<p>
</p>
<p>Except that evolution isn’t a “dogma,” like mollie pointed out. It’s science.</p>
<p>Should they teach astrology in class as well? Alchemy?</p>
<p>Scansmom:</p>
<p>It’s ok. I would expect nothing less. I always play devil’s advocate just to ensure that the person actually knows what they are talking about, even if they support my side. Regarding your quotes, however, I sifted through the site and many quotes hold little credibility. Quite a few of them are doubted to have even been said. One is quoted by the fallible David Barton, so how could it be credible? A few of the others do refer to god, but not in the Christian sense. Most of the founding fathers were deists; borderline atheists. Many of their quotes and works indicate that they would subscribe today to the Einsteinian god: the pantheist god. That is the beauty of the universe and its natural laws.</p>
<p>P.S. I do love Google, but I actually referenced The God Delusion for my quotes-ironic considering.</p>
<p>“Actually qwilde, what I meant was that by including the “establishment” clause in the first amendment, the nation’s founders elected to take America out of the religion business. By making that choice, they created the issue Itstoomuch complains of - we don’t treat faith-based dogma the same as we treat science-based analysis. A nation which formally tolerates all religion but by virtual of its fundamental principles cannot endorse any of them is inevitably in tension with the desire of the advocates of religion (any of them) because religion inherently demands recognition which this nation’s public agencies cannot give - not that the advocates of institutionalized religion will stop trying to change that”</p>
<p>Sorry, I must have miscontrued what you were attempting to say. I thought you were asserting that the founding fathers and subseqeuntly the Constitution supported religion, or one religion in particular. I am glad the advocates have failed though, otherwise, atheists like me might not even allowed to live in the U.S. or live at all.</p>
<p>Sherman: What will you do to win the votes of the Americans who are atheists?</p>
<p>Bush: I guess I’m pretty weak in the atheist community. Faith in God is important to me.</p>
<p>Sherman: Surely you recognize the equal citizenship and patriotism of Americans who are atheists?</p>
<p>Bush: No, I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.</p>
<p>Sherman (somewhat taken aback): Do you support as a sound constitutional principle the separation of state and church?</p>
<p>Bush: Yes, I support the separation of church and state. I’m just not very high on atheists</p>
<p>I should have clarified that the vast majority of people I’ve known who practice a religion have not pushed it on me in any way (JWs, Mormons coming to my door - as opposed to Mormons I’ve had as friends and co-workers, and born-agains excepted).</p>
<p>Yes, but moderates provide the basis that fundamentalists need. Fundamentalists will exploit the connection that they share to do their bidding. Also, most people whom actually “believe” assume they are god’s gift to the world and need to convey his (which is extremely sexist) message. Divinely, they know they are right and they must convert people for the common good. Ted Haggard being an archetypical example.</p>
<p>Some more quotes about atheism:</p>
<p>“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”
(Stephen Roberts)</p>
<p>“I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up - they have no holidays.”
Henny Youngman</p>
<p>“When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, “Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don’t believe?””
(Quentin Crisp / 1908-1999)</p>
<p>This one, if true, is scary (for atheists):
“America’s pluralistic ideal does not protect atheism; public support for different belief systems is matched by intolerance of disbelief. According to surveys published in the early 1980s, before today’s pre-millennial religious revivalism, nearly 70 percent of all Americans agreed that the freedom to worship “applies to all religious groups, regardless of how extreme their beliefs are”; but only 26 percent agreed that the freedom of atheists to make fun of God and religion “should be legally protected no matter who might be offended.” Seventy-one percent held that atheists “who preach against God and religion” should not be permitted to use civic auditoriums. Intolerance for atheism was stronger even than intolerance of homosexuality.”
(Wendy Kaminer / The Last Taboo /1996)</p>
<p>I have many favorite atheist quotes, but they are too numerous to list and you have already heard them, so it would be rather trite. I will, however, post an intriguing case study recorded in Professor Dawkin’s book The God Delusion, the book which ostensibly sparked this thread.</p>
<p>"But Hartung tells of a horrifying study by the Israeli psychologist George Tamarin. Tamarin presented to more than a thousand Israeli schoolchildren, aged between eight and fourteen, the account of the battle of Jericho in the book of Joshua:</p>
<p>Joshua said to the people, ‘Shout; for the LORD has given you the city. And the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the LORD for destruction…But all silver and gold, and vessels of bronze and iron, are sacred to the LORD; they shall go into the treasury of the LORD.’… Then they utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and asses, with the edge of the sword…And they burned the city with fire, and all within it; only the silver and gold, and vessels of bronze and iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD.</p>
<p>Tamarin then asked the simple moral question: 'Do you think Joshua and the Israelites acted rightly or not? They had to choose between A (total approval), B (partial approval) and C (total disapproval). The results were polarized: 66 per cent gave total approval and 26 per cent total disapproval, with rather fewer (8 per cent) in the middle with partial approval. Here are three typical answers from the total approval (A) group:</p>
<p>In my opinion Joshua and the Sons of Israel acted well, and here are the reasons: God promised them this land, and gave them permission to conquer. If they would not have acted in this manner or killed anyone, then there would be the danger that the Sons of Israel would have assimilated among the Goyium.</p>
<p>In my opinion Joshua was right when he did it, on reason being that God commanded him to exterminate the people so that the tribes of Israel will not be able to assimilate amongst them and learn their bad ways.</p>
<p>Joshua did good because the people who inhabited the land were of a different religion, and when Joshua killed them he wiped their religion from the earth.</p>
<p>The Justification for the genocidal massacre by Joshua is religious in every case. Even those in category C, who gave total disapproval, did so, in some cases, for backhanded religious reasons. One girl, for example, disapproved of Joshua’s conquering Jericho because, in order to do so, he had to enter it:</p>
<p>I think it is bad, since the Arabs are impure and if one enters an impure land one will also become impure and share their cause.</p>
<p>Two other who totally disapproved did so because Joshua destroyed everything, including animals and property, instead of keeping some spoils for the Israelites:</p>
<p>I think Joshua did not act well, as they could have spared the animals for themselves.</p>
<p>I think Joshua did not act well, as he could have left the property of Jericho; if he had not destroyed the property it would have belonged to the Israelites."</p>
<p>“Tamarin ran a fascinating control group in his experiment. A different group of 168 Israeli children were given the same text from the book of Joshua, but with Joshua’s own name replaced by ‘General Lin’ and ‘Israel’ replaced by the Chinese Kingdom 3,000 years ago’. Now the experiment gave opposite results. Only 7 per cent totally approved of General Lin’s behaviour, and 75 per cent disapproved. In other words, when their loyalty to Judaism was removed from the calculation, the majority of children agreed with the moral judgements that most modern humans would share. Joshua’s action was a deed of barbaric genocide. But it all looks different from a religious point of view. And the difference starts in early life. It was religion that mad the difference between children condemning genocide and condoning it.”</p>
<p>“Wow, how true! No wonder both sides of the debate claim the founding fathers back them up.”</p>
<p>One has to be careful with any argument around the “founding fathers”, not only because some of the players changed between 1775 and 1791, but the opinions/beliefs of the founders changed, in some cases radically. Jefferson’s own beliefs were different in 1775 than in 1791, Washington’s were especially changed (by the time he was President, he refused to take communion in his own church), and after the religious revival of 1805, the pendulum swung the other way. The opinions and especially the language used by Thomas Paine (likely the single most intellectually influential “founding father”) in 1775 in Common Sense was very different than what he would use in 1791 in The Age of Reason.</p>
<p>In 1776, the pantheists/deists of the Declaration would make claims upon the Creator. In 1787-1791, representating colonies in which God was invoked in every single charter, the “founding fathers” (some of them the same people) would knowingly and explicitly leave any and every reference to God or the Creator out of the Constitution (which did evoke some controversy at the time, notably from Patrick Henry, who, being a founding father, OPPOSED adoption of the Constitution, partially on those grounds.)</p>
<p>So if one makes an appeal to the “founding fathers”, one has to specify “when”. </p>
<p>“More quotes by our founding fathers - in favor of religion:”</p>
<p>Without context, they are meaningless. But then there is my favorite Biblical text: “Thou shalt not yoke the male oxen and the female oxen in twain, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”</p>
<p>““I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up - they have no holidays.”
Henny Youngman”</p>
<p>Quakers have no holidays.</p>
<p>just got a new book, the Moral Minority, our scepitcal founding fathers, by Brooke Allen…about the “founding fathers” and their “beliefs”</p>
<p>pretty eye opening</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>[“to be open minded is the mark of the beast”](<a href=“http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/01/the_backlash_is_winding_up.php#commentsArea”>http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/01/the_backlash_is_winding_up.php#commentsArea</a>)</p>
<p>post after post attacking the op all the while presenting the evidence of its main–and now proven–assertion: the atheists of our day are a dumb stand-in for their erudite and intellectually gifted predecessors; Richard Dawkins is not even a broke down G B Shaw, and how much worse are ccers own far left screamers.</p>
<p>So, it begins with the obfuscation of **mini<a href=“and%20sadly,%20in%20this%20thread,%20he%20was%20the%20atheist’s%20high-water%20mark”>/b</a>; Mini, it seems, has difficulty distinguishing an individual atheist, say Cavalcante, with a “population,” like the atheist’s that dominated the late 19th, early 20th century salon. Clearly, the first “population of atheists” first break the cultural surface in the wake of the age of Darwin—late 19th century.</p>
<p>Digmedia, lost in his analogy, then compounds the misreading by saying that it would be as well to say that the first “population of Christians” appeared in the Victorian era–no doubt having missed that whole Medieval Church thing. </p>
<p>But certainly the best, the vanguard of up-to-the-minute atheists are those who, unbeknownst to them, become the victim of their own irony: CGM, Bay, Allmusic and of course the grand prize winner, qwilde. Given enough rope they all tie nice Windsor knots below their chins and jump off the stool…into the stool.</p>
<p>As to the atheist “founding guys” I kick my heels off in laughter thinking of those who claim the Republic was intended to be atheist, by atheists and offer as their sole proof the “fact” that “Jefferson was a deist.” </p>
<p>To the best of my knowledge, deism does not equal atheism–not by a long stretch. A deist believes that God (a God) created the universe, that she reclined in absent minded bliss after birthing the universe, but that fact takes nothing away from her chichi divinity: s/he is still “a god” and those who believe in this absented minded parent believe in “God” not withstanding the fact that the atheist’s favorite founding father/deist was also a reprobate slave holder who championed the righteous cause that “all men are created equal”–now there’s a true deist for you; make something up like a universe or a human right and do nothing about it after you’ve made your name and done your business.</p>
<p>For the rest of the founders: you can claim some spoke poorly of religion either in general or in particular or fondly of religion in general or in particular, but you can hardly claim that those first legislators did no discuss religion! The facts here much offend your argument. Religion was a hot political topic throughout all of their lives; they praised god, addressed god requested gods benedictions on their fledgling country to the point that even I, a theist, would have become bored with it. </p>
<p>Get a grip, and stop screaming: it is unbecoming–even for atheists.</p>
<p>qwilde said: “I always play devil’s advocate just to ensure that the person actually knows what they are talking about, even if they support my side.”</p>
<p>If you can play devil’s advocate, then do you believe the devil exists, while god does not? If not, why do you feel you must speak for her? (sorry Fountain, but if god is female then the devil must be too. 
)</p>
<p>FS, I declared up front that I am not an atheist. I know you like to lump me with whomever you have perceived as the loonies, on whatever topic, but leave me out of it. I have mostly lurked on this train wreck of a thread.</p>
<p>Oh, terrific. The world has been blessed with yet another pseudo-intellectual theist, masquerading as “God’s gift” to the world. You countered none of our arguments and instead resorted to personal attacks: typical of a zealot though. No one ever argued that deism equaled atheism. If you in fact trace my threads you will discover that I labeled the “founding fathers” deists, but I also mentioned that if they had lived today, with the knowledge that we have, they would probably subscribe to the Einsteinian God, which is not a god. Most publicly known figures in the past did not dare declare themselves atheist because of violent and nonsensical religious tirades; tirades which I hope you don’t actually support. Yes, I am quite happy in continuing with my ignorance; that is believing the world is billions of years old, humans evolved gradually over time, dinosaurs did not co-inhabit the Earth with man, and the Earth is indeed not flat. If you actually make some plausible assertions conerning the existence of god, I will be happy to debate and counter them, but if insist on defaming members and advocating the illogical assumption that religion is undeniable, then I will not humour your petty remarks.</p>
<p>“but you can hardly claim that those first legislators did no discuss religion!”</p>
<p>I speak of religion, does that make me a believer?</p>
<p>Devil’s advocate is a colloquial expression.</p>
<p>“So, it begins with the obfuscation of mini (and sadly, in this thread, he was the atheist’s high-water mark); Mini, it seems, has difficulty distinguishing an individual atheist, say Cavalcante, with a “population,” like the atheist’s that dominated the late 19th, early 20th century salon.”</p>
<p>Clearly, you know nothing about the “salons” of the Italian Renaissance, and the Epicureans that encompass 300 years of European history and thinking. (I’m sure you know lots about Erasmus, too, and his attempts to realign Epicurean thinking with Christian thought - he, of course, was only trying to deal with those “single individual atheists” who lived 300 years earlier. of course, Erasmus was dealing with a mode of thinking that ‘never broke the cultural surface’.)</p>
<p>Is this how they teach you to think at Dartmouth?</p>
<p>I know damn well what the expression is, and you want to have your cake and eat it too. </p>
<p>I do not care how “colloquial” it is you cannot invoke the devil without giving god an equal footing, and in doing so you open the door to even the slightest admission that god exists. If you will not concede that possibility (do you REALLY want god NOT to exist?! lol) then you should refrain from calling up god’s opposite, since you appear not to be a hypocrite, no matter the context.</p>
<p>I play spaghetti monster advocate “just to ensure that the person actually knows what they are talking about, even if they support my side” . Uh-oh. I have to believe in the spaghetti monster now because I mentioned its name.</p>
<p>“do you REALLY want god NOT to exist”</p>
<p>It’s not a matter of whether I want a god to exist, it is a matter of whether god does exist. Just because you want a God doesn’t de facto mean it’s extant, something you irrational theists must eventually comprehend.</p>
<p>You still did not answer the question of whether or not you WANT god to exist.</p>
<p>Does nothing exist that is not physically perceivable? Germs then must not have existed before the microscope</p>