Atheist claim: War is caused by religion if participants are religious.

[Felch]

He'd already inflicted that damage on the community of nations with his wars on Iran and Kuwait. You can argue he wasn't a threat any more which is probably true, but he continued to inflict grave damage on his own people which for me is justification enough.

Not justification enough for the Pope. And which of you turned out to be right in the end?

[kentonio]

We propped up their secular tyrants for ages because the religious kind spooked us, but that doesn't mean we were right to knock over one of the few dictators who stood up without us in pursuit of a quixotic fantasy.

It's called paying your debts.

My argument is that we shouldn't have toppled Saddam for the same reason we shouldn't drive the Kims out of NK: we have no idea what kind of hellish chaos would result, but we know it will be worse than the existing order.

Few things are worse than living under oppression without any end in sight, which is why you see people willing to die for it in countries across the world.

Not justification enough for the Pope. And which of you turned out to be right in the end?

Him, perhaps the Vatican knew a lot more than the rest of us what a corrupt bunch of bastards Bushes administration were.

[Felch]

Him, perhaps the Vatican knew a lot more than the rest of us what a corrupt bunch of bastards Bushes administration were.

I think it's clear that they opposed the war on religious grounds. Maybe if Hitchens were a Christian, he wouldn't have advocated such a destructive and senseless war.

[giblets]

I think it's clear that they opposed the war on religious grounds. Maybe if Hitchens were a Christian, he wouldn't have advocated such a destructive and senseless war.

Maybe he would have been like a majority of Christians in America and supported the war anyway.

[Kidlicious]

Complete and utter bull****. Please feel free to point to any these non-existent 'problems'.

If you don't accept that someone can doubt the theory of evolution you aren't a skeptic, and I won't listen to you lecture me about reason.

[Felch]

Maybe he would have been like a majority of Christians in America and supported the war anyway.

Sadly the majority of Christians in America don't listen to the Pope's teachings. Hell, the majority of Catholics ignore him.

[Kidlicious]

.

[DaShi]

By Dashi's logic, God did it, not him.

This is true.

[kentonio]

If you don't accept that someone can doubt the theory of evolution you aren't a skeptic, and I won't listen to you lecture me about reason.

Why would I be a skeptic about the Theory of Evolution? I don't feel any need to walk around feeling skeptical about the Theory of Gravity. If you're an evolution skeptic then at this point the onus is on you to point out the actual reasons why.

[Kidlicious]

Why would I be a skeptic about the Theory of Evolution? I don't feel any need to walk around feeling skeptical about the Theory of Gravity. If you're an evolution skeptic then at this point the onus is on you to point out the actual reasons why.

A skeptic isn't just skeptical about things that people don't tend to believe anyway. A skeptic is skeptical about things that people generally take for granted as truth, such as, at one point in time, that existence of God. So it's not necessary for me to get into a debate with you about evolution. It would serve no purpose, because you aren't going to be reasonable about it. Reasonable people are skeptical.

[kentonio]

A skeptic isn't just skeptical about things that people don't tend to believe anyway. A skeptic is skeptical about things that people generally take for granted as truth, such as, at one point in time, that existence of God. So it's not necessary for me to get into a debate with you about evolution. It would serve no purpose, because you aren't going to be reasonable about it. Reasonable people are skeptical.

I think you're misunderstanding what a reasonable level of skepticism is. I'm not a biologist, the odds on me personally ever disproving the Theory of Evolution is about as close to zero as it can get. If however tomorrow a scientist announces that s/he has disproved that Theory, then I would initially be highly skeptical of their claims (solely because ToE is such a strong and well established theory that no-one has managed to disprove in well over a century) but I'd also read his proof with massive interest and if it was actually true then that would be kind of awesome, because we'd have learned a huge piece of new science.

If you just wander around saying that you're skeptical of everything, then it doesn't really mean anything. Yes we should treat everything with some degree of skepticism, but that has to be tempered by how much evidence there is to support each thing, and in evolutions case that's a vast, vast body of evidence. If you have anything actually concrete that makes you particularly question evolutions veracity then I'd be really interested to hear it, but if you're just generally skeptical and equally skeptical of other theories like gravity then.. well done?

[Kidlicious]

I think you're misunderstanding what a reasonable level of skepticism is. I'm not a biologist, the odds on me personally ever disproving the Theory of Evolution is about as close to zero as it can get. If however tomorrow a scientist announces that s/he has disproved that Theory, then I would initially be highly skeptical of their claims (solely because ToE is such a strong and well established theory that no-one has managed to disprove in well over a century) but I'd also read his proof with massive interest and if it was actually true then that would be kind of awesome, because we'd have learned a huge piece of new science.

If you just wander around saying that you're skeptical of everything, then it doesn't really mean anything. Yes we should treat everything with some degree of skepticism, but that has to be tempered by how much evidence there is to support each thing, and in evolutions case that's a vast, vast body of evidence. If you have anything actually concrete that makes you particularly question evolutions veracity then I'd be really interested to hear it, but if you're just generally skeptical and equally skeptical of other theories like gravity then.. well done?

You don't even get the point about why it would be futile to debate with you about evolution. I don't have any proof against the theory of evolution. I am, however, skeptical about it, meaning that I know that the thing is not a known truth unless it is a known truth. You, on the other hand, are not skeptical, and accept evolution as a known fact. You're insisting that unless I believe as you do, that I'm not a reasonable person, which doesn't make any sense. I'm not saying there isn't evidence for evolution. I'm saying we don't know if it's true or not.

[kentonio]

You don't even get the point about why it would be futile to debate with you about evolution. I don't have any proof against the theory of evolution. I am, however, skeptical about it, meaning that I know that the thing is not a known truth unless it is a known truth. You're insisting that unless I believe as you do, that I'm not a reasonable person, which doesn't make any sense.

That's absolutely not what I'm saying. I'm saying that if you have doubts presumably those must be based upon something, and that's a decent topic of discussion. Maybe someone here might have an answer for the things that make you doubt it, maybe not, but it's healthier to be open about it, rather than just claim you're 'skeptical' but not actually say why.

You, on the other hand, are not skeptical, and accept evolution as a known fact.

Pretty much yes, because I find it a very beautiful and elegant theory that seems to answer the questions it sets out to answer. The moment I actually came to understand what it actually meant and how deep the implications of it were was one of the biggest eureka moments of my life.

I'm not saying there isn't evidence for evolution. I'm saying we don't know if it's true or not.

Why? In what was is the evidence we have questionable?

[Kidlicious]

Have you heard of the Innocence Project? There are 234 cases that have been overturned because of DNA evidence. The jurers in those cases were so sure of what they believed that they judged those people guility, subjecting those people to punishment. You don't know, until you know.

[MikeH]

Outside of Maths virtually nothing in science is going to be a "Known Truth" to the point that there is literally nothing more we can know about a subject, but Evolution is as close to a "Known Truth" as any other theory in science. We may not have dotted all the Is and crossed all the Ts about the entire evolutionary history of all life on earth but we know evolution happens, how it happens, why it happens, have observed it happening, have made it happen. It has made many predictions which have later been substantiated and none of its predictions have been disproved.

We are at the point where any discoveries are going to enhance what we know, or show us that what we've seen so far is only part of the picture or maybe that it doesn't apply in some extreme circumstances, but there's no question it's the mechanism by which life on earth arrived at it's current state.