glad to oblige, you guys give me a giggle too as long as you don't pack up your sandbox and go home.

I get overly worked up by this stuff but I can laugh at myself too.:)

Bating and getting the religious folks pissed off on this forum has become a bit of a sport.Well, quite honestly, I wasn't trying to piss anyone off. I was simply responding to the assertion that we must not "close our minds to other possibilities". As it turns out, keeping minds open is easier said than done! :)

Yes, instead of using unicorns as an example, I could just as easily have demonstrated that keeping a mind open to "other possibilities" would require that we be prepared to accept all of the following:
- Jesus as a god and as simply a human and as nothing more than a mythical person; and
- the unquestionable existence of every single god ever devised by man; and
- the premise that no gods of any kind exist at all.

In either case, it becomes clear very quickly that something is required to sift through the myriad "other possiblities" and, in my opinion, that something is not the Bible - or any other human-generated book of faith - but reason and critical thinking. Which, if I'm not mistaken, was the reason (no pun intended) for this thread in the first place.

And maybe if we keep on the thread topic instead of belittling what each other believe in, with remarks such as,"he loves god and that is all it takes to make you wrong", we can actually learn something. That is, if you are at all interested in being open minded.

It takes just as much faith to believe that God does not exist as that he does, since you can't prove the existence either way. Those of you who were raised to believe that there was no God accepted this with child-like faith because your parents couldn't prove what they taught you.

Therefore, to run an atheist camp is to promote a philosophy above others that can't be proven, just the same as the religious philosophy.

I still think a camp should be a place removed from adults trying to force their beliefs on kids. Just let the kids have some fun.

It takes just as much faith to believe that God does not exist as that he does, since you can't prove the existence either way.I've never heard anyone suggest that it takes "faith" to believe that unicorns, leprechauns, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy do not exist. That's because reason - not "faith" - dictates that invisible, unproveable, mythical beings or creatures are more likely to not exist than to exist.

The very same argument applies to any and all gods created by mankind over the course of history. (I doubt that Christians would describe themselves as having "as much faith" in the non-existence of Greek, Hindu and Mesoamerican gods as their adherents have "faith" in their existence.)

When it comes to fantastic things, non-existence is the only reasonable conclusion in the absence of proof.

I still think a camp should be a place removed from adults trying to force their beliefs on kids. Just let the kids have some fun.Agreed.

And, with that, I am done with this thread.

"It was...fun. Oh, my!" :)

Bating and getting the religious folks pissed off on this forum has become a bit of a sport.

I agree that some members go overboard in their ridicule of "faith."

Having said that, this is a technology forum and technology is based on the application of science. I am a firm believer in Science and the scientific method which I think is true for many others on the forum.

The scientific method has taught us that: the earth revolves around the sun, the earth is not flat, cancer is a disease (not something you get because you suffer from poor morality), mountains were created by tectonics not God, heavier than air vehicles can fly, evolution is a fact, the earth is billions of years old and so on.

All of these things the Church vehemently denied and often incarcerated or murdered those who said these truths.

Fighting religion and those that scorn the scientific method is not "sport", rather it's a survival instinct against those that would deny the truth.

I leave this thread with the following quotes that help illustrate my thoughts:

"As the Church assumed leadership, activity in the fields of medicine, technology, science, education, history, art and commerce all but collapsed. Europe entered the Dark Ages." Helen Ellerbe

"The losses in science were monumental. In some cases the Christian church's burning of books and repression of intellectual pursuit set humanity back as much as two millennia in its scientific understanding." Helen Ellerbe

"Turn over the pages of history and read the damning record of the church's opposition to every advance in every field of science. . . ." Upton Sinclair

"The establishment of Christianity . . . arrested the normal development of the physical sciences for over fifteen hundred years." Andrew D. White

"The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable. To be sure, theology is always yielding a little to the progress of knowledge, and only a Holy Roller in the mountains of Tennessee would dare to preach today what the popes preached in the thirteenth century." H. L. Mencken

"When two men of science disagree, they do not invoke the secular arm; they wait for further evidence to decide the issue, because, as men of science, they know that neither is infallible. But when two theologians differ, since there are no criteria to which either can appeal, there is nothing for it but mutual hatred and an open or covert appeal to force." Bertrand Russell

Thanks again hugh, I get to upset in these threads .

Interesting quotes Hugh. No doubt one could argue at length about the many effects of religion in history and illustrating your POV with comments by atheists and agnostics does a fine job.

I suppose one could respond with comments by religious intellects and sympathizers but personally I don't think an accurate picture of the role of religion in history can be obtained by comparing quotes.

Religions and other philosophies have both been good and bad at times, but it seems to me that the results depend on the agendas of the leaders or movements of the day.

I'd be interested in religious quotes that dispute the value of the scientific method and support the belief that the earth is flat, torture is the way to treat 'heretics' the sun revolves around the earth and that heavier than air vehicles can't fly.

It took 359 years for the Catholic church to change its mind regarding the fact that the Earth revolves around the Sun so I guess religious leaders can change their mind.

In 1633, the Inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church forced Galileo Galilei, one of the founders of modern science, to recant his theory that the Earth moves around the Sun. Under threat of torture, Galileo - seen above facing his inquisitors - recanted. But as he left the courtroom, he is said to have muttered, 'all the same, it moves'.

Last week, 359 years later, the Church finally agreed. At a ceremony in Rome, before the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Pope John Paul II officially declared that Galileo was right.

Source: Galileo was right (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13618460.600-vatican-admits-galileo-was-right-.html) from Nov 1992

Did you know that Galileo was religious? So was Isaac Newton. These are some of the people I was referring to when I mentioned religious intellects. You can peruse their thoughts on religion if you like, I don't know if they commented on the value of the scientific method, but being that they were some of the forefathers of the scientific method, I'd guess they were fond of it.

Did you know that Galileo was religious?

One can't be both a heretic and religious! Regardless, pretty much every scientist in the past has paid lip service to the gods so they were not boiled in oil or subject to some equally heinous crime.

Argument from admired religious scientists (http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Argument_from_admired_religious_scientists)
[A] scientist may, for instance, believe that God intervenes in the world by performing miracles. However, she is expected to set aside her belief in miracles while working as a scientist: there is no objective evidence for the existence of miracles. They are therefore, at best, a highly-speculative hypothesis.
...
[S]mart people can still believe things that aren't true. Newton, for instance, was a believer in astrology and numerology.
...
Creationists are fond of circulating lists of scientists who believe in divine creation. However, invariably most of the scientists on the list died before Charles Darwin presented his ideas. It is unfair to imply that these notable scientists would reject the theory of evolution, when they never had a chance to become acquainted with it.I wasn't going to participate in this thread again, but that was too easy! ;)

Okay, gone for good this time... :p

As a result of Project Steve, in many discussion forums, if a creationist brings up a list of scientists who oppose evolution, someone will ask, "Yes, but how many of them are named Steve?"

http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Project_Steve

LOL!

I'm an athiest, but my only concern about sending my kids to camp would be that they had fun.

If I had kids.

Bingo! At least we can all agree on this, kids should have fun at camp.

Eljay, I noticed you edited your post. Why is there no edit stamp on it?(I don't know why I notice things like that!)

Faith requires the suspension of critical thinking, not its development, refinement and application.

Faith doesn't require the suspension of critical thinking, although too often it has that effect.

Some of the most famous critical thinkers of our time fall back on faith when science doesn't provide clear answers. Physicist Richard Feinman once said "On the other hand I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." He didn't understand it, but had faith that the math worked.

Quantum mechanics isn't the only phenomenon we don't understand. Gravity is another. We don't know how it works, but most of us have faith that it does. And that faith has nothing to do with the suspension of critical thinking.

Ricketty

There is a big difference between Feinmans faith in Quantum and the faith of religion.


Feinman would have experimented and worked at it until he figured it out given enough time and had faith that others like him would figure things out if he didn't.

Religious faith would have these kids go "godidit" and never try to figure anything out except how tithe to a guy in a polyester suit and act on things without understanding as demonstration of their faith.

Faith = Jonestown.

The feixability of science to increase undersanding versus the unflexability of faith is what camps like this can bring to kids.

Faith gave us Jonestown kind of like atheism gave us Stalin's purges.

Faith gave us Jonestown kind of like atheism gave us Stalin's purges.

Stalin was also a hunter. Isn't that better suited as a reason for his "purges"?
The more I read such discussions, the more bewildered I am at the complete lack of any logic and the childishly naive and incorrect conclusions the religious people come up with.

There is a big difference between Feinmans faith in Quantum and the faith of religion.

Feinman would have experimented and worked at it until he figured it out given enough time and had faith that others like him would figure things out if he didn't.

We may not disagree, but let's see.

Faith can generally be defined as a strong belief in something that is beyond proof. That includes everything from the irrational acceptance demonstrated by the Jonestown faithful to physicists' "faith" in gravity.

Where sound evidence and proof exist, there is no need for faith. But where there are gaps in the evidence and/or a lack of proof, faith is what closes the gap.

Most people are irrational and mentally lazy. They fall back on faith when they don't have access to, or won't look at, the available evidence. But no matter how much someone studies religion, the evidence is inconclusive and no "proof" emerges. My belief that there is no god is based as much on "faith" as another's belief that god exists.

Ricketty

But couldn't we say that gravity is an observable effect that can be measured and controlled under experimental conditions, which lends credibility to having "faith" in it? No one can deny that there is "something" to the notion of gravity, even if our understanding of it is not complete. No one can argue the opposite, i.e. that objects will not fall down if tossed into the air (of course, assuming there is no counter-force to overcome the effect).

I fail to see anything similar in terms of a demonstrable effect relating to gods.