<html><head><base href="x-msg://9/"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><div>On Dec 11, 2009, at 12:41 AM, flemming wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(123, 0, 153); "><table width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"><tbody><tr><td width="100%" height="100%" bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"><table width="100%" height="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center" style="table-layout: fixed; "><tbody><tr><td width="10"></td><td valign="top" style="overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap; "><table width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" style="white-space: normal; position: static; z-index: auto; "><tbody><tr><td height="10"></td></tr><tr><td><font face="Verdana,Arial,sans-serif" size="2" color="#7b0099" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; color: rgb(123, 0, 153); "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">To be an atheist is exactly just another religion. You can believe that there is no god, but you can not prove it.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "> Therefore atheism is a religion based on belief. If you want to distance yourself from religion the right ism is agnostisism. To be an agnostisc is to decclare that there is not enough data to settle the question if there is or is not a god.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Most natural scientist, if not religious, are agnostics, the late Carl Sagan is one example.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Flemming</div></div></font></td></tr><tr><td height="10"></td></tr></tbody></table></td><td width="10"></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr><tr><td height="70" bgcolor="#ffffff" background="cid:1260520588912@dclient.mail.yahoo.com"></td></tr></tbody></table></div><br>_______________________________________________<br>extropy-chat mailing list<br><a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a><br><a href="http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat">http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat</a><br></div></span></blockquote><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">This is dumb. Some asserts there are invisible pink unicorns all around us and that it is right and proper to worship them. I assert that I have no evidence of any such and thus do not believe in them and thus thing such worship is bullocks. And you come along and say both parties are equally religious! Clearly you have no firm grasp on the meaning of the word "belief" or "religion". They are not the same btw else belief in anything, say gravity, would be "religion". Clearly stating disbelief that X is true is not the same as belief that X is true. </div></div><br><div>Saying "well I can't really say whether there are invisible pink unicorns or not" is a cop-out, at best technically true since they are defined as being impossible to prove or disprove. But hopefully we have all grown beyond such sophomore BS rhetorical games.</div><div><br></div><div>- samantha</div><div><br></div></body></html>