What about the crimes of Atheist and non theist regimes Like Stalin, Pol Pot and Chairman Mao and The slaughter of the French revolution? — Andrew4Handel

What about them? Don't you think people react to that, also? Including atheists, believe it or not. Everyone has a reason for thinking as they think, but there's no law (no secular law, anyway) that says we have to agree with any of the others.

There is no reason believe that an absence of religion leads to a better society or better people. — Andrew4Handel

That is why I don't believe that - not even when when intelligent, well-meaning people assert it. I have no faith in humanity.

Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett et al are not targeting theocratic regimes but the soft beliefs of moderate Christians. — Andrew4Handel

I mildly disagree, having heard some of Dawkins' opinions on Islam.
But I don't really care what he thinks.
And again - Why do you?

Consider Richard Dawkins for example. — Gregory

Who is Richard Dawkins to me, or I to Richard Dawkins? Why should I consider his state of mind before settling on one of my own? Indeed, why should you?

I suppose Dawkins is reacting to some of the crimes of religious organizations and religious men - and he's quite right in feeling that way: those crimes have been enormous in scope and depth. In the present world, a number of very dangerous religio-political organizations are are perpetrating and contemplating further egregious crimes, in the name of the same deity (keeping in mind the Jehovah=God=Allah) and Dawkins may feel, along with many others, that they must be opposed. In this latter instance, I side with him. People have reasons for what they believe, what they think, what they consider to be worth suffering ans fighting for. I'm not in the business of telling them what that should be.

It often seems to me that some atheists use the lack-theism definition as a way of getting out of having to meet their burden of proof — busycuttingcrap

Nobody is authorized or empowered to lay that burden on me. My beliefs and unbeliefs are subjective and autonomous; I owe nobody a justification for them. Actions are - or may be - a different matter.

Religious truths are not like scientific truths. Even scientific truths are relative to a degree. Only God is absolute. If you hold to objective truth and yet remain an atheist because of lack of evidence you're being hard headed and ignoring the whole experience of religion, which is supposed to grow our hearts. God can do anything — Gregory

I'm not stopping him! I'm not an atheist because of lack of evidence; I'm an atheist because of evidence to the contrary: far too much of what religionists have claimed is proved false. But that just means I do not subscribe; it doesn't mean you shouldn't. So long as you don't bully other people or hurt animals, I'm fine with whatever you believe.

But I think it is a state of agnosticism not to commit ones self to an opinion on something. — Andrew4Handel

Only if the supernatural, and more specifically, deity, comes into it. For me, they don't. The big cosmic questions are simply beyond our ability to investigate: whether they contain something that somebody chooses to call a god or not will probably remain unknowable, so unless and until they do, I'm not require to believe or disbelieve. If you want to call that agnosticism, fine.

I am not saying atheists need to do this but certain things that come out of the what can be called the atheists community are claims that people can disagree with. — Andrew4Handel

People disagree about all kinds of things all the time. We are a contentious species. Crap comes out ever "community" - which just means some people talk crap - and wisdom comes out of every community, because some people talk sense.

This sounds like you are from The States. — Andrew4Handel

Doesn't matter where you are. All over the world, every single day, children are exposed to religious ideas. I very much doubt there is any adult who has never heard of religion.

. Also militant atheism and secularism entered universities. — Andrew4Handel

When? Why? In response to what? Look at historical cause and effect chains.





.

That's a big quote. Tell it to gravity.

Do you think that's faster than a big rock from space could achieve, or how about a massive eruption of the caldera under Yellowstone park or — universeness

Meteor strikes and volcano eruptions are not in the sphere of influence of either religion or science, and so that comparison is irrelevant. I was responding to your uncritical admiration of science. It's just a method whereby humans make tools to manipulate matter. Humans use tools for good and for evil, wisely and stupidly, constructively and destructively. In that regard, religion, which provides tools for the manipulation of minds, is exactly like science.

how fast do you think the Christian god could do it, if it existed?

The point there is: he doesn't. He's a product of human imagination, and he's used by humans as a benevolent force and a destructive force, because humans have both of those impulses and they express both of those impulses in all their creations.

1959! You are impatient Vera! That's only 63 years ago. It's a bit of a 'diva stance' to complain that the human race has not made enough satisfactory global improvements in your lifetime. — universeness

Zero. If you wait as long as Christianity has failed to

unite people in common cause — universeness

even though they both have

put significant dents in human primal fear.

I think you'll be alone in a desert.
Or on the moon. Good luck with that project!

appeal IS a central element of what we call truth, especially in the sciences. An important value in choosing one theory over another is aesthetic appeal. — Joshs

No. While an 'elegant' solution is much to be desired, and hard to let go, we settle for awkward, inconvenient, mean truths all the time. We always hope they will fit into a larger, more beautiful picture, and sometimes we luck out.

The facts have no coherence outside of their relation to our pragmatic goals and purposes. — Joshs

No. facts have coherence whether we like them or not. We just make don't all all make use of them all all of the time.

We convince ourselves that we conform our empirical models to the cold, hard facts of the world, but those cold , hard facts are constantly shaped and reshaped by our evolving concerns, expectations and practices. — Joshs

No. Facts do not change. Our perception of them may grow clearer, our understanding of how they fit together may render them less cold, but our concerns and practices shape nothing but our immediate environment, and our expectations are as often dashed as are fulfilled.

I don't know what this argument is meant to prove or demonstrate, but I think it's a rejection of reality that would not stand up in a court of law or a tax audit or a building design. Facts have very sharp teeth and I don't recommend turning your back on them.

Everyone approaches faith differently because they all experience religion differently. — Gregory

Oddly enough, I said that very thing in another thread. People take in what they hear, see, feel, read and they remix it in their head according to their previous experience, temperament and needs. Sure.
None of that affects the text itself or its relation to objective fact.

The Bible can be true for one and not another. — Gregory

Somebody can think it's literally true (I have some doubt about this: the people I've met who insisted that the scriptures were literally true were quite selective in the parts they quoted. They seem to like Paul for some reason... hm) but either was a woman named Esther in Persia or there wasn't; either she married Xerxes or she didn't; either he retracted the order to massacre the Jews or he didn't. Either Noah built an ark like the one in the Creation Museum in Kentucky or he didn't. I choose to believe Esther existed and Noah didn't, but that doesn't change their histories.

God gives spirituality to each person as he likes because it is as if we are children on this earth. — Gregory

Sweet... for those whom that fickle god likes. I have to squint really hard to see this, and it's not worth the effort. Microsoft fixed Windows 11 so that every time my cursor moves too far left, a window pops up with a too-familiar ugly orange balloon face in one of its frames, hour after hour, day after day... I can't see anything on the actual screen.

Once atheism makes claims about wider issues such as about whether there is a creator, whether reality needs a first cause, whether reality is purely physical — Andrew4Handel

Those are questions best left open, as far as this atheist is concerned. I can't know those things, wouldn't begin to know where to start investigating them, and they're frankly none of my business

but

whether morality can survive the death of religion etc. — Andrew4Handel

is a human one that only humans can answer - not gods, not conjectures, not the biggest of bangs.

The idea is once you abandon religion the only other option is to be a materialist atheist reliant only on science. — Andrew4Handel

That's one idea. "reliant only on science" sounds ominous, but all it means is trusting your senses and reason, learning, experience and memory, rather than stories that make no sense and don't appeal to you.
But if some of the stories do appeal to you, you have the option of holding onto them. Disbelieving in propaganda from one political source doesn't commit you to one other political party; it simply leaves you free to choose.

It's interesting how 'absolute certainty' is itself a kind of god in a lot of thinking. — Tom Storm

Do you mean a lot of people think certainty is a god, or that a lot of people think that other people who claim to be certain of something are actually professing a religion?
I think it doesn't matter. Most of the time, without entertaining doubts, or even giving it any thought, we are sure of some things that we take them for granted: slide out of bed in the dark, expecting the floor to be where we left it; grope our way to the bathroom, expecting it to be where we left it, flush the toilet and expect it to flush like it always does. Even the most ardent theists absolutely believe in physical reality, but most of them, at some time or other, waver in their "sure and certain hope [?] of the resurrection"

If you take the Bible literally you've missed its message — Gregory

And if you have to 'interpret', read the commentaries, obfuscate and waffle over it, you've missed it's fatal flaw. Either the scripture is sacred and true or it's just literature.

Loving god is faith/spirituality — Gregory

Loving a god is faith, yes, but spirituality is much more than fidelity to a single supernatural entity or idea, and it doesn't necessarily require "faith" - i.e. believing without evidence. Something as simple as awe when beholding the northern lights or being transported by a Schubert chorale can be a spiritual experience - all the way up to a complex relationship with the web of life.

My lack of evidence justified my absence of belief. But as has been said lack of evidence isn't evidence of absence. — Andrew4Handel

But we never get a chance never to have heard of the gods. They're in our faces all the time. Sure, there might be something somewhere that could conceivably called a god by somebody -- but that doesn't affect me and my believing or not believing in the possibility of its existence would have zero effect on anything. So, I don't believe in such a god in the same way I don't believe all the stuff I know nothing about - nor do i disbelieve them: they're simply absent from consciousness.

However, the stories and strictures and influence and threats from all those versions of deity that people tell about are very much present in my consciousness. That's what I actively disbelieve.

So I think the only real lack of belief is total ignorance like a babies where there is no evidence or concepts to evaluate. — Andrew4Handel

In which case 'belief' would be a superfluous word in describing the baby's mental processes. But that's not quite right, either. The baby that has cried when it was hungry and been fed is already making cause-effect connections. It is learning to believe that crying will result in food, or comfort; it very quickly learns that crying summons an adult, that adults are available to supply its needs, that it can rely on specific adults for regular care.... and so on. The baby is building up a conceptual data-base, and a system of beliefs.
If this baby is a bird, no cognitive dissonance need ever arise: the world is as he experiences it. For a human baby, problems start with the acquisition of language, when those same trusted adults start telling it truths and lies indiscriminately.

Science wins because the magic works. Making wine from grape juice works; making wine from water does not. — unenlightened

All those benighted Jews, etc. had been making wine for centuries before Jesus. Science has been part of the human psyche as long as spiritualism - they're part of the same imaginative, curious, exploring and extrapolating mind. They were never in competition - no winning and losing - until they were politicized for the very purpose of pitting people one against another.

Especially when so many of them take certain quotes from people like Aquinas as one of their main purposes in life: — universeness

I hoped you would at least use discernment: attack only those who are have done harm to you or someone who didn't deserve to to be harmed. I hoped you would give individuals the benefit of a doubt; judge them by their words and actions, not a label you've stuck on them.

The speed of advances in science has been incredible and very impressive indeed imo. — universeness

Sure. We can now ensure the death of everything on Earth in fifteen minutes flat. Of course, many creatures would take considerably longer to actually die.

We were always under threat of extinction. 99.9% of all creatures that have ever lived on Earth are extinct, the vast majority of those extinctions have nothing to do with the human race. — universeness

None of those extinctions included the human race. This one does. And I thought the benefits of science should include preventing extinction, not insuring it.

It can show us real pictures like pale blue dot and by doing so, demonstrate to us that we are indeed one little planet and one species that needs to globally unite. — universeness

Those pictures have been seen since since 1959. How many voluntary international unions have taken place since than, and how many divisions?

Science and secular humanism is trying to achieve the protections we all want and I have more confidence that they will succeed, compared to the solution of pointing a Christian cross and a bible at our problems alongside praying for a nonexistent god to intervene. — universeness

We'll send out lots of space probes with friendly messages and maybe the advanced aliens will come and save us from ourselves.
They both sound like the same kind of wishful thinking in the teeth of all evidence.

People tend to make glib blanket judgements about things they don't understand. And then consider themselves superior to people who admit they don't understand everything. People are funny.

So far, Hanover, your examples suck. — 180 Proof

"Religion" as an entity discrete enough to stand trial, should really include all religions... not just the current big organized ones you happen to know about and consider popular enough to count as major.

Someone made an apt comment about that:

Shadowbox with strawmen to your heart's content. — 180 Proof

Reasoned fears are far more adaptive than the unreasoned fears from the childhood of our species. — 180 Proof

What makes you think our species had a 'childhood'? People without cellphones can be adult and people with rocketships can be immature. Who says people who lived out in the woods, went barefoot and had to catch their own dinner instead of ordering out were less able to reason than people who have access to all the world's history and yet select leaders like Putin and Trump?

agree, but I can still challenge them on the 'delusion' part, yes? — universeness

Challenge, sure. But preferably in the same courteous tones you would expect from them. People don't much care for being called liars, sight unknown, life unseen.

Science WILL offer all sorts of transhumanism in the future and I think science makes many of us fear a lot less. — universeness

When? Scientific enterprise has been chugging along for 500 years, and yet people are still acting paranoid. Not because they're scared of Nature (primitive people's were not) and fear of death suffering doesn't seem to be any less on this side of the church wall. People are mostly scared of other people, with good reasons and bad ones. Science hasn't made the tiniest dent in that. It has helped us make a lot more people to be afraid of... but then, it's also helped us create the conditions for our own extinction.

To boldly go.... does exemplify a human wish to conquer primal fear. — universeness

You haven't met any cats or raccoons? Anyway, Sagan is right: the drive to explore and conquer have been with us much longer than Organized Science or Organized Religion or Civilization. none of those things alleviate fear. The only thing that does is a sense of personal security: when you know where your next meal is coming from, where you will sleep and who'll be there with you and you don't hear any gunfire or howling wind. We're not scared all the time (except maybe white supremacists), and we need to be scared sometimes.

Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. — universeness

No, Bert, it bloody well can't! Fear, like every other emotion, is with us to stay - unless you mean science can help us all to become cyborgs. Science can also give, and has given, a lot of brand new reasons for fear.

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. — universeness

And if someone wants both, they can have both.

He taught that humans are subject to three innate fears: the fear of death, the fear of the destructive forces of nature, and fear associated with suffering and the physical demands of life. — universeness

Sound like perfectly natural and justified fears. And so these very intelligent men look around at the practice of religion in their own society and leap to the facile conclusion that this fear was the universal and only motive for religion.
Of course, those fears are justified and useful; there are also unjustified, irrational fears created by human imagination, and unbelievers can have them [phobias, anxieties, neuroses] more easily than true believers, who have a built-in psychological gyroscope.
You can quote a lot of famous people who share your same opinion, and you all will even be right when assuming that it's true - of some people, but you'll be wrong about others. It's an opinion based in your own beliefs, that satisfies your own need for certainty, but no generalization applies to everyone else. However respected a man may be in some specialized field, he cannot know the experience, perception, motivations and inspirations of a stranger.
Especially if he starts at the wrong end.

Science has found truth about the physical universe. There is no Christian chemistry, Islamic chemistry, and Buddhist chemistry. There is just chemistry — Art48

There is no such entity as "science". There is a methodology outlined by humans to guide other humans in the pursuit of a certain kind of knowledge. The human practicing these methods have subdivided their subject matter into separate disciplines, just as the practitioners of religious pursuits have staked out their own territories.

There is no Chemical beatitude, no Biological heaven and no Physical salvation. So what? It doesn't hinder scientists in their endeavours.

Religion has failed to find truth about the spiritual universe. — Art48

True. It hasn't found a truth; it has found billions of truths.

It fails to converge on a coherent picture of the spiritual universe. — Art48

Why would "it" even want to? Religion is not a single entity. It is legion. Why would you expect religions all to have the same world-view when political ideologies don't? The organized religious bodies are rivals, competing for hungry souls, each offering some version of what one man, or a committee, thinks the other people need.
Why confuse dogma with belief? Dogma, doctrine, scripture, canon - these are man-made documents, like a constitution or a philosophical treatise or a company's mission statement (mission... how pretentious is that?) These are administrative, legislative documents, not spiritual ones. People subscribe to them, partly because they find it ready-made when they enter the world; indeed, most enter the world through a religious rite of one particular brand and are expected to follow it. Besides, it's easier than inventing their own.
Belief is internal. Whether believers admit it, realize it, think about it or even care or not, each believer forms his or her own faith. When learning the rituals and tenets of an established religion, each individual congregant customizes the religion; adapts the picture of the supernatural they're given to fit their own imagination, their own emotional needs, their own knowledge of and attitude to the world. A spiritual universe may be shared by many people who believe roughly the same metaphysics, but each internal picture is different. Religious belief, like conscience or taste or sexual attraction, is subjective.

Second guess: You’re still stuck in in the Marxist-structuralist tradition of scientific realism. Better?
Give me a hint. — Joshs

Hint: When formulating an opinion on any subject, I do not start by consulting philosophers. I have never subscribed to a school of thought... though Epicureanism came close. I have done some reading in history, anthropology and mythology. I don't give a flying fig about theoretical traditions; I judge by what I see actual people actually doing.

Religious vows are much more powerful than you suggest imo. — universeness

I never said psychological effects are less powerful than legal ones. Quite the opposite: they're the most powerful forces in humans - sometimes to the point of overpowering biological ones. For those who mean them sincerely, affirmations of faith are very powerful. But most people don't take any religious vows; they just go to church when they feel like it and identify as whatever religion they were born into. Children of 6 or 7 go through the motions they're taught and feel very solemn when doing it, but the next week, they're shooting spitball during mass, as usual. They're too young to be trusted with a house-key, never mind responsible for a life-long commitment. It doesn't prevent them breaking the rules, any more than marriage vows prevent infidelity or trade treaties prevent industrial espionage.

The Eastern civilization (as we call it today) was too strong to conquer. — Alkis Piskas

Well, for one thing, they're older that the European,

The Indus Valley Civilization dates to c. 7000 BCE and grew steadily throughout the lower Gangetic Valley region southwards and northwards to Malwa. .

the Chinese 'Cradle of Civilization' is the Yellow River Valley which gave rise to villages sometime around 5000 BCE.

and for another, they are large, populous lands.
But they've been conquered and to some degree converted more than once. That Islam fared better in India than Christianity, well, that might just be down to a more complete conquest by the Umayyad caliphate than the British Empire. Of course, they also came along earlier, so maybe all the people inclined to monotheism were already committed.

I personally don't use my religion to answer questions about how the world physically works. I've candidly not ever turned to my religious leaders to figure out how to start repair my car, build a house, to cure me of an illness, or of any other scientific inquiry. — Hanover

My best experience of religion was the late 1960's, the reasonable, ecumenical moment of the 20thy century, when it was quite common for church-going people to visit the churches of other denominations, and the non-affiliated like myself to learn about my friends' churches, for people who didn't all hold the same view to discuss their doctrinal variances, to rationalize their own and their sect's position regarding evolution and technology and social changes, like women's liberation, racial integration, premarital sex, education, divorce and birth control, degrees of one's obligation to self, family, community, nation, humanity and God.

During that time, I met a number of Christians who did work, and took risks, for causes that I also supported. They said they were prompted to do so by their faith; I was prompted to do likewise by my convictions. What's the difference? Good people behave well; bad people behave badly, whatever they profess.

Politics squashed that atmosphere of tolerant openness: religion was seized, once again, as a vehicle for division and conquest. That was a great setback for North America. And it manifests, still, in these manufactured misunderstandings. The physical and the spiritual world are not in conflict with each other. Science and religion are not conflict with each other. Objective and the subjective perception are not in conflict with each other. But humans, humans engage in conflict with one another, and within themselves, on any and every pretext.

Yeah but are you really suggesting that there is never any price to pay if you break a 'sacred vow?' — universeness

Of course not. Every decision has a price, as does every transaction - both in the physical realm and in the metaphysical or imaginary.

There is power behind such labels as 'sacred vow.' Would you not agree? — universeness

Yes. A psychological one, primarily. That's why people who have once had faith, were in love or felt patriotic have a harder time breaking away from their church, their marriage or their country than people who were only pretending when they took those vows.
Secondarily, there is a social burden: the vows are to a community of other people, too: the congregation, the family, fellow citizens, and when you break your vows, you're letting them all down. Their reactions can vary from mild reproach all the way to drawing and quartering.

I don't see why you use the word 'subjective' in the quote above Vera. I would suggest the covenant mode by Christians is presented more like a sacred vow than a subjective agreement open to revision. — universeness

Sacred vows, like the ones at a wedding or citizenship ceremony, are very subjective indeed. And of course they're open to revision, and breakage and cheating and dissolution.
As physical laws are not.

My main point is that science converges to what seems to be objective truth, — Art48

That's its function: to investigate the external, physical world; to ferret out how it works and figure out how it can be made to work for us.

religion fails to converge to any coherent picture of the universe. — Art48

It doesn't fail. It doesn't want to converge on a coherent picture picture of the physical universe. Various religions want to impose their own fantasy on people's internal, metaphorical picture of the universe. A lot more people accept the picture their native religion paints than reject it.

And most people who have an internal, subjective idea of the spirit world don't stop doing or using physical things according to the same physical laws as all the other animals that have no spirit world in their heads. They keep using tools and walking on solid surfaces; a lot of them even do sciency stuff all week and go to church on their holy days with no sense of conflict. It's not a contest, until an organized groups decides to take political power. But that is not about religion, science or reality: it's about power.
Mixing those things together makes for confusion.

It’s like the past 60 years of philosophizing about science doesn’t exist for you. — Joshs

Corrrrrect!

You’re still stuck in the Kantian-Popperian tradition of science as objective falsification., knowledge opposing itself to power and facts opposing values. — Joshs

Not even close.

This is claimed to be the spoken word of god to Moses, is it not?
It what way are such claims not presented as objective realities? — universeness

The word that doesn't fit is "objective". "I Am That I Am" is an entirely subjective claim. No proof is offered; no doubt is entertained. In the cited case, where Jehovah is talking to Moses, he just won the Jews in a contest with the Egyptian gods; adopted this small, insignificant nation for his own. Much bigger nations, empires, even, have their own gods. That's the point of the first four commandments, and about two third of Leviticus. It's a covenant, a relationship - personal and subjective.

Meanwhile, houses need to be built with wattle and stone; fields need tilling and livestock needs water, gold and silver have value, kings have power, babies are born, soldiers get killed - that's objective reality and Jehovah doesn't find it, doesn't explain it, he just messes with it once in a while to show off.

The ten commandments are presented by Christians as applicable to all humans in all circumstances. — universeness

And Christians know it's BS, since they disobey most of them most of the time, without showing the least fear of being struck down. But what has the bullying of Big Dogma got to do with reality?

I think religious doctrines do make objective reality claims and they have failed in the attempts. — universeness

They make lots of claims, yes. Very successfully. But making claims about reality is not the purpose of the religious impulse. The claims are a stratagem of power structures - all power structures, whether they are labelled as a religion, a political party or a corporation.
Objective reality isn't lost; none of them are looking for it; on the contrary, they're hiding it under layers and layers of "claim".
(That's why faith healers are not like medical healers. Surgery works whether the patient believes in it or not: it's objective. Faith healing works only if the patient believes; if it doesn't work, it's because he didn't believe hard enough: subjective.)

It has failed to find objective reality, as the OP makes clear. — Art48

You can't fail at something unless you try to do it. No spiritual system ever tried to "find" objective reality. Objective reality never went missing in the first place; it was slapping people in the face and biting them on the ass every day; they didn't need to go searching for it. They were looking for an escape from it, a loophole in it, a consolation for its depredations, a promise that it would let up.

In any case, religion has not failed. It has always been and still is very successful. More than 80% of the sample of populations old enough to be polled identify as subscribing to a registered religion. Only 15% claim to be unaffiliated. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/04/05/the-changing-global-religious-landscape/ Other than biological structure, needs and urges, can you think of anything that many people have in common?
And it's successful for the same reason potato chips and cell phones are phones are successful: it offers something people want.

Still, I challenge you, Vera, to name at least one major world religion that completely lacks idols, superstition, conformity and/or scapegoating (i.e. the stigmata of magical thinking). — 180 Proof

Where did I say any of them lack something? What you cited is only a small part of all religion. Of-bloody-course all "major world religions" have idols and dogma. (Scapegoating is a readily misunderstood concept better left for another venue.) But then, the overlap of major world religions with spirituality is a mere sliver of moon, and the overlap of major world religions with social structure, nationalism, politics, economics and culture are huge, so the idols are lined up on a shelf against a wall in one room of a great big maze-like building. Or on three interlocking tiles of a 1000-piece puzzle.

religion which is concerned with idols and superstitions, conformity and scapegoating, — 180 Proof

That's waaay simplistic. It's accurate the way one piece of a jigsaw puzzle is accurate.

On a Christian forum I frequent, the question was raised as to why Christianity has failed to spread across India and further Eastward. Here is my answer. — Art48

Have you considered the other factors?
1. Those peoples had religions of their own which satisfy their cultural and spiritual needs.
2. Christianity was brought to them by brutal colonizing empires. 3. Christianity is based on a view of the world and of humanity which is bleak and mean compared to Eastern religions.

Science is omnivorous and voracious - it consumes and subsumes all knowledge, where and by whomever it's discovered. Religion is insular and exclusive. They have different parts to play in human life.

It is very clear that a true form of democracy hasn't existed in any government. — TheMadMan

That depends on how far back in history you look. If you stick to civilizations with a written record of governance and law, then the statement is true. If you went back through human organizations that left only oral tradition, their forms of government are not at all clear.

I call bullshit. — Joshs

It will probably come.

Would you like to hear from some more “bad-faith” atheist debaters with similar comments on Dawkins and Dennett? I can give you plenty. — Joshs

No thanks. I have no time for bad fate debaters of any stripe.

I am not a theist but you clearly have your prejudices towards them and seem to assume I was one with no evidence. — Andrew4Handel

Some evidence; circumstantial; I can't absolutely prove my case. So I will respectfully bow out and let you and whoever wants to, speculate as to what all atheists think and why.

As an agnostic I have debated heavily with atheists over the years and I know what common trends and beliefs are amongst them. — Andrew4Handel

Well, if you already know what I'm thinking, why should i make an effort to tell you?

I think you can defend gods and the esoteric as explaining these types of things that a purely materialist atoms banging together doesn't explain, like meaning in language, concepts, desires and so on. — Andrew4Handel

Why do gods need defending? If they can't take care of themselves, even to the extent of being safe from non-believers, how will the gods take care of their faithful?

explaining these types of things that a purely materialist atoms banging together doesn't explain,

This does not exhibit a deep understanding of science.

like meaning in language, concepts, desires and so on

What makes you think those are other-worldly, or non-physical phenomena?

Atheists appear to be trying to make us just another senseless causal determined mechanism of brute nature in my opinion. — Andrew4Handel

That's the Big Misconception. The fact that theists try to make everyone else behave and think as they do does not indicate that everyone else thinks and behaves as they do. We are not trying to make you into anything. We just don't buy your version of reality or want to follow your rules.

Atheists beware. Bad-faith debater on the loose! Take cover!

Any time you hear someone defend atheism on the basis an argument to the effect that there is no empirical evidence in support of God, or that religious believers can’t put their ideas to a scientific test, youre in the vicinity of a scientistic thinking, and a doctrinaire atheism which asserts with authority the‘truth’ of their position. — Joshs

All the sirens went off at once; red flags waving like mad.

So what does theism explain that nontheism can't (or, put another way, what does theism explain that doesn't have some microcosm question rendering it toothless in terms of explanatory power)? — Astro Cat

It doesn't matter: explanation is not the purpose of religion.
In the beginning of human wonderment, there were creation stories to account for how a particular people came to be where they are and who they are. Those stories are not meant to be factual explanations: they're stories. They're self-descriptive; they express the and world-view of a cohesive group, and illustrate the basis of their moral understanding. They are elaborated into the healing stories of shamans and moral tales for the instruction of children, and dances and dramatic ceremonial performances, anecdotes and entertainments; stories whereby an itinerant adventurer might earn his supper and stories to exchange with other tribes at trade and marriage markets.
These stories were later magnified and elaborated into the civilized pantheons - the formalized gods of city-states, that had stratified class systems, top-down administrative structures and rigid legal codes. This kind of religion had as its primary function the preservation of the status quo.
As civilization grew bigger, so did their organized religion become powerful, more implausible, more remote from daily experience, offering sticks of guilt and hell and carrots of miracle and heaven to promote whatever behaviour the elite wanted from the polity.

Am I making my point clear? — Athena

Not in the least. In fact, you seem to have thrown a lot of ideas into a big pot, but, like America, they refused to melt into an alloy.

Your blindness to cultural differences is as disrespectful of all people as the missionaries and is as dangerous as driving blind. — Athena

Really? I'm sorry you think that. Frankly, a bit surprised, as well; I thought better of you.

Did you learn that in school? — Athena

No, I learned it in my immigrant family.