Subj : Re: "Hams to the Rescue After Katrina" MSNBC News Article
To   : alt.ham-radio.vhf-uhf,rec.radio.amateur.antenna,rec.radio.amateur.dx,rec.radio.amateur.equipment,rec.radio.amateur.policy
From : Zoran Brlecic
Date : Mon Sep 26 2005 01:53:36

From Newsgroup: alt.ham-radio.vhf-uhf

Matt Osborn wrote:

>>>Belief requires faith in something unknown. I see no difference if one
>>
>>were to name that unknown G-d or call it by some other name.
>>
>>>Regardless of the name, we attribute 'correctness' to something we do
>>>not know.
>>
>>What has this got to do with atheism? I still don't see any faith or 
>>belief in *not* believing that a magic supernatural dude created 
>>everything. Not believing supernatural and paranormal concepts is a 
>>default state. If you want to convince me or anyone else about your 
>>extraordinary claim, you have to provide extraordinary evidence. Simply 
>>saying "it is so because I say it is so" does not cut it.
> 
> 
> May I suggest you read the 'Golden Bough' by Frazer, for starters. The
> belief in the unknown is universal, it is a fundamental part of the
> human psyche.
> 
> When you say " I still don't see any faith or belief in *not*
> believing that a magic supernatural dude created everything", you are
> merely saying that what you believe is better than what the other guy
> believes.

Not at all, I keep saying, and you refuse to hear it, that I d-o  n-o-t 
   b-e-l-i-e-v-e  i-n  y-o-u-r  g-o-d-s. Any of them.

Once again, absence of belief is not a belief. Let me illustrate: 
suppose that someone accuses you of being a witch. He has no evidence, 
other than he believes he saw you kill someone's cow with a spell. Now, 
you obviously don't "believe that you're not" a witch, do you? It would 
seem that his claim needs evidence/proof and you have nothing to believe 
in and nothing to prove.
So now you're saying that his belief and your "belief" are somehow similar?

> What you seem to be doing is standing on soap box and claiming that
> Atheism is correct and religion is not.  That Atheism has basis in
> fact where other religions are based on superstitions.
> Atheism is exactly the same in all fundamental respects as any other
> religion.  Atheism, in other words doesn't exist, it cannot exist in
> any real sense.  Rather than I proving that an elephant can't fly, why
> don't you prove that it can?

Why don't you prove that your gods, devils and angels exist first, 
before engaging in the standard theist shifting of the burden of proof. 
If you have nothing to show for your gods other than the usual begging 
the question and other logical fallacies, then I don't have to entertain 
your hypothesis with any more seriousness than the hypothesis that the 
Universe was farted out of the Super-Nuclear Donkey's butt yesterday 
afternoon.

Either way, Matt, you keep spinning the old tired religious nonsense 
about atheism being just another theism, because that's pretty much the 
only thing they can say on the matter, other than engaging in the ad 
hominem about atheists' immorality, that is.

However, none of this would matter one bit and I would care about 
Christianity as much as I care about some Amazon tribe's river gods, if 
it weren't for the fact that the religious right affects my life in the 
profoundly negative way, and the list is getting longer by the day: 
health research, contraceptives, euthanasia, abortion, education, 
politics, freedom of expression, "morality" laws, taxes, phony illegal 
wars, etc.

Americans have almost absolute freedom to practice their religion in 
their homes and in their churches as they please, but that is never 
enough for the Christian Taliban, is it? They won't be happy until this 
country becomes a Christian Saudi Arabia.

73 ... WA7AA

.