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I wish you were right. But in fact, atheism is on the retreat again while religion and supersition are thriving once more. And it scares the living shit out of me that the greatest military and nuclear superpower in the world is ruled by Christian fundamentalists and has even creationism taught in school, while evolution is rejected. No wonder the number of scientists in the USA is constantly shrinking. No wonder the scientific progress is getting less and less year after year. No wonder US soldiers still engage in a never-ending war against (other) religious fanatics.
Reason is on the run in America. I hope I won’t live to see the end of it. I fear it to be an all too earthly, global inferno.
Ah, I see now - by “almost every” you actually meant “slightly less than half:”
A poll of scientists who are members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press in May and June 2009, found that 51% of scientists believe in God or a higher power.
This is all rather silly, but the 51% were the unsuccessful ones. 
Not saying that you’re wrong, per sé, but America != this planet.
Also, is so hard to believe that there are atheists besides angsty, rebellious American teenagers?
Exactly what I was trying to say. 
It’s a representative sample. But lets see the statistics from your side… oh wait they were prognosticated out of Danson’s ass.
On this forum, you mean? Good point, there’s also angsty, rebelious European teenagers. And at least one angsty rebellious 20-somethings apparently. Like I said, most people grow out of it.
There is more evidence supporting my beliefs than those countering it. If you show me otherwise then I’ll change my views accordingly.
Being angsty, in my experience, is much more a reason to be religious than it is to be atheist. Just a thought.
You may as well continue being proud of having “outgrown” reason.
Right, because you always hear about ‘angsty,’ rebellious teenagers going off and reading the Bible and becoming convicted Christians.
No, but I have heard, read and seen much about angsty, depressed, desperate, grieving or totally lost people who have chosen, out of fear or grief for a personal loss or out of pain, to join a religious community and chose faith over reason.
I don’t know how much sense it makes to post such a sincere answer to someone who has “Proud to be a Christian” in his signature, but I hope it makes you understand better what I was trying to say.
Oh yeah no I do get what you mean now, mate. The word ‘angsty’ kinda threw me off >.<
Yeah I’ve seen people turn to Christianity out of emotion alone before and that saddens me so much. I don’t at all think that’s what the Lord wants from us. I, personally, consider that a blind faith, which I have been trying my hardest to avoid all my life. I want to believe / do what is correct, not what my emotions lead me to. I much prefer logic over emotion. The thing is, though, the reason that I am a Christian is not because of emotion at all but because of the evidence that I have supporting it.
Just like the majority of scientists who believe in a higher power have also “outgrown” reason, right?
Evolution=SCIENCE!
Creation=why do we even do this?
I don’t care what word you attach to evolution, until you can convince me then I won’t believe it. Christianity, on the other hand, has more than enough backing to convince me.
What evidence is that?
I’m in class at the moment and don’t really have the patience anyway to write it all out, so unless you want it because it might convince you, then I don’t want to take the time to do that. For the sake of this discussion; just know that it’s solid enough to convince me more than any evidence disproving it. Now, I would be very interested in any disproof of my faith.
An honest question.
When you say you believe in creation do you believe that A) Everything operates according to God’s plan, but the Creation myth is allegory and should not be taken literally (Thus allowing for such things as biological evolution and a 6.5 billion year old Earth) or B) the Creation myth is the literal truth, and everything came into being 6,000 years ago?
In my mind that’s a very important distinction, with much of the flak coming from and targeted against option B.
Though I am pretty much an Atheist, I don’t really see the purpose of debating A, as that’s more a matter of opinion and personal faith and thus never going to be satisfactorily solved, especially by some schmucks on a message board. B on the other hand, can pretty much be blown out of the water with a cursory application of facts and information, no matter how much noise and disinformation is thrown out by its proponents.
Well that’s comforting! Apparently all our ancestors were West Virginians!
Seriously though, no. That is completely fallacious and inaccurate. No amount of inbreeding or freak genetics by Homo sapiens could produce the bone structure of an Australopithecus or Homo erectus. Our bodies are built quite differently in several important respects.
A combination of both. I believe that the Bible is the literal truth, but I don’t think that rules out evolution or the amount of time people say the Earth and its inhabitants evolved in. I don’t really care either way.
I looked it up in a dictionary and found this:
angsty [ˈæŋstɪ]
adj angstier, angstiest
Informal displaying or feeling angst, esp in a self-conscious manner
angst 1 (ängkst)
n.
A feeling of anxiety or apprehension often accompanied by depression.
anx·i·e·ty (ng-z-t)
n. pl. anx·i·e·ties
1.
a. A state of uneasiness and apprehension, as about future uncertainties
So I figured I had understood it and used it correctly. I am not a native speaker, so I apologize if the use of that word was not appropriate in that context. I figured it was.
And I have yet to see convincing evidence on that matter. I even had a near-death-experience one day where I was feeling as if being drawn towards a source of light and as if floating above my own body. Turns out parts of my brain had ceased functioning for a second or two, and I had a temporal amnesia which quickly dissipated. The hallucinations I had had could easily be explained with adrenaline flooding my bloodstream and with my brain being shaken very badly. I knew it had nothing to do with being “near to Heaven”. But it convinced me that dying is not a bad thing. It felt quite nice, actually.
Believing in a higher power is not quite the same as believing in Yahwe or Jehova, the male deity from the old testament who allegedly created Earth in six days and invented an eternal torture chamber for all those who would not worship him.
Being Christian or member of any other religion or superstitious circle of peers means to prefer undoubting belief over reason, questioning and evidence. So yeah - maybe those fabled “Christian scientists” you mean have indeed “outgrown” reason. Or not yet reached it. At least not fully.
The belief in some higher immaterial power which has caused all the universe to come into existance actually can coexist with science - as an unproven theory yet to be backed up by evidence. But not as a religious faith and unchallenged “fact”. To call that power Jehova is as good as calling it “Picaboo”, really.
To be Christian is something different to me. Believing that what the Bible says is true. Believing that there is indeed a Heaven and a Hell. Believing that there is a male authority figure watching every move we make. And waiting to punish us for a false move, thought, deed or word - with eternal damnation and torture. Yet loving us with all his heart.
It doesn’t take a professor of literature to find out what a pile of shite the morality stories of that ancient compilation of mythological fiction (aka Bible) are.