We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?
Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, open-mindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.
Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse.
Just as predicted, you didn’t dare to address the actual argument at hand, except to say plainly that ”Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith.”
“Our belief is not a belief” doesn’t even make sense.
What you’ve done here is simply write a long diatribe of word salad without actually saying anything. Reminds me of any given politician. Sounds nice, but means nothing.
I’ve made my case, explaining quite thoroughly exactly why atheism is, in fact, a religion.
You’ve done nothing to counter the argument. You have said nothing to challenge either of the specific points I use to make my argument.
Incidentally, your inability or unwillingness to even attempt to do so only further solidifies my contention that your belief system is 100% faith-based. Because if it weren’t, you’d actually think about the points I’ve made in a logical fashion, disassociating and disconnecting your preconceived notion for just long enough to consider and then either accept or reject them based on some sort of logical thought process.
Instead, you chose to completely ignore them (because thinking too hard gives you a headache I guess) and tell yourself “no matter what anyone says or how much sense it makes, I still believe there is no God.” That’s the very definition of “faith-based” belief, my friend.
In short, you can’t prove - yet you still believe - that there is no intelligent creator of life. That alone necessarily puts you squarely in the camp of a faith-based belief. It’s the very definition of it since “faith” is literally believing something that you can’t prove. And because the term “religion” is just another word for “faith-based belief system,” that’s game-set-match. There are no two ways about it, and no amount of flowery word salad essays changes that truth.
In short, you can’t prove - yet you still believe - that there is no intelligent creator of life.
There's nothing to prove. Someone made up a ridiculous story, and you can choose to believe it or not. Not believing the jewish creation story, for which there is no proof, is the most sensible position. No faith required.
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