Have we had a thread about the Richard Dawkins atheist summer camps for kids yet?

[policywonk]

here

Though #1: Dawkins is a loon.

Thought #2 (following very closely on the heels of Thought #1): DS1 (6) - who is alone (in his class of 30) in having been taught about the Big Bang rather than the creation story - might well get a lot out of something like this. At the moment, he's beginning to suspect that his father and I are cult leaders.

UQD, sorry, Davies is such a brilliant cribber of religious and metaphysical themes, it's too juicy to let alone.

The fact that you'd get different answers from different Christians is the point I was making, really.

For me, everything boils down to the fact that I can't see the world in anything other than metaphysical terms. Materialists (in the atheistis sense) see things on such a limited viewing.

I can't get past CS Lewis's 'that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of.

If you start with the view that everything can boiled down to it's mineral worth, then you have already truncated the options of what the answer will be, iyswim.

You can reduce me to the atoms I'm made of, but that won't tell you who 'Kay' is.

daftpunk, the reason you find me patronizing is because I'm patronizing you.

really KH....ohhhhhhhh well ain't i just too clever....do i go to heaven for spotting the bleedin obvious?

Oh, dp, you are silly. But I do like you despite the silliness. You combine a thick skin with an easily offended prurience like no one else I've ever met.

Yes it's true DP. You are like a Hello Kitty Ratzinger.

"Hello Kitty Ratzinger"

I love the image.

Let's not equate atheism with materialism, or say that atheists boil down everything to their mineral content. That's just not the case.

The reason I call myself an atheist is that, after a long hard look at everything I think I know about the world, from my experience of it (which includes far too much experience of Christianity in various forms), and from everything I've studied (science, philosophy, religious texts, linguistics), I think it's highly unlikely there is a god in the sense that any of the main religions use that term. That doesn't necessarily mean I only value material proof. It means that, taking all possible sources of knowledge into account, an atheist world view is the one which best fits my experience and knowledge.

Fennell: That is a very rational atheism.

it's based on experience too. many years of experience within the christian system.

KayH - I think you maybe have to allow for the importance of the power of the imagination? Atheists are often accused (not necessarily by you) of being lacking in imagination, as if there were somehow a link between this and belief. That's where my more, shall we say, poetic sense of "what a star is" would come from. I agree that to say "it's just a ball of gas" is boring and reductive. If I describe it as a "twinkling diamond in the velvety firmament", even if I am guilty of bad poetry, I am at least "thinking outside the box" (ugh). But it would be a big, big leap from there to say it was somehow part of a giant creation engineered by god.

(I realise you weren't just talking about stars. I just picked that example and ran with it.)

My mind comes up with all sorts of ridiculous free associations all the time, but I somehow know that they are not objectively "true".

Yes, I wasn't being disparaging.

"A god in the sense that any of the main religions use that term" is a useful working phrase.

That's why I try to say, when being painted into the old "what do you mean by X" corner, "tell me what you mean by it, and I'll tell you if I believe that."

Well, fennel, I appreciate that many atheists aren't happy with the materialist thing (largely because it gets so misinterpreted).

But it seems to me that if we're all happy with the open-ended possibilities, then we're pretty much left with 'This does/doesn't make sense to me' which is about as wooly as it gets, really (although I'm quite happy with it, myself)

But it would be a big, big leap from there to say it was somehow part of a giant creation engineered by god.

well, not really. Some people think that it is a big, big leap to say that it isn't. The example often given is of a poker game, where the person you are playing against is continually presenting you with their hand of aces. After a while you might start to think 'WTF?' And when this happens a thousand times you might start to wonder 'well this is a bit weird' rather than accepting that it's all just chance and has to happen like that at some point...

well the argument goes something like that

n.b. I don't play poker

closest I could find to kello kitty ratzinger

Completely agree with Fennel that it is good to distinguish atheism from materialism. Because atheism is only the denial of one sort of non-material entity (God); and because the denial need not at all be based on a claim that the only kind of grounding for a belief is a material one.

Atheism is sometimes so grounded; and it might sometimes co-exist with a denial of other non-material entities. But not always.

But what is imagination? It might be worth defining what we mean by that, and what importance we invest in it.

fwiw, even from atheist viewpoint, I think imagination is one of the most defining features of humanity.

lol KH...trust me....i look nothing like that

morningpaper - I'm not sure I get the poker game analogy. Your opponent represents god? And it keeps dealing aces? I don't see it. In my experience if you play poker with the universe it slips cards up its sleeve, smuggles some under the table, keeps changing the rules and swaps to Snap halfway through, then you suddenly find you're playing Canasta and you have to go and look the rules up for several days.

"It's all just chance" is a hugely reductive phrase and a vastly intellectually dishonest representation of evolutionary theory. But you are intelligent, and must know this. Therefore you have done it deliberately rather than out of ignorance.

Kay: check this out!

dp.

Anyway everyone, I'm actually literally mad, and my medication is making me a bit drowsy now, so I shall have to call it a day. Thank you for the mental exercise, it's been refreshing.

kay: or this

Atheism isn't exactly a "denial" of the existence of any God or supernatural being.

As I use it, it's the belief that, to the best of our current knowledge, there's no convincing evidence for a God, and quite a bit of evidence against the existence of an (onniscient omnipotent) God.

It's taking the best-fit theory for the available evidence. (including experiential evidence)

UQD: I feel that your sadness at the possibility that I'm being intellectually dishonest is rather over played.

The Accidental Universe puts it better, I suspect in a "thesis of a cosmic biological selection effect". I think it is, essentially perhaps, just an argument from awe. Just one of many explanations of a suspicion of theism (I use that term rather than 'an argument for the existence of God'). It isn't definitive, of course, it is just that where you say: "it would be a big, big leap from there to say it was somehow part of a giant creation engineered by god" - others would very much disagree.

Denial to a legal civil standard of proof - on a balance of probabilities?