Atheism includes both "fence-sitters" a.k.a. agnosticism and deniers/disbelivers etc. Therefore it's incorrect to say that atheism demands the view that "There is no God". Many people, perhaps most, think so, but many people also have the view that we can't either prove or disprove "God".
It's the same with my example of a flying pink elephant in a different dimension (basically what the Spaghetti Monster thing was about). It's impossible to prove it exists, and it's imossible to prove it doesn't exist. It's the same with "God".
I think people should think a bit about what religion has been used for. And about all the contradictions and errors in the Bible (and surely also the Koran). I do believe that at least some of the
stories in the Bible are based on historical truths. For instance the world-wide flood. It's impossible for the world to completely cover the earth. There simply isn't enough water. If all the ice melted the oceans would rise only 10m or so (IIRC, anyway not very much). But according to several sources there was a local flood in Persia at about that time. This is probably the origin of the "Noah's Ark" story (The ark is WAY out of proportions too, but I'll leave that).
I think there are many such cases in the bible. People with power, and people that wanted power, has twisted and added stuff to the stories, for their own personal gain. Even the birthdate of Jesus is completely false. December 25th was a pagan day of celebration back in the day, so the Church simply used this one. I don't remember when this was decided, but it was done at a high-level Church-meeting many centuries ago.
Quote:
Dr. Hook:
First off, I cannot speak for everyone, but for myself, I hold a religious view that I came to as an adult, and which I CHOSE to believe. Because I chose that view, I necessarily CHOOSE to believe what comes along with that.
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I find this quite strange. You don't
choose to believe something. You either believe it, or you don't.
For a little personal story. When I was little I did believe in God and Christianity and all that. This was simply down to having a very religious teacher. We had to pray pretty much every day, and sang lots of religious songs. I'm not sure exactly when I started to doubt it, and came to the conclusion that it's an illusion. But it was a process I suppose. I have never read much religious stuff, or anti-religious stuff. It was simply a process of thinking through things for myself. When you actually think about the stuff in the bible, it doesn't make much sense. But I'm an individual living in a society, so of course I have gotten other inputs along the road besides just me thinking about religion. That's part of being alive really.
This also goes to show how important it is for the Church as an institution to get to kids early. When you are very young you don't have the ability to think through big issues like this for yourself in a rational and independent manner. This is why, I think, the Church is fighting for staying in schools. It is also why it wants ID to enter schools as this is a way of gaining influence.
It is of course true that not all subjects in schools are scientific per se. But they are based on science and research as far as possible. Religion are against these methods. For instance in art you learn what technique to use for painting well, or sculpturing well. In the social sciences you learn about historical studies, and general trends in the world. History etc etc. But with religion you don't have any outside sources at all. It is the bible, and that's it. Very narrow in other words. It could have been fairly interesting to try to figure out how these stories came to be in the first place, the process of spreading the various religions, the historical contexts for them being spread, similarities in the various religions, and what they don't have in common. Then we could actually learn something.
One could have based all our understanding of history on Homer's Oddyssey for instance, but it wouldn't be a very smart thing to do. This is basically what religion does. It takes a single book as the one and only truth. It's almost like a North-Koreanesque Dear Leader mentality. Our Dear Leader has spoken (any priest etc really), we must do as our Dear Leader has told us. This is obviously an exaggeration (believe you want to slay me), but there are elements of truth to it.
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