"All believing Christians are "extreme fundamentalists""
I've never said that. Another feeble attempt by you to make things up so that you can pretend a response.
"if the constant use of pejorative language such as extreme and fundamentalist, to describe one belief system applies, then it is also applicable to the other"
"Extreme" and "fundamentalist" are applicable to any type of religion which is universally regarded as "fundamentalist". Atheism is neither a religion nor a system of beliefs. There is no "Holy Book of Atheism" which spells out a supernatural system of beliefs and which devotees may insist is "inerrant". Atheism is a single disbelief in the existence of God.
If someone were to say that he doesn't believe in the existence of unicorns or Santa Claus...it would be inaccurate (and frankly, STUPID) to characterize his disbelief as "fundamentalist" or "extreme". I have pointed this out to you, but people like you hate to look at facts. People like you are the enemies of facts and reason. Just as you are the enemy of sciences such as evolution theory. Because if all life evolved from simple life forms and the dinosaurs died 65 million years ago, then your mythology is just another mythology. Rather than face that truth you attack people who have accepted it as factual, just as they accept that the sun is not a God and propitious weather does not come from prayer.
There was a movie..."I want the truth", and Jack shouts back: "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!" You, g. m., CANNOT HANDLE THE TRUTH!
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"Do we say that a theist "extremely" believes in God and so forth??"
"Yes you do, all the time. Sadly; you don't even seem to realize it."
Now you resort to outright lies. I have never said that. I have made it clear that a theist {without any particular creed of lunacy) is just someone who believes in the existence of a God. Again, you make things up so that you may avoid all my points and so that you may pretend a response.
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"All evil done by those who hold religious beliefs (even if that evil is directly contradicted and inconsistent with the very religious beliefs they hold) is the direct result of that religion"
You are making things up. Am I surprised!
I have NEVER said that, nor insinuated that. The evils I referred to from the Catholic Church (to give one example) were done in the Name of God and in Praise and Worship of His Holy Book. Here is a direct quote from my last post:
"A person is not EVIL because they Do believe in God. But if they torture people then they are evil."
You see, Greg! When you weave a tangled web the spider will come out and bite you in the ass!
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"It is True that there is no Truth except the Truth that there is no Truth, except the Truth that there is no Truth, except the Truth that there is no Truth, except the Truth that there is no Truth, except the Truth that there is no Truth, except the Truth that there is no Truth,"
This is simple-minded BABBLE! Try to get a grip!
"Ever thing your opponents say is relative, but everything you say Atheistic gospel Truth"
Hardly! But everything an objective person argues about the nature of reality may be rationally debated. Supernaturalists "argue" the nature of their imaginations. They have no evidence other than their private assertions. Therefore, they don't argue. They simple kill one another.
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"Unbelievers are not to be trusted!"
Again, you make things up! I have never said any such thing. And your remark is asinine and deliberately misleading.
Arguments stand or fall on their own merit. It is irrelevant whether the person is or is not trustworthy. I would think that believers and non believers have relative proportions of trustworthy people.
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"Every time I point that out you equivocate and redefine evolution."
You have never pointed ANYTHING out to me about evolution. You don't even think that biological life evolved! You made some puzzling remark (he says kindly) about "once God is jettisoned evolution becomes the explanation/excuse for everything". Now, let’s face it. That statement is ignorant. A four year old can see how nonsensical it is!
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"Evolution in no way shape or form excludes religion or religious possibilities."
"You are flat wrong about that. Go ask Richard Dawkins."
I am NOT wrong about that! There are millions and millions of religious people who believe in the scientific fact of evolution! But I will say one thing: It is much easier for the religious to believe in evolution than for a scholar in evolution to believe in religion. People of a supernatural persuasion are free to bend facts and insert their imaginations without regard for reality. They have already done this in countless ways..."No, a DAY is NOT a DAY. That is not what Moses meant!"
Many religious people believe that a creative force is behind evolution and the universe in general. Others believe it is in evolution. Spinoza believed in evolution and he believed in God perhaps more strongly than any philosopher ever had. He believed God was an objective truth--not merely a revealed one.
No. Your comment simply exposes your self absorption with your own God. Your own God is incompatible with all science. Your "inerrancy" is simply myth. It does not even come close to being debatable in rational circles. I mean, read the book and get real, Greg!
As to what Dawkins believed about God: that is irrelevant to the fact that a belief in evolution in no way excludes a belief in God. But for the sake of providing information to the thread I will "ask" Dawkins as you insist!
"How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant? Instead they say, No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way. A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths."
Dawkins readily acknowledges that there may be an unfathomable mystery at the heart of existence. "That is where I come closest to being religious," he says. "But I prefer to keep my use of language precise. So I reserve the word religious for a supernatural consciousness."
The term "poetic" probably best captures the kind of language he would use in approaching that mystery, he adds. "I think there are deep problems that we don’t understand. We hope to understand them; maybe we never shall, perhaps because our brains are limited by having evolved for what they’ve evolved for."
However, our responses to this unfathomableness should not be couched in religious terms, he warns even if these terms are used poetically, as a metaphor to help explain the deep mystery of Being. Religious language simply holds too many dangers for misunderstanding.
"The vast majority of people don’t see it as a metaphor. Stephen Hawking notoriously used metaphorical language when he said we shall know the mind of God. Half his readers knew he was speaking metaphorically, but half his readers think he meant it!"
Given this fundamental conflict, can religious believers make good scientists? "This is a question of psychology," says Dawkins, speaking carefully. "There are some physicists who, when you press them on what they mean by religion, say there is something deeply mysterious at the base of the universe. That is a different matter from talking about a supernatural creator. Then there are people who, when you press them, turn out not to believe in anything at all, but who feel there is something valuable in tradition, and enjoy going to church and listening to music ñ rather as I enjoy that, and also enjoy dressing up in a dinner jacket for dinner, a ceremonial that you don’t really believe in, but you go through with it for the sake of tradition, because you feel it is part of your history. That is another category." |
