The hajj, one of the largest annual human gatherings in the world, begins on Wednesday in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Amid rising temperatures and logistical challenges, the pilgrimage has increasingly become a test of endurance both for pilgrims and the Saudi government.
Millions of Muslims from around the world travel to the city to take part; Saudi Arabia said 1,475,230 pilgrims from abroad have arrived since Sunday. Last year, the Saudi government said more than 1,300 pilgrims died, many from Egypt. Most of those who perished had been unregistered, Saudi officials said, meaning they had made the trip without the permits that gave them access to heat protections.
Faith is idiocy
While Im inclined to agree with you neither atheists nor theists can prove the other wrong.
But only one of them is making a claim. Theists claim there is a god. The burden of proof / unproof is on them. Really it’s pretty insulting to posit that such a fantastical cosmic being exists, and not be able to offer any evidence for it whatsoever.
They can offer proof that’s the book that claims there’s an omnipresent being.
Both are making claims and neither can substantiate it. The difference is the more mainstream religious folk tend to recognize this whereas many atheists seem not to.
I can show you a book about Hobbits and the dark lord Sauron and it doesn’t prove they exist.
Atheists don’t make any claim. They do not claim there is no god. They simply do not hold a belief in a god. If there were any reason to believe in one, any evidence for one, we would of course believe.
So really, there are just normal people interacting with the world as it comes, and religion, making up wild shit about what’s happening up in the sky.
The difference is the people who compiled the Bible at the Council of Nicea believed in it to varying degrees. The guy who wrote the Hobbit knew it was fiction.
It’s a huge assumption on your part that they believed it. It was and it remains an instrument of control. They took considerable editorial liberties, too, with the supposed word of god.
Anyway, even if they believed it that is STILL NOT EVIDENCE. The position that the Bible is evidence is incredibly weak. If you want to keep arguing that position, you’re going to have a very hard time and then lose.
That is an equally large presumption. I happen to agree that some were more interested in control but many were believers.
To them it is. Do you not get that they believe they have the words of their divine being in book form? If their faith is correct it would be proof.
You don’t seem to understand the word proof.
Proof means it can demonstrate what is true to anyone.
“If everything I’m saying is true, then this book is evidence of the truth!”
See, all I have to do is believe LOTR is real and then I meet your burden of proof. See how pathetic a standard that is?
Before you say no one believes LOTR is real, let me remind you that yes there are some people, and I consider them about as crazy as Christians are. Secondly, there are thousands of religions with supposed texts. Are all of those “proof” too?
I’ve heard the same self-validating logic about the council of Nicea. When asked “how could this possibly be the word of god when it was so clearly meddled with by human decisions?”
The answer: “well if you accept at all that it’s the word of god, don’t you think he would make sure it came out right?”
In other words, you either believe it or you don’t. But that’s the beauty of actual evidence, actual proof: you don’t have to already believe in it. It is sufficient to change preconceptions.
But why am I not surprised at this conversation. I mean OBVIOUSLY a religious person wouldn’t understand the very idea of proof. “Faith is the evidence of things unseen” blah blah. The brainwashing is real. People lose their very faculty to reason.
Sure, but atheists don’t organize together to persecute theists for their beliefs, in many theocracies right now being a non believer is punishable by death, not to mention the homophobia, the sexism, the tolerance for child rape, and many other kinds of abused towards vulnerable people, and other dogmatic nonsense. Religion creates in groups and out groups and twists people into being obedient fools who will do anything to stay part of the in group and guarantee their ticket to their so called heaven, I’d rather people learn to think for themselves and have the strength to live on their own, rather than becoming slaves to someone else’s ideology
Apparently they do it online. Every single time something religious is even hinted at, or somebody does something in line with religious beliefs, or even if somebody posts a picture of someone that moderately resembles a religious figure… Send in the atheists to proclaim their denial en mass. It’s just as pathetic and annoying as the goat herder yelling about his sky god.
You might want to crack open a history book focusing on any of the attempts at socialism or communism in Asia. You will find many atheists persecuting theists.
There aren’t many theocratic states remaining.
Everything creates in groups and out groups, nothing does this better than leftism.
The church has been a political power throughout history, and has often come into conflict with other political powers, such as totalitarian dictators. It is utterly disingenuous to claim that this has anything to do with atheists. It’s about the state eliminating the church and their message as a competing institution and influence.
You need to crack open a book desperately if that’s your current perspective because Im not talking about churches. You absolutely have bigoted atheists, who murder theists. China loves murdering religious folk.
There are tons of atheists who are bigots.
You gonna keep using that “crack a book” line repeatedly without citing any references? It’s getting tired.
Are youasking me to refer a book about the CCP’s treatment of religious communities?
I’m saying that references are more convincing than the condescending exhortation to “go read a book.” I’m also saying that if you persist in flogging people with the claim that you’ve read more than them, it won’t be long before you’re asked to show one bit of evidence for that. You can’t just run around saying “you’re wrong! I’ve read books that say so!”
Religion is just a means of controlling the idiot masses like yourself, those political parties that clamp down on religion aren’t doing it because they are atheist but because they don’t want any competition when it comes to controlling people, and morons like you who think of the world in binary terms like left and right fall for this stupid shit. As I said before read more than one book in your life and form your own opinions for once, stop assimilating the views of the people around you like a good little sheep, stop worrying so much about being discarded by your flock, this isn’t the dark ages, you won’t die from starvation on your own
Considering that you are two comments in and you have already made a series of factual errors AND I have said Im an atheist I don’t think you are qualified to determine who is less intelligent than average.
You also need remedial English lessons because oof.