I dive deeper...

All my life I have been a skeptic, even thought I didn't know it until a few months ago. I used to despise my peers because I just couldn't understand what I considered at the time to be immature behavior. I was extremely critical of any claims I could not immediately find compelling evidence for. Things my friends would say, and even things my parents would say would make me squint with an eye of skepticism. Now that I know how to describe my personality, being that I have found a community of individuals like myself, I am a much happier person. I truly do enjoy being myself around others like me. My skepticism set me so far apart from most people I knew growing up in Utah that I began to have a great hatred for almost everyone. I could never understand why I hated other people so much. I was afraid to question things like the dominant religion here and so I simply hated them for it. Today I have a more positive outlook on my life. I actually find the things people believe quite interesting. It fascinates me to watch hundreds of minds blindly following one another. They are so used to being surrounded by equally deluded people that they freely make unsubstantiated claims about whatever they choose.

As I have journeyed to become a regular name in the world of skepticism I hadn't yet found that thing that so many skeptics talk about. That one thing that leaves a skeptic in awe at human stupidity. Until today when I found this.....http://media.causes.com/564010. After watching this video I just chuckled; it was filled with so many logical fallacies and anecdotal stories that I was sure nobody gave this the time of day. Then I read the comments underneath the video. I just about passed out. I got my first glimpse into just how deluded some people truly are. I never would have imagined. Of course I had to enter in my skeptical bit and shoot down a few of the commenters using my weapons of logic, but I don't think anything could slow down that train of stupid. Here is my one long comment that I left in the hopes that I might at least convey why someone might be an Atheist and share some perspective.

I am 3 seconds in and have already spotted a logical fallacy. The existence of God is not a scientific claim. You cannot prove a negative; you cannot prove that God doesn't exist. It's like saying to someone, "prove to me invisible flying unicorns DON'T exist." The onus is on the individual making the claim to provide compelling evidence, only then can scientific tests be formulated to try and disprove the theory. Only when a theory has withstood an order of magnitude of tests and never turned out negative can it be called a viable scientific fact. Even then a scientific fact is still fundamentally a theory because further compelling evidence would change it yet again.

The existence of God is a belief system and operates outside of the realm of science. Religion and Science are mutually exclusive so this so called professor has an atheist extremist, which is no different than a religious extremist. Both are unwilling to modify what they think in any way.

I take the position that this entire story is made up. The whole thing is an anecdote designed to invoke some kind of emotional response, not any logical one. What professor stands up in front of a classroom of students, especially college students, and shouts "YOU FOOL!" like an evil sorcerer? It's amazing how religious activists make those who don't agree with them appear to be evil. It happens in much the same way Atheist extremists make religious people look evil. The fact of the matter is, the entire video is anecdotal and for that reason cannot be taken seriously. All it would have taken was the professor's name, the name of the university, the name of the student, anything to show that it actually happend; that would have made it at least have a small root in fact. As it stands I lean toward it all being made up.

Lastly, lets take as a premise that this did actually happen. Discounting the anecdotal factor lets pretend that this evil Atheist stood up and did this in front of an entire class, for years, without ever being forced to step down for introducing religious elements into a classroom and breaking the law. His argument that God need only stop the chalk from falling and/or breaking to prove his existence is the silliest argument I've ever heard. That doesn't prove or disprove anything. Furthermore, I refuse to believe that a classroom of supposed "true believers" all sat their intimidated. Do you have any idea how high and mighty even college students can get in the classroom? An entire class doesn't just get walked on. In addition to that, have you ever met an extremist of anything that was swayed by one small thing, let alone compelling evidence? The kid believes God made the chalk slip, all the Atheist would do if he really existed is pick it back up and drop it again, because chalk dropping and not breaking is not proof of God to any Atheist, and it doesn't disprove God to any theist. Period. Both parties are going to continue believing what they want to believe and no amount of evidence is going to sway them. Not chalk falling, not the sky falling, not even a booming voice echoing from the clouds above will change either person's views. That is the definition of an extremist.

I try to be as fair as possible when I write things like this, but here I have to insert a little of my bias as an Atheist. A true Atheist does not try to disprove God. That is a logical fallacy and a task that cannot be done. As I stated earlier, prove that invisible unicorns don't exist. You can't. A true Atheist is basically just a scientist or scientifically minded person that operates on logic. A true Atheist does not disbelieve in God because everyone else seems to. They do not try to prove a point, only a method of analyzing the world around him/her. The scientific method is simply the way we identify anomalies or mysteries that we've yet to understand, create a theory or theories that could potentially explain said anomaly, and then develop a series of tests to validate the theory. From an Atheist's standpoint God is a human concept that is invoked whenever we don't understand something. Because the idea of God is that this being is so powerful we cannot even comprehend or understand it, it is outside the realm of science. No theory for the existence of God can be created and tested. It is purely a faith system.

I only get confrontational when theists make religious claims that fall within the realm of science and completely contradict a scientific claim with literally no compelling evidence for their stance. As far as simply believing in God goes. Go right ahead! There will always be things we do not understand. Every solved question creates more questions; that is why science is so fascinating to me. However, if you chose to believe that God created the universe, etc, then I see nothing wrong with it. It's when we get up in arms as a people and argue about things like this that we become a savage race. Don't have holy wars, don't preach to those who disagree with you, just live and let live. If you believe in an afterlife then take solace in the fact that your faith will take you where you want to go and those other people you deem closed-minded will get what you think they deserve, with or without you attacking them. If you don't believe in an afterlife then take solace in the fact that those with blind faith will waste their lives worshiping a god you don't believe in and then die. Ultimately a dialog between two opposing factions of this kind is a waste of time. Faith and science are two completely separate entities. They do not need to be at odds.

Lastly, I will end my long speech with a simple request to the video author to provide some compelling information in future productions. Anecdotal evidence doesn't do anything but get people riled up (perhaps that was the intent?), and spark a controversy. Give us something to look at, something we can research so that true believers and skeptics alike can have an intelligent debate about facts instead of unintelligent debates about who's going to hell and who's wasting their lives away.

You really do have to look upon this production in awe as my well thought out paragraph-sized comment is completely ignored. A few other Atheists took the time to post in there. Unfortunately their comments were just as ignorant and illiterate as the rest of the comments. I made a few spelling errors, but for the most part I took a decent amount of time to share my point of view and point out some flaws in the video.

As you scroll through the comments in an attempt to find my wall of text (FaceBook decided to get rid of my nice formatting and cram it all together) you will sift through a sea of people that make no attempt to acknowledge what I said, let alone be affected by it. The sad part for me is that I'm fairly sure it is all because nobody bothered to read something so long. It is no wonder our society is largely lacking in intelligence. Everyone seems to have an opinion, but almost no one seems to have anything substantial to back it up. It truly is an amazing thing to see.