Atheism is a delusion - I'm not just saying this, I'm serious!

[Language-Gamer]

It is quite obvious that many atheists are intelligent and lucid people who think very deeply about the nature of reality by incorporating as much available data as they can into their conclusions.

Citation needed.

There are plenty secularists online that are not deluded. I can find links if you feel a Google search parameter is too difficult.

I didn't ask for secularists who are not deluded.

[Moot]

Pretty much everything I dislike about the New Atheism is present in this thread from Christians. If Christianity ever had a moral highground over the new atheism, it's gone... at least on this forum.

I consider this an insult. POLICE! FIRE THIS MAN FROM HIS JOB!


EDIT: Oh, I just thought of this awesome comeback:

if we were as bad as the new atheists, then you wouldn't be doing this, but would be rebuking us just in a sentence, or two. It would have costed you less effort, actually, than writing this kind of post here.

I think I can rebuke it in one sentences. Here goes:

You're strawmanning, you're going for low hanging fruit, you're being unchairitable and you've (possibly purposefully) completely misunderstood what you're criticizing.

Now, explaining this in more detail would take a few more sentences, but that's true of new atheist nonsense as well.

Oh, this isn't necessarily aimed at you kravarnik.

[Keith_]

Nobody claims that evolution is unguided.  Non random selection is the guide.

As you say, we shouldn't ignore details just because they don't fit with our beliefs.

To be guided implies an intended purpose, a plan, or a course set in advance. As in guided missiles, guided tours, or the guides on a fishing rod. Few people,  not even young earth creationists, deny that there are genetic errors or that natural selection can alter organisms over time.

A question for you, Emuse: Why do organisms evolve?

-Keith

"Guided" does not entail purpose.  A twig in a flowing stream has no option but to follow the course of the river so is guided by the flow of the river in terms of where it ends up.  But this doesn't mean that the river is intelligent or that there is some purpose behind what is happening to the twig.  We would obviously be concluding falsely if we decided that someone intended the twig to be against some particular rock because it was guided there non randomly by the flow of the river.  Things evolve as the result of genetic changes that are selected non randomly.

Glad you decided to engage.  You were starting to appear extremely rude.

I'm Not meaning to be rude. My time is limited due to a program deadline at work right now.
I think you missed the word "or" in my post.  We are not disagreeing, really. There are genetic changes and there is natural selection. I'm very skeptical about the claimed generative powers of these processes, which have not yet been shown capable of producing the volume of information needs to for human life in the time allotted, a couple billion years.
-K

[Lion IRC]

Nobody claims that evolution is unguided...

rationalwiki ? Are they nobody?

I seem to recall they lean towards atheism somewhat.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Unguided_evolution

[lancia]

Nobody claims that evolution is unguided...

rationalwiki ? Are they nobody?

I seem to recall they lean towards atheism somewhat.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Unguided_evolution

But read what rationalwiki's summary of unguided evolution says.

"Unguided evolution is a philosophical extension to the scientific theory of evolution. It is the idea that evolution is guided by one simple principle — living long enough to reproduce; that neither nature nor the process of evolution and natural selection are partial to what reproduces or how; that there is no ultimate form of life that is the 'target' of all this reproduction, mutation, and selection."

Note that in the second sentence explaining unguided evolution, they indeed say that evolution IS guided!

I think the problem is there are several definitions of the verb guide. One from Merriam-Webster is “to direct, supervise, or influence.” Certainly the environment directs or influences the course of change in a population over time through natural selection. Thus, we see in a prey population attacked by a visually oriented predator the evolution of traits that make the prey less visible over time. Predators direct or influence the course of change in the prey population over time. So, I think it is untrue to say evolution is unguided. It is guided, according to a common definition of the verb guide.

[Lion IRC]

I'm not disputing that there are folks who think evolution IS guided by prior causal (random) events.

I'm just pointing out that there are non-theist biology folks who DO call Darwinian Evolution "unguided".

[lancia]

I'm not disputing that there are folks who think evolution IS guided by prior causal (random) events.

I'm just pointing out that there are non-theist biology folks who DO call Darwinian Evolution "unguided".

But though these folks you cited and linked to call it unguided, they describe it as guided, in the very next breath. It's sort of amusing. They change the definition of the key word in their discussion. That's called equivocation.

[Hawke123]

When you don't specify a specific world view, and just say "atheist", it just seems like you can stuff a straw man as full as you want.

Unintentional strawmen are inevitable when someone is only given opaque, evasive answers after asking direct metaphysical and ethical questions.  I am not implicitly accusing you specifically of doing this.  But such practices are common among atheists during discussion and debate, and have been so on these forums for years.  There's obviously something disingenuous when someone presents themselves as literally nothing more than "lacking belief in God" during discussions about life's big questions.

What we theists are asking for is not what people do not believe, but what they do believe.  We're asking for an actual worldview.  Something with content, coherence, and intelligibility that can be argued for.  We find it exasperating and disheartening to dialogue with people who have a disputatious and dismissive spirit.  Endless expressions of little more than negation, contrarianism, word games, selectively applied scientism, and invincible skepticism are not what we consider to be fair engagements with the arguments we give for our views.  Again, I am not implicitly accusing you specifically of doing this.

So this is a frustration experienced by many theists like myself.  Thus I feel compelled to express it in order to raise awareness so that theist-atheist discussions might be more transparent, sincere, and fruitful.

[apophenia]

Nobody claims that evolution is unguided...

rationalwiki ? Are they nobody?

I seem to recall they lean towards atheism somewhat.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Unguided_evolution

In the sense in which Keith (appeared?) to mean it, that it is not a process guided by entropy, I think in that sense, nobody says that evolution is unguided and purely at the whims of destructive processes (I think).  To be sure, I'm not altogether positive what Keith's meaning is, but I think it would be a mistake to attribute to evolutionists the denial of the phenomenon of entropy playing its usual role in evolution as in other processes.

Another example from science includes seeing entropy rule the natural in everything with one exception - evolution is unguided. Really? Does that seem likely? This is only reasonable if you circularly presuppose that it must be so.

[searcherman]

When you don't specify a specific world view, and just say "atheist", it just seems like you can stuff a straw man as full as you want.

Unintentional strawmen are inevitable when someone is only given opaque, evasive answers after asking direct metaphysical and ethical questions.  I am not implicitly accusing you specifically of doing this.  But such practices are common among atheists during discussion and debate, and have been so on these forums for years.  There's obviously something disingenuous when someone presents themselves as literally nothing more than "lacking belief in God" during discussions about life's big questions.

What we theists are asking for is not what people do not believe, but what they do believe.  We're asking for an actual worldview.  Something with content, coherence, and intelligibility that can be argued for.  We find it exasperating and disheartening to dialogue with people who have a disputatious and dismissive spirit.  Endless expressions of little more than negation, contrarianism, word games, selectively applied scientism, and invincible skepticism are not what we consider to be fair engagements with the arguments we give for our views.  Again, I am not implicitly accusing you specifically of doing this.

So this is a frustration experienced by many theists like myself.  Thus I feel compelled to express it in order to raise awareness so that theist-atheist discussions might be more transparent, sincere, and fruitful.

Points well taken. I do my best to present what I am, as opposed to what I am not. Most of the nonreligious I know do that. And we are in the majority among the non-religious. But they don't rise above the din of the loud New Atheists.

The New Atheists also take advantage of those who have left religion, and have suffered abuse and betrayal. Those folks really have to get their anger off their chest, and I don't challenge them as much. Many of them need counseling. Many live in the southern US where they face discrimination and bullying. It's important that theists be more tolerant of them, and remember: do not be condescending to them or say they are just angry at God. Most of them are lost to religion. They won't reconvert. Do not give them a reason to be intellectual New Atheists. Befriend them.

Humanism is the positive affirmation of what many atheists and agnostics are. Many atheists like me are technically agnostics. We are not convinced of any supernatural force's existence, which is not the same as saying we know for sure such a force doesn't exist. (See quote below).

[Keith_]

Keith, sometimes it's hard to believe you were an atheist once haha, will get to the OP after work, but it gave me a chuckle  .

I was 100% certain that God did not exist, but for intellectual reasons. I was an atheist because I believed I had good reasons, not because of my politics out of hatred for Christians. I could defend my beliefs, and I could argue for their positive value, BUT I also had no anti-Christian proclivities whatsoever. I liked Christians and I could tell you about both the positive and negative cultural influences of Christianity. I knew Christians were wrong, but unlike many in today's pop-atheist movement, I didn't feel compelled to force my beliefs on them - or my politics, for that matter.   Today's pop atheism isn't a pro-atheist movement, it is an anti-Christian political movement built on very unrealistic and often extremely bigoted political stereotypes. 

I strongly suspect that many in today's pop atheist movement can't fathom what it would mean to be an atheist absent the anti-Christian animosity of their politics.

-Keith

[Keith_]

Keith,

Take a look at kids and nature programs today. It's completely Hollywood. In particular Jurassic claims.
Watching the programs, you'd think we know all about what these creatures look like and did.

What we think they were,did,how, when and why, is passed off as established fact. The same scepticism that applies to theism is completely absent. Yet their faith in nature no different to the theists in God.
But for some reason it's ok to make outlandish claims about nature, but you cannot make any claims about God.

You are right about the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs may have been silent creatures, and a number of today's paleontologists make the case that T-Rex was actually a scavenger. The stories describing how the powerful legs allowed T-Rex to run down it prey, are equally valid as a way to flee from predators.  I'm not sure that gullibility about dinosaurs is our best criticism of atheism, because many Christians believe these stories too.  Nonetheless, the just-so stories of evolutionary speculation are rampant in entertainment, with the most flagrant examples being the pseudo-science of nature documentaries.  This evolutionary pseudo-science is not only decried by young earth creationists, there are evolutionary biologists who are very vocal in their opposition. I'm not a young earth creationist, but I see the pseudo science as offensive. These misrepresentations may make the documentaries more interesting, but they also create the false impression that evolutionary biologists know a lot more than they actually do. Believing evolutionary biologists know much more than hey actually know is a false belief fostered by Richard Dawkins, and as a result superstitious beliefs about evolutionary science are epidemic.

Presenting speculation as if it were verified science includes the unverifiable and unfalsifiable claim that religion evolved to provide social structure. This has even been argued on this forum.  The problem is that the explanation is superfluous as wolves and many other animals have social structure without religion. Even ants and bees have social structure, so religion is clearly not needed.

The ubiquitous desire for the spiritual, something we can't not known but can only suppress, is better explained by the existence of the target for that longing. Even religious beliefs that are mostly wrong is closer to the truth than accepting atheism, a belief for which evidence isn't even possible. Even if Christianity were somehow proven to false, atheism would still be a superstitious baseless belief for which evidence is impossible.

-Keith

[neopolitan]

When was the last time you heard an atheists on this forum agree that any apologetic argument was sound and had merit?

I'd be interested in an answer to this question, although likely for a different reason.

[john doe]

So it sounds like you were one of those atheists who thought you knew what a god was and that no such thing existed.  Was it your experience that most atheists you knew then were like you?

[Keith_]

What we theists are asking for is not what people do not believe, but what they do believe.  We're asking for an actual worldview. 

Exactly, and this dovetails nicely with the point of this thread - delusional atheist beliefs.

It is seriously delusional to believe that saying the word "atheism" means "lack of belief" somehow negates the underlying reality of the beliefs an atheist actually has and expresses.  It is even more delusional  to believe that it is unreasonable for theists to respond to or challenge expressed atheist beliefs only because the atheist claims the beliefs they express don't exist.

-Keith