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  • If you want to believe that illness is caused by demons and witchcraft, fine, knock yourself out. But that's not how the real world works. If you're going to make extraordinary claims about reality, then you have to provide extraordinary proof. "I believe" isn't going to cut it in the reality-based community.

  • I don't remember any scientists raping children then being shielded by the scientific community

  • The first sentences be true, then it drives off a whacky tangent, or what science calls "a cliff".

    Never take away a person's beliefs about life. Whether you think they're true or not has nothing to do with it. They're their's, they mean a lot, and that's how they endure life. To take them away is to be no better than a missionary or JW dooknocker or Ackchyually Guy. If we all respected that rule from all sides, we'd have a lot less unnecessary hatred and death. The theistic, non theistic, and atheistic schools of thought all respect the values of not bringing harm to yourself and then secondly to not bring harm to others. We all share this before barreling down contradicting "ammendments" that no longer reflect the shared principles of humanity.

    Edit: Fuck... I'm ranting. I stop now.

    • The first sentences be true, then it drives off a whacky tangent, or what science calls "a cliff".

      The first sentence isn't true at all, science doesn't try and disprove god at all. It's just inconvenient for people who used to explain things as 'god made it' that science didn't manage to prove that.

      Science is the only belief system that tries to falsify theorems. So rather than daarin something is true, we try to prove something is false. That doesn't gel with a system that supposes to have the absolute answer to all things.

      However it doesn't say you can't believe what you want, just that it might not be true.

    • If religion wasn't behind some of the worst atrocities on the planet you might have a point, but the largest religions also are the ones that tend to be fundementally intolerant.

      Once an irrational belief in magical spirits starts effecting other people and how our society is run that's when it becomes something people actively need to be convinced not to believe. They need to cope with reality, not hide from it.

    • If we all respected that rule from all sides, we'd have a lot less unnecessary hatred and death.

      You're addressing wrong people with that

  • Atheism is bad for science because atheists tend tend to present science as a belief system that's in completion with religion.

    Science is about discovering how things work, while religion is about thinking about why. These are different questions.

    There is of course some intersection between science and religion, but atheist seek to artificially widen that intersection to create conflict. To prove religion wrong "because science."

    This has an effect of pushing religious people away from science. But atheists don't care that they're hurting science, because the goal is to win petty internet arguments (many of which are imaginary) rather than promote scientific understanding.

    My reaction to a post like the above would be to explain that science is not about disproving God, it's simply about gaining a better understanding of the universe. Since it's a religious person, we could also explain that understanding the universe is a way of appreciating God's creation. That person could walk away thinking more positively about science and willing to learn more about it.

    But an atheist will just mock the person to gain imaginary internet points and that person would go on being distrustful of science.

    Atheism is bad for science.

102 comments