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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Dietrich who wrote (482212)	5/19/2009 6:33:39 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1576893

SD, > Theists take a leap of faith. Atheists do not. I think it takes a leap of faith to believe that life is just a product of chance, for instance. Or to believe, like Cornell evolution professor and noted atheist Will Provine believes, that free will doesn't exist. Tenchusatsu

To: Steve Dietrich who wrote (482212)	5/19/2009 8:55:29 PM
From: one_less	1 Recommendation Respond to of 1576893

"Theists take a leap of faith. Atheists do not." I've never thought the terms 'leap' or 'fall' were accurate when it comes to belief systems. Most people develop a world view over time by considering the validity of ideas and experience that may seem reasonable and confirming or rejecting them based on existing views. Its more of a gradual slipping and shifting of views until an adult perspective with a personal and solid foundation is formed. Falling away from beliefs works the same way. The once religious person who ends up as a crack whore thief didn't suddenly go from one thing to another. The typical religious person was indoctrinated from early childhood with values, principles, and views that all connect as a world view that makes sense. If they are able to internalize the view they believe. If something disrupts that like discovering a parent is a hypocrite or maybe there parents told them doing drugs would be horrible but their peers show them how much fun they can have being high. Maybe they couldn't internalize the dogma because the values were never developed deeper than Santa Claus type rewards that are eventually discovered as a sort of fairy tail. Some people study and seek knowledge of spiritual things even if not indoctrinated in early childhood. Some go to religious authorities they trust and find faith based nourishment. Some just want to belong to a community that endorses human decency. etc etc etc. Some

To: Steve Dietrich who wrote (482212)	5/20/2009 10:12:22 AM
From: Brumar89	1 Recommendation Respond to of 1576893

Atheism takes more faith than theism. If an airplane pilot circled a presumably uninhabited island and observed rocks spelling out SOS on the beach, a hut of sticks and leaves, the ashes of a campfire, a cleared field with rows of crops .... it would take a lot of faith to continue to believe the island was uninhabited and that natural causes like waves, wind, and lightning had produced the observed artifacts. Similarly when one sees life based on complex information symbolically encoded complete with a parity code to minimize errors and in a code which is fine-tuned to minimize coding errors .... one with enough faith can assume it happened purely by accident.