie) evolution. I was not aware that so many famous people are atheists i knew about Richard Dawkins as i think he is a member of the British Humanist association.

  11. Hitler, a number of his cronies, as well as thousands of members
    of the SS, were Catholic.

  12. The key word is “were.” Hitler disavowed Catholicism and persecuted the Catholics. The Catholic church was considered dangerous and more than 3000 clergymen were murdered in Poland alone. I realize history is a hard pill to swallow but I thought Atheists considered themselves to be all knowing. Maybe you should do a little research.
    Kim Jong II, Dalmer, Jim Jones, Pol Pot and Cho Seung Hui were all Athiests as well.

  13. @Chris….As a lifetime atheist, I, as I’m sure many others, all know your defenses to your cultist beliefs. I see you try to list some of the less desireable people in history to make some sort of indication that atheists are awful moraless people. Well guess what man, our votes count just as much as yours. Guess what else, your freedom of speech was granted by atheists. So go ahead and pray for me as I will in turn, wish and hope your children aren’t molested at church.

  14. Julie, I am merely pointing out that not every Athiest is a good person. I am sure you have heard the expression, “you have to take the good with the bad.” Also, you referred to my, “cultist beliefs.” I do not belong to any organized religion, so I am not what cult to are talking about. Also, my freedom of speech has nothing to do with Athiests. In fact, if there is no God then that is a right that I preceive and is not granted by anyone.
    I do not have children but if I had, they would be more likely to be molested by an Athiest public school teacher than by anyone at a church.
    Here are some more Athiests for your list; Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Scott Peterson, Edmund Kemper and Margaret Sanger.

  15. Chris.
    Get your facts straight. If you want to play the Molester game, you only had FIVE atheists on the list, and they’re not even confirmed atheists; you just labeled them as Atheists. I’m pretty sure out of the five, four of them are actually god believers. But let’s just say your WILD GUESS— though only a mere 5% chance of probably being correct—is somehow correct… let’s compare that to the count of how many Molesters are there in Churches: from 1950 – 2002, 4% of 110,000 priests have molested children. That’s approximately 4,400 Molesters. (http://www.religioustolerance.org/clergy_sex8.htm) <– that's called, sources.

    Go ahead, put your daughter (or even better, your son) on a Church. I'd rather put my children to a really good school.

  16. Jesus, I did not say any of those people are molesters. I said that it is more likely that a child will be molested by a public school teacher then a member of the clergy. I am guessing that you are one of those teachers. Otherwise, why would you comment about my spelling. Wasting time correcting my spelling is like saying you have an inferior position.
    Here is a source for you, http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/4/5/01552.shtml
    Here are some more Atheists for you to ponder. Rachel Carson, the woman responsible for murdering 3 billion people around the globe, mostly children under the age of 5. Gilles de Rais, the first serial killer who rape and murdered little boys. Richard Trenton Chase, America’s Hannibal Lecter.

  17. Seriously man, Scott Peterson? What about all the sickos sitting right next to him in prison? And I did assume you are American, which would mean your freedom of speech would’ve been granted by atheists (deists, freethinkers, humanists…they had to get creative due to the lack of religious tolerance you speak of…or else persecution was sure to follow from your great christians). Secondly your argument about the molestation, is just something that you decided in your own head. Everybody knows how priests have been covering up and allowing sick murders of the soul to continue on, including the pope. Hell I was molested by a so called christian. There are good and bad people people of all beliefs and we could go through every person in history and debate them all. This was simply a list of famous atheists for informational value and your response is so ignorant that it makes me think once again….thank god I’m an atheist!!! Finally, what about stephen hawking…probably the most intelligent man alive. So have your list of murderers, its just a blatant example of your “non religious intolerance” and your ability to Google.

  18. You say, “your great christians.” However, I am not a Christian. You say, “your argument about the molestation, is just something that you decided in your own head.” However, you are the one who brought up molestation. You talk about religion as if it is something bad. However, it is you that belongs to a religious group, not me.
    What about Stephen Hawking?
    I am not intolorant of your hypocricy or ignorance. I am merely giving you people you can add to your list. If you want to be taken seriously, you should practice what you preach.
    The majority of prisioners go into jail as Atheists and “find God” in prison.
    Finally, if there is no God, then no man grants me fee speech. Do you understand how the Constitution works or are you ignorant to that as well.

  19. Question. Why is there so much energy dedicated to defending your beliefs? Who cares if Manson was an atheist? Or a mensa who is christian or buddhist or muslim or agnostic or atheist? Their beliefs are unrelated to yours or anyone else and are based on their experiences.
    If you are just looking for a fight or just want to irrate a person of religious faith or further justify anything have them google godisimaginary.com. It is a sight devoted to dispelling truths by a theologian. People crack me up that have to fend a belief to any degree. What is going to change or be different as a result and ultimately, who cares? Isn’t it hypocritical? Just asking.

  20. As any atheist will tell you, we are not members of a religious group, nor do we like the term atheist. It means anti deity and we do not believe in any god to be against. I am against idiots. Yes I brought up molestation but it was your response I was referring to. Also have you interviewed every prisoner in the world? Doubtful. And what you said about if there’s no god then no man grants you free speech….that doesn’t even make sense. Free speech is a right granted to you by our forefathers, the authors of the constitution, who were in fact non believers. The reason they felt it was important is because so many people died at the hands oChristians and their torture gadgets that they thought it was a right entitled to man and it should be the first amendment. It is clear that you are not only ignorant in religion, but also in mere statistics, America, the beauty of debate, forming sentences and spelling. I’m done with your idiocy and thank goodness you did not have children.

  21. That’s your Source? a freaking right-wing, biased news site? FOX news is more credible than this, and FOX news is already garbage. Try again mate. Their own data DOESN’T even have citations. You can’t just put any article and feel like you’re credible already. This is what dumbasses who defend religion and pretend they’re not religious have trickled-down to. Rachel Carson, Gilles De Rais, Richard Trenton Chase — not atheists. Richard Trenton has a religion other than christianity, Paganism (which is not atheism). TRY. AGAIN. It’s like you just google-searched “Worst serial killers” pulled out some name, and decided to called them, “ATHEISTS”. Or maybe you pulled it out of Conservapedia? Newsmax? FOX? Man, you better start reading something else.

  22. Tom, great question, I love where your head is at. There is no point to this, other than validating ones beliefs because they match someone else. It is like saying, ” so and so is a Cancer just like me. I bet be would be best friends.” There is no corrolation.

  23. Atheism is a religion. Unless you do not believe in existance, your religion is science.
    I do not have to interview anyone. There have been a million studies with prisioners and the majority go into prision an Atheist and leave believing in God. That is not necessarily a good thing. It is simply a fact.
    You cannot cite one Founding Father that was an Atheist. Also, freedom of speech is a right alienated from “God.” I bow to no man.
    I realize that you believe you are a free thinker and a voice of reason but it is you that is the idiot. I am just wondering, do you believe in global warming?

  24. Trying to feel the victim when you’re the one who started your Trolling.

    Trolling* – An act of deliberately or unknowingly making statements that are False, unsubstantiated, and void of facts, just to irritate people who are making a good claim.

  25. 1.) Rounding up serial killers and branding them “Atheists” without any proof.
    2.) Thinks religion is not bad, but it is.
    3.) Calling an “atheist” belonging to a “religious group”, because Atheism is a state of lacking religion (Genius).
    4.) Randomly branding Prisoners as atheists and converted to Christianity upon entering prison, and didn’t even bother to ask all prisoners what their religion was outside of Prison—which is catholics and protestants.
    5.) Ooooh, Constitution, must be a “no-bama” teabagger.
    6.) uses “Then” when it’s suppose to be “Than”.

    CHRIS = TROLL

    Trolling* – An act of deliberately or unknowingly making statements that are False, unsubstantiated, and void of facts, just to irritate people on the other side of the argument, especially to irritate people who know the real facts.

  26. Jesus, thw point of this site is to name people who are Atheists. I was just adding some names. Here are some more; Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, David Roland Waters and Napoleon Bonaparte.
    Far more people have been murdered by Atheists than any other religion.

  27. Read this Chri:

    FOUNDING FATHERS, Atheist:
    uncompromising-rhetoric.com/literature/atheism/great-quotes-from-great-men/

    If they weren’t, the first amendment wouldn’t be as secular as separation of church and state.

    MAJORITY OF PRISONERS ARE CHRISTIANS:
    freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Percentage_of_atheists

  28. Founding fathers were NOT Christians, even up to Abraham Lincoln:

    freethought.mbdojo.com/foundingfathers.html

    “To see by Faith is to Shut the Eye of Reason” – Benjamin Franklin

  29. Trolling* – An act of deliberately or unknowingly making statements that are False, unsubstantiated, and void of facts, just to irritate people on the other side of the argument, especially to irritate people who know the real facts.

  30. 1. There are thousands of mass murderers, I only mentioned the ones that are also Atheist.
    2. Explain how religion is bad and what that has to do with the belief in God.
    3. Atheism is a religion, legally speaking.
    4. Here you show how stupid you really are. I never said they converted to Christianity. You infered that based on your own hatred for Christianity. I said they “found God.” That comes in many forms including Islam and being Agnostic.
    5. Obviously, you are a liberal. I guess that means you do not like the Constitution.
    6. You say I am a troll because you are affraid of reality. I pray to God that you die of Aids. Of course, that should not bother you since there is no God, right?

  31. “Hitler disavowed Catholicism and persecuted the Catholics.” Where’s your sources for that?

    (Antisemitism of the Vatican: uncompromising-rhetoric.com/?p=1174)

    (Adolf Hitler is Catholic: uncompromising-rhetoric.com/?p=854)

    Jim Jones?! Jim Jones made a religion in the name of Christ then murdered hundreds by making them all commit suicide. Where did you get your history lessons? FOX News?

  32. Right, Troll. You pray to god and yet you said you’re not a Christian. Oh that’s right, you are. You probably think by not claiming your own religion, you can’t make your religion look stupid.

    Too late, a mass number of Christian idiots have beaten you to it to make Christians look stupid.

    Religion is bad. It inspired people like you to troll on other people with your UTTER lack of knowledge.

  33. Oh, and for the record, liberals like the constitution very much. The only constitution you like is “GUUUUNS” on the second amendment. We prefer the First amendment were it says, GET OUT OF OUR GOVERNMENT, CHRISTIANS.

  34. “Atheism is a religion, legally speaking?”

    No, that’s idiotically speaking. I don’t even know what you meant by “legal”, and I doubt you have any LEGAL documents to prove it.

  35. Try reading peer review articles to get your information. You can find all kinds of historical papers on Hitler and his desire to destroy Catholicism. James Jones believed he was God. Therefore, he had no faith.

  36. Furthermore, James Jones was a fraud who swindled people out of their money and raped women.

  37. Where are your “historical papers”? Based on your credibility on the rest of your comment I doubt you’re being truthful. You just like to combine those words, “Try reading peer review articles to get your information”, to APPEAR credible. I’ve shown you writings, and no, it’s very much contradictory to your statement. Just like all “Conservative Knowledge” are very much the opposite of the facts (i.e. everything on FOX news).

    The point of Jim Jones was religion. Religion controls feeble minds. Any evil bastard can make a religion, and any idiot will follow a religion, and that’s the story of Jim Jones. He based his fellowship on Christianity. Maybe he has no faith on the Christian god anymore, but hey, HIS followers had faith in HIS religion.

    Faith and religion is the doom of us all.

    How old are you? I’m only in my 20’s. I have 70 more years to combat your trolling here.

  38. Let’s name great swindlers:

    Oh wait, almost all forms of Christian Churches! My goodness, all those people giving money for invisible products that they don’t need and given no help.

  39. Religion and faith are two different things. A person can be Jewish, Muslim or a Christian and they all pray to the same God. Others like myself, admit we do not know if God exists but we have faith he does. We are called Agnostic.
    You mocked the Constitution and called me a Teabagger. Most people like Obama hate the Constitution.
    I have never owned a gun. The First Amendment also protect religion.
    I realize this is hard for you to understand but legally, Atheism is a protected “religion” in the United States. If you live elsewhere then I am sure that does not matter to you.
    Billions of people have been killed in the name of Atheism and liberalism, that is just a fact.
    The FBI statistics on prisoners religion is based on vital statistics. In other words, they and most likely you were born into a religion. Hence the name Jesus. Most Atheists in America start out as Catholics. They later turn their backs on God. I really do not care what you believe. I just do not understand why you waste your time trying to dispel something that does not exist. Do you believe in manmade global warming?

  40. Billions of people have been murdered by Atheists in the last 100 years or so. Only, a few thousand have been murdered by Muslim extremists.

  41. Read the Founding Fathers in their own words not from a propaganda website. Try reading the Federalist Papers or the original 12 Articals of the Bill of Rights.

  42. Read papers from, on or about the Nuremberg Trials. You will find all kinds of evidence that not only did Hitler disavow Catholicism but he murdered 3000 clergy in Poland alone.
    I agree about religion. Most forms of religion are a way of scamming people out of their money. The same way liberals have scammed people with global warming.

  43. If you look up crime statistics on the FBI webste you will see that roughly 3% of priests and 8% of teachers are molesters.

  44. You said you were in your 20’s and can keep going. Turns out your just another liberal with no original thoughts.

  45. You never answered my question, do you believe man is responsible for global warming?

  46. You keep assigning labels. I am not a conservative,I am a libertarian. I do not believe Obama is a Muslim, I believe he is an Atheist like you.
    Your name calling does not affect me because I do not know you.
    Global warming is a myth. For someone that is so certain there is no God, how can you believe in global warming? Do you believe in the Easter Bunny too? LMAO

  47. Bill of rights? What — the word “Creator” on it? What of it? Creator is Vague, and it doesn’t necessarily apply to the christian invisible friend. Creator can either be Allah, Krishna, Zeus, or Subatomic Particles.

    If “Propaganda” websites (that took information from official Library of Congress Documents) are not enough for you, ask historians from the Library off Congress IF the quotes are exactly from the Founding Fathers.

    The Founding Fathers did NOT like the Christian Doctrine. End of Story. Thing is, I don’t give a shit if you don’t like it. The truth is the truth whether you like it or not.

  48. 1. Christians, Jews and Muslims all pray to the same God. I never mentioned the word “creation.” Have you ever read the 12 Articles of the original Bill of Rights?
    2. Subatomic particles were unknown to the Founding Fathers.
    3. You are certain there is no God but believe in global warming, talk about being a hypocite.
    4. You mention, Fox and conservatives like it is something evil and yet it is you who is intolerant.
    5. Every Founding Father was a Christian, not an Atheist like you.
    7. I am not your friend. If I were a Christian I would pray for you but I am not so I will pray you die.

  49. You’re a christian, mate. I mean, who else would pray to have someone or a group of people killed—your friendly christians! (Satanists only pray to the devil to sell their soul for awesome guitar skills, and atheists pray to no one… you know… because… they don’t have a god and no religion?)

    Next time try praying to a different god. I’m still alive and Tomorrow, Monday, I get a bonus for completing projects above everyone else. My luck is just getting better and better.

    Have a nice day 😀

  50. You are the one that is intolerant of people that disagree with you. A perfect example is your admiration for the Spread Santorum blog. In your world if someone disagree’s with you the should be demeaned. People do not deserve special rights because they suck cock. That does not mean I care if a guy is gay. It simply means I am not affraid to call them what they are, sexual deviants but hey, I love eating pussy so who am I to speak.

    I am agnostic, I mostly agree with your assessment on organized religion. Although I would not say that religion is a bad thing. Actually it is quite the opposite. I also notice to have hatred for Christianity but never mention any other religions. That is a clear indication of thinking emotionally and not reasonable. Yet, you pretend to be a man of reason.

    Finally, I did not say I would pray that you would be killed, I said, “I will pray you die.” My point was simple, if prayer is meaningless then it does not matter what I pray for. The truth is, I hope you live a long life filled with great rewards and maybe one day you will come full circle.

    I also do not care what you believe. I does not affect me one way or the other. You should think about that before you attack people for having different views from yourself. Just because someone follows religion, does not make them bad, stupid or wrong. It also does not affect your beliefs or lack their of. Good luck with your beliefs, I am sure you are a decent person and I hope I was not to offensive.

  51. Don’t worry, ‘most of the time’ I can act like the… ‘man of reason’ (never claimed I was, last time I remember the most extravagant claim I posted was for “hoping the world could reason more properly”). You honestly think that I don’t know that (some) Religious people aren’t all bad, stupid, or wrong? I know that. (though, admittedly, in my ‘opinion’ having a religion (Abrahamic ones) in general is ‘quite’ stupid).

    And since you decided to be a little bit more tolerable in the end, I’ll answer your global warming question: You are correct that some scientists who have pioneered the agenda of “Global Warming” (oh, those two words… so 1990’s) have scammed governments and tax payers on projects that won’t really help— Rising Sea Levels – misleading; acid-rain – myth; Chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) destroying the Ozone layer – false; but the fact is, air pollutants caused by industrialization can still affect the environment in a much dramatic way; erratic than usual weather conditions, ecology of the arctic wild life, etc. I could go on for 175 more paragraphs about this, but maybe you should try and read things about counter-arguments against branding “Climate Change” as a myth.

    Next, your thing with Adolf Hitler: just because Adolf Hitler killed some Polish Priests who are catholic (because they were harboring Jews), doesn’t mean he’s not a catholic. FACT: Adolf Hitler was a catholic, and died a Catholic. (In the catholic doctrine, you remain catholic as long as you haven’t officially renounce the faith by signing some papers, regardless of how you act. I know, I WAS a catholic).

    And Finally, you posting here in the first place: So here are some Atheists, just having fun; enjoying and minding their own “Logical Fallacy of Appealing to Authority” (i.e. this good celebrity is an Atheist, therefore, Atheism must be really good!), and you come barging in trying to add your “Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot” (and somehow, Hitler got in there, too). And worse yet, you even Googled Murderers from the past, and brand them Atheists when most or even all of them really aren’t.

    When you’re being a douche bag, expect some people to return the favor to you. Now I don’t care if you reply to this, but I’ll end the conversation here. You have a nice day, though I’ve said that twice.

  52. To Chris and Jesus Sojourner: I have never enjoyed so much the banter between two such obviously intelligent men as yourselves!!! Bravo to you both! I, personally, would cower from taking on either one of you in a debate. I am, for what it may be worth, vry impressed,

  53. Man has created the notion of a vengeful “sky god” with humanistic features. Forget the the long lost concept of the earth goddess-that would mean we might be required to respect the planet and all living things with compassion-wow, That could lead to our developing concerns over issues like global warming. Humanizing a believed creative force gives comfort to the fearful.

  54. I love it! You do not believe there is a God but you believe in the fairytale, “Global Warming.” Do you also believ Ed in the “Tooth Fairy?”

  55. Werner Herzog filmed a movie about scientists working at the South Pole called Encounters, The end of the world. You should see it, not for scientific evidence and perspective, rather to gain insight into their philosophies. Perhaps it might expand your insight into global warming. Just out of curiosity, how do you interpret God? What teachings and principles do you follow?

  56. I am assuming this was meant for me. That being said, I have faith there is a God. Until it could be proven that there is not, I will continue to have faith. However, I am not a fan of organized religion. I consider myself Agnostic. I do not proclaim that my faith is anymore credible than others disbelief. That is why it is called faith.
    The same goes for man made global warming, can can not be proven. The earth is 4 billion years old and has gone through extreme tempatures, natural disasters and transformations long before man came along.
    I think it is funny that on the one hand a person can say, “there is no God” and on the other “man is definitely responsible for global warming.” That is the height of hypocracy.

  57. Global warming is not necessarily “man-made.” That is not what is implied here, but if humanity is the caretaker of the earth, we should pay attention to variations in climate and find ways to deal with changes, whatever the causal facors.

    And by the way, why does the clearly ficticious freakin’ easter bunny always take the rap?

  58. Zena, I actually mentioned the Tooth Fairy. There is nothing we can do about natural events. Everyone should conserve plain and simple.

  59. True, the more recent reference was the tooth fairy. The fairy and the bunny nearly always delivered. I’ ll give them that.

    Santa, IMO the skygod precursor, “knew if you were bad or good” and could drop a lump of coal on your sorry butt (so the story goes) if you misbehaved. Hmmmmmm…..bearded guy from the sky/ lump of coal vs another skyguy who would just as soon send you to the site which created the lump of coal.

  60. Rachel Carson? What could you possibly be talking about?
    Statistically, among convicted rapists, 57% admit to reading porn, 95% admit to reading the Bible. So I doubt the truth of your statement about a child being more likely to be sexually assaulted by an atheist school teacher than a Catholic priest. That is pure conjecture on your part, based on nothing. Like your disbelief in global warming. You have no facts to back up anything you say on this topic and instead choose to dismiss scientific evidence. You might as well stop “contributing” to this conversation until you have something to say that is based on reality and facts.

  61. Atheism is no more a religion than not believing in fairies is a religion. Not believing is something is not a religion. Look up the definition.

  62. Rachel Carson wrote the book Silent Spring, which was responsible for the banning of DDT and the murder of 3.5 billion people. She was also an Atheist.

    Statistically teachers are 10 times more likely to molest children than priests. Statistically 40% of teachers are Atheists. Statistically Atheist teachers are 4 times more likely to molest children than priests.

  63. There is no evidence that global warming exists. You have to rely on faith, the way someone believes in God

  64. @intbydes…don’t waste your time with that dude. I did the same thing…until his ridiculousness won. I watched that Jesus S Guy annihilate him in debate and the dude is fixated and wont hear anything else.

  65. My only question in listing famous atheists is, are their opinions any more valuable or relevant than any others, atheist or otherwise? It seems people regardless of their values are feeling they have to defend their beliefs. That in itself is troubling and has me questioning why someone is having to justify anything – kinda’ defies the logical of relative purpose…
    Frankly, there are many on the list above, as there are famous non-atheists not listed, I would not invite to a dinner party. So inevitably the question must be asked, what does it matter?

  66. Julie, I was not annihilated by anyone. Here are a few people that were annihilated by Atheists; Jews, African children, Mongolians, Chinese peasants and Russian farmers. This is only a few of the billions of people murdered by Atheism.

  67. O how free was I when self died
    Each step guided as wings beneath my tread
    And how the simple truth in order lay
    When rid of every lie and deception in my head lay
    Christian I am called for my world view
    Accepting truths that open the way
    Seeking the path toward all that is true
    With a stalwart heart and determined mind
    But I have more than acceptance of truth, I have a promise of tomorrow in heaven oh God of the Universe with you.
    Which atheist fools and liars are blinded to
    The sting of death is gone
    Rich the blessing of truth I live
    Possessing gifts that gods of this world can never give

  68. A few questions I must ask, who made the thumb, where did the wind come from, can a man make a blade of grass? Where does a man go when he dies? Starting with the Jews as we must, we cannot understand God unless we do. God called a man named Abraham to go to a far land to start a new family. From this family line, kings would come. One of the most famous was King David, whose children were blessed enough to welcome the very Son of God. God loved us so much that he didn’t want any man or woman to suffer eternal everlasting torment as Satan and his angels were sentenced to. Satan rebelled well before Adam and Eve and was cast out of Heaven. Sounds like a tell, I can assure you it is true. Christ lived, was crucified and arose again for us. His blood covers our sins if we only ask forgiveness. Then our names will be put into the lambs book of life. If you don’t believe me read it for yourself. The book is called, “The Holy Bible”. If we claim to be atheist, we are fools. There are many many rich, intelligent, beautiful, royal, people who will be lost in the lake of fire made for the devil and his angels. Satan has blinded 98% of the population into believing there is No God. He seeks who he may kill, steal from, and destroy. I think he is doing a really good job, don’t you?

  69. If you believe in theological determinism, it is part of the plan, isn’t it?
    “God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It’s as simple as that.” – Joseph Campbell

  70. Just a quick note on a change in my policy regarding comments on this website. I’ve decided to delete personally abusive attacks from within comments. That will allow the substantive points made to stand on their own merit. Thanks very much to everyone who has commented so far, and please keep doing so! Michael.

  71. “I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so.” Hitler

    “I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator; by defending myself against the Jews, I am fighting for the Lord…I would like to thank Providence and the Almighty for choosing me of all people.” Hitler

    “Loyalty and responsibility toward the people and the Fatherland are most deeply anchored in the Christian faith.” Hitler

    Get your facts straight and stop pretending you know these things.

  72. Nice try but thoughs quotes are from before he was in power. You glossed over this: “Derek Hastings sees Hitler’s commitment to Christianity as more tenuous. He considers it “eminently plausible” that Hitler was a believing Catholic as late as his trial in 1924, but writes that “there is little doubt that Hitler was a staunch opponent of Christianity throughout the duration of the Third Reich.” Then there is this: “In 1985, a letter written and signed by Hitler was published stating the “Immediate and unconditional abolition of all religions after the final victory [was achieved]” seems to confirm this view.”

    You also ignore that fact that 3 million catholics and 50,000 priests were murdered during the Holocaust.

    Your denial only shows you most likely approve of Hitler’s actions.

  73. 230 million people in this country practice it. I think the purpose of doing so is often misconstrued

  74. Chris, The darkness does not understand the light. Athiesm is the great “falling away” predicted in the Prophesies. You deliver the message of God and they have responded with the message of man. Give them your best wishes and leave.
    Rejecting the word:
    “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet. Truly I tell you, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town. ”
    Athiesm:
    “He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.”
    People like Marx and Dawkins:
    “The Spirit clearly says that in latter times some people will turn away from the faith. They will pay attention to spirits that deceive and to the teaching of demons. 2 They will be controlled by the pretense of lying, and their own consciences will be seared.”

    There was 1600 years between the times of Moses and Jesus – there have been 2000 years since Jesus. Tick tock.

  75. If God is all powerful why can’t he just stop Satan from tempting blinding humans. Why does the Bible only focus on one race the Hebrews when other nationalities exist such as Romans and Egyptians
    Why was Jesus Hebrew, as a Negro African I ask my self why should I believe in a book that doesn’t mention a single Negro what has the Bible got to do with me. And the Ten Commandments since God is all knowing why did he make humans along with failures such as jealousy and yet tell us not to covet our neighbours goods. God made everything so it would not be wrong to blame him for deseases and yet he tells us not to kill is God himself not a killer. I am only 15 years old and not old enough to know what the world really is but from my 15 years on Earth so far I don’t think Jesus is coming any time soon so don’t hold your breathe and as for miracles I believe we make our own miracles.

  76. And all this information is coming from a 2000 year-old book that has no verifiable information whasoever. Your “sacred” text was written by a bunch of Jews in the desert about a mysterious being that cannot be seen or heard. You cannot verify that God exists. Miracles? Doctors. Those are the real miracle workers, yet an invisible sky magician gets ALL the credit because his “son” (who was really Him) died for your sins and came back as a magical zombie.
    This is the crap written in your little fairy tale with stories about a flood that magically destroyed the world and many other equally stupid fables. Can you give me 100% bonafide truth that God exists? And while you’re at it, can you ask Him why he’s such a douche?


  77. “Your “sacred” text was written by a bunch of Jews in the desert about a mysterious being that cannot be seen or heard.”

    Not this really shows how little you know or, more likely, are prepared to learn. Where did you hear such poor history?

    I suggest you do more research. Start with Luke and Acts. You will discover that he was no Jew.

    Try to avoid being a fool who mocks what he knows nothing about. You do yourself a disservice and lose credibility from the word go.

    Best wishes.

    Paul

  78. As I read the comment from Carlos last night, I could not help but feel disturbed. It is those type of comments that put any belief or non-belief in a bad light. It is no different than any extremist spewing and blaming someone or something else for the injustices they perceive in life.
    From C.S. Lewis –
    “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such a violent reaction against it?… Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if i did that, then my argument against God collapsed too–for the argument depended on saying the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus, in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist – in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless – I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality – namely my idea of justice – was full of sense. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never have known it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

  79. There are many things that cant be expained or proven,but people still believe in them,so why should religion be different, thats what faith is,believing in something that you cant see.

  80. Just because there is a word in the dictionary to describe what faith is…doesn’t mean it has to happen.

  81. People believe in lies without asking for proof or explanation because it’s a lot more comfortable to put their lives in the hands of a non-existent higher power than actually know that they are the ones creating their own lives.
    Ignorance is bliss but it’s better to know the truth. The truth really does set you free.

  82. That’s nonsense. I dont have faith because I need to. The notion that people of faith can’t deal with a reality where god doesn’t exists is another intellectual snobbery example of the likes of Dawkins et al.

    People choose to have faith. Just like you choose to be an atheist. The flip side of that argument is to say that atheists don’t like the idea of a final judgement and want to live their lives without repercussion.

  83. Dieter, since you are so enlightened please explain in detail, how the universe was formed?

  84. I find it interesting that both atheists and believers feel so justified to defend their positions. Is the purpose here to try to convert someone? At times it appears that way. Will that occur? Hardly, as people state with purpose and defend their ingrained positions. So I ask, what is the point in arguing that which can only be defended, and ultimately ascertained, through personal belief? Is calling someone a fool or obtuse gaining personal victory? I hardly think either limited types exist on this forum, unless they are those criticizing. So, what can be purposefully gained through such countering? Is it the desire for education, or only to support of one’s beliefs?

  85. Sven, it’s the ultimate question.

    But that is a good point. Militant atheists not only believe the question of the afterlife is not an important one, but (ironically) they want everyone else to stop asking it.

  86. Chris you better read more often than telling us bunch of untruth statements over here. you are hilarious. hitler is a christian and no, atheist is not considered a religion in United States.

  87. Hitler planned on the elimination of all religion. He may have been Agnostic but he gave up his Catholic roots the same way you did.
    Atheism is legally a religion in the United States. What is hilarious is that you have faith and will not admit it. Your faith is in science.
    Leslie asks a great question, “since you are so enlightened please explain in detail, how the universe was formed?”

  88. Hitler said he is coming to finish what Jesus began. He thought he was a God. Not very Christian at all.

  89. Hi,

    I don’t want to barge in on this discussion, but I have a few general questions.
    Before I ask, please remember I try to refrain from having a religious title, but I can proclaim I am a Christ follower. The reason I say this, is that the title of “Christians” bears a negative light. By all means I am no better as a person than the “American Christian” or for that matter anyone else involved in this discussion, I just believe many people are not practicing what they preach, therefore I can easily see where others can see the corruptioncans wickedness coming from. An author whom I highly respect estimates that upwards of 90% of “Christians” are not truly saved and will not enter Heaven. I understand that means little to someone who doesn’t believe in the concept of Heaven, but we see the hypocrites just as well as you do too.

    Anyways, here are some things I have been wondering;
    1) Chris, I’m not sure of your religious beliefs, however can you categorize what religious book you find truth in?
    2) (General) Do atheists follow a common moral code, or do they all essentially set thier own beliefs (I’ve always wondered this).
    3) (General) Where do atheists get thier fulfillment/happiness in life from? I have been on both sides of the belief scale and I have a lot of respect for those who can do without a personal relationship with Christ. I have always been charitable, however this was never enough to get fulfillment from.

    I am 18 and honestly just want to find answers from people who actually are atheists and not what “Christians” hear/say. I am typing this from my iPhone so please excuse any typos I was not aware of.

    Thanks,
    Jared

    Also,
    I do not wish for anyone to die of any diseases despite what you believe, lol.

  90. Jared,
    Very cool and refreshing entry. The subject becomes stale when people reference those historians we have no control over. I for one would like to learn how people arrived at their beliefs, whatever they are. It would make for a much more interesting and dynamic interaction. After all, this is anonymous, and no one will be crucified (pun intended).

  91. Ive lived a life that many will never. I’ve sold drugs and taken plenty them, I’ve slept with prostitutes and cheated on my ex-girlfriend of 13 years. I’ve burgled houses and I’ve inflicted violence upon others.

    I was Mr. Cool. Mr popular with plenty of friends but then something happened. I lost it all. I broke up with my partner. She was faithful and loved me for 13 years and I neglected her and eventually she cheated on me. I lost all my friends and hated everyone. Everyone rejected me because I rejected them. But I realised after spending a very long time on my own that they were never my friends to begin with. We only got drunk together.

    I have gay friend who is a militant atheist that kept posting what would be considered offensive things towards God and for some reason I just rejected these things so I started to read about atheism and religion and then I started to actually read the bible.

    My life has changed so much. I have a girlfriend who I adore and she adores me. I am so happy and I read the word of God all the time. I have a new circle of friends who don’t take drugs and I love life.

    The bible taught me how to love and be thankful and live with humility. There may be things in there which dont make sense but I tell you it’s teachings are divinity.

    Thats how I arrived at my faith.

  92. By the way, I told my gay friend and I thanked him for bringing me to the Lord and he stopped posting those things. He’s still and always will be my friend.

    Doesn’t God work in mysterious ways?!

  93. Paul,
    In a sense, this was your vehicle to a better existence – don’t see anything wrong with that! Congrats, by the way ~

  94. I see so much in people and so little understanding of who and where and why we are here on this big round satellite called earth.Look around and see the similarities in nature.Think of the simple things like an ant who works without complaining.Look at humans,what a difference.Now look at the complex structures of how it comes together.A human has trillions of cells,and complex chemicals to which makes us exist as we grow.We have free will and really make a mess of things sometimes.But we don’t always have to.Some of us believe in something that is so far fetched that the highest and smartest people cherish God and some do not.
    I go by the writings of the Bible NIV as a standard to live and let live.Written my man or the Church and inspired by Holy men,yes?It is man that makes the words of the Bible to his favor.Because we are Human and have free will.Thats what I feel.Jesus and God Loves his children still,even if they do wrong.There are lots of things Humans still do not understand,like why Quantum physics is still be re written today.How can a Quark be in two places at the same time?We are still in the Dark Ages my friend.Still.We still are afraid of the dark,and death,so you are still not in control.It is another order and it was written from your maker,whoever you think it is.

  95. Can people stop claiming Bjork is an atheist? She admitted that she does believe in something, nature. she’s a metaphysican.

  96. Great roll call, micheal I am an Atheist of African- Carribean decent, I know there are quite a few very well known and not so well known bu highly influential African- American people now and historically, do have anymore of the same of the African Diaspora outside the USA.

    I know you have Ayaan Hirsi Ali, is there any more?……..

  97. Great roll call, micheal I am an Atheist of African- Carribean decent, do you have anymore atheists of the African Diaspora outside the USA.
    I know you have Ayaan Hirsi Ali, is there any more?……..

  98. Hi Michael,
    I believe Bill Bryson should not be on this list.

    I have just been reading his ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’, and after an engaging first ten chapters, along comes chapter 11 – slanting the science in such a way as to thrill creationists, who will be quoting it for years to denigrate science and scientists and the scientific method.
    http://www.faithandscienceresource.org.uk/reviews/bryson_shorthist.html for example.

    From reading this, I believe Bryson is a Trojan creationist, a sheep in wolf’s clothing, a troll intending to belittle science and fuel creationists and IDers. This is a gift for high-school classrooms in the Bible Belt. In purporting to be written by an atheist(??) it tries to make atheists and scientists look like fools.

    “conventional science and a belief in god are absolutely not incompatible. You can be a scientist and believe in god: the two can go hand in hand.” Atheist?

    “If you believe in god, it’s much more fantastic to believe that he created this universe billions of years ago and set in motion this long train of activities that eventually resulted in us. I think that’s so much more satisfying, more thrilling, than the idea that it was all done in seven days.’ ”
    (That’s his plan right there! – get creationists to stretch the 7 days to something more plausible, then belittle the science itself and slip in a new, ‘more respectable’ creationism.)
    Quotes from Martin Rees, quotes from Einstein about God etc etc etc…

    No way should Bryson be on an atheist list!

    Thanks for all your amazing work Michael, we are in your debt.
    Donal

  99. Very interesting. Truth is truth. I noticed several of these people have died. They know the truth now.

  100. I look to God as my savior, my protector, my world. We all may believe different things about where the world came from but I love him. I live my own life so it shouldn’t matter to anyone else what or who I believe in. I have that everyone of you will find the light in any religion one chooses. I hope you believe in whatever God you believe in with all your heart and dont let anyone tell you otherwise. As for the athiest, i believe my God loves you also and if you choose to not believe in a God then that is your peragative. Just know that there is always a place in heaven for anyone and everyone. I love you all whether you want to believe it or not. I am only 14 years old and Im learning alot, but no matter what happens, I keep my faith 🙂

  101. Hey, where are Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot on your list?

    They were some really Kick Ass Atheists!

  102. I pray for all these atheists who are still alive that God who is long suffering and rich in mercy will reveal himself to as many who have heard of Him but being blinded by satan. This battle is in the spiritual level and you can’t comprehend it with your little brain. I will that you sincerely ask God to know, to just reveal himself to you. He love you and He will show you exactly what you ask of. Thank you Jesus

  103. I can hear Onyori’s comment spoken in a hillbilly sorta voice. Praise tha lawd!

    If they existed I’d rather chill with Satan than God. Satan loves us a whole lot more. He didn’t kill countless thousands or hundreds of thousands and vow to torture (for ETERNITY) those who reject this imaginary friend of yours.

    God loves us?

    I don’t think so.

  104. Perhaps you say hill billy voice because you like to think of anyone who believes in God as having less intelligence than you.

    I think your understanding of “gawd” and Santa are deeply flawed. Santa gives billions of naughty kids coal each year and God allows everyone to have as much of His glory as they can handle. I don’t buy into the eternity of misery and Hell… Though you may not agree with how the LDS believers came to their views I think you’ll find our understanding of God and the purpose to life a lot more logical/believable than many other belief systems.

  105. A motivating discussion is worth comment. I do believe that you should publish more about this subject matter,
    it may not be a taboo matter but usually folks don’t discuss such issues. To the next! Many thanks!!

  106. From once it for all, I will answer to that arrogant Chris:
    only
    First, as you stated that Hitler, Stalin and other dictators were atheist, excuse, me, but you are distorting the history. Hitler was a ctholic all his life, you can find out by yourself and he said in a speech in 1933 that them (the nazis) had smashed the atheist movement with actions and not only with words. We could say that possibly Stalin was atheist, but we can’t even be sure of it. He was just a tyrannical dictator and could have been just an hypocrite. I know that most of communist parties really made a vulgar distort of marxist theory (I’m NOT marxist) and used atheism in not very propper ways, but you can’t even say that all atheists are marxist and/or communist and if you say that Hitler was not a real catholic, I can say that Stalin was not a real atheist. Satisfied?
    By the way, there are vey important epistemological differences between religion and science. Science is based on facts that can be discovered only by investigation, free inquiry and experiments that allow us to know more, even it has the limitation that sometimes, theory ignores something that cannot be discovered by the method itself, but if it is found (the only way is curiosity) then it can be studied. Religion instead, is based on dogmas and supposed revelations that the preachers say they had (this happens in every religion) and doesn’t need prooves because they say that people must believe by faith. Religion uses “anecdotic evidence” such as, that a person was praying for raining and then started to rain. It doesn’t pay attention to the numerous cases in which prayers are not seemingly listened because they just don’t get what they are asking. This happens all the time and when someones has gotten what he prayed for, it can be atributed to other factors. We, the atheist do not believe in coincidences or anecdotic evidence to explain something because it doesn’t prove that there is a supernatural power out there.
    Finally, just an observation. You believe that God sent Jesus to be crucified by the humans. If humans are imperfect, then it is God’s fault because he could make us not say perfect, but at least better, unless he is not perfect and commits mistakes (personally, for me the most reasonable is that there is no one, although, this doesn’t prove that he doesn’t exist, but if you were honest and modest, you’d admit you cannot be sure either). By the way, Jesus only preached in a very limited geographical space (according to the own Bible) and it seems that God didn’t take into consideration how strongly people adhere to their religion (as in the remote Asia, for example). Honestly, I think that there could have been a kind of revolutioner called “Jesus” (not necessarily true) but I don’t have any reasons to believe he was a messiah sent by God nor the supposed historical factibility of the gospel (this is myth, because the gospel is historically incoherent, please read a book called “Misquoting Jesus” and see James Randi video “Archeology versus Bible”. Thanks to all the ones who read this comment.

  107. @Emmanuel

    Your religion is faith in science. I never said I am a Christian. Hitler was born a Catholic like many Athiests and turned away from religion. This was evidenced by the fact that he murdered 300,000 priests throughout Europe. He also declared that he wanted to stamp out all religion as did Stalin, Lenon and Mao.

  108. Hitler had a dream of a blond haired blue eyed world.He did not like the Jews,why I do not understand.Was he mad at them for wanting to kill Jesus?Or was he just a mad man who was very eccentric and was stealing from the Jews to finance his War Effort to overtake the world.Did you ever think of that,and yes Most Jews were well off in those times.They are God’s chosen people.Very disciplined and frugal.Alot of people leave the Catholic Church because one they do not have a true relationship with God,only what they are taught from Sunday School and so on.I married a Catholic once,now we are divorced.I can go on and on about Christians and there problems.We are Human and God made us this way,to be weak?,or strong?It’s up to you and the Trinity of your Faith and Strength he can supply Us all with.Not all can receive unless you are chosen.

  109. I am so lucky to be an atheist, apart from the Science aspect , religion binds you to rules and regulations. I know that when I die, I will never see my family again, but one thing I am certain of is that My memory will be kept alive by my family and friends, that is all I need to comfort me.

  110. I’m so glad I’m a criminal. The law binds you to rules and regulations.

    Judgement comes.

    Isiaih 19 is being fulfilled as we speak. Hundreds of people are being saved at out Church and the shouts are getting louder but we are still a remnant as it was prophesied.

    Come Jesus.

  111. Thank-you to all of you who are standing up for religion..having a relationship with our father in heaven is the greatest most wonderful thing you could possess!….Not living as you please going unchecked and roaming the earth with no purpose..what a horrible feeling it must be to think we will never see our loved ones again! Our father in heaven sent us here to learn and become better therbefore there has to be evil, unhappiness, and unspeakable things in this life but it’s how we choose to deal with the hardships of life and how we should always serve one another. There is a spirit in man; and the inspiration of the almighty gives them understanding. Those who haven’t received that inspiration will not comprehend the meaning of the resurrection from the dead, and without that understanding it seems to me there would be little happiness for those who are growing older, waiting for the time when the spirit leaves the body to go where they know not..sad.

  112. Allright, let’s get to the point. Religions promote division and conflict between humans because they are incompatible beliefs systems and are based on different dogmas and absolute unquestionable sacred truths. It is as cruel as involving that if the Bible is right all the non-christians will be damned and if the Coran is right all the non-muslims will go to the hell. It is tyrannical. All religions have absurdities and the arrogant blind faith of religious people is based on speculation. I don’t consider ethically justifiable to believe in monotheistic gods and we can be more humanistical without religious judgement and the terror of final trial and hell.

  113. “I” is your biggest problem. What you perceive religion to do is not important. Jesus promoted no such thing as devide. If you chose to follow the teaching of Quran and condider who Muhammed actually was as a person (by their fruits you shall know them) then so be it – I was personally thrown when I discovered he wedded a 6 year old. God gave us all a brain to question, research and understand.

    Stop looking at mankind for your justification against faith, you are looking at an imperfect, fallen being for explanations of Devine perfection. Obviously this is not going to work. Look at the Book itself and what it teaches. Do so with an open heard. For your own sake. God bless.

  114. All right, let’s put the things clear. According to the gospel of Mark, the one who refuses to believe will be damned. It’s no matter if you are a “nice” or “evil” person, it is just a matter of submission. The four gospels menace us saying that the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is unforgivable and Luke tells us that to follow Jesus we must be disposed to hate our father and mother, brother, sister, children and our own life in order to follow him. This is narcissistic. A merciful rational God wouldn’t speak that way. And there are many terrifying mentions of the hell in the gospel, where the phrase weeping and gnashing of teeth is repeated over and over again (does God need to condemn someone for all eternity?). Not except if he is sadistic. He also said that he didn’t come to bring peace but the sword and he was going to put the members of the family in dissent against each other (probably the ones who wrote this weren’t so fool after all and they were conscious that if they achieved the conversion of “pagan” people to Christianity it was going to cause many family conflicts (and so the obvious solution is to forsake them if they don’t accept the new doctrine) . Such a way to make things!
    As you can read the Paul’s epistles and the catholic epistles (I hope you to understand the difference) you are able to notice the misogyny and sexism in the text that orders explicitly women’s submission to men, the prohibition to them to speak inside the synagogue and the commitment that they must work with abnegation because the woman made the first sin (this stupid rationalization is based on a literal interpretation of Genesis, a mistake that appears very often in the epistles).
    The epistles to the Romans and the Corinthians don’t waste time in giving divine support to the homophobia and hatred against the gay. The first one affirms that homosexuality is a punishment of God as he delivered to a reprobate mind (the term varies according to the translation) those who decided to praise animal idols instead of him (when I think in christian gay people I simply can’t understand how this supposed God is also able to sanction the ones who have never denied to praise him). The Corintians epistle sends to hell not only homosexuals but also the effeminates (again the term varies according to the translation, but the idea is that somehow it is unforgivable for a man to imitate the way that woman look like and/or act). Does this mean that God considers women evil or that he is interested in perpetuating closed genre stereotypes? Or is just that some jews recently converted to christians were playing to be their own God? Given this situations, nobody can take the epistles as the God’s word, as they are non sense.
    As you can read by yourself, Mathew and Luke cannot agree about the genealogy of Jesus nor the way that his parents arrived to Bethlehem (but John apparently denies this version saying that the master came from Galilee, putting more inconsistencies to the history).
    If this all isn’t enough to doubt about the supposed truth of the Bible, the moral perfection of God and Jesus and the own existence of God, you are just blind and deaf. And considering that this website is made from Ireland (I’m not irish) I simply can’t understand how after so much suffering and bloodletting that your country has experienced because of religion you are still defending it. I’m from Costa Rica and we are in a religious war too (but only with words) because of fundamentalist stupid politicians that have submitted our laws to their personal religious beliefs, and that’s not my idea of pluralism, respect and freedom. I hope you’ll understand one day.

  115. If I tell you not to jump off of a bridge because you will die, do I condemn you to death? No, you condemn yourself to death when you jump.

    I think you’ve been reading too many atheist books my friend.

  116. Your point is absurd Paul. If I hold a gun to your head and said “give me fifty bucks or I shoot” Am I condemning myself to death if I do not hand over the money. Should the shooter be considered innocent in this case as I chose not to follow his demand.

  117. You’ve proven my point exactly and your misinterpretation becomes all the more clear.

    The difference is that one is a threat and the other is a warning. You have a choice by means of a warning. You do not have a choice by means of a threat.

    You can live life filled with the pleasures of the world and rejecting God, you can have a whale of a time. That’s your choice. Personally I’ve lived on both sides of the fence and my life is filled with riches in the Lord and those who follow and believe in him have treated me with more kindness and love than the world ever did.

    But the fact is that you’ve been told that God exists and he created us. The Word serves as both guidance to the fruits and joys of life and also as a warning towards punishment against rebelion. So the only threat that exists is your own threat to yourself by rejecting this warning.

  118. Well, let’s point out some important issues. As I said before in a comment, the christian religion is cruel and unfair as it is based in a book that is so and according to the doctrine cannot be contradicted by anyone because it is God’s word. When somebody tells me that it is a warning about the things I have to avoid in order to save myself from the hell, it is just a sadomasochistic vision of human life, as we can choose only between absolute submission or eternal condemnation. This is the most sinister scenario for most of humans as the major part of today’s world population isn’t christian and I know that most of christians do not accomplish the own biblical requests for arriving to heaven (according to the gospel it is not actually necessary to make the evil for going to hell, it’s just a matter of not being kindly with others. Although I agree completely with an ideal of human solidarity this opens the moral dilemma that if we are going to be generous with someone just because we see the benefit of that person as the end of what we ar doing or if instead, we are doing it egotistically just to save ourselves from the hell. Even this could sound absurd it is not my fault that the Bible uses such a method to inspire altruistic conduct in human beings -the least human one).
    Now, some points on free will. Many believers signal that if we receive the warning of the revelation and do not accept it, we are causing our own condemnation. This means that once you heard it, you will have to believe it like or not without any possibility of dissension because if you do so you will be automatically damned. As somebody said before, this, sir, is not free will. If there were a humanistic God, he would judge humans according to their acts and intentions and not only on the basis that if they admitted or not a message contained in a Holy Book. By the way, this is a huge lack of common sense. Must we think that God didn’t pay attention to the fact that many of us were going to be able to get into disagreement with many parts of the holy scripture only on the basis on our sense of justice, ethics and logical analysis? Don’t we have a right to doubt about this in a skeptical way? According to the own Bible and many believers, NO. Actually, if this were the final destination of every human being, the existence itself wouldn’t have any sense to me, as it were just the commitment to absolute submission and this takes off the most beautiful, inspiring and motivational notions of free inquiry from human life. As a skeptical, I have argued that lack of solid evidence is a non-emotional reason to refuse to believe, but as the believers put emotional reasons to justify their belief, let me expose that emotional argument. If life is nothing else than submission to an omniscient dictator (who takes no responsibility for creating imperfect humans) then I would say that it had been better not to exist.
    Finally some ethical claims. First of all, I will say that creating an universal norm to guide society in a reasonable way has never been easy and this always requires a collective effort. We lasted 45 centuries before Christ (I mention him because it is the arbitrary name of the arbitrary limit we put inside history) and 20 centuries after him (that is 65 centuries) to arrive to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. You know, this is probably our greatest achievement as a civilization in order to give ourselves a universally acceptable normative that protects human dignity. It was not easy to get and could do it by a complex evolution of our notions of right, justice and ethics. As a secular thinker (please don’t say I’m cocky, we are all thinkers somehow) I consider that the notions that allowed us to arrive to that goal are the ones that must guide our society. The respect to the equality of rights, the freedom of doing what we want with our lives while not damaging the integrity of the others, the obligation of persecuting the well-being of society, the warranty of free speech and thought were made (as any other values) by ourselves. Please don’t come saying that the intervention of God was necessary, I find it as offensive as saying that we cannot think by ourselves.
    Finally I beg you, believers, to make historical justice. Don’t mention just the case of evil atheists. Don’t ignore the noble intentions of people like Bertrand Russell, Carl Sagan, Friedrich Engels, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Isaac Asimov, Albert Einstein (research seriously about him and you will find he didn’t believe in a personal God nor the eternity), Katharine Hepburn, Jose Saramago and many others. Don’t be so unfair and closed-minded.

  119. Your mind is open but your heart is not. You abide by your fathers rules in the home and you abide by your countries laws, why then is there such a problem to abide by God’s laws, or oppose those who choose to? Don’t you ever wonder why all these Christians don’t care about evolution, or the Big Bang (who lit the spark)? The advocate you have not accepted resides in them. That’s why you are blind and you think my words are garbled, because you don’t understand. This is exactly what Jesus said and we who understand, understand why those who don’t understand don’t.

    Let me tell you why, read 2 Thessolonians about the delusion that God thinks is strong. And you know what? If God thinks something is strong, you better know fellow, that ALL men who deny Him will believe it.

    If you don’t believe in a creator then you live on your own, with no hope, no reason and nothing to give thanks for or to. This is a very sad existence but you still remain blind, content in the satisfaction that this is all there is, random chance. My friend you only lie to yourself and no other. Maths and science are far from random, they are exact. The same laws that govern the universe govern our hearts and our consciousness. These laws were set on place and are held in place by the Almighty. You seek the truth and you have decided to forsake Him so because then he utterly forsakes you do not call Him a dictator. You chose. End of. Dictators give you no chance, and from where I am standing, you’re still breathing, living in freedom and deciding that there is no God.

    Read all the Philosophy you want mate. Been there, done that, there are some batty individuals with some batty ideas out there. All are lost and there is only one truth. That’s the one that atheism hates the most, and it isn’t Islam.

  120. To believe or not to believe? Science or religion? Faith or self?
    Atheism is not a new development. Psalm 14:1, written by David around 1000 B.C., mentions atheism: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” Recent statistics show an increasing number of people claiming to be atheists, up to 10 percent of people worldwide. So why are more and more people becoming atheists? Is atheism truly the logical position atheists claim it to be?
    Why does atheism even exist? Why doesn’t God simply reveal Himself to people, proving that He exists? Surely if God would just appear, the thinking goes, everyone would believe in Him! The problem here is that it is not God’s desire to just convince people that He exists. It is God’s desire for people to believe in Him by faith (2 Peter 3:9) and accept by faith His gift of salvation (John 3:16). God clearly demonstrated His existence many times in the Old Testament (Genesis 6-9; Exodus 14:21-22; 1 Kings 18:19-31). Did the people believe that God exists? Yes. Did they turn from their evil ways and obey God? No. If a person is not willing to accept God’s existence by faith, then he/she is definitely not ready to accept Jesus Christ as Savior by faith (Ephesians 2:8-9). God’s desire is for people to become Christians, not just theists (those who believe God exists).

    The Bible tells us that God’s existence must be accepted by faith. Hebrews 11:6 declares, “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.” The Bible reminds us that we are blessed when we believe and trust in God by faith: “Then Jesus told him, ‘Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed’” (John 20:29).

    The existence of God must be accepted by faith, but this does not mean belief in God is illogical. There are many good arguments for the existence of God. The Bible teaches that God’s existence is clearly seen in the universe (Psalm 19:1-4), in nature (Romans 1:18-22), and in our own hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11). With all that said, the existence of God cannot be proven; it must be accepted by faith.

    At the same time, it takes just as much faith to believe in atheism. To make the absolute statement “God does not exist” is to make a claim of knowing absolutely everything there is to know about everything and of having been everywhere in the universe and having witnessed everything there is to be seen. Of course, no atheist would make these claims. However, that is essentially what they are claiming when they state that God absolutely does not exist. Atheists cannot prove that God does not, for example, live in the center of the sun, or beneath the clouds of Jupiter, or in some distant nebula. Since those places are beyond our capacity to observe, it cannot be proven that God does not exist. It takes just as much faith to be an atheist as it does to be a theist.

    Atheism cannot be proven, and God’s existence must be accepted by faith. Obviously, Christians believe strongly that God exists, and admit that God’s existence is a matter of faith. At the same time, we reject the idea that belief in God is illogical. We believe that God’s existence can be clearly seen, keenly sensed, and proven to be philosophically and scientifically necessary. “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world” (Psalm 19:1-4). – GQ

    In the end, it makes no sense to quote who does or does not believe. Why? Isn’t doing so just trying to state that your principles are the same as someone smarter or more famous than you? – is it really relevant to you to name someone prominent that has no more knowledge than you do (btw, re-read what Einstein’s position on God and the expanding universe)? Very simply, you either choose to have faith or you choose not to. You have chosen not to, and one day will have to accept that to the point to where you do not have to defend it, though I wonder if you will, for what are obvious reasons to me. I do not have to defend my faith, only embrace it. Isn’t naming famous atheists in the end, a superficial way to justify beliefs? If all those you listed were Christians, would your position be different? If Bono, Denzel Washington, Ard Lewis, Copernicus, Galileo, Isaac Newton, Tom Hanks, Bobby Bowden, C. S. Lewis or any of our presidents (except Grant and Monroe) were atheists instead of Christians change my opinion about Christianity? No, because my faith is in God, not in any man’s position.

  121. Again, I must put some issues clear. The most annoying of the critics that you have done to me refers to my supposed intention of justifying my beliefs just because some famous people believed so. This is absolutely false. I feel fortunate that I have understood that you cannot measure a person’s intelligence only on the basis of his/her religion or lack of it and don’t pretend to accuse me of being stupid enough to believe in something just because somebody else did. According to you, I have no right to admire an atheist human being because it means that I became atheist because of that, but you will never accept the accusation that you are believers just because you grew up in a christian culture and the admiration that you’ve been taught to keep towards saints (although this is very real, as you are following a tradition, but I can concede you a point. Maybe you decided to believe after an analysis of faith but if that’s the case I still can’t understand how you submit yourselves to the absurd claims of religion). By the way, some catholic saints like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas were no saints at all, they both were anti-semitic and misogynist and agreed with burning alive the heretics, but even so they are called saints.

    Second, I’m a little bit worried about the wring notions that you have the atheist view of life. One of you exposed the opinion (shared by many ones) that if you are a non-believer necessarily you will have no hope and no reason to be. Excuse me, but this is ridiculous, the nihilists are you. Everything depends on your view point. Human life can have as much meaning as you want to put into it. If I see as the highest aim of a person the prosecution of social progress and well-being of the majority as much as the development of one-self and the others in the intellectual, physical and moral aspect, I actually don’t need any more reason to be. We have a great meaning for ourselves but we can’t mean anything out of ourselves. When you make the sense of human life dependent of a God that is able to send us to the hell for not believing in him or making a blasphemy you take off the aim of our lives from us to put it into the hands of someone that considers himself our owner and the supreme judge with the right of condemning us. It is cruel, absurd, sadomasochistic, tyrannical. You have taken from us the only possible freedom that we still have in a determinist society to submit us to objectives that aren’t ours but god ones (even if he were a nice being it could be tolerable, but the own existence of a hell just disqualify him as a benevolent person and the reality we live in is incompatible with the idea of a merciful god, he is at the very best, indifferent). And if we aren’t the owners of our own lifes (because they belong to God) of what are we owners then? It appears that we don’t have choice for nothing and then we are nothing (except if you wanna choose by yourself and going to hell, according to believers).
    Now, let’s point something important. One of you said that if we do not accept him we are causing our own condemnation but we have the freedom of choice about this. There is a small detail on this. As I’ve been signaling, the Bible god establishes severe criteria for getting salvation and also a lot of reasons for going to hell (it is not necessary to be evil, just not believing in him or not being generous enough). If this is your concept of freedom, it’s like the analogy that once an atheist did: if a man menaces his girlfriend with a gun and tells her “do what I want or I’ll kill you” we call him a psychopath. But if it is God who says “do what I want or I’ll send you to the hell” we call it love. Nice thing!

    Furthermore, I’m going to warn you about the dangerous that is for yourselves to justify your beliefs with biblical quotes, specially from the Old Testament. In order to do so, you have to discriminate the different parts of the texts and omit the ones that are obviously cruel and absurd. You can find a lot of both things in the Genesis, Exodus, Judges and Leviticus, as for example, death sentences to the infidels and the ones who work on Sabbath, a man that prefers their daughters to be raped by a crowd than putting in risk the security of the men that God sent to him, the order of murdering a member of your family if he/she worships other gods, an old man that has to burn his own daughter in sacrifice (I’m talking about the story of Jephtah, don’t confuse it with one of Abraham and Isaac), the rules for trading slaves (allowed) and many others features. To adapt the Bible to nowadays cultural context you have to use your common sense and your own sense of morality and that proves that you can think by yourselves without absolute submission to a holy text. If there can be an objective absolute morality it is born from the interactions of multiple subjects in order to achieve the common good. Ethics appear when morality is submitted to reason, because morality changes according to the culture and historical context. Ethics are universal.

  122. Enjoy your human life then my friend and so will I. I’ll be glorifying God and giving thanks to Him while you glorify yourself.

    Take care and all the best.

  123. This will be my last post here, and as I do so I wish to make a couple of points as well. No one is attacking you, just asking questions because your communications are not clear to me. You listed and referenced famous atheist people on a site that is about famous atheists for your justifications, so why even go there.

    The above quote referenced was from a group of theologians and biblical scholars, as I am not qualified to “group together ” bible quotes. It does however address the issue of belief, of which you now attempt to blur the interpretation of. Also you are not accurate on several of your stated facts that you are using to justify your reasoning, so it tells me you are still looking for justification to support being an atheist, which I understand, as I once did too. No matter, you are going to do and feel what what you believe, and that is your right. God loves all his children, and as a former Christian turned atheist who then accepted faith over ego, I am not a nihilist, rather I just chose my path because it was far more rewarding than trying to justify a path that fell short of satisfaction, and one only left more questions.
    There are many sites that are filled with highly intelligent people that question or challenge the existence of God, far beyond the shallow interpretations of this one, that discuss science, determinism, elitism, evolution, technology, global warming, history, current interpretations of religion vs atheism or agnosticism, and in all of those, the dispute of the teachings or interpretations continue. There are others that challenge the accuracy and timing of the teachings, or former priests that lost their faith, or scientists who did not believe and now do because of their continued study, theologians, muslims, hinduists, buddhists who hold strong to their beliefs, and yet all come to the same conclusion, which is continued speculative interpretation to hold onto a belief. In the end, as stated, it comes down to faith and choice. It is that simple, regardless of how many ways someone to attempts to justify why.

  124. There are some issues I want to comment now. I haven’t answered yet to the questioning that without a god, many questions about the universe would remain without answer. There are two important things so sign here. First, if we cannot explain or understand something now it doesn’t mean that we will never be able to. Without explanation doesn’t involve unexplainable. One of you said that if you are an atheist you can’t answer who put the first spark in the universe that let to the big bang expansion. But the posture of a believer doesn’t explain the origin of verything either, as I would ask (I know this is non-sense) who put the first spark or life infusion inside god? The answer will have to be nobody, because he is (according to the theology) the only incausal being or what is the same thing, he is eternal because he contains his own origin. This is at least, the same absurd as thinking that the universe is eternal or contains inside itself its origin. We are arriving to an answer without answer and a cause without a cause. Then, someone could ask me: why can you be an atheist either? There is something important to point out and it is that I call myself an atheist because I’m a skeptical person that considers as the most probable the non-existence of god, although I cannot prove it, but all the attemps of believers to prove his existence have failed to be unquestionable and incontrovertible. And it’s necessary to understand that this is not the same as faith. Simply, every assumption is taken as false until the contrary is proven. Without evidence, nothing is certain. It’s just a prudent way of proceeding and thinking. It is a rule in science but doesn’t have to be seen as something exclusive of it (and please, understand that science is an ideal of objectiveness in the way we see the world, and it is NOT a religion, this is one of the most absurd claims I’ve ever heard).

    One of the above commenters said that atheism leads to a live of uncertainty without an answer. If the answer is to submit oneself to the pre-stablished thought and formulas of religions, then you are sying that the way to be happy is to renounce to free inquiry and to think by yourself. Uncertainty and doubt can be wonderful and inspiring (imagine how boring life would be if you knew everything) and you don’t have to suffer because you don’t know wheather there is something after death or not (I’m almost absoluetly sure that no, but if you bet everything to a religion and it is wrong, you will have gained only the pleasure of emotional satisfaction during this life. This could sound good but isn’t by itself a reason to believe in the truth of something and we don’t really need a religion).

    Finally, I can’t understand that someone told me that the historical facts I’ve mentioned before are false. Please read carefully the Bible (including the controversial parts), research about the history of the church and the thought of some saints as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas and you will realize of the truth.

  125. Emmanuel, you are all over the place, so help me understand what your position is. Have you read the Bible? The Torah? The Quran? Have you studies Eastern religions? What are your opinions truly based on? What are your beliefs? As far as your references…

    Thomas Aquinas the priest and philosopher – his views:
    – God is simple, without composition of parts, such as body and soul, or matter and form.
    – God is perfect, lacking nothing. That is, God is distinguished from other beings on account of God’s complete actuality. Thomas defined God as the ‘Ipse Actus Essendi subsistens,’ subsisting act of being.
    – God is infinite. That is, God is not finite in the ways that created beings are physically, intellectually, and emotionally limited. This infinity is to be distinguished from infinity of size and infinity of number.
    – God is immutable, incapable of change on the levels of God’s essence and character.
    – God is one, without diversification within God’s self. The unity of God is such that God’s essence is the same as God’s existence. In Thomas’s words, “in itself the proposition ‘God exists’ is necessarily true, for in it subject and predicate are the same.”

    St Augustine, who converted to Christianity after leaving the Catholic church? He helped create the separation of Protestants and Catholics.

    Einstein, who was not an atheist, later said that due to the fact the universe is expanding, there has to be a source. He stated:

    “I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth.” Your question [about God] is the most difficult in the world. It is not a question I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza’s Pantheism. I admire even more his contributions to modern thought. Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers, because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things.”

    Emmanuel, are you are saying that the structures, religions and laws created by man are what you do not accept? Just trying to understand.

  126. Well, the answer you are asking me will have to be quite long. This is only the first part of it.

    I’ll make a list of biblical quotes that any moral person would reject. Some of them are cruel (as I said before, I disagree with the necessity of a hell) and some others absurd, and for attacking this from the root, I’ll start with the gospel:

    Mark 3: 29-30 But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation: Because they said, He hath an unclean spirit.

    Mark 10: 23 And Jesus looked round about, and saith unto his disciples, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!

    Mark 16: 15-16 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.

    Mathew 5: 28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

    Mathew 6: 34 Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day [is] the evil thereof.

    Mathew 10: 34-36 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes [shall be] they of his own household.

    Mathew 18: 8-9 Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast [them] from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast [it] from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.

    Mathew 21: 19-20 And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away. And when the disciples saw [it,] they marvelled, saying, How soon is the fig tree withered away!

    Mathew 25: 41-43 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.

    Luke 14: 26 If any [man] come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

    Luke 22: 36 Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take [it,] and likewise [his] scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.

    John 2: 3-4 And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.

    John 15: 6 If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast [them] into the fire, and they are burned.

    Luke 8: 28-35 When he saw Jesus, he cried out, and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, [thou] Son of God most high? I beseech thee, torment me not. (For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For oftentimes it had caught him: and he was kept bound with chains and in fetters; and he brake the bands, and was driven of the devil into the wilderness.) And Jesus asked him, saying, What is thy name? And he said, Legion: because many devils were entered into him. And they besought him that he would not command them to go out into the deep. And there was there an herd of many swine feeding on the mountain: and they besought him that he would suffer them to enter into them. And he suffered them. Then went the devils out of the man, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the lake, and were choked. When they that fed [them] saw what was done, they fled, and went and told [it] in the city and in the country.

    NOW THE HOMOPHOBIC ONES:

    Romans 1: 24-28 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile
    affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in [their] knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;

    Corinthians 6: 9-10 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,

    ONE CLAIM AGAINST KNOWLEDGE AND ANOTHER ONE AGAINST SEX:

    I Corinthians 3:18-20 Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness. And again, The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.

    I Corinthians 7: 1-2 Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: [It is] good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, [to avoid] fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.

    THE SEXIST GOD:

    Romans 7: 2 For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to [her] husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of [her] husband.

    Ephesians 5: 21-24 Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so [let] the wives [be] to their own husbands in everything.

    I Corinthians 11: 8-9 For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.

    I Corinthians 11: 34-35 Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but [they are commanded] to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.

    I Timothy 2:11-15 Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.

  127. SECOND PART: THE EVIL OLD TESTAMENT

    OFFERING OF THE DAUGHTERS TO THE CROWD:

    Genesis 19: 4-9 But before they lay down, the men of the city,[even] the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter: And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where [are] the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them. And Lot went out at the door unto them, and shut the door after him, And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly. Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as [is] good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof.

    Leviticus 12: 1-5 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a woman have conceived seed, and born a man child: then she shall be unclean seven days; according to the days of the separation for her infirmity shall she be unclean. And in the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. And she shall then continue in the blood of her purifying three and thirty days; she shall touch no hallowed thing, nor come into the sanctuary, until the days of her purifying be fulfilled. But if she bear a maid child, then she shall be unclean two weeks, as in her separation: and she shall continue in the blood of her purifying threescore and six days.

    IN THIS CONTEXT, INFIRMITY, SEPARATION AND POLLUTION MEAN MENSTRUATION.

    Leviticus 15: 19-24 And if a woman have an issue, [and] her issue in her flesh be blood, she shall be put apart seven days: and whosoever toucheth her shall be unclean until the even. And every thing that she lieth upon in her separation shall be unclean: every thing also that she sitteth upon shall be unclean. And whosoever toucheth her bed shall wash his clothes, and bathe [himself] in water, and be unclean until the even. And whosoever toucheth any thing that she sat upon shall wash his clothes, and bathe [himself] in water, and be unclean until the even. And if it [be] on [her] bed, or on any thing whereon she sitteth, when he toucheth it, he shall be unclean until the even. And if any man lie with her at all, and her flowers be upon him, he shall be unclean seven days; and all the bed whereon he lieth [shall be] unclean.

    Leviticus 18: 19 Also thou shalt not approach unto a woman to uncover her nakedness, as long as she is put apart for her uncleanness.

    Leviticus 20:18 And if a man shall lie with a woman having her sickness, and shall uncover her nakedness; he hath discovered her fountain, and she hath uncovered the fountain of her blood: and both of them shall be cut off from among their people.

    Ezequiel 22: 10 In thee have they discovered their fathers’ nakedness: in thee have they humbled her that
    was set apart for pollution.

    TREATISE ON SLAVERY:

    Exodus 21: 1-6 Now these [are] the judgments which thou shalt set before them. If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master have given him a wife, and she have born him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out by himself. And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free: Then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an aul; and he shall serve him for ever.

    DAUGHTER SACRIFICE:

    Judges 11: 29-31 Then the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah, and he passed over Gilead, and Manasseh, and passed over Mizpeh of Gilead, and from Mizpeh of Gilead he passed over [unto] the children of Ammon. And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the LORD, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the LORD’S, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.

    Judges 11: 34-40 And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she [was his] only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter. And it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas, my daughter! thou hast brought me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me: for I have opened my mouth unto the LORD, and I cannot go back. And she said unto him, My father, [if] thou hast opened thy mouth unto the LORD, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as the LORD hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, [even] of the children of Ammon. And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows. And he said, Go. And he sent her away [for] two months: and she went with her companions, and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains. And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who did with her [according] to his vow which he had vowed: and she knew no man. And it was a custom in Israel, [That] the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year.

    SLAUGHTER

    Judges 21: 7-12 How shall we do for wives for them that remain, seeing we have sworn by the LORD that we will not give them of our daughters to wives? And they said, What one [is there] of the tribes of Israel that came not up to Mizpeh to the LORD? And, behold, there came none to the camp from Jabesh-gilead to the assembly. For the people were numbered, and, behold, [there were] none of the inhabitants of Jabesh gilead there. And the congregation sent thither twelve thousand men of the valiantest, and commanded them, saying, Go and smite the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead with the edge of the sword, with the women and the children. And this [is] the thing that ye shall do, Ye shall utterly destroy every male, and every woman that hath lain by man. And they found among the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead four hundred young virgins, that had known no man by lying with any male: and they brought them unto the camp to Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan.

    VIRGINITY OR DEATH:

    Deuteronomy 22: 13-21 If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her, And give occasions of speech against her, and bring up an evil name upon her, and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid: Then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth [the tokens of] the damsel’s virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate: And the damsel’s father shall say unto the elders, I gave my daughter unto this man to wife, and he hateth her; And, lo, he hath given occasions of speech [against her,] saying, I found not thy daughter a maid; and yet these [are the tokens of] my daughter’s virginity. And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city. And the elders of that city shall take that man and chastise him; And they shall amerce him in an hundred [shekels] of silver, and give [them] unto the father of the damsel, because he hath brought up an evil name upon a virgin of Israel: and she shall be his wife; he may not put her away all his days. But if this thing be true, [and the tokens of] virginity be not found for the damsel: Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father’s house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.

    WOMAN SEEN AS AN OBJECT:

    Exodus 20: 17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that [is] thy neighbour’s.

    DEATH PENALTY FOR APOSTASY

    Deuteronomy 13: 6-10 If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which [is] as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; [Namely,] of the gods of the people which [are] round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the [one] end of the earth even unto the [other] end of the earth; Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.

  128. You are wayaward seed my friend. Quoting scripture like the liar did in Matthew 4:5

    Jesus called, and his desciples followed. He chose.

    Thank you Lord for choosing me. I will always be humbled by your presence and I beg to lie prostrate before you and to worship you forever and forever and forever, The King, The Almighy, Son of the Heavenly Father.

    Do some research into Moloch, human sacrifice amongst the Greeks and imagine the world as it was 3500 years ago. God had to make his people, who were also fallen, somehow Holy. You are the one who is so clever no? As I’ve said before, this was the law. What law did the Egyptians and Mesopotamians follow? Where is it written?

    Are you homosexual?

  129. Well, well, you can read by yourselves in the King James version of the Bible (and any other). The third part of my answer in this one, about some saints:

    Clark, Elizabeth, Women and Religion: A Feminist Sourcebook of Christian Thought, New York, Harper & Row, 1977:

    “Saint Thomas Aquinas: “As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten; for the active power in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness according to the male sex. while the production of women comes from he defect in the active power; or from some material indisposition, or even some external influence, such as that of a south wind, which is moist as the philosopher Aristotle observed.”

    “Good order would have been wanting in the human family if some were not governed by others wiser than themselves. So by such a kind of subjection woman is naturally subject to man, because in men the discretion of reason predominates.”

    Saint Augustine declared, “Any woman who acts in such a way that she cannot give birth to as many children as she is capable of, makes herself guilty of that many murders.”

    “I don’t see what sort of help woman was created to provide man with, if one excludes procreation. If woman is not given to man for help in bearing children, for what help could she be? To till the earth together? If help were needed for that, man would have been a better help for man. The same goes for comfort in solitude. How much more pleasure is it for life and conversation when two friends live together than when a man and a woman cohabitate?”

    Saint John Chrysostom (344-407 A.D.): The synagogue is worse than a brothel…it is the den of scoundrels and the repair of wild beasts…the temple of demons devoted to idolatrous cults…the refuge of brigands and dabauchees, and the cavern of devils. It is a criminal assembly of Jews…a place of meeting for the assassins of Christ… a house worse than a drinking shop…a den of thieves, a house of ill fame, a dwelling of iniquity, the refuge of devils, a gulf and a abyss of perdition.”…”I would say the same things about their souls… As for me, I hate the synagogue…I hate the Jews for the same reason.

    From “The Roots of Christian Anti-Semitism” by Malcolm Hay

    St. Augustine (c. 354-430 A.D.), Confessions, 12.14:

    How hateful to me are the enemies of your Scripture! How I wish that you would slay them (the Jews) with your two-edged sword, so that there should be none to oppose your word! Gladly would I have them die to themselves and live to you!

    In his On the Governance of the Jews, St. Thomas Aquinas wrote:

    “The Jews should not be allowed to keep what they have obtained from others by usury; it were best that they were compelled to work so that they could earn their living instead of doing nothing but becoming avaricious.”

    THE FORMER IS A PROHIBITION FOR THE JEWS TO TRADE

    St. Thomas Aquinas: “It would be licit to hold Jews, because of the crimes, in perpetual servitude, and therefore the princes may regard the possessions of Jews as belonging to the State.”

    FINALLY I WILL SAY YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE HOMOSEXUAL TO UNDERSTAND THEY ARE HUMANS THAT HAVE RIGHTS. I HOPE THE REASONABLE PEOPLE WILL UNDERSTAND MY POINTS BUT ANYWAY, MY ANSWER IS ALSO TO BELIEVERS WHO DARED TO SAY I HAVE NO SUPPORT FOR MY POSITIONS, ALTHOUGH I KNOW THEY WILL NOT UNDERSTAND.

  130. I agree, gays do have rights here on earth. But they have no rights in the Kingdom of God.

    Let me tell you something mate, that excitement they get when they know what they do is wrong. It’s the same excitement I got when I slept with prostitutes and took drugs, when I stole things and beat people up … it’s rebellious, it’s naughty, it’s unnatural, it’s a kick you get. It’s like watching porn, you start off and it grows and it becomes habitual.

    What you chose to believe is your choice, but it will never change what the truth is, and everybody knows what that is deep down. Some are too proud, or to weak to face it, the cost is too high.

    Well, we make our choices and we deal with the consequences.

    I’ve been there and done that and I tell you as a man who has sinned more than most, there is only one way to stop and that is Jesus Christ. Amen.

  131. Before writing the fourth part of my answer, I’ll put some attention to your questionings.

    First, as one of you said that other cultures besides the Hebrews didn’t have any law put in text, I can tell him that he must study a little bit more of history. The Mesopotamians had the Hammurabi Code with the famous quote “eye per eye, tooth by tooth”. The hinduists have their holy text (the Mahabharata), and in China, the confucians had the Analects and so on. It has been difficult to recover the codes of the ancient Egipt, but they had the notion of a final judgement in which your destination was going to be decided on the basis of the weight of your heart.

    Second, the one who said that homosexuality leads to any kind of vices and therefore those people are excluded from heaven (and then, obviously damned to hell) I can tell you that this just isn’t true. Sexual orientation has nothing to deal with vices and it is not just a matter of excitement as doing something forbidden. Possibly, if you read a book called “Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit” by Jeannette Winterson, you will understand this better (she is a christian). I could give a huge list of famous wonderful persons that are homosexuals and do NOT delivered themselves to vices, but I can give you some of them: Jodie Foster, Sir Ian McKellen, Ellen DeGeneres and some others of the past as Oscar Wilde and Piotr Tchaikovsky (these two cases were specially tragic because of the homophobic society in which they lived, Tchaikovsky had to hide it during most of his life). If you were in drugs and other things and got out of it nice for you, but your case is not the one of everybody.

    Well, the fourth part of my answer is a brief explanation of why I don’t believe in the Coran (or Quran) either, and maybe you, believers, will agree with me at this point. Here are some violent quotes:
    Prophet, make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them. Hell shall be their home: an evil fate. (Koran 9:73)

    Believers, make war on the infidels who dwell around you. Deal firmly with them. Know that God is with the righteous. (Koran 9:123)

    The believers who stay at home—apart from those that suffer from a grave impediment—are not the equal of those who fight for the cause of God with their goods and their persons. God has given those that fight with their goods and their persons a higher rank than those who stay at home. God has promised all a good reward; but far richer is the recompense of those who fight for Him…. He that leaves his dwelling to fight for God and His apostle and is then overtaken by death, shall be rewarded by God. . . . The unbelievers are your inveterate enemies. (Koran 4:95-101)

    Let those who would exchange the life of this world for the hereafter, fight for the cause of God; whoever fights for the cause of God, whether he dies or triumphs, We shall richly reward him The true believers fight for the cause of God, but the infidels fight for the devil. Fight then against the friends of Satan…. Say: “Trifling are the pleasures of this life. The hereafter is better for those who would keep from evil. . . .” (Koran 4:74-78)

    Given this, the Coran has the same trouble as the Bible (it has some absurd parts that must be ignored in order to live in a civilized society). From once for all, STOP legitimating the hate through divine orders given in religious texts. I’m sick of watching so much hatred and intolerance due to religious reasons (but will never be quiet until somebody kills me). And await the fifth part of my answer (about my personal beliefs on morality and the universe).

  132. This will be the fifth and hopefully, last part of my answer to the believers.

    One of you said that my beliefs were not clear and maybe it was because of the brief space I had to explain, but anyway I have expressed the most important in my previous opinions. Just to let it clear, I’m not a nihilist nor a radical anarchist who proclaims to reject all the ideological constructions of mankind (this wouldn’t be even possible) but I DO reject dogmatism and fanaticism. I believe that our best and most beautiful creations in the field of the ideas as much as the practical work are the product of a collective effort based importantly on free inquiry, broad-mind and the use of critical and logical thought. I believe in freedom of speech and thought, in science (and curiosity) as the way to understand the universe, in equality of rights, in the search of collective benefit as the only way to get a real personal benefit (for this, it’s necessary to respect the differences) and the prosecution of human development in the intellectual, cultural, physical and moral aspects. I believe in democracy and a fair distribution of power (to me, this involves the disappearance of the actual system of political parties for one in which each one of the social sectors choose its representatives from THEIR OWN). I believe that workers must have power of deciding about the policies of the enterprises they work for (but I’m not a communist because I agree with the existence of private property).

    One of you said that the order that the universe seems to have and the magnitude of the human ignorance are clues of the existence of a god. Actually, there are no implications between both things. It is true that we are ignorant, but the impression that the universe gives to us can’t be used by itself as a proof of god’s existence. One of the theories about the origin of the universe is called the false vacuum fluctuation, according to which, many universes could have emerged from fluctuations in a falsely empty space. If it sounds non- sense, we must take into consideration that even if the big-bang theory is true (this is part of the famous Kalam cosmological argument used to “prove” the existence of god) it is not necessarily true that nothing existed before it. Then we had to prove that the nothing existed before this universe (this would be impossible, but if you believe in god you would have to think that he appeared from the nothing or that he is eternal). Other two theories are the loop theory (according to which the universe expands and collapses periodically and eternally) and the superstring theory, according to which the universe periodically collides with another universe. I know we can’t be sure of any of this as much as we can’t be sure of god. Isn’t this wonderful? We are free to admire and explore and learn without arriving never to a tedious and boring state of absolute knowledge.

    There is no reason to be afraid. Most possibly, hell doesn’t exist!

  133. I am known throughout the Philippines as the FATHER OF ATHEISM.
    Hopefully, one day soon, after I am dead and gone, I will be included on these pages. With all good wishes, Poch Suzara

  134. Does that include atheist fundamentalism? Like soviet atheism for instance?

    All in the same boat fellow.

  135. Everybody calm the fuck down. Atheists and Christians and anti-everythingists and anti-labelists. This is supposed to be a site, I have to assume from its format, to celebrate a lot of famous atheists. I love (most, admittedly not all) the words and minds and intelligence and humor and good-heartedness of most of the atheists listed hereon. I am not an atheist. Atheism is not, as some commentor here has insisted, strictly speaking a religion, nor even a philosophy. And the ‘a’ in atheism is not short for ‘anti, ‘ just means ‘no’ or ‘none.’ If you have a faith in Science, then perhaps though not necessarily Science qualifies as your religion. It might be one of the few religions that allows you to hold multiple faiths, though not in all public institutions. (that was a joke, yo) Btw, I am not a Science-thumping believer though I have a science educational background (science should be the first to admit it doesn’t know, might be wrong, searching for a better theory, a better description of reality based upon empirical evidence, which is its limitation not its right to pride and arrogance) nor am I a Christian, nor of Jewish faith or inheritance, nor do I follow any religion, organized nor disorganized. And if the site-master does not want to list the evil, murdering atheists of the world (at the very least the already mentioned Mao & Stalin & Pol Pot qualify), ya-hey, it’s his site, maybe he doesn’t want to celebrate them. Ais, I am not an atheist, but I defend your right not to have to decide nor advertise nor defend your beliefs, whichever and whatever they may be. It is easy to attack religion, and not easy to defend mistaken beliefs, religious, spiritual or otherwise. How did this become a referendum on Christianity? Because I happen to know based on years of general study [ and please do not googleize, wikipediaize, or internetize this discussion—the net does not make your blogging a scholarly work] as a scholar, leave it at that, don’t really give a shit if you need credentials and references [read my last note; I am not writing for a scholarly journal here], to a man, the Founding Dudes were theists of one stripe or another and mainly from the Judeo-Christian tradition, but being products of the Enlightenment, you are not going to find avowed Bible believing Christians either. The Declaration quote, “With a firm reliance on Divine Providence, we pledge our lives, our property, and our sacred honor” is eloquent, profound and moving enough. Some were Masons, for crying out loud; a group which began as Judeo-Christian. Now I can admit that I read and study scripture, follow and love the Father & Son as described there. And do not read into that; you do not know what I believe because you know what I read; I read the Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind too, but that doesn’t make me a Jaynist nor a believer in his neurologic theory, perhaps I just appreciate it as theory. See what I mean? I do not call myself a Christian, do not use the title ‘God’ because I studied Ancient History while an atheist for 40 years and am skeptical of its origin [it may not be derived from High German Gott-Good], and would ask those who do, cuz I know you’re tryin’, to seriously study the origins of the name ‘Christian’ and all things adopted from Roman and Greek origins, of ignoring the Father, ignoring His name and its meaning and significance, and calling the Son Jee-Zeus (there is no ‘J’ in Hebrew, and ‘Jewish’ is derived from the name Yahuda), a non-scriptural Trinity (proto-Greek), a non-scriptural Hell/Hades (proto-Greek). To hell with ‘hell.’ And who’s to say what heaven is, perhaps a freedom from the 4 to 11 dimensions which hold us captive. As for me and my house, we will love the Creator and everything he created, like the earth and other people, and keep applauding Science which is really just smart committed people trying to comprehend. Please stop hating what you don’t comprehend, whichever your ilk. Don’t assume you know {I try not to} and don’t force or insult others if you can help yourself, atheist or theist. There’s likely another shitstorm around the corner, so let’s try to help each other through it. Use your mind and energy for good as you determine it. And when you die, die with your arms, heart, and mind unbound. Seek truth whomever you are. These atheists listed here have done that each to their ability and I love them for it. That’s all I’m saying.

  136. @ J:
    I really appreciate your kindness and noble intentions, as much as your broad-minded actitude. I think you have defined very well the correct position of a skeptical, and unfortunately, many persons do not understand this need of tolerance. I suppose that your position is closer to a believer, although you question too the blind faith in science (it is defined as an ensemble of methods used to comprehend the nature of reality but can be seen as a conceptual ideal of objectiveness in order to know the cosmos as it really is), but with the unavoidable limitation that it depends on theory and when theory ignores something it becomes difficult to realize that it exists (this is when free curiosity can help more than the scientific method itself).

    I think that the two most tragic effects that religion has on people is that it makes them believe that they have the absolute reason and certainty on issues of which they just can’t and that it inspires hatred against others (one of the commenters dared to say that gay people don’t have rights in the kingdom of God (is this the idea of absolute perfect justice?). Believers defend the position of that catholic church is never wrong (even when they oppose to the use of contraceptives, assuming that they will be used only for lust and not by married people who don’t plan to have more children for a while?). It is sad that so many persons become so closed-minded.

    I repeat that I appreciate your comment, not matter if you believe in God. And I can see that you know a lot about the history of religion. It’s good to know that there are people in the world able to love others based on their actions more than their religious beliefs (I can feel a huge respect to Gandhi, however he was an hinduist, for example). I have had some moral dilemmas about the position that I must take towards religion. But I can see clearly two things: that as most of persons I know as much as most of my friends are believers I just cannot dare to stigmatize all those persons because they are not evil, so the real enemy is extremism in all its forms. Second, that as I reject religious totalistic claims I must distinguish between the ideology itself and the persons (victims?) that believe in them. The intolerance this causes is a tragedy but we must not become a part of it. Thank you again for your comment.

  137. @ Paul

    Well, fellow, a little time before I didn’t want to answer you, but your arrogance is really beyond limits.

    Some days ago you asked in a bully sarcastic way why did the atheist cross the road? The question itself is stupid, but assuming that you didn’t use any double sense, I could say that he did it just to know the another side. Or, if you meant, why did some of us return to religious beliefs, well, that’s very personal and maybe those persons just feel insecure and need to learn more things (I have serious and almost countless reasons to think that it makes much more sense to believe each one personally in his/her way without getting into the way of others than submitting to the ridiculous dogmas of a church).

    Second, once you said about yourself that you were inside drugs and prostitutes and other things. If Christianity was the only way to your narrow mind to get out of it, unfortunately it didn’t make you a respectful, tolerant or merciful person at all. You sound arrogant, cruel and sadistic. You said that homosexual don’t have rights in the kingdom of God and try to make laughter on skeptical persons that don’t dare to say they have an absolute certainty. This is not to me the adequate attitude of a real christian (and I tell you this because I know very well the basis of christianity, but unfortunately, as much as it can inspire mercy, it does the same with hate, sending so much people to hell according to their beliefs, but even so, hatred is not authorized explicitly in any part of the New Testament fellow, but don’t pretend to say now that you didn’t mean that after so much fire you have released).

    I actually don’t want to charge too much personal attacks to you, but considering the facts that you have said about yourself (if they were false, why did you say all that manure?) I have serious doubts about your capability of being rational and applying critical thinking, considering the intolerance you have expressed in your positions.

    Third, please stop daring to say that we are all fanatical people, like the old soviets. One atheist said that he rejects religious fundamentalism (a healthy position) and you dared to say that he is a fanatic. You cannot say this without any basis, you look like the real fanatic. You can’t submit politics to religion in a civilized secular nation, but maybe you don’t have the necessary culture to understand this. And please, learn from once it for all, that we aren’t all the same. Atheists are really diverse and we aren’t all communists nor marxist nor whatever. The only thing we have all in common is that we doubt seriously about the existence of a personal God (some dare to say they have the absolute certainty about this but I disagree with them. Maybe some atheist are intolerant but don’t count me nor the ones mentioned in this side among them, because most of my friends are believers and I don’t hate them at all, and the persons mentioned here know (or knew) to distinguish between opposing to an ideology and opposing to the people that believe it).

    Finally, I will remark, that I also feel worried about the concern of some atheists of leaving a kind of immortal legacy after their death or supporting their position on the basis that some famous people are atheist. It is good and fair to recognize others achievements, but also, we mustn’t make an obsession on finding famous atheist people as it were a necessity, because an ideology is not right or wrong on the fact of how many people belief in it or how powerful/famous or whatever they are. And, as Bertrand Russell said, we know that one day humanity will stop existing and we must take towards this the same serene attitude we assume to the death of oneself. Our existence will have a meaning while we define a noble objective in our lives which ones don’t have to be eternal (I would say fortunately). If we survive to this stage of evolution and live long enough as species to face the moment in which conditions on solar system become incompatible with life, hopefully our descendants will have enough maturity to admit this peacefully and giving themselves a painless end. To me, this doesn’t mean that we don’t have a reason to be. This is subjective and can give ourselves anyone we want. The atheists that live obsessed on the idea of fame, just need to get more mature and I hope they will become so.

  138. It seems to me that the main thrust of the quotations and humorous remarks of the famous atheists are simplifications, generalizations, and misunderstandings based upon hearsay or, no doubt sincere, cogitations based upon hearsay. After all, they are not philosophers and they are not theologians. I would love to see the great philosophers on this list, btw, such as Bertrand Russel, Nietsche, et al with their quotes and thoughts. Those would be fascinating and on point, I should think. As it is, it is certainly interesting and entertaining because they are bright and witty people, and even sometimes enlightening on general principles. But it is like scientists, for instance, writing outside of their fields. Dawkins, for instance, is an evolutionary biologist. So he’s like asking the Pope to wax eloquent about the Big Bang, say. He may have an opinion, and an eloquent one, but it will hardly be unbiased in the true sense of the word, and will likely be dismissable as self-serving spin. Having said that, I like the last two comments of Dawkins, about open minds with brains falling out and ‘God’ being a re-framing of the question rather than an answer to it. Those are intelligent and articulate postulations which redress perspective. Anytime you can reframe perspective in a debate, it is helpful; because everyone gets so polarized and entrenched in their thinking as a reaction to everyone else. I’d like to see more comments about specific quotations and their authors, rather than so much mudslinging from the respective poles. Here’s a question: would you go to a dentist to get your heart transplant? To a brilliant brain surgeon for a tooth extraction? You might only if your sole other options were a really kind-hearted florist and an exceptionally strong and philosophical janitor, or to do it your own self. Zappa, Twain and Carlin, for example, are all very funny and witty, because they are based upon misunderstanding and over-simplification. If you caricature someone or some concept, it is no longer meant to be a fair assessment; but it is preferable not to insult and offend the subject of the caricature or the believers in the concept. The world is incredibly divisive. Meaning humans. Our pre-frontal cortex is designed to discriminate, but why do we feel the need to divide and deride everyone based on that discrimination? Though, as I said before, I am not an atheist, I’ve always appreciated Christopher Hitchens for his wit and good humor. And his quote above, in my estimation, is right on target, true and right. I like it very much. And he went to his death, reportedly, with his atheist credentials intact to the end. An atheist may fear the physical and emotional sting of death, but, like Jews and true Christians [for lack of truer, but more unconventional terms], they need not fear an after-death.
    I believe the comment before referred to recent articles in Forbes and other publications attesting to the fact that Rachel Carson lied and purposely misinformed by omission, leading to the unwarranted ban on DDT, in turn leading to the deaths of estimated (but to my mind not fully substantiated) millions of Bangladeshi and others in Asia and the subcontinent, mostly children and pregnant mothers, by re-risen rates of malaria. That’s another, tangential, area for debate, I suppose.
    Bryson’s comment about Science’s most common genesis scenario being more interesting than his limited c0mprehension of Judeo-Christian genesis story is a common one. Note that it makes a lot of false assumptions based upon essentially hearsay. He is a science writer. So he can pick and choose which scientific scenario is most interesting to him, then compare and contrast it to whichever religious genesis story he finds least interesting. Hindii cosmo-genesis, for one example, is to some more fanciful and engaging than a Big Bang or the generally-acknowledged to be failed String Theory. I enjoyed String Theory, though I never could take it seriously. As an atheist once betrothed to a rabid atheist (as with Adams above and his ‘radical’ atheist term, it is the best description), I always believed that evolution was a failed theory, not adaptation certainly, but when it came to true specio-genesis, and was waiting and reading hopefully for a more robust and credible scientific theory to replace it…one I could sink my rational teeth into. Algebra, however, and to a lesser extent math in general through trig, calc, and number theory, is to me an elegant and logical language…perhaps the most elegant one that I know (as a former math major and linguistics postgrad, I have some foundation for saying so).
    Given more time, I would certainly comment on Nehru, Jordan, Penn and Randi. They all have quotes which bear commenting on.
    Thanks for reading, though. I must go take my meds.> kidding, yo. Sleep is the medication of the wise.

  139. B4Igo,
    @Emmanuel
    I appreciate your respectful and eloquent comments to all, very much so. And while I can agree with some but disagree with perhaps most of your estimations, I again really appreciate the respect and eloquence with which you make them. Bravo, sincerely.

    @Chris
    Keep on keeping on. I applaud your tenacity and pluck. Humility, perhaps, for you as for me, is a goal to take aim upon.

    @Paul
    Don’t fully know where you are coming from, but I think you have a good head on your shoulders. Don’t lose it. “It’s nicer to be nice to the nice.”
    “Good night, Wesley; sleep well. The universe will most likely kill you on the morrow.”

  140. Great list – must send this link around! Of course the Mark Twai made me laugh out loud.

    Mark Knopfler might be a nice addition to this list …

    …asks if Knopfler believes in fate.
    Knopfler responds:
    MK : “Well I don’t think you’re supposed to know. I don’t think you are supposed to know the answer to that question. I think what you’re supposed to do is say “I don’t know”. More and more things happen to me that seem to be more of a coincidence, more and more things happen where you’re tempted to think that things are mapped out and you’re tempted to think that there’s a connection between seemingly disparate events. You’re not suppose to know because if you knew that for sure then you’d say er.. you’d say well then “I believe in God” or whatever..”I believe in” er…and I think if you knew that for sure then it would spoil something. I don’t think that we ever will know. I don’t think we ever will know the answer to that question no matter how far science goes. No matter how… whether you know how the universe…think you know how the universe came about. I don’t think you’ll ever know. I don’t think you’re supposed to know.”

  141. Dear Michael
    I would like to suggest you to add Mr.E.V.Ramasamy to your list. We fondly call him as “Thanthai Periyar” in Tamilnadu, India

    His famous sayings about GOD are below
    There is no god
    There is no god at all
    He who invented god is a fool
    He who propagates god is a knave
    He who worships god is a primitive

    Few links to know more about him.
    http://www.uni-giessen.de/~gk1415/periyar.htm
    http://www.uni-giessen.de/~gk1415/revolutionary.htm
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periyar_E._V._Ramasamy
    http://periyar.madeinthoughts.com/
    http://www.periyar.org/
    http://www.thanthaiperiyar.org/home/denial-god/

  142. always i used to read smaller content which as well clear
    their motive, and that is also happening with this piece of writing which I am reading at this place.

  143. @Chris, you need to stop telling atheists that “science is [their] religion”. Atheism is completely independent of science.

    Religion is faith-based, i.e. belief despite the lack of any corroborating verifiable fact – often, sadly, even in the face of contradictory fact. An atheist (the word refers to “no god”, not “anti-god”) simply believes that there is nothing there to believe in: no deity/ies, no “supernatural forces”, no life after death. Atheists can’t “prove” their position any more than adherents of any religion can. (In a sense, agnostics – that word stems from “no knowledge” – are more rational than atheists :), since they are reserving judgement until solid proof is available one way or the other.)

    Science, in contrast to both religion and atheism, is based on observations of reality followed by the development of theories to explain those observations, in such a way that those theories can be tested, the results of testing can be reproduced (or fail to be reproduced) by others, and the theories can be revised according to the results. In this way, scientific theories iterate to reduce discrepancies between what the theories predict and what is observed in reality. Anyone who doesn’t follow these steps as objectively as possible, or provide a full factual explanation of how they got their results, is not doing science.

    One doesn’t “believe in” science, because it is based on fact and observed reality. Facts exist and reality happens regardless of one’s beliefs about anything. It is entirely possible for an atheist – like anyone else, including scientists with different ideas – not to accept the validity of a scientific theory; but their objections won’t be based on the principle that some supernatural being or force explains the observations instead.

    Note also that the vast majority of religious people worldwide accept the factual explanations and benefits provided by science on a routine basis, even if they don’t always realize it; for example, annual flu shots (evolution), electricity/automobiles/airplanes (physics), baking/brewing/medicines (chemistry), disease/nutrition/agriculture (biology), etc. etc. etc. All of these things operate regardless of religious belief or lack thereof. And even the most intransigent fundamentalists are not so blind to reality as to believe that the power of prayer will keep them alive every day even if they don’t eat, drink, sleep, stay warm, and so forth.

  144. @N M

    Thank you for the lecture. I agree that everyone is effected by science regardless of their beliefs. As an Agnostic person, I also agree that hedging your bet is the best way to go. However, I have never met an Atheist that believes in majic. That is too say, even an Atheist believes there was a beginning in time when the universe was created. The difference is they believe that forces of science not a God(s) created the universe. Therefore, it is science that is their God.

    It is perverse for a person to say, “there is no God.” There is no proof of a lack there of. However, a person who believes relies on faith and that is proof enough.

    Ironically, Atheists like to preach a lack of a God, when really they should be saying nothing.

  145. So, it’s just fine to preach that there *is* a god, but it’s perverse to preach that there is not? If you truly feel that, then I don’t think you’re as agnostic as you claim to be. Atheism is basically faith that there is no god since, as I also pointed out, there is no proof of that (“absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”). But how is that somehow worse than having faith that there is?

    As for the origin of the universe, why do you insist that it can only be a religious event? We have massive amounts of observed evidence consistent with the scientific theory of the Big Bang. Not knowing how the initial singularity came to be doesn’t make that pre-Big Bang state religious in nature.

    Furthermore, there are many religious people who do not believe that their god(s) literally created the universe. Many Christians, for example, read Genesis as allegory rather than fact, and accept the Big Bang theory as far as it goes. Are you going to say that these people have two religions? I think they would disagree.

  146. You are flying off of the rails. It makes sense to preach if you believe. If you do not there should be nothing to talk about. It would be like me telling a basketball player how to shoot a jump shot. I have done it but I am not an expert. Therefore, there is no reason for my opinion. It is the same for an Atheist. If you do not believe there is nothing to talk about. Typically, an Atheist only wants to be heard because they want people know there is no God but they do not really know, so it is pointless.

    You are wrong when you say, “Atheism is basically faith that there is no god.” It is an absolute belief that there is no God. As you said, “no one really knows.”

    I do not claim to know the origin of the universe. I do know the big bang theory is a false premise. It is impossible for something to come from nothing. If a person of faith believes in “big bang” it does not mean they have two religions. It just means they are confused.

    People of faith do not have to shut the door to science and you are right, most do not. However, Atheists can only hold onto science since the believe nothing else exists. That seems very narrow minded for people who claim to be reasoned. Frankly, Atheism is nothing more than arrogance. It is also funny that most Atheists believe in Global Warming. I wonder if they also believe in the Tooth Fairy?

  147. Chris makes a good point toward atheist use of “evidence” a term even faster and looser than the term “empirical evidence” since atheists and theists both point to the “evidence.” When my teenage son was three and four, he had “empirical evidence” of the Ishtar (Easter) bunny, because of which he could not be talked nor reasoned out of his belief. Not only did a basketful of candy appear on Ishtar Sunday morning, but for days afterward he would leave it on the bottom of the stairs before going up to bed, and it would be “refreshed” with candy the next morning until all the Ishtar candy hidden in the cupboard was used up. Thereby, his older and wiser brothers of seven and ten years could not talk him out of his belief. They in fact gave up their argument in favor of leaving their own baskets on the stairs for refreshment. Undoubtedly, both atheists and theists (and I suppose agnostics too) will see their own side of the argument supported by this story.

  148. One could just as accurately say, “Typically, a Baptist/Mormon/etc. only wants to be heard because they want people know there is a God but they do not really know, so it is pointless.” It’s equally silly to preach either way since both positions are founded on belief. And perhaps you haven’t noticed, but many atheists, especially in the US, are pretty quiet about their beliefs.

    Can you please give an example of a prominent atheist (as opposed to some obscure random wackjob) who claimed to have actual evidence that there is no god? The closest I’ve seen anyone come to that are neuroscience studies of brain activity, which are pretty new and not well tested yet. Otherwise, in all my reading, they say only that there is no credible evidence to prove the opposite, which is not the same thing.

    “Atheists can only hold onto science since the [sic] believe nothing else exists.” Oh, please. Atheists hold onto observed reality, not science. Science is simply a big set of tools that can be used to describe, explain, and learn more about that reality.

    “I do know the big bang theory is a false premise.” Really? And how exactly do you “know” this? There are physical, measurable remnants of the Big Bang, and the theory fits observed reality very well indeed – better than existing particle theory works. Just because you don’t understand the theory – and at this point I don’t think anyone understands how all the mass/energy of the Universe came to be – doesn’t make it impossible. You are free to believe, or not believe, whatever you wish. But you cannot claim to *know* it’s false unless you can demonstrate that.

    You might find this interesting reading: http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2012/10/15/what-happened-before-the-big-bang/

  149. NM, It is polar opposites. “a Baptist/Mormon” has something they believe in and that is what they proselytize. An Atheist believes of nothing. Therefore, they have nothing to proselytize.

    “many atheists, especially in the US, are pretty quiet about their beliefs”
    They should be quiet, that is the point. The loudest like Bill Maher are destructive. Nobody is going to claim they have “actual evidence that there is no god.” Thet do not have to. The point is there is not proof either way. It is fine not to believe, the problem is most people are absolute in their belief.

    “observed reality”
    I am laughing too hard…to type.

    It is very easy to prove the so called “Big Bang Theory” is a false premise. It is simple math. It is impossible to create something from nothing.

  150. Let me add, I say that science is the Atheist’s God because Atheists believe they have the answers and the rest of us are just stupid.

  151. I still don’t see how science becomes a religion. And there’s no shortage of religious people who believe they have the answers and the rest of us – meaning anyone who doesn’t believe the same things as they do – are not just stupid but actually bad people who are doomed to Hell as well.

    People who believe in the existence of God try all the time to convince others that they’re right. Your argument that the people who don’t believe shouldn’t try to convince anyone of their position is complete nonsense. Next you’ll be saying that anyone who tries to convince their child that the Easter Bunny isn’t real should just shut up, too. :}

    Furthermore, if you’re concerned about destructiveness, you should check out the loudmouths on the “godly” side of the fence. Far more damaging.

    Oh, and your “simple math” won’t get you anywhere near disproving the Big Bang theory. I’m not surprised you find the concept of reality laughable.

  152. NM, the reality is no one knows. I don’t, you don’t nor does anyone else. If a person believes in God, they have faith. Atheists have nothing. It does not strengthen your argument to say “reality,” when the reality is you do not know.

    Please explain how it is possible to get something from nothing.

    P.S. Atheism has been responsible for far more deaths than religion.

  153. Belief without proof is the definition of faith. Atheists have this too, as you’ve said yourself.

    The Big Bang theory doesn’t cover where the matter came from to start with. It only covers what happened to the universe when the process started, and there is ample evidence that it did happen that way. Here is a short summary about the concepts of the theory and some common misconceptions that may help to answer your question: http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/bb_concepts.html

    As for the origins, nobody knows for certain. But that doesn’t mean it must have been created by someone/something, as so many people fall back on. It only means that we don’t have a natural explanation for it yet. As an agnostic, you should be comfortable with that situation. 🙂

    “Atheism has been responsible for far more deaths than religion.” Neutral sources, please. Individuals should only be included in the petpetrator tallies – on either side – if they caused deaths for reasons connected with their atheism/religion, not simply because they were insane megalomaniacs.

  154. There is no proof what so ever. It is only theory. Like a science fiction movie. It sounds good because you want to believe it. My mother believes in ghosts and aliens. To her they exist because she believes. In reality, there is no proof.

    Where did the matter come from? What was the starting point? How did something come from nothing? I do not consider NASA to be credible. After all, they are currently pushing false claims that Global Warming is real.

    As an Agnostic, I am comfortable with the idea that I do not have the answers. I do not try to pretend I do. All I am saying is, The God side makes more sense. At least until someone can prove them wrong.

    I will say this one more time, people that believe in God have faith. That is enough for them. People who are Atheist have nothing. Yet, their beliefs system is just as strong as a person of faith. To me that is counter productive. It is like living in a fantasy.

    Start with Margret Sanger. She did not invent abortion, she acted on her belief that eugenics was a way to purify the world. She also wanted to eradicate the black community and she was not alone.

    Mao Zedong is responsible for 40 million deaths. Joseph Stalin has 20 million. Both men were Atheists and and were not acting alone.

    These numbers pale in comparison to liberals like Rachel Carson. This disgusting Athiest and the people that helped her were responsible for 3.5 billion deaths and counting. I understand that many of the people that helped her murder mostly African babies were religous but most were Atheists and all were liberals.

  155. Big Bang theory: I did not say there was proof. I said there was a lot of evidence to support it. In scientific terms, even the fact that you don’t float off into space is not “proof” that the theory of gravitation is correct.

    Your examples of how atheism has been responsible for huge numbers of deaths are clichéd and factually inaccurate.

    First, although Margaret Sanger was racist (as were many people at the time, sadly), she did not “want to eradicate the black community”, and was opposed to abortion herself; it wasn’t offered as a tool of family planning until after her death. Her atheism is completely irrelevant to any of this.

    Second, neither Stalin nor Mao did the terrible things they did *because* they were atheists; they just happened to *be* atheists – as well as being psychopaths (no lock on that by atheists). It’s not even clear that Stalin was actually atheist, and his persecution of Christians may have been partly a backlash against physical abuse by priests in childhood (see http://freethoughtnation.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=334%3Awere-stalin-hitler-and-pol-pot-atheists). Only a tiny number of these Communist dictators’ victims were murdered simply because they were religious; the vast majority were killed for political or ideological reasons. (The same goes for Pol Pot, who might not have been truly atheist, either.)

    As for Rachel Carson – wow, do you cross-check *anything* you read? Yes, her successful advocacy against DDT ultimately allowed malaria to spread more widely, but the “3 billion deaths” figure is bogus. That number comes from Dr. William Bowers, who in 1986 said it was the number of lives actually saved from malaria by DDT to that point. But DDT has continued to be used in some countries to control disease, and even conservatively-biased articles put the supposed “Carson” toll at “tens of millions”. (See http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2012/09/05/rachel-carsons-deadly-fantasies/ and the Gordon Edwards article it links to.) This is still an appalling outcome, of course, but the magnitude of the impact was not predictable in 1962 and she died before any restrictions were actually implemented. Carson was wrong about some things, but lumping her in with the likes of Stalin and Mao just because she was an atheist is absurd.

    Now, let’s summarize some of the points you’ve made over the past couple of days:

    1. The Big Bang theory is science fiction, comparable to ghosts and aliens.

    2. “The God side makes more sense.”

    3. Atheists are disgusting, racist liberals living in a fantasy, and should just keep quiet because they have nothing to proselytize about.

    4. These bad people were atheists, therefore their evil deeds must be due to atheism.

    5. Rachel Carson murdered “billions” with her “mostly atheist” helpers.

    6. “Global Warming”, like the Tooth Fairy, is a lie, and NASA is pushing it. (You left out the word “conspiracy”.)

    ‘Nuff said.

  156. The Big Bang theory is mathmatically impossible.

    Margret Sanger created the Negro Project in order to sterilize black women and limit the amount of births. She wanted to play God because she believed man controlled man.

    “Only a tiny number of these Communist dictators’ victims were murdered simply because they were religious”

    This is not true; Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Lenin and Mao all killed religious figures in an attempt to vanquish religion. All but Hitler and Mao wanted a Godless society. Mao allowed government santioned religion and Hitler realized he could not stop people from religion so he decided he could control it. He murdered over 2,000 priests and burned down most of the Catholic Churches. Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were all commited Atheists. It is unclear if Hitler and Lenin were Atheists but since they both went out of their way to murder as many clergy as possible it is safe to assume they were.

    You have to look at the big picture. Rachel Carson by herself was not responsible for all the deaths. She wrote the book Silent Spring that led to the ban of DDT. Rachel, like many of the people behind the ban saw it as a way to control population. They used idiots like JFK to force the ban. Not all killers pull the trigger. Some hatch plans and then allow others to follow through. I misspoke, 3.5 billion people have contracted malaria. Only a few 100 million have died. My bad.

    While your summary is not quite accurate, it is close. I never said, “Atheists are disgusting, racist liberals living in a fantasy.” I also did not say that Atheism in itself commited murders. It is however, the catalyst for most government santioned murders. You could make the argument that it is not Atheism but secularism but then you are just splitting hairs. I never said that NASA is pushing GW. However, governments are. That does not change the fact that it does not exist. Finally, Atheists are free to say anything they like. It is just that there is no point in saying anything.

  157. Re NASA and the adjectives you used to describe atheists: I took your words right off this page. They’re all up there in black and white. (E.g. “I do not consider NASA to be credible. After all, they are currently pushing false claims that Global Warming is real.”)

    Re Sanger and Carson duping and manipulating people into helping them achieve their ultimate goal of controlling black populations: this is just delusional.

    I asked for examples where atheism was responsible for large numbers of deaths. You trotted out the standard set of mass murderers who were atheists, but did not demonstrate that they committed those murders because of their atheism. Communist dictators primarily wanted to vanquish religious leaders not because they were religious per se, but because they threatened the dictators’ power by competing with the “state” for the people’s allegiance. This isn’t atheism at work, it’s despotism. Note that they killed huge numbers of other people they considered threats as well, even though those were of no religious significance. It was all the same to them. Religious dictators – and secular dictators who were themselves believers but cared more about power and/or ideology – have also eliminated rivals and others for exactly the same reason even when their religious beliefs were not in conflict. (Some popes and ayatollahs come to mind.) Another atheist dictator, Napoleon Bonaparte, actually ended persecution of religious figures when he came into power because he felt that having them around kept the people happy, like a baby’s pacifier. Ironically, that action *can* be attributed to his atheism because it stemmed from his contempt for those who believed in God.

    The bottom line is that your insistence that atheism offers nothing to hold onto or proselytize is not consistent with your claim that it is also a catalyst powerful enough for something requiring such steely motivation, assertion of authority, and disregard of conscience as mass murder.

  158. You took my words out of context. This is what I said: “These numbers pale in comparison to liberals like Rachel Carson. This disgusting Athiest and the people that helped her.” Notice I called Rachel and the people that helped her, disgusting. I am not saying all Atheists are disgusting but anyone that supports population control and acts on it, is disgusting.

    As far as NASA is concerned, they are a department within the government and function as a tool for the government. Therefore, they are not credible.

    Sanger and Carson did not have to “manipulate people into helping them.” All they had too do is put forth a plan and other like minded people would act upon it. They both had the same things in common. That is, they believed in population control. They were no different than Hitler. If you notice I did not metion Hitler because no one knows if he was an Atheists. I only mentioned known Atheists.

    You do not catch on very quickly. I only mentioned Mao and Stalin because both despised religion. In the case of Mao, he allowed santioned religion so he could control it. Stalin made barred all religion. Again, I ony mentioned known Atheists that acted on their Atheism. While Pol Pot was Atheist, he did not care if churches existed. He went after the middle class, doctors and lawyers. All of these guys pale in comparison to Sanger and Carson. Both women believed in population control and acted on it. They were not alone. There were thousands of people that helped. Many are religious but most were/are dupes that do not realize what is going on.

    There are still a lot of people advocating population control; Sir David Attenborough (Atheist), Paul Ehrlich (Atheist), Dave Foreman (Atheist), Ted Turner (Atheist), need I keep going?

    Atheism is simply a tool some people use to justify mass murder. That does not mean that all Atheist are mass murders. It also is not all inclusive. There are plenty of religious mass murderers. I said, “Atheism has been responsible for far more deaths than religion.” That is too say, far more deaths occurred at the hands of Atheists then from those who are religious.

    You are an Atheist so you want to feel relevant. You want to believe you have something to share with people but you literally have nothing. My guess is you were raised a Catholic and turned your back on the church.

  159. You’re attributing an *extreme* hidden agenda to Carson, even though she died several years before her book was used to support that agenda (and it was only ever used for that purpose by a very small faction, with no indication I can find anywhere that she was ever part of it).

    Certainly Sanger believed in population control: *voluntary* population control. I hope you understand that important distinction. There is absolutely nothing wrong with individuals *choosing* to prevent their own unwanted pregnancies, and Sanger was instrumental in making birth control widely available to women in the US, especially the most severely disadvantage; but as I pointed out before, she herself opposed abortion, and she did not agree with forced sterilization or forced contraception either. Nor are any of the men you list actually advocating that; three of them specifically refer to *voluntary* population controls, while as far as I can determine, Dave Foreman has said nothing more than that the planet is unsustainably overpopulated – which should be clear to anyone who stops to think about it – but acknowledging that fact doesn’t mean they want to go out and forcibly fix the problem (although Paul Ehrlich has discussed the logistics).

    Of course, it is not only atheists who advocate making reliable, affordable contraception available worldwide without coercion or deterrent; but if atheists are a higher fraction of such advocates than in the population overall, maybe it’s because they don’t have to defy a religious authority just to speak out about it, or go against what they believe to be the dictates of their deity.

    You say,
    “Atheism has been responsible for far more deaths than religion.
    That is too say, far more deaths occurred at the hands of Atheists
    then from those who are religious.”
    Whether these statements are even correct is debatable, since people have been killing for religious reasons for thousands of years; but they are *not* equivalent. The first one focuses on the lack of religious belief as motivation for killing – which is very much what matters here – while the other takes note only of a single personal characteristic that is just one of many potential factors that may affect someone’s choices. I asked you for examples of the former, you have given me only the latter. If you can’t find any examples to justify your original statement about *atheism*, as opposed to *atheists*, or to support your claim that “Atheism is simply a tool some people use to justify mass murder”, just say so and be done.

    And here’s another irony: until the 20th century it wasn’t even possible for a single tyrant of any persuasion to kill millions of people in such brief periods of time. Only increasing population density has created that potential.

    “You are an Atheist so you want to feel relevant.” I don’t believe I ever stated whether I was atheist or otherwise. And given what you wrote earlier about not telling a basketball player how to play because you aren’t one, this incredibly rude remark is also hypocritical.

    I started off here because I found your arguments about atheism and science-as-religion made no sense, and I wanted to try to clarify the factual errors and inconsistencies (drawn from as-yet-unidentified sources). Not only do I still find your arguments illogical and incomplete, you’ve now progressed to declarations like “[Carson and Sanger] were no different than Hitler.” You’re just going further out in left field with every post.

  160. Rachel Carson’s agenda was not hidden. She and many others were open about what they wanted. JFK was a useful idiot that helped them get what they wanted and Rachel was still alive when that happened. You should do a little more research.

    Sanger believe in involuntary population control. She wanted to sterilize poor minorities and believed the “State” had a right to control who has children. Her thinking was a lot like Hitler. In fact she was 20 years ahead of him. She did not oppose abortion but she was affected by woman who were having illegal abortions. She did not try to change the law. It is not known if Planned Parenthood was performing abortions in the 20’s, it is only an assumption they were not.

    All four of the men I named believe the “State” has a right to control population control. That is not voluntary. Obama and Boxer want to kill babies after they are born. They both claim to be religious, so what?

    Do you know what a useful idiot is? Very few people murder for a single reason. If you are defending yourself or robbing a bank and someone dies, it is usually because of a single reason. If you are a mass murderer you may have a thousand reasons to kill. I am only pointing out mass murderers that are Atheists. Carson and Sanger believe killing is alright because the “State” gets to decide who lives and who dies. Both women held their views because of their Atheism.

    Are you saying you are not an Atheist?

    Actually, I would say Carson and Sanger were worse than Hitler.

  161. Did lots of research. Found nothing credible (in some cases nothing at all) to substantiate your claims. Sources or we’re done.

  162. @Chris

    I don’t want to be too soft with you, but I will start saying that it has been difficult to me to understand what your position is.
    First, if finally you are starting to admit that atheism itself is not a cause for mass murder, good for you, but I still think that your vision of history is severely biased. You insist in mentioning the case of mass murderers such as Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot, and as someone pointed out, those massive slaughters were possible because of the higher population and more efficient methods for mass killing. I know it is not a very wise strategy to argue with ad hominem arguments accusing the another side of crimes that were not actually made because of his position, but let me remind you of the thousands (never counted) of people that were killed during the Crusades, fighting for RELIGIOUS reasons, the burning of innocent people accused of witchcraft, as well as the heretics, and the imprisonment of Galileo inside his house during the rest of his life for denying that the Earth was the center of the universe. And remember also the corrupted that some popes like Innocent VIII, Alexander III or John XXI were.

    You can tell me and actually you were right, that some modern catholic dictators such as Mussolini, Hitler, Fulgencio Batista and Augusto Pinochet didn’t kill millions of people because they were catholic but it is NOT true either that the dictators you mentioned killed because they were atheists, political ambitions of men are NOT justified by atheism, as this one is only the refusal to submit yourself to the supposed dictates of an omniscient deity and modern atheism is based on rational arguments instead of a stupid wish of doing all kind of abuses you want, please, stop establishing false causes associating atheism with the lack of respect to human dignity. From Socrates to Dawkins, passing through Epicurus, Ludwig Feuerbach, Friederich Engels, Bertrand Russell, Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, Katharine Hepburn, Diego Rivera, NO ONE of them did anything offensive to human dignity and were and are very concerned about the progress of mankind and I mention those cases because they are among the greatest ones.

    I really think you are insulting the memory of Rachel Carson. She denounced the use of DDT because it is poisonous to the environment and it was killing the birds by thousand (after that, we also realized that it is harmful for humans and it has caused cases of sterility in many workers of the third world), we have to take into consideration that we are not the only species on the Earth and if it was poisonous we had to stop using it, you cannot argue that it was worse to allow parasites as Plasmodium to spread with the interruption on its use, because its use was dangerous and it has been illegally used in many underdeveloped countries. If you want me to believe that she agreed with involuntary population control, please give me references, but even so, if true, doesn’t make her comparable to Hitler, you are just insulting her in a few serious way.

  163. @ Emmanuel

    The history of man is loaded with mass murders. People have murdered in the name of religion and vice versa. Too say, that anyone kills for a single reason is ridiculous. However, to ignore reasons because it does not fit your narrative is foolish. You want to pretend like Atheism is ammune from criticism. It is like you believe you are virtuous, you are not. Atheism is only one of many reasons people kill. That does not mean all Atheists are killers.

    The Crucades started as a land grab, nothing more.

    Hitler started out Catholic but was not later in life. You are merely whitewashing history to fit your narrative.

    Like I said, not all Atheists kill. However, plenty of Atheists have murdered because they believed that man controls man. Many like Carson and Sanger believe that governments can control who lives and who dies. Call it a God complex if you want.

    Saying that DDT was killing birds is a flat out lie. Do some research. Carson knew that DDT was saving human life and pushed for its ban. To people like Carson, life is expendable. You have no idea what you are talking about. It is a fact that DDT is harmless to humans and Carson knew that. Over 100 million people have died because of the ban of DDT and that number is conservative. I am sure if your family and friends were contracting and dying from malaria you would strike a different tone. Carson, Ehrlich and all the useful idiots that were responsible for the ban were far worse than Hitler. She was a despicable person.

    I am just curious, do you support forced abortion? Do you believe birds are more important then humans?

  164. @Chris

    As I said, if you want me to believe that Rachel Carson supported forced abortion, you have to give me references. She was an ecologist and concerned mostly on environment. Let me tell you that if you knew something of toxicology, you would know that DDT is harmful to humans and it remains during decades in soil, and causes sterility, please, study!

    I didn’t say that atheism is exempt from critics but you are falling again into the mistake of confusing the critics to the person (the atheist) with the critics to the philosophy (atheism). This last one is only the refusal to submit yourself to an alleged omniscient deity, the rest are the personal moral and political beliefs that vary according to the atheist but aren’t part of atheism itself.

    And please, admit that the Crusades had a religious background because they were fought in order to get the holy land. If it weren’t for that connotation, nothing had happened. I’m starting to think that your vision of history is determined by prejudice.

  165. @ Emmanuel

    I did not say Rachel Carson supported forced abortion. What she did is far worse. She killed people using false claims about DDT. Humans can digest DDT with little or no effects. It is virtually harmless to humans. Carson knew this but was worried more about population growth than human life. That is what liberals do. They say they care about the poor but the poor is expendable if it suits their cause. While it is true that many of the people that were involved with the ban were religious, she was an Atheist. That is the point of this website.

    I understand that Atheism is not a catalyst to murder. I am only pointing out Atheists that are also mass murderers.

    Of course, the Crusades were about religion but the fight was mainly about land. Like I have said, most mass murderers have several reasons for what they do.

  166. As Emmanuel pointed out, had the land in question not been holy to their religion, European Christians would never have bothered trying to take it. Jerusalem was 2000 miles away, took months of hard and dangerous travel to get to (two *years* for the First Crusade), and had no value to them otherwise. Saying that the Crusades “started as a land grab, nothing more” is disingenuous to say the least.

    Still no sources (of any kind, let alone credible) for your other claims.

  167. NM, you are a fool. You can believe that all Atheists are free of wrong doing. You can believe what you want. You cannot change history.

  168. Chris, besides insulting me (again), you are now putting words in my mouth.

    I have never at any point said *atheists* were perfect people who never do anything wrong. That would be even more ridiculous than your claims. Nobody can go through life without doing something morally/ethically wrong at some level, whatever their beliefs and whatever societal or religious rules they may be bound by.

    I have, however, said that your examples do not show *atheism* resulting in horrific actions. And they don’t. Your reluctance to acknowledge that distinction doesn’t make it go away.

    Since you apparently would rather sling insults than provide the sources on which you base your outrageous claims, don’t be surprised that with every post your credibility is dropping.

  169. So there was this one time I read this blog and thought “OOH INTERESTING” so I subscribed… for the first few hundred emails updating me of comments it was cool but now i want out and cannot figure out how to unsubscribe.

    Athiest since you are more intelligent than i can you help me please?

    🙂

  170. NM, you refuse to accept what I am saying because of your bias. I am not saying Atheism caused anyone to do anything. What I am doing is pointing out is that Atheists are capable of committing mass murder.

    You refusal to aknowledge the truth about Carson and Sanger hurts your credibility not mine.

  171. “I am not saying Atheism caused anyone to do anything.”

    So you didn’t write the P.S. in comment #186?

    Simply repeating that you speak truth about Carson and Sanger doesn’t make it so. Provide your sources.

  172. @Skyler: I don’t know if you’re addressing me, but underneath the “Leave a Comment” text box is a link saying “Manage your subscriptions”. That’s probably what you need to get off the discussion and/or change the notifications. (I subscribed to this comment thread, but only ever saw one initial email about followups. I see now that my email provider helpfully filed all the others as spam.)

  173. @ NM

    I have already addressed this. Atheists have murdered more people than religious people in terms of mass murder. I will not repeat myself anymore.

    I gave you Sanger and Carson in their own words. I cannot do any better then that.

  174. Pinochet was a Catholic; is Catholicism therefore responsible for everyone he caused to be murdered? Tojo Hideki was Shinto; is Shintoism responsible for the Nanking Massacre, the Bataan Death March, and the other atrocities Tojo initiated? If you insist on conflating atheism with atheists, then you must do the same with these and all other instances of religious people doing bad things for non-religious reasons.

    *You* made the statement about atheism in comment #186 that I have been trying to get you to substantiate ever since. The fact that someone is atheist is irrelevant if it isn’t the motivation for their actions. Without that, it’s just as irrelevant as, say, the person’s age, or height, or singing voice, or which hand they write with, or any other characteristic if it doesn’t drive the action in question.

    “I gave you Sanger and Carson in their own words.” If that’s true, you should have no trouble pointing me to one place – one single place – where Carson herself said DDT should be banned because it was saving too many human lives.

  175. @ chris

    By last, I will signal briefly why your arguments just cannot have support.

    First, you argue that atheists have caused more deaths than anyone else in history as it were en evidence of that atheism is somehow evil. This falls into two kinds of falacies: false cause and ad hominem argument. The first one, because those attitudes and crimes were not inspired by atheism itself, but for political ambitions that were allowed to manifest due to concentration of power and lack of ethics. Talking about death is not a funny issue, but consider that some catholics like Mussolini, Hitler, Pinochet and Batista were also criminals but they weren’t so because they were catholic, they were corrupted. If we talk in terms of evilness and abuse of power, no institution has been able to express them during more time than Catholic Church that had all the Middle Ages (more than a thousand years) to submit the western world and murder millions through the inquisition, death sentences for heressy and witchcraft and the Crusades.

    The second fallacy refers to the confusion between the person and the idea itself. Again, this happens now because you are criticizing the atheist in order to discredit the atheism, and as I said before, this cannot be supported. You can try to discredit atheism with a logical analysis (actually that’s impossible without evidence of a god) but not accusing it on the supposed basis that it is the cause of the lack of morality of (some) atheists.

    By last, most of your speech lacks of historical support. You insist of accusing Rachel Carson of killing thousands of millions because she supported prohibition of DDT. You have been ignoring the fact that this compound has chronical toxic effects on human body and the environment and causes severe disturbia in ecosystem and sterility in humans (and this might be important to you, as you oppose to involuntary methods of population control, which one can be worse than being innocently poisoned?). If banning a venom has some price in terms fo fighting some plagues in the present it is for avoiding bigger trouble in future, as new strategies can be developped. Actually, poverty is the main reason why infectious diseases transmited by arthropodes take such a great toll in underdevelopped countries and this happens because of the madness of world’s economy.

    That brave woman had to fight against many obstacles, from sexism to a terminal cancer of which she died. I wonder if you have the same kind of character (excuse me for the ad hominem argument 😉

  176. @ NM

    Sanger knew what she wrote was lies. She knoe that DDT was wiping out malaria.

    @Emmanuel

    What I am saying is simple. Atheists regardless of the reasons have killed more people then people of religion.

    Hitler was not a Catholic when he killed. Also, All the dictators in the last 150 years do not come close to the murders of Carson. Witch craft had nothing to do with the Catholic church. Atheism and liberalism is the root cause of pure evil. Muslim terrorist cannot come close to the murders commited by Atheists.

    Humans can directly digest DDT with little or no effect. Carson knew that and published her lies anyway. It is people like you that would rather millions of little, mostly black babies die poison the earth.

    I will use you as an example. The fact that you are an Atheist is not why you support mass murder. It is simply a by product of your thinking.

  177. @Chris,

    Please stop accusing people who disagree with you of supporting mass murder. It does not follow from anything anyone has said, and it is both rude and pointless.

    “Atheists regardless of the reasons have killed more people then people of religion.” If you count atheists “regardless of the reasons”, then you must also count every murderer who was a believer in some religion or other, regardless of their reasons. Given the frequency of deadly conflicts (including individual murder), the timescale of human religious history, and the fact that believers have always greatly outnumbered atheists, there’s little chance your claim is true.

    “Atheism and liberalism is the root cause of pure evil.” Sorry, who did you say was “flying off the rails”?

    Every time someone asks you for sources to back up your claims, you respond by restating the claims, ad nauseam and with increasing stridency, as if you expect that to get different results. Now you’re adding desperate accusations as well. How could this strategy possibly convince anyone that anything you say has any merit?

  178. @ Chris

    From once it for all, I will discredit your position, but this is for the rest of readers, not for you.

    First, I will just point out once again that you stablish a false cause arguing that atheism favours mass murder. You don’t take into consideration that the Church did mass murder during the Middle Ages and although you could argue it has nothing to deal with the teachings of the gospel, that was the excuse, as the aim was to eliminate all the enemies of the word of god. And you intentionally didn’t understand that the false accusation of witchcraft, that left the victim without any possible deffense, was used as a master mechanism to murder hundreds of thousands that were burned alive. Now, you pretend to distort history hidding the past of christian religion, and while I’m not accusing you of supporting the same crimes that were made in the name of god, you dare to say that the thinking of the atheists supports mass murder using as your only rethorical resource the ever repeating mention of the fanatical pseudo marxist dictatorships. You will never understand how diverse atheists are, your argument is as falsifiable as I were saying that all catholics were like Mussolini and Hitler (who never stopped believing in god, however, this doesn’t have real importance, except in historical terms).

    Later, DDT is classified as “moderately toxic” by the United States National Toxicology Program (NTP) and “moderately hazardous” by the World Health Organization (WHO), based on the rat oral LD50 of 113 mg/kg. Done it. It is not very hazardous in short-term, low-dose exposures, but you cannot say the same for years of it. Besides, with the excessive use of it in agriculture it has caused the mosquitoes and other vectors to become resistant and it’s almost useless in countries like India, please research. Your excessively anthropocentric point of view leads you to despise all species and wildlife (if you want to poison your whole garden and yourself with DDT, go to a country of the third world and do it, but I’m not responsible if you get sterile).

    Possibly, you will not stop your slander against Rachel Carson and the atheists. The only thing that remains me to say is that she will be remembered as a heroin, something you will never have.

  179. OMG! You guys are like cockroaches! I have said it over and over. Atheism has not killed anyone. People kill people. If this was a Catholic site pretending that Catholics are incapable of committing sins I would be pointing out mass murderers that are Catholic but it is not.

    You guys are free to believe what you want. You do not have a right to your own facts. Hitler was not a Catholic in 1933, forward. Carson was fully aware that banning DDT would kill millions of poor people around the world. That was the point.

    Just as an observation, I noticed you never mention Islam and murder. Why?

  180. Polite as usual.

    “I have said it over and over. Atheism has not killed anyone.” I don’t know about “over and over”, but I’ll consider that a retraction of your original statements to the contrary (#186, 193, 198). And you changed your opinion on whether it’s a “catalyst for murder” (191 & 203). So all that’s left now is whether you still consider it “the root cause of pure evil.” 🙂 (215)

    “Just as an observation, I noticed you never mention Islam and murder.” Actually, I did mention “some popes and ayatollahs” in one of my comments (#192), as examples of religious people who have killed for non-religious reasons. Unlike you, to me the motivation is key to determining whether “religion” (or lack thereof) was responsible, so I looked for examples where it clearly was; however, the death tolls from such cases of individual Islamic government leaders (e.g. Khomeini) are orders of magnitude smaller. Most Islamic dictator-murderers (e.g. Saddam Hussein) were killing mainly for power, like the examples that had already been given, so I didn’t see any point in adding their names to the discussion.

    Of course “jihad”, as the term is generally used, has historically been the driver for killing hundreds of millions of “infidels”, even if it sometimes wasn’t the only motive (e.g. the plunder of India by Tamerlane). This is one of the factors in my judgement that it’s unlikely atheists have committed more murders in human history than believers have.

  181. Have you ever thought about publishing an e-book or guest authoring on other sites?
    I have a blog based upon on the same topics you discuss and
    would really like to have you share some stories/information.
    I know my audience would value your work. If you’re even remotely interested, feel free to shoot me an e-mail.

  182. Yes, I have; thx 4 asking.
    Religious fanatics don’t kill people. People kill people. If evil kills evil and evil kills good, but good only kills evil, then it is a matter of time before only evil exists; but of course there are other factors and extenuating circumstances.

  183. Um, *religion* doesn’t kill people. Religious practitioners, however, *are* people, and many who are fanatic about their religion certainly do kill people. But evil (in its many forms) won’t win if it is outweighed by good, which so far seems to be true on our planet.

    Wasn’t @Grant Talabay talking to Michael Nugent?

  184. @Norbert Murdoch fm New Mexico or Northern Mongolian
    From which planet do you hail? On mine, evil is kicking ass.
    Religion certainly kills emotionally, psychologically & intellectually; takes on a ‘life’ or ‘persona’ of its own in that respect. But if your only criterion for evil is murder–the taking of a physical life without circumstance of self-defense, one need not extrapolate.

    While one could make a case for Atheism being one of the motives for mass murder in the twentieth century and as a devaluer of life leading to things like premeditated abortion (a clearcut case of murder in any trimester, I’m afraid, taken from a purely biochemical perspective) or eugenics, genocide, and euthanasia, the clear winner is Religion as primary cause for the highest number of historical kills.

    I refuse to make that assumptive misdemeanor.

  185. Billions of people on this planet are living their lives without doing evil. There are far more of them than the ones who are not. Not everyone has a pleasant life, certainly, but that isn’t always the result of evil. And I did say that evil has many forms; committing murder is of course not the only criterion. I’m not going to argue about atheism being a “devaluer of life”, because that has been hashed out and refuted in many, many other places.

  186. Au contraire, Neville Miscreant, and anyway it begs the discourse. We’re talking by volume and overshadow. One evil giant is worth, say, six million of your ‘do no evil’ types. “All that is needed for evil to prevail is that good men do nothing.” Dislike it if you like, but scripture makes just this point when it contends that evil and good are together within human nature, and that the main preliminary task is recognition via separation of the two. Notice too a primary difference between them: Good eschews and avoids artiface while Evil uses it as a powerful tool. Read Hitchens’ book, The Missionary Position, for an example of how Evil is mistaken for Good by good men who do nothing but aid and abet. Evil, on the other hand, recognizes its own and locks step. The twentieth century is believed by modern historians to be the bloodiest; can the 21st be any better with its record start? War is universally labeled an evil, yet persists in every century, spawned by ‘good’ and evil causes alike.

    Oh really? And to your satisfaction? And to a satisfactory conclusion for the purpose of discourse, no doubt?

    The trouble with atheists is that they, by and large, equate Religion with Theism and foil each against his own least favorite flavor of Religion; even then, for the most part, ignorantly. The trouble with Atheism is that it is dishonest…and need point a dishonest finger at its twin sister, Religion.

  187. While it’s fairly clear that everyone is capable of doing good and bad things, I don’t agree that everyone is capable of real evil. The 20th century was especially bloody in large part because a relatively small number of truly evil people had the means to kill very large numbers of other people quickly and with minimal effort. With rare exceptions (e.g. Tamerlane in Hindustan), evil people in the past simply didn’t have access to such large populations to victimize, which kept the scope of their actions much smaller. The 21st century is definitely not off to a great start so far, but I don’t think that necessarily correlates with an increase in evil. (Increases in stupidity and greed, maybe.) But 87% of it is still ahead of us, so it seems a bit premature to decide it’s going to end up being worse. 🙂

    Most religions claim the existence of some kind of supernatural force, whether as deity/ies or otherwise. And I’d bet a lot of religious people would also equate Religion with Theism – particularly those whose favorite flavor of religion is actually theistic. 🙂

  188. Well, well, while I admire your brand of optimism, I call it quaint in the Renaissance meaning of the word. And there is a hugemongous difference between capability and predisposition. And do you not see that the 20th century trend you cite is trending upward in the 21st? And there is no time like the present to be premature. And again you are confusing Religion with Theism. Religion may be a subset at best.

    Most men give up the search for Truth like the man who inadvertently drowned above a sandbar, leading to the phrase “When ‘God’ gifts sand, stand up.”

  189. Those who point out that fascist dictators of the twentieth century were primarily atheists would have to prove that from looking at the facts rather parroting the far right dogma asserting that this is true. Franco in Spain, Salazar in Portugal, Mussolini in Italy, were all practicing Catholics. Hitler was also Catholic who derived his antisemitism from the new testament, though it could be argued he was not a practicing one. Stalin certainly was an atheist, as was Mao Tse Tung. Hirohito was in fact himself a God. Pol Pot wrapped himself in the ancient cult of the Ankar. The Kim Il dynasty is a personality cult demanding the worship and praise of the dear leader. Those who argue that the true horrors perpetrated on mankind such as the Holocaust and the genocides in Armenia, Rawanda, and Darfur were the result of atheism actually had their origins wholly as the result of religious teachings. Did I mention the Ukase in the Balkans and in Prague the head of the Nazi Party was in fact a man of the cloth. Substitute the word fascism with right wing Christianity and the difference would be non-existent in Europe. So tell me how a state founded on the principles of atheists Bennett Spinoza, Epicurus, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Dale Carnagie, Robert Ingersoll, and Thomas Jefferson be a horror and plague on the world. So tell me how those who do not believe in unsubstantiated supernatural claims are to blame for the heinous and the immoral acts of history?

  190. Hey “J” from May 6th, Atheism is the rejection of the supernatural as an explanation of the cosmos (theism). To reject religion is to be antitheist. I highly recommend both pursuits.

  191. @Christopher Lowe

    You are an idiot. Mussolini was never a practicing Catholic. He was baptised in 1929 for political reasons. Before that he was an Atheist. Hitler rejected Catholicism as an adult and murdered many Catholics.

    Benamin Franklin was a Deist not an atheist. The same goes for Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson.

    Atheism is not the rejection of religion. It is the rejection of a God. It is the ignorance of people that claim to know something without any proof. The difference between you and a religious person, is they have faith. You have nothing, literally.

  192. @Christopher Lowe

    I am sorry to say, you are an idiot. Mussolini was never a practicing Catholic. He was baptised in 1929 for political reasons. Before that he was an Atheist. Hitler rejected Catholicism as an adult and murdered many Catholics.

    Benamin Franklin was a Deist not an atheist. The same goes for Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson.

    Atheism is not the rejection of religion. It is the rejection of a God. It is the ignorance of people that claim to know something without any proof. The difference between you and a religious person, is they have faith. You have nothing, literally.

  193. back@CLowe
    A) “Rejection” is too strong an assumption. 2) True, but beside the point. &) Assuming you mean the twin “pursuits” of rejection, (of) the supernatural and Religion, your recommendation must be taken with the caveat of ‘consider the source.’ Cast your balefulness wither thou whilst, you make several false claims; Chris addressed a few. (I certainly don’t agree with her/his general assessment of you, quite the contrary, but many intelligent individuals are willfully ignorant.) As a wise one once said:

    (enjoy the silence)

  194. Chris, You are correct, Messrs. Paine and Jefferson were indeed Deists, but Franklin was absolutely an atheist, which is a courageous stance to take,given the consequences of admitting to that at that time. Mussolini took communion and attended church. For all i know it was a sham. I know he did not care for the Pope. He was RE-baptised 1929. You seem to think I make no distinction between practicing and devout Catholocsism. And that is probably my fault. I never claimed they were devout . Never underestimate the cynicism a despot can employ to achieve their ends and as megalomaniacs to brook no opposition even from the heavens. You are making an argument where there isn’t one. My point was this: Blaming the bloody wars and carnage of the twentieth century on atheistic principles and atheism is an outright false accusation. Regardless of their political stripe and religious orientation, these were psychopathic and sociopathic mega-assholes who attained power to impose their will to the detriment of all humanity, from the killing fields of Cambodia to the ovens of Aushcwitz. How dare you imply us atheists as complicit fellow travellers of these monsters, or even more insidious, as people you think have the lack of moral values as to allow these things to happen.And please don’t give me that tired old saw “if you don’t derive you morals from religious teachings, where do you get them from?” Finally, my other blog on this post makes a perfect distinction about atheism not being a rejection of religion. That is antitheism. (of which I also am a subscriber). And to conclude,I may be and probably am an idiot, but that is certainly not a nice thing to say to a person you’ve never met, and a gawd-awful way to begin an exchange of ideas or way to be taken seriously, so show some class and respect this forum of public discourse please.

  195. @Skyler
    Long time since one of your “Looking For An Exit” comments. My favorite thread. We hardly knew ya.

  196. @Christopher Lowe

    Franklin was not an Atheist. There are mounds of evidence that he not only believed in God but that he prayed on a regular basis. It is true that he despised organized religion but that is not the same as not believing.

    Mussolini was not re-baptised, he was baptised for the first time in 1929. It was the only way to get into a position of power. There is no record of any religious back ground and it is likely he was Atheist before 1929. Religion was simply a means to an end.

    I have never said anyone killed in the name of Atheism. Nor has anyone killed in the name of religion. People have many reasons to kill. I simply pointed out that more people have been killed by Atheists. That is all. I have never said all Atheists are equal to mass murderers. That is just silly. However, you are not virtuous.

    Respect has to be earned. You cannot make up your own facts and expect to be seriously. Do some research instead to cherry picking bullshit off of the internet.

  197. @Christopher Lowe

    Franklin was not an Atheist. There are mounds of evidence that he not only believed in God but that he prayed on a regular basis. It is true that he despised organized religion but that is not the same as not believing.

    Mussolini was not re-baptised, he was baptised for the first time in 1929. It was the only way to get into a position of power. There is no record of any religious back ground and it is likely he was Atheist before 1929. Religion was simply a means to an end.

    I have never said anyone killed in the name of Atheism. Nor has anyone killed in the name of religion. People have many reasons to kill. I simply pointed out that more people have been killed by Atheists. That is all. I have never said all Atheists are equal to mass murderers. That is just silly. However, you are not virtuous.

    Respect has to be earned. You cannot make up your own facts and expect to be seriously. Do some research instead to cherry picking bullshit off of the internet. If it is any consolation, I am sure you are a good person.

  198. Back to J…Sir/Madame, Thank you for keeping me honest. Let me clarify the best I can, and humour me, I’m not a scholar, just a broken down old factory worker who happens to be considered well read. My assertion should well and properly be toned down to read: To me an atheist is one that does not accept assertions based on insufficient evidence. Since those who make claims about the cosmos and its meaning based not on evidence, but faith and unresearched declarations are overwhelmingly theist, It is they who have not won me over, hence my atheism. I totally agree that theism and atheism are simply two opposing points of view. Nothing more. Nothing less. It is certainly a conversation worth having. To the point of me making “several false assertions” please point out the few that Chris did not address, and how you consider them false. I am writing this straight from my brain to the keyboard and submitting it unedited, but I am not, to put it crudely , pulling these things out of my ass either. I know a little bit about whom I’m talking , having either read their works or histories of, or involving them.(I know, I know. A little knowledge is worse than…) But this is opinion. If you want a scholarly paper properly indexed and researched I could do that too. But I digress, the distinction I make between atheism and antitheism is very much to the point. Do you think I’m making too fine a point, or splitting the difference here? As for “pursuits”. Do you think I’m out to persuade you or anybody else over to my side? I simply don’t have the skill or wit to even attempt that. Here is where the distinction of “a” vs. “anti” theism kicks in. You were right to infer an atheist or a theist can only argue with himself. All that results from this is an exchange of tautologies. The debate, however, between anti theists and theists, screams to be had, when those who wish to impose and prothylastize upon others comes against those who can’t and won’t be talked to in that tone of voice. “Non-believers” cannot be left alone so it seems by the believers. They cannot be satisfied until your a believer too. This has huge consequences in real life . Stridency is required when threats are made by bullying and intimidation to those who reject the faithfuls’ metaphysics . There is a feast of opinions that must be dined upon before we can make each other understand the points we are trying to make to each other. NOW do you see where I’m coming from? Lets have that debate. This,my response to you,J, and the one I gave to Chris was merely a throat-clearing. I invite both of you to ask: Christopher, tell me what you REALLY think!

  199. @Chris…Come on now. I get the sense that you are not trying to read what i’m trying to say and are looking for that “AHA you are WRONG!” point to dismiss the whole and body of my argument, and me too, for that matter,out of hand. Perhaps you are a Professor of History. I don’t know. I am a student of history. My bent is toward the history of religions and politics in Europe/North America(I’m Canadian)/Middle East. And yes it is coloured from the point of view of one of those pesky, skeptical, atheists you so much love and admire. Bear in mind if you read my original post, I was not addressing you in particular nor was I targeting your posts. It just happened to be you that responded to my Hyde Park Soapbox bit. This is an irritant I wanted to address, that I’ve heard over an over again, That it was atheists who were the main players in the ghastly carnage of war and massacre that is the legacy of the twentieth century.You can argue all day to the degree to which these assholes held the beliefs of the cultures they were raised in. But I have two points to make on this account. What made these people do what they did was psycopathy,and megalomania and not atheism,which is neither a creed or even a belief. A side symptom of megalomania may indeed be atheism,but it is a symptom of a mental disorder. Megalomania can lead to atheism but not the other way around. Your denial that you were not implicating atheism, just” Oh isn’t it notable how these bad people happened to be atheists and there is where we score the the board as to the body count.” You were more than than implicating atheism ,you were laying blame squarely on atheism. Otherwise why even mention atheism in the same sentence as the causality of the Holocaust etc. You’re not a denier of the Holocaust too I presume? The second point is, however you wish it not to be, religion played a major roll in all these conflicts Except China
    where it
    only played a minor roll and only in the resistance. Justification of the genocide of the jews came directly from the scriptures and the catholic dogma and was chillingly spelled out in Mien Kampf which was previous to the noted jetising of his faith in 1933 you pointed out for whatever reason. We did not even mention Viet Nam, whose victims were wholly atheist. What about WWI , whose various Monarchs claimed to have God given powers and their sectarian differences defined the battle grounds of the most horrific conflict of them all. Now let us move on to Rwanda , shall we . The Holy See , the cardinals and priests ORCHISTRATED that nasty little piece of business. In a nutshell, leave the atheist out of it. They had nothing to do with the cause or justification of any of this. There is no us versus them along any of those non- believers/believer lines. I was going to address this so called internet reading reliability insult vs. my actual extensive reading of actual books including biographies, Histories(mainstream and substantiated) the Bible the Baghvad gida Philosophies , and scientific tomes. In fact I’ll just go around you and leave you to troll my postings instead. You can use this a a study in good manners where you’ll note I never called you a bad name. Or you can print this and use it as as swipe for all I care. I’m through with you

  200. @Chris…Come on now. I get the sense that you are not trying to read what i’m trying to say and are looking for that “AHA you are WRONG!” point to dismiss the whole and body of my argument, and me too, for that matter,out of hand. Perhaps you are a Professor of History. I don’t know. I am a student of history. My bent is toward the history of religions and politics in Europe/North America(I’m Canadian)/Middle East. And yes it is coloured from the point of view of one of those pesky, skeptical, atheists you so much love and admire. Bear in mind if you read my original post, I was not addressing you in particular nor was I targeting your posts. It just happened to be you that responded to my Hyde Park Soapbox bit. This is an irritant I wanted to address, that I’ve heard over an over again, That it was atheists who were the main players in the ghastly carnage of war and massacre that is the legacy of the twentieth century.You can argue all day to the degree to which these assholes held the beliefs of the cultures they were raised in. But I have two points to make on this account. What made these people do what they did was psycopathy,and megalomania and not atheism,which is neither a creed or even a belief. A side symptom of megalomania may indeed be atheism,but it is a symptom of a mental disorder. Megalomania can lead to atheism but not the other way around. Your denial that you were not implicating atheism, just” Oh isn’t it notable how these bad people happened to be atheists and there is where we score the the board as to the body count.” You were more than than implicating atheism ,you were laying blame squarely on atheism. Otherwise why even mention atheism in the same sentence as the causality of the Holocaust etc. You’re not a denier of the Holocaust too I presume? The second point is, however you wish it not to be, religion played a major roll in all these conflicts Except China
    where it
    only played a minor roll and only in the resistance. Justification of the genocide of the jews came directly from the scriptures and the catholic dogma and was chillingly spelled out in Mien Kampf which was previous to the noted jetising of his faith in 1933 you pointed out for whatever reason. We did not even mention Viet Nam, whose victims were wholly atheist. What about WWI , whose various Monarchs claimed to have God given powers and their sectarian differences defined the battle grounds of the most horrific conflict of them all. Now let us move on to Rwanda , shall we . The Holy See , the cardinals and priests ORCHISTRATED that nasty little piece of business. In a nutshell, leave the atheist out of it. They had nothing to do with the cause or justification of any of this. There is no us versus them along any of those non- believers/believer lines. I was going to address this so called internet reading reliability insult vs. my actual extensive reading of actual books including biographies, Histories(mainstream and substantiated) the Bible the Baghvad gida Philosophies , and scientific tomes. In fact I’ll just go around you and leave you to troll my postings instead. You can use this a a study in good manners where you’ll note I never called you a bad name. Or you can print this and use it as asswipe for all I care. I’m through with you

  201. To Christopher Lowe …I am so impressed with your knowledge and word articulation. That Chris guy called me an ignorant c-word, which was edited out, and its nice to see him put in his place. Though he’ll never see it that way.

  202. @ Emmanuel Sanchez Well met, and well said. After finishing with my blabbering the last couple of days, I took time to go back over the history of this blog, and read the comments made and opinions put forth by the contributors . I have to say I was more than impressed with your approach and the direction of your philosophy and in the way you voiced it. Call me a fan (but not a follower). There is an annoyance I confess. You’ve written so extensively on so many of the points I was going to make that I’m being crowded out of the conversation before I’ve even get my toes wet! Your advantage to me seems to your easy navigation through scripture. I have read the Bible through on a couple of occasions though I found it tedious, being born and raised an atheist,to have to parse a book I never considered holy or an accurate source of anything. Virtually all the scientific disciplines have torn these back country myths to shreds. I have no desire to pick over the carcass. I realize I’m a minuscule minority by taking this stance. But I think this viewpoint might have some legs. I do not want to argue with the theist. We have nothing to say to each other.Throwing Faith into the equation is a conversation stopper, not a conversation initiator. Like I said, so many points I’ve wanted to do you have already covered and in a much more polished way. Bravo and keep it up. As a huge fan of your awesome country (I’m considering moving to Ojochal) I’d like it if you could elaborate on the nuanced religious debate or tug of war or struggle that is going on there now.

  203. @ Julie .. anybody who has been called the C-word by Chris is a friend of mine!

  204. I hate to break it to you all, but blaspheme and apostasy are imaginary crimes. Furthermore there are people dying as a result of being convicted of these as we speak.

  205. @Christopher Lowe

    You really are a dumb fuck. The largest genosides do not require war. As for Hitler, he gave up on religion while he was in art school. There is also no evidence he followed his Catholic faith. He was merely baptised as a child.

  206. You really are a dumb fuck. The largest genosides do not require war. As for Hitler, he gave up on religion while he was in art school. There is also no evidence he followed his Catholic faith. He was merely baptised as a child. Have a nice day.

  207. @chris… Do yourself a favour and read Mien Kampf. The largest genocides do not require war. Okay, your point being?

  208. @Chris
    2 verbae: angora management, mein freund.

    @CLowe
    Though I’ve been called the c-word many times, never by Chris, as yet, so that doesn’t qualify me as your friend…however, any inamorato of Emmanuel Sanchez is alright by me. Yes, I’ve been called the c-word, and I rather like it. Few things are more satisfying than responding to an arrogant obnoxious male chauvinist, or female for that matter, with a thorough and humiliating intellectual ass-kicking. Since you state that you are not a scholar (but seem to be of a scholarly bent), I’ll be brief and kind. Some of your assertions are false, or at the very least exaggerations, and appear to have been ‘pulled out of your ass,’ to use your phrase. The only 100% appropriate time and place for that activity is and are ‘privacy’ and ‘ the commode.’ The Americans you cite, for instance, were deists to a man. Franklin was a wily politicized character whose philosophies were purposely obfuscated for the record. He, I suspect, like most intelligent persons, likely held changing, complex, nuanced or even conflicted beliefs throughout his lifetime. You seem to be working under the false assumptions and presumptions that atheism equates to anti-theism, that theism and religion are largely synonymous, that theism is not evidence based, that atheism and science are somehow or to some degree co-habitual, and that both science and atheism are based upon a preponderance of ‘the’ evidence, and that, in fact, concluding from your word usage, both science and atheism are based upon a preponderance of all the evidence in all or nearly all contexts and instances, and that you have a satisfactory and workable definition of evidence. Please, at the very least, agree that religion is a subset of theism which in every example one can bring to mind is a dogma, a dogmatization, of theism. Because every famous atheist cited on this site begins foundationally, or by every indication thus appears, with this false premise, it has become tedious to recount. In decency, you could go a step further to admit that science can, has, but should not be nor become a subset and dogma of atheism. To truly love Science, as a scientist especially, is not to love its pretty hair; that is a faith based attraction equivalent to theistic faith. In truth, science has no hair. True science has only questions and questing.

    And fyi all the argument re which belief system is more evil vis a vis which kills more, is just asinine prima facie.

  209. Hello J9…. Interact long enough with Chris and I assure you we will become fast friends! I see your point. If you want to chart it , theism is a subset of deism,and religion is absolutely subourned under the theist flag. No problem. Question: who then are other denizens of the theist nation? I see if I want to be the “A” in theism I better understand theism well. Know that I am a rank amateur and brand new to this forum. On any blog site. Anywhere. I popped my cherry on Wednesday. Being 57 yrs old the stew from which I dip my ladle has much in it and its presentation is very much disorganized. I do wish to mould my argument with intellectual integrity. I’m not there yet obviously. “I’ve barely got my trousers off”, as C. Hitchens used to say. My bumbling musings hopefully will gain sinew and definition as time goes by. Enough with the allegories. It seems to me your contribution to this conversation is one of arbiter or referee. you also seem to think you are eminently qualified to be one. I am certainly willing to take advice on structure, but not content. I do have things to say. You seem to like my style, but not my substance. I’m an oaf , but not a stupid one. Remember this is Michael Nugent’s site set up to celebrate atheism,skepticism, freethinking, and happiness. oh and maybe add another celebritiy’s name to the list of atheists. as I read the comments section I saw it rapidly got off topic.I also noticed the bar had not been set too high. I’m happily open about my atheism, and this often gets challenged by those opposed. To this I’ve gladly had good but often unresolved talks. Okay …always unresolved talks. Inevitably a list of atheists gets trotted out to somehow prove that not only is the atheist stance wrong, but evil. I don’t accept this infantile premise for a moment but it seems this mantra has to be repeated as the default AHA that nails it for the God guys. This line of logical thinking belongs in the kindergarden sandbox. Now I saw this same crap being spouted here on this site. This gets annoying after awhile so I had to get it off my chest. You read what I wrote. I was surprised anyone would notice or care enough to respond. One thing led to another and here I am 72 hours later. If people like you want me to up my game, I’ll try , this is me now warts and all

  210. @J9 for crying out loud, I just spent over an hour writing a response to your last post. It seems to have disappeared. I’ll try again later when I have the time.

  211. @ J9…Never mind it appears we had just run out of room. Figured out I had to flip the page.

  212. @chris, please stop pretending that “[you] have never said anyone killed in the name of Atheism.”

    You wrote in comment #186 that “Atheism has been responsible for far more deaths than religion.” Note your choice of word: *atheism*, not *atheists*. You spent numerous posts afterwards trying to argue that statement out of existence instead of giving sources to back it up. While you worked your way around to finally admitting that it wasn’t true, you made the other claim that you are now repeating, i.e. “more people have been killed by Atheists.” In weeks of posting you haven’t been able to support this alternative form of your claim, either.

    Now we have your latest and most ridiculous attempt to rewrite not merely your own posting history here but human history as well: “Nor has anyone killed in the name of religion.” Puh-leez. Uncountable numbers of people have killed or been killed “in the name of religion”: the Romans’ persecution of Christians, Tamerlane’s slaughter of Hindus, Muslims’ many persecutions of other Muslims and of Baha’i, everyone’s persecution of Jews, the Crusades, the Inquisition, Bloody Mary, witch hunts, every instance of human sacrifice over tens of thousands of years … The way you’ve phrased it doesn’t even require that the killers (or victims) be true believers in anything. There’s no way you can make this one stick. Try thinking through what you’ve written before you click the Submit button.

  213. This is becoming a challenge of idiots. NM, we have beat this too death. Atheism nor religion kill, people kill. They kill for many reasons. No one kills in the “name of religion.” There are many reason’s people kill and religion is only a bi-product or a frame of mind. The same goes for Atheism. It is only a subset of reasons to kill.

    Christopher, you seem fixated on murderous dictators. Yet, history is filled with mass murderers that do simple little things too wipe out millions of people. I have mentioned Rachel Carson several times. She made Hitler look like a boy scout. She got the ball rolling and a million useful idiots followed.

    You have a bias because you want to believe that Atheism is a good thing. It is not. It is literally nothing, devoid of reason. Yet, Atheist like too say they are applying reason. Go figure.

  214. Hello NM…Thanks for mentioning the Bahai. Let’s not forget the Zoroastrians that the Persian Muslims find so intolerable. Well NM, I can’t seem to keep this guy on point as he seems singularly on a quest to paint atheists as the bad guys. He is just yanking our chains y’know. Stirring the pot. It is sport to him. He should maybe go to a Libertarian site, where he can sniff out the latest grand conspiracy and hurl his invective towards Obama he so despises.

  215. One has only to read what you wrote yourself to see that you don’t believe what you just repeated about religion and atheism.

    Yet again you implicate Rachel Carson as someone who deliberately and knowingly caused the deaths of millions, and yet again – like all your other assertions – you provide absolutely nothing to support your statements. Put up or shut up.

    As for bias – you are a hypocrite of the first order.

  216. Shinola, Clowe!, I just bothered to give you one clear example of your faulty disinformation, upon which you had based a premise, then followed with the extrapolated assumptions and presumptions upon which you base, it seemed to me, your other false premises. I was trying to help. Allow you some foundational self-search. I thought I could move on. But yet you accuse me of finding fault with your structure, not your content–and worse, of “liking my style but not my substance.” I assure you that I don’t like your style. But don’t take it personally; style is a matter of taste. And I don’t have a taste for your “muscular” metaphors. (I suppose you preferred me to engage in the point-by-point stalemate prevalent to this blog.) But, if this was not re content, then you have none.

    Now I can’t leave lie your comment on Deism v. Theism, because it is a wrong-headed one thrown around currently and popularized by one atheist notable and would-be notable after another, including Hitchens, to whom you refer, and about whom I’ve said before I like and enjoy– admire being too strong a word. I enjoy his wrong-headed rants, often merely clever and devoid of unperverted logic. As Dawkins is atheism’s small-minded attack dog, Hitchens was its expansive spitting-camel. I was careful to use the word Deist to refer to Paine, Jefferson and Franklin, because of this popular current distinction. But strictly speaking the terms are synonymous unless one wants to point out the difference in the cultural significance of religion between the Greeks and the Romans. Every competent Roman writer, adult or patrician child, would have translated the Greek term thusly. Theism is not, then, a subset of Deism.

    You also appear to find fault with my attempt to, not mediate, but ‘referee’ as you call it, in a limited and delineated way, neglecting that I also tried to get the discussion on my end back on track to its original purpose of celebrating the quotes of the famous atheists mentioned and suggesting some others. What right-minded person would not, given the level of vitriol? The alternative is to ignore it as many commentors have done.

    I’ve already begged the debate on belief-system roadkill competition at least twice now. However, I do more so have to agree with Chris in his/her estimation on two important points: that, despite their whining and mudslinging (respectively) to the contrary, atheists avoid reason and atheism is not a ‘good’ thing. If you do not want to admit that atheists, by and large, claim that atheism is a ‘good’ thing, ask yourself if you 1) believe that religion is a ‘bad’ thing (however you define it) and 2) believe in your heart of hearts that religion is atheism’s (or science’s if you prefer to argue that non sequitur) counter-corollary.
    If you do not want to admit that atheism is at worst devoid of reason as Chris says, or at least avoids reason like a plague, and is therefore worthy of NM’s description, hypocrite, then play the tape backward and examine the mud you are slinging to see how it fits the hand that is slinging it.

    @NihilMontage
    all the world’s a hypocrite…but it is not the first order, far from it.

    “Good night, Wesley, sleep well; the universe will most likely kill you on the morrow.”

  217. Greetings from the great white north J9….I once read or heard from somewhere that atheism is a word that need not even exist. Why should it? Not believing in a proposition does not require a label or even an explanation. It certainly says nothing of what a person likes or what their affiliations may be. It matters not if one will dismiss someone outright if they perceive him to be a nonbeliever. If it would only be that simple. Our side would be thrilled. No one to try to impose their own beliefs on you. No one to dictate how you should think, or what propitiations you should make and to whom. But will that ever happen? Hopefully in Ireland someday with the help of the likes of Michael Nugent. This will piss off a lot of people who are used to having it all their own way. I noted that it was believed that the Church filled a void the government refused to fill. Whatever the case there’s no time like the present. The disagreement here would better be referred as one between the skeptic(s) and the religious dogmatist(s). The phrase counter-corollary is a redundancy. Leave out the hyphen and they cancel each other out. I should have written under my initials so I could be entertained by the way they could be played with `a la NM. Are you a dog owner? Just asking.

  218. @ chris

    Well, first of all I will say that your arrogance is something that I have seen few times in a person. Actually your lack of humbleness is something contradictory to your alleged religious principles and now (again) you appear denying what yourself has said before, when you accused atheism of being the cause of evil and a reason to make mass murder.

    Although I actually think this is a too complex for you to understand issue, I will give you my answer of why I reject Christianity as a source of morality.

    When we analyze history of mankind and religion as well, it’s easy to notice that we have been actually naive during all centuries in our attempts to make people behave in decent and reasonable ways. If we want to be impartial (and in this issue I really think that real atheists are far more just than believers who use to ostracize us) we have to admit that religion as itself has not been the cause of so much wars and mass murder, but it does cause divisions, fear and rejection of those who don’t share it, all this as a consequence of its approaches. Religion as well as traditional morality is based basically on fear to authority and menaces as the main mechanisms to control human behavior. This is based on the prejudice that it will be impossible to teach morality some other way -and before you answer with bigotry, please re-read the so many verses of the Bible that mention the weeping and gnashing of teeth, the ever-lasting fire, the gnawing worm that never dies and also, the numerous verses of Old Testament that command people to stone others to the death for reasons as ridiculous as working on Saturday. In both parts of the Bible god is a judge whose favor we are supposed to seek in order to avoid an eternal punishment and who is able to condemn us for thought crimes, as non believers appear as automatically damned.

    To believe that fear is the only way to guarantee human decency is actually a great insult, but it is an easy to exhaust mechanism. It creates by itself the wish of violating the law and deceiving and/or challenging the authority and this wrong notions have led to the worst corruption examples of all history, as we can see also in the history of catholic church and Christianity. The use of fear as an omnipresent tool to teach humans promotes double morality, power abuse and violence. The intolerance showed by the own Christ to the ones who didn’t want to listen him is a bad example of morality in my view. When civilization was created we started a long way towards a greater complexity without return and in the process we have forgotten many important issues. First, we forgot to analyze the origins or our morality seen in some primate species in which the conduct of all subjects is submitted to the interest of the herd. They remember us the necessary Community ideal that we need to understand solidarity and the pursuit of common good. But we also forgot to teach the people to think and unfortunately we have forsaken a lot the ethical tradition established in the ancient Greece through Epicurus and Aristotle that has continued until our days but mainly and almost only within the circles of philosophy (and I wouldn’t know actually nothing of this if it weren’t for my own curiosity and the university education I’ve received. The notion of unity and the aim to take care of each other was still alive in some ancient tribes, but later we substituted it with a heavy individualism and hypocrisy (and before you start signing the negligence towards the christian commands as the cause of this, let me remember you that when the catholic church was most powerful -the Middle Ages- they didn’t help to cure any of the social evils that existed, instead, they increased them). It has been until recent years with the new findings of psychology that we are starting to understand the variables that interact in the development of personality and character that we must take into consideration to built a better kind of human beings.

    Ancient tribes had the problem that you had to share the beliefs of the tribe in order to be a part of it. The new challenge of mankind is to establish a new ideal of unity respecting the differences and to teach morals in a reasonable way, understanding that there is actually no separation between collective and personal good, one cannot be without the another. And remember the teaching of Bertrand Russell: “The most important of all is love and tolerance. And remember that you must try to support your beliefs on the facts about a question. If you don’t have enough information to be sure of something you must postpone your opinion.”

  219. @ chris

    Let me remember you that the founding fathers of America weren’t fanatical christians as you are and would feel terrified of today’s american fundamentalism. Most of them were deists, this means, they rejected dogmas and revelations as the source of their beliefs and tried to use reason instead and believed in a god who doesn’t involve himself in the events that happen in the world. Here are some quotes:

    Thomas Jefferson ‘The Christian God is a being of terrific character – cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.’

    ‘Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man’

    ‘Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.’

    Benjamin Franklin’s

    ‘Lighthouses are more useful than churches’

    John Adams’s
    ‘This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.’

    See?

  220. @ J9
    You cannot make such generalization of all atheist as dogmatic persons or whatever. You appear to insist that not believing in god is a kind of irrational position that is incompatible with science and objectiveness. Well, first of all, I think it is asserted to affirm that god isn’t actually a problem of science but let me tell you why. the god hypothesis is unfalsifiable. While science is a joint of methods that we use to know the reality of cosmos, theology is based upon speculation. I know this sounds hard, even offensive, but let me sign something. If believers were right, why are there so many religions in the world? Why doesn’t that god just take off his mask and stop all this misleading conflict? My explanation is that most probably he doesn’t exist, or as second option, he doesn’t care of us. Which one do you prefer? You really think that a merciful god would allow all these divisions even among the christians without making things clearer? When I formulate these questions it is obvious that they do not belong to scientific field because no experiment can be done to clear them and, if we don’t get any answer in everyday life we can only speculate and think what is most reasonable for us, in my case, atheism. Why? Because, although I don’t have any kind of strong evidence (in my opinion, chrstians have failed when they try to present one) to me is obvious that I had never believed in god if it weren’t because of religious teachings and I reject religious teachings. Without factual evidence, everything will be taken as false, until the contrary is proven. The load of proof is on the one that affirms the existence of something. Do you think this is irrational? I don’t see anything of that within this. Skepticism is the result of reason and I admit I cannot be totally sure, but at least I have decided to live without the fear of eternal condemnation.

  221. @ Christopher Lowe
    Thank you a lot for your moral support and gratifications. Thank you again for what you have said about my country. Thank you, sincere thanks. Let me tell you that I appreciate your attitude and your effort to think by yourself. But don’t despise yourself by considering yourself too ignorant or whatever. Modesty is necessary as the first step to wisdom but never a reason to feel less than others. And never devaluate yourself in the presence of fanatical people. I know sometimes is difficult to keep up a discussion with persons that are very skillful in this but also very intolerant. I think it’s better sometimes to not waste time with such persons (like someone called William Craig, I don’t know if you’ve heard of him before, a kind of smart idiot, but unfortunately, very famous among debaters).

    Einstein said: we are all very ignorant, the fact is that we do not ignore the same things.

  222. @NM

    I really cannot converse with a person that likes the idea of murdereing little black babies. It is good if we part ways.

    @ Emmanuel Sanchez

    I do not have religious principles. I am Agnostic. I do not claim to have the answers. I am only here to point out how polar opposites think so much alike.

    This is the last time I am going to address this. Atheism/religion does not kill, people kill. Atheism/religion is only a part of a persons reasoning. Example: Scott Roeder killed George Tiller because he believed he was saving lives. Religion was not the reason he killed but was part of his mind set. He did not kill in the name of religion. Example (2): Rachel Carson’s motives for writing Silent Spring was a tool for population control. She did not do it because she was an Atheist. However, being an Atheist gave her a God complex. Atheism was part of her mind set.

    There is nothing wrong with being an Atheist. It does not make you evil. My only point is that it is not virtuous. There are evil people that are Atheists. It is nice that this site wants too notice all the great Atheists but it is a public forum, so I am including the ones that are not so great.

    You are to fixated on Christianity. It is not the only religion. Religion and faith are two different things. It did not start 2,000 years ago. As for, “I really think that real atheists are far more just than believers,” that is rediculous. Obviously, there are problems with religion. However, religion is far greater for society than none at all. I live in America, land od the free. Atheists create nothing, they help no one. I am sure many donate money and time to various causes but so what, where is the benefit to society? I am not going to argue on behalf of religion. It is just as silly to say you know the origins of life. Trust me, I have pissed off plenty of believers on religious sites as well.

    Thank God (pun intended) we have evolved in our instincts. Using basic primates as an example is bad. All other primates kill each other. They are part of the food chain, not to mention they shun their elderly. You seem like a decent person, you do not believe in kill or be killed. We all hate rules and laws but it is necessary for us to get along. The reason we have wars and fear each other is not because of religion, it is human nature. It is how we were wired as basic primates. Laws have changed how we interact. I personally believe that love and unity are over rated. Stay out of my way and I will stay out of yours. We can learn to tolerate each other, otherwise fuck off. See, it is just words, no violence.

    You make too many assumptions. The Founding Fathers were escaping religion. It does not mean they were not religious, most were. Only a hand full were Deists. Non are on record as being Atheists.

    Atheism is not reason. Religion is not faith. Believers fill the voids with God. Atheist fill the void with theory. Neither can be proved. Both rely on faith. What is the difference?

    @ Christopher Lowe

    You live in a free society. No one is forcing anything on you. No one will harm you for not believing. The same goes for people in Ireland. If you want to live somewhere that religion is the minority, try North Korea.

  223. @chris:

    “I really cannot converse with a person that likes the idea of murdereing [sic] little black babies.” There you go putting completely irrational and unjustified words in my mouth again.

    “Rachel Carson’s motives for writing Silent Spring was a tool for population control.” Yet again you haven’t even attempted to provide anything to back up your accusations against Rachel Carson – not so much as a link to a wacko Web site, let alone anything credible.

    “[Scott Roeder] did not kill in the name of religion.” Of course there are many examples of murderers who did not kill in the name of religion; as you said yourself, people have many reasons for killing. That hardly proves that no-one has. I suspect the hundreds of millions of victims in the examples I gave to the contrary would disagree with you.

    “[B]eing an Atheist … does not make you evil.” Again you are backpedaling from your own earlier statements.

    “I personally believe that love and unity are over rated.” “Trust me, I have pissed off plenty of believers on religious sites as well.” Now these statements I have no trouble believing at all.

    “It is good if we part ways.” So you won’t be posting here any more, then?

  224. @chris…It was not that long ago in Ireland that a husband could be a wife beating rapist and a woman would not have recourse to divorce. No wife no matter what her religious affiliation. Tell her that theocratic imposition is non existent in her country. This has now been corrected, but only in the last twenty years. And in a more general vein, those under the yolk of Sharia obviously have dogma rule their lives. Religions aren’t a primary threat to freedom? Push back is somehow a dogma in it’s own right? I’d love to get whatever it is you’re smoking!

  225. @NM

    Read Rachel Carson’s own words. She was very much in favor of population control. Scum like you and JFK are too happy to oblige.

    Give one example of a murder commited solely in the name of religion.

    @Christopher Lowe

    It does not matter what Ireland was 20 years ago, it is free today. North Korea and China are a majority Atheist and are not free. What is your point?

  226. @chris…JFK? I know i’m not involved in this conversation. Just curious. This is a new one on me.

  227. ” I dream of a world where a chicken can cross the road without their motive being questioned.” Anomynous.

  228. @Christopher Lowe: This is a pet peeve of chris’. JFK was the president whose science council agreed with Rachel Carson that DDT should be banned *for agricultural use*. Note that it has never been completely banned for malarial mosquito control, and in many places its overuse has resulted in resistance so that it’s no longer effective anyway. But that is apparently irrelevant.

    @chris: “Read Rachel Carson’s own words.” Quote me her own words. Where did she say that banning pesticides like DDT would permit millions of black babies to die of malaria and that would help the goal of population control? Pretty sure it wasn’t in “Silent Spring”. I’ve asked for this proof multiple times. Either come back with something new, rather than just repeating your own unsubstantiated personal opinions, or admit you can’t do that and drop it.

    “Give one example of a murder commited solely in the name of religion.” Ah, back to making an absolute claim and then trying to weasel out of it by changing the words. Now you’re saying “solely” in the name of religion. That isn’t what you said before. But it’s easy anyway because I already gave some examples; one of the clearest is Muslim persecution (including execution) of Baha’is. I could give many more, such as the time-honored tradition of human sacrifice to appease the gods, but you only asked for one.

    “Atheists create nothing, they help no one. I am sure many donate money and time to various causes but so what, where is the benefit to society?” See? Here’s another one. Can you list every atheist in the world and demonstrate that none of them has ever created anything, helped anyone, or donated time and money to any cause that had any benefit to any society? Of course not – not simply because it’s not feasible but because it’s not true. If you want proof of my statement, Google the people on givingpledge.org. Many of them have stated they are atheist (e.g. Branson), and many others are at least agnostic (e.g. Buffett and Gates).

    Tell us, chris, what have *you* done to benefit society lately? Hint: pissing people off in online discussions does not qualify.

  229. @NM Let us agree then that, as it were, a Holy Crusade be waged against malaria. And let it be carried out by people and agencies who know what they are doing. And let it be supported by agnostics, Muslims, Hindus, members of the cargo cults of the South Pacific, homophobes,nut bars, Monarchists, Animists, Catholics, atheists etc.. It worked for Smallpox. It almost worked for polio (before certain mullahs sabotaged that one-but that’s another story)

  230. The crusade against malaria is well underway, partly through the auspices of the Gates Foundation, and partly through government initiatives in some of the countries affected as well as those in wealthier nations. It will take years, of course, and due to its nature, malaria probably cannot be completely eradicated as smallpox was (and polio could now easily be).

  231. @ Christopher Lowe

    Just trying to rattle chains. JFK was the willful idiot that helped ban DDT. It should be noted that he was a religious man.

  232. Hinduism-Now that’s a religion with no missionaries, no protheslytizing(sp?), no cultural aggression, no conversions, forced or otherwise. Though they do have some strange-to-us concepts of reality, nobody among them has any interest on foisting these upon you. As one who champions freedom from religion, ya gotta like that. They do have some internal squabbles and a in dire need of cultural corrections, but it will all be sorted out among themselves.

  233. @Chris … freedom from religion is precisely what I meant. Not of. I was not referring in any way to the first amendment of your constitution. This is a distinction we atheists use to let the religious know we want to be left the fuck alone in the institutional sense in that their beliefs not be imposed on us by way of law or any other means. So it is in this context that I said “championing freedom from religion”, and that Hindus allow that very well. It would be very nice if other religions were more like that. Coming from an officially secular state yourself you may not appreciate that distinction. Though a country that spawns the likes of Tony Perkins might give you a hint at what I’m getting at.

  234. Chris, You are precisely correct on all of your important points, leaving only Carson and JFK aside because those two are icons for some people who cannot and will not consider counter evidence to their ‘sainthood’ (like the Mother Teresa in Hitchens’ report), and your tormentors hereon only skirt your points because they cannot refute them. Agnosticism is the only rational position available to argument. In fact, atheists tend to argue for agnosticism when they mean to support atheism. Your other important point is that human nature, based upon animal nature, is the true source of all of our societal ills. You are correct in pointing out that dogmas and belief-systems are only excuses the human animal gives himself for carrying out his animal nature. (The salient and potentially enlightening area of inquiry would be why he bothers.) I believe you are also correct in pointing out that Atheism is a dogma, nonsense regarding “atheism is a non-thing, so it’s not really there” notwithstanding, just as capable and historically culpable of being pressed into the service of the animal. Your detractors here equate religion with theism no matter what, and so refuse the comparisons you are trying to show them. They really do have a persecution complex. So thanks for pointing those things out and staying on point despite detractors. I can almost agree with you about Love and Unity being overrated, but the fact is that they are concepts which are misused for commercial and/or evil purposes. So how can we really know them? A belief that one could live comfortably from a live-and-let-live and “fuck off” philosophy alone in this day and age is perhaps naive or fanciful.

    Emmy Sanchez, welcome back! Though you are mistaken, it’s great to hear from you. Your would-be rational and well-mannered voice is always appreciated by me.

    Baldspot to the North Clowe (pronounced Chloe or Ceelo), what are you talking about? Open your mind a bit before you attempt to correct the incorrectable, else you’ll inherit the wind. My dogs are barkin’ today. Several types of pets are in fact my prerogative.
    “Unbesmurfable… that’s what you are.” –Nat King Smurf, famous atheist

    “Yes…I CAN fly.” –Buzz Lightyear, famous atheist

  235. @ Christopher Lowe

    I like you so I will help you out. Freedom from religion would be the complete removal of religion. Places like China and North Korea practice that. I am sure you would not want to see your religious friends jailed for putting a Menorah in their front window. Regardless of what the US Constitution says, there is a big difference between “from” and “of.”

    @ J

    I live in Las Vegas. I have no family and very few friends, yet I am surrounded by thousands of people every day. I am very much left alone and it feels great.

  236. Chris, I see…I was extrapolating to a societal level, so thinking that you are living in an urban, populated area, you rely on the systems put in place and run by scores of others. Las Vegas seems like a good place to pull off living by your particular philosophy day to day.
    Admittedly without having spent much time considering it, I agree on principle with your estimation that atheism has not benefited mankind nor society. Religion, at least, has benefited man to the point that it encourages better behavior than our animal nature would require. Theism has benefited mankind similarly. Atheism, and possibly agnosticism as well, is neutral and of itself has no benefit. (The arguments ad nauseam that individual atheists do beneficial things and that Religion also does evil things, is all beside the point.)

  237. It is the height of religious arrogance to assume that humans would still behave like animals were it not for religion.

    “Freedom from religion” does not require that religion be forcibly banned, only that no-one need be exposed to religious concepts or coerced into using religious references (e.g. the “under God” in the pledge of allegiance) unless they seek those out of their own volition. China and Korea, as you say, have no freedom in this respect.

  238. @ J
    The problem with Atheists is, they want to be identified for “nothing.” They have no message, yet want to be heard. Individuals are either good or evil, regardless of whether they are religious or not. I good example is Penn Jillette. He is on Celebrity Apprentice playing for Opportunity Village. Opportunity Village was created by Wayne Newton based on his religious principles. Despite that Penn is still helping them. It shows he is first class and can put his beliefs aside.

    @ NM

    Freedom from religion means exactly that. That is the system in China. Freedom of religion means that no one can force their religion on you. I agree that the government should stay out of religion and vice versa. That goes for Atheism to.

  239. @Chris… I, too, am by myself,but not liking it very much, as I stand widowed in an empty nest. I live on a 2 acre mountain side lot 5 miles from a town of 40,000 in British Columbia. My son is airborne as I write this heading for your Fair City in a stag posse. I told him to treat the Hangover movies as a warning, not a guide. Not to make too fine a point of it, the of/from point is this, as I meant it: Handle your snakes, pound your pulpits, bend your knees towards Mecca, spin your prayer wheels, light your incense, pretend you’re a Rastafarian like I do occasionally, but keep it to your various selves. Believe it or not I do not wish for any of this to disappear, except in the purview of politics. I am not an anarchist. Maintain and enforce just and moral laws . Keep the colour neutral. There are very few homogeneous societies left out there. Each confession may disagree and strongly so with the other. Do not tilt the government one side or the other in these exchanges. The government, at best, should only insure that these do not boil over. There ain’t a hell of a lot of this unbiasedness going on out there at this time. Divine warrant is no way rule over another. No human being has the right to claim divine warrant. Claiming to know the mind of god and act upon it is an impossibly justified feat and to reign on this proposition is just as immoral as the tyrant who usurps all your rights and freedoms. As an atheist I never would endorse any fascistic regime religious our atheistic. Chris, as an American agnostic would you not appreciate protection FROM Sharia law? @J… Solely to annoy you on your urban analogy, is there such a thing as Christian water works? Jewish traffic control? Wiccan bridge construction? Of course it all has to work by cooperation and structure. It is in the council chambers where one has to be wary of philosophical input being injected into what we should both agree ought to be a purely secular task. Don’t deny this happens big time everywhere you look. I know you never broached the subject or even cared to address it. I just wanted you to know what an annoying prick I can be

  240. Michael Nugent is the gracious host of this site. He is indeed an atheist with a cause and a set of convictions. Moreover, he walks the walk. This is evidenced in his writings and can be seen in his numerous You Tube appearances. You will notice he stands unequivocally on our side of the fence. I was “there” decades before I ever heard of him. This site is a natural home for the thinking and caring non-believer. Those of us, of the skeptical and freethinking ilk , tend to be allied in our common fending off of, and our contempt of, religious over- reaching. I can’t help but notice there is not a peep from those that are on the other side of this argument, or straddling the fence, directing their well considered propositions at and to what this man stands for. There is an abundance of playing field trash talk and metaphysical food fighting going on . But what about Mr. Nugent’s actual words? Anybody?

  241. @ Christopher Lowe

    I am sorry to hear about your loss. Death is a hard thing. I have never been married. I am the youngest of 6 children and 4 of my siblings are dead, one is missing. My father died when I was 2 and my mother died when I was 25, one week after I graduated from law school. I have been alone ever since and I have adjusted well.

    I love BC and have spent a lot of time in Kelowna and Vernon. I have a few clients in both cities and have been going there for about ten years now.

    Your son will be fine. What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, unless it is herpes.

    I agree with most of what you are saying. That is the important difference between from/of.

    Two thing I would disagree with is culture, I do not want a homogeneous society. I want to hold on to my Irish heritage. I also want others to express themselves freely. I believe diversity is a bad thing. Second, government sucks. It should be rare. Private sector is always better. Yes, there are Christian, muslim and Jewish infrastructure. Most third world countries rely on outside help. That help usually comes from religious groups. It is also the work of great people who are both believers and nonbelievers. That is the point, it does not matter what you believe. I am some what of a believer in Anarchist economics. We obviously need government but it should be rare.

  242. NabokovMalfeasance
    Religion certainly goes much higher. When you are done skirting the point, alight somewhere in the near vicinity, please.

    Chris, you are correct again in that “freedom” ‘from’ is essentially a self-contradiction in terms. Freedom ‘of’ essentially means you are free to choose among, to take forever doing so, and to choose none is also implied; hence no one can lawfully force you. Clowe may have meant to say ‘free from.’ The American document framers were wisely specific in their choice.
    I have no problem with atheists wanting to be heard, except as they force others to hear, but as I continue to point out, they are antagonistic, often pugnacious, and toward the wrong foil. I think that is the real rub, that they use their bogeyman of Religion, citing past religious persecution, as an excuse to antagonize others.

    Clowe, Noted. Annoying pricks and irritating clits are a dime a dozen, but no one really wants to buy one. Did you ever figure out the term counter-corollary? It was a very specific reference. Don’t take out the hyphen, even if it were true what you said, which it isn’t.
    In NY, no one is ever really alone. Besides friends, colleagues and paramours, I have my children for company, after divorce, of course, and they are thoroughly engaging. I believe that given ‘good’ genes, you should make your own people– in order to up your odds of finding ones with whom you would want to associate. This is a change from my early youth when my quote regarding children was ‘you can have as many as you have closets.’

  243. Aw Chris I only wish your circumstances would have turned out much happier, your losses being multifold and so close to home. My heartfelt condolences go to you. Vernon is indeed the city I was referring to. I’m in the Silver Star foothills. I kind of intuited from your writings that you were conservative and libertarian on the political and economic front. I think every one down there there should put team colours away at least until you’re back on the tracks. Your country received a nasty head-shot (an ice hockey analogy). We up here managed to avoid the full brunt of this crisis (though alas I didn’t) and did so with only minimal gov’t intervention. We see neither polarized extreme in the US has the be all and end all answer to the problem. Neither side is even talking to the other. We are all shaking our heads up here. Here is where maybe you and I part on economics. Unfettered free capitalism has a case to be made for itself and in theory seems to me an engine that runs well in and of itself.Ayn Rand and Adam Smith were both atheists by the way, just throwing that in there. However these engines are running under the aegis of the nations and cultures they inhabit. It seems to me somewhat harsh that it ride divorced of human consideration. At the corporate level there does not seem to be much honesty or fair play built in the game.Survival of the fittest(another atheistic concept) leaves only the survivor stronger and in no way guarantees its good citizenship. Human solidarity(gasp! a term the socialists hijacked) is the glue that keeps a society together. Capitalism can actually be a great enabler to this goal, but only when not behaving badly. Your thoughts.

  244. @Jiffy Lube the 9th People should never be allowed to proclaim regnancy on the basis of their metaphysics. An unimpeachable moral compass on the other hand should be a requirement. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

  245. @Chris . Oh yeah, another thing we have in common. My Grand Daddy is from Mullingar in County Cork.

  246. @Emmanuel Sanchez Hola amigo. Pura vida. Yes I have heard of William Lane Craig, as well as many other apologists such as Schmuley Boteach, Dinesh D’Souza, Bill Donahue, David Wolpe, Tariq Ramidan, John Lennox etc. They come at you from all different directions. They all have they’re separate rows to hoe. None of them particularly care to be challenged, and strangely all come to the table unprepared. Dinesh D’Souza gets blown out of the water so often it’s embarrassing. Bill Donahue is a Catholic talking point blowhard who totally ignores his debate partners and is only interested in getting his own power points across. Tariq Ramidan is all smiley, smiley and tries to tell you that Islam is nothing but the most peace loving religion the world has ever known. In all of them I see a lot of talking in circles. I see them espouse patently disproven points as absolute truths and even base their premises on them. Some of them are extraordinarily smart and have a body of work behind them that gives them a gravitas well earned. But as Desi Arnaz used to say in I Love Lucy, The’ve got a lot of splaining to do.

  247. Nobody politicizing the Moore, Okla. disaster. Very refreshing. Donate generously!

  248. @ chris

    Well, you consider yourself an agnostic, but what kind of agnostic are you? A hallelujah agnostic? You have attacked atheists many times with your comments blaming us for inducing evil and disrespect for human dignity, putting special attention to the case of evil atheists, lying shamelessly when you argue falsely that Hitler was atheist, slandering Rachel Carson of genocide and forced population control when she was only concerned about ecology and taking care of environment. Besides, you distort history when you try to convince people that the founding fathers of America were traditional christians, while in fact they tried to take the best of moral values of Christ without belonging to any religion or church and criticizing them fiercely. You defend constantly religion ignoring how much dangerous and pernicious it can be. You just lie, insult, slander and later on you pretend to be an agnostic? With people like you there is no need of fundamentalist governments, you could even substitute the Pope! You are worse than Mr. Bush saying that God spoke to him personally. I see real agnosticism in persons that do not affirm the certainty of anything without incontrovertible evidence, persons like Carl Sagan and Bertrand Russell, to which you will never be like, I’m starting to think that you are mentally lost.

    And one last clarification: atheism by itself is just the rejection of any kind of dogmatic beliefs and worshiping of deities, so, somehow this rejection by itself doesn’t have a positive affirmation of something, but on the base of this intellectual freedom the possibilities are boundless. Atheists have done a lot for humanity but unfortunately persons like you pay more attention on the evil ones like Stalin and Mao (did I mention that Pinochet, Batista, Hitler, and some corrupted popes like Innocent VIII and Alexander III as well as the italian murderer Caesar Borgia were catholic?). It is not fair to pay attention only to bad examples. We can have motivational impulses on many causes, from freedom of speech and thought, to scientific investigation, ecology and environment, human rights, respect to LGBT community and many, many others.

    If so, why do I affirm that abrahamic religions have caused more evil than good? Just take a look at history. So many persons were killed in the name of God during centuries in so many ways, from stoning to burning alive, including hanging and torture to death, so many crimes committed during the Crusades and by the Holy Inquisition, the massacres among catholics and protestants, today’s islamic terrorism, and remember that not even people as respectable as Galileo Galilei could escape from religious censorship, as one song says: “all the servants of the Cross will deny… will deny the starlight!”.

    Atheists are so diverse that you cannot blame all of us for anything because it is like blaming the whole humanity, and I’m not exaggerating. We belong to all cultures, to all times, to all ideologies, the only we all have in common is the absence of a God and religion. And we feel nice without them.

  249. @ chris
    Well, you consider yourself an agnostic, but what kind of agnostic are you? A hallelujah agnostic? You have attacked atheists many times with your comments blaming us for inducing evil and disrespect for human dignity, putting special attention to the case of evil atheists, lying shamelessly when you argue falsely that Hitler was atheist, slandering Rachel Carson of genocide and forced population control when she was only concerned about ecology and taking care of environment. Besides, you distort history when you try to convince people that the founding fathers of America were traditional christians, while in fact they tried to take the best of moral values of Christ without belonging to any religion or church and criticizing them fiercely. You defend constantly religion ignoring how much dangerous and pernicious it can be. You just lie, insult, slander and later on you pretend to be an agnostic? With people like you there is no need of fundamentalist governments, you could even substitute the Pope! You are worse than Mr. Bush saying that God spoke to him personally. I see real agnosticism in persons that do not affirm the certainty of anything without incontrovertible evidence, persons like Carl Sagan and Bertrand Russell, to which you will never be like, I’m starting to think that you are mentally lost.
    And one last clarification: atheism by itself is just the rejection of any kind of dogmatic beliefs and worshiping of deities, so, somehow this rejection by itself doesn’t have a positive affirmation of something, but on the base of this intellectual freedom the possibilities are boundless. Atheists have done a lot for humanity but unfortunately persons like you pay more attention on the evil ones like Stalin and Mao (did I mention that Pinochet, Batista, Hitler, and some corrupted popes like Innocent VIII and Alexander III as well as the italian murderer Caesar Borgia were catholic?). It is not fair to pay attention only to bad examples. We can have motivational impulses on many causes, from freedom of speech and thought, to scientific investigation, ecology and environment, human rights, respect to LGBT community and many, many others.
    If so, why do I affirm that abrahamic religions have caused more evil than good? Just take a look at history. So many persons were killed in the name of God during centuries in so many ways, from stoning to burning alive, including hanging and torture to death, so many crimes committed during the Crusades and by the Holy Inquisition, the massacres among catholics and protestants, today’s islamic terrorism, and remember that not even people as respectable as Galileo Galilei could escape from religious censorship, as one song says: “all the servants of the Cross will deny… will deny the starlight!”.
    Atheists are so diverse that you cannot blame all of us for anything because it is like blaming the whole humanity, and I’m not exaggerating. We belong to all cultures, to all times, to all ideologies, the only we all have in common is the absence of a God and religion. And we feel nice without them.

  250. @ J

    I Hope you have read my answer to chris. You both share many characteristics. I really think you don’t deserve to call yourself an agnostic. You express yourself as a christian apologist and appear to agree with the stupid notion that atheist have nothing, no cause, no morality, no sense, nothing to fight for. Maybe you need to read about some persons like Linus Pauling, Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, Epicurus, Socrates, Thomas Alva Edison, Virginia Woolf, James Watson, David Hume, LaPlace, Woody Allen, Ayaan Hirshi Ali, Harold Kroto, Dimitri Pavlov, Democritus, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ayn Rand, Steven Weinberg, Stephen Hawking and many, many others. I suggest to read The Demon-Haunted World by Sagan for you to learn a couple of things. Although, I’m not sure if you will understand that.

  251. @ Christopher Lowe

    Hi friend! It’s nice to read your comment! Stars and stripes forever! I’m impressed with how much you know about our enemies. Certainly you know more of them than me. I have to study about them more because it’s always good to know the enemy. You may also know about the skeptical thought of Thomas Jefferson, he is really worthy of being read. Also, I’ll confess that once I played to be socialist but later I changed my mind. Central planning economy doesn’t allow creativeness and genius to express freely and puts too much responsibilities on very few persons. The model to follow are to me the Scandinavian countries, like Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Finland and also Switzerland. All those countries have solid democracies, a strong state, and good quality public services like transport, health and education, they are amazing!

    By the way, I’m really sorry for what happened in Oklahoma, I hope it will not be the same as New Orleans.

  252. @ Christopher Lowe

    Sorry it took time to respond. I have been in Great Falls, Montana.

    It was difficult losing my mother but I have adjusted well. I chose not to get into relationships. I have a few good friends. For the most part I stick to myself.

    The economic problems in America are almost entirely caused by government. While both parties are to blame, it does not help having a president that wants to destroy our economy. The Democratc Party has become the largest terrorist group in the world. Adam Smith was a Deist, as were many in his time.

    I own a consulting firm that specializes with medium size businesses. The vast majority of companies are very good to their employees. Some are dishonest but that is not the norm. The biggest problem is the unions. They have created unreasonable work conditions and have hurt their own workers. They are currently pushing for Amnesty for illegals that will hurt American workers. All the unions care about is dues, so it does not matter who pays them.

    My father and four of my siblings were born in Fairhill, Cork City.

  253. @ Emmanuel Sanchez

    I am the kind od Agnostic that does not claim to know the origins of our universe. I can neither confirm or deny that God exists. In other words, I use reason when it comes to not knowing.

    Hitler was not religious when he died. It is very possible that he was Atheist. He certainly was not a practicing Catholic like you and others have claimed. Rachel Carlson has written over 100 articles about population control and was clearly an advocate. She was a firm believer that third world countries should be controlled and not allowed to over populate. She also knew that DDT was relatively harmless and she knew she was lying when she wrote Silent Spring.

    I have never said the Founding Fathers were traditional Christains. Most were but many were Deists. Non were Atheist, as you would like to believe. I do not view Atheists or believers as “the enemy,” you do.

    There have been many atrocities associated with religion, so what? Over all, religion is far better for society than not. The good, far out weighs the bad. Atheism offers nother for society, only Douchebags like you that think you have something to offer, you do not. It is you that is lost. Just like man cannot prove the existance of God, you cannot prove there is no God. The difference is a believer has faith, you have nothing.

    We have already discussed Hitler and the fact remains the same, more people throught history have been murdered by Atheists than people who hold religious beliefs. Also, one more time, Hitler had distain for religion and was most likely an Atheist when he died. There is no proof of course but there is plenty of evidence that he was not religious.

    The Catholic Church was very supportive of the scientific community but that does not fit your agenda. It is too bad you cannot be honest with yourself. You should release your hatred and set your mind free.

  254. In just the past few days you have written:

    “[Rachel Carson] made Hitler look like a boy scout.”
    “Scum like you and JFK”
    “I believe diversity is a bad thing.”
    “only Douchebags like you”
    “You are an idiot if you think you have to be an Atheist to be a free thinker. You are not a fre thinker, you are a narrow minder believer of nothing. Basically you are just a liberal scumbag.”

    And you call Emmanuel Sanchez a hater? That’s your hypocrisy speaking, again.

    [The last quote has somehow been edited out of the version on this site, but it is in the copy I received through the email subscription.]

  255. NM, I edited out the phrase about being an idiot and a liberal scum bag, and I contacted chris by email to let him know.

    Everyone, please feel free to engage in robust reasoned debate, but please do not use this website as a platform for personal abuse.

  256. @ Emmanuel Sanchez. Buenos Dias. Actually, “stars and stripes” forever is a little off the mark. I’m a little bit north of there. The Maple Leaf Forever!

  257. @ chris
    Well, well, well, anyone who reads what you have said before, the way you express and also the fact that you have already been censored realizes of that your critical thinking capabilities are really limited, you watch everything as a confrontation in which insulting and slandering are more important than arguing, you call yourself an agnostic while actually you are very biased in favor of religion and accuse atheists of offering nothing, having no reason to live and finally of causing more deaths than anyone. Before signaling some important issues about this, I will answer to your questionings:

    I never claimed that I had the absolute certainty about the existence of God nor the origin of the universe. About the first issue, i have said many times that without evidence, everything will be taken as false until the contrary is proven. I am a skeptical atheist that refuses to believe in god because there is no solid evidence for me. I will believe the day that I see an incontrovertible evidence. What is most clear to me is that nobody would believe in god if it weren’t because of religion and I have plenty of reasons for not believing in religion that I’ve expressed before. You accuse me of hating christianity but you are wrong, I just reject it and criticize it to support my view. And I’ve put some emphasis on this because it is the main religious system in the western world and people in this region uses to think that if you don’t believe in it you are necessarily evil and shameless (and it appears that you follow that line). I didn’t affirm either that I knew the origin of the universe. Actually, once I said that it is possible that we will never know, but I was really concerned about letting clear that this kind of limitations in our knowledge do not involve the existence of a god. To me, a universe without a master mind thinking every single phenomena and planning everything makes more sense, as I really think that it is because of our subjective ways to perceiving reality that we like so much to think that everything requires a designer, but well, I could also be wrong about this, but I really hope that the Bible’s god is not real, because if he is, all this life would have to be just the choose between absolute submission or eternal condemnation, it’s horrible.

    You say that you never affirmed that the founding fathers were traditional christians, but then what did you mean when you said “The Founding Fathers were escaping religion. It does not mean they were not religious, most were. Only a hand full were Deists.”? You criticize me for making too much assumptions but also you are contradicting yourself. I recognize that I don’t know too much of american history, but a spirit of free thought and secularism was very present in the founding fathers, which you want to disguise as religious. You might be offending your own nation.

    You insist in talking about Hitler. He was never an enemy of catholic church. When he survived to the attempt against his life in 1943, the archbishop of Munich offered a Te Deum in thanksgiving for the salvation of the Führer. He said that killing jews he was making the work of god. In his master book Mein Kampf he mentions a creator of the universe. He blamed atheists as well as communists and jews for everything. Facts are more powerful than words.

    You say that catholic church was very supportive of scientific investigation. Are you kidding? Something like that could be possible until recent times, when it has lost most of the power it once had. They not only censored Galileo. During the Middle Ages they banned the corpse dissection and the study of human anatomy. They didn’t allow any kind of free inquiry and taught only some selected texts of Plato and Aristotle that were saved from them ironically by muslims, who later re-introduced them in Europe to let them learn about the lost philosophy of ancient Greece. The Renaissance made an inflexion point in history because the political power started to separate from church, as well as intellectual work, study!

    Recently, I’ve been studying about Carson’s book Silent Spring and I think she was prejudiced about some issues but that was because she was scared of the effects of pesticides on wildlife -and was one of the very first persons to warn us about this in a time when most of us were really ignorant about it. It’s difficult to establish a solid criteria about an issue in which there were so many interests in conflict, but even if she was wrong (and she wasn’t mostly) it doesn’t allow you to compare her with Hitler. She did not believe in genocides as something justifiable nor the superiority of a race. She defended planned population control and regulation of birth rate, not in slaughter.
    In further defense of Carson, it is argued that DDT was never banned by the US government or international treaty for use against malaria (its ban for agricultural use in the United States in 1972 did not apply outside the US or to anti-malaria spraying; the international treaty that did ban most uses of DDT and other organochlorine pesticides — the 2001 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants — included an exemption for DDT for the use of malaria control until affordable substitutes could be found.)

    John Quiggin and Tim Lambert have written that “the most striking feature of the claim against Carson is the ease with which it can be refuted,” while Merrill Goozner laments publicity given to critics “who make statements that can be refuted by spending just fifteen minutes in online databases that contain scientific abstracts.” Mass outdoor spraying of DDT was abandoned in poor countries subject to malaria, such as Sri Lanka, in the 1970s and 1980s, not because of government prohibitions, but because the DDT had lost its ability to kill the mosquitoes. The Global Malaria Eradication Campaign, which employed large outdoor spraying of DDT was halted in 1969 — four years before the US DDT ban — for not “achieving its stated objective”, as mosquitoes were developing resistance. It is now known that agricultural spraying of pesticides produces resistance to the pesticide in seven to ten years.”

    When you support DDT irrationally you make yourself look like a salesman of chemical industries. The real trouble with this are not short-term effects, it is the accumulation during decades in soil and water, the bioaccumulation through the food chain. That substance deposits in human grease and bones, has been implicated as a cause of neurological damage and is specially harmful for aquatic wild life and birds. It seems you do not care too much about it.

    Lastly, I will clarify two things. First, I didn’t mention that all christians were my enemies, I have never said that. I identify my enemies in intolerant, dogmatic, closed-minded and stubborn people like William Craig, because their interest is not knowing the truth, it’s just the intransigent defense of their positions without admitting any other kind of reasoning. I have known very nice persons that believe in god who are not like them, nor you. Second, some comments ago, when I compared ourselves with primates, I did it to show how the inhibitions in behavior and altruistic conduct that we associate with morality are far more primitive than what we though. I didn’t say they were somehow “perfect”. I know we are far more complex. When you criticize me your hypocrisy flourishes. You said don’t get in my way and I will not get in yours. If so, why so much insults and slang? You make me feel pity (of you).

  258. @ chris

    As Richard Dawkins said, a lot of false analogies can be made when you accuse some one(s) of a crime. I have pointed out some of the crimes made in the name of god and religion because they are very diferent to the crimes commited by religious persons. For example, I understand that the mass murder made by Hitler and Pinochet, among others was not motivated by religion. But the crimes made by the catholic church during the haunt and burning alive of “witches” and opposites, the Crusades and the Holy Inquisition as well as the ever-lasting (until recent times) persecution of gay people were actually inspired by religion, those crimes had religious ideological reasons.

    When you accuse atheist of comminting mass murder you try to establish a false cause, as signaling atheism as the motivation of those crimes. Political ambitions, megalomania and hatred are not caused by atheism, this can be only a part of the thought of those horrible characters but not the cause of what they did. As a example, Hitler, Stalin and Hussein all had mustaches. But their mustaches didn’t make them evil, it’s stupid to affirm something like that. The same goes for atheism. It doesn’t make anyone evil. As much as there are decent men with mustaches, there are decent atheist men and women. Do you understand?

    It is so false to say that all atheist are marxist that it’s tedious just to argue against that stupid lie. But if Marx were alive when some of the evil characters you have mentioned distorted his theory in favor of themselves, he wold have felt very frustrated, terrified and depressed. You must be very careful to accuse an ideology of inspiring something.

    Lastly, let me shake off your accusation against me of being a liberal scumbag. I deffend the right of each person to live the way he/she wants without hurting the others. I do not support unregulated capitalism but I support the existence of private enterprise. I define myself as an anarchist in political terms because I agree with the fundamentals of that ideology. I do not believe in political parties, I think each social sector has to choose its own representators from their own. This is not liberalism. As I said before I admire a lot scandinavian countries and the europeans which are not liberal, at least not totally. I think the state has to be strong. But, anyway, I don’t even know if you have the necessary humbleness or inteligence to analyse all this.

  259. @ Christopher Lowe

    Ha, ha, ha, excuse me for that mistake! I though you were american (because you didn’t specify I suppose now you are canadian). I’ve heard a lot of good things about your country. Canada has a strong sense of conservationism and has the reputation of one of the cleanest countries of the world. Also, you know to do things better than americans (no offensive purpose intended) as you have social medical insurance and a lot of public universities and heavier taxes that your government invests in improving life quality of the average citizen. I don’t have money nor time now to visit your homeland, but hopefully I will one day. Pura vida!

  260. @ Emmanuel Sanchez…Buenas Noches. We Canadians are often confused as being like Americans. We for the most part share the same language. Our economies are inextricably connected. We have as many Wal-Marts per capita and we drive around in mostly American vehicles. But our politics, and our histories, and our social and foreign policies are very, very different. Because our population is only 10% of the Americans’, and our military is laughable by American standards, we have to be wary of our giants to the south. I note that Costa Rica has no military at all. Good on you. Our best known priminister of recent times, Pierre Trudeau, was the one who made the analogy of living beside the Americans is like sleeping with an elephant. If the elephant decides to roll over…. Because our histories are so very much different so are our outcomes and our outlooks. We are in no ways two peas in a pod. We have a parliamentary system of government (which we feel is more representative and democratic, by the way.) Although we are signed allies, we are no way in lock-step with American strategic foreign policy. On the contrary, Re: the Middle East, Africa, East Asia, we differ and differ quite strongly. Viet Nam: we officially opposed their policy and did not participate militarily. Iraq? Same thing in the second Iraq war. Cuba? Maybe at first we backed the US, but as time went by and the soviets dissolved we felt no need in participating in “punishing” the Cubans any more . We have had full diplomatic and trade relations with Cuba since the end of the missile crisis. In 1962 we feel the embargo was justified, but 51 years later we feel restrictions are overkill. Cuba is now no threat to the US. I feel communism may well die out with the Castro brothers if the Cubans are treated with respect and don’t have an intransigent US as an excuse to bash their American neighbours for political purposes and be more amenable to become a “normal” Carribean republic. These days we look to the south with bemused confusion. The political fighting and infighting seems quite bizarre to most peering in from the outside. But if you are any kind of student of American history (which I literally was as a 4th, 5th and 6th grader in the Fairfax, Virginia school system) it makes sense, taking into account the tides that have washed over them in the 19th and 20th centuries. It has come to what it has come to directly as a result of the great debates and wars of those eras. To their credit they’ve kept their friends and allies out of it. In return I’m sure they would appreciate us keeping our noses out of it. We in Canada sit in the bleachers cheerleading one side or the other (actually mostly one side) they have the right to tell us to mind our own business, as we have the right to have the favour returned. On the topic of religiosity though, no boundary should be recognized. These questions are bigger than any of us, nationally or individually. That resides in the Realm of Ideas. Let the debate rage on.

  261. @ Emmanuel Sanchez

    You are projecting. I never said, “Atheists have no reason to live.” I also realize that the vast majority of Atheists are good and decent people. That is not the point.

    Insults are a fact of life. I will respect Micheal’s rules and stop the insulting. Although, I am amazed that an Atheist would want rules that confirm too religious beliefs. As far as slander, you obviously do not understand what the word means. I have not slandered anyone.

    I am not a religious person. You have no idea what the differense between religion and faith is. It is obvious that you also are unaware of what Agnostic means.

    “your critical thinking capabilities are really limited”

    I would put my education and IQ up against you anyday.

    First, faith came before religion. There is evidence that people worshiped a God over 100,000 years ago. Religion came around as best we can tell in China about 4,500 years ago. There is a difference between scepticism and knowing. The argument is not about what you believe personally. It is about what we as a society claim to be true. You referred to “the enemy” so I said you hate religion. I too believe that all religions are full of crap. I too see the hypocrisy in all of the different religions. The difference is this, I cannot prove or disprove the existance of God. I was a lawyer for 12 years and as a result, I realize that making a claim is enough. You as the sceptic, has to prove your case without a shadow of a doubt. Atheists cannot do that.

    I do not know the stats of Atheism worldwide but in America it is something like this. 95% of Atheists are born into religion, 70% start out as Catholics, 80% are registered Democrats and 90% believe in Global Warming. There is definitely a pattern there. Atheism is not as diverse as some believe. It seems like more of a political statement.

    The Founding Fathers were escaping the King and his taxes, not religion. The very first thing they did after the war, was build a church. They did not want something similar to the Church of England. The “Founding Father’s” refers to the men that created America’s government after the war. The vast majority were religious. A hand full of these men were Deists. Non of these men were Atheists, at least not publically. When I said, “they were escaping religion,” I was referring to the Church of England.

    Hitler rejected Catholicism while he was in Art school. A few references to God is far different to being a believer. He murdered over 1,000,000 Catholics in Poland. He also killed over 2,000 priests. He wanted to decimate organized religion but was willing to structure a government organized religion. There is no evidence that he had any animosity towards Atheists. It is also not know if he believed in God when he died. I have never claimed he was an Atheist, only that it was possible.

    Galileo was persecuted because he challenged the Churches Authority. Catholic scientists including Galileo, were responsible for many discoveries.

    Rachel Carson studied the effects of DDT for ten years before she wrote it. She had full knowledge that it was basically harmless. She also knew the banning DDT would reverse the effects it had on ending malaria. Rachel Carson also wrote about the need for population control and believe man was responsible for controlling third world countries. She knew fully well that the lies in her book would kill millions of people. She may not have been racist but third world countries just happen to be littered with brown people. You can call that what you want, I call it “superiority of a race.” She was far worse than Hitler. The US was instrumental in the ban of DDT around the world. It was all orchestrated be Carson and her cohorts. Everything you wrote about DDT is bullshit. The fact is malaria was nearly wiped out and today millions are still dying.

    There is a group of people that want to ban the use of petroleum. The want to ban all uses of fossil fuels. When you ask one of these idiots about the consequences and point out that millions of people will starve to death, they just shrug their shoulders. That is the reality of people like Rachel Carson.

    You should not pity me. I am doing well. I am simply saying that peace and love is a farse. It does not exist and never will. There are two things that will never change, greed and power. As long as the two exist, there will always be problems. So, if you leave me alone, I will leave you alone. That is in terms of society, not me and you personally.

  262. a) Ernest Hemingway. b) Sir David Attenborough, who, taking advantage of a renter’s relief program, rents a luxury downtown apartment for, get this, $150/month!. c) Helen Keller. d) David Suzuki. e)Susan B. Anthony. f) If imbued with their creators’ philosophies: Mickey Mouse, Superman, Family Guy. g) The surviving members of Pink Floyd.

  263. Everything you mentioned had many reasons for happening. There is not a single event you mentioned that was solely about religion, just as the millions of religious people in countries like China, North Korea and the old Solviet Union were not killed solely because of their religion.

    I am not making the claim that they killed because they were Atheists and you are right, that is only part of their character.

    You give yourself to much praise. You are a liberal. You believe that you can force your will on others in the interest of what is good for society. You seem to think that you are an intelligent but you have offered no evidence. Like I said, before you question me, take a look in the mirror.

  264. @Chris… Would an unfettered capitalism lead to a form of anarchy, or an oligarchy? Something to chew on. Ayn Rand didn’t have a drop of human blood in her body. @ No One in Particular, more atheists: Howard Taft, William Shatner, Leslie Neilson, Sweden, Mel Gibson (not!!), Ted Williams, Kurt Vonnegut.Someday I will learn to paragraph using this medium. I promise. @Chris again, Early riser I see.

  265. @ Christopher Lowe

    Capitalism is only a tool, much like all other isms. Private sector will always be better and more efficient than government.

    I hardly sleep. I have insomnia and only sleep a couple of hours a day. Somedays I do not sleep at all.

  266. @chris… I kind of agree, though sometimes I’d leave out the word “better”

  267. @ chris

    You are the world champion of hypocrisy. Of accuse me of giving too much praise to myself while you challenge me to test my intelligence and academic level against yours? I’ve never claimed to be a genius, but let me tell you something fellow, no matter how much do you know, what you least have are wisdom and humbleness. You have called others idiots, scumbags and cockroaches just because they don’t agree with you. You said about yourself that you are a lawyer with twelve years of experience, let me tell you something, if so your situation is even more embarrassing. When I started my discussion against you, I thought I was debating with a teenager or maybe a young adult, someone in his 20’s. If what you said is true, you are too immature for your age. You have been working for the half of the years I am old. And I don’t pretend to say that my argumentation is better, it is certainly more serious and respectful than yours, and this doesn’t come from my ego, it is a question of dignity and self-respect.
    You ask me to take a look at the mirror. You may do it first, but somehow, I’ve already done. I have been giving you examples of most of my claims, taken from reliable sources and you insist in that I don’t present any evidence. Although I admit I was misinformed in some issues, you are certainly worse than me, because when you are you don’t stop your insults and bigotry. You have actually taught a couple of things. One is that I will face some intolerant, closed-minded and stone-deaf people during my life, just like you. Second, that one must be well informed of something to support better oneself positions, however, as an opposite to many of today’s most widespread ideologies, I have tried to do so. And don’t come saying that I have failed. Even if you know more than me, your defects don’t allow that culture shine.

    You say that if I cannot prove that god doesn’t exist then I have an undisclosed case and I cannot affirm anything. Well, I agree partially with that point, but being yourself a lawyer, it’s a shame that you come saying that. If you remember the principle of in dubio pro reo, you may know that if there is no clear evidence signaling someone of what he/she has supposedly done, the person cannot be blamed. The same goes for the assumption of innocence, until the contrary is proven. This is at least the third time I say this: applying that same kind of healthy skepticism, any asseveration will be taken as false until the contrary is proven. The same goes for god. I’m not a dogmatic atheist, I’m a skeptical atheist.

    And I’m tired of reading your comments saying (and later denying, in the most annoying way) that we have no hope. Once you said “you have nothing, literally”. At least we have free thought (and let me tell you that I never said that you need to be an atheist to be a free thinker, but I do think that if you belong to a religion [you said this is not your case, however it looks like] you have to submit your mind to a series of dogmas, and, if you don’t like dogmas, you cannot have religion). To me is difficult to understand how religious persons can argue that they are free thinkers, but I won’t discuss that now. They can be very respectful, which is not your case.

    By the way, it seems you need sleeping pills. Maybe your insomnia is killing your neurons 😛

  268. Wow a lot of crap under the bilge gate.

    All forms of govt devolve to oligarchy, including representative or republican democracies such as the Roman Republic and the early U.S.; in fact, the most ancient monarchies like Egypt and Sumeria and China were probably morphing oligarchies. It can be argued that all forms of govt derive from oligarchy and return to it. When you sing the praises of Scandinavian or No. American neo-liberal governments, it shows very little comprehension of the global situation of today.

    Emmielou Sanchez, you are quick with the nasty asides, but I can assure you I am more than your intellectual equal. If you would read carefully you would not be so mistaken in your attacks upon Chris nor upon me. For instance, I never claimed to be an agnostic, and could not have been clearer. I am far from a religious apologist as you mistakenly claim; I’ve been very careful and clear in my assertions regarding the illogicality of atheism and the distinction between religion and theism. Chris is correct when he says that you “project,” and your mistakes and misguided attacks could be minimized by your reading more carefully. At any rate, despite your long-listed name droppings, you have poorly supported the wrong point. Even as a pre-reformed atheist, I recognized Sagan as a feeble clown…at least leave him off your list of dignitaries. My background is in physics, before string theory set it back a few decades. And despite my distaste for the popularist, I even suggested Sagan for the list of famous atheists. So don’t drop that gall bladder’s bile and split my sides, I have kids to feed.

    Chris, what may be pregnant in this discussion is the smugness of certain nationalities toward our circumstances here in the States. The fact is that ours is the only govt left which still gives lip service to the Liberal v. Conservative debate. But since that debate was and is only a slipcover for the real ballgame, it’s a counterproductive waste of time discussing.

    Atheists, be free! Free to believe nothing. But stop proselytizing, badmouthing your bogeyman Religion, and pretending the chip on your shoulder isn’t there. I’ve never met a religion I could stand nor take seriously, so it doesn’t impress me when you take badly aimed potshots at the worst generalities you can find and poorly comprehend about particular religions. You are in danger of exhibiting the same character flaws as the religionists you clearly despise. You have a form of blind faith in nothing. Admit that it is a twin-sister to the faith that theists have. I’ll say it again, because it is true, agnosticism is the only logically defensible and rationally arguable position. The rest is a form of faith. I admit I have faith in Science, but I also admit that it is faith.

    Also, Michael, I don’t doubt that an argument, even fight, against entrenched religion, and especially its worst excesses, is both necessary and worthwhile.

  269. @J…..”I can assure you I am more than your intellectual equal” Yikes! Your arrogance is breathtaking. Just because you’ve “been very clear about your assertions regarding the illogicality of atheism and the distinction between religion and theism” doesn’t mean you’re right.The profuse churning out of negative adjectives is not a reasonable way to argue any side as a serious adult. Sitting there parsing us who actually have something to say contributes nothing to the conversation. Oh yeah do up your pants, your ethnocentricism is showing.

  270. @J9

    There is a user that signs just as “J”. Are you the same man, just asking?

  271. I can see now why Chris has lost patience with these few. CL, your breath is no doubt easily taken. You have no appreciation for the fact that I was responding to an insult, previously hurled at Chris, and responding carefully and measuredly and with specificity. I challenge you to supply the ‘negative adjectives’ you claim to have been ‘profusely churned.’ As for your conversation, no one has been ‘parsed’ and all attempts to cut through the nonsense have been rebuffed with insults and invectives, and most annoyingly by harping on tangents. Lastly, ethnocentrism should show, and be acknowledged because everyone has it, can hardly fail to have, though most are unaware; therefore it is coloring your ‘conversation’ unbeknownst. (And no, fawning over each other’s countries doesn’t exempt.) Though it is a mystery and conundrum that anyone could misconstrue my few words to Chris as self-congratulatory or even complementary to our country or culture much less to ethnicity, if one of these is what you are attempting to imply.

  272. I see that you might be offended by the word ‘smugness.’ I apologize for that, as I could have chosen more carefully. It’s not necessarily a negative, but is usually taken that way.
    Still, I am reminded of the joke with the punchline: If the Foo shits, wear it.

  273. @ Emmanuel Sanchez

    I am not a lawyer. I used to be a lawyer, then I got a real job. I am nearly twice your age and I have forgotten more than you seem to know. My insults are nothing more then a way of debating. If you do not like it then maybe you are ill prepared to debate.

    Nothing I have said is bigoted or untrue. It is you that is close-minded.

    The believer is the one on trial, at this website and you cannot prove your case. As far as saying, “Atheists literally have nothing,” I simply mean you lack faith. Rest assured though, you still have religion, which is basically what Atheism is.

  274. @chris:

    “Nothing I have said is bigoted or untrue.” I’m even older than you, and I find this statement to be a paradox.

  275. @J/J9

    All right, let’s start from the beginning. Your constant attacks against atheists and qualifying them as dogmatic (you didn’t use that word but you compared us with religious persons, so the accusation goes by the same path) induced me to think that you were religious, just like the case of chris. And let me quoute you after you denied that you said you were agnostic, however, what did you expect me to think after you said this:

    “Chris, You are precisely correct on all of your important points […] and your tormentors hereon only skirt your points because they cannot refute them. Agnosticism is the only rational position available to argument. In fact, atheists tend to argue for agnosticism when they mean to support atheism.”

    If you agreed so much with chris and his alleged agnosticism, therefore, I though you considered yourself an agnostic. But what bothers me the most are two things. First, you are giving your support to an intolerant man that has called idiots and scumbags the ones that do not agree with him (and I’ve never used such expressions against believers, not even against him), and if you consent this kind of intolerance, then you are accomplice of it or maybe (I’m not sure) you share that point of view, and if so, you just aren’t a rational person. Second, you generalize saying that atheists are irrational persons comparable to religious people. This may be the case of some of them but not all and maybe not even the most. Please take into account that many ones of us come very religious and intolerant families and are somehow escaping from that, but this is not the real reason of this. In my case, and many others, we define ourselves as atheists because after making an analysis of the Holy Bible and religion and ideas like an omniscient father and the afterlife, we find them so absurd that we cannot believe them. This is an exercise of reason, not hatred or anything else. As Hitchens said, what is affirmed without evidence, can be discarded without evidence. I don’t believe in any god because I haven’t seen any solid evidence in favor of one (but I do see every day is that very few ideas are more established in our society than the prejudice that all human kindness and generosity come from religion and god. If so (as it is obvious) why are there nice persons of all religions? Does god have multiple personality? Just kidding!

    You said in another comment:

    “However, I do more so have to agree with Chris in his/her estimation on two important points: that, despite their whining and mudslinging (respectively) to the contrary, atheists avoid reason and atheism is not a ‘good’ thing. If you do not want to admit that atheists, by and large, claim that atheism is a ‘good’ thing, ask yourself if you 1) believe that religion is a ‘bad’ thing (however you define it) and 2) believe in your heart of hearts that religion is atheism’s (or science’s if you prefer to argue that non sequitur) counter-corollary.”

    After so much evil caused by religion, it’s easy to understand why so many of us see it as a menace. To me religion stretches and biases the thought of people, making them believe many absurd things (the list here could be eternal. Just as a example, catholic church still opposes to the use of contraceptives arguing that it induces lust and promiscuity [no population control considered, hey] the in vitro fertilization comparing it to abortion [wtf?] and that homosexuals are going to hell [this one is funny, it includes many priests, however also nice people]). To me, religion poses a moral dilemma. I understand that I have to distinguish between the doctrine itself and the people that believes it. Religious people can be nice persons but I do consider pernicious some of the bases of the doctrines in which they believe, but anyway, many of them are so ignorant about their own religion, that their morality doesn’t actually comes from it (but unfortunately, they think it is so).

    It is impossible to hide the opposition between atheism and religion. In everyday’s life I do not waste time trying to convert anyone. I believe that religious believes are part of private issues, no one can force the whole society by the law to submit to a complex of religious beliefs. But I do not consider my case a “religious” one for the reasons I’ve expressed before. My position is not dogmatic. And there is something important to point out. When I have discussed with believers in everyday’s life, I’ve realized that they don’t only want you to believe in god, but to believe in THEIR god. There is a huge difference between believing that there is possibly something and that what is there is specifically what they want, but many of them fail to make this distinction.

    “They really do have a persecution complex.” This affirmation is quite offensive. In countries like mine, it is not a persecution complex. It is a fact. They stigmatize and ostracize you for being a non-believer. If you have any kind of sense of justice, you have to be against this.

    I find your opinion about the human animal being responsible for all the evil very interesting. However, I think it is only partially. Our brains are still primitive and biased by emotions. But our culture, civilization and weapons development aren’t actually natural and it’s difficult to analyze such things. When we use our intelligence for mutual destruction I see it as a tragic combination of our abstract reasoning with our primitive impulses. It is a synergy, not only one source. The first time I heard that our morality had natural origins I didn’t believe it. But after analyzing the behavior of animal species and the investigations that many ones have done on it I see that the primitive fundamentals of what we now call “morality” are far more ancient than what we though. Also, we can see some examples of selfish behavior in nature, but it obeys to instincts. War and genocide are far from that. They are usually motivated by political reasons and very often have been motivated by religious reasons. The primitive aggression and pleasure on others pain is also present but I don’t consider it as the main ingredient.

  276. @J

    There is something I forgot to say. You dared to call Carl Sagan a clown. This is pure irreverence. You really need to learn to respect such intelligent and rational people. Also you said once “atheists be free to believe nothing”. Seriously? This is bigotry. There is a lot to fight for in political and ethical arenas. I have mentioned earlier that we can defend many diverse convictions. Be careful with what you say.

  277. @ chris
    It’s hard to mention from where atheists come. If in America most of them come from catholic religion, you cannot generalize saying that we lack of diversity. I will try to make a brief list of some cases of atheists that got separated from religion:

    Antiquity (deserters from paganism):
    Epicurus
    Socrates
    Protagoras
    Democritus
    Diagoras
    Theodorus
    Hypathia (most probably agnostic, she refused to convert to christianity)
    Siddartha Gautama (Budda): although he was the founder of a religion he didn’t believe in any god and in oposition to what many ones think, he didn’t declare himself a god.

    Middel Ages
    The only case I know are some Muslims that apparently became atheist: Ibn al-Rawandi, Abu Bakr al-Razi, Al-Maʿarri.

    Renaissance and modernity:
    David Hume (ex-protestant)
    La Place (ex-catholic)
    Kazimierz Łyszczyński (ex-orthodox)
    Jean-François de la Barre (ex-catholic)
    Baruch Spinoza (ex-jew)

    Contemporary (oh, you have the whole website, here are some examples):
    Karl Marx (ex-jew)
    Engels (ex-protestant)
    Schopenhauer (ex-protestant)
    Nietzche (ex-protestant)
    Bertrand Russell (ex-protestant)
    Amarthya Kunar Sen (ex-hinduist)
    Julia sweeney (ex-catholic)
    Kathy Griffith (ex-catholic)
    AND MANY, MANY, MANY OTHERS…

  278. @ chris

    You have stated many times that Mao killed more people than anyone as a way to slander atheism. Take into consideration that during the Conquest of America up to 90% of aboriginal population could have died, and there were around 30 million only in Mexico. That historical process had religion behind as an excuse to justify the abuses in order to spread christianity. Take account of it.

  279. @Emmanuel Sanchez. Buenas Noches my young Tico friend. Just a point, there really is no such thing as an ex Jew. They self identify more along ethnic and hereditary lines. Lewis Black (agnostic) and Woody Allen, Rob Reiner, and Sam Harris (atheists) call themselves “secular Jews”. Our friend J says that he is a physicist. He also claims to be agnostic. Is he, or is he really a deist. You know his opinion of Carl Sagan, try waving the name of Lawrence Krause under his nose and see what happens.

  280. “In such grim proceedings one should be grateful for unintended humor.”

    “It’s a tautology, for God’s sake!”

    “Because something is unintended does not make it an accident.”

    EmSan, I will respond to you again; Though, Chris, I don’t know how you find the patience to respond to those who won’t listen. Clowe, I won’t respond to your lies about me as they were not addressed to me, so blessedly I have an excuse; except to say thus and so: incite and wave flatulence under your own nose; you imply I have nothing to say, but that is because you can’t or won’t hear what I have said. Flatly funny that you, Sancho, an avowed atheist, are concerned for REVERENCE for your god Sagan. Is He your Creator, sine quo non? I can’t help your prejudices which lead to an inability to read, grasp and move forward, since I’ve exhausted attempts at asking for you to do so. But I don’t like your putting words in my mouth, especially when quoting that which should make your mistake obvious, though it doesn’t rise to the level of libel. I don’t like your calling me bigoted, as you have done Chris. You are inaccurate in both cases, and fall to the level of ad hominem, to quote your own charge at Chris. I was speaking to Chris when defending agnosticism, not to you, so I am not responsible for your false inferences; doing so because it is true, does not make me an agnostic; I’ve been clear at every point of comment, that is the source of my frustration. (please be mindful of your presumptions.)

    I have not said that atheism is a religion, as Chris has said. I don’t agree with that…but have said here that science can and often does act as a form of religion for some, probably many, atheists…ones I’ve known personally and others I’ve read…Dawkins, for instance. I was not referring to all atheists, which you’d see if you would, again, read carefully and with particularity, but to Chris’ “detractors hereon” when I referred to a persecution complex. And I was speaking to Chris, not to you. And I do not agree with Chris on this point, though I comprehend his position, unlike his detractors hereon, that atheism lacks faith. I’ve said I believe the opposite, in fact, that atheism is a form of faith…in nothing. There is a large difference. Time and again I’ve pointed out that atheism has a cause to fight religious intolerance and persecution, but that by ignoring the distinction between religion and theism, it becomes a crusade of intolerance itself. I say, ‘be free,’ and you call it bigotry. How can freedom be bigotry? I am beginning to see that Chris is right in telling you to define terms you are misusing. You seem to like name calling. I respect you because, by and large, you are polite. I admire that and aspire to be more so; but I admit I have no real taste for it. (please curb your assumptions.)

    Religion has caused evil, I suppose it is mere semantics to say otherwise. But then the same holds true for atheism, as Chris has tried to point out. The animal brain, the amygdala and other basal ganglia, is responsible for most of our ills, but you are correct to point out that our pre-frontal lobes contribute their own issues though charged with the orchestration and control of our emotions. (please curb your assumptions.)

    Vagina from China, ancestrally, btw. (please be mindful of your assumptions.)

  281. Iran is about to hold national “elections”. They kicked all reform candidates off the ballot. Kind of a reverse voter repression move.

  282. @J
    Well, first of all, I will clarify something important. You falsely argue that I see Carl Sagan as a god. I have very clear that he was only a remarkable human being, one of the best astronomers and scientific popularizers of all time and a very smart and moral person. According to you I cannot admire him because it is the same as a divinization. This is the most ridiculous I’ve heard. You need to study more philosophy and history of religion to understand what divinization is and I understand he is not a god or anything so. Please get mature.

    You have said that atheism is the twin sister of religion. This a huge lie and I don’t know when are you going to understand that this is a generalization you cannot make so easily. Not all atheists are dogmatic atheists. You accuse us of intolerance while in fact intolerance arises when hatred and confrontation come as consequences of disagreements, so is more a question of personal attitude. Not all atheists are intolerant and I think most of us actually laugh when we see people fighting for religious reasons. You say we don’t make difference between religion and theism. I understand there is a difference but is very weird to imagine a theism without religion. If you don’t have an idea of who is god, given by a religion, to whom are you going to pray? I don’t know anyone who says that he prays to an unknown god without shape, or message. All gods come from religions and if you pretend to be a non-religious theist (hypothetical case) , well, if it is possible, don’t waste your time thinking that there is always somebody listening to you. You say things that later you deny, like a child that throws the stone and hides the hand.

    You said “they really have a persecution complex” in a sarcastic way, loaded with hate, as well as “be free to believe nothing”. These expression have a strong pejorative meaning, they are insults, and then you try to make an euphemism putting emphasis on freedom. You are childish. We can fight for many causes, but it is something you just don’t understand.

    You complaint about using ad hominem argument. Let me sign something. When you are attacking an idea, the ad hominem argument is a fallacy. But when you are defending yourself from the accusations and the specific arguments of a person, it is not, because you need to criticize your adversary to show that you are right. You and chris are actually the ones that have taken this to ad hominem argumentation, making statements in a very personal way. I hope reasonable people will be able to see this.

  283. @ Christopher Lowe

    Hi friend! I have had few time to answer you. I’m a little bit worried about you. Don’t tell me that you are a computer addict or something like that (“boy I need a coffee”). ??? Dou you stay up late in front of a computer? Please tell me that’s not the case. I usually write at late night because I’m very busy during the day, I’m in university. This is not a chat room. You won’t necessarily receive responses immediately. Sorry for that 🙁

    By the way, thanks for the clarification. I’ll be more careful the next time I write about jews, but, to be a jew atheist sounds very weird, but anyway, I feel respect to them.

  284. I see it! Even though I need a thesaurus to understand most of what y’all are saying. I do support my Canadian neighbors. People can give whatever percentages they want about how many atheists are where but I happen to know I’ve never been questioned by one of these polls leading me to believe these numbers are off. To say people weren’t atheist in a time when their guts would be removed and laid across their bodies for admitting it, that tells me some aren’t thinking very deeply. Doesn’t take big words or a masters to figure that out.

  285. @Emmanual Sanchez…..No amigo, I’m not 24 hour computer obsessed, but this forum is a new toy to me and I’m playing with it often. The coffee reference was just a little humour directed at myself for a need of clarity of the mind to stop becoming mistake prone. @julie…..An exquisitely good point. One does have to wonder in an era (very long era) when to confess oneself as an atheist had very real consequences, many hid behind “milder” stated philosophies. Mostly deist. When religionists had it all their own way, heresy was a capital crime. Still is in modern Islam. Self preservation I suspect was a strong motive. Another point. Before the enlightenment and the rise of science to more provable and practical application, atheism was on more shaky grounds foundationally. I may be wrong (and others here will certainly point it out if I am) but Baron D’Holbach in mid 18th century Paris might have been the first in Europe to “get away” with open and unabridged atheism. Was could have been a spokesman for many others who for reasons of social standing might have kept mum on the subject? I suspect so.

  286. It should be noted that in the officially secular US where their own constitution has a requirement that they be religiously neutral, that religion is flourishing more than any other developed western nation. Nothing wrong with that. It’s funny though that this country with well over 100,000 churches, mosques, temples etc have so many that accuse atheists of trying to hog the stage. Oh the delicious irony!

  287. Also I want to state that some of the people listed in comments that are terrible murderous people, are sociopaths. Therefore it matters not their religion or what they claim to be their beliefs because a sociopath will always lie. They have no conscience and are gods in their own minds. Sometimes we should look at pathology before religion. Just my 2 cents.

  288. @ Emmanuel Sanchez

    Do you understand that the three major religions all pray to the same God?

    @ Christopher Lowe

    America is not a secular society and our Constitution says nothing about being neutral on religion.

    @ Julie

    You are correct, a person’s religion or lack thereof, have nothing to do with their murderous ways.

  289. Chris…then why are u so compelled to keep listing them? How about lets start naming self proclaimed agnostics who troll just to get under others’ skin?

  290. Or perhaps you Chris would fall under sociopath as well since you care not when you call people ignorant, c$#@, and idiots while simply having a goddamn conversation.

  291. Shucks how could I forget praying that people die of aids? Are u naive to the goal of the manufacturing of aids? My immature reaction says maybe uncaring misinterpreting lawyers would have been a better target. But I do not wish that on you. I wish u to be a happy soul. However my knowledge reminds me that lawyer is the 2nd top profession of the psychopath. So itch Lear suddenly that your purpose is to feed off others energy. Its food to you.

  292. @ chris
    I was just doubting about the asseveration that theism can be separated from religion. To me, this is almost impossible in epistemological terms. How can be a theism without a religious base? Actually, what you are saying supports my affirmation. The three main monotheistic religions have a common root and they represent the necessity of a religious base for believing in a god. The rest of people can pray to many gods like the hinduists or they can pray to divinized figures as Buddha (although this is a distort of his doctrine, he never claimed to be a god). The world is made a religious mosaic but I just wanted to sign that without religion theism cannot have support.

    By the way, I’m amazed you seem to have forgotten what says the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America:

    “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”

    And you say “our Constitution says nothing about being neutral on religion.”

    What kind of person are you? What kind of lawyer you were? What kind of american? When you deny that there was a spirit of religion neutrality in the origin of ypur country you talk like a theocrat or a zealot. You consider yourself an agnostic but you are far from that, you seem to wish the obligatory establishment of christianity. Even I’m not american, it almost makes me want to cry to see how the secularism and freedom spirit that was present at the born of your nation has now almost disappeared. It’s time to atheists to recover it.

  293. @ julie

    I appreciate your attitude. When you talk about soul, you seem to be a believer, but that’s not a problem for me. You look like a tolerant person and that’s the important. I really hope that you won’t fall in the same intransigence and bigotry that J/J9 and chris have expressed. And I suggest you to nurture your mind with discourses from both sides to establish a more solid criteria. Reject always fanaticism, as Hitchens said (maybe a little bit extremist): religion poisons everything. Love and respect are far better.

  294. Emmanuel…hi and I appreciate your address to me bc I’d definitely like to clear up how I’m perceived. Please go to the beginning of the comments to see my words. I am knowledgeable about psychology and psychopathy and this is why I used the word soul. Perhaps a better synonym would be conscience. I do not believe a sociology/psychopath can truly have a religion because they cannot truly love, therefore cannot love their god. I am a lifetime atheist and contrary to what Chris thinks…I’ve been this way my whole life….meaning I didn’t have to go to prison or be raised Catholic to get a realistic insight. I’m with u man.

  295. @ Julie

    You obviously are not very bright. The reason I listed murderous Atheists is because they exist. If you want to live in a fairytale land where everything and everyone Atheist is perfect, go ahead. I did not say all Atheists start out Catholic or in prison. In fact, I aknowledged that a few were born Atheists.

    @ Emmanuel Sanchez

    You know nothing about the American Constitution. Obviously, you also do not know that in the US, Atheism is an established religion.

    The Constitution does not protect a person from religion, the way many people think. It simply protects your right to worship or not. Separation of church and state has mostly been interpreted by the court system and America is country with religios foundations and principles. No one in America escapes “God.” It is printed on our money.

    Theism and Religion are two completely different thing. It is like the chicken and the egg, which came first? Theism is much older than religion. It goes back to the beginning of man.

  296. Thanks, Chris, for stating what should be obvious to these, and trying to clear up their misconceptions. I think what is most evident is a lack of depth of imagination and intellect (the latter is sometimes willful), and an inability to take a joke. As for troll julie, there’s that ‘c’ word again. It’s not just foreigners, but also fellow Americans who mis-paraphrase with ‘separation of church and state.’ The original Constitution of the united States was not ratified because it was a “mere” framework for governance, and it was only ratified in 1797 after the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments were added. It then became a protection against government. It protected the People and their (“God-given” “Endowed by their Creator”) freedoms also called Rights, one of which is the freedom OF religion. The words ES quoted are carefully stated. They do not mean to “protect the People from Religion,” as he and CL wish and imply, but Religion from Government. Both governmental imposition and governmental control. (An important side note is that it is precisely this divine imposition which makes the rights and freedoms of Man unimpeachable. Without this divine origin, they can be argued away, which is what is happening today.) Possibly, people such as ES cannot imagine theism without religion because they lack the imagination, but it is a very common conceit with the atheists on this website and on its blog. So it might be with all people hurt by, or who rightly or wrongly feel hurt by, religion’s evils.

    ES, it was a joke–it can’t hurt you unless you will it–a joke to illustrate an irony. Now, I know Say-Gone is not your deity literally; he represents for you all manufacturers of dairy products. So don’t put the ‘ass’ in ‘asseverate.’ Atheists would have to agree that the egg preceded the chicken. Only a theist could conceive of a precedent chicken. And only a religionist would declare it so.

  297. @ J

    What most people do not understand is that there were originally 12 amendments but only 10 were ratified. That is just a side note. The goal of the “Founding Fathers” was to keep government and the church separated and independent of each other.

    The problem with Emmanuel Sanchez is, he was baptised a Catholic and probably did not leave the church until he was 17.

    @ Emmanuel Sanchez

    Tell me I am wrong. The real problem is you are not an Atheist. You are an Agnostic like me. The difference is I hedged my bet and sided with “God.” You turned too the dark side. May the “Force” (of God) be with you.

  298. I will pray for you agnostics. But will not impose my good wishes upon atheists, who are free by free will to be free of goodwill. This freedom will no doubt be declared bigotry by Sancho.

    You are attempting to impose shoulds on an essentially shouldless disbelief system. There should be no shoulds in atheism.

    I see now that the atheists are attempting to define themselves by contrast to what they reject about religion. That is probably from whence all the angst comes.

  299. @the Dynamic Duo, J&Chris……I agree, there it is in black and white. The 1st Amendment states it protects religion from government. And that there be no establishment of a state religion. As well it should be. But guard ye well those gates, because your legislators are attempting to sneak through customs in there briefcases encroachments to the spirit of this law, if not outright violation. The precursor of the Establishment clause, The Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, seems more along the intent of protecting religions from each other, as was the Virginia Baptists’ concern in writing to Thomas Jefferson about discrimination by the Anglican Church. This resulted in the disestablishment of the Anglican Church as the state endorsed religion. Yay! The Virginia Statute guaranteed freedom only to Catholics, Jews, and Protestants. But this was not enfolded into the Establishment clause, as it was negated by the phrase “all religions”. I know I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, but the readership and those that contribute are international. As for the divinity origins, I have a friend who literally came to blows with another fella at an airport bar over this. Wasn’t you, was it Chris? The Declaration of Independence definitely states that rights are “endowed by the Creator”( I think the implication here was more “rather than you, King guy”). The Constitution on the other hand makes no mention of God. I’ll accept “In God We Trust” on your money, especially when said money is offered to me, but I have to tell you that pyramid-topping eye staring at me gives me the creeps!….As for atheism being officially defined as a religion in the states I’ll have to defer to Chris on this point, as he has a legal background. That does not mean the law is just or right. If it is indeed on the books I somehow see this being challenged in the future. As Mr. Bumble states in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist: “the law is an ass”

  300. @J…. Whether an atheist is free of good will, would have to be asked to each and every individual atheist, because being atheist in no way indicates a person’s background, hopes and fears, associations or even ideologies. We of this principle agree on one,and only one point. Distribute your goodwill as you see fit. As you no doubt will distribute your invective.

  301. @ Christopher Lowe

    You are a good sport, my friend. Atheism is to labeled a religion to protect you guys from the masses. The Constitution actually does mention God. It is a good way to make a couple of dollars on a bet.

    It was not me your friend hit, I would have sued him.

  302. from day 1 we are brain washed that god is great and god is good, it’s hard to believe that he didn’t make human’s perfect, then there wouldn’t be any more religious war’s or deaths. all I can say is (once upon a time and they lived happily ever after. TheEnd)

  303. @marly-n, that is nonsense. And do you really expect us to believe that your parents began your first day ex-utero with aphorisms regarding a creator and his character? Read Hitchens’ God is Not Great, cream, and relax yourself. Some people’s brains may need a good scrubbing.

    Clowe, I was referring to goodwill bestowed upon them. Because to reject others of different beliefs as they do is to reject their goodwill and illwill alike. But I think many atheists are just being defensive, and probably with some good reason.
    It’s a sloppy slope to conclude origins from preceding documents. I know this from ancient history. The Declaration is the clear precedent to the Constitution, and in some ways the latter tries to formulate governance from the former. The Declaration was only a divorcing document, but its genius (set aside its tediousness and stridency) was to stand upon and declare first principles pursuant to divorce. The Articles of Confederation were not a similar attempt and it has been argued rightly that they were formulated along the inspirational lines of the Iroquois Confederacy more so than any State documents. They didn’t work in this context, however, and what’s more the various States agreed upon how they did not work. The other important point is that the Constitution in final form is not precursed by the VA or MA documents. It is new in its way. Defined from and distinct from English Parliament, Roman Senate, and English Magna Carta, it is grounded in English Common Law principles and the English Common Weal. But the genius, if that’s not too strong a word, of its writers, however its other flaws, is that they knew that the only way to be eternally free of kings was to declare each man a sovereign. Each man on the land is a sovereign where he stands. This was new. The Declaration made each man (and woman inclusive) beholden to no one but his/her Creator. The Constitution made each his own Sovereign. For the first time in Western history that I know of, governance was derived from the governed rather than from heredity. Prior to that, kings and queens took power but ultimately claimed a hereditary right to do so. All this was probably an attempt to prevail self-governance even if the confederacy of States eventually failed, fell to inter-warfare and/or conflicting global alliances. All this protectionism and self-preservation was of course in the past and all for naught. All governance devolves to oligarchy, in this day and age, global oligarchy. If we keep fighting over religion, which is also what atheism v. theism has become for the most part, we are just keeping ourselves pawns.

    Chris, I can’t find the mention of ‘God’ or ‘Creator’ anywhere in the Constitution.

  304. @ chris

    I think that what you have is a serious misinterpretation. You are right at signaling that the first amendment had the function of separating church from state, but as C. Lowe pointed out, it had also the important function of protecting the individual of being forced by law to have a religion. This is what I meant with religion neutrality. You denied fiercely that american constitution established religion neutrality but to me this is religion neutrality. The founding fathers, as you once pointed out, were escaping from religion and that’s the main reason why they were worried about avoiding the establishment of commitments between religions and the state others than mutual respect and non-involving in each other’s issues. You argue that religion was very present from the beginning of your nation, but you intentionally ignore that the founding fathers were deists and didn’t belong to a established religion (as founding fathers I refer to the intellectuals that founded formally the republic of the USA, not to all the colonizers that came with them and I think that’s an important conceptual disagreement between two us).

    In 1947, the U.S. Supreme Court decision Everson v. Board of Education incorporated the Establishment Clause (i.e., made it apply against the states). In the majority decision, Justice Hugo Black wrote:

    The “establishment of religion” clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion to another … in the words of Jefferson, the [First Amendment] clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect ‘a wall of separation between church and State’ … That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.”

    You use the omnipresent god’s mentions in your country as a way to intimidate atheists and non-christians in general. Let me tell you something fellow. The appearance of the phrase In God We Trust in US dollars didn’t happen until 1957, after the congress approved the addition of it to the bills in order to make it a symbol of the opposition to the godless communism (this was to me a combination of political and religious fanaticism, the two main ingredients of your ideology, too). It first appeared in coins in 1864, far later your nation was born. In my country people use the same prepotency and bigotry as you and I’m used to it. You are pathetic.

    Atheism just cannot be an established religion and all the ones that see it that way are terribly wrong. I don’t even want to know from where you got those statistics or whatever. Religion is submission to a series of dogmas and beliefs in some divine power (except for some eastern religions) and atheism is precisely not that. Atheism is a religion as much as sexual abstinence is a sex position.

    I understand that theism has many forms but it comes closely related to religion. In ancient tribes they had polytheistic religions or cults that were actually animist, so, if you want to tell me that a religion-less theism was present at the very beginning of mankind, take into consideration that even the most primitive had an idea of how god were and today’s notion of a faceless, shapeless god able to fit with a non-religious theism is actually very modern, it is actually having a personal god.

    Finally, when you try to make laughter of me signaling my position as a consequence of being raised catholic, you are putting yourself in ridiculous. There are many deserters from islam, judaism and hinduism within atheism. You can deduce from the fact that I was raised in a catholic country that I was raised catholic but this is not the reason of my atheism (I would accept almost any other way to mock on catholic religion, but this one is wrong on both sides). At the beginning when I was actually 14, I started to doubt about the truth and accuracy of the supposed truths that had always been taught to me. It was presenting obvious that I didn’t have any evidence of god nor the afterlife. My first doubts didn’t come from anywhere, they came from myself. That year was very important in the definition of my beliefs. After I read some quotes of Marx, Feuerbach and Stirner I was more sure of becoming an atheist (this happened later). During years I didn’t have any interest in reading the Bible as the message of the church was so empty, authoritarian and monotonous to me until recently I realized that I couldn’t actually criticize something I don’t know. I read the Julia Sweeney’s monologue Letting Go of God and I could easily find the absurd parts of the Bible, then I made some web search, corroborated it with an actual Bible and then I supported more my rejection of christianity. Satisfied?

  305. @ J

    In the date on the Constitution it reads; “In The Day Of Our Lord.”

    I would add that the Constitution was a way to protect the States from a centralized government.

    @ Emmanuel Sanchez

    First off, I do not know what shit-hole country you live in. I does not matter, you are not unique. There are other drones just like you. I knew you were Catholic because like most Atheists, you focus all your hatred and bigotry towards the Catholic Church.

    The “Founding Fathers” were the men who helped establish the U. S. Government. That included the original 13 states. There were roughly 2,000 men involved. Besides the signer’s of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, there were the Federalist Papers and 13 state Constitutions. Of all those men, only a handful were Deists. The vast majority were Judeo-Christian. Hence the term, Judeo-Christian Society.

    The first reason for the Constitution was to establish rights for the individual states. The “people” did not want another king. Second was to form a government that Changed every 2 years. Third was to seperate church and state. Not onlt so people were free to pray as they chose but to keep the state from controlling religion.

    The reason the government was able to put “in God we trust” on our money is because religion is not established. A muslim is respected as much as a Christian. If the Atheists do not like it, they have the right to fuck off. Everybody’s happy. There are loads of other examples like our Lady of Liberty is praying.

    I noticed you did not deny that you are not an Atheist but actually Agnostic. At least the other people on this site stand by their convictions. You on the other hand, are an apologist for youe views and that is just pathetic.

  306. @Emmanuel Sanchez…..Pura Vida, mi Tico Amigo. Where you are young and open-minded and evolving in your world view, Chris is older and more focused in his outlooks. He seems to have poured the cement to his to foundational beliefs. He stands on that foundation firmly. There is an intellectual honesty in that, however you and I might think it’s misplaced. I’m kind of like that too but maybe a bit more flexible and willing to listen. Definitely more polite than either one of you two. Keep in mind when you are both exchanging screeds, you are both wearing the tinted glasses of your cultures (shit-hole country. Really now?)…. My arrogance in stating this comes from my army brat background, where my dad was posted and i had lived in a couple of Canadian posts, Belgium, U.S. (Washington,D.C.), India and Japan. Being a kid I was able to form ties and bonds with local kids. A real hands-on cultural exchange. My point is my tinted glasses have multiple hues imbued in me because of my voracious curiosity and fascination of my surroundings back then. I was in the local english speaking schools where possible. A Jesuit school (unabused!) in Tokyo, Fairfax Elementary School near Washington DC. I was leading a kind of Forrest Gump existence; standing with my mom and dad at JFK’s funeral procession, being in the public school system in Virginia precisely when the system was being desegregated, landing at my new home in India just days after the conclusion of a fierce nasty war with Pakistan, at a Malayan vacation resort where US troops on R&R from Viet Nam were billeted. . All this while i was living in an entirely secular home . No religion. Nada. When I say I’m an atheist, I really, really mean it. There is clarity in my mind how atheism should be defined. J9 wisely said consider the source. So my angle is probably different than any other of you who are contributing to this source and probably more aligned to the spirit of this blogsite than any one of you. I should be considered in the military wing (rhetorically) of this camp. I will point out the religionists’ stultifying children’s minds in their schools, trying to teach them nonsense as fact in their science classes. Or the madrases where mullahs waste their children’s time and minds by having them restricted to reading and memorizing one book, by rote, often in a language they don’t speak. And that is to be the whole and sum of their education. Worse, there are large and far spread Wahabi and Sufi run madrases (similar to jesuit and dominican) that encourage xenophobia, bigotry, and violence on these young formative minds. That can’t turn out very well. These same mullahs are the ones who sabotaged the world wide , UN lead eradication of polio, forbidding the taking of the oral vaccine drops, of the people over whom they held sway , citing it was a conspiracy to render muslims sterile. Stupid is as stupid taught. Because of them, that boulder has to be rolled all the way back to the top of the hill again. Catholics who say AIDS in Africa is bad but condoms and other prophylactics are worse because of an incredibly stupid dogma that sperm and unfertilized eggs are the spark of life and are not to be inhibited in any way. However in allowing the spread of this disease they will administer the most compassionate care to the victims, This is evil incarnate. I see where the term Holy Shit might acquire the opprobrium of religious bullshit. Our brethren the Taliban, whose education, laws, and established societies need no further comment. The way the religious tolerate and defend the “quirks” of the other consolations. By this I mean Danish and other Scandinavian embassies burned. Over 50 killed,some by mobs in countries where public protest is forbidden, all over some silly cartoons that might affront the sensibilities of some certain group. So there is world wide condemnation by religious and government leaders of the arsonists, murderers, intimidators of small western democracy and large media outlets. NO! World wide damnation lies at the feet of the CARTOONIST! Where the theocratic head of a large important state can put a contract out on an individual novelist of another country for writing a novel of fiction, and governments (including the one that he is a citizen) condemn, not the Ayatollah and his fatwa, but the author. Birds of a feather, it seems, do indeed flock together. Though religious culture is rich and wonderful, and produces great works of art, literature, architecture, and music , and form the mosaic of almost all of our cultures. In vast stretches of society its egregious dogmas are strangling the breath out of the civilizations they inhabit. Some of Michael Nugent’s work targets the Catholic Churchs’ stranglehold on the laws of his land, but I know his ideals extend internationally and he speaks against religious over-reach and imposition and intolerance. Having said all that I realize there is a counter- corollary ( am I using it right J9?) where areligious governments like China and N. Korea are putting great effort in suppressing and even eradicating religion in their countries. That takes nothing at all from what i’ve been focusing on in my talks. So I just sit here and mouth off at the iniquities I and try to point them out. As for religionists, I feel in too many cases their aggressiveness is far out of proportion to their justifications and (Chris note) divine claims, which atheists like me state are abject nonsense.

  307. @ chris

    As my friend C. Lowe has signed, you have to be extremely arrogant for insulting such a way a country without even knowing which one is. That is what one could call a blind target insult. I thought you had paid at least a little attention to me to know that I was raised in Costa Rica. I never wanted to put into this any kind of discussions about nationalities but you made it unavoidable. You are trying to justify the wave of fundamentalism and fanaticism that has been happening in your country saying that so much overload of religion is all right and also you have claimed to be against diversity and have showed clearly your intolerance towards the atheists, in the best theocrat-zealot way. While you are a fake agnostic and have evidenced your hypocrisy in many ways, I’m very clear in my position. I don’t want to waste time in discussions about the real meaning of the term atheism, like some people as William Craig use to do, trying to discredit us. You can consider me an agnostic or whatever, but to my concepts, I am a skeptical atheist. The term agnostic refers to the person that rejects any kind of dogmatic, magical or mystical explanations to the natural phenomena, so, you can call an agnostic a person that considers that there is a possibility of something like 50/50 that god exists, or you can consider an agnostic someone that watches as the most probable the non-existence of god, but without an absolute certainty, like my case. In everyday’s life, some persons that do not want to get into struggles related with religion call themselves agnostics to avoid being ostracized or persecuted. It is milder way to reject religious belief. I call myself an atheist because I don’t believe in the existence of any god, do not worship any one and do not take any kind of text as an absolute truth. I have said that without evidence, any affirmation will be taken as false. This is the way I define my atheism. I try my position to be like the one that Bertrand Russell and Carl Sagan had on the issue, not to be like them, only in that specific aspect.

    You have said that I launch my hate and bigotry against catholic church. There is something important to point out. It’s difficult to keep the blood cold when an institution makes her followers think that they have the absolute reason and certainty, that the ones who don’t share their philosophy (specially atheists) are necessarily evil, that contraceptives must be forbidden because they induce lust and promiscuity, that if you are gay you are going to hell, that you can never divorce, that has committed so many crimes during history (to which your cynical answer was “so what?”) and then denies them or talks about it as it were something without importance (and take into consideration that John Paul II has been the only pope that has asked forgiveness publicly because of the abuses of catholic church). You are right that I haven’t pointed out the abuses that have been done in the name of other religions, but, in the context of the western culture they are less important. I know that the orthodox church of eastern europe had its own version of the Holy Inquisition with exquisite torture methods that were later used by Stalin and the communists. The crimes of the islamic extremists are so obvious that they need no mention. From what I know, a lot less brutality can be attributed to protestants, but when I read the thoughts of Martin Luther and Calvin, it is obvious that they were intolerant hateful persons, just like you, chris. I do not hate believers. Religion? Perhaps, but I can tolerate religion while it doesn’t get involved in law and politics, while it doesn’t censors free speech. To me, religion posts a moral dilemma. Everyone has the right to have one, but I will always disagree with a set of dogmatic beliefs that defy my common sense. And I think they mustn’t be taught to little children. This is an issue in which you have to decide by yourself when you are mature enough.

    I have explained extensively what my beliefs are in my previous comments, so I don’t want to repeat the same speech once again. But let me tell you something fellow. I believe in originality of thoughts and ideas, and if my convictions, according to you, don’t fit within any scheme, that may not be a casualty. My convictions are possibly very sui generis, and if this doesn’t fit with you, it’s not my problem. I’m not pathetic, you are.

    Warren G. Harding, then a Republican Senator from Ohio, coined the phrase “Founding Fathers” in his keynote address to the 1916 Republican National Convention. As a recent expression, it has many ways to be interpreted and people use it in different ways. I as referring to the main characters that participated in the definition of the intellectual spirit of the USA, which were John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington, mostly deist. When you include the 40 signers of the Independence Act I recognize most of them were christians. If you include more people, the tendency is the same. But they were not fanatical. They were very conscious of the need to separate politics from religion. Religion was a private issue of each one’s own. Today’s american fundamentalism that opposes to the teaching of evolution theory in schools and promotes smart design, has made impossible the legalization of gay marriage in all states and has inspired violent acts as the murder of physicians that have practiced abortions is far from that secular spirit. And you seem to support all this madness. Your alleged agnosticism is fake, you are a theocrat zealot.

    Well, you say that everybody’s happy. I don’t wanna talk too much about this, because it is not my intention to ostracize America. If I were american, I would be very concerned about some aspects of the reality of my nation. In the US the medical insurance is so expensive that there are nearly 50 million people that don’t have during a part or the whole year. That is inacceptable for a developed rich nation (if you are humble enough to read this carefully, I suggest you to see the movie Sicko of Michael Moore). The superior education is also extremely expensive in the US. The average debt of an university graduate student is of 25,000 bucks and many ones have a lot higher debts. The medicine career, for example, usually makes them ask 200,000 bucks in loans. This is crazy. Also in your nation many youngsters suffer very stressful lives and fall inside alcoholism and drugs. You are the first drug-consuming country of the world. Also there is an educational crisis. Sagan talked extensively about it in The Demon Haunted World. You need to improve your educative system. On other issues, your aggressive foreign policy doesn’t help too much to the world peace. The muslims will always be your enemies until both sides sit to negotiate, letting pride aside and you must pay an indemnification to the islamic world. This mad situation didn’t let Mr. Obama close Guantanamo nor stopping torturing. And in the short-term future you will have to take more care about the environment. Running out of resources and pollution are very important issues that you will have to face at the turn of the corner. Please read the book Collapse of Jared Diamond.

    I appreciate that your country has been very creative. Also, you protected us from the soviets. But you need to learn to be more modest. Just a suggestion.

  308. @ Christopher Lowe

    Hi friend! I think you are right in that my visions are changing and definitely I’m moe broad-minded than chris. I appreciate your comments, but let me point out that this person really puts you to test. It’s not only hard to keep calmed when reading his biased slang and slandering comments, it’s a challenge to discredit them. Honestly I lost my patience with that person and started to accuse him in ethical terms. It was, to me, necessary. I’m actually very different to him and more interested in supporting my beliefs with reliable sources.

    You were fortunate that nobody taught you formally a religion. When you grow up in a religious family and start to doubt about their beliefs is a hard situation. We both seem to value the free thought and inquiry and that’s our main conviction.

  309. @ Christopher Lowe

    You mention that the Catholic Church will not distribute condoms in Africa but fail to mention that the do not prevent their use. In otherwords, all of you peace loving Atheists can provide the condoms. Wait, I forgot, Atheists do nothing for society.

    @ Emmanuel Sanchez

    When you are done crying in a corner of your Dung Hut in the third world shit-hole you live in, try to grow up. You are the one that said, you do not know if a God exists. It is clear that you do not know what reliable sources are. Cutting and pasting from Wikipedia does not cut it, Sicko was 50% bullshit/50% bias and 100% crap. Instead of finding books to read that support your beliefs, try reading 3 or 4 that have different perspectives.

    Let us start with the definition of Atheist. Atheist: one who believes that there is no deity. That is not you. You said, ” you do not know so if you do not see proof, you will not believe. Christopher Lowe, NM and Micheal Nugent all say, there is no God, period. They are as set in their beliefs as the Pope. There is no point for me to be rude to Christopher because he understands bounderies. NM is different because he likes the idea of murdering little black babies. You are not a sceptical Atheist because that is a contridiction in terms. You are closer to being Agnostic. Agnostic: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable; broadly: one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god. That is where I stand and is the fence you are riding.

    You like to mention that people kill in the name of religion and constantly bring up the lame Inquisition. The Inquisition was about power and control, nothing more. The Crusades were about land and economics. Even the modern day Muslim Terrorists are not killing in the name of religion. They want what everyone wants, power to control. You see, religion is a subset of their plans. The same can be said in North Korea were 25% of the population is in the Army, 4% of the population die every year from starvation and half the children receive little or no formal education. It is not because North Korea is an Atheist country. It is because the dictator wants to hold onto power.

    You have tried to bring your homosexuality into the conversation several times but it does not matter. No one cares if your gay.

    Lets discuss the U.S. vs Costa Rica. You mentioned our education system. You are right, it sucks. The reason it sucks is because it is led by unions that care more about teacher’s salaries then teaching children. I can only use myself as an example. I grew up in Chicago and was forced into the public school system. Granted it was much better in the 70’s than it is today. The high school I went to was 75% black and had a 80% graduation rate. Today that same school is graduating 45% of its students and is scheduled to close. The kids did not get dumber. It is the system that has failed. Getting back to me, I graduated 3rd in a class of 1,200 students and received a full scholarship to Notre Dame (Catholic University). I graduated with two majors, Summa Cum Laude and a job offer with one of the largest law firms in America. I went to Tulane Law School (private, secular) and it was paid for by the firm I worked for. I passed the bar in California on the first try, 8 months before I graduated top of my class (218 law students). Now you tell me, what are the chances of a kid growing up without a father in a slum of Costa Rica becoming a lawyer making 6 figures while he is still in law school? Come to think of it, where is that possible anywhere else in the world?

    You mentioned our Healthcare system. I will keep this short and sweet. In most of europe including England, their system’s are crumbling. In Cuba where Micheal Moore took his camera’s, people die before they see a doctor. That does not happen in America. Our system is far from great but it is better then most in the world. You mentioned 50 million Americans that do not have health insurance. That number was used by the Terrorist Barak Obama. He lied, go figure! The number he tried to use came from the 2008 Census. The actual number was 46.3 million. When you break that down it tells a much different story. 9.5 million are not citizens. I say fuck them. Patch them up and send them home. That brings the number down to
    36.8 million. 17.7 million (including myself) earn over $50,000 a year. Most, (including myself) chose not to purchase insurance. I say fuck them, they can afford it and pay for it themselves. That brings the number to a very manageable 19.1 million. That is less than 10% of the population and can easily be controlled. However, we have a political system that craves power and one way to do that is through healthcare. If a person needs emergancy heart surgery where are they most likely to receive it, if they are poor? a) America b) England c) Canada d) Costa Rica The correct answer is America, enough said.

    You brought up gay marriage. That is funny coming from a person who falsely claims to be Atheist and not a Marxist. Marriage is the ultimate symble of religion. Why would you care? The fact is, in my great country marriage is not a right. However, the courts will fold to the extremist thugs in the gay movement. You are right, I am concerned about the fundamentalism in this country. The liberal extremists are out of control. Personally, I would like to see another civil war. It would be great to thin the herds. The fact is, gay people are free to do as they please. They can suck each other off all day if they please. How are they treated in your shit-hole country.

    Alcohol and drugs are available and some people abuse it. So what, most of Europe has the same problems. It like most problems can be easily solved. Again, to solve it would take power away from the government.

    Finally, Muslim terrorist. You are way out of your league. I said I will respect Micheal Nuggent’s rules so I will not cut you to pieces. Gitmo has not been closed because it serves a lawful and safe purpose. Torture is a good thing but sadly, my government does not torchure people. I wish they would. Torchure is when you decapite someone on film, like what happened to Nick Berg. I suggest you watch the film. It has a perdictable ending. Nick dies a very horific death with some coward holding his head up for the camera. The person on film turned out to be Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He was killed in 2006 in a targeted killing. I wonder, do you see a problem with that?

    The idea of sitting down and talking is ridiculous. They only way to acheive peace is through force. America and the Western world has to start murdering the families of terrorists with a vengance. Only then will these cowards think twice. In England, one of the two thugs that butchered the soldier was asked by Ingrid Loyau-Kennett, “why not go over and join the army. Then you can kill as many soldiers as you like.” His answer was, this is easier. That is the mind set of these idiots. Talking will not stop this type of stupidity. However, if England rounded up the families of the two murderers and butchered them, do you think that would sent a message?

    It is you that needs to grow up. The world is not peaceful and diversity hurst relationships. People will obey boundries as long as nothing is forced on them. It goes back to human nature. Fight or flight is ingrained in every creature.

  310. @ Emmanuel Sanchez

    P.S.

    You said, “It’s not only hard to keep calmed when reading his biased slang and slandering comments, it’s a challenge to discredit them.”

    First, I have slander no one. Second, you cannot discredit me because everything I have said is true. I will say it again, you want to come to this site to pretend Atheism is virtuous. It is not and as long as this site is public, I will be a fly in the ointment.

  311. Chris, True, good one, and Agreed with your addition. Often the trouble is that outsiders, and most insiders, believe the nonsense they receive from media, advertising and wikipedia without foundation, verification, nor skepticism. Ironic when it applies to the self-proclaimed skeptics.
    The skepticism hereon is a misuse of the term; they are “skeptical” of what they reject and non-critical of what they already believe. It’s mostly just willful fuzzy-thinking and romantic nonsense.
    In this sense, Sanchez is more “broad-minded” than you, you’ve gotta give ’em that.

  312. @chris….Nobody is calling you uneducated, unqualified,or stupid. As the Bard once penned, Methinks you dost protest overmuch. But I do agree with MLK that a man should be judged by the quality of his character. I could debate any number of points in your harangue at ES, but I’ll keep myself to the one directed at me. You say the catholic church does not prevent the use of condoms. How can you possibly be serious, and say that? In Sub-Saharan Africa much of the charity work is done by that church. More than it’s charity has been its recruitment into its fold. The power of catholic dogma now holds sway over millions of uneducated and credulous people there. In many areas it is the one and only source of information Re condoms. Cardinal Alfonzo Lopez de Trujillo, President of the Pontifical Council of the Family stooped so low as to aver that all condoms are secretly made with many microscopic holes so as to allow the AIDS virus to pass through.Making such a statement from Rome is bad enough.Translate this statement to the poor and stricken countries involved. See what I mean? Try and picture, if you can, having authority to inflict the greatest possible suffering in the least number of words. When you bow to the authority of the Catholic church in Africa their pronouncements have all the muscular, preventive seriousness intended. Prevented? I think so. OK, I lied. I will address one thing you said to ES even though I know it was a planted burr. Costa Rica has the highest standard of living of any nation in the Western Hemisphere south of the U.S. border aside from a couple of boutique Carribean islands. It is a Developed country. 1st world. It has often been compared to Switzerland. It’s true. I’ve been there. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

  313. @ Chrisptopher Lowe

    I had so much hope for you. Please do not let me down. Tough tittie, said the kittie but the milk still tastes good. Let’s not cry over the Catholic Church not liking condoms. George Bush does not believe in condoms either and his administration has given more money to combat AIDS than any other function of society. There is not a single country in Africa that is controlled by the Catholic Church. If you went to visit a tribe that is supported by the church, not a single person would stop you from handing out condoms.

    As far as Costa Rica is concerned, I have been there too. It is nice but I would not want the misfortune of having to live there. I live in the only state in America where prostitution is legal. It is highly regulated. Costa Rica is where pediphiles go to search out child prostitutes.

  314. @ chris…. I’d never shed a tear over the Papal empire Mr.Oily Fly. You know that. Just that you said they did nothing to prevent anybody using them, but actually in Africa they do in a manner.Just in the way I explained. Of course these pronouncements are widely ignored by the faithful over here because you’re dealing with a more sophisticated audience. Catholics keep coming up in the conversations because they have to be the most successful power maestros of the last two millennia. It’s hard to vote them off the island. I assume you are not talking about the run of the mill pedophiles hiding behind the cross and under the spired roofs. If you’re a sex tourist for little boys and girls the most likely place you’d get caught, next to the U.S. is…..TaDahh!….Costa Rica. Brothels don’t do a damn thing for me. Never been. Never will.

  315. @ chris…. “W” does deserve much credit for his work in fighting AIDS in Africa, but he had to be talked into it. But again,with Bush you were really dealing with whatever ventriloquist happen to have their puppeteers hand up his ass at any given time. Atheist Bob Geldof, and agnostic Bono arguably have had more impact to the AIDS cause anyway.

  316. @ Christopher Lowe

    Like I said, I do not know the stats worldwide but I would bet the majority of Atheists in Canada started as Catholics. That has to be true in most of Europe and Latin countries. Of course, that is a no brainer.

    I agree, I have never had a need for a brothel. I live in a city where visitors are here to do things they would not do at home. I am sure when I go to Ruth’s Chris tonight I will meet such a lady.

    America is not even close to being a destination for child molestation. Asian countries, Arab countries, Latin countries and half of Europe lead the list.

  317. @ chris

    Ah, chris, you have said so much bullshit that I will unavoidably extend this answer a lot. Actually you have wasted the patience of some other users that stopped discussing with you, like NM, because they realized it was a waste of time. But I see it as a good exercise to prove to other persons that all you are saying is a mixture of lies, distortions, slander, bigotry and ego. Anyway, many users would wonder why, if the discussions in this side are supposed to be about atheism, we finished up talking about so many topics, but you have brought them up, as calling my country a shit hole, for example. But first, I will point something important in this discussion (and you are fortunate that C. Lowe doesn’t like to answer to what someone says directed to another person, however, you actually cannot argue to have privacy in a public forum).

    First, when I was talking about you with my Canadian friend, I didn’t say that it was a challenge to discredit you because I was thinking that you were right. Actually, the very most of your “arguments” are loaded with pride and prejudice. I was referring to the fact that I like to search from some sources before answering you, which not only consumes time, it is also an exercise of character. You take the easy road trying to intimidate everyone with your insults, which is actually the meanest possible way to answer. You have tempted me to do it. It’s easy. You express your disagreement with hate and offense leaving no place to real arguing and discussing. And let me tell you something fellow. When you started signaling your achievements, you were not only trying to impress everyone feeding your stupid pride, you also tried to scare me. And you did! Because if it is true, this is the first time in my life that I meet someone that is at once so much cultured and so much stupid. When I analyze the discourse of William Craig I see that although he has an unbearable arrogance, at least he handles logic and philosophy in well constructed but hollow arguments. He is light-years far from you. You are a lot more rude, discourteous, slang, rustic, liar and immature. Did I mention that you have never used references or quotes of anyone in your opinions? You share all the defects of such a person, with the addition of a great lack of modals and a not-admitted ignorance. You may know too much about laws, but that may be the only thing. You don’t debate as an educated person, you do it as a teenager. And you want to read something else? This is the second time I meet a stubborn intransigent arrogant lawyer. I know I cannot make generalizations, but it is very suspicious that at least some of you learn to defend unsustainable positions using brute force and intimidation. It’s a shame that you don’t care about knowing the truth about something. It’s all about prepotency. People like you slow down the world’s progress. Fortunately, not everybody is the same as you.

    In your critics directed against me, I see that you insist in signaling me as a non-admitted agnostic and not a real atheist. However I don’t care about the way you classify me, at least I know that top-level atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennet, the deceased Christopher Hitchens, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and some of the past as Epicurus, Bertrand Russell, Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov and David Hume had a position that is very similar to mine: you don’t have enough evidence to affirm unequivocally that there is not a god, but without any satisfactory proof on the other side, you can take that supposition as false, because the load of the proof rests on the one that affirms something. It is unnecessary to remark that the thoughts of all them were very different to yours. They were also more complex than me. If you say that an atheist is the one that believes that there is no god, in this moment I fit within that definition. Your concept of agnostic as someone who believes that any kind of divine personality is unknowable is actually something with which I disagree. If that divine personality decides to reveal itself, it would blow up all mysteries. But it has not happened. I don’t consider it impossible, but to me, very, very, very improbable to see something like that happen. That is my view about the issue of god. When you compare atheism with religion you are disrespecting us. Not all atheists are dogmatic, you insist in keeping inside a mistake. Atheism is a social phenomena defined only by the rejection of religion’s gods or any other kind of deities. There can be very diverse positions within this and that’s the reason why it is so complicated to make up demographic statistics about atheism. If you consider my position as agnostic, maybe most of the people who declare themselves atheist, including the icon Bill Maher, would have to be considered agnostics, but they will not care about it anyway.

    You used the expression “the USA versus Costa Rica”. WTF? I didn’t mean to compare the two countries. I only wanted to give you hints about what are some of the biggest troubles of your nation. You dared to call my country a shit-hole and I’m far more careful when I talk about yours. Recognizing the own ignorance is the first step to wisdom, says the adage. In the same sense, recognizing the own defects is the first step to improving. I don’t want you to remind me that I live in a third world country. You cannot know about the problems of my own nation then me, because I live here (you could tell me the same but because of your arrogance you don’t want to admit them. I have the necessary humbleness to do so, but I won’t let you say so easily that it’s a disgrace to live here, which I will answer later). Before going abroad to fix the world, make three turns around your house, says the Chinese proverb. It’s funny to think about it when the USA has sent troops to so many countries and couldn’t even give the adequate attention to people in New Orleans disaster. By the way, it is time to support my claims, but before I do so with the problems of America, I will start with the Founding Fathers.

    The following is an extract from The Economist:
    “IN THE year of our Lord 1816 two grand old men of the American Revolution corresponded eagerly about the work they had recently done, in their rural retirement, on the Bible. Ex-President Thomas Jefferson thanked his old friend Charles Thomson, a co-sponsor of the Declaration of Independence, for sending a copy of his newly completed synopsis of the Gospels.

    At a time when many modern Americans are arguing feverishly over the real significance of the nation’s religious and political beginnings, such letters can be dynamite. So let the contents of this exchange be noted carefully. Thomson, like most members of the first American Congress, which he had served as secretary, was a committed member of a church—in his case Presbyterian—but he still felt that there might be things in the Bible that organised Christianity hadn’t grasped. So he spent years re-translating the scriptures; the ex-president approved.

    But Jefferson, like most of the top figures in the American Revolution, was far more of a sceptic in religious matters. He was fascinated by metaphysics but he had no time for the mystical. In contrast with today’s vituperative exchanges, these differences did not stop the two gentlemen maintaining a warm correspondence. But Jefferson’s approach to redacting the Bible involved something more radical than translation. He literally snipped out everything supernatural: miracles, the Virgin birth, the resurrection. The result was his own, non-mystical account of the life of Jesus. He told his old comrade: “I too have made a wee little book from the same materials which I call the ‘Philosophy of Jesus.’ It is a paradigma [sic] of his doctrines, made by cutting the pages out of the book and arranging them on the pages of a blank book…A more beautiful or precious morsel…I have never seen. It is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists who call me infidel and themselves Christians.

    Between now and the 2012 presidential election, many pronouncements by the founding fathers—especially but not only on the subject of Christianity—will be parsed and dissected with passion by both sides. Liberals, keen to protect the American variety of secularism from what they see as a resurgence of zealotry, will stress the rationalist leanings of most of the revolution’s protagonists; religious conservatives will point out that the revolution’s foot-soldiers were generally people of faith who would be shocked, for example, by the idea of banning prayer in schools.

    Believers in the idea that America was established as a Christian state scored a hit last year when the Texas school board, a politicised body in which evangelicals control crucial votes, ordered up textbooks laying out this view. Given the size of the Texan market, school-book publishers across the country often follow its lead. The best-known advocate of the “Christian nation” theory is a Texan, an author and evangelist called David Barton, who has been writing on the subject since the 1980s.

    Among his recent claims are that the founding fathers rejected Darwinism (although they pre-dated Charles Darwin), and that they broke away from Britain in order to abolish slavery. In fact the southern states only joined the Revolution on the understanding that slavery would not be questioned.”

    This is what I found in Encyclopedia Britannica:
    “Although the Declaration of Independence mentioned “Nature’s God” and the “Creator,” the Constitution made no reference to a divine being, Christian or otherwise, and the First Amendmentexplicitly forbid the establishment of any official church or creed. There is also a story, probably apocryphal, that Benjamin Franklin’s proposal to call in a chaplain to offer a prayer when a particularly controversial issue was being debated in theConstitutional Convention prompted Hamilton to observe that he saw no reason to call in foreign aid. If there is a clear legacy bequeathed by the founders, it is the insistence that religion was a private matter in which the state should not interfere.

    In recent decades Christian advocacy groups, prompted by motives that have been questioned by some, have felt a powerful urge to enlist the Founding Fathers in their respective congregations. But recovering the spiritual convictions of the Founders, in all their messy integrity, is not an easy task. Once again, diversity is the dominant pattern. Franklin and Jefferson were deists, Washington harbored a pantheistic sense of providential destiny, John Adams began a Congregationalist and ended aUnitarian, Hamilton was a lukewarm Anglican for most of his life but embraced a more actively Christian posture after his son died in a duel.”

    ““Founding Fathers” refers to the most prominent statesmen of America’s revolutionary generation, responsible for the successful war for colonial independence from Great Britain, the liberal ideas celebrated in the Declaration of Independence, and the republican form of government defined in the United States Constitution. While there is no agreed upon criteria for inclusion, membership in this select group customarily requires conspicuous contributions at one or both of the American foundings: during the rebellion against Great Britain, when independence was won, or during the Constitutional Convention, when nationhood was achieved.

    Although the list of members can expand and contract in response to political pressures and ideological prejudices of the moment, the following 10, presented alphabetically, represent the “gallery of greats” that has stood the test of time: John Adams, Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton,Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Marshall, George Mason, and George Washington. There is a nearly unanimous consensus that George Washington was the Foundingest Father of them all.”

    This is the fragment of the discourse of Warren G Harding in which the term “Founding Fathers” was first used:
    “Standing in this presence, mindful of the solemnity of this occasion, feeling the emotions which no one may know until he senses the great weight of responsibility for himself, I must utter my belief in the divine inspiration of the founding fathers. Surely there must have been God’s intent in the making of this new-world Republic. Ours is an organic law which had but one ambiguity, and we saw that effaced in a baptism of sacrifice and blood, with union maintained, the Nation supreme, and its concord inspiring. We have seen the world rivet its hopeful gaze on the great truths on which the founders wrought. We have seen civil, human, and religious liberty verified and glorified. In the beginning the Old World scoffed at our experiment; today our foundations of political and social belief stand unshaken, a precious inheritance to ourselves, an inspiring example of freedom and civilization to all mankind.” March 4, 1921.

    The following statistics were taken from the CDC, the maximal health authority in the USA:
    “In 2011, 46.3 million persons of all ages (15.1%) were uninsured at the time of interview, 58.7 million (19.2%) had been uninsured for at least part of the year prior to interview, and 34.2 million (11.2%) had been uninsured for more than a year at the time of interview.”

    Talking about life expectancy, the USA are behind most of the European Union and also Costa Rica. You can check it out in the Statistics of the Global Burden of Disease made in 2010 by the WHO. Costa Rica is in place 31 in the world with 78.87 years. USA is ranked 40 at 77.97. I know these numbers can vary, but is very attention-calling that two countries so separated in terms of GDP and resources have similar life expectancies, not matter which one is above the another one, the difference is low, and we both are behind Japan, South Korea and most of the European Union, like it or not.

    In my country all pregnant women must be attended in a hospital to give birth, no matter if they have insurance or not. It is a legal obligation of the social insurance. It is free, too. If you have a stroke and call the 911, you will be attended. If you don’t have insurance, they will charge you later, but your life will be saved.

    In other issues, the average medical school debt today, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges is $156,456. According to The New York Times ” Students who graduated from college in 2010 with student loans owed an average of $25,250, up 5 percent from the previous year,”. The same quantity was reported by daily finance.

    In Costa Rica, not even in private universities you will have to take such a debt. I admit that we have coverage problems and we don’t have the same prestigious and academic weight that many american universities have, but, if in relative terms, a similar percentage of total population will get a college degree, then, why presuming so much? I know that if you grow up poor, your chances are limited in this country. But, If your problem is that you don’t have a father and you lack money but your mother is concerned about your education and has let you a good cultural heritage, then exists a possibility that your family can achieve a scholarship given by the government. You can get paid your school and high school and even university if you qualify. If you were as bright as you said, you wouldn’t have had difficulties here either. The problem with the poorest people is that they are usually very ignorant and education is not their priority. I know it’s a complex situation and our government hasn’t done the best about it.

    About the defense of gay rights, there is few that remains me to say. Your sarcasm is actually non-sense. I have said previously that I’m not gay, I just respect them and would like to disappear from the Earth all the religious institutions that sign them as immoral or whatever. I know what is to belong to a stigmatized minority, atheists, not matter straight or gay, are hated too. I don’t think that in the whole USA they can live as comfortable as you say, your culture is as homophobic as mine. In Costa Rica most people say they don’t care about what they do, but in fact, they are homophobic. It is a cultural issue, determined by religion. The same happens in the states that have not legalized gay marriage. In my country, at least, there are a lot of gay bars and other fun places like beaches that they can visit. And I dare to say that I feel proud that many gay tourists come to my country to visit those places, but it is not enough.

    It is very revealing that you admit that you believe in brute force as a mechanism (the only one) to get to agreements. This actually talks very badly of you as a person and of us, as species. But I still dare to say that I dream of a free rational world even if I die without knowing it. I believe in reason, because it has been the key of progress. Your vision is actually limited for what you have seen inside your country. There are other ways to live. I really think we have to learn what we have forgotten from ancient tribes. Your thoughts only lead to bloodletting and self-destruction. And why haven’t you dared to destroy the whole islamic world with your nuclear power if you hate them so much? Respect? Wrong answer. Petrol. Saudi Arabia is one of the main trading partners of America because they have petrol. As much as they sell their religious convictions, you sell your political aims. Everything is about money. Business is business. There is something more powerful than fear and coercion to inspire respect. What about love and unity? They are very scarce in this world, I know. But I don’t know anything more capable of inspiring respect than when you appreciate someone. Conflicts will always arise, but they can be solved.

    You say that the crimes committed in the name of religion actually had political reasons. That is partially true. Religious power has been usually the allied of political power. It’s sometimes the same one, as in islamic cultures. But religious beliefs were the way to justify the crimes I have mentioned. It appears you have a very biased view of history, but anyway, you aren’t a reasonable person.

  318. Canada is traditionally English /French. So divided roughly Catholic/Anglican. Canada did not have a constitution of its own until 1981. The Queen of England was officially our Head of State until then. Every Act of Parliament had to be signed off by her. It was of course only a ceremonial rubber stamping since 1867, when the Dominion of Canada was formed. I’ve not read it myself, though I strongly suspect it is along the lines of the British tradition, as our Parliamential system is. I do believe that Canadians who claim no religious affiliation is around the mid forties percentage wise. The highest non- affiliation claims in any English speaking country would be Australia, where it is in the upper 60’s. This is not an indication of how many of these would claim to be atheists, so your guess is as good of mine. These are simply folks who checked “none of the above”. Americans check in at 15% by similar polls. I don’t suspect Americans would ever allow itself to become a molestation destination,but they do have domestic problem (as we all do). Laws can’t be harsh enough against these baby rapers and their enablers.

  319. I found Costa Rica to be rather lovely, and no more prone to slums than most other countries in the Americas.

  320. a) Abby Hoffman, b) Dr. Benjamin Spock, c)Peter Fonda d)Gore Vidal e) Franz Kafka, f)Diego Rivera, g)Jean-Paul Sartre g)A.C. Grayling f)Charles M. Schultz. Well, time to trot out from my stable another one of my hobby-horses, and gallop into the fray. Before aspirin, tylenol, ibuprofen, pain killers in Marx’s time were basically opiates in various forms and ether. It is to the ANALGESIC properties of the poppy he is referring to when being quoted. the most egregious out of context use of a quote ever perpetuated. It is a cynical, deliberate isolation of a phrase used by many of those opposed to his politics. I’m talking of course, “religion is the opium of the people”. He was addressing how much the dominance of false consolations and wish thinking was driving the politics of his time, ignoring the people to whom this was being applied. You may or may not agree in what he was offering as an alternative, but in no way was he advocating stupefying and rendering the population indifferent and impotent as his enemies imply. His opponents have plenty of other ammunition of his writings to turn to. He was rallying people to be MORE active, not zone out and let geopolitical tides wash over them. He was not denigrating religion as much as imploring religion to get out of the way, and let man among men decide (pre women’s rights) their own destiny. Disapprove of what he thought that destiny should be. Go nuts. But I believe in this aspect of what he has to say, and that it is a false target for his anti-socialist enemies. It would be like accusing him of being a religious maniac because he said “bless you” to someone who sneezed. Anyway here for context is the full quote wherein lies the opium/people phrase is contained: “The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is indeed the self consciousness and self esteem of man who has either not yet won to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man-state society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn compliment, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression the of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of the heartless world, and the soul of the soulless conditions. The opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call them to give up their illusions about a condition is to call them to give up a condition that requires illusion. The criticism of religion is therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo. Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but that he throw off the chain and pluck the living flower.” Yadah yadah yadah. Let it be known other than this very brief epiphany of his, I’m no fan of Karl Marx. He lead a very banal and provincial life frought with domestic problems and failed enterprises and was a rather unsuccessful member of the very bourgeoisie he was trying to vilify. His “success” came rather late in life when he hooked up with fellow traveller Friedrich Engels. Man, did they ever have wicked soup strainers hanging from under their noses and chins!

  321. @ Emmanuel Sanchez

    You truly are a sad little pathetic person. You have to grow up and put your big pants on. Do not come on here and cry because someone is being mean to you. It makes you look weak. Besides, you too are a very insulting person.

    I do not have to lie to get my point across. You on the other hand, are only lying to yourself. Also, you are the person that plagiarizes, uses Wiki for resources and subscribes to bullshit like the movie Sicko. Anyone that is fair minded understands that you are a kid recently out of university that does not know fuck all about the real world.

    I could care less if NM is interested in what I say. He/she wants to murder little black babies.

    I use myself as an example because it pertained to the conversation and I have experience in what I speak. Youbbrought up the problems in America not me. I pointed out that America is a much better place than the shit-hole you live in. I have been to Costa Rica, have you been to America? Do yourself a favor and stop being so transparent. You are a typical liberal fool that only believes what you want to believe. Stop being so closed minded and bigoted.

    No one needs a history lesson about the “Founding Fathers” from someone like you, thanks anyway.

    “Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennet, the deceased Christopher Hitchens, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and some of the past as Epicurus, Bertrand Russell, Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov and David Hume,” all of these men believe that there is no God and no possibility of one existing. That is what makes them Atheists. You do not share their beliefs. You are a fraud.

    I have met Bill Maher, I am not sure I would call him an icon. Retard would be more like it. Only a retard would deny the existance of God and then insist that Global Warming is settled science. Talk about a hypocrite. Penn Jillette would be a better choice to call an icon.

    People in New Orleans are doing well. Anything you think you know about what happened there is bullshit. If you do not believe me go there and see for yourself. Wait! That’s right, you do not use applied knowledge. You get all your information from Wiki and bulshit liberal/marxist propaganda.

    The only reason Costa Rica has a high rate of life expectancy is because they under report their infant mortality rate. If you douchebags in that shit-hole counted the way you are supposed to you life expectancy rate would be much lower. There is nothing in your shit-hole country that comes close to comparing it to America. It is just a fact that America is better in every way. It is not your fault you were born in such a shit-hole, third world, bacward ass, fuckwad country.

    It is odd that you say, “you respect gay people.” Do respect adults that dress like babies and shit themselves? A main reason gays in your country are so disrespected is because of machismo, which has nothing to do with religion. Anyway, most gay people struggle with who they are. You are right, they should be respected but not because they are gay. They should be respected as human beings and left alone. It should not matter what a person’s sexual orientation is.

    Sometimes brute force is the only way to get a message across. Go back in history and read about Neville Chamberlain. He was a naive person just like you. Let us get something straight. Your shit-hole country does not have a military and has to rely on America for protection. If we pulled the plug it would only be a matter of time before your shit-hole country would be overrun by Panama.

  322. @Michael Nugent. My last comment is awaiting moderation? What did I do?

  323. a)John Stossel b)S.E.Cupp c)Cenk Uygur d)Andy Rooney e) Marjoe Gortner

  324. @ Christopher Lowe

    John Stossel is Agnostic.

    @ ROBERTL QUETZALCOATL

    Atheism is bondage to IGNORANCE
    Lack of religion a contamination
    of the mind.

  325. @chris…. Ok. I heard him once on TV say he had no religion. I assumed he had no god by that statement.

  326. @ chris

    WTF? I though you were already dead. How can I call you now, a zombie? The theocrat zealot is still alive…

  327. @Emmanuel Sanchez…..Buenas Noches. It had become so quiet around this site that I thought maybe everyone was scared off. Busy instead I suppose. Everybody’s got their day job. Yes I’m awaiting an explanation why my post #373 is being moderated It’s been a week now and no word from Michael. Guess he’s busy or he’s trying to ignore me so I’ll go away. That’s OK because I found a Website where the discussion is just as lively and the people are much easier to talk to, without the bickering and name calling. It looks like we have a “newbie” on board for chris to torment. Should be entertaining.

  328. I too am waiting for something I posted to be moderating. No I am not dead. I actually just got back from Vernon, BC. I am on my way to the Palms and in the morning I probably will look like a zombie.

  329. @ chris

    You aren’t conscious that the only one here who doesn’t realize of how much ridiculous you are is yourself. Any reasonable person that reads your previous comments can see that you actually do not support your arguments with nothing, it’s only about offense, prepotency and prejudice.

    First of all, I will tell you a fact that really makes me think about how contradictory can the people be driven by ignorance. In your previous comments it seems that at least you are a fervent patriot (but on the wrong side). Then you will want the preservation and survival of the bald eagle, your national bird. You wanna know something? Besides other factors, it was almost taken to extinction because of DDT, as well as the cormorant and the osprey. I’ve taken this facts from the book Biology: Life on Earth, written by Teresa Audesirk, Gerald Audesirk and Bruce E. Byers, ninth edition, 2010. This happens because predacious organisms like those birds, suffer severely because of bioaccumulation. In some cormorants, concentration of DDT was one million times higher in their tissues than in water. Do you imagine how much embarrassing would have been for your nation to admit the extinction of your national bird? You almost did it. DDT was banned in America in 1972 so those species could recover. It was never banned in most of underdeveloped countries. And it is a fact too, that it was firstly used for agricultural purposes in America, it was later used in developing nations for controlling mosquitoes populations. The combat against malaria doesn’t depend only on this, it also relays on treatment access by administrating drugs like cloroquine and primaquine and also promoting community health by elimination of hatcheries. In low income countries this is very difficult. And consider that the WHO allows still use of DDT in case of emergency of epidemic malaria. When Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring probably she was assuming many things but later investigations proved that her concerns were justified. Comparing her with Hitler is a historical atrocity. You may be more comparable.

    Second, the comment you have made about the atheists I have mentioned shows nothing more than your ignorance. Epicurus once said, that perhaps there are gods, but what he knew, and this was a teaching of experience, is that they do not worry nor occupy for us. Maybe the most famous of his quotes is the one that doubts about the generosity or omnipotence of god. If you knew more of history, you would understand that this is a skeptical position. He didn’t claim to have an absolute certainty. The same can be said about Carl Sagan, as one of his most famous questionings against theism was “if god created the universe then I think it has sense to ask who created god”. In the historical debate against father Copplestone, Bertrand Russell affirmed that could not demonstrate that god didn’t exist, but he was a skeptical. He was an atheist because he discredited all the Christian dogmas using skepticism and logic. Richard Dawkins claims that god “ALMOST certainly doesn’t exist”. He said that he is as skeptical for god as he is for fairies. But what would happen if you see a fairy? You will have to admit it. He doesn’t affirm that he has the absolute certainty either. Bill Maher once said that if Jesus appeared in the mid-time superbowl show we would say “goddamn, there he is”. C. Hitchens wrote in his book God Is Not Great that if he meets god after death, he would say: “imponderable sir: I suppose you appreciate more a sincere disbelief that an interested belief”. Sam Harris is also a skeptical who beliefs in scientific method and empirical evidence as ways to know the truth. Here is a recent quote from Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has just become mother: ” And so you have to ask yourself, “Do I really want to bring him up with the idea that there is no God?” And my approach is – and my husband agrees with me – no, I’m not going to tell my son there is no God. Why? Because when I was growing up I was told there is a God. I’m just going to tell my son, in regards to morality, once he’s old enough to understand, that there are people who think there is a God, and there are different gods, and there are people who think there is no God, and there are different forms of atheism.”

    None of these persons are or were dogmatics who refuse to accept any evidence in favor of the existence of god. They believe in evidence. When you implicitly affirm that they have faith that there is no god, you are just lying. Faith, understood as the blind belief in something, just doesn’t fit within those minds. And you may know something new now. I’ve read too about global warming skepticism, and arguments in favor that most of carbon dioxide actually comes from plankton and volcanoes. This, in my opinion, could be true, but the effects of pollution on human health are definitely real and it’s not necessary to be a scientist to see it. If Bill Maher is wrong about this, it doesn’t make him a retarded.

    Now, let’s return to the issue of our nations. I feel more dignified than you when talking about this. You insist in calling my country a shit-hole and actually the first time you did you didn’t even know which my country was. I’m not launching such insults against America. One knows a lot about the problems of your country because of what yourselves have said about it. When Obama denounced the problematic of lack of insurance you called him a terrorist (such a patriot!) when CDC warns about the seriousness of the trouble, you ignore it. A lot of columnists in your country have spoken about this, Michael Moore is only one more. Here are some quotes from Paul Krugman, published on New York Times:

    ” A House committee estimated that Assurant made $150 million in profits between 2003 and 2007 by canceling coverage of people who thought they had insurance, a sum that dwarfs the fine the court imposed in this particular case. It’s not demonizing insurers to describe what they actually do.
    Beyond that, this is a story that could happen only in America. In every other advanced nation, insurance coverage is available to everyone regardless of medical history. Our system is unique in its cruelty.

    The United States is the only advanced nation without universal health care, and it also has by far the world’s highest health care costs.
    Can you imagine a better reform? Sure. If Harry Truman had managed to add health care to Social Security back in 1947, we’d have a better, cheaper system than the one whose fate now hangs in the balance. But an ideal plan isn’t on the table. And what is on the table, ready to go, is legislation that is fiscally responsible, takes major steps toward dealing with rising health care costs, and would make us a better, fairer, more decent nation.”

    Possibly, you will now say that Krugman is a liar. It’s predictable. You call me a liberal and a marxist (don’t you realize this is a contradiction of concepts?) and say that all my sources are crap. What are yours?

    Here is a data taken from the CIA world factbook (an american source) about life expectancy, that you can check out at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html

    The USA are ranked in place 51 in the world with a lifespan of 78.62 years. Costa Rica is in place 58 with 78.06 years. You dared to say that my country hides infant mortality. How can you know, if you aren’t from here? In my country, actually both birth rate and infant mortality are among the lowest in Latin America. Possibly you don’t know that in my country there is a hospital specialized in attending children. Do you remember what I said? I didn’t want to compare the two countries. I accept the main problems of my nation, why don’t you accept yours? As I said, actually our countries have very similar life expectancies (if you insist that this is biased, ask yourself why an american source would lie about this). You have the military power. It doesn’t make invulnerable. All the world-leading civilizations and empires that existed before have collapsed or lost its protagonist role. This happened even they were once invincible. You make laughter on us. Abolishing the army was a gesture of civilization, in a perfect world it wouldn’t exist. We are the only country in Latin America in which democratic elections were uninterrupted during the whole second half of twentieth century. This was possible because without an army there cannot be putsches. You say that without your protection we would be overrun by Panama. How could that happen between two friends? War is stupid when unnecessary. Maybe some countries like Colombia and Venezuela would be more aggressive but unfortunately, the history of this region shows how much self-destructive we can be (but Costa Rica never participated in a single war).

    In the Cold War times, Soviet Union was the second military power of the world. Did it involve that they were right? Obviously not. They imploded. Brute force doesn’t involve reason. Take account of it.

    Finally, we must recognize that cultural issues are complex. When you argue that sexism or machismo is the main reason for gay discrimination you are simplifying reality. That may be partially true for men, but what about lesbians? Religion is actually very important, I know it because the Bible is the main source quoted by homophobic people in this country. In yours the same damn thing happens.

  330. @Escherichia Colicoati
    peoPle who SLOganizE are vein drained ZombiES. In your canopic containers you will find, hopefully, your grey matter, testicles, liver and spleen. Under the rock of your petrified amygdala, you will find your first clue.

  331. @Quetzalcaturine
    Atheism is faith in ignorance. Cogitate on this for a time before you blurt out some emotional nonsense; for instance, it’s not prima facie insult.

    @EmmoSancho
    Liked your last response very much; showed self control, some scholarship, and good intent. And it got through the moderators. Thanks for the information. Since it’s not to me, I’ll refrain from responding by point. It’s counterproductive at this juncture anyway. Especially liked your defense of your country while showing perspective. Favorite quote: “In yours the same damn thing happens.” Side question though, can atheists in good conscience use the term ‘damn?’

  332. @ Emmanuel Sanchez

    You truly are the master of misinformation.

    There is no correlation between birds and DDT. Between the time America started using DDT and the time Carson wrote her book, 1941 to 1960 the Bald eagle population grew. The bird was in trouble not because of DDT but because of hunters. In fact the dumb twat used the robin as her example. The fact is, the robin population grew 12 fold in that period. I also did not equate her to Hitler. I said she was worse than Hitler.

    Next, Atheists Blah, Blah, Blah. All of those people are being ironic.

    Global Warming is no more provable than God. Bill Maher is a retard because he is ignorant on so many issues, not just because he believes in something that does not exist.

    I did not call Obama a terrorist because he is a liar. I called him a terrorist because he is responsible for the deaths of many Americans and he like most of the Democrat Party have given material support to terrorsts organizations. In fact, I am on record as stating that the Democrat Party is the largest terrorist group in the world. Speaking the truth about your country is patriotism.

    Paul Krugman is not a journalist. He is a commentator. Liberalism and Marxism are not mutually exclusive. In fact, most -isms are interchangeable. The idea that you chose the most extreme liberals like Paul Krugman and Micheal Moore explains why you are so biased. Try using more independant sourses. You use the CIA as a sourse, like I am supposed to accept it as fact. I thought you kept up with what is going on. My government is currently caught up in 4 scandals. My government lies all the time. However, I accept the study you used. The problem with the numbers is they do not include the infant mortality rate.

    https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html

    Costa Rica is number 152. The U.S. is 174. How does that compute? Belize is a peaceful country and have not been involved in any wars for over 100 years. Panama is your friend because they too rely heavily on support from the U.S.

    America has many problems. Healthcare is very low on the list. The fact is heath insurance does not equate to heath coverage. You can have all the health insurance you want but it will not heal you without access to a doctor. That is the reason people from other countries come to America for coverage. Including people from countries with univeral healthcare. The reality is if you do not have insurance in America you can go to an emergancy room in any hospital anfd they cannot turn you away. If you do not want to wait in an emergancy room you can go to any county hospital and you will be seen regardless if you have insurance or not. Your country has a children’s hospital. America has 87 children’s hospitals that are specific to one expertise. In other words, if you have heart problems you go to Boston Children’s Hospital and if you have cancer you go to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Do you understand the difference? That is why our system is more than anywhere else.

    The number one cause for any bias is ingnorance. That is how someone as biased as you can feel so superior. You are not. You are just ignorant.

  333. How does spam get through immediately but not legitimate comments?

    Chris. Sweet. Tour de force.
    Problem with sources is they are all biased, in fact publish disinformation, UN CIA WHO and then every other would-be source refers to those. Usually based on some false premise which skews the supposed results. Usually an unaccounted for field which renders the extrapolations meaningless. How does a clandestine “intelligence” gathering agency publish reports?
    Ignorance is more comforting than false information.

  334. @ J

    Great point. People that offer sources are usually only doing what they learned in college. The problem is, like you said, most sourses are biased. Emmanuel Sanchez wants sourses but if I only used Fox News or Newsmax, he would say those are biased. He would be right. However, when he refers to Micheal Moore, Paul Krugman or Wikipedia he does not seem to realize that he is using propaganda.

  335. Re comment: It takes Faith to be an atheist….I have to tell you that as far as real atheists are concerned, Faith is completely off the table. Faith, as referred to by religionists, bears no weight or credence as an argument for anything as far as we are concerned. Faith is the religious giving each other permission to suspend reason and proof. Faith is not a virtue. It is not tied to morals. It is not tied to reality. It is fabricated nonsense. To those that say atheists believe in nothing, they couldn’t utter a more fatuous, imbecilic statement if they tried. Seeing is believing. The nose on your face is plainly visible. 2+2=4. We all form concepts with what we see, we commit, we indulge, we form passions. Within that sense we believe strongly in what we do and what we say. We DO believe in nothing that smacks of Divine origin or control, if that’s what you mean. If you want to peg all atheists with a set of beliefs, all you would be doing is trying to herd cats. To anticipate an argument, no I do not hold science as a religion. It isn’t one anyway, it’s just a fact finding method that can and does get revised and corrected with better information. (Name one religion that does that). I realize that religion was originally an attempt to explain the reality our species found ourselves in. It was also an original attempt at governance, and an original attempt to control that which could not be controlled. The vast majority of the religions that have arisen have been discarded. The dominant ones today have had their assertions on cosmology, math, history, geology, anthropology, archeology, as well as moral advancement ripped to shreds by better information. There is no evidence of any divinity, good or bad, to exist, let alone play a hand in the affairs of life on earth, or the machinations of the cosmos. But there it is. An overwhelming majority have Faith, and use it as a basis of decision and a claim (utterly undeserved) of righteous rectitude. Atheists too have convictions and act upon them. Make a list of history’s worst assholes and benevolent philanthropists. You’ll find atheists on both. Find someone who stares at an indisputable fact and still denies it and you’ll be looking at somebody with a pathological mental disorder or a person of Faith. It takes a person of Faith to perform the breathtakingly lazy stance of filling in the gaps of knowledge with ‘god’. Since this is a site dedicated to the subject of atheism, free thought and skepticism, I thought I’d throw in a comment that’s on message.

  336. @chris… “Belize is a peaceful country and have not been involved in any wars for over 100 years”. Something about that did not sound right to me, so I looked it up. Firstly, Belize has only been around for 32 years. I kinda knew that. Previous to that it was the British colony of British Honduras, since 1862. Guatemala also laid claim to this territory as the province of “Belice.” War was threatened and troops amassed in 1963, 1975, and 1977. Soldiers from British Honduras/Belize fought in WWI. As far as I know it was the only Latin American territory other than Puerto Rico to send troops to either World War. You could probably care less, but just saying.

  337. @ Christopher Lowe

    You are right, Belize has only been a independent country a short time. However, they are the same people as they were when they where colonized. In fact, the English never set up a formal government. As a colony they have not been involved in a war in over 100 years. Many men went off to fight with England in both wars so they could send money back to their families, so what? My father came to America and faught in the Korean War so he could become a citizen.

    Since I like you I will help you with your nonsensical babbling. Atheists do believe in what we can not see. Take air for instance. You cannot see it but you know it exists. You also realize that the universe is infinite. We all know there is not a brick wall out in the middle of space. Let’s take your rants one at a time.

    “Faith is the religious giving each other permission to suspend reason and proof.”

    It is just the opposite. Faith is the same as saying you believe in the “Big Bang” theory or that we all evolved from bacteria.

    “Faith is not a virtue.”

    Faith is a virtue. It is what holds communities together more than anything else. It does not mean that Atheists are not good people but Atheism offers nothing that helps bind us.

    “It is not tied to morals.”

    Of course faith is tied to morals. The whole basis of modern criminal law is based on the 10 commandments.

    “To those that say atheists believe in nothing”

    What do you believe in?

    “We DO believe in nothing that smacks of Divine origin”

    You do believe in something that requires as much faith as the religious. The more you believe you are different, the more you are the same.

    “It takes a person of Faith to perform the breathtakingly lazy stance of filling in the gaps of knowledge with ‘god”

    It takes a person without Faith to perform the breathtakingly lazy stance of filling in the gaps of knowledge with science. The reality your version of events are no more provable. I thought you began by saying you only believe what you can see?

  338. Chris, Source confabulation is a sincere problem, and I am not just talking out of my pinhole, but rather worked half a dozen years at a public policy institute “think tank” (talk about a misnomer). They had an axe to grind like every other would-be source, debunking global warming, pushing self-governance (another surreal term) and global sustainable agriculture and global sustainable economic growth at 2.3% annually for developed countries (with a U.S. goal-able target of 4% annually, which would be the highest sustained rate in U.S. history –compare to the Coolidge years). But the biggest problem was always credible sources. All these days are infotainment or disinformation. Unless you are talking purely scientific information in the form of peer reviewed scientific journals, as opposed to popular scientific magazines and scientific news “outlets,” which do not extrapolate, interpret nor grandstand but report study results in detailed graphic form, there are no credible sources of information. Regurgitation of misinformation and disinformation is the order of the day at least since the mid eighties. I’ll give Wiki one point, that it sometimes gets some things right due to the Poll The Audience effect…but even that is difficult to prove, and not authenticated.

    Clowe, sheer asininity; that is the perfect word for your words. Me thoughts you had gone off to your kinder, gentler atheist intellectual circle jerk you found more tasteful. Perhaps they didn’t have a taste for your skeletal endocrinological and colonic weak metaphorestations either. You don’t know shit about the term ‘faith,’ to use your metaphorical range. Since you willfully only know ‘religious’ faith, and that in a limited way, I’ll apprise you. All human intelligence involves faith. All sentience acts on faith. Even single-celled organisms act on faith in Newtonian physics, or basic mechanics. Start there, Jerk-on. Stop confusing faith with belief, faith with religion and religion with theism. To be unaware of your faith or refuse to recognize it does not make it go away. All your drivel aside, atheists, assuming they are sentient, must have faith in nothing, or what they might call randomness. Despite the circumstantial evidence of energy/matter and organization/entropy, they believe or have faith in their stance to wit there is nothing behind this evidence, nothing promulgatory. That is foundation to the assertion: atheists have a form of faith, in nothing. You have a reliance upon nature, for instance, or perhaps you even call it natural law, even though you have no comprehension of what it is, and willfully misplace the growing inventory of scientific data and anecdotal experience regarding how it works. This is faith. Refuse to believe it or not.
    Many scientists were swayed toward theism or agnosticism by the postulate of The Big Bang singularity. Despite its breach of the law of angular momentum, I have a modicum of faith in that theory or something like it, due to the circumstantial evidence of cosmic radiation.
    Science is at best a methodology…not a “fact finding method.”
    Seeing is not Believing; you show you are not a scientist. “Get revised and corrected with better information” shows you are not a scientist and have no comprehension of science. “(Name one religion that does that.)” Catholicism. Yes, even the most monolithic religion of the day fits your criteria.

    The only message you are “on” is the usual anti-religious irrational rant. Atheists acting like you are a scourge.

  339. @J…..I was very clear. Quote; ” Faith as referred to by religionists…”. “Faith is the religious permission to suspend reason and proof.”. How can you not see I was targeting the religious requirement of faith? It is in that narrow definition that I was referring. But there you go again parsing my words. Give me credit for knowing the difference between faith and belief. Their meanings have a small overlap, but that is contextual. I never said I was trained in science, or even debate, nor would I ever boast so. ‘science is a methodology…..Duh! The real question is do you trust the results? I knew you would say the Catholic Church when I said name a religion does that.(scientific method). Thank you anyway for limiting somewhat your scatological remarks and your tedious and unfunny wordplay. If I’m so “wrong” beyond the pale do yourself the pleasure of ignoring me.

  340. Dingaderry, You were clear without meaning to be. Don’t avoid the truth of your target. Of course “religious faith” is “off the table” for atheists. Your statements spoke for themselves in terms of scope and intent. Chris addressed them by point already. You show you don’t know the difference and it colors your wild assertions, that’s the point. “Re comment: It takes Faith to be an atheist….I have to tell you that as far as real atheists are concerned, Faith is completely off the table.” This was your reference, not religious faith; no matter you go on to deny it. What would be the point of your discussion then? That’s rhetorical for ‘nunc.’ You called science a ‘fact finding method.’ So “duh” should have been your statement instead? That’s rhetorical for ‘apparently so.’ And the question is not faith in or “trust [in] the results,” that’s the point and crux of the discussion, faith in the methodology. Chris likes you so I responded to your response to a point on ‘faith’ to which I’ve added or supported previously. “I knew you would say the Catholic Church when I said name a religion does that.(scientific method).” You’re prescient now too? That’s ironical for why are you making statements you don’t mean. You said “revised and corrected,” (another misunderstanding) specifically, not scientific method; if you already knew that just about any modern day religion fits the criteria, why did you posit? Now you are supporting religious faith. Science self-corrects on fundamental positions no more nor less than religions generally. When you attack religious faith without comprehension of faith, you merit and invite criticism. I know I’m a bitch, specifically to those who attack without rationality or self-knowledge or definition of terms. You’ll survive. Get a p{censored in moderation}s. Practice using it. Imagine if Chris didn’t like you.

  341. @J

    Your point is a kind of interesting but mistaken. You are a very paradoxical person. Your aggressive response against C. Lowe almost made me feel shocked. You cannot call someone a scourge because he is wrong about something, but actually he wasn’t. Trying to be pacifist, I think the bottom of this is a semantic disagreement. When you use the word “faith” you are missing the notion of that it has different meanings. It is a kind of term that involves different concepts. Religious faith (maybe the most common use of the word) as C. Lowe pointed out, is something that doesn’t have anything to deal with atheism. It is the blind, sure, dogmatic belief in a set of truths promoted by a religion. But when you use faith as a synonym of hope, the stage changes. We all have hope in something, at least, we have a slight hope that we will be alive tomorrow. Hope is not the same as certainty. When you have a high hope, you could act as you actually believed in something without having factual certainty (this is vet similar to religious faith, but not necessarily the case of all ideological postures), but you can have hope in something admitting that you can also be wrong. In this sense, we all have hope in our beliefs because nobody believes in something that appears to himself as being wrong. I have no religious faith, so I won’t admit a pretended accusation of signaling me as a dogmatic irrational person. I could be wrong but I don’t expect to see that (but it can happen, and therefore, I could, maybe, meet a god after death, but it sounds so illogical to me that unless I see it I won’t believe it). You call me an agnostic, but I honestly think that nobody can claim an absolute righteousness or clearance about this concepts. Besides the fact that persons use the terms carelessly, they somehow overlap. For example, Richard Dawkins is an atheist that affirms that God almost certainly doesn’t exist. He has said that if he meets god after death, his first question would be “who are you?”. Russell didn’t believe in god because he discredited all the dogmas in favor of such a belief. Julia Sweeney considers most probable that men created god than the other way about. We all have hope. It’s not the same as religious faith. Both terms can fall within the word “faith”. You can call me an agnostic. I call myself an atheist because to me the non-existence of god makes more sense. I don’t have a certain belief without evidence. It is what I call faith. If you call faith any other hope then I have faith. If you are an agnostic that (simplifying it) thinks that perhaps there is a god, then somehow you don’t have faith in any position about this, but you have the faith that there is not a tyrannical god that will send you to hell for not having faith (I have faith you see my words game in this tricky use of homonyms).

  342. Emiliano, Aggression should not shock you. I don’t suffer fools well, especially those who attempt to mock or insult me such as yer playpal who attacks what he misunderstands and then hides behind what’s called in the pop psych vernacular passive-aggressive-verbal. But you are well-mannered in your response to me, and I appreciate that above else. A little side data: there is no percentage in believing that I am mistaken. You have that on good authority. I addressed behavior when I called him and ilk a scourge. It was well chosen and I stand by it. Much less to do with his being wrong. Faith is not synonymous with hope, and people using the terms interchangeably are confusing themselves. It is obvious to me that Theists have more evidence of their stance than Atheists have of theirs, and Religionists have more or less depending upon their religion. It’s all circumstantial. Since you are off my point, I will simply say thanks for responding; it showed confused loyalty to your confused friend.

  343. Well it looks like the ultra-right wing American nut-bags finally managed to scare off and shout down discourse in this blog site. These self important people only serve as babble and white noise in an international inquiry into skepticism and positive atheism.
    Let’s hear your ideas. Where can we stem the tide of superstition dominating so much of our civilization, and allow positive, fact based, results oriented policies that work for all consolations and demographic subsets? How do we face down the people who play upon these superstitions to further their own ends to the detriment of the people they’re trying to influence?
    Keep in mind the hysterical attack dogs from the devout and the ultra-right wing are going to gadfly your ideas, but don’t be discouraged. They are not interested in providing any solutions.

    Do you have any atheist-specific organizations in your community?

  344. @ Christopher Lowe

    Your hatred and intolerance of conservatives does not suprise me. It is always the people that claim to be tolorant and reasonable that are the most hypocritical and full of shit.

  345. There again with his thumbs lodged in his ear canals in lieu of cortical nuclei, having just retrieved them from a light-deprived unsanitary platz.

  346. @ Christopher Lowe

    You have created a strw man argument by saying, “ultra-right wing American nut-bags.” As opposed to what, ultra-left wing Canadian nut-bags? Try to stand on your arguments. I realize it is hard for your to frame your points because they are so weak but you should try it anyway.

  347. I am willing to pay the toll for this debate, but unwilling to pay the troll. Too polluted for my tastes. Happy sailing everybody!

  348. My spouse and I absolutely love your blog and find many of your post’s to be exactly what I’m looking for.
    Would you offer guest writers to write content to suit your
    needs? I wouldn’t mind writing a post or elaborating on many of the subjects you write regarding here. Again, awesome website!

  349. This is pretty sad all these people dead pretty sad all these people dead or dying and going to hell

  350. Catheter, The extent of your ignorance of the universe is repulsive. Not surprising you can’t spell your own name. Hell is where the heart is.

  351. @Catheter, The extent of your ignorance of the universe is repulsive. Not surprising you can’t spell your own name. Hell is where the heart is.

  352. Hi I have urgent need of people of influence to help me with a plan that I have formulated to help the poor, it does not require one of your dollars. I went to all the Christian churches in my nation and not one of them would assist me. I want to inquire of you, do you have the compassion that they are lacking. If you do please read my plans at http://www.futureandahope.net/poorhelp.php there are 4 or 5 ideas I am trying to present to politicians, and I need scores of people to sign my online petition at the above address. I will share with you one of the plans that I got as I was in prayer:

    I propose that government Legislate that a small percentage of prime time TV be assigned to charities. Two advertisements per night, 50% for world aid and 50% for local charities like cancer research. The benefits of this is that no tax money is spent, awareness of poverty is increased and 100 of thousands of dollars will be raised each year, possibly millions.

    I love God, but the church is no benefit too me, are you as an atheist more compassionate than the church. If you are prove it to me by promoting my petition and ideas to every body you can.

    God Bless You
    Robert Palmer

  353. RQ, Reflexive Quandry,
    NOT to WORRY, your mind is a desolate tundra of neuronal misfirings in WANT of contamination. YOU are the QuarK at the end of the Universe.
    “You RUN to the Dummy, but the Dummy turns out to be a BOMB, and YOU are the dummy.”—Bullwinkle

  354. Michael, Bravo on your development of an elementary school course on atheism. This is a very positive direction and undertaking. Wish we had the like here in the States. I hope you are including the discussion of Agnosticism therein. And congratulations on your inclusion on Pribble’s blog.

  355. Not really too sure what a long list of atheists does… I’m not on that list… now sure why not?!??! My family think I’m pretty famous… well to them anyway… or is there a level at which when X number of folks think they know you, your famous… in Which case your not on it yourself Michael…which is odd.

    Anyway… I think by 2050 a shorter list will be the remaining religious. Because lets be honest… education is not going to play nice with religion this century… it got rather snappy in the 19th century… then got really aggressive and rowdy in the 20th… the last time I seen Mr. Education it was knocking around to Religions house with a baseball bat behind its back, rapping on the door shouting…. “get out here you coward… come out where I can see you!”

    I think I seen the curtains close ….

  356. BTW Michael… See Robert Palmer above… creating back-links for his website… otherwise he’d have noticed her was pasting his little script into an atheist blog… but he could only spare you the ten seconds it took his bot to click submit there.

    God Bless he says… lol…[nuclear level facepalm]

    I wonder how long it supposedly took him to talk to every priest, rabbi, imam and pastor in Australia… 30 years maybe?

    We could ask him… his phone number is 0061 738 932 480

  357. @chris… yeah clearly society shouldn’t be contaminated with reason, science, education and logic when clearly there are magic pixies and unicorns to be getting on with!

  358. Now now, morons, mind your spittle. You are in danger of being crushed by the tiny little stones you are attempting to throw. Michael is attempting to promote civility of atheists, while you are enshrining your lack of intelligence in a dark, unsanitary place of your own making. What you lack in ignorance, you more than make up for in stupidity.

    Yes, @ you two buffoons.

  359. One of my fav singer is on the list and two of my fav actors are also on the list. I knew that there’s a reason why i like them so much, now i know why.
    From what i’ve read i kinda found the similarity why they choose to be atheist or simply didn’t believe in the existing of god. Without any contact whatsoever with any people who share the same belief as i am, i also think what they all think. The humanity, being kind to people not because have too but because that is the right thing to do, equality not only toward human being but for all living things and even non-living things (ex:earth). I don’t know if i was about to say was relevant or not but the realization when someone decided to refuse the concept of god is often based on the refusal to give in in something that is just wrong and just not right in many different level, filling the void by voice of reason and the what ifs with what should have. In the end we all want to do or to be treated as kind and as right when circumtances are against us. Ex: i want to help that person because it’s the right thing to do even though i’m christian and he’s a jew. I want to walk in the street without being bullied because i’m gay. Will my family still loves me even though i’m not their biological child. It all based on the want and willingness in ourselve that we want to do the right thing and not because we have to, not know but understands why even with all the different situations and circumtances we still want the outcome to be as fair and just

  360. Firstlly, I’m an atheist. Secondly I see above in some posts, the usual pre-conceptions about history that are gross biases. Some poster above says that Protestants did much less harm than Catholics, historically. The usual Inquisition appears. “The Horrors of the Spanish Inquisition” etc.
    People should learn the facts. In 300 years the Spanish Inquisition executed 3000 people. In his reign, Henry VIII executed 50,000 to 70,000. When Cromwell was in Ireland, the population fell by a quarter. Thousands of witches, maybe 100,000 were burnt in Europe by Protestants. Irish doesn’t have a word for witch as we didn’t believe they existed. We had the Penal Laws in Ireland etc.
    If you’re an atheist you should not be a predominantly anti-Catholic one because you should read your history. Then you’ll learn that all religions are oppressive.

  361. So, you’ve made this tine list and are proud of several people, some of whom are a debatable value, take Dawkins just for a single example, and you brag about so loud. Heh, is that it? Did you notice that we, Christians, do not bother so much over this list? I mean, serious, churched believers, not pop-Hollywood-diva-style of pseudo-believers. Why so? Simply because we do not care so much about worldly fame. God is more famous and more important than all those puffed-up buffoons and self-important beaus.

  362. So, you’ve made this tine list and are proud of several people, some of whom are a debatable value, take Dawkins just for a single example, and you brag about so loud. Heh, is that it? Did you notice that we, Christians, do not bother so much over this list? I mean, serious, churched believers, not pop-Hollywood-diva-style of pseudo-believers. Why so? Simply because we do not care so much about worldly fame. God is more famous and more important than all those puffed-up buffoons and self-important beaus.

  363. ALL BRANCHES OF KNOWLEDGE, SCIENCE
    CONTRADICT RELIGION. THE EVOLUTION
    OF KNOWLEDGE IS REJECTED BY THE
    IGNORANT MASSES. WE ARE LIVING IN THE
    21th CENTURY. PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE IN god
    ARE STUPID.

  364. I think the quote you assigned to Hitchens is from Aayan Hirsi Ali. Hitchens was quoting her in The Portable Atheist.

  365. Robertl Q. your postings are neither enlightening or helpful. Nobody is going to listen to someone who is just going to mimic a Waterboro First Baptist poster with babyish rantings. You are giving atheists a bad name. The only way your views are going to be respected by anyone, let alone those who disagree, is with a thoughtful and calm laying out your case.

  366. The only way you will be respected is if you admit you do not know and drop the idea of certainty. So in a way, ROBERTL is on to something.

  367. Touche chris. So why assume certainty is the default position of those who wish to dislodge religious certainty. I’m sorry but I’d like to see something better from you than your habit of turning others’ opinions around on themselves. That must be the lawyer in you and it is only a courtroom trick. Merry Christmas, by the way.

  368. I do not really celebrate Christmas but thank you anyway. The problem with your argument is religion and faith are not the same things. Faith is not a certainty, it is a belief system. A, believes in God, B, does not. Both have faith in their positions but may or may not be religious. A, is Catholic and believes with certainty that God exists. B, is an Atheist and believes with certainty that God does not exist. Both are religious and most likely cannot be reasoned with. It works with things like global warming as well.
    I am just curious, do Atheists celebrate the holiday’s or is it just another day.

  369. @chris
    I agree that a stance of certainty is a conversation stopper. Assuming an atheist or a Catholic or a Mormon cannot have an open mind or be not swayed by evidence might not be always accurate though. It seems to me that groupthink vs groupthink might be the more intransigeant situation.
    Christmas has enough pagan aspects to it to satisfy the staunchest of atheists. At any rate as a working guy any paid statutory holiday is good enough for me regardless of origins!

  370. Personally I never met anyone that prayed to lord odin. I certainly don’t .. But I still put up a christmas tree. Clearly that makes me a bad atheist and almost every christian eithher blasphmous, ignorant or both.

  371. @chris

    Although it seemed pointleess to me to return to this side after so much arguing and confrontation and a huge lack of interest of other people to participate, I can’t avoid the temptation of signaling your inconsistence once more.

    If it weren’t because of the large amount of prejudices associated with religion I wouldn’t care so much in deffending atheism and my view point. I have said I don’t claim to have absolute certainty and in that makes me an agnostic to you, call me so, go ahead. But when you sign blind certainty as faith I have to point out that your intransigence as well as your fanatical nationalism make you qualify very well as a faithful person from your definition and the way you understand the concept. I think nobody can claim absolute certainty about the issue of god but the way you argue (if someone wonders what I am referring to, read previous comments) makes you be very far from the humble position of an agnostic or skeptical. Not all the ones who call themselves atheists are as closed-minded as you think. Some may be but not all.

  372. @Emmanuel

    It is good to see you are starting to understand. You can call yourself what ever you like and you are right, faith is not only based on religion. I will grant you that fanatical Theists are the most annoying and easiest to mess with, they are the strongest willed. You cannot shake their religious foundation. The same is true with most Atheists.

    You do not have a clear understanding of what faith is. Faith is simply believing in something that cannot be seen, where there is no tangible proof it exists or not. Examples: God, global warming, ghosts, you get the point. A reasonably intellegent person can believe in all types of things. You can choose to believe or not. it does not make their belief any less reasonable.

    As far as my “fanatical nationalism,” that is just silly. I am on record as saying Obama is the most dangerous terrorist in the world and the Democrat Party is the largest terrorist group in the world. However it is hard to argue that America is not the greatest country in the world, even without all of its current problems.

    You may personally dislike religion but Atheist, non-believers and all other non-religious people are equally capable of “large amount of prejudices.”

  373. Funny (but not surprising) you should lump global warming as an intangible along with god and ghosts. Global warming can be both measured and analyzed. So you have issues with general consensus findings of those whom have expertise on this subject. Why does this hobby horse of yours get lumped into the realm of illusion or, more importantly, delusion?
    You know these are basically the same people who found and red-flagged the degradation of our ozone layer and got the world to drastically cut back on the release of fluorocarbons into the atmosphere with the very tangible result of repairing it.
    The same people you trust when they say global warming and ice ages are natural cyclical events are all of a sudden agenda-driven idiots when they factor in human activity as contributing to its intensity. Smells like shooting the messenger to me.
    Idiots with their agendas do exist and would use this information to their goals no doubt, but to attack the information itself? C’mon now, chris!

  374. Global warming is nothing more than a fable, like God and ghosts. It cannot be measured and a consensus is not scientific. Furthermore, there is far from consensus of the “experts.” There are over 200,000 climate scientists in the world, not all agree with you.

    “Why does this hobby horse of yours get lumped into the realm of illusion or, more importantly, delusion?”

    It is delusional to believe man controls the climate.

    There are many contributing factors to climate change. The reality is the climate has been cooling in recent years.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/10294082/Global-warming-No-actually-were-cooling-claim-scientists.html

    The “idiots” as you call them are paid by many different sourses to come up with perdictions. Some are guessing, some believe what they say and some are liars. It does not change the fact that global warming is a fraud.

  375. join the spiritual word and have all your heart desire email;olumberspiritual@outlook.com or contact +2348128066162. for urgent respond.

  376. I have had enough of “spirituality”. That brings nothing else than empty rituals, hypocrisy and prejudice to my mind. I know there are good people among believers but most of them aren’t so much (and what I reject is the philosophy, not the people). Remember this is an atheist side, stop making religious propaganda.

  377. The big shiny object that has caught my attention these days is neuroplasticity. There could lie therein some insight as to the tone of the responses we see on BOTH sides of the existence/nonexistence of god argument.

  378. @Christopher Lowe

    It depends on the way you speak. If you use the second grammar person “tú”, then you must say ¿Cómo estás? But this way to speak is considered provocative unless you talk to a very close person. Most often used is the third grammar person “usted”, then you must say ¿Cómo está? It is considered more formal. By the way, I’m fine. I started to work last year. Thank yoy.

    @chris

    Partially I agree with your notions about global warming, but unfortunatelly ignorant people think that it is the only reason why we must worry, letting aside deforestation, pollution and depletion of water and oil. Anyway, it seems you have not evolved too much since our last discussion. You continue with your arrogance and sarcasm. Just a little stone in your shoe: what about the recent “obamacare” crisis? That’s the way the greatest nation of the world get to agreements about giving medical insurance to its citizens? I’d prefer rather to live in Iceland or Germany 😛

  379. there are no true atheist; if God was not for real we wouldn’t be here to discuss if one exist or not; atheist nor science can explain the snow flake, that being true why should I believe anything else they come up with.. I take my hat off to the atheist they have more faith then I do as a Christian..

  380. @Dave:

    You are brainless if you think that the affirmation of the existence of something involves the existence of something. As an example, there is a novel in which a girl tells her mother that if there is tge word “dragon” there must have existed dragons some time ago. Human imagination is very creative and has constructed many myths (ask the greeks about their mythology). As much as your god can be real, Zeus, Allah, Brahma, Krishna, Thor (the escandinavian version), Mithras, Ganesh and any other one could be real according to that logic.

  381. @ES
    Only to say that atheism is also not free of empty rituals and hypocrisy, nor of prejudice & bias. “We all gotta duck, when the shite hits the fan.”

  382. Isaac Asimov (1920-1992)

    […]

    In 1994, Asimov speculated that:

    Can somebody explain to me how he was able to speculate in 1994 when he died 1992 ?!?!?!

  383. @J9

    Well, I do not consider myself an atheist-idolatric, as I recognize that some atheist can be very stupid too. At least, if you become an atheist you will not be forced to participate in any kind of rituals or whatever to be one. If some of them are hypocrites, what can I say, I only complaint that when religious people criticize us saying we don’t have morality they are claiming to be morally superior, and however this can be very subjective, most of them do not conduct their lives so much “morally”.

  384. @ES
    That’s good to know, but it’s a subtle vice and a blind step down to idolizing and idealizing, and between rational and rationalization. Theists are not necessarily religious. Atheists are not necessarily blind rationalists. But most seem to be, in both camps. When you muddy the water in either direction, inquiry becomes debate and debate quickly becomes warfare. I believe in a Creator though I reject all religions to which I’ve been exposed, through study and discussion. My belief is not blind faith, as atheists seem to assume, although I recognize that it is based upon personal experiences and rational considerations which are circumstantial evidence, as is all experience, and so not credible to anyone else.

  385. Only the BRAINWASHED and the SIMPLEMINDED could STILL believe such GUFF. The RULERS OF OLD who were the PSYCHOPATHS that wished retain power, and wealth, invented the ‘GOD’, and the GULLIBLE THOUSANDS OF MILLIONS are still being taken in, despite that these DEITIES are the SOURCE for ABUNDANT EVIL that is committed in the name of the myriads of RELIGIONS, that DISTORT the LIVES of those that want not part of it, by DOMINION OVER MOST LEGAL SYSTEMS, and deciding the values that should be OBEYED by many UNWILLING non believers, as in the example of whose life is it, and when do we wish to terminate it.

  386. I think all this name calling is a waste of time. I tried to believe is God but science got in the way. I read about evolution and it made way more sense to me. We see things every day that are evolving in order to live in our ever changing environment. I remember when I was out trying to help the homeless I asked a Christian organization if they could help me get some food for the homeless and they asked me if I was Christian. I told them no and they said they could not help me because I was not Christian and I could be a Satanist. I left and thought to myself how wrong that was. I believe that everyone has the right to believe in whatever they need to, to get through their life and long as you do not try to force your belief on others and do not hate others who do not believe as you do. I believe in me when it all comes down to it.

  387. Judy, you can be religious and still believe in evolution. Also, Two British men were hiking in North Korea last year when soldiers approached them. They were asked if the were Christians and when they replied yes, they were executed on the spot. You see, North Korea is an Atheist country. So what is the point of the story you shared?

  388. Likewise, you can be an atheist and still not believe in evolution (specio-genesis as opposed to adaptation, for instance). If Science with a capital S is “getting in the way,” Judy, then you are not comprehending science.

  389. @ James

    That is so f*cking hilarious! If what you say is true (and I’m not fully convinced) you have just sold your soul to the devil (in the figurative sense of the expresion) as you have (according to you) made a deal with one of the most corrupted secret societies of the world. Let’s be clear here, I have never believed that Illuminati really exist, therefore either you are a liar or a poor beggar who has just pawned his life to those evil despicable powerful (supposed) bastards.

  390. The main problem with theists is that to arrive at their conclusions they have worked really hard to avoid any information to the contrary, and openly state things which they personally know nothing about as if things are really unknown or even if they are unknown somehow this means their opinion id a fact.

    I’ll give a quick example using a post above…

    “there are no true atheist; if God was not for real we wouldn’t be here to discuss if one exist or not; atheist nor science can explain the snow flake, that being true why should I believe anything else they come up with.. I take my hat off to the atheist they have more faith then I do as a Christian..”

    “there are no true atheist;”
    No sorry I really do not accept any Gods… in fact the idea is classified by me the same way I classify one ended sticks.. NOT POSSIBLE. Let alone probable even slightly.

    “if God was not for real we wouldn’t be here to discuss if one exist or not; ”
    Demonstrate how one leads to the other, there are two premises here… ‘We are Here’ and ‘God is real’ how does one necessitate the other? After all we might be in the matrix, or the entire universe might be a figment of my imagination… I might be the God… these are all ‘mights’… and again there is now way to join the dots between we are here … to any of those either.

    “atheist nor science can explain the snow flake, ”

    See complex adaptivity as explained using Conways game of life or Murray Gel Manns quark and the Jaguar…. it explains this thing you think has not been explained.., and even demonstrates it… however not knowing something has been explained does not mean it hasn’t, just that the statement is both inaccurate and based on ignorance (again, what a surprise)

    “I take my hat off to the atheist they have more faith then I do as a Christian..”

    So the christains argument here is that because they are ignorant of the formation of snowflakes that science is basing its explanation of that process on faith alone? In other words a huge gap in knowledge by a single individual is license to make things up and act on that…

    Then you would wonder why folks repeatedly tell the religious how outright stupid and uneducated they are… not because they are ignorant of things… but because they use that ignorance as if EVERYONE doesn’t know the same things they don’t know.

    The moral of this story?

    Well, We don’t yet know… nobody does… if there is a mountain of cheese sandwiches on Uranus or not… however banking on a free meal on the way out of the solar system by assuming there is such a mountain will lead to a very hungry journey!

  391. Mick, you are a typical Atheist. Your ignorance keeps you from accepting the fact that you do not know either.
    The idea that you are using reason is idiotic. Your faith is as strong as the religious.

  392. Mick, You have unsuccessfully flogged a straw dog. You seem to be arrogantly proud of yourself for feigning logic. Ur anus is obviously surrounded by a green methane gas, it’s your mind which is full of cheese sandwiches. First you pretend to discuss Theists, but it’s really just a screen to insult the Religious. I think you protest too much because you are blind and lame and no religion can heal you. Like too many atheists, you’re just mad at somebody, don’t really want to know why you are mad, and are not polite enough to refrain from exhibiting your ignorance. Michael has tried to promote a kinder atheism which moves on from mere reaction. You might try to follow his lead if you are not too lame.

  393. @J9

    You say you believe in a Creator. So do you mean that a Sentient Being lit the spark that set in motion all the physics that brought us to this blog site? I think people of all ilks can ponder this imponderable. But does this go any further for you? Would this Being be even aware of our existence? Or even the cause us to exist in particular as life on this planet? Or? You infer you’re at least in the process of coming to some conclusions. I am genuinely curious. I know you don’t respect me very much but this isn’t mutual. I really would like to know, and not for any fodder for debate or argument.

  394. J9,

    I done nothing of the sort, I addressed every single sentence in that one post… every single thing I pointed out there is factual…

    We really do know how snowflakes form… and this is THE most common reason people give for their belief in Gods and what not… that THEY PERSONALLY do not understand how X or Y works… therefore ignorance is not replaced with the actual knowledge, (which these days is available at the click of a butto)n… but rather by ‘THEREFORE GODDIDIT’

    The original poster of that comment could have typed. ‘how do snowflakes form?’ into Google and got an actual answer… instead they decided they would rather NOT KNOW, and also somehow decided that because they don’t know, neither does anyone else…

    In their voluntary and deliberate willful ignorance they then proclaim that because they don’t know…therefore they do know…

    This is the single most common reason for folks accepting childish and peuile stories of magical beings in the sky… magic being in the sky is a hell of a lot easier to get to grips with than complex adaptability theory.

    So I’ll say it again… with that common practice by the religious its certainly not a wonder they are accused of doing just that…accepting a stupid and puerile explanation thats actually impossible over an explanation they can demonstrate to themselves but is more complex.

  395. @chris…

    Ohh boy did you get that wrong… I am very well aware that I don’t know MOST things… but I don’t plaster up the cracks by pretending all the things I personally don’t know are GodDidIt…

    I simply say ‘I Don’t Know’ and I’m happy with that. Because its the truth…

    What you think is the truth however… what you openly would proclaim is the ‘truth’ is actually things you not only don’t know but cannot!

    That is the exact opposite of knowledge. And it is incredibly arrogant to proclaim knowledge where you have none while pointing out to someone that says ‘I don’t know’ that they are arrogant…

  396. Mick, You are predictably missing the point. So without the patience nor interest to persevere, I repeat follow on the lead if not lame.

    Lowe, There would be little point discussing it with you, especially hereon and without a common frame of reference. I can see no use for it. It’s true that I hold you in lowe regard as you’ve proven to be rude, uninformed and recalcitrant in willful ignorance, choosing to misread and misunderstand. But it’s simply an impression from this context by a stranger whom you’ll never have to meet. I will say this to you though, a Creator is in the physics. And I’ll go further and say that the physics is in one of the commonly known “sacred” books. So that by inference and circumstantial evidence it is possible to foundation a faith in a Creator. And based upon my personal experience, this Creator gives more than a passing rat’s ass about the Creation from the infinitesimal to the cosmic and all it’s life forms. But that’s a personal belief. I don’t expect nor require anyone else to share it. I very much enjoyed forty formative years of atheism. And I repeat that the only logical, and perhaps the only rational, certainly defensible stance is agnosticism, in my opinion.

  397. Perhaps I should add that I believe that all the ‘requirements’ we see associated with a Creator are derived from men & women, usually of some religious flavor. I see no evidence for any of that nonsense. Quite the opposite if anything. Wear a hair-shirt if you wish, but please don’t turn it into a sine qua non fetish.

  398. It seems some people are still missing the point (or perhaps willingfully ignoring the fact) that actually atheism is more a continuum of different postures than a well defined ideology like catholicism, for example. As Richard Dawkins pointed out -and I don’t pretend to sound any narcissistic- when a big amount of scientist was asked about their opinion on the existence of God, ranging from absolute certainty that there is one to absolute certainty of that there’s no, including doubting and “almost certain” most of them answered that they were more or less certain or almost sure (you could say suspicious and very suspicious) that there is no one. My personal position is similar. Actually, to define atheism could let us to endless and pointless discussions. I understan atheism as the non-worshipping of gods, therefore, many people that don’t think dogmatically can be called atheists, not just the stubborn kind of atheist troll or whatever. Some people that I would classify as atheists wouldn’t admit to be called so, like Carl Sagan and Neil DeGrasse Tyson so I think we can call them agnostics as a sign of respect.

    I just wanna point something else now. You must consider atheists are humans too. If somebody looses his temper (I’m not justifying this) because he lives in a religiously saturated social media and is always pressed to become a believer it is something easy to understand and we mustn’t pay to much attention to it. In my country you can notice a terrible double standard. If you make religious proselitism nobody will censor you but if you are a “fool atheist” who “doesn’t accept the truth” you are supposed to shut up as a gesture of respect. Just facts.

  399. @Emmanuel

    a·the·ist /ˈāTHēˌist/ noun
    noun: atheist; plural noun: atheists: a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods.

    ag·nos·tic /agˈnästik/ noun
    noun: agnostic; plural noun: agnostics: a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God.

    You are talking out of both sides of your mouth again. If you are Atheist you are absolutely sure there is no God, the same as a person of religion is absolultely sure there is a God. It is not ambiguous. A person that claims there is no God, has no proof of the lack of existence. Therfore, an Atheist is as dogmatic in their beliefs.
    A person who is agnostic neither confirms nor denies the existence of God.
    Carl Sagan and Neil DeGrasse Tyson are a couple of clowns like you, that want to have it both ways.
    Religious countries will not kill you if you do not believe. The same can not be said for countries with no faith.

  400. Thanks Chris for that summary response, better said and succinct than i could have put it. Some hereon don’t seem to want to accept your point that hypocrisy is rampant on both sides of this aisle. i don’t like the term God because it holds a hidden definition beyond Creator, whether or not dictionaries acknowledge it. The distinction between Theist and Atheist is the better starting point. i believe there is circumstantial evidence for a Creator inferable from the physics of the early universe upon which all physics is arguably now based. There is no evidence of any kind, however, that i can see for atheism. Hence my support for agnosticism (from Greek not-know) without the added ‘cannot be known’. I’m not convinced that it cannot be known or is unknowable.
    There certainly are religious countries though which kill nonbelievers. And many others in which nonbelievers and those of any other religion are likely to be killed without sanction of the state (i could name five which are obvious). And there are atheist countries as well as religious countries (some muslim and hindu, for instance) which have little or no regard for human life –i mean the lives of their own members– tantamount to murder large in scope. But your point that there are and have been atheist countries like No. Korea which kill or have killed the religious (as well as their own remorselessly in an effort to erradicate and from a lack of regard for human life) is certainly true.

  401. It is not hypocrisy to call oneself an atheist or theist and still ponder and try to solve the “unknowable”. They are merely rejecting the plausibility of the others’ explanations. A harder argument would be anti deism. If you are an a-deist you would have a hard time reconciling your skepticism with that of your agnostic friends. As far as the unknown is concerned is that you can only add to the known or point to circumstantial evidence. Why should that be hypocrisy if an atheist does this?

  402. @Chris Lowe

    Yes, really. There is not a single religious country in the world that will kill you if you are an Atheist. There are some that will kill you for blasphemy but that is a different argument. You may also get killed if you are the member of a different religion, like what is happening in Iran but again, that is a different argument.

  403. That’s not the hypocrisy to which i referred. But since you beg the point, though it doesn’t rise to the level of hypocrisy, there is no circumstantial nor other evidence for atheism to point toward.

  404. @Chris

    There are places you well know that kill people who blaspheme or who are apostate. Only a very well hidden atheist escapes mortal peril in such States. And yes, before you reply, I know these imaginary crimes are more often inter religious.A place like North Korea doesn’t need any excuse whatsoever to off you other than it doesn’t like you. It does require it’s own people to be a part of a personality cult in that you must worship and attest to the divinity of the Kim-IL Dynasty. No consideration (regardless of ilk) is given to anyone else. Foreigners have a modicum of protection against this but are still severely restricted in what they can see or do. Only bad P.R. prevents them from not putting up with even this. And they can’t seem to help themselves anyway despite this injunction. I think Chris you’d be hard pressed to find an atheist who would find solidarity with Kim Il-Un. What religion is Dennis Rodman?

    Bad atheists? No doubt about it. Trotting them out as representative of atheists as a whole is disingenuous and not just a little bigoted as well.

  405. @Christopher Lowe
    It is nice to hear from you. I was just in Vernon BC, visiting a friend.
    Anyway, you a partially right. If you are an Atheist you are free from persecution. If you speak out against Islam in almost every Islamic State you will be killed for blasphemy. The difference is you will be killed simply for existing in these same countries if you are from any other religion and possibly from the wrong sect of Islam. In countries like North Korea, China and Russia (to a certain respect), these countries will kill you for establishing religion.
    Atheists who keep to themselves in Muslim Nations are widely ignored because they believe you can later be converted. The only “sin” would be speaking out against Mohommad.

  406. @J9

    There is a switch and bait going on here. Theists and atheists have incompatible views. To consider them as opposing beliefs IMO is a false comparison. That there may be no circumstantial evidence or other for atheists to point to may be valid but you come close to intuiting an atheist stance.

    Atheists (not an ism!) see fit to debunk theists who do claim evidence for the personal and intervening god. Their is plenty of evidence claimed that can be pointed AGAINST. Explanations better than myth,legend, and here say can be put forward by a preponderance of evidence open to proof. Unfortunately for those on the superstitious side the proof process is mostly entirely reinforcing your wrongness. I have come to a point of realizing a religion can be valid if detached from the plausibility of its storytelling. As an institution it is as real as it gets but that says nothing at all about the veracity of it’s metaphysical claims.

    Atheists (I’m talking about Abrahamic religions now) see that those holy books are wrong about cosmology, physics, history, palaeontology,zoology, biology , geology, geography, and even math.

    Why is there so much disinformation in books claiming to hold the entirety of truth in all its writings? Isn’t it that all described within them are only on what was immediately observable by the people writing them? If god was there dictating to them on what’s what, then why did he not dispel them of their ideas of origins of disease or that Hey, you might be living in an earthquake zone, or ya know i made kangaroos and dodo birds and bison and stuff too in far away lands. Oh ya, what if i told you that you live on a sphere orbiting the sun surrounded by billions of years among trillions of suns over incomprehensible distances? You would think s(he) would be a little more helpful clearing the fog.

    Nope. The holy books are exactly as you would expect coming from a backwards superstitious agrarian backwater civilization.

    Christopher Hitchens asked this; Why did god not manifest himself to the Chinese or the Indus valley civilizations of the time which were literate and had universities and libraries and practical sciences and were in a much better position to digest and disseminate any information on offer?

    Atheists are better armed with more and better information that makes theology a nonsensical proposition.

    This is not an argument against deists though i am “a-deistic” as well. At least deists are smart enough not to emphasize the silly and the improbable and know it isn’t a good move if they want to be taken seriously. I personally suspect they are following a cold and dead end trail, but their position is far less weak and a little harder to argue against. Alas i do not have the information or cranial capacity to poke at models they might have in mind re: prime mover etc. I only have my scepticism and the oppositions’ unsatisfactory explanations to go by.

    There is more to heaven and earth than we can imagine so don’t pretend you are right (the “royal’ you, not you personally J9). It is low hanging fruit for the atheist to prove a theist wrong but as far as a real atheist is concerned that is All an atheist is required to do. I wish others with my shared viewpoint would leave it at that because if you don’t you leave yourself open to the charge of replacing belief with belief, which is precisely not the point and invites pointless circular arguments and is completely off message.

  407. well, lowe, i appreciate that at least you have grown civil. however, that is all your usual nonsense, i’m afraid. you have not made a case for anything. to call a false comparison any idea to its a-idea is just beyond words worth uttering. the rest, alas, is more religious and anti-religous nonsense. obviously you are speaking of sciences to which you are not familiar except in the usual pop-science. you derailed at the second sentence and from there it was necessarily all off-topic drivel. but thanks for saying hello. that loblah fellow was interesting whilst tiresome. i suppose i am also tiresome to most.
    it was Oscar Wilde who said, ‘Someone here is boring me…I think its me.’
    but he also said from prison, ‘If this is how Her Majesty treats her prisoners, she doesn’t deserve to have any!’
    And those two statements taken together might also sum up his view of a deity.

  408. @chris

    You really are the best ally of religious proselitism. Let me point something out from once and from all. The association of communist dictatorships with atheism is a direct consequence of the distortion of marxist theory and it wold not be happening if it weren’t because Marx was an atheist. If he had been a christian it would not be happening. Many atheists existed before Marx (like Epicurus and Socrates) and many existed after him, including some liberals. To associate atheism to a political ideology is just a fallacy. Many religious reigns have killed thousands of people (remember Hitler, Pinochet, Batista) but in those cases religion was not the cause of their crimes. It was when religious institutions like catholic church sponsored campaigns like the crusades and the witch haunting. What happens now in North Korea and China is just the use of state stablished atheism as an excuse for opression as it is also the political opposition to the government. In North Korea actually they apply a state religion with a cult of their leader. That is actually a different form of dogmatism. If you assume that is the unavoidable end of atheism then you must take a ride to Sweden and Iceland, two developped countries with high levels of atheism. Behind those you can find Netherlands and Switzerland.

    Dictators only need an excuse for their lust of power. Right now, to your knowledge, there is a fundamentalistic dictatorship in Russia, ruled by Vladimir Putin. He started his career in KGB in the times of atheist communism. Now he always speaks of god in interviews and speeches. That is very revealing.

    If you need to know something else, Marx became an atheist because some antisemithic laws were approved in germany in those days and his whole family had to convert to christianity to keep their goods and capital. This caused a religious confussion in him when he was a teenager after being raised as a jew. He failed his last exam of religion (unbelievable!) and some years later he became an atheist. Proselitism can really become counter productive (and, just in case, remember antisemithic hatred existed way before the nazis).

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  410. It just seems to me that if the Abrahamic god is the Creator of the universe he/she/it would be unequivocal and error free in describing the event. There would be no room for debate. Nor would there be any concern about his/her/its own existence. The Torah, Bible, and Koran are just as full of myth legend and idealogical fantasy as The Iliad, Gilgamesh, Beowulf, or for that matter The Lord of the Rings.

  411. @skidmiron@aol.com

    Well, Mr. whatever, you can spread insults against us but it is a historical fact thst monotheistic religions have hindered scientific advance as well as cultural progress sticking people to ignorance, stupid tradition and superstition. You can argue until running out of words, but were the brave people within secular movements who allowed this world to walk again during the Renaissance and then the Enlightenment. Remember not only the past but the present. Right now catholic church is worried about the damage that the promoted hatred against gay people and atheist can make to its own image and that is the reason why they are changing their postures now. It’s all about political interest. We are sure that promoting humanist values as well as a new conscience of commitment to human progress and sustainability we can create a better world without the prejudice and hatred inspired by religion.

  412. 18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. 24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator–who is forever praised. Amen. 26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. 28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

  413. The somewhat bizarre claims are reproduced below – before being roundly rebutted with true Rational Wiki flair.
    Science Confirms the Bible (bear in mind that the Bible is 2000-3000 years old!)
    The Bible Science now Science then
    The Earth is a sphere (Isaiah 40:23) The Earth is a sphere The Earth is a flat disk
    Incalculable number of stars (Jeremiah 33:22) Incalculable number of stars Only 1100 stars
    Free float of Earth in space (Job 26:7) Free float of Earth in space Earth sat on a large animal
    Creation made of invisible elements (Hebrews 11:3) Creation made of invisible elements (atoms) Science is mostly ignorant on the subject
    Each star is different (1 Corinthians 15:41) Each star is different All stars were the same
    Light moves (Job 38:19,20) Light moves Light was fixed in place
    Air has weight (Job 28:25) Air has weight Air was weightless
    Winds blow in cyclones (Ecclesiastes 1:6) Winds blow in cyclones Winds blew straight
    Blood is the source of life and health (Leviticus 17:11) Blood is the source of life and health Sick people must be bled
    Ocean floor contains deep valleys and mountains (2 Samuel 22:16; Jonah 2:6) Ocean floor contains deep valleys and mountains The ocean floor was flat
    Ocean contains springs (Job 38:16) Ocean contains springs Ocean fed only by rivers and rain
    When dealing with disease, hands should be washed under running water (Leviticus 15:13) When dealing with disease, hands should be washed under running water Hands washed in still water
    A text version of the original can be found here.

  414. If GOD made HIS existence logically thinkable wouldn’t be logical for GOD to hell and heaven hell would be a waste. We human make jail which is avoidable or if bads cant avoid it’s not a hell of punishment and bads still run from it(feared punishment) , with god you will not be able to avoid it so u are only bound to only obey. We human do things just to be happy either do bads or do goods, and in heaven you can only find happiness(at least that is what I told) which is what we are working hard for so if god mad HIS existence logically thinkable there wouldn’t be bad people because happiness is too easy to find.
    you might think why GOD didn’t throw Adam into hell because he did a wrong doing(funny if this kind of thing went through your mind if you are an atheist), well god hadn’t made the statement at the time Adam did wrong and to me it’s just a kind of secret plan GOD had.
    We can only measure GOD’s capability only if we have GOD’s capabilty. Just imagine we are all powerfull all knowing what could we make?? we know a little about our universe and with just a little we human are able to create unimaginable staff, take computer for example isn’t it amazing;

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  416. I’m not posting to try to prove God’s existence to atheists or agnostics. Their minds are made up. Mine is, too. The difference is, I have plenty of evidence to prove God is, has always been, and will always be…..God. If I DID have to debate an atheist on the subject, I would win the debate hands-down, with one simple, but undefeatable fact: All that exists, every thing, meaning all the stuff, visible, touchable, audible, odoriferous, testable things atheists demand in order to believe things do exist had to have a Creator. I have a great idea! Let’s find a multimillionaire willing to give a $1,000,000 prize to anyone who can prove all this came from absolute nothingness! THAT would be truly impossible! But a supernatural Creator? How ELSE could CREATION come about? Simple! I just feel horrible for all these folks who are in hell today, or on their way there, because for all eternity they will be saying this: “I didn’t have to come here. If only I’d listened. I didn’t have to come here. If only I hadn’t been so ‘smart.’ I didn’t have to come here…..”

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    for beginners. Could you please prolong them a little from next time?
    Thanks for the post.

  418. I learned a long time ago that trying to debate the issue of God or no-God is fruitless if not impossible, there is nothing a non-believer can say or do to convince a so-called believer to even entertain a simple rational thought or question when it comes to their belief because all they can muster is a book that they believe to be the word of God, although this book was written by common men it is all they have and in their mind is the only proof that matters. Having been on both sides in my own life the absolute can only come from who we are, we must all decide whether we believe or not believe and it may take us a lifetime to come to the final result. The simple thing that decides this personal debate is whether we accept faith as something that is real or something we are told is real. I have found faith to be nothing more then a desire to believe in something that my natural and tangible mind is unable to accept based on what can be seen or heard through natural means but rather something which I am told is real without a single tangible piece or trace of proof other then simple faith to believe which goes against everything in a natural world. This type of thinking is the greatest con of all for if I say to you “please accept this piece of gold” but hand you a piece of coal is not the piece of coal just a piece of coal or is it spiritual gold through faith you believe? If we are natural men but believe that after we die we become spiritual men does then the coal become gold. The Bible states natural man can move a mountain simply by faith but I ask you how many mountains have been moved in such a way since this was said? If you believe it can be done then I would suggest you try it and see if it can be done. Men desire eternal life because to simply die and return to the dirt as just dirt might sound like a depressing thought, men want to believe they are special, that some being or God is looking after them, it comforts them to believe such things because all men wish this to be true just like wishing coal will turn to gold when in reality it cannot happen no matter what amount of faith they may attempt to believe. There is just life and when life becomes death the natural process is finished and it doesn’t matter if that life is good or bad or just plain life.

  419. @smitty: your statements are idiotic and your comments quixotic. at long last, have you left no sense of decency?
    @barry: screwith thou, “Hell/Hades/Eternal Fire/Hellacious” is a human-made concept. why would anyone ever stoop to creating that?! be ashamed, be very ashamed; since that apparently is your forte’.

  420. sad that so many of those atheists have died and ended up in hell for all eternity due to their arrogance and pride of being atheists for refusing Jesus Christ and His salvation proposal their whole lives. the same may happen to the other atheists if they refuse Jesus Christ before they die. very sad on their part if they do so as well. it is not worth all the fame, the money and the attention from the world. Psalm 14:1 The Fool Says, There is No God
    1For the choir director. A Psalm of David. The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds; There is no one who does good. John 11:26 Jesus Comforts Martha and Mary
    …25Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, 26and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?” 1 John 2:23 Beware of Antichrists
    …22Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. 23Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also. 24As for you, let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father.… Matthew 10:33 Confessing Christ
    32″Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. 33″But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven. John 3:36 John’s Testimony Concerning Jesus
    …35″The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand. 36″He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” Matthew 16:26
    What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?

  421. God was a hidden treasure. He wished he should be recognised. He created this rift-free enormous creation. He created death and life that He may try you, which of you is best in conduct; and He is the Mighty, the Forgiving.
    His last of the Holy Books is Quran. It can’t be written by any body other than God. It is a reality. His all Prophets were the best people in their respective times. The last of all was Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). The study of his biography, as put in by Encyclopedia Britannica, often reveals a MOVING CONTRAST between the extent of his achievements and the very humanity of his soul. He simply won peoples’ hearts and they became his slaves by choice. The western intellectuals pay him tributes, one of a kind by itself like: the greatest single figure in human history – welcome as the dictator of the whole world – before whom the noblest of Christianity and the greatest of truth yield before him – of all the standards by which human greatness can be measured, we may ask: is there and body greater than he? – He was the Caesar and the Pope in one, but without the legions of the Caesar and without the pretensions of the Pope.
    Islam’s best evidences are these two, the Quran and Prophet Muhammad. From these two evidences, God manifests Himself abundantly. He is closer to each human being than his or her jugular vein. He is with every man and woman all the time. He knows every thing. His angels are writing every thing of every person. Death is FINAL AWAKENING!!! His bondsmen will be rewarded with Paradise – the eternal AFFLUENCE. His disbelievers will be awarded Hell – the worst abode. During this life, He pardons him who asks for it. He is so Merciful. But after death, there will be tough time for His disbelievers. All men and women must die as believers. This is His call to all.

  422. I’m afraid of God. What will it be like to face God and be judged? I could never turn away from God and claim to be an atheist. I’m not perfect but he loves me. How is it possible he always was. Never born. Hard to think about. Why did he make us with a free mind to believe what we choose to believe or not believe. What does it mean blessed is he that believes and not see? I believe in God. He is as real as this laptop I’m using. Does that make you angry? Good. Be angry. What do I care. I have enough problems of my own. You want to throw away your future throw it away. God is much bigger then you think. So much more we cant comprehend God. This world has so much violence and so on because people chose what they chose. God is real and someday we will all see proof that you ask….where is the proof? I see it everyday. Not God himself but the trees, stars everything he made.

  423. Pointless arguments; one side trying to convince the other side, neither one needing or wanting to be convinced. These posts remind me of two dwarves arguing over who is the tallest.

  424. Elliot Rodger, Enver Hoxha, James Holmes, Matti Juhani Saari, Slobodan Milošević, Alvin Lee King III, Than Shwe, Che Guevara, Jared Lee Loughner, Jeffrey James Weise, Seung-Hui Cho, Michael Adam Carneal, Kip Kinkel, Kimveer Gill, Seth Privacky, John Hughes, Craig Stephen Hicks, Marc Lépine…

  425. One thing is for sure; none of these people who have died are atheists any longer! None of them offered any real evidence against there being a God either. Most of their reasons were based on wishful thinking. People ‘hope’ that there is no God so that they can live how they wish without consequences. There is much real evidence that God exists, in fact so much that it actually takes ‘blind faith’ to not believe. Like the Bible says, they are ‘willingly ignorant’.

  426. Seven years ago I joined the discussion on this page. I just came back to browse the comments since. Any of that gang still around. There has been an obvious sea change in the zeitgeist since then. Anybody still browsing the comments around from 2013-2015?

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