What KP said.

If you want sources, read the sourced quotes at the beginning of this article, specifically the first 2. They are all valid sources with authors who have been published in peer-reviewed literature.

http://www.skepdic.com/intelligentdesign.html

Hopefully you will understand why your arguments are flawed. What you have is a case of, as the second cited author would describe it, Innumeracy, or mathematical illiteracy. You use numerical concepts to back up your points, but don't understand how they work.

It gives us something more comfortable than the alternative.

That's the way I see it, at least. On the subject of death, for example, often the nonreligious will tell you that you face an eternity of nothing. Isn't the Christian explanation, that those who live a morally righteous life will be given an eternal happiness, a much more comfortable one?

Not saying either is true, for the record. I'm somewhat agnostic myself. But I feel like that's the biggest reason religion in general lives on today and will continue to live until the end of time, because it offers a peace of mind.

Not to mention a better life, in theory. If we were all Christians, we'd all have the same morals, we'd all be on the same page about stuff. It'd be a nice alternative.. Shame that a lot of them try to seek it by being loud and obnoxious.

EDIT:

I somewhat agree with you, actually. Your argument is why I consider myself agnostic rather than atheist - Looking at all the extremely complex life and cycles and situations and events that we have, from the most intricate details of dna to the vastness of the universe itself, it's hard to see it all and think "chance". I acknowledge that "chance" might be the actual answer, but I suppose that's where faith comes in.

On a side note, why do you consider Cracked atheist? I've been following them for a while, and I suppose it's just because I don't really look for these things, but I've never noticed a major stance against religion, just a stance against bigots.

cracked tends to be pretty liberal (from what i've seen, you could say they are less "anti-bigotry" and more of the self righteous "look how tolerant we are, because as superior smart people we should be" type of pitying bigot), and generally people who subscribe to that sort of thought would also tend more towards being atheists

Makes sense. I guess I could see where you're coming from, though I haven't actually seen it myself.

Gonna keep an eye out for that

Gnosticism and theism are on separate scales. "Agnostic rather than atheist" doesn't make sense.

agnosticism is implied in anything you say re: you are just a person you don't really know anything

ya

terminx you need to read that link I posted. Here I'll even quote it for you:



Also, the world would not be a better place if everyone was christian, unless you mean the kind of christian that says they are but don't actually do anything to follow the religion. A world full of people who followed the full teachings of christianity would be a horrible place.

The best way to have a good system of morals is to base them off doing moral things oneself rather than following some ancient text/group that people say is moral.

Great!

Got some great responses here (more reasoning, less spam)


Hmm, I dunno. I've been reading the Bible and doing tons of research outside of it, and I have to say that even a country where people follow the teachings of Christianity, would be a very healthy environment to live in, and obviously peaceful.
(Which is why the Jews are some of the healthiest people in the world.)

I guess you are talking about not being able to have sex with anyone but your wife, and not being able to be a homosexual, or not to be able to get drunk or high.

And those morals you're talking about, they are all based on teachings that the Jews (and later Christians) managed to spread everywhere they went or were scattered/brought to.

Regarding morals: I don't mean the HURR WE CAN'T LISTEN TO SATAN MUSIC LIKE NIRVANA idiots. I mean more along the lines of murder rates dropping dramatically because they believe God is watching. It would be a tradeoff, certainly, as I don't agree with a lot of their morals, but if we all followed them there would be much, MUCH less conflict in the world. That, you can't deny.

Regarding statistics: If you pull the name Jacob Long from a list of 1000 students at a particular school, then reinsert him, shuffle the list and pull his name again, the odds of that are ridiculously low. Even lower are the odds that you do it again, and again, then again. While it's statistically possible for that to happen by chance, your first thought will most likely be "shenanigans". That's what I'm saying - It's very possible that everything that is, is due to total randomness. But I find the idea of an engineer much more fascinating. Maybe not more likely, but it isn't something I'll dismiss immediately.

Regarding theism: The point I was trying to make is that I consider myself not an atheist ("I do not think there is a God"), but agnostic ("I do not know if there is a God"). Those are comparable.

I'm Atheist all the way.

Christianity lowering crime is a nice thought, but it's not backed in reality. Crime rates are much lower in predominantly atheist countries than in christian ones (http://www.nairaland.com/121066/predominantly-atheist-countries-lowest-crime - original article is down, but this one quotes it). This includes almost all types of crime, including murder. I can give you a bunch more sources on this if you want. You could google it too, if you wanted. It's pretty well established. I'm not going to bother guessing at the reasons it's the case, but the correlation is the opposite of what you imply.

Re: statistics: that's not what you're doing, though. It would be indeed very unlikely to draw the same student twice in a row. However, if you HAD ALREADY drawn the same student twice in a row, it would be absurd to say that, in fact, that is not what happened. The difference comes from when you're observing the events. If I had a fair die and I said I was going to roll it 5 times and get all 6s, you could fairly say that that was unlikely to happen. However, if I already had rolled 5 6s in a row, it would be silly to tell me that I had not done it. The issue comes from a lack of understanding of how statistics work.

Atheism doesn't imply anything about your gnosticism, no matter how much you want it to. Being an atheist is saying that you do not believe that god claims have sufficient evidence. You can be a gnostic atheist (I am sure that I am correct in rejecting all god claims) or an agnostic one (I am not sure...etc). But saying you're an agnostic doesn't tell me anything about your theism.

Christian morals lowering crime is a theoretical thought. The thread topic is still "Why are there Christians", and that theory applies to that. We could potentially live in a better world if we all agreed with each other on one level or another, is the only point I'm trying to make.

And I'm not saying I subscribe to the idea of a creator. All I'm saying is that when the odds are as ridiculously small as they are, it's not silly to wonder if there isn't some outside force affecting the results. What if your die, for example, had been hollowed, with a weight placed on the six side? That would make it a ton more likely that you'd manage to roll consistent 6s. It's still possible to do so without interference, but it becomes increasingly unlikely. I believe what you're saying also shows a lack of understanding of statistics - When you get stupidly low ones, or strange patterns or numbers in the data, you check it for bias, or interference. Maybe the name "Jacob Long" will always be generated from a 1000 name list, by chance. Maybe someone wrote a program that chooses "Jacob Long" then randomizes the next 999 results. Maybe the universe came to be purely because of nature's will. Or maybe someone crafted it. The beautiful thing is, we have no idea.

Then if there's a word for "I acknowledge that I do not and will not ever know the intricacies of the universe", then that's what I am. If we were created, I've chosen to spend my life enjoying the world that was created for us. If we are the product of chance, I've chosen to live my limited life to the fullest, without worrying about answers that I can never discover. To my knowledge, "agnostic" fits that more or less.

and the award for most unreliable link ever goes too...
there is no reliable way to study a thing like that; which is your first hint that it's a stupid thing to try to defend or attack
gregory paul is an opinionologist who says what he wants people to think, hunts down things that could be phrased as supportive of his claims, and then conveniently ignores everything that would show how full of s*** he is; this is the same "reverse scientific method" that conspiracy "theorists" rely on to protect their claims from logic
if you're wondering why his articles are "often quoted, but rarely cited", it's so people don't actually read them and find out exactly what i just said

atheism in itself doesn't imply anything about gnosticism, but saying things about your gnosticism is redundant
you are not "sure" of anything unless you're a megalomaniac
but loads of people are closet megalomaniacs so whatever

There are other studies. I don't take them as proof of anything obviously because they don't actually show causation. I only brought it up because he was acting like it was undeniable fact that everyone belonging to the same religion = better morals (I can tell this from the part where he said that I can't deny it). Point is the correlation is the opposite of what he implied it is.

Some people do identify as gnostics. It's silly but yeah.

there is no correlation between religious status and crime rates