Sam Keen: In The Absence of God

Most atheists are willing to concede the point that god might exist, but have made a personal choice to disbelieve for the lack of any actual and testable proof. This guy seems to confuse religion with spirituality, just because you have an aha moment doesn't mean it's a religious emotion. The first time I actually "got" Einstein's theory of relativity it was a very enlightening moment for me, but it was far from a religious emotion. I believe in the glory of the cosmos and the wonder and amazement I feel when I contemplate it, this is my "god".

Get it right people: Atheism is not believing, not "believing not". That's not literalist, it's just not believing. Belief and faith is unnecessary. Guessing and risk are okay.

"I'm not sure about that. Atheists (by definition) are 100% certain that God is just magical thinking." - Dogma.

I see no reason to believe the fancy claims of theists, and am hence an atheist, but neither am I certain that some form of higher intelligence doesn't exist. So much for your selfserving definition.

So please, if you're going to make silly claims about what I and fellow atheists believe about the existence of gods, please just stick to the kids table.

Only watched a sample, and am pretty annoyed by it. I'll watch the full thing before I stick the knife in though!

Dogma, please stop. First you were called out for claiming Dawkins (and all atheists) openly assert that they are 100% sure no deities exist. When confronted with a direct quote refuting your baseless assumption, did you apologize? No, you went on to say "oh, but then he's not an atheist!" I understand words sometimes have multiple meanings, but to suggest that atheism has only ever meant "the certainty of the nonexistence of a deity" is ridiculous. Every dictionary I've ever encountered has contained the definition for both strong and weak atheism under the "atheism" heading. I would hardly call the folks at Merriam-Webster revisionist radicals; the presence of both meanings in their and others' dictionaries suggests that you are the one who has failed to grasp the terminology.

Also, don't mistake fervor for fundamentalism. Many atheists see the problems caused by organized religion and turn to battling the orthodoxy. In fact many were directly harmed by religion, making it a personal matter as well as one of public policy; I consider myself lucky that I grew up in a family of seekers who had no religious dogma to foist upon me. In any case, tearing apart the irrational underpinnings of the Abrahamic faiths is not the same as claiming that there can be no intelligent creative force behind the universe. There are many atheists like myself who ardently wish for a sane, secular society, where religions are accepted without being put on a pedestal or used as an excuse for discrimination. And you do not get to redefine us simply because a word with two meanings makes you uncomfortable. Especially considering the word "agnostic" has two meanings as well...

For thousands of years religious people have imposed their crazy beliefs and faiths on men and women everywhere...believe or die, repent or suffer for ever etc... check out religions bloody past and see how its priests,imams and clergy have controlled the thinking and lives of the multitude of humanity with their contradicting beliefs and empty faiths, dictating crazy laws and rigid so called theocratically inspired ways of life to people who had no choice but to listen and obey!.....


.....now today when the thinking man or woman shouts 'Hold on a minute!' why should i be made to believe in unprovable empty faith based systems of god belief!....am fed up being lied to or told i must have FAITH as an excuse for we dont really know or cant understand or prove etc!

Funny now, how the god believing people dont like it when its THEIR turn to be preached to...only this time the Likes of Dawkins and Darwin (and 99% of most intelligent THINKING people)dont base their beliefs on blind credulous ideas and hope...but rather, science and deep thinking and coming to terms with probably realities rather than sucking on their blind religious dummies of false hopes fairy tail dreams/realities promised by religions everywhere.

I was once very religious (a JW)...but i have now accepted, just that as Dawkins once stated..'There prob is 'NO' god'....SO the the quicker humanity stops wasting time, efort, money and energy and their empty lives/hopes on religion the quicker it can learn to live together in REAL peace.... not the hypocritical blind and false peace that religion has brought to mankind.

loved it

Funny how you rant against Keen's talk after turning it off 3 minutes into the segment; maybe you should listen to what he has to say before trying to counter argue his points.

Listening to this, I felt a little disappointed because most of this was utterly trivial to me. Much of the "religious" (or spiritual) experience Mr. Keen is talking about can be had by a child between the ages of eight and ten (give or take a few years, as long as one stays on the safe sides of both early socialization and puberty when emotionally much more pressing matters have to be dealt with). The resulting emotional experience during this relatively calm and contemplative time can be channeled easily into a lifelong passion for humanism and knowledge. If left alone, such a child will not automatically seek answers in religion (neither organized nor otherwise) but will be quite happy to explore the world on its own to discover beauty and grandeur without any fear of either the physical or the metaphysical. Good parents and a good school will give such a child all necessary emotional and intellectual tools to cope with any and all of the existential questions that it will need to address during such exploration.

Highly enjoyable provocateurs like Dawkins and Hitchens know all of this by heart and having gone through this phase successfully is their ever present intellectual subtext. To them the natural development of a self-owned metaphysical/spiritual persona is so natural that they don't even bother mentioning it, except in their constant reminder that it is a crime to disrupt the development process of the child with any sort of institutionalized religious meddling, which leads to lifelong struggle to overcome the guilt that comes with rejecting the random teachings of the particular religious group that the child happens to be born into while replacing them with an intellectual response worthy of a grownup.

Having said that, where Dawkins and Hitchens might be going wrong is to assume that more than just a small fraction of all people can actually manage to undo the harm that was done to them in those early formative years. And this, I believe, might be where Keen comes in with a desperately romanticizing call to the authorities (parents, religious teachers etc.) not to inflict this damage to begin with. But I am afraid that few members of organized religions will listen kindly to either of these gentlemen. Religions are not staying in business by being abstinent of the minds of the young and vulnerable.

So if we say unicorns don't exist, that would mean that unicorns exist because if they didn't exist there would be no point in saying that they didn't exist? I am just pointing out the absurdity of your logic.