"Atheists need to question their sacred texts too."

"If you don't believe in God, you're right -- for you, there is no God."

Calling Atheism a belief system is like calling bald a hair color. Unbelief is not the same as belief.

Similarly, science is not a belief system, it is a method to verify or disprove any hypothesis about the physical world. It is the self-correction that scientists provide to guard against self-deception and other errors that can creep into data, hence the peer review process, and requirement that the experiment be repeatable.

Lastly, I agree with Ramon, religion is like gambling, don't much care for it, don't like the after effects.

Anon (and others): "The acrimony here constantly astounds me."

Speaking for myself, I'm angry with organized religion because it imposes its views on my life. Set aside all the political ties to Christianity for a moment (In god we trust, under god, etc.), we in the U.S. are seeing the pendulum swing too far towards religious fanaticism, and it scares us. My 'live and let live' lifestyle is met with an asymmetric pressure from religious fundamentalists who want me to conform to their set of (often hypocritical)rules. Beyond the U.S., I'm seeing islamic fanatics indiscriminately kill in the name of Allah and yet they are celebrated in their communities for such heinous acts. I genuinely fear for the future of humanity. Do you?

Go read Leviticus or sections of the Koran that address infidels and treatment thereof, and then see where the acrimony originates. I'm certainly not writing or supporting books advocating the harming or oppression of others, yet I'm part of a marginalized minority in this country. Should I remain silent?

PS: http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/5/29/195855/959

Please see my previous posts, starting on what's currently page 7 or so.

To summarize,

Atheism for me isn't a dogmatic insistence that God does not exist. It is not a moral system in competition with Christianity. It is saying, look, I don't give much truck to the existence of anything for which there is absolutely no positive evidence, especially when that thing is in violation of what's currently known and in contradiction with itself.

If you accept the existence of God, why stop there? Why not invisible Dragons, magic, you're just a brain in a jar, etc...? Unfounded, impossible to disprove ideas are limitless, and all equally worthless bases for living my life.

To believe in ideas that have no basis in reality is not only irrational, it can be dangerous. Sometimes suffering isn't caused by the deliberate actions of wicked people, but by well meaning people who are behaving irrationally. The best way to avoid accidentally causing harm to others is to base one's decisions on all the available evidence, and to chuck out ideas that aren't supported by real life. If some new evidence comes along, you accept it.

Ben,

You write:

Actually, no. Atheism is the disbelief in apocryphal tales. It says nothing about the need for Cultural Revolution, or the Holocaust or anything of the sort. So no, Atheists don't have to take the blame for the Cultural Revolution any more than those who don't believe in Santa Claus.

I don't believe in apocryphal tales, and yet I am not an atheist. (Nor am I a theist, I might add.) Who gets to define atheism? Only atheists who have not commited genocide? If atheism isn't a belief system or religion, then who are you to speak for what Atheism™ stands for? In the absense of an Atheist Pope, must we not take the avowed atheism of a Stalin or a Mao at face value?

The Bible actually DOES exhort the faithful to conquer and slay non-believers. It also says not to. It's inconsistent. But yes, citing terrible acts carried out by Christians is a pretty weak argument against Christianity, though it's entirely valid to point out that the Bible does sanction some pretty awful behavior.

Agreed.

A better argument against the bible would be that it's self-contradictory mystical nonsense. One shouldn't live by the bible for the same reason one shouldn't live by the fevered scribblings of a lunatic. The same reason one shouldn't hold one's hand over a flame and not expect to be burned. When you ignore the real world, and decide things based on "magic", the real world doesn't care, and will eventually bite you in the ass.

Where did I say anyting about deciding things based on magic? And I don't think I said anywhere that anyone should live by the Bible. I don't, though I am quite fond of parts of it.

But since you mentioned it, there are a lot of books shy of "the fevered scribblings of a lunatic" worth living one's life by, whether you or I choose to or not. Is that so hard to grok?

One can be a decent, moral person whether Atheist or Christian. One can be a terrible, cruel person whether Atheist or Christian. But if one wishes to avoid irrationality, there is only 1 choice, and keep in mind: bad things often are the unforseen consequences of irrational thought rather than the deliberate actions of the wicked.

Your last paragraph could easily have been written by a theist who, like you, believes they are rational. Irrational belief in one's own rationality is not very persuasive, except to those who already inclined to your position.

The vehemence and vitriol throughout this 100+ letter thread convinces no one of the Rationality™ of atheism. I suspect it's quite the opposite.

I'm sorry, I wasn't actually assuming anything about your beliefs and was merely sharing some of my own. Not all of that was addressed specifically to you, only the part where I said that to blame people that don't believe in god for the crimes of Mao made about as much sense as blaming people that don't believe in Santa Claus. Why not blame vegeterians for the Holocaust? Hitler was a vegetarian afterall. Unless you can show me how the rejection of religious faith relates to the mistreatment of human beings, you cannot lay the Cultural Revolution at the feet of atheism in the same way you can partially blame christianity for the crusades.

I define atheism for myself to be the rejection of religious faith. It's, for me, not a belief system, but the continuation of common sense skepticism in the face of the "divine". It's inseperable from the skepticism that keeps me from believing someone who tells me their appartment is haunted, or they can fly, or the number 13 is bad luck, when there is no evidence to support any of these claims.

I think there IS a real difference between someone who refuses to believe in things for which there is no evidence, and someone who does believe in such things against all evidence, and though I agree with you that none of this is likely to win and "converts", I disagree that my position is as irrational as that of the believers I attack. The difference is, they believe in something which is unsupported by any evidence, which is contradictory to what is currently known about the universe, and which if examined carefully, is self-contradictory. Despite all of this, they will continue to believe.

But me, if I ever find myself in Heaven [or the other place more likely], I'll turn right around and start believing.

That's the difference between rational belief and religion The willingness to adapt to new information, and the slavish devotion to what is known, rather than what is sacred.