As much as I support separation between religion and government, I don't really like the attitude this organisation has towards religious people. It basically says on their site that atheists are the inteligent ones and people who believe in any god or gods are idiots who can't think by themselves. Why can't they defend separation between government and religion based on mutual respect?
That's not their m.o. so I'm not sure what you are referring to. Perhaps you can tell me exactly what it is you have seen on their web site (that isn't part of a reader's comments section, or a synopsis of some book that is sold in their web store).
They are no holds barred when it comes to fighting against any and all encroachments of religion into government/public functions, based on historical evidence that allowing even the slightest of violations to go unchecked ultimately goes on to escalate to further and further violations, and the longer a violation is allowed to go unchecked the more difficult it can then be to fight. (e.g. "Nobody complained for 50 years!" And so it will be argued it's now just a historical tradition.")
"FFRF works as an effective state/church watchdog and voice for freethought (atheism, agnosticism, skepticism)." - It's right there in the middle of their home page, describing what this organisation stands for.
If they didn't specify which particular views they consider as "freethought" I wouldn't really be bothered by it and I'd support them without a hitch. But as they did specify that the only views they consider as based on logic and reason are non-religious ones it strongly implies that religious movements or beliefs such as christianity, islam or hinduism aren't really considered logical by them and as such believing in them is not really a sign of great intelligence. I don't think it's true as we can't neither confirm nor deny that any greater force exists so there is no reason to say that not believing is more logical than believing (and of course the other way around).
The very definition of religion is opposition to free thought, logic, and reason. Simple theism (e.g. the belief in a deity) is not religion. Though it too is not supportable by evidence or reason.
Religion is a set of BELIEFS, that are unassailable as per the religion. They are not open to debate, let alone debate that takes into account science, evidence, and reason. There are 10,000 different denominations of Christianity alone, because they had disagreements about beliefs and doctrine. Religions rarely, if ever, change their views and they do so slowly and typically under great pressure. It's easier for a faction that decides to believe something else (from minor to major disagreements) to form a separate religious sect.
Free thought is not bound by any doctrine or dogma. It's the freedom for one's ideas and beliefs about things to go where the evidence points and not where some religion demands your ideas and beliefs about something be.
As for intelligence, that's entirely separate, and FFRF has made no claims that religious people are unintelligent. Intelligent people are perfectly capable of compartmentalizing irrational beliefs (like religion) in their minds, or any other thing they desperately wish to believe despite a lack of evidence and the irrationality of the belief.
And sorry, but it's always the burden of the person making the positive claim to provide evidence of that claim, and extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. In other words, I will believe your unextraordinary claim that you ate spaghetti last week, with your providing me little to no evidence of that claim. Spaghetti exists, I've seen it, I've had it, people eat it all the time, and it's of little consequence if you ate it last week or not. However, if you claim that an alien took you up into his spaceship last week. well.... that's going to require some substantial evidence to be believed by me. It's an extraordinary claim.
Now if I made the claim that I was NOT taken up into an alien spaceship last week, I'm not making a positive claim and so I have no burden of proving to you that I was not. This is very much like how our criminal justice system works. It's the prosecutions burden to prove I was at the scene of a murder, not my burden to prove that I was not there. Jury's are instructed to understand that.
Saying one does not believe in a god is not a positive claim that there is no god. And the careful atheist does not make the positive claim that there IS NO god. Simply that they do not believe a god exists. This is an important distinction. There is no rational reason to believe in the existence of a god and no evidence has ever been produced that points to the existence of a god (let alone the one's characterized by the major religions). Claiming that a god exits, despite a total lack of evidence, and rational reason to believe a god exists, is an extraordinary claim and requires extraordinary evidence to be believed. And being a positive claim the burden of proof is on the person making the claim.
As much as I support separation between religion and government, I don't really like the attitude this organisation has towards religious people. It basically says on their site that atheists are the inteligent ones and people who believe in any god or gods are idiots who can't think by themselves. Why can't they defend separation between government and religion based on mutual respect?
But thank you for the giveaway :)
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That's not their m.o. so I'm not sure what you are referring to. Perhaps you can tell me exactly what it is you have seen on their web site (that isn't part of a reader's comments section, or a synopsis of some book that is sold in their web store).
They are no holds barred when it comes to fighting against any and all encroachments of religion into government/public functions, based on historical evidence that allowing even the slightest of violations to go unchecked ultimately goes on to escalate to further and further violations, and the longer a violation is allowed to go unchecked the more difficult it can then be to fight. (e.g. "Nobody complained for 50 years!" And so it will be argued it's now just a historical tradition.")
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"FFRF works as an effective state/church watchdog and voice for freethought (atheism, agnosticism, skepticism)." - It's right there in the middle of their home page, describing what this organisation stands for.
If they didn't specify which particular views they consider as "freethought" I wouldn't really be bothered by it and I'd support them without a hitch. But as they did specify that the only views they consider as based on logic and reason are non-religious ones it strongly implies that religious movements or beliefs such as christianity, islam or hinduism aren't really considered logical by them and as such believing in them is not really a sign of great intelligence. I don't think it's true as we can't neither confirm nor deny that any greater force exists so there is no reason to say that not believing is more logical than believing (and of course the other way around).
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The very definition of religion is opposition to free thought, logic, and reason. Simple theism (e.g. the belief in a deity) is not religion. Though it too is not supportable by evidence or reason.
Religion is a set of BELIEFS, that are unassailable as per the religion. They are not open to debate, let alone debate that takes into account science, evidence, and reason. There are 10,000 different denominations of Christianity alone, because they had disagreements about beliefs and doctrine. Religions rarely, if ever, change their views and they do so slowly and typically under great pressure. It's easier for a faction that decides to believe something else (from minor to major disagreements) to form a separate religious sect.
Free thought is not bound by any doctrine or dogma. It's the freedom for one's ideas and beliefs about things to go where the evidence points and not where some religion demands your ideas and beliefs about something be.
As for intelligence, that's entirely separate, and FFRF has made no claims that religious people are unintelligent. Intelligent people are perfectly capable of compartmentalizing irrational beliefs (like religion) in their minds, or any other thing they desperately wish to believe despite a lack of evidence and the irrationality of the belief.
And sorry, but it's always the burden of the person making the positive claim to provide evidence of that claim, and extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. In other words, I will believe your unextraordinary claim that you ate spaghetti last week, with your providing me little to no evidence of that claim. Spaghetti exists, I've seen it, I've had it, people eat it all the time, and it's of little consequence if you ate it last week or not. However, if you claim that an alien took you up into his spaceship last week. well.... that's going to require some substantial evidence to be believed by me. It's an extraordinary claim.
Now if I made the claim that I was NOT taken up into an alien spaceship last week, I'm not making a positive claim and so I have no burden of proving to you that I was not. This is very much like how our criminal justice system works. It's the prosecutions burden to prove I was at the scene of a murder, not my burden to prove that I was not there. Jury's are instructed to understand that.
Saying one does not believe in a god is not a positive claim that there is no god. And the careful atheist does not make the positive claim that there IS NO god. Simply that they do not believe a god exists. This is an important distinction. There is no rational reason to believe in the existence of a god and no evidence has ever been produced that points to the existence of a god (let alone the one's characterized by the major religions). Claiming that a god exits, despite a total lack of evidence, and rational reason to believe a god exists, is an extraordinary claim and requires extraordinary evidence to be believed. And being a positive claim the burden of proof is on the person making the claim.
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Ok, I might have misinterpreted it. Thank you for taking your time to explain it to me so thoroughly :)
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Ty
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