Comment by Mario Rodgers on May 13, 2010 at 12:05am

There may or may not be a Zeus. STOP HATING ON ZEUS!

Comment by AJComix on May 13, 2010 at 12:49am

THOR IS BETTER.

Comment by Helen Bascom on May 13, 2010 at 12:57am

God is a pigeon.

The one thing I've never understood is why god believers are so antagonistic to rational people?

Comment by Boomzy on May 13, 2010 at 1:49am

Atheists have better things to do than be pissed off about a stupid movie.

Comment by Jake W. Andrews on May 13, 2010 at 6:44am

Bugg: Agreed!

well that website has a few documentaries regarding science and religion, but while we should not get pissed off, we should be offering the patented rational criticism and keep the misinformation at bay. The movie, The Trouble With Atheists goes through every common objection to atheism, and is a good place to start in creating a list of counter arguments.

Comment by Shanika on May 13, 2010 at 12:53pm

It sounds like he thinks we worship science. I remember having a similar conversation on facebook with a friend. She asked me what I believe now that I'm not a Christian. I told her that I'm a humanist and that I believe that people can be good without god/gods. I believe, as the quote says, that we should be"guided by reason, informed by science, inspired by art, and motivated by compassion." She responded, "Oh I see, you're a Scientologist.".....Huh?

See, one of the problems is that people don't know much about religions other than their own (and many of them know very little about their own religion as well!). I guess anything that is seen as a threat to their religion will be considered just another RIVAL belief. In essence the term "atheism" denotes no belief in god, so it makes no sense to say you hate something you don't even believe exists.

Comment by Shanika on May 13, 2010 at 1:02pm

And we can't have a "scared" texts because we recognize, unlike theistic religions (especially dominator fundamentalism), that information changes and that because we are always learning, we are always changing and updating information. Scientists never say they are 100% sure about anything. They will go only as far as 99.999% (which is pretty darn close, but they stay away from absolutes unlike most religions). Even in the conversation of the existence of god/gods, we don't say that it's IMPOSSIBLE for a god/gods to exist, but we do say that it is VERY IMPROBABLE. Furthermore, we recognize that a negative cannot be proven and that the burden of proof is on the one who claims the existence of god/gods.

Comment by Kris on May 13, 2010 at 6:25pm

@Shanika
Well, we can claim absolute certainty for some things. x=x and 1+1=2, are absolute certainties. Nothing that could possibly happen would change those.
But yeah, what Rod Liddle argues is that because science can change its mind, there's no basis for believing any of what it says to be true. Now, I understand how he reached that conclusion, but it's really not a true thing to say.
Science keeps getting closer to the answer. Several thousand years ago, people thought the earth was flat. This was perfectly reasonable, considering the fact that all the evidence that they had, pointed toward a flat earth. Later, when people started building ships and traveling, they started thinking that the earth was round. Today, we know that the earth is actually more of a spheroid.
The leap from flat to round, compared to the leap from round to spherical, is much, much bigger. I doubt that we will ever make a discovery that says that the earth is any other shape than the one we today have established, but if we do, the deviation will be minor.
I guess my point is that, yes science changes its mind, but unless it is a new discovery, the deviations are usually minute, getting closer and closer to the truth, but never reaching it.
Religious people have been saying "magic man dun it" for millenniums and haven't changed their minds one bit. Should we trust their permanence more? I think not. It could be compared with the flat earth society, who still think that the earth is flat.

Comment by Shanika on May 14, 2010 at 10:14am

^^
lol...yeah I thought about that too Kristian. There's was an interesting aricle in the New York Times about the ubiquity and absoluteness of mathematics a few years ago here, if you're interested:

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/02/10/science/useful-invention-or-absol...

Just to clarify, I just thought to add the link to the article because I think it's thought-provoking, not to disagree with anything that was said :-), although some would argue whether or not mathematics is actually a science.


You're right Kristian. Science keeps getting closer to the answers to questions that we aren't sure of right now and it is certainly the best tool we have for understanding ourselves and the world. And it's certainly answered the questions that religion tried to answer but failed.

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