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I think it's fair to say that communism, or any political/philosophical viewpoint, can be held religiously; as an unquestioned and absolute faith whose tenets are believed absolutely. But I don't think communism is necessarily clung to in such a dogmatic way, by all who think it's a workable...

"Test"- for what, I wonder? A willingness to deny all the evidence of our senses, if some holy book says we should? I presume all here have read Dawkins' article 'Sadly, an honest creationist"; if not google it, and check it out. The doublethink required would make Big Brother proud.

Is 'god' a concrete entity, or an abstract one? I think even we atheists would agree that the noun 'god' has some abstract meaning, despite the difficulties we have getting those who believe in such a thing to give us a firm definition. But if it isn't a concrete entity, a thing- then how is...

Sad but true. Neither professing belief nor unbelief means you aren't lying.

For many years I kept up the list of Internet Infidels Deconverts, on the old II board. While there were lots and lots of people who had gone from believer to unbeliever, there were precious few going in the opposite direction. So just as a matter of statistics, atheist-to-theist conversions are...

As Sam Harris put it- Which is not to say that mostly non-religious and scientifically savvy societies do not exhibit practices that appear strange and bizarre to other societies. But I would say that the more skeptical the society, the fewer practices truly harmful to the society as a whole...

I want to start a religion preaching evangelistic skepticism!

I once asked a very similar question in a thread at Christian Forums about intelligent design. No one there even attempted an answer, so I appreciate that you give a frank response. But the way you answer it makes me wonder- if you would only worship an uncreated creator of this universe, how...

I suppose I've been asked all of those nine, in one form or another, over the course of my life. And not just in online forums like this one- though that has been the usual venue for such questions. I particularly liked Christina's answer to the one about atheists being angry.

As a kid, the Sears winter/Christmas catalog was what dreams were made of. Though it's been many years since I patronized Sears, I always have had a bit of a soft spot for the company due to those childhood memories. A trip to Sears in the small city of Columbus, GA, was always a cause for big...

Until we can agree on a coherent meaning for the word 'god', it's nonsensical. Meaningless. While we can treat it as a word that might *possibly* have meaning, and label some existent entity or state, until we can clearly state it we have no reason to believe in it; it has the same ontological...

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.” -Richard Feynman

It is a very Christian thing to consider themselves persecuted, or that they will be in the future. It always seemed to me that the whole 'turn the other cheek' ethos was clearly the best survival strategy for a badly defeated people; which the Jews were, in two succeeding generations. The...

:sadyes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-cPo1wqxD8

Learner, back in the nineties a fellow named Steve Locks did a great deal of research on philosophically informed atheists or agnostics who later became believers, of whatever sort. See Asymmetry of Conversion for his work. He found that extremely few people who demonstrated understanding of...

Solipsism- my best argument against it is as follows. Presuming we are brains in vats, then someone or something must have created both brain, and vat. But, that someone or something cannot prove that it is not also a brain in a vat, being fed the illusion that it's creating a brain in a vat...

If you see the light as coming from the left and slightly beneath the center of the image, all of them look upside down. But if you visualize it coming from the lower right, they're right side up.

I definitely consider myself a skeptic- but that isn't the opposite of being open-minded. As the famous saying goes, I try to keep an open mind, but not so open my brain falls out! As Cromwell said, we should always consider it possible we might be mistaken. We should put error bars on all our...

Score 1.6, 4%. I did the short version. And I very much wonder how Trump would score on that test, answering honestly.