Funny to me that Dawkins thinks he's charming, and the lack of the trait is due to negative media. Heh.
As someone who is Atheist/doubtfully-Agnostic (understanding that something like this can never, ever be proven one way or another, damn religious "logic"), I've really hated Dawkins and the late-Hitchens monologues about religious belief.
While I wholly agree with them, I could never reconcile that someone who had the world-stage could be so obtuse and offensive about spreading their beliefs. I could never claim they spoke for my beliefs, because they treated those who held that which they found false with such disrespect and disregard to the point of actually lowering themselves below those which they attacked.
You will never change the minds of those you disagree with by calling them ignorant or stupid, and for years that is exactly what they have done, in all all their own personal ignorance and blindness in the face of their celebrity. It was disgusting.
In this interview it seems like Dawkins has now found a "rival" who has tempered his idiocy to some extent (though the quote I started this post with would be argument to the contrary), but hopefully they will learn.
I abhor fundamental religious belief, but Dawkins and Hitchens were two atheists who, by their attitudes and egos alone, proved a need for a supposed moral belief system for all of mankind.

Wish those guys had gone to school or somethin'!

Theres quite a lot of literature out there, written by agnostic and fairly unbiased peeps, that points towards porn being bad for ya in any more than like...once a month or so.

Daily use can really fuck with your mind.

Anyone should be able to post anything VS. Just don't expect it to receive upvotes or positive commentary.

People can say whatever they like about me; and they do. I don't expect anything I say or any videos I share to get votes and I am pleasantly surprised when they do.

My opinion is, is that the Sift is geared more atheist by consensus. That is it is somewhat of a belief trend. For better or worse.

I am fully on another spectrum of thought. I could not say I am agnostic or atheist or even that I believe in a thought process in line with some sort of God. I don't even know. I know I believe in something I just do not know how to fit it into human words because it is beyond human comprehension.

Seems like you could boil it down to a couple of simple questions: was I deliberately created, and if so, by whom and for what reason?

I just do not like when people try and act like what they believe is THE TRUTH. That goes for both spectrums. None of you know. But that is my opinion. What makes us interesting is that many have differing opinions and as we know it is also nice to have similar beliefs for camaraderie sake.

Bear with me here..you're saying you don't know what the truth is, and that's perfectly legitimate. It's when you take it a step further and say that no one else knows what it is either that I have a question. The question is, how do you know that? If you don't know the truth, how do you know whether someone else knows it or not? How would you recognize it if they did, not knowing what it is yourself?

There are two ways to know truth..either you are omnipotent, or an omnipotent being reveals the truth to you. I make the second claim, and I base it on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Anyone should be able to post anything VS. Just don't expect it to receive upvotes or positive commentary.

My opinion is, is that the Sift is geared more atheist by consensus. That is it is somewhat of a belief trend. For better or worse.

I am fully on another spectrum of thought. I could not say I am agnostic or atheist or even that I believe in a thought process in line with some sort of God. I don't even know. I know I believe in something I just do not know how to fit it into human words because it is beyond human comprehension.

I just do not like when people try and act like what they believe is THE TRUTH. That goes for both spectrums. None of you know. But that is my opinion. What makes us interesting is that many have differing opinions and as we know it is also nice to have similar beliefs for camaraderie sake.

BTW, in case anyone not familiar with NZ watching this thinks this guys is some kind of left-wing liberal pinko, this guy is in the National Party, the reigning centre right party.

NZ, motherfuckers! Where the prime minister is agnostic and even the conservatives talk sense.
That's how we roll, bitches.

And when they haul you into court after your little murder spree you can always just tell them it wasn't really you but an evil doppelganger from an alternate universe. They will of course present "evidence" like clothing fibers, hair samples and fingerprints but they couldn't possibly admit those things when they are based on something as flimsy as empirical observations.

Empirical observation is very powerful, and obviously very useful, and I am not casting any doubt on that. Empirical evidence is good enough for most things, but usefulness does not justify it as a standard for truth. If you want to say we must have empirical evidence for everything except for the idea that we need empirical evidence for everything, then this is what is known as special pleading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_pleading

My biggest problem with inductive reasoning argument is that really it's just a simple fuck you response. The sun has risen on this planet again and again for the last 4 billion years or so but because inductive reasoning states that past performance is not a reliable predictor for the future. Holy shit! I'd better get my affairs in order because there's probably not going to be a tomorrow.

The problem of induction is simply pointing out the lack of rationale for why there should be a uniformity in nature (the constancy of natural law). Science has no answer for it; should the problem be ignored in order that the assumption may be justified? Doesn't sound very scientific to me.

By throwing in Inductive Reasoning, you are basically saying that nobody can ever really know anything, that religion and science are all the same, which I suspect is the true intent of the argument. I think some believe that if they can take science and reduce it to being just another "belief system" or "World View" then religion and science will be considered equally valid.

I think you're mistaking my position because I am not trying to equalize science and religion; I don't see any conflict between the two. In my worldview, everything that science does is completely justified. I can explain why there is uniformity in nature, and why empirical observation works and can be trusted. My worldview explains why we can know something to be true, and where our rationality comes from. The naturalistic/atheistic worldview can explain approximately none of these things. My argument, essentially, exposes the gaping holes of that position and the leaps of logic over those holes that must be made to justify it.

Empirical reasoning exists because we need some kind of shared standard for reality. Without that the court would have to acknowledge that your interpretation of reality (and that of your doppelganger) is as real and as valid as any scientifically produced evidence and you'd probably get away with murder.

So now, anytime you feel like you're losing an argument that involves scientific evidence you can just say "Inductive Reasoning" and you automatically win the argument.

Most of what I am called to do as a Christian is predicated in some way upon empirical observation. I am not challenging its usefulness at all; what I am really pointing out in this reply is that the problem of induction is only a problem for the atheist/agnostic and not the Christian.

What you seem to be saying here is that we must have a standard even if we can't explain it. If that is so, or even if it isn't, then I am here to tell you that we already have a standard given to us by the God who created you and me. He told us directly what this standard was when He sent His Son Jesus Christ into the world to die for our sins. The standard is Jesus Christ Himself, who said He is the way the truth and the life, and that no one comes to the Father but by Him. What He told us is that we must repent of our sins and believe on Him for forgiveness of our sins and that when we do we will be forgiven and receive eternal life.

any creator who only reveals himself to certain people and not others is a dick and not worth following or caring about. Any person who "thinks" god has been revealed to them and uses that as an assertion of authority over those who haven't had similar "revelations" are not just dicks, they deserve to be locked up.

I'm still ignoring shiny but I'm assuming he's making all the same tired arguments about god revealing himself as he always does. I'm sure he's also still quoting the bible as an authoritative source.

As Matt has continued to point out, secular morality has proven itself better than biblical morality.

God and religion are two separate things. always have, always will be. The question of the existence of a creator is largely irrelevant. If a creator exists and I'm doing things contrary to what this creator wishes me to do, tough. If this creator has a problem with it, it can come down here and tell me directly instead of using a ancient book as it's main source of communication. God is either a dick or incompetent for using such an inefficient means of communicating its wishes. Even if a creator did manifest itself physically and declared its undisputed existence, this creator would have a lot of angry people (and that includes people who DO believe in a creator) on its hands demanding some answers and rightfully so. The threat of eternal damnation just really isn't that effective of a means of ensuring compliance. Again. secular morality beats biblical morality.

Even if a creator does not exist it still doesn't change anything. Even if it was possible to scientifically prove a creator doesn't exist. It doesn't change shit. Countless people will still continue believing it. A creator may not exist, but Religion ain't going anywhere for a long time. There isn't a magic set of words that magically convince someone to not believe in an imaginary god. This ain't the TV show Stargate and there is no "Ark of Truth" and in my opinion, it would be immoral to use such a device if it existed. (great googely boogely that was such a horrible tv movie).

If we want a free society, people have to make their own conclusions. By and large, all atheists and agnostics support Freedom of Religion. They just want religion out of government. You can be religious, but government has to be secular.

science is agnostic to the existence of a creator. It doesn't care if a creator exists. If the evidence is there. then the evidence will point to it. If there is no evidence then it doesn't exist. Even if there is evidence and we just haven't found it yet, we still have to err on the side treating it as if it doesn't exist. Theists make the claim the a creator exists. You have to back that shit up. The burden is on you to prove it exists. Not only that, but you have a double burden. Not only do you have to prove a creator exists, you have prove that this creator wants you to do X, Y, and Z. None of which has been done.

And guess what, not all atheists/agnostics believe/disbelieve the same thing. just because you trot out some non-believer that says things that other non-believers don't agree with doesn't mean a thing. Yeah, atheists and agnostics like to squabble over the definitions of atheist and agnostic and the myriad of combinations of both words. So what? it doesn't remove the theist's double burden of proof, Yes, there are some atheists out there who don't just want separation of church and state, they would eliminate all forms of religion if they could. Shock, someone in a group is taking things a little far. ZOMG! THAT NEVER HAPPENS ANYWHERE!! It STILL doesn't remove the theist's double burden of proof.

Matt has argued this countless times. you make a claim? you gotta back it up. You may wish to quibble over the semantics of what an atheist is or isn't. I too don't strictly agree with his definition of atheism. But he has declared his views on the subject countless times: He used to be a Christian, but he decided that he needed to know that what he was preaching was actually rational and Christianity could not meet the burden of proof in his eyes. So he is not making the claim that god doesn't exist, because he cannot prove that. The problem is, Christians, or any other religion for that matter cannot prove any of their claims either, thus, there is no reason to believe them or consider them trustworthy.

You want to quibble over whether or not that's an atheist or an agnostic, be my fucking guest but it's just a distraction that doesn't change the end result. Matt (and myself) do not accept the claim that a creator exists, nor do we accept the claim that even if a creator exists, that this creator follows the Christian belief system (or any other belief system for that matter). And the reason that we can't accept any of these claims is because of the lack of evidence and not meeting the burden of proof

Yes I saw what people refer to as THEM. I knew of entities entering what some call the afterlife or the breakthrough reality by fission reaction in head experience. But, I thought I was going to see angels or something of that nature.

My breakthrough was terrifying because I had thought I had gotten to know the nature of this drug. And if anyone attempts to play around with it, it can seem like magic, or an alien computer program that shows you the most beautiful landscapes, sacred geometry, infinite electrical grids, the universe. It is as though something is coaxing us into this experience. And what I mean by this is that on my first breakthrough it began normal. I hit it with my EYES closed. Two seconds in there was a huge blue/white pure energy tunnel that appeared and I was excited, oh shit this is going to be huge.

The next thing that happened was instead of going forward like I usually had into the mandala, sacred geometry grid or whatever it is to begin with, it fell to the ground, like a painting in a black room. And I was instantly freaked out. WTF is going on? The place where a beautiful pure light grid existed in an infinite way had just fallen to the floor. Then blackness. My eyes were closed. That blackness began to unfold. That blackness slipped off the wall and unfolded a box that revealed the actual room around me that I was sitting in. Again, my eyes were closed. Then the box unfolded around me. And room went by by as the box trapped me in it and the floor of this dimension was removed. It seemed like a conspiracy,a GOTCHA moment and instantly I thought, why am I doing this again? TOO LATE. I was thinking what the hell is going on, like some alien had coaxed me into this and was capturing my entirety on purpose.

The floor had been removed traveling at lightspeed, like I was a quantum magnet reaching its destination somewhere in the middle of the universe, dissolving through unknown dimensions, I could never have believed this possible and kept thinking, HOLY SHIT, ITS REAL. The box came undone as everything around me was destroyed like all nuclear bombs had gone off on Earth. Then the frequencies began, like a jet engine taking off. There was no way I was going to survive this. From a low drone to the most high pitch sound I had ever heard it blasted me apart. I died. I died materially and consciously. I splattered the instant that frequency reached its unbearably powerful threshold. SPLAT. Up until this point, from my room to this point. I had been literally screaming for dear life in my head. Like I never had before, not like a rollercoaster but holy shit, I am going to die. My subconscious melted completely whilst I saw the quantum physiology of the space around me. Something there was physically turning off my consciousness. And then it went dark.

And then I woke up. And they were there. And at the time even in another life, in another dimension I was still freaking out and they told me like they do everyone, to calm down it is OK. They are the paradox. They are either the root of who you are or they are aliens that make one sound crazy. They are the ones that give you deep lessons on how to live life and yet, you see, we are here talking about them and that makes us sound absolutely batshit crazy but anyone who has seen them will say. THEY WERE FOR REAL with all of their being. And then you ask, so who are they? My main concern has been forgetting them and concentrate on what they taught me. Nothing could have ever prepared me. And actually do not wish for any atheist to do this.

But, if they must go around acting like they know something for fact that cannot be proven, that there is a God or not, well they are just about as good as someone like me taking a drug and coming back saying something is real when there is no way to prove it is real. The main diffierence being I SAW it, I FELT it, I HEARD it. And no Christian in my own personal knowledge has seen, heard, or felt something on this level, and to me certainly means atheists are flat out wrong, like I said I was agnostic. And I have been atheist for long stretches of life. But, like I am saying. It could be aliens out there trying to guide us into its vortex and steal our souls because we venture into a new frequency we normally do not. It could be just a psychedelic and all those percentages of brain activity we do not use creates an infinite experience, a huge puzzle that the brain likes playing with itself and it plays it out with you and you just have to go along for the ride, no turning back. It could be the program that we receive upon birth and death. I have no idea of what this shit is. Except, that it has been used for thousands of years in the Amazon with expert shamans and that it challenges the very seat of atheism and challenges the participant on the grandest scale. It is one whacked out puzzle. But, so is the universe and consciousness.

I want to talk about something that to my regard is pure lunacy. But, to me, though I appreciate the doubters, the ones who question everything; would change their attitudes completely. None of the atheists should go on ranting until they take the ultimate bungie jump a human can have: DMT. One thing I would note is that I do not know if it was put there by aliens, evil spirits, sacred spirits, the Earth itself, God. No, I do not know and no one knows. I do not know if there is a price to be paid by having witnessed the underpinnings of technology, soul, afterlife, the universe, consciousness, the brain or whatever the hell it is. I have no idea, I just know that this experience is as real as fuck. Mind blowing. Scary. Terrible and healing all at the same time.

I was agnostic going into this, did not believe in soul, appreciate string theory, quantum mechanics but do not believe in it at some factual level, did not believe in any sort of God, or the afterlife. In mere seconds all my notions of what I thought or did not think or could never had merely thought up, all my permeating existential beliefs were thrown off like a nuclear bomb had gone off; revealing some partial truth of what we really are, witnessing an alien computer program, based on simple equations that manifests consciousness itself. Not a new conclusion and one I thought only drug addled scifi writer or schizos would ever believe.

It were as though I had found some way to put my head into the Large Hadron Collider itself whilst every proton turned into Higgs Boson; I then found out that this is not uncommon for such an experience. I know that can sound incredibly narcissistic, incredulous, unbearable, impossible. But what I got out of it was humble and that is another story.

There are experiences out there in which a person can feel as though they had been thrown into another dimension, experienced the Big Bang and met Gods of the Ultimate Power, they may or may not be and died on levels not many ever knew possible. In mere seconds the regular doors of perception are shut and a new life is born. That is where it gets tricky.

Until any of these guys can figure out why the human mind can explode on an infinite universe level of pure digital consciousness, think it can perceive these things and witness them on all levels and in new ways and come back to a normal human life in a normal brain without having in fact died? Well, I think they ought to stop talking and do more research. We have no facts and an experience like that will make it very apparent that the walls of reality can be so easily shattered to see new alien worlds, languages, dimensions, spirits, births and rebirths beyond all human comprehension. It sounds like the ultimate atheist experience, right? Not at all, it leaves room for something of the highest power that is manifested through pretty much any religion. We have to remember... you have to go to school, you have to get a job, we get wrapped up in our world. We have to act like we know what we are talking about and I am saying there is no evidence out there to support the fact that anyone can say that there is absolutely no God. There is absolutely no afterlife. Anyone that feels that they know anything about the nature of reality and who they are or what any of it means and apply lectures to it in the event that they become so arrogant and stubborn that they say what they think is absolutely correct when it is not accounted for by science, should do this. Do it after a lot of research. I say science but it is a paradox, I believe in Science first and foremost, it is our hope for tangible evolution, repeatable fact, but I am fairly sure this is something Science will never figure out. And after reading a similar experience: http://ewwty.com/2012/02/24/dimethyltryptamine-dmt-experience it seems in this experience there are some reoccurring themes. Science has so far written this off in the easiest way it can: to call it a psychedelic or a hallucinogen. So, find out. We know absolutely nothing in a very non existential way.

In most dictionaries, two non equivalent definitions are given for atheism. The one I'm using and the one you're using. That is why I was very explicit in what I said. Precisely the same situation for my use of the word agnosticism.

Atheism does not answer the question 'Does God Exist'. Instead it addresses your belief regarding the existence of god. The only real question that can be answered by atheism is 'Do you believe (g)God(s) exists?' to which there are exactly two answers. Yes and No. That's theism and atheism. Agnosticism (with regards to the existence of divinity) simply isn't an answer to this question. It says that ultimate knowledge one way or the other is impossible to obtain. Note that even if you answered Yes or No, it does not imply that you are 100% absolutely certain, only that you hold a belief. Using the agnostic qualifier explicitly states that the belief is not at a 100% level.

There are three possible answers to the question of whether God exists: Yes, No, and I don't know. Atheists, going along with the current trend of redefining the meaning of the word atheism, want to both select both no and I don't know at the same time. No, because that is what they really believe, and I don't know because they can't prove it. To be an "agnostic atheist" is simply a contradiction in terms. An agnostic neither believes or disbelieves in God, while an atheist disbelieves; they are mutually exclusive. To cut this short, you can't answer no and I don't know at the same time.

Defining the term is to me a largely semantic issue. The way I see it, most atheists are also agnostics, and most agnostics are atheists. The dictionary definition I would say is that atheists answer in the negative to questions like "Do you believe in God/That Jesus was the sun of god/that god created the universe/that Muhammed talked to god/other religious claims"

No, I do not believe in any of those things. Thus I am an atheist.

I am also an agnostic, because I can never be sure of anything. There might be tooth fairy for all I know.

Someone who calls themselves "agnostic" and avoids the term atheist, well, I cant speak for them, but I suppose they almost believe in god or something, or think its 50/50 or think that it is impossible to make up your mind.

To me, personally, It seems silly and non-descriptive for my view to use the term agnostic, since I'm agnostic about everything. I have no faith in any religious claim. so non-theistic, or a-theistic is a better fit to describe my view.

That video is pretty funny.
For some reason, the speaker thinks that the definition of words is based on formal logic. I guess I'm missing his point entirely.

This most precise definition for agnostic I've come across is:
a person who denies or doubts the possibility of ultimate knowledge in some area of study.

It is often used as a shorthand for agnostic with regards to claims of the existence of god, but strictly speaking, it is only meaningful when combined with a knowledge claim.

I don't think there are many atheists at all that claim to be gnostic atheists. I would say at least 99% of atheists are agnostic atheists. Meaning they can't prove god's existence or absence, but they are sufficiently unconvinced that they act as if there were no god.

Agnostic: Someone who does not want to commit and has the philosophy, it doesn't matter.

Agnostic 2: A pussy. Hairy, pussy.

Agnostic 3: Says the rules of science might not matter because a God could potentially render them useless. (See De Tyson)

An agnostic is someone who doesn't believe *or* disbelieve in God. An atheist is someone who believes God doesn't exist. If you think atheism means a "lack of belief" then watch this video by one of your contemporaries:



It all comes down to whether you are an honest or dishonest skeptic. An honest skeptic investigates. A dishonest skeptic doesn't want to know.

As far as this video goes, this show often has Christians on that don't know the bible, and don't understand apologetics, so they often get frustrated and say something that comes out the wrong way. The caller was trying to make some kind of point that we're all sinners but it was misplaced and ill-timed. It's not as if you can't find a billion examples of atheists saying the most horrible things. I just had an atheist tell me he wanted to crucify me the other day.