Okay, so you’ve got one criteria: Socialized Medicine, care to list out the rest of them for how you determine if something is socialism?

Oct 1, 1949. Communist Party of China establishes the People’s Republic of China.

Then there’s the question of ‘Is China still socialist?’ which depends on what qualifies as socialist.

Magic doesn’t work… and people flip out when someone tries to use things that would.

The God of the Christians?

Time’s killing it just as it does everyone. Not only is the vile religion diminishing currently but the claimed miracles of the fabled monster are also diminishing with time.

• In true Last Thursdayism fashion they claim the universe was created by the beast six millennia ago.
• 2 millennia later he demonstrably lost, if he ever had to begin with, the traits of omniscience and omnipotence. As demonstrated by taking a rash action, regretting it, and not undoing it.
• At some point he’s developed a weakness to iron as stated by spaceghoti.
• Nowadays his grand “miracles” are causing light breezes, or small amounts of rain, or stopping either… things Humans are entirely capable of doing.

As for how to accelerate the death of this monster? Take a page from the countries that have done the best at wounding it so far: Raise general quality of life, not just education, for all the people of your society. It feeds on suffering, so we should starve it out.

I see faith and religion confused a lot.

Fair enough, I have been using them interchangeably. I suppose given your position that’s inaccurate. Our positions differ quite a bit, I’m an antitheist and materialist/physicalist.

which - fair, you can make inferences and guesses, but we’re still not able to know for certain what someone else is thinking.

My point here is just the opposite. It isn’t inferences or guesses, we can tell from brain activity that what’s going on falls within a certain range. We have yet to refine this ability to tell detailed specifics but we’re not guessing A * B = G, we can use our modern tools and understanding to determine that G is within the range of D through J. Prior to the development of the current tools and methods we had a wider range and prior to the development of any such tools we were guessing and making inferences.

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle would be an example I’d agree to of something unknownable: the set of both the precise location and momentum of a particle. However as of yet I am unaware of any reason or mechanism by which this unknowable is impactful to any sapient entity… except those specifically studying it.

As-is I find the unknowables that I am aware of, the Uncertainty Principle, whether or not we’re in a simulation, and so on so be inconsequential on the scale we operate on. We have a perceived reality that behaves according to rules that are determinable and practical utility can be derived from determining them.

my view is that we all act on some degree of faith

I don’t think I can contest this. At least not at the moment after having had a long day. In any case I think this point is where we likely differ quite a lot; I strive to take nothing on faith. To whichever extent that I do I want it to be less or at least driven past the point of functional irrelevance to the operation of my life.

Nothing to do with the faith/spirituality of the individual, a LOT to do with the biases of whatever leadership your in group has.

I suppose the authors of their scripture would count even though they have limited relation to living leaders of their religion.

I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. We can determine to some degree what’s going on in the mind of other people without having faith in their self-report, it’s just impractical to do to everyone or frequently; FMRI can show us their brain activity and we already have a reasonable sense of what the different bits of brain do. Would we be able to get fine specifics of their thoughts from it? No, not yet but given that out ability to detect and measure has a general tendency to improve with time I believe that it is a ‘yet’ and not an ‘if’ barring Extinction Level Events.

Could you elaborate on the second point? I don’t see cause to have faith regarding that subject. We don’t have all the knowledge about the subject but neither would we know, for example, the exact ordering of a deck of cards immediately after a thorough shuffle. We know enough that we’re not going to see an Ace of Fives if we shuffled a standard deck and we’ll be able to determine the order they are in if we pay attention.

Most of the faithful that I know personally aren’t involved with a governing body of their faith. They still use it to be bigots. When pressing them on the issue I’ve yet to get a response as to why they’re bigots other than their faith. They have, or at least are aware of, secular reasons to be good and kind but not when being bigoted in some ways (they have secular reasons for the kinds of bigotry their faith opposes).

• Thanks.
• The differentiation I used wasn’t my own words, I got it from here, I figured I shouldn’t go off just my own take. I suppose I should have specified that from the beginning.
• I suppose there’s a case to be made for that.
• I don’t see how you’ve got that I have an extreme position from ‘Religions are faith-based while philosophies are based in some logical argumentation.’
• Noted. I suppose I could try to find something not abhorrent about faith. I’ve long since stopped being angry about it but I’m still very much an Antitheist.

I don’t intend this to be harsh or negative but I don’t know how to phrase this nicely;

Secular Humanism is a philosophy, not a religion. Religions are faith-based while philosophies are based in some logical argumentation. The muddling of religion with philosophy linguistically serves only to tarnish philosophy and lend undue credence to religion. That language is so flexible can be beneficial but it can equally be detrimental when used like this.

The numbers words, Mason, what to they mean!?

We’re talking about the head of an organization that claims to own the entire planet. They’re going to insert themselves wherever they see fit regardless of actually having a place to do so.

So, just to be clear we’re talking about the person who’s predecessor refused to speak out against the Holocaust while it was happening in spite of knowing it was happening for longer than most, right?

EtA: The leader of the cowardly organization that made arrangements with the Reich for protection while so much of the rest of the world was fighting or making preparations to fight.

Stories like that of Job is why my position is that if it were to be determined by some means that the God of Abraham actually exists than that should be corrected at the earliest available opportunity. If almost any claimed gods exist than that should be corrected.

Yeah, that’s frustrating. Reminds me of learning my grandfather attributed me being accepted to my collage of choice to the fictitious despot rather than my own ability (at least in spite of being religious he’s kind, this kind of thing with him tends more to be by way of unfortunate implication rather than intent).

Thank you. I’m aware it won’t change their minds however for one of them I have been established as a source of correct information (close relative and lifetime of giving them correct info)…

They don’t seem to internalize the information but I still try to provide them with correct information to counter the christofasc programming.

What’s the source for the Jefferson quote? I’d like to show it to a few Christian American Supremacists I know.

Honestly, I don’t think that would work. Flint didn’t wake our society. That we can have more mass shootings than days in a year for several consecutive years hasn’t woken it. Honestly, at what point must we conclude that we’re trying to wake a corpse?

Your only allowed to modify genitals for sadistic reasons./j

What I’m trying to say is that we don’t really understand much about the origin of the universe, so saying “I don’t believe there is a god because of lack of evidence” seems too harsh.

I don’t think many Atheists come to the conclusion based off of arguments about the origin of the universe. It appears to be more common that logical or ethical contradictions within theistic doctrine lead to its rejection.

For me personally it began with the divine hiddenness problem. Being raised in a faith that states its god wants a relationship with me and yet is wholly imperceivable to me. From there building with additional arguments such as the abhorrent ethics of their mythical figures when viewed from a frame of reference other than ‘they’re the good guys because their god said so’.

My last paragraph was aimed towards religious people and atheists that have a solid opinion.

Alright. Was thinking about this prior to seeing your reply and meant to apologize as on thinking about it your statement could be meant that way and now with the clarification doubt has further been removed. Sorry.

I don’t think accepting ignorance is something bad, I advice to do it whenever possible.

I agree that it’s not bad to accept legitimate ignorance however I don’t think it’s best practice to accept ignorance just because it’s one of the possibilities. Rather, I feel that ignorance should be the fallback position, over baseless speculation, when hard facts on a subject are insufficient in number and/or scope to paint a reasonably clear picture.

Where sufficient facts on a matter exist to show a clear picture exist I don’t believe it proper to accept an assertion of ignorance. Firstly because it’s false, we know at least some things on the topic, and secondly because it can be harmful, shysters leveraging ‘we don’t know’ to insert a baseless speculation paired with hawking a product or marketing themselves as a problem solver.

Do you think lack of evidence provided by humans, little animals who live in a dust spec for a relative short amount of time, gives you enough confidence to say “there is no creator”?

For some generalized creator figure? I can’t disprove that, however I think Russel’s Teapot comes into play at this point. We couldn’t detect a porcelain teapot the size of a common teapot in stellar orbit between the Earth and Mars. So, currently, it would be impossible to disprove that claim, however there is also no reason to accept it. The burden of proof is on those who make these claims to support them, not on those who don’t accept them to disprove every claim they could posit.

For any of the creator figures I’m aware of non-deist theists claiming exist? At least of all those that I am familiar with they have self-contradictory stated natures, operate in logical contradictions, and perform impossibilities. In short: They don’t exist because for that not to be the case then the few things we can demonstrate to be true must be false.

That is exactly my issue with atheism, that they think their human reason gives them enough capacity to take a position to something as complex as the origin of reality.

The only times I’ve seen an atheist back their atheism just with human reason is when explaining logical contradictions about the asserted god. Most arguments I’m aware of use more than just logical contradictions in the opposing claim. More often than not I see them engaging with the proposed evidence for the claim and providing contrary evidence against it.

It’s just outside of our reach and anything we choose to believe, even if rooted in reason, is a wild guess.

We use the terms ‘rooted in reason’ and ‘wild guess’ to mean different things. To me a wild guess is made in the absence of reason or without regard to it while something that is ‘rooted in reason’ is about as opposed to that as is possible, a belief that stems only from what it well supported by evidence, reasoning, or most preferably both.

I’m not sure I take your meaning for ‘just outside our reach’. Are you stating that we’re close to it but not there yet or that it is categorically beyond our ability to reach such that we will never reach it?

The most rational thing to do is just to stop guessing. I feel if people accepted their ignorance more frequently instead of taking sides without actual knowledge, the world would be a better place.

I’m sorry but this comes off as somewhat disingenuous directed toward atheists. We’re not accepting the other side’s guess and generally also provide reasoning for that decision when prompted. Contrast with the theistic position of the assertion of some grand causer or creator and subsequent assertions that anything not yet explained rationally is somehow the work of this unsupported asserted entity.