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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (27127)	6/14/2012 1:25:31 AM
From: Solon	1 Recommendation Respond to of 69300

"They are simply, as you correctly labeled them "belief statements;" a set of belief statements atheists are expected to accept without any doubts. " Again, you are misusing the term. All you can expect when you discover that someone is an atheist is that they do not believe in a creator. You will have no idea whether or not they are read in science. You will not know their ideas concerning the age of the earth. You will not know whether they support the role of religion in society or government. You will not know if they have studied moral philosophy or if they consider a particular ideology to be important. Some atheists believe life was seeded on earth by an advanced star culture--but that, too, is irrelevant to the fact of atheism. You are correct that some premises would seem to logically follow from not believing in a creator but the reasoning ability and the accumulated knowledge is being gratuitously assumed. Uneducated children can be atheists. The only requirement is that one not believe in god. The reasoning does not need to be justified and the person need not have any opinion or knowledge regarding the age of the earth, or the evidence for Evolution, or the meaning of life, or the myriad theories of morality addressed by philosophy. I suspect there are many atheists who have very insufficient ideas regarding the age of the earth, the facts of Evolution, etc. I know people who do not believe in a creator who are very deficient in the sciences. An atheist does not believe in a god as traditionally understood and defined. That is all you know about him (or is it her)? Recently, an atheist gave millions of dollars to the Catholic Church to support the Catholic educational system. This was the largest donation ever made by an individual to the church. Yes. You heard that correctly. An atheist. I think that ought to demonstrate my point that assumptions can be very misleading.