If Atheists can believe in the supernatural, how can they rule out there being a God?

endacl

MisterEpicurus wrote: »

Personally, I don't understand how anyone can believe in anything supernatural if they are an atheist.

Both claims have equally scant evidence and both are human constructions trying to explain phenomena around.

I think supernatural-believing atheists should remain consistent and feck the whole lot.

Well, people who believe in fairies (atheist or otherwise) tend not to go around telling other people how to act, think and live their lives, based on a belief in fairies.

Religious belief on the other hand, seems all too often to come complete with a license to judge. Which has led to religious mumbo-jumbo affecting the lives of everybody, religious or not. In no particular order, we have:

Magdalene laundries, contraception illegal in Ireland till 1978 (and even then practically impossible to access), gay marriage blocked, stoning to death, crashing airplanes into buildings, Mel Gibson (except for the Lethal Weapon movies, they were cool), no pints on Good (allegedly, I've yet to be convinced) Friday, The Life of Brian banned, the Lord's Resistance Army, Dana, ritual mutilation of infant boys, ritual mutilation of teenage girls, idiots knocking on your door looking to talk about a 2000 year old zombie carpenter....

The list could go on and on. And on some more. So in innumerable ways, some trivial, some shockingly un-trivial, my life, your life, and the life of a huge majority of people alive today has been, and is, affected by religion. It shouldn't be.

While there is a logical inconsistency, at least a belief in fairies is mostly harmless. TBH, if religion was also mostly harmless, I wouldn't bother posting here. If it was just a case of scoring semantic points and having a bit of craic and debate, I'd be over in Politics or Economics right now. And I suspect many regular posters might feel similarly.

MisterEpicurus

MisterEpicurus wrote: »

Personally, I don't understand how anyone can believe in anything supernatural if they are an atheist.

Both claims have equally scant evidence and both are human constructions trying to explain phenomena around.

I think supernatural-believing atheists should remain consistent and feck the whole lot.

Well it really depends on how they arrived at their atheism. It could be that they did so from the fact that a god runs into the problem of evil, which does not rely on evidence based logic (and is fairly weak on it's own IMO.)

Similarly it could just be a case that the person had never bought into the idea of God, but had run into other supernatural claims first, therefore dismissing the idea of god like religious do with other versions of god.

Or it could be genuinely a case of bad logic, such as people in authority use religion against the masses therefore it's not true. I think that Bill Maher is an example of this. He's an atheist, but he holds some very silly, illogical stances about science and medicine.

endacl

Kidchameleon wrote: »

Well have I been an ass yet?

Define 'Ass'?

You posted a question to stimulate a discussion, and then barely engaged.

Would that count?

Kidchameleon

endacl wrote: »

Kidchameleon wrote: »

Well have I been an ass yet?

Define 'Ass'?

You posted a question to stimulate a discussion, and then barely engaged.

Would that count?

No

MrPudding

Kidchameleon wrote: »

No

On this forum it kind of does.

MrP

Dades

Kidchameleon, the next time you post in this forum - that post better have some substance.

Worthless thread closed.