Do We Need Faith?

[It Aint Necessarily So]

How can that be irrelevant. There are only two possibilities; he is either remarkably stupid or he lied. It seems improbable he is that stupid.

Even if he lied, Fauci's is still an expert in virology, immunology, and epidemiology, and a safer source of information than those attacking him.

And there are other possibilities. I notice you declined to answer from whom you took Covid advice from if not medical experts. If you got vaccinated, you either were able to interpret the data yourself or you trusted experts. If you refused the vaccine, you took an unnecessary risk.

Common sense says this disease affected only a small percentage of the population. Common sense says this was just Swine Flu 2.0 on steroids.

Wrong on both counts. You seem to be equating affecting with killing. The virus has decimated individuals and families in many ways, and potentially more to come. Survivors of Covid often suffer from long Covid, some unable to work, some barely able to walk, many requiring months of rehab. Many also have permanent organ damage, especially in the brain, lungs, heart, and kidneys:

LUNG
New study into long-term impacts of lung damage after COVID-19 – UKRI
Study examines the effect of long COVID on lung health (medicalnewstoday.com)

KIDNEY
Kidney Damage Another Consequence of 'Long COVID' (webmd.com)
Long-term effects of Covid-19 on the kidney | QJM: An International Journal of Medicine | Oxford Academic (oup.com)

HEART
The COVID Heart—One Year After SARS-CoV-2 Infection, Patients Have an Array of Increased Cardiovascular Risks | Cardiology | JAMA | JAMA Network
COVID-19 (coronavirus): Long-term effects - Mayo Clinic

BRAIN
Severe COVID-19 can trigger drop in IQ similar to aging 20 years, study shows - UPI.com
Study Finds COVID-19 May Lower Intelligence (webmd.com)

Many have left widows and orphans behind. Many have left their families in economic ruin.

And then there are the long-term sequelae of viral infections that make a permanent home in a human body. AIDS is due to HIV doing that, and follows in years. Cervical cancer comes years after HPV. Cirrhosis and liver cancer are complications of HCV. Shingles is a visit from your old chicken pox (VZV) infection waiting decades to reactivate. It's beginning to look like Alzheimer's is long HSV (herpes) and MS is long EBV (mono). Do you want to know what coronavirus will do in ten or thirty years? Me. too, but I'd rather not learn from personal experience. Being vaccinated reduces the frequency of infection and the viral load if one contracts it while vaccinated (breakthrough). Hopefully, that results in less tissue damage now and less virus living forever in your tissues (Covid lives in association with blood vessels, so everywhere.)

One might also wonder what the long-term sequelae of vaccines has been. None so far. The swine flu vaccine in the 70's caused Guillan-Barre in some, a devastating paralytic illness, but did so in most cases within two months and in every case within two. I know one person who has had severe. incapacitating, and long-lasting reaction, and one who was also incapacitated, but recovered in several weeks. Both had their reactions within a week of inoculation.

it will be years before we know the full extent of the damage to children, pregnant women

Yep, and not just them. Everybody that has had the virus. See above. We are waiting for the long-term sequelae of infection, which we know is a thing, not vaccination, which is not known ever to produce very late effects.

No. I've rebutted this many times (in a virtually every post) but people aren't trying to make sense of what I say.

No, you've never rebutted, "The bottom line is that we can know from experience that empiricism is not only a reliable method for determining what's true about the world, but that it's the only means to do that." Do you know what a rebuttal is? it isn't mere dissent. It's a specific type of dissent, and the only one worth considering. A rebuttal is a contradictory conclusion and its supporting evidence and argument. The conclusion of a rebuttal and the conclusion of the argument rebutted must be of the form such that if one is correct, the other cannot be.

Let me illustrate for you. I claim that John is a single man. You produce his marriage certificate. Well, if that marriage certificate is valid, the claim is successfully rebutted, and the rebuttal is unassailable. But perhaps there is evidence that the certificate is no longer valid, perhaps a divorce decree, and the rebuttal is successfully rebutted itself. When they come to the point that no further rebuttal is forthcoming, the issue is settled in favor of the last plausible, unrebutted conclusion. But producing other kinds of documents is not rebuttal. Producing a letter from John's youth that he will never get married is not a rebuttal to the claim that he is married, because it is possible that both claims are correct at the same time - he did write that, and he did get married anyway.

Now let's look at what a successful rebuttal of my comment looks like, and why nothing you have written meets that criterion. What could you possibly write that if true, makes me wrong? A falsifying counterexample - nothing else. Give me an example of something known to be true about the world not discovered through experience. The only alternative are beliefs held by faith - insufficiently justified belief. My position is that nothing believed in that manner can be called correct, or knowledge about reality. You have not rebutted that because you cannot. Why? Because it is correct. Correct statements cannot be successfully rebutted, since one would need to show that something correct is incorrect - an impossibility.

That's the power of dialectic. When it ends, the matter is resolved in favor of the last compelling, unrebutted conclusion. It ended for us when you didn't successfully rebut my claim according to the definition of rebuttal provided here.

 

[PureX]

But you were one making comparison between science and religion, and stating that it is okay to think of science as another religion.

Religions are practiced. So is science. And both can become the way an individual chooses to relate himself to the world.

The thing is people don't worship science, because there are no gods in sciences, there are no disciples, prophets, messengers, messiahs, spirits, angels, demons or gods, there are no scriptures.

All of those are character representations of presumed truths. They are part of the "story" of our existence. Just as the chain of physical causes and events are likewise part of the "story" of our existence. And people do "worship" those stories as they represent the truth to them.

Now Social Sciences may deal with ethics and morality, but most of branches of Social Sciences (eg branches like psychology, sociology, ethics and law, economics, political sciences, etc) don't have to follow the requirements of new hypotheses or existing theories - like being "Falsifiable" or the "Scientific Method".

No aspect of science deals with ethics. Ethics are expressly left out and avoided so as to avoid "bias" in the result. Observing how people act in relation to their stated or presumed ethical imperatives is not in itself ethical nor unethical. And it expressly forbids applying ethical values to the observed conclusions.

For that reasons, many of the fields in Social Science, are referred to as "soft science".

Science is a process engaged in for the study of physical interaction. Ethics and morality are metaphysical concerns that science cannot broach.

Anyway, Natural Sciences & Physical Sciences don’t deal with ethics and morality, because it is neither “natural”, nor “physical”. What I mean by this, ethics and morality are man-made constructs, they don’t exist in “nature”.

Ethics and morality (existential value assessments) are metaphysical concerns. Which is why they are beyond the reach of science. And that's fine. But they still need to be addressed and explored and advanced. Which is what art, religion, and philosophy are for.

 

[cladking]

No, you stated, "if you believe in science you start trusting experts which is unreasonable," Which is very different from what you're claiming now. I don't disagree with your revised claim, just the original one. Your example using noses and doctors actually contradicts your claim, as you are acknowledging that not every physician is a nose specialist, which implies that one ought to seek experts in nose health for nose problems.

Now you just want to play word games.

Anyone trying to parse my words so they made sense could do it very easily.

I find that belief in insufficiently evidenced ideas is where the danger lies. Incidentally, where you use the word science, I use the word empiricism. Most of my beliefs come from the interpretation of the evidence of my senses, not laboratories or observatories, nor peer reviewed articles.

Indeed, yes. Much of our disagreement is just words. "Empiricism" and "science" mean the same thing. Words have many meanings and we need to try to parse them as they were intended.

And, yes, I understand most of your beliefs come from science. I do not have a problem with this and I am the same way. I think the point you are missing is that the premises and definitions that underlie science I contend are incorrect and disordered. It is essentially a paradigmatical problem because the disorder has led to a misinterpretation of experiment which is the source of all theory. Part of this disorder is that most people are not recognizing all experiment simultaneously. This is difficult for many reasons but chiefly because science is highly reductionistic. We find bits and pieces of reality and then try to assemble them in our minds piece by piece through the creation of models. We don't notice that the formatting for putting these pieces together is defined by the same disorder. Our models reflect our beliefs rather than the reality. This formatting is called a "paradigm" by Kuhn but he didn't understand the properties and causes of paradigms and I believe I do.

Ultimately we all build ourselves from our senses never realizing there is a layer of belief between the input and its experience.

 

[cladking]

Critical thinkers don't take anything as gospel. If you intend to diminish the power and value of empiricism by limiting it to professional science and claiming a religious-like relationship to empiricism, then you are tilting at a straw man. That is not the humanist's position. That's not the empiricist's position.

Yes, I agree. But you are missing a distinction here.

Most importantly most individuals don't understand science at all or why it works at all. Some f these individuals have a great amount of knowledge of science but without understanding they can not devise experiment, make new technology, or come up with viable new hypothesis. They don't really know what they know because all true knowledge is visceral and the "holy trinity" is Knowledge > Understanding > Creation. Without a knowledge of metaphysics one might still be a capable scientist but this is largely because most creation of all types is largely serendipity.

Such subjects as these interest me far less than coming to understand the cause and precise nature of the disorder. It is imperative that some current paradigms undergo radical change in the near future. Like dominoes the old errors and poor definitions should fall.

 

[gnostic]

My belief is based upon evidence, not proof. Evidence is not the same as proof.
Evidence is information that indicates that something is true and causes you to believe it is true.
Evidence helps to establish if something is the truth but it does not establish it as a fact.
Proof is what establishes evidence as a fact.

Verifiable evidence is proof but not all evidence is verifiable.

You are mistaken.

Mathematics and science (referring to all Physical Sciences & Natural Sciences, excluding Social Sciences (eg psychology, sociology, anthropology, archaeology, economics, political sciences, etc, all belonged in Social Sciences), mathematics and sciences define proofs as logical models, like mathematical equations, formulas, constants, variables, etc.

Proofs are commonly expressed as equations.

Examples of proofs:

• Ohm‘s law: I = V R
• Newton’s 2nd law (from his “laws of motion”): F = m a
• Einstein’s mass-energy equivalence: E = m c^2
• etc

These physics equations are all proofs. No one is denying mathematics are useful tools in sciences, but the equations or “proofs” are not “evidence”.

In maths & sciences, proofs have nothing to do with evidence, because proofs are only abstract representations of physical realities, but proofs are not themselves, physical.

Evidence, on the other hand, is a physical sample of natural phenomena or physical phenomena.

Proof don’t “establish evidence as fact”, evidence are what can establish theory as fact, or evidence can refute a theory or a hypothesis.

Evidence is the essential part of Scientific Method, the part in the testing stage of Scientific Method. Testing required evidence, either through discovery evidence in the field, or through the test results of lab experiments.

You really don’t know what you are talking about.

 

[QuestioningMind]

It's not verified publicly. It's crazy, in my opinion, to insist that you have verify everything in a public to believe in something yourself. I don't insist on you following my "inner evidence". It has nothing to do with you. I believe in unity in diversity of opinion, and not trying to impose sameness on everyone.

Apparently you don't think there is a reality that applies to us all... that 'facts' are all a matter of opinion. Sadly that's what's wrong with the world today. Far too many people refuse to face reality. That's why we've got folks who insist that the world is flat, that climate change is a hoax, or that Q-Anon speaks TRUTH.

Can 2 + 2 = 19 if your 'inner evidence' tells you so?

Do you honestly think that the world is flat for SOME people and it's a sphere for the rest of us? Are those of us who believe in a spherical world trying to 'impose sameness on everyone'?

 

[cladking]

Well, that's also covered in humanism, in its rational ethics. Humanists are the ones arguing against such ideas. Those aren't my values, nor those of anybody I know. I only see ideas like that from the fascistic elements of society, and from theists blaming Darwin for such fascistic types like Hitler, who was also not a humanist, misappropriating his ideas.

These are all fine words but the problem remains that all people act on their beliefs all the time. There are people who believe the weak should be murdered or left to their fates. There are some leaders whose sole motivation is the collection of wealth and power regardless of the effects on people. Beliefs underlie everything and anything can be misinterpreted.

 

[gnostic]

No aspect of science deals with ethics. Ethics are expressly left out and avoided so as to avoid "bias" in the result.

Actually, ethics is delve with in laws. Laws is one of the branches in Social Sciences.

It is not delve with in Physical Sciences or in Natural Sciences.

 

[cladking]

Science tells man how nature works, not how to use that information.

Again, you are talking about real science correctly interpreted by someone who understands basic metaphysics.

Most people are by nature far more mystical and we all think our every belief is founded on a solid foundation. I maintain NO BELIEF has any foundation at all in reality. Even your and my beliefs are based in science and look how different our realities are.

The problem is NOT science. The problem is BELIEF in science and the rejection or ignorance of all evidence that doesn't support that belief. People who practice science aren't the problem. People who understand it aren't the problem. The problem is the ones who believe in science and most such individuals do understand how or why it works.

 

[cladking]

Even if he lied, Fauci's is still an expert in virology, immunology, and epidemiology, and a safer source of information than those attacking him.

I see no logic there. If he is providing poor advice or not disseminating important data in a timely manner then everyone including the government will be doing stupid things; things that are inconsistent with protecting individuals from the disease.

The CDC bungled this from Day 1 and the government response was awful.

One might also wonder what the long-term sequelae of vaccines has been. None so far. The swine flu vaccine in the 70's caused Guillan-Barre in some, a devastating paralytic illness, but did so in most cases within two months and in every case within two.

I had a friend who wasn't diagnosed for a few years. She blamed her condition on the flu shot but it was years before the symptoms were bad enough and she had a doctor competent enough to diagnose it.

So I know only one individual who died of swine flu (25 years later) and nobody at all who contracted the disease.

A rebuttal is a contradictory conclusion and its supporting evidence and argument.

Every experiment ever performed shows people act on belief. This IS sufficient rebuttal unless you can show any complex behavior derives from something else.

 

[cladking]

She blamed her condition on the flu shot but it was years before the symptoms were bad enough and she had a doctor competent enough to diagnose it.

She lived in a small town and like most such places there was not a lot of competent medical care. When her symptoms became intolerable she went to the Mayo Clinic and several doctors came in to examine her. Before anyone had much of a chance some European doctor said it was obviously Guillan-Barre. He was amazed no one had seen it earlier. She didn't do a lot better with treatment.

 

[questfortruth]

I was moved to make this thread in response to a question raised by an Atheist.

You was moved by Atheist. It is dangerous for your faith. Are you strong enough?

 

[Trailblazer]

You really don’t know what you are talking about.

What you said is all true, but what I said is also true.
There are many different definitions of evidence and proof....
More than one can be true. There is no contradiction.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Anyone trying to parse my words so they made sense could do it very easily.

Agreed. You wrote, "if you believe in science you start trusting experts which is unreasonable." That is a simple declarative sentence easily understood. It means exactly what the words say - if you believe in science you will trust it, and that is unreasonable. The statement is incorrect. It has been successfully rebutted with falsifying examples of trust in science being reasonable.

I think the point you are missing is that the premises and definitions that underlie science I contend are incorrect and disordered.

So you keep claiming, but I've yet to see which dicta of science you are calling incorrect or disordered, why you consider them that, or what undesirable consequence results. Without that, and considering that I disagree, why would I change my opinion to something closer to yours? You'll need sound arguments to do that. You'll need to show others why you are correct, not merely claim it.

Most importantly most individuals don't understand science at all or why it works at all.

Why do you think that's important. I've heard people ask how the aspirin knows where the pain is to treat it. They clearly have no concept of how it works, but that isn't importantif they know when it's appropriate to take it.

It is imperative that some current paradigms undergo radical change in the near future. Like dominoes the old errors and poor definitions should fall.

Such as what? I've explained that these kind of general statements lacking specifics and supporting links are meaningless to a critical thinker. You need to make a compelling, evidenced argument if you want to change such minds. Literally nothing else can do that.

the problem remains that all people act on their beliefs all the time.

That's not a problem. False beliefs are a problem, but not justified beliefs. They're the solution.

I maintain NO BELIEF has any foundation at all in reality.

I don't know exactly what you mean, but I have a suite of beliefs that consistently and accurately predict outcomes, all acquired empirically. For example, I discovered that the pier was five blocks south and three blocks east of my home by wandering the streets and deriving a conclusion from the evidence of my senses - empiricism. This allows me to get to the pier directly from my front door - the predicted and desired outcome. If that doesn't count as a belief being founded in reality, then I don't know what you mean. And if it does count as an example of a belief founded in reality for you, then your thesis has been falsified with that counterexample.

People who practice science aren't the problem. People who understand it aren't the problem. The problem is the ones who believe in science and most such individuals do understand how or why it works.

There you are again declaring that there are problems that others don't see, with no attempt to make a convincing supporting argument - just a broad claim that experience contradicts. Do you know people that turn on light switches that do not practice science or understand electricity, have no idea what happens between the switch and the bulb or even what light is, yet have nor create any problems because of those facts? I don't, and that's why I have to keep rejecting these kinds of claims. They are unsupported and they contradict experience.

Every experiment ever performed shows people act on belief. This IS sufficient rebuttal

No, it's not. I wrote, "A rebuttal is a contradictory conclusion and its supporting evidence and argument." Your comment doesn't address mine at all, much less serve as a rebuttal to it. I've told you what a rebuttal is. You've yet to provide that in any of your posting. You just express unsupported opinions and disregard their rebuttals.

I had a friend who wasn't diagnosed for a few years. She blamed her condition on the flu shot but it was years before the symptoms were bad enough and she had a doctor competent enough to diagnose it. She lived in a small town and like most such places there was not a lot of competent medical care. When her symptoms became intolerable she went to the Mayo Clinic and several doctors came in to examine her. Before anyone had much of a chance some European doctor said it was obviously Guillan-Barre. He was amazed no one had seen it earlier. She didn't do a lot better with treatment.

Sorry to hear that. The condition is largely untreatable, but not usually a difficult diagnosis to make.

I wish you had commented on the rest of that material discussing the risk involved with Covid infections. You had said, "Common sense says this disease affected only a small percentage of the population." Can we assume that you have no rebuttal to that, then. Of course you don't. Your comment could be and was rebutted because it is demonstrably incorrect. A significant fraction of people were seriously damaged by this disease in many different ways as I outlined. Mine cannot be rebutted and therefore was not rebutted, because it is correct. That's how such matters are decided in dialectic.

But that's not happening here. You make no arguments, just claims, which are meaningless to me, and the arguments of others appear to be of no interest to you. That means that neither of us can teach the other anything.

 

[Dao Hao Now]

OK, I skimmed the entire site this time. Still they didn't say that they (Scout) finds all these known threats and imply they find most of them.

So you go from “there are no professionals or large telescopes sweeping the skies searching for anomalous movements “:

There are no professionals or large telescopes sweeping the sky searching for anomalous movements. Most such bodies are found by amateurs.

And:

And if you missed it I pointed out that almost all new discoveries are made by amateurs with little telescopes. This is because the professionals and big telescopes aren't sweeping the sky but looking for specific things.

To (I’m paraphrasing here) “Yeah, well they haven’t found all of them!”

It’s obvious from your posts that you have a distrust and disdain for “experts” and institutions that you perceive as to proud of their knowledge and therefore not open to evidence that may be contrary to their beliefs.
Since pride (inordinate self-esteem; conceit)
appears to be distasteful to you,
and the opposite of pride is humility….

Here’s an exercise in humility for you:

Would you concede, that there are programs run by professionals, and yes even dreaded “experts”, which are actively searching the solar system for any new potentially hazardous objects,
and that your assertions quoted above were incorrect?

Would it help to mention that amateur astronomers
are incorporated in these programs?

Again, from the same site:
“This data is collected by observatories around the world, including significant contributions from amateur observers. The vast majority of asteroid-tracking data, however, is collected by large NASA-funded observatories (such as Pan-STARRS, the Catalina Sky Survey, NASA’s NEOWISEmission and, in the future, NEO Surveyor). Planetary radar projects (including JPL’s Goldstone Solar System Radar Group) are another key component of NASA’s NEO Observations Program.”

And could you manage to make this concession without resorting to a patronizing passive aggressive red herring?
Something along the lines of humbly stating that your statements were incorrect, and that you are happily now more informed on the subject and if not embarrassed, at least perhaps more apt to make certain of assertions you make particularly before doubling down on it?

 

[Dao Hao Now]

In one breath you say we should act on science and in the next you suggest it's OK to do the opposite if anyone can make obscene profit.

Again, I have never said anything like this….
Are you sure your not conflating my conversation with you with someone else your conversing with?

Where is the science that says refrigerators should last only a few years? Where is the science that says we should import things from China that cost more to transport than they are worth? Where is the science that says the US taxpayer should be forced to pay for the insurance of things built on the beach before rising sea levels? Where is the science that says we should use more energy to make gasahol than the energy contained in the finished product?

Where is the science that says the human race should be self destructive if it benefits the few?

Once again, I said science isn’t involved in any of this.

Science doesn’t address anything about what SHOULD be done.
What SHOULD be or SHOULD NOT be are subjective opinions not made by science.

Here is yet another example, of many, which proves that fact that you do not understand what science is or how it is practiced.
And once again, I sorry you just don’t understand that.

 

[Truthseeker]

I didn't bring Russia up at all; you did.

You

Read over what you wrote again; can you understand why it's offensive?

I don't see it as offensive. You don't have the principle of pleasing God, because you don't believe in God. I don't mean to say that an atheist in necessarily a bad person, they can be good people, but it has nothing to do with God. People who believe in religion can distort their religion and be fanatical thinking they are pleasing God that way when in fact they are not. It's not a black and white thing for me. All are in shades of gray. I hope this reply is acceptable to you though I wouldn't call this an apology. I just am trying to make clear with this post that I don't denigrate you just because you are atheist. Your behavior is what counts.

 

[Truthseeker]

Not so, the principal was nationalism.

Stalin himself was a Christian and did a great deal to reatore the church following the abuses of the czars.
In fact it is largely stalin who began the growth to make Russia among the most Christian countries in the world again after dismantling the hold of the czars

https://www.history.com/news/joseph-stalin-religion-atheism-ussr#:~:text=AFP/Getty Images-,Joseph Stalin led a uniquely brutal campaign against religion and,Communism begins where atheism begins.”
Joseph Stalin, as the second leader of the Soviet Union, tried to enforce militant atheism on the republic. The new “socialist man,” Stalin argued, was an atheist one, free of the religious chains that had helped to bind him to class oppression. From 1928 until World War II, when some restrictions were relaxed, the totalitarian dictator shuttered churches, synagogues and mosques and ordered the killing and imprisonment of thousands of religious leaders in an effort to eliminate even the concept of God.

Rubbish. Atheists were also purged in the USSR, as was anyone who met in groups of more than 6 people, anyone who spoke against the state or anyone considered a threat to nationalism

However Christianity, being the biggest group were hardest hit.

Of course they were, because Stalin had no ethic except for wanting power, and apparently had no empathy for anyone, including atheists.

Actually Christianity was very strong in pre revolutionary russia with the czars prompted to demigodhood. This abuse of the christian church was one of the reasons for the revolution

That's what their degeneration was, their abuse of supporting brutal Czars. I was not referring to how strong their hold was on the people.

 

[Truthseeker]

Apparently you don't think there is a reality that applies to us all... that 'facts' are all a matter of opinion. Sadly that's what's wrong with the world today. Far too many people refuse to face reality. That's why we've got folks who insist that the world is flat, that climate change is a hoax, or that Q-Anon speaks TRUTH.

There are realities that apply to us all, and I don't advocate for just arbitralily believeing what is convenient for you. However, you will agree, I think that there are honest differnece of opinion, and it will always be that way. I believe in unity in diversity. If someone has an opinion that is not harmful, then why stridently get worked up over that opinion? Believing that climate change is a hoax is a harmful opinion because then the problem will not be addressed as it should be.

Can 2 + 2 = 19 if your 'inner evidence' tells you so?

No. The "inner evidence" has to be consistent with the "outer evidence".

 

[ChristineM]

https://www.history.com/news/joseph-stalin-religion-atheism-ussr#:~:text=AFP/Getty Images-,Joseph Stalin led a uniquely brutal campaign against religion and,Communism begins where atheism begins.”
Joseph Stalin, as the second leader of the Soviet Union, tried to enforce militant atheism on the republic. The new “socialist man,” Stalin argued, was an atheist one, free of the religious chains that had helped to bind him to class oppression. From 1928 until World War II, when some restrictions were relaxed, the totalitarian dictator shuttered churches, synagogues and mosques and ordered the killing and imprisonment of thousands of religious leaders in an effort to eliminate even the concept of God.

Of course they were, because Stalin had no ethic except for wanting power, and apparently had no empathy for anyone, including atheists.

That's what their degeneration was, their abuse of supporting brutal Czars. I was not referring to how strong their hold was on the people.

Following his consolidation of power Stalin reopened the seminaries and opened over 20,000 churches, he donated millions of rubles of his own personal wealth to the church, he was known as the only christian in the Kremlin. His daughter told of how he kept a christian library at home. At his funeral not 1, not 2 but 3 archbishop's officiated. This does not sound to me like the life of a atheist.

Sorry, the link you posted just does not fit the known history. Much revisionist history is written long after his death by westerner's who need to feed red meat to their hungry western audience.