without getting too abstract here....I think that atheism is religious in its non-belief(humans need religion for some unknown reason and this just supports religious mystery and 'faith'). So when I hear or see atheists and humanists arguing with religious people about matters of faith I think what it would be like if you just turned off the sound and watched the body language---I doubt you could tell which one was which.
An interesting observation. I agree, if you "turn off the sound" then it's impossible to tell who's right and who's wrong. It's the words that define this, not the body language. I think you're using that rather obvious reality to try to prove that the arguments are therefore equivalent. They're not. With the sound turned down, people planning a bank robbery may be indistinguishable from people planning a charity event. But once you don't remove the most important information, it becomes much easier to distinguish between the two.
Non-belief becomes dogma, and atheists are as evangelical and charismatic within their own paradigm as any born-again xtian or islamic fundy.
"Within their own paradigm" everybody's right. It's what happens when you compare these paradigms to reality. Some match reality better than others.
I believe in gods/goddesses. I believe there is One Ultimate way back somewhere that we cannot touch from here and we need the other lesser ones in between in order to connect.
You're entitled to believe that. I'm entitled to ask you to prove it before I'll consider it valid.
But it is a Baskin-Robbins kind of theology....it's all ice cream, but comes in 31 flavors and you have no right to force feed me the flavor I don't like, or want, or happen to be allergic too. Christian fundys(all fundys for that matter) are convinced that their flavor is the only true flavor and all the other flavors are poisonous and it is their duty to keep you from them. oh well.
Unfortunately, reality is not like flavours of ice cream. You can't just pick and choose which ones you want to believe in - well, you can but you'll be wrong. If you say pi =4 you're wrong. You're entitled to believe it but it's not true. Talk of paradigms and ice cream flavours won't change this.
even atheists owe their existence to the Church. without the Church they would have never decided to not believe! They would be hard-pressed to try to come up with a lineage of atheism pre-Christianity since they use the supposed 'immaturity' of humanity's religious 'superstition' to support their non-belief! In other words--before Christianity the pagan people were superstitious and not as evolved as they are today---which makes it rare that an atheist would have existed back then.
That's a pretty spurious argument. It would of course be impossible not to believe in gods if someone hadn't imagined them. It would be equally impossible not to believe in Santa Claus if he hadn't been invented. In fact, until reading this post, I'm sure nobody here didn't believe in the seven multi-coloured banana people of Karspeokila - but I'm equally sure that most do now.
Anway, the 'throwing the baby out with the bath water' analogy is an odd thing for an atheist or non-believer or even agnostic to use since to a believer that is exactly what THEY have done!
It was Yeru who first used the baby/bathwater analogy. He implied that because of a bad experience with those who claim to represent god, atheists etc. had unfairly rejected his god. My reasons are not so shallow. I checked the bathwater carefully. I couldn't find a baby.
Of course you can't prove the existence of god---who said you could? who said you have to?
If you can't, then why believe? Most religious people believe they can. They are so sure that they have undeniable evidence of the existence of their gods that they're willing to die or kill for this belief. Perhaps it is only because their evidence is so flimsy that their "faith" is so strong.
Do you have to taste all 31 flavors before you believe Baskin-Robbins has them?
No, because there's a difference between an ordinary claim (this ice-cream is also available in other flavours) and an extradordinary one (there exists an omnipotent being who requires that we behave in certain ways). Can you see why we might accept one claim far more easily than the other?
why can't humans live and let live? where does this fundy-gene come from? it will be the death of us all, and I mean all--human and non.
I'm perfectly happy to "live and let live". I don't require that other people believe the same as I do, nor do I want to stop people acting according to their beliefs, as long as those beliefs do not interfere with other people's rights. But I will debate any claims made by anybody on any subject if I don't believe those claims are consistent with reality. Those who do not want to debate can keep their beliefs to themselves.