Atheists draw conclusions (There is no god) from as little evidence as the devoutly religious do. Essentially it's just another form of religion masquerading as critical thought. The path of agnosticism is the only one that is obviously, incontrovertably right in its claims: "I don't know."

I agree with you devilnis, agnoticism is the smart way to think.
But i dont agree with the little evidence part. I study this subjects and they interest me, for me and for lots and lots of people, many things skeptics believe that is not possible are already proven by cientific methods.
God is not one of them, but the things i can say i know as facts (not theories, that i have lots and lots too) include: reincarnation, existence of life after death (and before birth), the existence of spirits in many forms (angels, demons, elementals, "ghosts" and many others), telephaty, outside of human brain consciousness, and a few others.
Quantum fisics says that every matter acts as waves and they are conscious beings, and that brings up lots of questions and answers if you go deep enough.

So, to many people that are healed from cancer or any other disaese, or are helped by circuntamces in such a way that they have absolutely certainty that they are experimenting spirituality. To this people faith is a fact. It doesnt mean they know everything, some times this experiences makes them unable to see anything through other person perspective, but the fact they are experiment events that the current scientific community don't support is the reality.

If anyone reads that with a urge to criticize, i can support what i am saying, just ask politely.

Quantum physics makes no claim that the quanta (whether looked at as a point or as a wave) are conscious. The possibility exists that the entire universe could be sentient on some vast scale, but it's just delightful conjecture at this point since we don't have the vantage point or depth of understanding to test the theory. I'd be interested to see what studies were done that could possibly confirm the other things you mentioned such as reincarnation. Are they peer reviewed? Have other labs re-ran the experiments with the same results? Just because it's on the internet in bold font doesn't mean it's real.

The miracle cures and whatnot that you refer to are fringe cases and to be expected - some people will miraculously be cured of things when people expected otherwise, such as those rare people who are genetically capable of defeating an HIV infection. When you point to those "miracles" as being something amazing and divine, you are participating in what is known as "observational bias" where you will tend to notice, think about, and remember the fringe cases and exclude from your consciousness the fact that the vast majority of people will be unable to live through an HIV infection unaided. It would be much more improbable for there to NOT be statistical outliers, so the fact that they exist is not proof of anything meaningful.

Also, some conditions are the result of both a physical prompt and a biofeedback loop powered by the subject's beliefs and mood, so sometimes just tricking a patient into believing that they are cured can be enough to cure them in truth (the very well-documented "placebo effect".) - None of this supports the concept of divine intervention in any way, as there are statistically verified mundane causes for the outcome.

ok, thank for your answers, you got them all i figure

What devilnis said.
Except for that oversimplifying "atheism=religion" bit. There's more to atheism vs. agnosticism than just "NO!" vs. "I am abstaining from voting".
Being an atheist with regard to that one Abrahamitic deity (as always, your mileage may vary depending on how you interpret the scriptures (or what parts of them)) is a pretty sound and valid philosophical position and not only some sort of secular modern-day ersatz religion creed.
Also: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/

tl,dr on all the above:
If you're calling yourself an atheist, you *probably should be* calling yourself an agnosticist. Except when you're a Dawkins fanboy. That guy definitely HAS something of a guru about him. Be sure to get all the T-shirts.

"Woman is the devil
God is a fraud"

There's no more proof of God's nonexistance than there is of his existance, so any claim to "know" one way or the other is voodoo...

i am that naive to believe that two intelligent person would talk through something without the necessity of that feeling that the discussion must have a winner?

If by any chance your arguments are strong enough to make me quiet, would that mean that the universes follows the laws that you believe in? Would our opinions have any practical value rather than the fact the every person has to right to have their own?
But this means nothing, discussing right or wrong is pointless, because EVERYSINGLEPERSONINTHISFUCKINGWORLD believe to be inside a group that have all the answers. And is that any good for anybody?

How can I communicate the information that i am not trying to prove myself right or either that yourself is wrong?
Because i dont believe in that. I believe that if i ask you to rethink your believe system to something else, shouldn't I give you the same opportunity to make me rethink my believe system? Isn't that the rational way human kind should be taken by this point?
So i don't want to oppose what you are saying, I want to understand it, because would be very easy to use my believe system to neglect all information you give me and still believe in the exact same things I always did.
So, can I present want I believe in without hurting your feelings? Can I do the same when you present your information to me?

Can we stop thousands of years of acting the same way, declaring that being opposed to ones thoughts is cause for hostility?

End my final question is: can two intelligent person trade so much information, that in the end of a long period they both have a feeling that they know everything about the others perspective, and just than starting to formulate a safe base which both can rely on trough clarity and logic?
Can we take each others will of being right out of the equation?

devilnis atheist makes more sense then theism purely because the fact that it is impossible to prove anything does *not* exist, but it is simple to prove something does exist.. a theist can simple prove their point with proof of a divine existance, the atheist standpoint cannot be proven... if you believe in theism, you should just as readily believe in bigfoot, aliens visiting whenever we're not looking, interdimensional beings visiting us regularly, etc. etc. etc. because these things have not been proven, and cannot be disproven...

*Believe that which is easiest to disprove* I am an agnostic, leaning towards atheism until realistic proof to the contrary is presented....

and dakoish, every human is 99% atheist... take your common christian, you believe in the christian deity.. that means you disbelieve in all the other deities throughout history, and atheism is the active disbelief in deities, and/or the religion providing those deities.. believing atheism is bs is ignorance of oneself and of the environment we live in currently..


this being said, I only half skimmed most of the conversation, because religious debates can be so tedious, and this is *not* the location for it.

Lol.
Devil, if you wanted to you could make the effort and clarify what exactly you are referring to as "God" and "He" (protip: "Yehova/FatherSonHolyghost/Allah" probably sums it up). You are of course welcome to elaborate on what you mean with <"knowing" put in parentheses> as well. Then you could also re-read my post and, after that, the article I linked.
Or you could just believe me when I write that you and I have fairly congruent ideas about the matter at hand and that I was merely trying to get definitions straight.
;)

devilnis wrote:
|> There's no more proof of God's nonexistance than there is of his existance, so any claim to "know" one way or the other is voodoo...

[Russell's teapot](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot)

---

dunga wrote:
|> EVERYSINGLEPERSONINTHISFUCKINGWORLD believe to be inside a group that have all the answers

I disagree; I for one have no illusion of having all the answers.

|> How can I communicate the information that i am not trying to prove myself right or either that yourself is wrong?

Please keep in mind Internet forums may not be the most appropriate place for having delicate discussions:

- There are many people here who's native language is something other than English; having a discussion, especially one with subtle points, is very demanding on your command of the language in which you do so.
- We're writing plain text; the absence of intonation, facial expression while saying something and body language makes it incredibly easy to misunderstand one another.
- Anyone can participate in the discussion, from an extremely over-confident 16 year old know-it-all to a professor of theology who's spent his entire life studying exactly this question. While it should be easy enough to tell those extremes apart, it can be rather difficult to gauge just how much credibility any given person deserves. (For some reason it seems to be "not done" to ask people their "credentials". Maybe because you're essentially asking "why should I believe a single word you're saying", or maybe because it's far to easy to lie about it...?)

|> Can we stop thousands of years of acting the same way, declaring that being opposed to ones thoughts is cause for hostility?

Given how we're nowhere close to achieving world peace, I'm afraid it would be unlikely we can stop discussions from deteriorating into shouting-matches...

|> Can we take each others will of being right out of the equation?

This seems to be difficult even for scientists; even when a given theory has been proven wrong some of its proponents may still feel the need to tweak and fix it, just so they can show (the people backing) the other theory was actually wrong as well... This may just be an innate property many, many people have (to different extents of course).

Perrin3088 wrote:
|> atheist makes more sense then theism purely because the fact that it is impossible to prove anything does not exist, but it is simple to prove something does exist..

That reasoning implicitly assumes God wants to actively proof his/her/its existence. What if God had a reason to specifically *not* want to show him/her/itself (or, at least, not any more)...? In that case your argument completely falls apart.

My claim is inarguable - I don't know much of the vast assortment of things there are to know, and when others say that they know the answers to the eternal questions of life (Why are we here? Is there a God? Is there a purpose?) yet all they can point to as evidence is some musty tome written thousands of years ago by multiple authors in multiple languages that have since been translated and retranslated hundreds of times (for example,) I say that they are overstepping the bounds of their true knowledge and allowing the twin forces of habit and desire to taint the clarity of their perceptions. Is that demeaning? The answer lies in the eye of the beholder. If you can't deal with the fact that I believe your claims are wildly improbable, then yes to you it's demeaning, but there it is. I didn't truly dismiss them out of hand though, I just asked where the evidence is, since you claimed that you had seen some :) Ball's in your court, my man!

I'm a Christian I'll say... but religious posts on the war light forum blow up... I hate it when this happens, the internet isnt the exact place to switch someone to your point of view....

|>|>Can we take each others will of being right out of the equation?

|>This seems to be difficult even for scientists; even when a given theory has been proven wrong some of its proponents may still feel the need to tweak and fix it, just so they can show (the people backing) the other theory was actually wrong as well... This may just be an innate property many, many people have (to different extents of course).


people tend to believe theories are facts long before they are facts... but it is also important for the proponents to keep tweaking for the case in which perhaps the old theory was in fact correct, but just slightly wrong and perhaps the new theory could in fact be more wrong then a modified old theory is...

RvW, it is irrelevant on if the thing wants to be proven or not.. the pure fact of the matter is, is that next to nothing can be proven not to be, while things can be proven to be... in order to prove john doe is not on a moving train you must simultaneously view every portion of said train at the same time to prove john does lack of existance on said train, but to prove john doe is on said train, all you have to do is find him.

Yes, Exactly RvW - Russel's teapot indeed. Like him, I approach atheism since I believe the existance of God in any way I've ever heard it described to be an EXTREMELY low probability. But the possibility of God exists, and picking apart the bible (for instance) by disputing small factual points within it (where's the dinosaurs?) is a fool's game since if you take as an assumption the presence of an omnipotent deity, everything else becomes quite possible, aka the system is "internally consistent".

I'm not going to believe bigfoot exists purely because bigfoot does not want to be found... I am going to believe bigfoot exists when he is found, or conclusive evidance is provided to prove he does exist.

"RvW, it is irrelevant on if the thing wants to be proven or not.. the pure fact of the matter is, is that next to nothing can be proven not to be, while things can be proven to be... in order to prove john doe is not on a moving train you must simultaneously view every portion of said train at the same time to prove john does lack of existance on said train, but to prove john doe is on said train, all you have to do is find him."

... And then subsequently prove that what appears to be John Doe actually is the John Doe you were speaking of and that the train was indeed moving at the time that you conjectured John Doe was on it (not at the time that you found him.) And then, to a true scientist, what you call proof would be merely a high probability. There are no proofs in the real world, only in abstracted systems such as mathematics or logic. We are forever limited by the weakness of our powers of comprehension and observation.

[all you need to know about atheism](http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/)