Albania was the first nation in the world to officially declare itself atheist, after World War II. Members of my family were there and they do not remember it as a happy time.
Penn Jillette has proof by assertion and snarky facial expressions to back up the Reign of Terror and the massacre of the Vendee in France, the mass closing of schools under the Third Republic, the liquidation of the kulaks under Lenin, the Great Purge and the Holodomor under Stalin, the Cultural Revolution under Mao, the killing fields of Cambodia, and, and, and,...
And in the 1980s, I came home from school to find my father sitting on the couch dumbfounded, with tears in his eyes, holding a letter telling of how his youngest brother had been shot trying to escape from the kind of society that achieved what Penn Jillette advocates. The look on my father's face was very different from the smug condescension on Jillette's. Bastard.
Here's a cute pattern to ponder. Many atheists claim that most wars have been caused by religion. For the past two centuries, religion has declined in influence in the West. Over that span, the wars only got deadlier. There was the French Revolution, followed by Napoleon, Europe steadily turning into a powder keg from the Great Game, the two World Wars, then the fate of the world hung in the balance with the Cold War. Something to think about.
London has an atheist church? Geez! Atheism is the opposite of religion. It is a LACK of belief. I'm atheist because I don't believe the claims of the church but I'm not making any claims myself. For all I know, there might be a god. The evidence just doesn't support it right now.
Strong atheism is the belief in the lack of a higher power. Weak atheism is the lack of belief. Agnosticism is the lack of proclaimed knowledge, regardless of belief.
"Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time. [...]
I ought to call myself an agnostic; but, for all practical purposes, I am an atheist. I do not think the existence of the Christian God any more probable than the existence of the Gods of Olympus or Valhalla. To take another illustration: nobody can prove that there is not between the Earth and Mars a china teapot revolving in an elliptical orbit, but nobody thinks this sufficiently likely to be taken into account in practice. I think the Christian God just as unlikely." - Bertrand Russel
Ahhh, this old chestnut. It does not take "faith" to believe that something does not exist. There are literally an infinite number of things that you believe do not exist, simply because there is no evidence that they do. For example, if I told you that there is an invisible elephant in the boot of your car right now, would you consider yourself on the fence as to whether I was telling the truth? Or would you simply reject the idea as absurd, until shown evidence to the contrary?
Agnosticism is fine, but for people who place the burden of proof on those who make extraordinary claims, atheism is not a faith-based decision.
Amen (lol). Favourite line ... "Religion also includes fellowship, joy, compassion, service and great music, and those can be replaced by ... fellowship, joy, compassion, service and great music."
" Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_atheism#Albania
http://www.amazon.com/Banishing-God-Albania-Giacomo-Gardin/d...
Penn Jillette has proof by assertion and snarky facial expressions to back up the Reign of Terror and the massacre of the Vendee in France, the mass closing of schools under the Third Republic, the liquidation of the kulaks under Lenin, the Great Purge and the Holodomor under Stalin, the Cultural Revolution under Mao, the killing fields of Cambodia, and, and, and,...
And in the 1980s, I came home from school to find my father sitting on the couch dumbfounded, with tears in his eyes, holding a letter telling of how his youngest brother had been shot trying to escape from the kind of society that achieved what Penn Jillette advocates. The look on my father's face was very different from the smug condescension on Jillette's. Bastard.
Here's a cute pattern to ponder. Many atheists claim that most wars have been caused by religion. For the past two centuries, religion has declined in influence in the West. Over that span, the wars only got deadlier. There was the French Revolution, followed by Napoleon, Europe steadily turning into a powder keg from the Great Game, the two World Wars, then the fate of the world hung in the balance with the Cold War. Something to think about.