is anyone tired of this atheists and Christians hatred for each other? - Page 5

Yep. I guess the confusion comes from the word itself. "a" means "without" and "theism" means "belief" so you'd think it would just mean someone who didn't believe in anything.

But really, an atheist is indeed someone who BELIEVES there is no god.

Meanwhile an antitheist is someone who literally thinks that religious "faith" is a ridiculous and harmful concept.

quote DG

quote Gaming Geezer

LOL.

You to are a man of faith.

Have you read my new blog.

No, I don't generally read blogs. Summarise for me please, or link or something.

Man of faith? I think not. Faith means believing something with no particular evidence or proof to base that belief on.

What I "believe" is based on countless years of scientific research by thousand upon thousands of scientists.


EDIT: Oops, link in your signature. OK I read it.

quote Your article thingy.

That can only happen when the DNA from both a male and female are brought together. In nature there is no way for a single cell to be loaded with all of that information that would enable it to develop into a multi celled creature of any kind.

Completely and utterly wrong.

There are plenty of multicellular creatures that don't have separate sexes.

Plants in particular can have both sets of sexual organs.


As for animals, look up the Hydra.
Not the Greek myth, the actual creature.

quote The internet

Nineteenth-century biologists reported that the Hydra was such a simple animal that it was possible to force one through gauze to separate it into individual cells; if the cells were then left to themselves, they would regroup to form a hydra again.

A Hydra can reproduce by merely splitting itself up. (Budding)

While they DO have sex chromosomes and can reproduce sexually, they don't need to.

Note that when split into single cells, every cell has both sets of sex chromosomes, basically.
So you effectively have a cloud of single cellular organisms, each with one set of chromosomes, which can join to make a multicellular creature.



This is important:

A Y chromosome is a mutated, shortened X chromosome. It contains essentially no information that is not present in the X chromosome.

So saying you need an X and Y chromosome mixed is complete nonsense.

Also, why are you/whoever wrote that article claiming that you can't have a multicellular creature without both X and Y chromosomes being present in the same individual?


Sure you can.

We call them WOMEN.


Note: Not all animals/plants actually use X and Y chromosomes, but the system is similar nonetheless.



Also, look up Amoebae. They're single cellular creatures that can at any time send signals to each other, causing them to group into a multicellular mobile colony. The result looks like a slug and even crawls around like one. It's effectively a multicellular animal, albeit a temporary one.

While amoebae do have sexes (I think), the cells are not mixing. Each cell only has one set of sex chromosomes. The creature overall does not contain X/Y in each cell.


Also, you claimed/whoever wrote the article claimed that a single cell can't contain the genetic information from both sexes.


People can be born with odd genetic combinations like XXY, XYY, etc. One such combination is XXXY, which is a person with the sets of sex chromosomes for "female" and "male" in every single cell.

I saw no evidence there that life can arise from primordial soup or that New genetic material, not present in the species can be transferred at conception, or that a single celled animal can evolve into a multi celled creature. Multi sexes is a different matter.

DG, the odd genetic disorders that you mentioned involve, the genetic material already present. Not new genetic material not inherent in the species.

I think an agnostic is what you get when an atheist and a theist has a baby.

quote Mouldy Cheese

Well the direction that this thread is going seems contrary to the title itself

When you get Tumbles, DG, and Gaming Geezer together, the thread will never stay clean for too long. I do agree. Hopefully a mod steps in soon and gets the thread back on track.

quote AnonymousGuy

Tumbles, I'm confused. You claim that I'm dead wrong but then you post two definitions which state that atheism is EXACTLY what I think it is, which is the rejection of the idea that god exists i.e. a belief that god does not exist. So what the hell are we arguing about here exactly?

And weak atheism is a ridiculous idea, IMO. It's the absurdity of taking a completely agnostic approach to religion but denying that you're agnostic. An agnostic by any other name is still an agnostic.

I think he means to distinguish between the positive assertion that there is no god (strong atheism), and the negative state of merely NOT believing (or disbelieving) in one (weak atheism). Do you see the distinction? One is a claim, and one is a passive state of mind. Myself and a number of atheist believe it's silly to call agnostic an in-between ground. I curse Aldous Huxley for coining the modern use of that term. Agnostic is an adjective you append to your beliefs. It's not a belief in itself, and it does not in itself provide any useful content about anything other than your life attitude. You can be an agnostic atheist, an agnostic theist, a gnostic atheist or a gnostic theist. If your answer to the question "Do you believe in a god or gods?" is "I don't, but I'm not sure." you're an atheist. An agnostic atheist, but because you do not believe in a god, you're still an atheist by definition. Similarly, if you answer "I do, but I can't know for certain," then you're a theist. You just aren't an 100% sure gnostic theist.

In my view, agnosticism shouldn't even be a word we need to append to anything. Any healthy, educated mind should, without saying it, be agnostic. We're never certain of our answers. We never really KNOW anything for sure. Even when I say "I know" it's usually an exaggeration of 99% certainty.

Anyway, the point of this rant was to originally to help shed some light on the meaning of "weak atheism" so you don't have to continue thinking it's absurd. Hope that helps.

Edit: Whoops, Tumbles ninja'd me. Took too long with my post. Haha.

Adamrpg, yeah I understand why people shut off as well. I really do. There's a limit to how many times a day I want to defend my beliefs. There's a point where it becomes harassment. Anyway, I don't know what we've accomplished either, but I like the general attitude it sets to think in that way. Just be relaxed about, and realize the line where you've begun to harass someone (preferably before you've reached it). If you're being belligerent and making someone angry, you aren't getting your point across anymore, and you're probably doing it to reassure yourself more than anything. I guess friendly discussion should only happen when both parties are willing to discuss things (or when it's absolutely necessary).

quote AnonymousGuy

quote Tumbles

The rejection of a belief in deities is not the same as believing there are no deities.

That's absurd. The rejection of a belief in deity necessitates that you also believe that there are no deities. It's absurd to say otherwise, unless you subscribe to Orwellian double-think.

quote Tumbles

You likely reject the idea that there are unicorns - but I would doubt you would say with 100% certainty that there are no unicorns, yes?

By rejecting the idea of unicorns I'm saying that there are no unicorns. Pretty simple.

http://atheism.about.com/od/atheismquestions/a/beliefdisbelief.htm

Maybe this explanation will do better than I can.

quote AnonymousGuy

I've heard all the arguments and you've explained it as well as anyone could. I'm just saying that I don't buy it. It's just pointless distinctions without difference to me. It's like people who feel the need to create a sub-sub-sub-genre of music every time an artist uses a new chord progression. There's no need for that much distinction.

It's not exactly something you get to choose to "buy." It is how the words are defined and how they interact with each other... there's not some random person just making things up.