I myself am an Atheist, and therefore in my opinion believe miracles are impossible as all miracles are by, definition impossible if they claim to be the action of a deity. There are four different definitions of miracles, A ‘radical change for the better’ in a person, an ordinary event which has Religious significance for the believer, A remarkable or unusual event which has been directly caused by God but does not go against or break the laws of nature and The ‘laws of nature’ are being broken by God, which is the definition David Hume (18th Century) uses. This more traditional understanding of a miracle is the understanding of classical Theism, namely that God is omnipotent and omnibenevolent, and therefore he does intervene on occasion to perform miracles. As an atheist, David Hume refutes miracles, he does not believe that they can happen, although he has one of the most famous definitions of the traditional understanding of a miracle. Hume
Often the term "myth" is being misused to mean a supposedly dead religion and its teachings along the lines of saying that Zeus is a myth and Jesus is not, when Zeus is just as real to his worshippers as Jesus is to his. It has become a way to say, your religion is less valid than mine. I guess it's the way someone looks at religion in order to say all religions are a myth. No, I don't think all religions are a myth, because one has to be the truth. I'm catholic, and I really hope mine is true religion.
Hitchens is very anti-religious and is a well-known atheist. This is something that they differ in, I believe that Emerson doesn’t think there is a higher power but isn’t sure what, while Hitchens is anti-religious completely. They did differ in their views on charity for the most part, since Hitchens still believed there should be some, but it isn’t the duty of himself, it was the duty of the government. Emerson for the most part would have like Christopher Hitchens for his views on religion and consistency alone. Hitchens tended to be inconsistent on his view of war And the Bush administration making him a person who changed his mind based on what he though was right, which is what Emerson thought was
They only believe what they see. Their belief is not sustained by literature theory as from the Bible. “The scriptural geologists were not opposed to geological facts, but to the old-earth interpretations of those facts. And they argued that old-earth interpretations were based on anti-biblical philosophical assumptions, and in this they were correct. Buffon was a deist or secret atheist,12 as were Lamarck13 and Hutton.14 Laplace was an open atheist.15Werner,16 Cuvier,17 Smith18 and Lyell19 were probably deists or some sort of vague theists.
In the quote below Rand explains why she rejects religion outright, and she believes man himself deserves the attention: Just as religion has preempted the field of ethics, turning morality against man, so it has usurped the highest moral concepts of our language, placing them outside this earth and beyond man’s reach. “Exaltation” is usually taken to mean an emotional state evoked by contemplating the supernatural. “Worship” means the emotional experience of loyalty and dedication to something higher than man… But such concepts do name actual emotions, even though no supernatural dimension exists; and these emotions are experienced as uplifting or ennobling, without the self-abasement required by religious definitions.
McCloskey contended against the three mystical verifications, which are the cosmological argument, the argument from design and the teleological argument. He called attention to the presence of evil on the planet that God made. He likewise called attention to that it is irrational to live by trust or faith. As indicated by McCloskey, confirmations do not essentially assume a fundamental part in the conviction of God. Page 62 of the article expresses that "most theists do not come to have faith in God as a premise for religious conviction, however come to religion as a consequence of different reasons and variables."
The Chrysalids: Fear Waknuk is a society of the future with a setting from the past. It is one of the few places, which have survived Tribulation but it is a primitive society, where people reject change and difference in belief that that is how the ‘Old People’ lived. Waknuk is dominated by a religion, which is obsessed by perfection. “And any creature that shall seem to be human…it is a Blasphemy against the true image of God, and hateful in the sight of God.” They believe that they are the “True image of God”, and anyone or anything different is a ‘Mutant’. That is what they fear, ‘mutants’.
This seems almost opposite of what Christianity teaches today. According to predetermination, if Hitler’s soul was predetermined to be saved, none of his horrible actions would have any effect on his fate. This seems ridiculous, and I would have expected Augustine, a true skeptic, to see the holes in this belief. Despite this gaping hole in logic, I find myself agreeing with most of Augustine’s ideas, especially that of obsession and addiction. Often in the modern world, it is obsession and addiction that lead to the most horrible evils.
Meaning that since good and evil are opposites, since god created good he would have to have created evil. Another response to this is that some theist think something’s cant exist unless their opposites exist so that being thought leads them to believe that since there is good there must be evil. Which I don’t think is true because some things exist because their opposites don’t like having peace. You cant have peace if there’s war. Since peace and war are opposites and one can only exist when the other doesn’t makes some theist response not very accurate.
Relativism relies on personal and cultural norms to determine what is right and wrong. This is not a valid source of morality because what is socially acceptable is not always what is right. There was a point in time when slavery was socially acceptable but that does not make it right. Furthermore, the secular humanist is a consequentialist, which means ethical choices are judged by their results (http://www.secularhumanism.org). The result of this moral compass is an unstable platform for truth; as a result secular humanism supports gay marriage, abortion, and euthanasia.