That pretty much sums it up...

[BikerDude]

http://www.lfpress.com/2014/09/26/ripley-how-my-mind-has-changed

Interview with the guy.

Reverend Bob Ripley was a minister for over 30 years, with 15 of those years as Senior Minister at Metropolitan United Church, one of the most prominent churches of the United Church of Canada. He wrote a syndicated column discussing religion for 25 years.

In his September 26, 2014 column on LFPress, he announced to the world that he no longer believed in God. He's releasing a book which chronicles his journey, titled "Life Beyond Belief: a Preacher's Deconversion."

Bob joins Seth Andrews for a candid discussion about his life, his beliefs, his doubts, and the transition from Christian minister to skeptic/humanist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imbVOJnwKWY&index=8&list=UUeYP27qLtfUMY1b1Cyy3WdQ

[DigitalBuddha]

I'm cool with Atheism, I see it as a very valuable tool in questioning the origins of life, the universe and everything. But, it's a tool, not an end in itself IMHDO. There is other thinking obviously on the subject, some of which argues down this vain......

The Atheist creation model;

In the beginning there was nothing, absolutely nothing; and then it exploded!

Contrary to popular thinking; many great thinkers in our society were not as "Atheist" as people claimed. Case in point; the great Carl Sagan...



That's just like my Agnostic opinion, man.

[BikerDude]

I'd recommend "The Demon Haunted World" by Carl Sagan.
Enlisting Carl Sagan as a defense of faith is a dead end IMO.

?I am not an atheist. An atheist is someone who has compelling evidence that there is no Judeo-Christian-Islamic God. I am not that wise, but neither do I consider there to be anything approaching adequate evidence for such a god. Why are you in such a hurry to make up your mind? Why not simply wait until there is compelling evidence??

It's just a matter of how the question is framed.
Remember an Atheist doesn't say God does not exist. An atheist says "show me the evidence" and "until you do I don't believe". I know a lot of atheists and I don't know any that would say they "became" and atheist. All just realized that they had been atheists all along while continuing to try and prop up things that could better be characterized as wishful thinking rather than beliefs.
Put together with his other writings, it's clear he was not saying that lack of belief in a god was stupid.  He was saying that claiming to know there is no god is stupid, because we don't know or understand enough about the universe to make such an assertion.  As a scientist he would never make such an assertion.

As Sagan's character in Contact said.

The question [Do you believe in God?] has a peculiar structure. If I say no, do I mean I'm convinced God doesn't exist, or do I mean I'm not convinced he does exist? Those are two very different questions.

This was typical of Sagan's views. And IMO he was incorrectly defining what atheism is.

An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence. Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we do now to be sure that no such God exists. To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed.[66]

Religions confidently states that there positively is a God and even that they know his will.
If a person does not believe in God he is an atheist. Cut and dry. And he is not necessarily saying there is no God. Almost all say,  because of the lack of evidence and the transparent self interest of organized religions and the nearly endless list of ways that religious beliefs about the universe have been proven wrong over and over and over through the years that they doubt that there is any God. Atheists are saying religion is stupid and faith is stupid in the exact sense that Carl Sagan said so. If religions and the religious relegated their nonsense to appropriate levels of doubt then nobody would have a problem. But of course the religious will tell you that birth control is wrong because God says so for instance. And of course a lot of far worse absolutes. They do a terrible disservice to a society attempting to manage it's self in a sensible way. The certainty becomes a giant anchor that modern society is forced to drag along like something from an iron age myth. What a coincidence.
Dictionary definition of atheism is...

atheist
[ey-thee-ist]
noun
1.
a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.

Faith begins with a default belief and a determination to maintain it in the absence of proof to the contrary.
It is belief without evidence. It is Faith. Sagan rejected this.
There are a lot of quotes by Sagan himself that don't exactly make him a defender of faith to say the least.

You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe.
-- Carl Sagan

Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science? ... No other human institution comes close.
-- Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World, page 30

It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
-- Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

The evidence, so far at least and laws of Nature aside, does not require a Designer. Maybe there is one hiding, maddeningly unwilling to be revealed.
-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
-- Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World, page 429

If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate.
-- Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World, page 30

The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there's no place for it in the endeavor of science. We do not know beforehand where fundamental insights will arise from about our mysterious and lovely solar system. The history of our study of our solar system shows us clearly that accepted and conventional ideas are often wrong, and that fundamental insights can arise from the most unexpected sources.
-- Carl Sagan, Cosmos television series, quoted from The Carl Sagan Electronic Monument

And many many more...

[DigitalBuddha]

Funny you would mention The Demon Haunted World, I'm reading that now...well, listening to the book on CD. It's a great read!

[BikerDude]

Funny you would mention The Demon Haunted World, I'm reading that now...well, listening to the book on CD. It's a great read!

It's very good.
I'd also recommend Daniel Dennette.
Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Spell-Religion-Natural-Phenomenon/dp/0143038338

Dennett surveys various theories of religion:

From Scott Atran - Religion is (1) a community's costly and hard-to-fake commitment (2) to a counterfactual and counterintuitive world of supernatural agent(s) (3) who master peoples' existential anxieties, such as death and deception (4) leading to ritualistic and rhythmic co-ordination of 1, 2, and 3; such as communion. This tendency to invent a supernatural agency is an evolutionary by-product - which involves exaggerated use of everyday cognitive processes - to produce unreal worlds that easily attract attention, are readily memorable, and are subject to cultural transmission, selection, and survival. Add a few hopeful solutions to the problems involving the tragedies of life, and you get religion.

[BikerDude]

Don't get me start with quoting.

The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth ? that error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it has been cured of one error, is usually another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.
? H L Mencken, thanks to Laird Wilcox, editor, ?The Degeneration of Belief?

For it is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true; it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false.
? H L Mencken (attributed: source unknown)

The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous. Is it, perchance, cherished by persons who should know better? Then their folly should be brought out into the light of day, and exhibited there in all its hideousness until they flee from it, hiding their heads in shame.
     True enough, even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights. He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he pleases, provided only he does not try to inflict them upon other men by force. He has a right to argue for them as eloquently as he can, in season and out of season. He has a right to teach them to his children. But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them. He has no right to demand that they be treated as sacred. He has no right to preach them without challenge. Did Darrow, in the course of his dreadful bombardment of Bryan, drop a few shells, incidentally, into measurably cleaner camps? Then let the garrisons of those camps look to their defenses. They are free to shoot back. But they can?t disarm their enemy.
? H L Mencken, ?Aftermath? (coverage of the Scopes Trial) The Baltimore Evening Sun, (September 14, 1925)

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant.
? H L Mencken, Minority Report (1956), quoted from James A Haught, editor, 2000 Years of Disbelief

The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
? H L Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

The priest, realistically considered, is the most immoral of men, for he is always willing to sacrifice every other sort of good to the one good of his arcanum ? the vague body of mysteries that he calls the truth.
? H L Mencken, Treatise on the Gods (1949)

Deep within the heart of every evangelist lies the wreck of a car salesman.
? H L Mencken, quoted by atheist spokesman Ron Barrier in describing the Christian antiatheist author Ray Comfort

The curse of man, and cause of nearly all of his woes, is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible.
? H L Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949), quoted from James A Haught, editor, 2000 Years of Disbelief

[amogorilla77]

In my opinion the one about the priest and evangelist is a little targeting. All people who are arrogant and closed minded and consider themselves without fault are like that, also in my opinion the curse of man is not in believing the incredible. The curse of man is his abuse of knowledge in the pursuit of his own selfish desires whether they be in the belief of the incredible or the mundane grasp of self comfort in all it's forms. If moral certainty is the equivalent of closed mindedness and intolerance then  I would agree about it being the sign of cultural inferiority, but I don't think that it is. I believe moral certainty is the camouflage of choice for the closed minded and intolerant. I believe the natural tendency of the ignorant is to follow the being who is the most self assured because they figure that person has something they lack.
In the land of the quantum the way this dude saw things really brought the universe down man. However I do believe he had some valid points about the dis function of the world, and if one is open and can see there are things to work on than a change for the better can be had. Which means all things balance out in the end.

[BikerDude]

In my opinion the one about the priest and evangelist is a little targeting.

What's your point?
I'd say Mencken's feeling about that were pretty well stated by...

The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous. Is it, perchance, cherished by persons who should know better? Then their folly should be brought out into the light of day, and exhibited there in all its hideousness until they flee from it, hiding their heads in shame.
     True enough, even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights. He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he pleases, provided only he does not try to inflict them upon other men by force. He has a right to argue for them as eloquently as he can, in season and out of season. He has a right to teach them to his children. But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them. He has no right to demand that they be treated as sacred. He has no right to preach them without challenge. Did Darrow, in the course of his dreadful bombardment of Bryan, drop a few shells, incidentally, into measurably cleaner camps? Then let the garrisons of those camps look to their defenses. They are free to shoot back. But they can?t disarm their enemy.
? H L Mencken, ?Aftermath? (coverage of the Scopes Trial) The Baltimore Evening Sun, (September 14, 1925)

Which I happen to agree with.
As "undude" as the may or may not be.

I guess your meaning is that the critisicm goes beyond priests to more generally cover the "close minded".  I'm not sure he was specifically addressing close mindedness so much as the license afforded the "holy" by their faith.
As far as the "Used car salesman" crack goes...... well it's a classic.

[Masked Dude]

The problem is no one asks us atheists, but they love to tell us what we think. Atheism is just the denial of deities. Nothing more.

We don't have creation stories, agendas, or religious movements.

Atheism isn't the only thing about us. It's just one piece of a puzzle.

[jgiffin]

We don't have creation stories, agendas, or religious movements.

We have pizza, dude, pizza and beer.

And, yay, though it is good.

[Hominid]

The problem is no one asks us atheists, but they love to tell us what we think. Atheism is just the denial of deities. Nothing more.

We don't have creation stories, agendas, or religious movements.

Atheism isn't the only thing about us. It's just one piece of a puzzle.

I like to wait till the dust settles a bit on these discussions, because there's usually lots of strong opinions expressed - which I'm guilty of - but this quote says it all.  Thanks Masked Dude.  Even though I don't officially call myself an atheist (because of the baggage associated  with it), I align with MD's summation.

[BikerDude]

The problem is no one asks us atheists, but they love to tell us what we think. Atheism is just the denial of deities. Nothing more.

We don't have creation stories, agendas, or religious movements.

Atheism isn't the only thing about us. It's just one piece of a puzzle.

I like to wait till the dust settles a bit on these discussions, because there's usually lots of strong opinions expressed - which I'm guilty of - but this quote says it all.  Thanks Masked Dude.  Even though I don't officially call myself an atheist (because of the baggage associated  with it), I align with MD's summation.

Here here.
I really am trying not to take the bait.
I swear.

Well in this instance I started it.
But in general.

VAGINA?

[Masked Dude]

We don't have creation stories, agendas, or religious movements.

We have pizza, dude, pizza and beer.

And, yay, though it is good.

Oh hell yeah...

But, yeah, vagina.

[Masked Dude]

The problem is no one asks us atheists, but they love to tell us what we think. Atheism is just the denial of deities. Nothing more.

We don't have creation stories, agendas, or religious movements.

Atheism isn't the only thing about us. It's just one piece of a puzzle.

I like to wait till the dust settles a bit on these discussions, because there's usually lots of strong opinions expressed - which I'm guilty of - but this quote says it all.  Thanks Masked Dude.  Even though I don't officially call myself an atheist (because of the baggage associated  with it), I align with MD's summation.

I was trying to press the Like button when I realized this forum doesn't have it.

[amogorilla77]

I don't think that is entirely true about people loving to tell atheist what atheist think. I will give you their are some fanatics out there who do regurgitate things true and false about atheist, but lets face facts Atheist love to tell people what they think all on their own. I remember when no one bothered with atheist at all, it was something that just was like every other religion, but then atheist started taking everybody to court and now here we are.