Atheists and Agnostics holding a Freedom from Religion Confrence?

Question

I just read in the newspaper that Atheists and Agnostics will hold a conference in Wisconsin so they will be "released from religion". They say that God is the cause of all the evil...huh? Someone, please tell me what you think.

I read this in my hometown newspaper and I don't see the link online to it, but here are some links to others(associated press I believe)
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/R/RELIGION_TODAY?SITE=CAONT&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2007-10-11-12-09-15

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/ATHEIST_CONVENTION?SITE=KSPIT&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2007-10-11-15-13-25

These are the news pieces that my newspaper got it from. its pretty much the same thing.

As I've said, there were minor details left out of these ones. I do apologize if the question came out wrong as to God instead of Religion. For sake of argument, we all know what it means to an Agnostic or what Atheism is. I do, however, appreciate the responses.

Answer 1

I think we are at an age where as the Bible foretold that good will be considered evil and evil will be considered good.

Answer 2

An atheist would never say that "god is the cause of all evil" because god doesn't exist.

An Atheist however would say that the concept of god is the cause of a great deal of evil in the world.

So many people kill and judge in "god's name" without a shred of evildence of the existence of such god.

When asked about proof, they point to THE BIBLE, a book written, edited and controled by man.
When that's brought up, the response is usually "well, you need to have faith"

Faith is what you need when you want to believe something that has absolutely no facts (or even contrary facts)
Atheists just don't have that kind of energy to waste on what ifs

Answer 3

How can an Atheist say God is the cause of all evil when they do not believe the God exists in the first place?

They are holding a freedom FROM religion because religion IS the cause of all evil!

"...Without religion you would have good people doing good things and bad people doing bad things. But for good people to do bad things takes religion"

Answer 4

Here is how I see the evolution of religion.

1) Spirits — Hominids arose some 3 to 5 million years ago. Let’s say that with their development, self awareness also arose, ie, the awareness of oneself and the relationship with one’s environment. At some point, homo started wondering about cause and effect. And there were a lot of effects to consider. Plague, drought, volcanoes, disease, madness, night, day, life, death. But homo had absolutely no scientific framework in which to consider these events. They still wanted to understand these things, surely not in the same way we pursue knowledge today, but to make some sense of these things which were so frustratingly beyond their control. They accomplished this in some fashion by fantasizing a system of spirits which controlled these events. As homo became more sophisticated, so did their spirits. At some point, they anthropomorphized these spirits, which allowed them to then interact with the spirits, which is the first step toward controlling them.

2) God — At some point, homo got the idea of appointing these anthropomorphic spirits to some hierarchy. This was quite natural since all societies have hierarchies. Surely the sun spirit must have a more exalted position than the toe-fungus spirit. It was then up to some innovative homo to invent a spirit who would be the chief high mogul of spirits. Such a spirit was named god. Eventually, you can even eliminate all the other spirits since the one god could do it all. That was a defining moment in hominid evolution. That homo was a really smart one and was probably rewarded by being made the first sacrifice to god.

3) Religion — Of course, god cannot be a simple being. It must have all the complexities of homo since it was invented by and modeled after homo. We are surely well into the homo sapiens species now, probably just a few thousand years ago. By the time this is happening, however, homo is spread over most, if not all, of the earth. If homo left Africa over 100,000 years ago, there was plenty of time to disperse widely before the god thing happened. Communication was not good in those days, so a lot of different gods evolved, and each god-inventing group had a little different set of godly requirements. Naturally, if god is going to be the high mogul spirit, there can be just one of them. So you see the problem of religion here. It became the equivalent of Monday Night Football, a good healthy outlet for highly-testosteroned males trying to win the favor of over-estrogened females by bringing home the heads of disbelievers.

4) Catholic Church / Christianity — One of the religions that sprang up was invented by a group of persecuted Jews who latched onto the image of a very charismatic guy who did not interact smoothly with Roman authorities or with the Jewish establishment. I use the word image because, by the time the New Testament was written, a couple generations had already passed since Jesus was crucified. Thus the gospels had to be written by men who never met Jesus based on stories that had been told around chuck wagons for a long time. The accuracy of the New Testament, however, is a whole other issue.

5) Me — So here we are two thousand years later, well-schooled in the doctrine of this latest stage in the evolution of the spirit world. I look at how all this happened over the eons, or at least how I believe it happen, and it gives me some comfort to understand whence I came. But I want more than comfort. My construct uses a modified scientific method. You seek a plausible hypothesis which will allow you to make future decisions based on the veracity of that hypothesis. What’s missing here, of course, is the testing of the hypothesis. I don’t know whether my hypothesis (the evolution of religion above) is untestable or I’m just too lazy to do it. In any event, my hypothesis is consistent with a lifetime of observations which I am unable to quantify. My conclusion is quite simple. I understand plague, drought, volcanoes, disease, madness, night, day, life, and death. And the parts that I don’t fully understand, I realize are understandable, either by someone else with fuller knowledge or at a latter date with fuller knowledge. I don’t need to depend on spirits to understand my environment.

And I don’t need god.

Answer 5

Which "god"? You seem to have a common delusion that belief in "god" is a peaceful pursuit. Name a single conflict going on the world today (or ever, for that matter) that isn't a result of religious incompatibility and/or intolerance.

I don't need to be "released from religion" because I escaped a long time ago.

Answer 6

God is not the cause of evil, but a lot of harm comes from people fighting over what He wants. If God wants things run a certain way, He needs to let us know what these details are, otherwise we need to assume that any attempt to reach him is acceptable, and stop bashing each other over those attempts.

Answer 7

They have a right to their opinion.
I say God is the source of all good.

Why do they need to hold a conference to be "released from religion"? I thought they already were released.

How can atheists be released from something they don't believe in? That makes NO SENSE!

How can they say God is the cause of all evil when they don't believe in Him? Again.....nonsense!

I want to see a link to this, please.

Answer 8

That is great news. Now we'll enjoy freedom from atheists and agnostics for the weekend.
If somebody sneezes at a conference as theirs, does someone say bless you, or God bless you.

Answer 9

I think it is a great ideal, but I would not try wisconsin, (noticed the sin) I would say head on over to a few of the other places where they deny God, China, Cuba, Russia. they would fit in much better there.

Answer 10

Link?

No atheist would say that "God is the cause of all evil". I think you're lying, and that serves your religion quite well, doesn't it?

EDIT : Nowhere does it say "GOD" is the cause of evil, it says religion is, and anyone who disagrees with that comment isn't worthy of debating the topic to begin with.

Answer 11

If they don't believe in God... how can they say God was the cause of all evil?

Wouldn't that be man that would be the cause?