[Ninkazu]

not particularly about gaming, but I just wanted to know.

I'm a strong atheist... basically because it's the real truth. http://www.atheists.org

[Jihgfed Pumpkinhead]

     Hmm... I know, I know, I should just let it slide, but... I don't really want to. Firstly, I'm defining atheism as "an active disbelief in a Deity", rather than "a lack of believing in a Deity". In other words, the atheist says "There is no God", rather than "I can see no reason to believe in God", which opinion is better termed agnosticism.
     So, I really fail to see why atheistic opinions are constantly championed as rational, or "basically ... the real truth". There can be no compelling evidence for the non-existence of a Deity; such evidence is impossible to acquire. Consequently, there is no logical argument for atheism; atheistic arguments are rarely more than simple refutations of theistic arguments.
     Now, I have nothing against atheism. It's fine, more power to you; I really don't care very much, to be honest. But I would like to dispel the extremely firm-rooted belief that atheism is somehow rational. That just doesn't make any sense. Positive belief and disbelief in a Deity are both leaps of faith, they just go in different directions.
     Yeah, this thread's most likely going to get frozen for being off-topic, so I thought I'd get my point in while I still had a chance. Besides, I've always had a bee in my bonnet about this topic; so that's why I'm getting involved rather than sensibly sitting back.

[Terry]

I think about these kind of things a lot. All the time actually. I know what I suspect the truth is - but I don't actually know, which is more than a little fustrating. But essentially, what Jihgfed Pumpkinhead has said is correct - Athiesm is just as much a leap of faith as any religion.

Someone one told me that Wiccans don't regard Wicca as religion, because it makes no assumtions - and I'm curious - is there any truth to that?

- Terry Cavanagh
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[entivore]

Every bit of knowledge makes assumptions. Even math is based on the assumption that the universe is not completely chaotic and so rules can be created to model it.

I'm as atheistic as you can get, an existential nihilist to boot, but it always bug me when the rational argument nazis come into town. Ultimately, your beliefs will have to be based on some guesses and assumptions. The best that you can do is keep those assumptions very base and sparse, and then use logic to derive individual beliefs from them, so your view is logically consistent. For example, I could say... believe that pain is bad, and I could say. . . believe that I'm not the only human that counts. So from that I can derive that hurting other people is wrong unless doing so stops them from hurting me more. Etc. But there's no such thing as a purely logical belief, because logic doesn't create anything. Logic gets you from point a to point b, but it can't create point a. Heh.

I don't regard a person as inferior just for being religious, but there definantly is a concentration of people who make up their beliefs as they go and don't care about contradictions in that group. Much of this is probably more to do with religion being the "default state" in the cultures of the world than any flaw in religion itself.

Just about every human believes they have the real truth. Some of them probably do, but a lot of them don't. Who knows for sure. lol.
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[Mandrake]

Sorry, but locked. This is jsut a flame war waiting to happen.