The game was Wednesday's European Cup Final when AC Milan beat Liverpool 2-1. On the left is Kaka , the Brazilian now rated as the best player in the world. On the right is Steve Gerrard, the Liverpool captain, a great player and leader.
Kaka is an evangelical Christian. His lifestyle and virtues are impressive. I shudder at such people, but that may be the devil in me. I shudder more still at the religion of Atheism, so I'm glad that Kaka sticks it up 'em in this photo.
5 comments:
Atheism is not a religion, merely an absence of irrational belief.
Atheism is not a religion, merely an absence of irrational belief. I suspect it's only a matter of time before you come out as an evangelical christian....
Christopher Hitchens is the one true prophet:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/article1860734.ece
Persistent little gerbil, ain't ya?
Atheism is the belief that there is no god. That is irrational since there is neither proof nor evidence. Of course if you re-define atheist (against etymology) to mean agnostic then you have what you describe, but then what do you call someone who believes there is no god and how do you explain the redundancy? Like Hitchens,Dawkins and their gullible and self-congratulatory secular flock, you make life easy for yourself by setting up straw-men like evangelicals or making woolly and a-historical claims that religion is a prime cause of war and oppression ignoring the atheists Mao,Stalin and Hitler and conflating the singular modern oppressive religion, Islam, with the markedly peaceful other modern religions - Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, animism.
Persistent, because it is important to counter this sort of published religious propaganda with reason, so here goes:
Disbelief in something for which there is no evidence, and belief in something for which there is no evidence are not logically equivalent; it is simply fallacious to suggest otherwise.
Just because some great evils have been perpetrated for non-religious ends (Hitler, Mao etc), does not mean that religion is not the cause of other great evils – it is.
The evangelical Christians and Muslim fundamentalists are not straw men – they are representative of huge numbers of deluded and highly vocal people who seek to impose their views on others.
I’m not conflating Islam with other religions – there are plenty of supposedly moderate Christians and Jews who seek to impose on others their revolting rules on:
- the place of women (see Christian schism over women priests sullying places of worship)
- homosexuality and premarital sex (god doesn’t like these, apparently. But what (s)he DOES like is:
- the mistreatment of animals (halal and kosher slaughter – slitting the animals throat without stunning it first, then letting it bleed to death)
Even if whatever version of the comprehensively refuted design argument DID point towards the existence of god, it does not show that (s)he is any of the following:
1. benevolent
2. omniscient
3. omnipotent
4. requiring that he be worshipped and feared by people or they will end up in hell
5. remotely interested in my sex life
But the main argument against religion, benign or not: IT IS NOT TRUE!
On a ligher note, see a hairy-footed pygmy gerbil at:
http://concise.britannica.com/ebc/art-87566
"Disbelief in something for which there is no evidence, and belief in something for which there is no evidence are not logically equivalent; it is simply fallacious to suggest otherwise."
You misstate the case. You believe that there is no God. In the absence of an atheistic Grand Unifying Theory that is pure hypothesis. To believe it, is fine, but unscientific.
"The evangelical Christians and Muslim fundamentalists are not straw men – they are representative of huge numbers of deluded and highly vocal people who seek to impose their views on others."
To equate evangelical Christians and Islamists is weak. One wants you to convert, the other kills you if you don't submit. In any case their behaviour says nothing about the truth of atheism or theism. It simply serves your purpose to summon up types whom you and many others dislike instead as a substitute for reason.
"But the main argument against religion, benign or not: IT IS NOT TRUE!"
Mere assertion. Some finer minds than than Dawkins or Hitchens, C. believed in God (eg Eliot,Auden,Einstein,Newton,Bach...
There is a mystery about the basis for science. An hypothesis is that some intelligence is responsible for time,matter,energy. We don't know. It is no counter to say "well who created that intelligence, since the hypothesis can include time without an arrow). You can also hypothesize that all this happened without an intelligence. Both hypotheses are interesting, but there is little or no scientic evidence for either. They are equivalently uncertain. That is the scientific position. It does not support atheism.
Now there are other factors such as the human sense of wonder,revelation,morality, beauty and they are powerful and tend to be associated with forms of theism. Few geniuses profess atheism. Few of those who've suffered profess atheism. These factors do not prove the science of theism, but they are relevant as circumstantial evidence and grounds for enquiry.
I am simply not interested in arguments about the inhumsne or socially illiberal nature of God or not-God. You might like the atheist's movie "Gospel According to Saint Matthew" for a profound depiction of Christ.
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