Some atheists are just like religious fundamentalists

That's actually quite poetic.

 

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Suits you sir

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It doesn't.
I'm going to have that damn song going through my head for ages now.
:bawl:

 

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Maybe it well help you recover from this thread . . .

 

Another bad assumption.

I have one:

http://www.toequest.com/forum/anecdotal-stories/5594-life-revealed.html

 

So would a bullet through the brain.
Neither of them is a method I'd choose though.

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Galileo noted the ancient sculptures still standing against mouldering time, knowing that the new scientists arriving, if they were worthily smart enough, would have to use the clues provided as the way to the secret meeting place, for there was no map made and never would be.

As the word of this scientific brotherhood began to spread, scientists would travel thousands of miles but upon the slim hope of chancing a glance through Galileo’s fine telescope and discussing the master’s many ideas.

As Galileo wandered among the ruins made one with nature in their decay, or gazed on the praxitelean shapes that thronged the capitol, and the palaces of Rome, his minding soul imbibed all the forms, this loveliness becoming a portion of himself, as well as its science, even right here, within the realm of the Pope’s Holiness that shadowed him—much as the darkness of night condemned the day.

 

Very nice too.

I will respond to your post on my thread once I figured through it and digested. Late now; I'll look at it after work tomorrow.

 

Great, no hammer needed then!

 

I've now got images of abraded busts singing Beegees songs, help!

 

Fundamentalists behave like fundamentalists. Film at 11.

 

What about the ones who were never religious? Please don't make the assumption all atheists are ex-Christians.

 

Many had been burned before, thought Galileo, so ‘tis a difficult path to follow, yet the truth calls me forward… and so he had published the ‘Starry Messenger’. Later on, Galileo had argued that the Bible had to be interpreted in the light of what science had shown to be true.

Galileo had several opponents and they made sure that a copy of the ‘Letter to Castelli’ was sent to the inquisition in Rome. In 1616 Galileo wrote the ‘Letter to the Grand Duchess’ which vigorously attacked the followers of Aristotle. In this work, which he addressed to the Grand Duchess Christina of Lorraine, he argued strongly for a non-literal interpretation of holy scripture when the literal interpretation would contradict facts about the physical world proved by mathematical science.

 

The fundamental scientist who, and which, as always, with science inadvertently promotes atheism…

…

Galileo walked on slowly, for his health had become poor, and noted the setting moon—the sky would be wonderfully dark. He would soon be found guilty and condemned, but he knew none of that this night. The eventual ‘Father of Science’ again sat with the scientific illuminati of his time, the discussions as free and glorious as ever…

He was later put under house arrest in his home in Florence, having by then nearly gone blind, but the starry memories of the Milky Way, the moons of Jupiter, and more, remained in a mind still free—that which could never be taken away by ‘Dogma’.

His body was concealed, and only placed in a fine tomb in a church in 1737 by the civil authorities, against the wishes of many in the church.

On 31 October 1992, 350 years after Galileo’s death, Pope John Paul II gave an address on behalf of the Catholic Church in which he admitted that errors had been made by the theological advisors in the case of Galileo. He declared the Galileo case closed, but he did not admit that the Church was wrong to convict Galileo on a charge of heresy because of his belief that the Earth rotates round the sun.

‘Twas here, his final resting place, in a church… at last enshrined as the Father of science. Embellished, as the master in stone, he’s ever looking up whence forth came the light from the starry skies.

(The end, unless you want more.)

 

In my experience Atheists are rarely, if ever, fundamentalists. They just believe that the "No God" position better explains the world.

But if you asked Richard Dawkins, for example, an outspoken Atheist, if there could be a a god, he says well of course there could be. Nobody knows for sure.

 

Thread necromancy.

 

yeah he is so unbiased that I hear that the title for his next book is "the atheist delusion"

 

Yes he is biased. But unlike most people, including your good self (with apologies) he states his biases up front.

And are you saying everyone else is dispassionate, including the religious clergy?

 

Dawkins isn't biased. If there was evidence for creation, he would be a creationist. He would change his mind if the evidence compelled him to.

This is one of the most fundamental differences between believers and non-believers. Believers are opposed to new ideas, and consider faith a virtue. They take pride in their ability to maintain that faith no matter what, to overcome doubt. Non-believers think faith is a weakness, and find stubborn rigidity detrimental.

 

Our experiences apparently have been a little different. My view is that some (not all and not the majority of) atheists do appear rather similar to religious fundamentalists. It's entirely possible for a person to be what amounts to an atheist fundamentalist. They are common on the internet.

Or at least they hold the opinion that the "God" position lacks credible justification. Sure, many/most atheists are pretty relaxed and simply don't believe in 'God'. I include myself in that group.

But a certain percentage of atheists do push their non-theism much further along towards broad anti-religious passion. Some atheists are as consumed by their anti-religious passion as the fundies are consumed by religious emotion. These kind of atheists don't just placidly lack belief, they are angry, dismissive and occasionally rather aggressive.

And more subtly, some atheists just seem to conceptualize religion as if it was Christianity, and Christianity as if it was a Protestant-style Biblicism. You'll find a certain kind of atheist studying their Bibles just as intently as the Christian fundies do, and reading them in the same highly literalistic way. There's a similar hostility to allegorical interpretation, a similar disinterest in non-Christian religiosity and blank incomprehension towards the Christian contemplative traditions.