Is Atheism Irrelavent?

Discussion in 'Religion' started by Mazulu, Oct 13, 2013.

  1. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    A validated/observable/experimental Quantum Gravity Theory is another important discovery.
     
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  3. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Sounds like you think science is irrelevant. :/
     
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  5. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    You are entitled to those beliefs...Just as an Atheist is entitled to his/her beliefs about religion being misguided.
    You ever heard of a bloke called George La-Maitre??...He is a Belgian Jesuit priest, and history acknowledges him as the Father of the Big Bang.

    BTW, I'm not any hard core Atheist....You may call me an Imaginative, curious Agnostic individual, that stands/sits on this fart-arse little blue orb, and is in continual awe of the Universe that surrounds him.
     
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  7. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Hey Mazula!
    I have posted a link to the following before.....Just in case you failed to check it out, here it is in its entirety.
    It is in regards to Albert Einstein and his thoughts on religion God and such....

    http://news.softpedia.com/news/Scie...Religion-Without-Science-is-Blind-85550.shtml


    "Science without Religion Is Lame, Religion without Science Is Blind"


    This is what Albert Einstein wrote in his letter to philosopher Eric Gutkind, in response to his receiving the book "Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt". The letter was written on January 3, 1954, in German, and explains Einstein's personal beliefs regarding religion and the Jewish people; it was put on sale one year later and remained into a personal collection ever since. Now the letter is again on auction in London and has a starting price of 8,000 sterling pounds.

    The letter states pretty clearly that Einstein was by no means a religious person - in fact, the great physicist saw religion as no more than a "childish superstition". "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this", Einstein wrote.



    Einstein was Jewish, which is why the people of Israel asked him once to become Israel's second president. Also, Einstein felt uncomfortable with the idea that the Jews are God's favored People.

    "For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise, I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them", said Einstein.

    Although, neither Einstein nor his parents were religious people, he did in fact attend the Catholic primary school. But at the age of 12 he was already questioning the truth of the stories written in the Bible. "The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression", Einstein wrote.

    Einstein may have not believed in God, but he felt that faith was a must. This is probably why he never gave a second thought to studying the quantum theory and its random nature. He once said that "God does not throw dice", meaning that quantum theory randomness is out of the question for him. This belief in faith is probably also why his position towards religion was often misinterpreted.

    "Like other great scientists he does not fit the boxes in which popular polemicists like to pigeonhole him. It is clear for example that he had respect for the religious values enshrined within Judaic and Christian traditions... but what he understood by religion was something far more subtle than what is usually meant by the word in popular discussion", said John Brook from the Oxford University, leading expert on Albert Einstein.

    Einstein was often associated with atheism because of his views on conventional religion, but he never liked being called an atheist.
     
  8. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, insignificant. Especially when you consider that a very large majority of those self-reported as "nonreligious" would also identify themselves as spiritual, and this true for agnostics to a lesser extent. "Secular" is basically an abstaining vote in a poll with these four options. Your "leaps and bounds" are a direct result of these groups being increasingly considered together under the label of "atheism" and the propensity for these groups to appear overrepresented in both the liberal-leaning media and online, where a vocal minority can get more exposure.

    And even if this very diverse, composite group ever could become the majority, the nonreligious/spiritual (i.e. believers who just do not identify with any specific religion/denomination) would necessarily comprise the majority of that group. No doubt keeping atheistic activism alive and well, only without the statistics to back it (unless they then quit counting this composite group among their numbers).
     
  9. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    The choice for an interesting and fulfilling life isn't between religion and science. It's between the supernatural and reality. You are responsible for your interesting and fulfilling life and not some supernatural nonsense.
     
  10. arauca Banned Banned

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    Let say atheism is increasing . Let's ask ourselves what benefit brings atheism for the society . The way I see Atheism does not provide discipline for the society , atheism condones selfishness
     
  11. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    That seems like a pointless statement, as even those who believe "god has a purpose for their life" know that they are responsible for taking the action to realize that purpose. Perhaps you do not realize that religion is generally the largest proponent of personal responsibility, and that belief has been directly shown to lead to more responsible behavior.
     
  12. Grumpy Curmudgeon of Lucidity Valued Senior Member

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    arauca

    The elimination of magical thinking alone would get rid of the Tea Party in the US, to great benefit for all. The anti-science, know-nothing party is dragging us down with their immunity to reality. That immunity has been inculcated into them by a lifetime of religious indoctrination to believe fairy tales are true.

    By the way, most orthodox Buddhists are Atheists, the Shinto religion in Japan is honor to ancestors, not worship of gods, most Native American religions were spirit based, not god based and where did you get the idea that Atheists are not just as spiritual and moral as you are? The point being that even BILLIONS of people considered religious aren't by the definition of the Fundy Christians or Muslims, whole countries are mostly Atheist(some of them the best countries on Earth), your supernatural delusions are not an improvement for the human intellect and can lead to inane, if not insane, behavior. Hitler was a life-long devout Catholic, but then so is Rick Santorum.

    Grumpy

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  13. Mazulu Banned Banned

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    Last I heard, it takes the energy equivalence of Jupiter (converted to energy) to make a warp drive work. Even if they had that kind of energy available, how would they use it? That kind of energy is available if you can build your ward drive ship and fly it into the sun. But how would you make it work?

    Looking at the hard cold facts, I see humanity as being stuck in a box, a cage, a crib, stuck in a valley. Everything we can measure is based upon physics of the space-time continuum which has gilded bars with c (the speed of light) written all over them. If we ever hope to build a hyper-drive and travel to other star systems (and I wish we could) then we have to get access to the physics constants, the speed of light, and change it.
     
  14. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    lol Well said.

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  15. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    I havn't a bloody clue! If I did have some idea, I wouldn't be here would I?

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    It's a technology that as yet we have no idea about....Remember old Lord Kelvin and his thoughts in the late 1800s and early 20th century??
    His remark about the impossibility of human flight was only a decade before the Wright brothers.





    Rubbish! Look at history......Look at what even otherwise smart and great men have said.
    At present on the Kardashev scale of civilisations, we are a class 0........

    Type I
    "Technological level close to the level presently attained on earth, with energy consumption at ≈4×1019 erg/sec[1] (4 × 1012 watts.) Guillermo A. Lemarchand stated this as "A level near contemporary terrestrial civilization with an energy capability equivalent to the solar insolation on Earth, between 1016 and 1017 watts."[2]
    Type II
    "A civilization capable of harnessing the energy radiated by its own star (for example, the stage of successful construction of a Dyson sphere), with energy consumption at ≈4×1033 erg/sec.[1] Lemarchand stated this as "A civilization capable of utilizing and channeling the entire radiation output of its star. The energy utilization would then be comparable to the luminosity of our Sun, about 4 × 1026 watts."[2]
    Type III
    "A civilization in possession of energy on the scale of its own galaxy, with energy consumption at ≈4×1044 erg/sec."[1] Lemarchand stated this as "A civilization with access to the power comparable to the luminosity of the entire Milky Way galaxy, about 4 × 1037 Watts."[2]


    Michio Kaku says we may reach class 1 in a 100 years or so........
     
  16. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    None of it will be easy....Didn't your President Kennedy say something to the same effect about the Moon landings?
    People were still putting that endeavour down, a couple of years before it was achieved.
     
  17. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    It will though take great men, plenty of Application, plenty of Imagination, plenty of Innovation, and extracting all we have learnt by standing on the shoulders of giants from the past.

    Those other hated two scenarios that will have some say in the time frame of our technological progress and advancement, are variables and will change for the better....I of course speak of economics and politics.
     
  18. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    A writer/author/scientist once said
    "Any sufficiently advanced civilisation, would appear as magic to us"........ or words to that effect.
    That was of course Author C Clarke
     
  19. Mazulu Banned Banned

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    Here is my two cents worth. The energy of the big bang basically comes from the negative potential energy of gravity. I don't think controlling googles of joules of energy is how warp drive will happen. I think we have to figure out how the physics constant c is maintained by nature. We have to get into the nuts and bolts of how the space-time continuum is put together. Only then can we manipulate the speed of light and make it larger. I'm probably alone in myopinion, but I think my opinion is correct.
     
  20. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    Doesn't get its category in what context? A list of religions? Atheism isn't a form of religious adherence, so that makes sense.

    That 'lump' would be the so-called 'none's', those who don't have any religious adherence.

    Many people in traditionally Christian countries will call themselves 'Christians' if they are asked their religious adherence by a pollster. But many of these nominal 'Christians' never attend church, never read religious literature such as the Bible, and rarely think about religion at all. (Most of my extended family fit that description. Their Sunday devotion is to football.)

    I'm sure that there are many nominal 'Muslims' in Muslim countries as well, though my sense is that they are less prevalent in their more traditional societies than nominal 'Christians' are here in the West.
     
  21. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    I wish that people on the left wouldn't rant so ignorantly and so often.

    I'm favorably inclined towards the 'tea-party'. That has nothing whatsoever to do with religion or with religious indoctrination. Instead, it's an expression of populism, I guess, an expression of support for individual liberty and for bottom-up government by the people, as opposed to top-down one-size-fits-all regulations foisted on what are thought of as the ignorant and child-like 'little-people' by supposedly superior urban elites.

    I'm not sure what an "orthodox Buddhist" is. If you are talking about traditional Buddhists in Asia, you will find that probably most Mahayana Buddhists pray to cosmic Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, who perform a function in Mahayana very similar to the role played by gods and goddesses in many other religions. The most prevalent form of Mahayana in East Asia is Pure Land, which emphasizes prayer and grace.

    Belief in gods and goddesses is widespread among Theravada Buddhists as well. While these deities have no direct role in Buddhist salvation, Southeast Asians will commonly pray to them for this-worldly benefit. Women will pray to goddesses for success in childbirth, for example.
     
  22. Trooper Secular Sanity Valued Senior Member

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    Source?
     
  23. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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