Let me tell you a story.A fallen depressed man is asking 3 people for help.The priest said pray to God and your suffering shall be healed,after that the priest walk away.The Atheist said dont blame god,he doesnt exist,blame yourself and others,so stand up and get tough,after that he also go away to another direction.
But the Third man,the Reasonable Guy, said stand up and fight—>while HELPING the depressed man all the way to the hospital.
The lesson here:Religion and Atheism are a BELIEVE SYSTEM—>Religion BELIEVE IN GOD\GODS and Atheis BELIVE THAT THERE IS NOTHING BUT REASON—->As long you hold to one of them you are bound by its limits and rules.So stop hating and bicthing at each another.You Guys ARE THE SAME PART OF A COIN.

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AngryDemon “You Guys ARE THE SAME PART OF A COIN.”

Sure - just the other day I saw an atheist with explosives strapped to his belt with a copy of Origin of the Species ready to blow himself up for his reason.

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AngryDemon,

    We are a reflection of your metaphor of the coin in the same way that the republicans and democrats are the same ‘part of a coin’. Or conservatives and labor. Loyalists and Unionists. Astrologers and non-astrologers. I am a geologist so am pretty well schooled in the evidence for plate tectonics etc, am i the same part of the creationist coin as well?

    Besides, i dont think you mean same ‘part of a coin’, this is not how the metaphor goes, or indeed, works. Yo surely mean we are different sides of the same coin. As my geology/creation example shows though, this analogy only works in a very superficial way.

  Opposition to belief in reason is a funny thing. The religions are the grand rationalisers, their answers lending rationality to ever action of nature and every narrative of meaning they should lay their greasy fingers upon. Each monumental event they claim is explained away with suspension of the laws of physics etc. The construct of deity narrative is such that their behavior and beliefs become ‘rational’ within that construct.

  I assume you expect rationality with your food or energy supply. Your medicine or transport. The philosophical project you are, perhaps unwittingly, engaging in of downplaying rationality as a source of critisism in subjects of ‘meaning’ is just that - a philosophical project. There is ample evidence that theologians have picked it simply because of its utility. There is after all little else left to them.

  However, choosing to use it because there is little else left instead of it actually having any power other than to weakly undermine, almost beg, for its own correctness, is not the same as having a functional argument. The best way to see this is to notice how the argument is used in fashionable new-age philosophy, some theological circles, etc and rarely by philosophers.

  Not everything is rational. Human behavior can be purposely irrational. Some emotions can be ‘described’ as irrational, though we should be cautious of how people play with these as they can be read in many ways. Quantum mechanics perhaps provides insight into how we define rational in the first place.

  The best way to see terms like rationality or materialism is as concepts embodying reality, not as fixed philosophical terms denying future realisation. Deities are philosophical (then shifted into their own philosophical branch of theology) propositions used to describe nature and add a concept layered on top (and triggering) the human emotion and concept of meaning. This is why they are so fragile to the concepts of rationality and input from their sister subject of philosophy. Science can counter the claims of nature (a project rationality has proven very powerful in), and philosophy counters the philosophical claims of theology.

  It is in this truth that your analogy shows its tails.

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@AngryDemon

You invent a story involving a priest and an atheist, put words their mouths, and that’s proof of something? Let’s see how this works. Let me tell you a story: A commenter with user-name AngryDemon said a bunch of douche nonsense. He then went away and masturbated furiously to pictures of farm cows. The end. The lesson of this story is that you are a douchebag with a fiery passion for bovine porn. If I’m following your logic, then making it up in a story makes it true.

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Atheism is a religion in the same way that “off” is a TV channel.

Btw, am I the only one who finds it funny that the ‘good guy’ in the story is called Reasonable, while at the same time atheists are accused of ‘believing’ in Reason?

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@Ysaye

Yea I noticed that little oddity as well. If atheists believe in Reason, and helping the man in trouble was the most ‘reasonable’ thing to do, then that is what the atheist would do, even within the logic of AngryDemon’s own little stupid story.

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