“The degree of this intolerance is a bit surprising. My experience has taught me that atheists tend to be very intelligent, thoughtful people with a high standard of ethics that they carry through to their everyday lives.”

My responce:

My experience has taught me that that most atheists tend to be very intelligent (I agree) people with a huge egos who can be as fanatical as any religious fundamentalist. Religious fundamentalists tend to divide the world into heathen and non-heathen whereas atheists tend to divide the world into rational and irrational. Most atheists treat the irrational with the same contempt that fundamentalists treat heathens. They are a lot a like, yet they can’t see it.

So what makes your experience better than my experience? It’s all anecdotal, isn’t it?

You’re too dumb to realize that he was speaking metaphorically in his apples example. Basically his point is that we know very little about the way the universe works in the grand scheme of things. Even things that we take for granted to be true, may eventually turn out to be false. The more we learn about the universe, the more we realize how little we know about it.

Sorry, but I don’t remember who is quoted there..

Don’t apologize (directly or indirectly) for rationality, facts, and changing your worldview when new facts are discovered.

If people want to think they have a direct connection with Thor, Athena, Zeus, hey, get down and boogie, brothers and sisters. But don’t expect me to party with you, unless there’s free beer.
I’ll be happy to believe. In the beer, at least.

You yourself said that nothing can be binary value of 1 or 0. This identical reasoning must apply to atheism itself.

Your conclusion that atheism is a belief is a religion is incorrect, based on your reasoning, and really, anything is anything, because we just don’t know. You are defeated by your own argument. what you say is that nothing is nothing. or anything is anything. or that nothing is anything. Take your pick.

However, it IS true that there are axioms which are accepted as true, like a=a. There’s no proving axioms. The thing with atheists(my preferred term is ‘rationalists’) is that they WILL change their minds if shown evidence. That’s the whole point. This is the essence of science. I would venture a guess that ALL atheists would become theists if there was modern scientific evedence (tv cameras, putting fingers into the wounds, teams of physicians, etc). Not just by some secret little cadre somewhere, but a full-on evidential driven understanding, done by a panel of medical doctors, technicians, etc. Unfortunately, those who have ‘faith’ will never do the opposite – they are NOT open-minded and will NEVER change their minds if shown evidence contrary to their opinion.

Let’s go to your next ‘observation.’ Truth is NOT an individual action and personally decide if it’s true. This is one of the biggest load of s–t you’ve spouted. If you believe this, go out to a highway and play in traffic……Hey, if I don’t believe there are cars speeding along at 70 mph, that that’s just up to me. WROOONNG!

Just because we can’t know everything, does that mean we know nothing, that there are no known facts? No. To specifically answer your points: our eyes see all the spectrum through tools. Obviously, you’ve never heard of infrared scopes. We have tools to see a great deal more of the spectrum. Same with sound. We have tools that allow us to magnify touch sensitivity. Even if we can’t see it, science and numbers allow us to understand and predict.

As far as 100 years compared to 4 billion years, for those with trained, scientific minds, this is not an issue. Think. Everyone understands hard disk drives contain trillions of bytes. It’s easy to compare it to years, if you understand one, you understand the other.
What a bunch of blather you spout (and I’m not being ‘intolerant.’ I’m just saying 1=1)

This is why people who are rationalists (others call us atheists) are frustrated. You fully argued that 11, without showing a cohesive example (your apple example was SOOO messed up).