Psychology looks at atheism and theism. Also, atheism is tenuous/non-existent/rare ..

I am an athiest. I exist.
There you go, a second data point to support that atheism exists.

Thats fine, I won't consider you a christian, since your testimony should be held to the same standard.

LOL, what do you mean christian martyrs (by this I take it you mean people who died for their beliefs?)?
That in no way supports your assertion that you are a christian. In fact, who is to say they were christisans? For all we know, they were deluded Hindus led astray by shiva, to destroy them......

How do "martyrs" validate anything. Heck, you even provide a quote that says exactly that marytrdome doesn't equate correctness. I have no doubt that there have been athiests that have been persecuted and killed for their beliefs in the past, probably in the name of various churches as well. However, personal belief has always been a statment from personal authority, and can't be otherwise. Your professed belief that your are a christian has to be taken at face value, because you claim it to be what you believe. Since we are not psychic, and I like to assume people aren't lying, I am willing to take your word on it. Now, that doesn't mean I believe in a god, but I am willing to believe that you do. I have the capacity to understand a viewpoint other than my own. I think you may lack this ability. If you wish to call me a liar, fine. If you wish to believe that atheism doesn't exist, fine. However, that doesn't change my personal belief that no dieties exist, and that we all wind up as nothing more than decomposing chemical soups when we die. My beliefs do not depend on your acceptance or understanding.This message has been edited by Darwin Storm, 09-01-2004 10:30 PM

BTW, I can play the quote game as well...

How does dying support anything?

If you read the article you posted from the Mayo clinic, you would realize that it says absolutley nothing about athiests. It never mentions them. It is quite possible there were no athiests in either group. For you to make any such assertion, you would have to do a group with just athiests and see how the did compartively. Heck, perhaps they had a better success rate then both groups, since they aren't burdened by self delusion.

Ken, go back and read the article. It talks about active participation in a spirtual life versus not. Most likley, both groups were christians, though there may have been other denominations. If there were athiests, they probably were in both groups, but my guess is that their numbers were either statistically insignifigant (since athiests only account for about 7 percent or less of the population, depending on survey), or were eliminated from either group, since they didn't fit criteria. however, the Mayo clinic doesn't address ANY of those issues, and never mention athiests, so the most logical conlcusion is that data set doesn't. Iapply to athiests (since athiests were neither seperatley accounted for, nor was there a control groups of only athiests). BTW, I do find it interstesting that the difference were less than 2 percent and 3 percent in the major samplings. It would be interesting to see if those percentages fall withing normal statical error ranges.

Oh, my kidney's hurt from laughing. Ohhhhhh .

Actually, as an atheist, I don't reject the christian god any more than I reject Zues, Shiva, or ancestral spirit, I just don't believe that any form of diety or supernatural exists. Kinda hard to reject something which you don't believe in. You simpley lack the desire or ability to accept the existance of atheism or athiests. That is fine, whatever gets you through the day.

Ken, your posts were anecdotal evidence from christian apologetic websites. Besides, it matters not if some athiests waver in their convictions any more than it does when christians, or anyone else does. Your second arguement that the death of someone verifies their beliefs, or your, is absurd. By your reasoning, I can easily say that there is no such thing as a christian, since they can't prove that the believe in christ, no matter what they profess otherwise. What you are trying to do is falsey equating belief in an idea as proof or support of an idea. For example, you can believe in the christ as the son of god. It is an axiomatic assumption that you do. Since personal beliefs and thoughts are mental contructs, they can't be quantified or proved. You either believe in something or you don't. However, once you try to assert that your belief is the truth, or proper interpreation of reality, is is incumbent on you to then support your beliefs with evidence. As you see, there is a huge difference between believing something and attempting to verify to others that the belief is true. You arn't verifying your acceptance of the belief, that is given, you are verifying the reasons for that belief to try and persuade others.
SEcondly, you are making an enourmous fallacy in your discussion of skepticism. For example, you are making an ENORMOUS assumption that belief in god is a default belief that applies to everyone. That is simply not the case. Secondly, you assume that such belief is validly supported, not because of evidential support for the existance of god, but because people have died for their supposed and unconfimred beliefs (By your own sophistry, their death is NOT proof of their belief, since how do we know they died for their faith when that would be taking their word as an infallible authority. You have already insisted no one has that ability, even in regards to their own thoughts.)
Skepticism, meanwhile, simply means that we judge any idea or concept based on the evidence. The default position, without any evidence, is to not believe in it. In regards To the claim that a diety exists, without any evidence the default is not to believe in the existance of such a being. In the case of people claiming to believe in athiesm, christianity, etc., the existance of people who claim to hold these beliefs is evidence that such people exist. It doesn't say anything about the validity of their beliefs to the skeptic, it just says that these people hold these beliefs.For example, you can claim to be a christian. By your aruguement, you can never assert that you, or anyone is a christian, since any proclamations are arguement from authority, which are invalid. However, since there is no way to verify your thought process, there is always the assumption that what you proclaim to be your beliefs are in fact your beliefs. Now, you could be lying, and perhaps are a hindu, muslim, atheist, etc, we don't know . Now, once we accept that you christian because you say so, we are able to discuss if your beliefs are supported by evidence or not. However, the existance of your beliefs do not depend on their validity or on evidence supporting such beliefs as true or false.

Ken, I addressed the Mayo study earlier. Having read the article, I can state is says absolutley nothing about athiests. If you go back several pages, you will find the post where I specifically deal with your assumptions, which were not supported by the article. I suggest you go reread the article.

the problem, is the apologetic websites didnt provide a study, the provided an opinionated essay. Not the same thing.

I know what you said. My point was that you have absolutely no clue if that is true or not. Since atheism and atheists had no control group, and were not distinguished in the study as such, you can't make an statement about atheists using that study. You are simply making an unsupported statement, ie making it up... WTF? What does self-absorbtion, regardless if your assumption is correct or not, have to do with the existance of athiests? (answer: it doesn't. Its one of those pesky logical fallacies.) Of course, I could say religious worship isa waste of time praising a non-existance entity in hope of salvation. self-absorbe and self serving????Of course, my favorite part of this diatribe of yours is the most telling: The fact that individuals, (and trust me this applies to christians as well, actually applies to all but the most dogmatic and mindless followers) question their beliefs and reasses them based on new experience is NORMAL! Almost every christian friend I know has had moments of doubt in their belief. I hardly take that to mean that they have never held the belief in christianity, but only that they have had moments of doubt. If I were to take your illogical tactic, I would have to assume that not only are they not christians, but that I should doubt that the chritian faith exists at all. It doesn't logically follow from one to the other.This message has been edited by Darwin Storm, 09-02-2004 10:27 PM

Another logical fallacy. If you say your are an athiest (or a christian), it is consistant and logical for society to assume that you are an atheist (or christian). It would be logically invalid to assume that your statement of belief proves that belief is correct. I know you can see the difference. Game over.