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Creationism Museum To Open Next Summer
Aloriel writes to point out a story in the Guardian (UK) about the opening next year of
the first Creationism museum in Kentucky, just over the Ohio border. From the article: "The Creation Museum — motto: 'Prepare to Believe!' — will be the first institution in the world whose contents, with the exception of a few turtles swimming in an artificial pond, are entirely fake. It is dedicated to the proposition that the account of the creation of the world in the Book of Genesis is completely correct... The museum is costing $25 million and all but $3 million has already been raised from private donations." A lot of that money is going into the animatronic dinosaurs, which are pictured as coexisting with modern humans before the Fall. According to the article, up to 50 million Americans believe this. The museum has a Web presence in the Answersingenesis.org site.
"Aloriel writes to point out a story in the Guardian (UK) about the opening next year of the first Creationism museum in Kentucky, just over the Ohio border."
I am writing abou the closing next year of the first Creationism museum in Kentucky, just over the Ohio border.
Does first post count as a 'scoop'?
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
From the linked site it sounds like it's a great place to go for a laugh.
Don't link to them. Don't give them the oxygen of publicity, of recognition.
Young Earth Creationism is fraud, pure and simple. By any sensible test, the world's age is far greater than 6000 years. People never co-existed with dinosaurs. If you would disregard all the evidence, you might as well believe the world was created 5 minutes ago by a spaghetti monster.
Wow.
If it's true because it's a story that has been passed down for generations and people believe it, I guess all of these are true too.
Who wants to help me open an Inuit Creation museum?
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
When I think of people like this, I immediately get the mental picture of Little Red Riding Hood being pulled out of the bloddy belly of the wolf. It's amazing that she made it down the gullet of the wolf without much injury, but always more fascinating how the woodsman's axe was able to kill the wolf without also injuring Red Riding Hood.
This wouldn't even fool my 3rd level Magic User.
And he'll pretty much believe anything I tell him.
The book of Job describes a creature called a 'behemoth' whose description can be interpreted as that of a dinosaur.
Great work.
I expect this will help bring up a new generation of scientist that are not fixated on ways to change observations to reflect theories but rather change theories to reflect observations.
All theories are welcome, but observations should be considered objectively.
Way to go!
I'm just glad I live in Australia, where education is valued.
Some people understand religion in one way and some people in another, but most of the religious beliefs are in contradiction with science.
In modern science you not only have evolution, you also have biologically inspired sociology, computational neuroscience and a number of other disciplines that you just cannot understand if you believe in a human soul. The more progress in this areas of study, the more problems you have trying to match this knowledge with religious faith.
Even the soft religious beliefs like "there must be something different about humans" are being challenged. We are just animals, no soul.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
And a lot of the women looked like Raquel Welch.
Stalinism, Nazism, and Mao's Communism were religions. They were religions centred on the worship of a perfect God-like figure: Stalin, Hitler, Chairman Mao. Why do I think this?
- Absolute belief in the leader was required for all subjects (like a theocracy)
- The punishment for thoughtcrime (heresy) involved torture, imprisonment and death (like the Spanish Inquisition).
- A promised land of plenty (a workers paradise, lebensraum, or heaven) was just around the corner for the people that did what the leader wanted.
- Any failure to reach this promised land was the fault of the people, not the leader (just as continued suffering in the world is due to our continuing to sin).
These regimes were not atheistic. They were more like the later days of the Roman Empire, in which the emperor deified himself, or like Egypt, where the pharoah was believed to be a god.Religion achieves many good things, but total conviction can be very dangerous. It can drive good people to true evil.
NO COMMENT!
People will take long ways to create illusion around them that something they believe in actually exists or have existed. Poor people, still linger to last leftovers of "belief".
Why I tagged this "ohhdear"? I believe in God, however, I don't think it has anything to do with Bible or this physical world. People simply can't believe something that doesn't not exist or at least have some evidence of it. People don't believe in God and Jesus because they want to be good, they want to feel good, just be a part of system of believe. They want to feel safe.
Jesus said love your enemies and forgive them. We don't. Jesus said don't kill and don't seek revenge (well, not directly, but...). We don't.
We don't want to believe. Creationism is just a "feeling-good-because-we-are-so-many-so-stupid" way of confirming that we are not wrong. That everything Bible says is true, because priest said so...and if they are wrong, religion and my belief should be wrong too, right? So it simply can't be.
Human is so weak when it comes down to reality and how we are selective to it.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
"You ever notice how people who believe in creationism look really unevolved?" - Bill Hicks
Plus you know those 9-11 terrorists. Totally motivated by atheism. *snort*
Philosophy.
AU
EU
whatever
OK I'm sorry but since when is a snide comment stating an opinion considered informative?
Informative, adj. Serving to inform; providing or disclosing information; instructive.
Mod it Funny, Insightful, Flamebait, whatever, but please Mod it correctly people.
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
what a yolly place to spend the weekend, diddly-so !
Please take a look at the passage and try to figure out what it is describing.
http://www.bartleby.com/108/18/40.html
US
Geography
whatever
(Oh great, here goes that karma I built up. Oh well...)
/. archive with a Python script, and no one would know the difference.
/.'ers {loath | fear} {a theocracy | George Bush | anti-abortion activists}.
/.'ers.
Could we please just skip the redundant parts of the conversations that sping up 100% of the time when we have creationism vs. non-creationism discussions? The arcs of conversation are so predictable that you could just rehash them from the
Some topics that I now view as complete noise (since we've hashed them over to death 400 times):
- how stupid Christians are
- how much
- details about why creationists are wrong.
None of these topics is uninteresting, except for the fact THAT WE HAVE THE SAME CONVERSATIONS EVERY TIME A TOPIC COMES UP PITTING RELIGIOUS VIEWS VS. ATHEISTIC ONES.
Seriously, I don't even know why we kick these articles around more than once every 5 years. Because clearly they don't stimulate any new thoughts in us
This offends me. What the hell is wrong with people?
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
Well, some of those guys had a religion, other ones did not, either way it did not play a big role unless as a tool to manipulate the masses.
Anyway I don't understand why people in the civilized world still make such a big deal about religion nowadays. Just pick yours if you want one, or do without - it's not like it really changes anything: I still have to meet people whose religious beliefs play an important role in their lives. Sure, rituals and all the small things... but nothing life-changing. Unless we're talking about zealots, but I don't see any around here (= the aforementioned civilized world).
There must be something about religion in the USA, because you're always arguing over it.
Global warming is a cube.
It's about time they opened up a museum showing the truth.
It's quite clear that there's a consipracy amongst godless scientists to cover up the clear existence of God, and to disprove the clear evidence in the bible that the animals were created, and then man was created. And after man, God created the animals. It says so in the bible, so it must be true. and if the bible is false, then how did the eye evolve? And what are all those fossils doing at the tops of mountains?
I hope they disprove other heretics such as Keplar, who believed the earth went round the sun, when a simple observation of the sun rising, and any rational interpretation of the bible will prov that the opposite is true.
When I first saw this, I thought: "Great! Creationism is declining so rapidly that we need a museum to teach about this primitive superstition." No such luck.
There's a reason why Genesis is the first chapter of the Bible: it's a dumbf*ck-test = if you believe this sh*t, then the rest of the book is easy, and if you don't believe it, then the outrageousness will shut you up anyway coz you can't argue against irrationality.
No wonder it's such a wonderful tool for believers to use. Gods are drama-queens and people are suckers for a good soap-opera.
Ok, so let me get this straight. A bunch of Bible-thumpers raises private money to build a museum to depict scenes out of the Flintstones, and everyone here is bitching about how these people should be shut up. The 1st Amendment separates church and state, but it also protects freedom of speech. These people aren't directly inciting violence or rebellion They're not spouting libelous falsehoods. Let them be.
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
Authority is the root excuse for murder. Religion and commanding officers are all forms of authority. And those who are following it don't consider themselves responsible for their actions since they are only following orders. And those wielding authority don't either, since they're only giving orders and aren't doing anything themselves.
Summary:religion is a great excuse for not being responsible for your own actions.
A lot of that money is going into the animatronic dinosaurs, which are pictured as coexisting with modern humans before the Fall. According to the article, up to 50 million Americans believe this.
Is The Flintstones screened as a documentary in the US?
Have you considered that they didn't have the means to do it? And that low-scale slaughter were widespread at the time? Witch hunts, jews killings, various pogroms, ... were not that rare, and no one cared.
Unless you're reading the Ancient Testament, that is, since most of it is about slaughtering everyone who doesn't believe in your own god, and sacrificing even your family members (by burning them, none the less) if your God asks you to...
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
The opium that is creationism is some damned powerful stuff.
I thought this was open already. It's been covered by the British press a number of times.
As an Athisest I find this story quite amsuing and while I would love to use it to poke fun at America I know a worrying number of people here in England who aboultly beilve in this stuff.
Sadly there are idiots everywhere.
Basically, for about 4000 years, Man has believed that there are beings greater than Human. In fact, the belief is that these beings created humans and the world and the universe. They, for 4000 years, called these beings god or gods or God.
In the past couple hundred years, a few uppity atheists like yourself suddenly come along and demand proof of the existence of these beings. The reason the demand for proof is shoved back in your face by theists is that there is a long history of belief in these beings. The proof of historical "that's the way it was"ness.
If you want to disprove these beings, it's up to you to disprove. You'll never be able to get the theists to roll up their sleeves and get in the mud with you. They can point at Descartes or Aquinas or any number of philosophers who over the millenia have discoursed about these greater beings. Do you have any tangible position to argue from besides smugness?
Ladies and gentlemen, if you'll just follow me.
This first exhibit shows god with his little bag of mysteries. He is shown placing dinosaur bones in the rocks because even god likes a good laugh.
And further on we have another aspect of God. This is god in his aspect of 'having to make all the animals himself because he is too stupid to create a universe that can do this shit on its own'.
Now we have a stuffed monkey. You will see that the monkey, while superficially similar is not at all related to man. This is proved by the fact that the monkey is holding a placard stating that god made him as part of a batch job, 4103 years ago, on a tuesday. Further you will see that the stuffed Man we have next to him is also holding a placard, and this states definatelly that god made him the previous wednesday as part of an entirely different batch of wonders. This disparity, proved by our scientifically validated placards, is all the proof any sensible person should need.
Lastly we have the flood exhibit. This exhibit houses a model earth, three feet in diameter, and shows what it would look like covered in water. As you can see only the tip of mount arrarat is visible, even though it isn't the highest peak in the world. This is because it was a very curvy mysterious flood. If you look closely you will see one tiny wooden boat near arrarat which contains a pair of every species on the planet, their diverse ecological requirements and foods, all neatly seperated to stop them eating each other. Next to this model you will see the explanation of where the water went, and how, when the entire world was engulfed in a flood of sufficient depth to kill everything living, a boat made of wood was able to survive. As you can clearly see, that notice says 'shut up and go away, heretical unbeleiver'.
This concludes the tour, please give us loads of money as you leave.
The 50 million Americans who believe this nonsense, are they
a) Aged eight or less?
b) Extremely poorly educated?
c) Wilfully ignorant?
because I can't think of any other reasons for thinking that Genesis, Noah's Flood etc. are anything but mythology.
Cress, cress, lovely lovely cress
First they made the Sex museum and now there's going to be a Creationist museum? When will they finally make one we nerds can identify with? I can only visit the Smithsonian Apple exhibit so many times. :sigh:
What's the metaphor? It seems like a straightforward description of an animal to me.
I can understand that much of the Bible is metaphorical. However you'll have to do better than call me names to argue that this simple description is actually a metaphor. What's it a metaphor about?
The problem with Fundamentalists is that they interpret the Bible literally. If it is written to forgive 70 times 7, they will probably start counting the number of times they forgive someone and when they reach 490, they'll probably say -- "that's it, the Bible says to stop". Ever since the books of the Bible were written, it was understood (see the writings of early Church fathers -- around II century) that a lot of the stuff was symbolic and typological. In other words the people who wrote the Bible, thousands of years ago, chose which books to include and which to not include, along with their contemporaries who interpreted and wrote about the interpretation of the scriptures, would _never_ agree with a literal interpretation.
Instead of spending $25 million on the museum, these people could feed and cloth a huge number of children from the developing countries, they could donate it towards AIDS research. To me that would be a more convincing witness to a Christian life than building a museum with animatronic dinosaurs...
I live in Southern Ohio, I would go out protesting against this museum along with anyone else who wishes to do so.
Museums tend to show things - paintings in art museums, science displays in science museums. I'm just puzzled at what they will show in this museum. Will it just be like a giant diorama depicting scenes from the Bible, or will it have "scientific" evidence of creationism.
The website has some videos that contain arguments against some of the common criticisms of creationalism - i.e. evolutionary criticisms of the eye -Why is the retina facing the wrong way, etc.
..........FULL STOP.
While these leaders used religious symbolism and pomp to further their cause, they were decidedly antireligious or at least areligious.
Some points:
** It was not that belief was required but the flow of knowledge controlled. Germans thought Americans bloodthirsty savages, much like, well, modern Germans and the North Koreans.
** The vast majority of those killed were not imprisoned 'like the Spanish Inquisition'. Look at the number of Ukranians who died in their fields under Stalin.
** While each of those mentioned did have some 'perfect state' to which they would ascend things typically got worse which would point out the importance of point one.
** The fault usually lay with some enemy not the people. For Hitler it was the Juden. For North Korea, it is America. Same with Islam.
I think the key here is less about religion and more about the facets of totalitarianism. Christianity got most of this out of its system during the War of Spanish Succession and Glorious Revolution. Islam and Secular Humanism have not come to the realization that the philosophy does not cure fanaticism and take a holier than thou approach towards Christians, not realizing that the humility that Christians display could be of some value.
Of course, this doesn't account for the Luddites that think creation happened by the book. The lengths to which folks go is frightening. But at least they don't worship a rock and blow people up.
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That finally explains my good looks. ;)
Yah, and atheists are such saints:
Religious Persecution in Soviet Russia
The Killing Fields of Cambodia
People can be motivated to kill by just about any ideology, religious or otherwise.
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
Excellent! A whole museum dedicated to Truthiness. I hope it's Wikiality page reflects just how truthy it really is.
For far too long now, museums have bored children with dry facts. It's about time we got them excited with far more exciting things that really sound true.
After all there's no way we want children to want to grow to be scientists - they're like terrorists...
Technically this is a racist belief system if you look at it from the view point of an Australian aboriginal, it denies the fact that they have lived in Australia now for over 50,000 years. Then you have simple things like pictures from the hubble telescope showing objects over "12 billion light years away", now lets think now, if something is 12 Billions light years away it took 6,000 years for the light to get here, riiiiight, believe that and I will happily sell you some prime time swamp land.
A lot of that money is going into the animatronic dinosaurs, which are pictured as coexisting with modern humans before the Fall.
I thought the dogma was that dinosaur bones were placed by the devil to confuse and ensnare us. I guess the dogma is evolving. As for the $25 million, the amount of money that the average person is willing to part with to support their 'feel-good' fantasies has always amazed me when compared to the amount they are willing to give to prove or disprove those fantasies using objective science.
Request a Linux Shockwave player here: http://www.macromedia.com/support/email/wishform/
Such as "If Cain and Abel where Adam & Eve's only sons, and Abel was killed, then who did Cain mate with to continue the human species?"
Apple sauce, coca-cola and honey are all types of beer. Why do I think this?
What a revelation! See how I did that? I just set aside the key features of beer (it's brown, it gets you drunk, etc) and all of a sudden everything is just like beer! Wow!
How we know is more important than what we know.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
You can also read that passage as a poetic description of a volcano, or any number of things. Read some Milton or Dante and you'll find that their style is somewhat similar. Yet you'd have a hard time convincing anybody that any of their stuff is literal truth.
Bob
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the cause is neither religion nor atheism. The cause is not being tolerant of people who are different from you. Sometimes this is caused by genuine concerns (even if unjustified ones), but most often its caused by powermongers whipping people up into a frenzy so as to establish a 'new order' where they will be in charge.
The first rule of establishing a dictatorship is to define an enemy for people to hate, thus helping them convince themselves that the privations at home are worth it, if the wider goal of 'safety from [insert enemy here] is to be acheived'.
What would you prefer to be?
1) The intelligent creation of an omnipotent being -- or
2) The retarded offspring of five monkeys having butt-sex with a fish-squirrel.
There you go.
I always hated it when Americans were in Bavaria on the Oktoberfest and said "Wow, I have been in Germany.", afterwards.
Now I can go visit this great museum and say "Wow, I have been in America.", afterwards.
Muahahahaha... I could crap my pants...
I just wanted to point out that there's already a museum dedicated to furthering creationism: http://icr.org/discover/index/discover_museum/
I'm surprised that people here are so upset about it.
Here's a religious group exercising their freedom of religion and freedom of speech. They're building a museum with their own money to build an edifice to their beliefs. So what. The worst that you can say is they're exercising the freedoms that most people admire.
You may not agree with it, but heck, I don't agree completely with anybody on everything.
I think perhaps people need to be more tolerant, and that goes both ways.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Score: -2, Retarded.
A lot of that money is going into the animatronic dinosaurs, which are pictured as coexisting with modern humans before the Fall
Let me start by saying I am an athiest. Now, about this. I have read The Bible several times and do not remember hearing anything about our ancestors playing around with dinosaurs?
From dictionary.com, 'museum' from Greek through Latin and means 'shrine to the Muses'.
Muses are [godesses].
And then to the creationist's handbook:
http://www.bartleby.com/108/02/20.html
Building a temple to godesses seems to me like a gross violation of rule number 1 (verses 3-6)
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
Regardless of whether these regimes were truly religions or not, they were all based upon unreasoning belief in a concept or institution, and religion falls into the same category. Indeed, the belief they fostered allowed them to persist; one can't have a regime that encourages rational thought and persecution, otherwise you'd have people poking holes in your arguments when you try to pin the blame on scapegoats, or try to insist that a particular group of people are subhuman.
But these non-believers are per definition sinners and not innocents, so that's alright!
I love the religious logic.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Prepare to believe:
a) The world is flat
b) It's 6000 years old
c) The Pyramids age can be skipped over... It was probably built by dinosaurs!
FTFA: "and, as for scientists, so much of what they believe is pretty fuzzy about life and its origins"
See above points a-c and decide whose view is 'fuzzier'.
Does anyone who's not a Creationist want to come and live with me on Mars? Soon as.
Also from TFA when questioned about Adam's dong: "some of our donors are scared to death about nudity." Bit hypocritical then. Surely if God intended Adam and Eve to be naked, and shame and modesty are sins... aren't the donors living in sin? Defying God's wish?
Personally I've never been confident (or dumb) enough to talk for God. Why can they?
Of course, you're right, but let's not forget that some people actually hold beliefs so strongly that they believe forcing those beliefs on others is the right thing to do. Ironically, "tolerance of others" happens to be one of those beliefs that is forced on a lot of people :)
How we know is more important than what we know.
Why animatronic? What about cloning dinosaurs from DNA found in mosquitos trapped in amber....it would be a perfect attraction for creationists "See what Jesus saw, Real dinosaurs!"
So, anyway, how DID humans survive next to dinosaurs. Velociraptor, T-rex, anyone? wouldn't the humans have been killed and/or eaten?
I drive past the building everyday on my way to work. You can see it from I-275. It is actually a pretty neat looking building from an architecture point of view. Opinion on the contents of the building may vary, but I think it is a pretty neat looking building, and can see why the project is costing $25 million...
While I agree on the negative impact of such an endeavor, I don't think religion as it is used in the USA corresponds to Marx's definition.
Marx meant it as a means to tame an oppressed class "Suffering in this life guarantees you Paradise in the afterlife!".
We can hardly call the american middle-class "oppressed" in any way.
Actually, come to think of it, I have no idea how come religion (specifically, christianism) is so powerful in such a developped country as the USA...
I wonder if it has anything to do with protestant evangelists taking up the methods of capitalism. Hmm...
Misleading titles? Inflammatory blurbs? Keep in mind that Slashdot is a tabloid.
Yes, sure. If someone points out that religion is not the root of all evil, and provides some examples, then you redefine what religion is to include those examples as religion. Very clever.
I just wonder are you really so blinded that you don't see this fallacy, or being manipulative on purpose?
And therein lies the root of this entire argument, which can be summarised thus: people kill for reasons other than religion too, therefore religion is good. Oh, and all religions state that killing is wrong in their moral code, which makes them double good, so when people do kill in the name of religion, they're not *really* religious.
OK, let's ignore the fact that all of the reasons for killing which this "writer" lists are often uncomfortably close to religion (Hitler, "ethnic" troubles in Northern Ireland..) but -and i ask this genuinely- can anyone tell me, what exactly is his point? That we should *believe* in a story because the (already inate) values that it promotes are good ones? I've never heard an atheist argue with the values of the ten commandments (the big ones. Thou shalt not kill, steal etc. Not the ones about god), but rather argue that they are INSTINCTIVE within humans, but because religion has written them down it's somehow in the right, and because atheism does not have a "constitution" EVERY genocide in history is, by default, atheistic?
Or Is it merely, "nah, nah, politics can be bad for people too..let's all be religious"?
Just the biggest load of genocidal apologism i've heard from anyone who wasn't institutionalised.
Stupid people think it's cool. Smart people thinks it's a joke; also cool.
I think it's curious when the burden of proof gets shifted back to the evolutionism, it's not like it's the evo theory that doesn't hold. I'm thinking in terms of popper and falsification here. If you cannot prove the theory invalid, then it cannot be considered scientific. Creationism is one "theory" that routes past all proof towards it's invalidity by saying "it's in the book", hardly scientific.
the description itself is a metaphor, OK maybe synonym, 'the creature was built like a brick shit-house'
doesn't mean it is actually made of bricks, somewhat square and smelly.
Dipshit seconded.
As far as I understand, suicide bombers (palestinian and otherwise) are often recruited from families that are either in debt, and get a way to clear their debt, or are just young men brainwashed enough with religion to actually go out there and explode themselves. Basically, they're manipulated to further the goals of some organization and again with the use of religion. So I wouldn't look at the actual purpetrators, but more at the masterminds behind it to discover what drives these people. My guess still is the good ole horseman of fear, hatred, power and riches.
Where is the foot icon in this article?!?
... they could have been deformed, diseased or something. I've seen people like that running round the streets of New York.'"
"Stephen Bates is given a sneak preview and asks: was there really a tyrannosaurus in the Bible?"
"[The museum] will be the first institution in the world whose contents, with the exception of a few turtles swimming in an artificial pond, are entirely fake."
"...tableaux and a strangely Disneyfied version of the Bible story."
"As for the Grand Canyon - no problem: that was, of course, created in a few months by Noah's Flood."
"But what, I ask wonderingly, about those fossilised remains of early man-like creatures? Marsh knows all about that: 'There are no such things. Humans are basically as you see them today. Those skeletons they've found, what's the word?
"[The workers], too, know they are doing the Lord's Work, and each has signed a contract saying they believe in the Seven Days of Creation theory."
"'[Adam] is appropriately positioned, so he can be modest. There will be a lamb or something there next to him. We are very careful about that: some of our donors are scared to death about nudity.'"
"The museum's planetarium is his pride and joy. Lisle writes the commentary. 'Amazing! God has a name for each star,' it says, and: 'The sun's distance from earth did not happen by chance.' There is much more in this vein, but not what God thought he was doing when he made Pluto, or why." (what has happened to the heliocentric belief?)
About Ken Ham, the museum's director and is inspiration: "Ham is an Australian, a former science teacher - though not, he is at pains to say, a scientist - and he has been working on the project for much of the past 20 years since moving to the US. 'You'd never find something like this in Australia,' he says. 'If you want to get the message out, it has to be here.'"
"Poodles are degenerate mutants of dogs. I say that in my lectures and people present them to me as gifts." (I've always knew that poodles couldn't be real dogs!)
"It is full of books with titles such as Infallible Proofs, The Lie, The Great Dinosaur Mystery Solved and even a DVD entitled Arguments Creationists Should Not Use."
So say we all
God created creationists because she likes a laugh.
So anyway, i figured someone might like to read it.
"No, no, no, don't tug on that! You never know what it might be attached to."
Stalin, Hitler and Mao -- explicitly prohibited any religious worship and never defined themselves as "Gods", while the later Roman emperors did, as did the Pharaohs and many other kings and rulers.
What was worshiped was not as much a person but an ideology -- fascism, socialism and so on. You can almost substitute "leader" with "ideology" or "party affiliation" in your description.
Perhaps the beliefs of many self-described American atheists in the spread of democracy, justice and freedom around the world at all cost, can also be described as a religion. There are people who have a blind belief in ideologies. Anyone who doesn't agree with them will not be tortured (unless CIA gets their hands on them, because their name might sound Arabic), but the promise or prosperity is there (democracy = the ultimate goal, the utopia), the failure to reach the democracy is the failure of the people as well, not the ideology ("democracy is best for in Iraq, we just didn't have enough troops" for ex).
I'm quite sure that most of these bastards had/have a religion, so while I agree with your point that religion has been used and abused to murder in its name, that does not mean that the opposite of religion (atheism) is the true cause, nor does the above rant gives any argument why and how atheism leads to mass murder.
Communism in most countries has been militantly atheistic, engaging in harsh suppression of religion and programs for the spread of militant atheism. The Soviets even established an All-Union League of the Godless and museums of atheism in former churches. (North Korea still executes Christians.) At the same time, Communism was responsible for killing about 100,000,000 people in the last century. There were even incidents of cannibalism in the People's Republic of China to prove your loyalty to the party, literally eating the rich. The brutality of communism was one that repeated itself from country to country to country. Stalin outdid Hitler in body count, and Mao dwarfed Stalin. As a percentage of his country, Pol Pot outdid Mao. The vile regime of North Korea is still engaged in horror after horror after horror.
How is that that Communism, allegedly founded on a scientific basis, stressing rationality and scientific though, with principles regarded as altruistic (from each according to his ability to each according to his need), repeatedly produced such carnage and such leaders? Do you think it is possible that there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of man at work there?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I fully agree with you. In fact will even go as far as buying their t-shirt http://www.cafepress.com/venganza.27298385
I don't like sterotypes as much as the next guy, but I never on all my travels met a smart American.
I asked this one American what he was doing in and he said "god wanted him to be there".
Stupid fucker.
most of the religious beliefs are in contradiction with science.
Until about 40 years ago, most scientists were religious people. For all I know, they still are (I don't go round asking them). Most scientific theories were developed in an environment of religion, and most religious beliefs emerged from cultures that had at least some vague concept of forming theories about natural phenomena and testing them by trial and error. Ever since long before Galileo sat in his Vatican-funded observatory (it's a pity he didn't keep out of politics, though!) and Newton took time out from his theological studies to formulate a few laws of motion, people have had, among various other things, religion and science.
It's just rational humanists such as you who have trouble with this. And it's fine for you to have trouble with it -- you have a perfect right to believe that religion and science are somehow opposites locked in eternal conflict. But you ought to be aware that it's just your belief, just as some folks belive the End Times are Coming or God Hates Fags.
computational neuroscience and a number of other disciplines that you just cannot understand if you believe in a human soul
The fact that you believe it's impossible is part of your faith -- it's not a fact about neuroscience and souls. Otherwise there wouldn't be any religious neuroscientists, which I observe not to be the case.
Put your faith down and talk about facts -- even Creationists can do that, on a good day, with a favorable wind. The main difference between a creationist and a rational humanist is that the creationist understands that they are running on faith.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
The American version is "Pie in the Sky":
The Preacher and the Slave
Long haired preachers come out every night
Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right
But when asked how 'bout something to eat
They reply in voices so sweet
CHORUS:
You will eat, by and by
In that glorious land in the sky
Work and pray, live on hay
You'll get pie in the sky, when you die.
Chorus:
Oh the Stravation Army they play
And they sing and they clap and they pray
Till they get all your coin on the drum
Then they tell you when you're on the bum
Chorus:
Holy Rollers and jumpers come out,
They holler, they jump and they shout.
Give your money to Jesus they say,
He will cure all diseases today.
Chorus:
If you fight hard for children and wife
Try to get something good in this life
You're a sinner and bad man, they tell
When you die you will sure go to hell.
Chorus:
Workingmen of all countries, unite,
Side by side we for freedom will fight;
When the world and its wealth we have gained
To the grafters we'll sing this refrain
FINAL CHORUS:
You will eat, bye and bye,
When you've learned how to cook and to fry.
Chop some wood, 'twill do you good,
And you'll eat in the sweet bye and bye.
-Joe Hill
KFG
So we're agreed then: people can be cunts, wether or not they're being a cunt in the name of religion?
The problem is not with the account, the problem is with some people's interpretation of the account. When I read the first 2 chapters of Genesis, it does not preclude evolution (yeah, go read it). It also does not demand a 7x24 hour creation period (since the Hebrew word for "day" has many meanings).
In fact, Genesis is NOT a scientific treatise on the origin of the world. The book is clearly about the origin and early history of Israel. The first 2 chapters only provide some context for Adam.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
"It is strange to witness the passion with which some secular figures rail against the misdeeds of the Crusaders and Inquisitors more than 500 years ago. The number sentenced to death by the Spanish Inquisition appears to be about 10,000."
The Inquisition started in France, not Spain. It was started to deal with the Cathars, Christians who were the subject of the Albigensian Crusade.
As for your naming of Hitler and Stalin, look at the action of the Archbishop of Citeaux in the crusade. He was responsible for the killing of somewhere between 7,000 and 20,000 in a single day in Bezier. When asked how to distinguish between the Cathars and the rest of the population he declared "Caedite eos! Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius".
In the crusade, which was instigated by Pope Innocent III, some half a million people were killed. Not quite as many as Hitler, but there again the population was that much smaller.
Except they didn't kill out of atheïsm, but they found communist reasons to kill and oppress those of different persuasions. There actions found it's base in the communist ideology which has no respect for the life/rights of the individual.
Don't blame the atheïsts for the horrible communist regime.
--> Insert Funny Sig Here
I mean if you're going to waste money....
Oh, I know. Award me the no bid IT contract. Since the thing will never open, I can keep all the cool stuff and sell the animatronic dinosaurs on eBay!
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
I wish Creationists who've taken the time to memorize and regurgitate the first two chapters of the book of Genesis would take the time and read the other 48 cahpters of this book. Anyone who does so would accept the fact that Genesis is about the Patriarchs, not about the creation of the world/universe (which was very likely tacked on for the sake of curisosity and completeion .... and at the time, *that* explanation in Ch.'s 1-2 was more than sufficient).
"He who questions training trains himself at asking questions." - The Sphinx, Mystery Men (1999)
If you are going to try to argue against the existence of a God, you can't create a strawman and burn it to the ground and claim a victory for your side.
If you think that the argument itself is futile, then it would be best to avoid the argument altogether.
Instead, most atheists are more than willing to rush headlong into the futile argument with their banners of Science and Logic flying proudly, demanding detailed argument for the existence of God from the theists. Then they are put out when the theists counter that 4000 years of history, culture, philosophy, and tradition not to mention personal belief and spirituality undergird their position.
Hitler was not an atheist, he paid a lot of lip service to christian faith, considered himself a christian, and drew upon the 2000 years or christian's hatred for jews. And a lot of german officers at the time (most of them, in fact) were christians. Should also be mentioned the good ol' SS belt buckle motto "Gott mit Uns" (God With Us)
While I agree with you argument I have to point out that Hitler it is not at all clear whether Hitler was an Atheist or Christian. He was a catholic by birth and often made reference Christianity in his speeches and in private but he did also talk about ridding the world of religion in other circumstances.
Stephen Dawkins goes into some detail about the question of Hitler's religious belief in his latest book if your interested.
It should be in the funny category.
Deleted
Set up a link with the term Utter Rubbish to their web site.
If enough people do it, then searching for Utter Rubbish will show up this web site.
http://davesboat.blogspot.com/
There's also a great aquarium on the ohio-kentucky border, so it's not ALL bad... although I can tell you right now, there will be protests at the Creationist museum on a regular basis from the various atheist groups in Ohio. I'd be surprised if the Pope endorsed this -- I think even he understands that if you try to prove faith, you fail, just as it says in the Bible that you can't "test god".
stuff |
"Do you have any tangible position to argue from besides smugness?"
Using logic only, you can't disprove the existence of anything. You can't disprove the existence of blue dragon. You can't disprove the existence of faery and gnome. In other word, saying "we always did it so" is an axiom, and no better than saying "god exists" as an hypothesis to prove that gods exists. But you cannot disprove god exists, because there is nothing you can start up with. You CANNOT disprove an axiom of existence. You can only disprove an axiom of INEXISTANCE. It ain't a question of smugness but a question of logic. The only way ANYTHING could be ever proved is that gods exists with a proof of it, the contrary cannot be proved. And for that there is millenia of philosophical discussion, LONGER than any discussion from aquinas or descartes (which spans hundred of years and not millenia as you supposed : Aquinas : 1200 ish and descartes 1600 ish. Philosophy : waaaay before 0-ish).
In other word it ain't a question from smugness from atheist which just point out at the philosophical logical discourse to base their logic, it is a question of religious people in general which refuse utterly to put their religion in question. Point. Final.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
It's worth noting, however, that all the examples provided are acts of violence committed due to unreasoning faith in a concept or institution. Religion may not be the root of all evil, but there's a stronger case for believing that faith is.
But these non-believers are per definition sinners and not innocents, so that's alright! :-p
Actually, according to Christian theology everyone is a sinner.
meh
The US upper middle class has another reason for being religious: Boredom and the search for a meaning of life.
It's the same reason why they launch zealous attacks against abortion clinics, smoking and a few other overhyped crazes. It gives their meaningless, boring life some kind of sense. If they couldn't do that, they'd prolly play MMORPGs.
So, now mod me troll and let's go on with the show.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Museum? I'd call this a theme park, or a show, or an attraction.
Penny - plain text accounting
Or rather, as Dawkins points out, simply saying God did it is a way of explaining the world. It's a direct alternative to scientific method. Whether you take the bible literally or not is irrelevant, it's simply a laughable example of the same phenomenon. Why is the atom made up of protons, neutrons and electrons? To a believer the answer "God made it that way" is sufficient. It becomes case closed. With belief it must always at some point come down to "it's gods will".
If you're a believer, you might as well take the bible literally, it's as good an explanation as any other of the world as we see it.
Deleted
Frankly, I haven't seen many posts saying they should be shut up.
What most of us _are_ saying is that:
1) it's stupid. Sorry, the same first ammendment says I _can_ say I find it bloody stupid. Same as if I read about someone spending that much money on a magic ring of levitation to jump off a cliff with. Or spending that much money on animatronics to "prove" to everyone that Lord Of The Rings is 100% fact. (Sure, you can animate hobbits and orcs all you want, but that doesn't make it a scientiffic proof.) Sure, I'm not going to stop them, but excuse me while I laugh my ass off at the stupidity of it all.
2. this, and the whole "young earth creationsm" and "intelligent design" bullshit are part of an insidious battle to destroy science as a whole, via a barrage of fallacies, flawed logic, and redefining words. It's not just a "well, I think that god exists" issue, but a battle for mindshare trying to effectively purge the very fundament of the scientific method or reasoning from as many minds as possible. There's a whole scaffold including stuff like "burden of proof", "Occam's razor", etc, that these people systematically try to pervert and destroy. Each and every single notion, word and definition is systematically corrupted, perverted, distorted, and outright presented as the very opposite of what it used to mean.
If you want an analogy, it's not just like creating a "museum of fascism", for historical reason. What these people do is akin to instead trying to systematically pervert and corrupt the very notions of "democracy", "freedom", "elections", etc- Until the whole edifice is pulled from under you and you find yourself in a fascist dictatorship just because everyone forgot how a democratic country was supposed to work or what the difference is.
That's essentially what these people are trying to do to science and reason: pervert and corrupt and undermine it all, until you find yourself in an Iran-style fundamentalist theocracy, just because noone knows any better any more. Just because everyone's mind has been warped to think that "evidence" means "what the preacher told me", and "burden of proof" means "well, you can't disprove what the preacher said", and "theory" means "just another unfounded opinion."
Sure, I'm still not going to shut them up by force, but they do earn my heartfelt disgust and contempt.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Atheism is not the opposite of religion. Atheism is the opposite of Theism. Its a very important distinction and the reason why the grandparent's post is bullshit.
Bah. I much preferred Richard Hawkings' book on the subject, "A Brief History of God"
That is definitely not his only mistake.
His BIG mistake was to propose violence as a generally acceptable means for achieve his proposed goals. This in my opinion is a terrible design flaw.
When violence is regarded as acceptable, the ones capable and willing to produce the most violence either directly or through others are far more likely to rise to the top.
How would you overthrow such people once they get to the top? Either you wait for them to die or suddenly change their ways or you use yet more violence which is likely to create the same problem again.
If a country is fairly peaceful, violence should be far from an acceptable means for its transformation.
Sure you can get lucky, and you probably will after a while, but don't be surprised if it takes generations - just look at the various countries around the world and their histories.
Many do, I'm sure. Those applying the label "Christian" to themselves are a pretty diverse bunch. I couldn't say whether most do. For the record, I don't consider them crazy, although I'm sure they have their fair share of crazy people on board. I could say the same for evolutionists.
It is true that the Bible is not a science textbook, but it does present itself as a documentary account of many things. Not all of it is figurative, and not all of it is literal. To the best of my knowledge, scholars of the Hebrew language do not consider the text of Genesis chapter one to be poetry, but rather documentary. You can accuse it of being false, but it's unreasonable to say that it was not meant to be read literally.
Indeed, I consider the "it's not literal" excuse to be a lame cop-out where Genesis chapter one is concerned: it's tantamount to saying "I'll interpret the text any which way I please without even paying lip service to textual analysis". That's the sort of treatment that follows on to denial of a literal virgin birth, and of Jesus being the literal son of God, and being literally raised from the dead -- not on the basis of whether the text appears to be speaking literally, but because they are miraculous. At that level of non-literalism, you just don't have a literal Christ in your Christianity anymore. It's not even clear that there's anything substantial enough to call a "belief" in such a system. What, specifically, is there to believe if none of the Bible is literal? Should we believe that God exists? Literally?
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
Yes, but "it eateth grass like an ox" probably does mean that it eats grass like an ox. That's not a metaphor or a synonym, it's a plain description of a large animal. Perhaps an elephant or something.
No. Marx said that religion is a social defense mechansim, the expression of problems in society, and develops based on the material and economic realities in a given society. Authorities can use religion as a means to console an oppressed class. Marx also said that people should transcend religion and take control of their own destiny.
If you have surrendered your capacity to take decisions, to think for yourself, and to control your own destiny, then you are oppressed (according to Marx and others). Religion is, by this definition, oppression.
Perhaps it has something to do with Spain starting the colonization of the Americas by imposing Catholicism on all natives and immigrants. Or maybe it was the pilgrims, puritans, quakers, and lutherans that followed them, avoiding religious persecution in Europe. Or maybe you should just read about the Eurpoean colonization of the Americas to understand why the USA was founded by a bunch of Christian fundamentalists.
i-name =twylite [http://public.xdi.org/=twylite], see idcommons.net
Next time some nut starts to explain how "Jesus saved" or "God's love will guide you". Call them on it. Explain to them that what they believe is a fairy tale with zero evidence. By not doing so you're creating an environment where it's perfectly acceptable to indoctrinate people into religious dogma.
Deleted
Well, here is the thing.
I am an orthodox Jew. AND, incidentally, I speak fluent hebrew (my aramaic is passable). And well, I typicaly read Job at least once a year (In hebrew. With 1000+ years of various rabbinical commentary. That and ecclesiasties. On Shavout, if you must know). I would also like to say that I think creationism is fairly silly. Dangerous, sure. But, silly. I happen to think that MOST relegion is fairly silly (my own, included). There are lots of arguments you could use.
But just saying "eveyrone knows it's a metaphor, you dipshit" reduces your comment to. Well:
A. Wrong. Not everyone knows that. There is a lot of rabbinical debate. Some say it is a prophetic vision, others say it was actually God taking him around showing him these things. This debate appears all over in biblical commentary, esp. in regards to phatasmagorical prophetiky things. The only real thing that is constant in Rabbinical debate, is that there is a lot of it. And Pigs arent Kosher.
B. Ad Hominem. And who modded your silly ad hominem up, probably doesnt read hebrew, or know much about rabinical authority.
Look, I am a big fan of telling people "read it in the hebrew". If you had bothered to do that, you would see the passage he is talking about (Job 40:15) should almost certainly be translated (roughly) "here are the animals, that I made, along with you. Grass/Grain it Eats, just like cattle eat." Now, the interesting thing about this passage is the word (transliterated) "b-hay-mote". Hebrew, as lots of people will tell you, is written with consonants. So, the word is BHM#T (the # is something that normally represents an "Oh" or "oo" but can be a "V". A vav for those of you who know hebrew.) Under normal circumstances, you would just translate that as "animals". The problem with that translation, is that this chapter is God, showing Job all sorts of wonderous things of Creation. So why are some random animals so wonderous. That question is what leads to the discussion that the animals in question, are wonderous animals, and the trasliteration of a normal word "B-Hay-Mote" to behemoth. You really have to be reading the passage TRYING to force the word to mean "dinosaurs" for it to come close to that reading.
See, that would be a decent argument. "everyone knows its metaphor you dipshit" is just wrong, and personal.
Also, please dont give me ownership of the Old testament. I like to think my knowledge of it is better than most. But that doesnt mean I own it, any more that a classics professor owns "the Illiad". Other people can still come to these books, read them, and find what they may in them. Some of what they find might be because they want to see it. Sometimes a scholar of these books can show somone why a particular reading isnt likely. But Christians (though I think they are often wrong, because they rarely study the bible in any original source) are not to be dismissed out of hand because they are not "orthodox Jews". Further, why should an Orthodox Jew have any more claim to the bible then I Conservative, or reform Jew. They have the same traditional connection I do, they just choose to make a different reading.
In short, please mod parent down. He is an AC, doesnt really say anything constructive (or even correct), and belongs at 0 where he started.
To try and make some vague link with IT here... Something I find useful is to imagine God/deity as a computer programmer. (S)He creates a universe, writes the objects, workflow etc etc, and this universe, being well programmed, contains objects able to have some form of self-consciousness. These objects then wonder if they've been created by the big Programmer in the sky, or whether their universe is a digital accident. The only way for them really to know would be that the Programmer speaks through an object. They could perhaps deduce certain things from the structure of their universe, but it wouldn't prove anything either way. The Programmer would have to reveal him/herself within the program for them to be sure. Of course, if the Programmer was able to set up the universe to run on base principles, a few basic laws that allowed the rest to evolve... then that would be pretty excellent programming. A deity that had to invoke "adam = new Human(bellybutton = true)" would be decidedly second rate
I grew up in a really religious household. I am now agnostic and a huge fan of Eastern thought. I know of a few other folks who have a similar background and think Creationism and Religion in general as being just utter crap.
So, if you're worried about this promoting Creationism, don't. The folks going there are already converted and if anything, it may get them thinking and questioning their own beleifs.
And as long there isn't any police showing up at my door to force me to church or to tax me for not going to church, I'm going to worry about more important things.
For my fellow Americans -Have a Happy Thanksgiving!
I think the reason why creationism and other balony can grow in the US is a general "all or nothing" attitude in a lot of people there. I've noticed it in a few people while I was in the US, many of them have an approach to things that allows no middle way. Things are black or white, good or bad, there or not. Yes or no. Very binary.
Creationism and clinging to the bunk is a necessity for the religous zealots there. If God didn't create the world, he cannot exist. All or nothing. Either the Bible is 100% correct or God is gone. Now, that must not happen, of course, so Creationism MUST be correct.
Even the most zealous religious groups here in Europe take a rather moderate stance towards Creationism. God can exist without it, the Bible needn't be literal. "Created in seven days" is a metaphor for a creation in a "whole way", that's what the seven symbolizes. That can take millenia (hey, who are you to dictate to God how long one of his days is? Remember, he's beyond and above space and time). He also created the animals before man, so those dinos can exist way before man came to be. A millenia old earth? No problem, those "seven days" are a metaphor.
I've had lengthy talks with very devout theologists and without failure they all said that you cannot take the Bible literal. Doing so would most likely make you either crazy or turn from the faith, because you'd have to realize that it cannot be true if taken literal. You don't even want to count the translation mistakes (it was translated from Aramaic to Greek to Latin to English... talk about bablefish) or the interpretations. And a lot of things changed meaning in the millenia since its creation, a lot of the figures and parallels used to describe things don't make sense anymore to a modern person. Do you REALLY want to try taking something like that literal?
The general belief here is (if you are so inclined to take it serious and believe in it) that God created the world in seven "steps", which is also in sync with the original text ("days" is only a way to translate it. The original text talked about "daily tasks", in today's commerce it would be translated as "man days"). And that's by far not the only translation mistake the various people who copied it made.
And you want to take one of those babelfishy documents literal? Must be nuts to do that.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Whereas socialism is the opium of the bureaucracy.
Karl Marx was right. Was he? I thought time and trial had proven otherwise.
Who cares how someone gets a +1? What difference does it make?
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
As opposed to what, catholic communism?
Is it possible that this is the beginning of that split in the human race where one part devolves into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures?
1 7/2015231
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/
Slashdot is powered by your submission.
I'd like to appologize on behalf of the state of Kentucky.
Not all of us are ignorant, inbred rednecks.
the creature was built like a brick shit-house
That statement is neither a metaphor nor a synonym - it's a simile.
Here's an explanation of the difference between a metaphor and a simile.
> ...the animatronic dinosaurs, which are pictured as coexisting with modern humans before the Fall
:)
You rotten swines ! You've just made me spit coffee all over my keyboard, and then I nearly choked on what was left in my mouth due to laughing so much
Then again I don't really know how to take this... Is it good that freedom of speech allows them to create this rubbish ? or is it really, really sad to see such a display of simple mindedness being produced on such a large scale in the most developed country in the world ?
Oh well, best mop up my keyboard.
Very, very funny indeed !
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
Why does a person of Faith need scientific proof?
I'm an atheist, but I found this comment really interesting: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=207834 &cid=16947864
Yay, I'll go to bed less ignorant tonight. I learnt how to say 'Animals' in hebrew. Yay!
Thank you /.
This is why you shouldn't take Dawkins so seriously when he talks philosophy: he's an expert zoologist, and a crummy philosopher. Contra Dawkins, saying "God did it" is a direct alternative to saying "it happened all by itself".
Anyone who lacks a spirit of scientific inquiry will be satisfied with a metaphysical answer like "God wills it" or "the anthromorphic prinicple makes it inevitable". The scientifically curious will say, "I wonder if I can smash apart those protons, neutrons, and electrons to find even smaller particles and understand how they behave" -- which has very little to do with why protons, neutrons and electrons exist in the first place.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
So, just as Catholics belief that murdering heretics (preferably as painfully as possible) was doing god's work justified the genocide of the Cathars (as just one example), the communists' belief that they were hastening the arrival of post-capitalist society justified their own murderous depredations.
The point is that unquestioning belief in any set of propositions (whether mystical or secular) leads people (not all of them, but certainly enough, as history has shown us, to be a concern) to do very bad things.
It's a Power engine of the highest order. Its proponents begin by asking you to suspend logic and assume an anti-entropic premise. From there, the orthodox doctrine is One of Many interpretations. It gets worse. For the newbie, they can either listen to glorious affirmations, or face the grinding universe. It's like a mathematical proof with a division by zero in it. It's an "illegal operation" for a reason. If that step is allowed, quite literally anything can be pseudo-proved. The fun part is the computer era has contributed a whole new slew of reasons to show it all up.
"God hasn't answered my prayers."
"He is Busy."
"No he's not, he's God."
"Oh. Well, then you're too puny to understand Him."
"Hmm. Then can I talk to the cool souls of dead people? Like Edward Gibbon?"
"No. The Other World is removed from this one."
"That's no fun. Can I send an email?"
"No."
"What?? God has no IT staff?? Where did all the Slashdotters go?"
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Um.
Adam being naked with his Tingling Naughty Bits hanging out is too much for their more conservative donors to handle, but Adam squatting naked behind a sheep is okay?
I guess that doesn't surprise me.
Thank you for the troll moderation, it validates Joe.
KFG
Science is a method of looking at the world. It's incompatible with all belief because at some point the believer says "god made it that way". There are no believer scientists. They may think they are but they're not really scientists.
Deleted
In modern science you not only have evolution, you also have biologically inspired sociology, computational neuroscience and a number of other disciplines that you just cannot understand if you believe in a human soul.
This really depends on how you conceive of a human soul. While you are quite correct that over the last 500 years, science has provided knowledge about many aspects of the world that trumps religious belief for various reasons, this does not imply that science has or will trump religious belief per se. That is, religions tend to have large bodies of knowledge around them, much of which refers to facts about the world and will inevitably be shown to be false by things like science, but they also have certain beliefs which have nothing to do with what science is capable of investigating.
For example, the idea of a soul: you can be a complete determinist, you can think that all operations of the mind are really operations of the brain, etc, but you can still believe in a soul. You could, for example, say that what does the feeling of your various mental states is the soul, and that this soul somehow goes on to occupy another body in another universe when you die, thereby continuing some kind of feeling (even without memory of the first time around). Or whatever.
The point is, science can say nothing about that, as with many other religious beliefs, such as the existence of gods. Only religion itself and philosophy can actually argue against core religious beliefs.
Why can't evolution be the intelligent design?
It's brilliant - I'd expect God to be able to pull it off.
I'm a 2000 man.
Most Christians I know put a lot of work into feeding and clothing the poor, as Christ taught. I'm sorry your experience has not been the same.
Oh how I wish I lived in the USA.
On an unrelated topic, I'm an arsonist.
Actually, we just have to sit back and watch the various religions kill each other off ("my god is the real god" "no, mine is" "no, mine is - die, infidel!") And if you think that's limited to the middle east, you didn't look too closely at Ireland, among other places and times.
Religion isn't the opiate of the masses ... more like crack cocaine.
A pox on all your houses.
is what I thought I read at first *gulps more coffee*. Boy it would suck to be that guy.
I know a lot of Christians who seek to oppress their neighbors, as Christ didn't teach. You're lucky your experience has not been the same.
Can I bum a sig?
"Linux is for noobs"-The new MS fud strategy
I subscribe to drugs, especially if the weed is good but I would rather opt out of creationism if I may.
Tyrannosaurs on a boat? Hey, I just had a great idea for a Hollywood blockbuster. Get me my agent...
Quite the contrary, the "Starvation Army" provided all of the furniture in the house I grew up in - for free; and we weren't even Christians and not going to be.
Still have a few pieces of that "junk" furniture, only now it's valuable Mission Oak. My mother has always said that she wishes she took more (the offer was for anything she wanted, just help yourself), only pride prevented her.
Still, it is my experience that the one thing the average Christian can't abide is a Christian. Just read The Name of the Rose.
KFG
I know, its "more complicated than that." But no, really, it isn't.
The whole chrisitian religion is as full of logical holes as any other one. For example:
And don't bring out the "God didn't have sex with that woman!" line. It didn't wash with Clinton and his blow job, it doesn't wash with God knocking up some teen-ager. Or is oral sex now not classified as sex in the New New New Revised King James Version For Pedophile Preachers?
Either:
Now really, would you even trust someone who goes around cuckolding someone else, never mind worshiping them and their bastard kid? That's some opiate of the masses there - more like crack.
Religion is the reason why poor people vote for Republicans who cut social programs and give tax cuts to the rich.
You're right, the analogy is broken. Even Opium addicts aren't as stupid as the "Christian Right".
Your argument is fraught with tautologies, assumptions and unvoiced assumptive qualities of Atheism in an apparent attempt to promote institutionalized ignorance and delusion as something that is related to "truth". You sir, are apparently quite confused.
You don't think I have exactly the same right to laugh at the poor deluded fundy nuts? Go learn the concept of freedom.
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In the same way murderous actions by those who claim a religion are usually found in some other base, for example, political, financial, geographical, racial or otherwise. It gets old to keep repeating it, but blaming an entire religion for a murderous action is silly unless you can point to justification for the action in the foundational religious text/s.
Evolution in itself has no explanation for the origin of species. (pun intended) Consider this: for that first living cell to exist, it would have to be able to create food (as there would be no organic food for it to feed off of), store the food, convert the food into energy, expell waste, reproduce, the list goes on... Needless to say, this cell would be fairly complex, and it is not likely to think that these parts would just fall into place. Furthermore, it is just silly to think that the DNA could fall into place. That is the same as saying that throwing letters at a wall would produce Shakespearen books. It doesn't work. The improbabilty is doubled, when you bring RNA into the ring. I for one applude that someone is atleast putting common sense into their beliefs. Rather than try and say they are "fools" take a look at the rest of their site. They offer many good arguments. http://www.answersingenesis.org/
You're forgetting, the fundies don't really need to explain anything in scientific terms. When science proves them wrong, they have the ultimate answer: 'God did it'. If their god can create a whole universe, he can certainly magic up a few zillion tons of water, and magic them away again afterwards. There's no point in talking to Creationists about 'science' and 'proof', when they believe in a god who can bend the rules at will. Faith their case is 'belief despite all evidence to the contrary'.
Watch my YouTube atheist video blog (user NickGisburne2000) for arguments against religion
Seriously... who cares? So some people built a museum... why is this news? If you got a distinct sense of pleasure in ridiculing these people and their museum maybe you should evaluate yourself and question why your world is so small.
Take this crap and post it on DailyKos or the Democratic Underground, but NOT HERE.
Asshole.
What?
I know lots of people whose religion (in the case of theists, more accurately God) has a huge impact on their lives.
Have you asked people or assumed that because there is no impact you are aware of that there is none? It is something that is difficult to talk about people who are not religous. For one thing they are likely to think one crazy (a zealot!), for another they are unlikely to be interested or understand - and it is often difficult to explain.
The "rituals and small things" may be the tip of the iceberg. What are the motives for them? What impact does the underlying belief and relationship with God have on them?
OK, very few of go and do very visible things like working for the poor, joining a monastary etc. (although I know a few of those too). However, someone like you is unlikely to meet the people who do do those things.
Where are you and how do you define "civilized world"? I have lived in two very different countries, but it is in the one that is less apparently religious and more developed (Britain) that I have seen the greatest impact on people at an individual level (impact on societey and culture are another matter).
Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast...
Is that a metaphor, or should I start backing away slowly?
I support faith based missile defense systems
When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail
Mutually incompatible philosophies. Science demands proof, religion demands belief. You can be one or the other but not both.
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Eh? Aren't there already Sci-Fi museums? What about stuff at places like Disneyland?
http://outcampaign.org/
Perhaps they want to do a lot of terrible things that only their faith keeps them from doing. It would explain what happens when a religious authority proclaims that the rules don't apply to this or that particular brand of bad people.
At first, I sighed at this story, but then I realized this could be the perfect chance for me to make millions and retire early. All I need to do is set up a kiosk in front of the place and sell magic beans (blessed by Jesus himself). Evil be gone!
Ask me about my sig!
Don't forget that atheism is a religion too. "Militant atheists", as described above, believe that God does not exist, despite having no direct evidence to support that belief. No one gave them an exclusive peek outside the universe to see that nothing is out there. Holding an unsubstantiated belief is the definition of religion, and like any other religion, it can be used to justify extremism.
Or perhaps SOME people DO realize that theft doesn't stop being theft if it's government doing it, and calling it "taxing the rich". And some of them do even have the moral fiber to stand against injustice, even if they benefit from it?
He's currently spinning in his grave to build up power, but when a meteorite hits the museum, we'll know we need to dig up Darwin and burn him as a witch.
You are, of course, wrong.
The problem is this - the ONLY position that atheism maintains is that there is no god (or at least, that there is no reason to believe there is a god). That's it. Atheism makes no positive statements about anything. It does not tell people what to do, believe or think. It is not a political or military viewpoint.
Let's assume that you are correct, and that atheists killed lots of people. What does this tell us? Nothing. Presumably those murderers also did not believe in unicorns. Therefore, it is just as reasonable to state "People who don't believe in God committed genocide" as "People who don't believe in unicorns committed genocide".
The problems you are linking to atheism are really more to do with the political systems and leader-cults, not disbelief in a particular supernatural entity.
Cress, cress, lovely lovely cress
"In this respect", the OP clearly meant. Time and trial have hardly proven otherwise with that in mind.
This is old news for me but only because I worked for the site listed below when their article on this was published. It looks like he came in around $15 million over budget cause back in 2000 it was estimated that it'd only be $10 million to get going.
9 07/cover_story000907.html
http://www.aceweekly.com/Backissues_ACEWeekly/000
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
The most interesting thing to me is the fundimentalist most often quote the old testiment. The old testiment is a jewish text and the jews don't take it literally. I would argue fundimentalists aren't Christians. They don't follow Christian values. The fundimentals of Christianity include helping the poor and tolerance. Christ was quite specific about a seperation between church and state. As a matter of fact I can't think of a single value the fundimentalist preach that is specifically Christian. In truth what fundimentalist preach is preChristian.
I would like to understand why exactly this is. Does the Bible say that it should not be taken literally? Should the whole thing not be taken literally or just parts of it? If the latter, how do you know what parts? And if we are not supposed to take it literally, what are the contents actually supposed to mean (given that interpretation of nor literal material is highly subjective)?
Forgive me for flying off the handle right away, but it seems to me this is just a technique believers use to shield themselve from inquiry when it is clear that their beliefs are downright outlandish (and they know it). If the Bible is not meant to be taken literally then honestly what could it possibly be good for? (Aside from the reasons we read The Odyssey or similar classics.) You cannot be sure of anything in such a text as it is intended for the audience to make their own decisions. It is like basing beliefs on interpretations of Fight Club or Rocking-Horse Winner. Those stories could mean anything and specifically do not present absolutes, drawing on the reader to make sense of them.
Why bother.
These figures are tragic, and of course population levels were much lower at the time. But even so, they are minuscule compared with the death tolls produced by the atheist despotisms of the 20th century. In the name of creating their version of a religion-free utopia, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong produced the kind of mass slaughter that no Inquisitor could possibly match. Collectively these atheist tyrants murdered more than 100 million people.
...may advance theological claims - "God gave us this land" and so forth - but the conflict would remain essentially the same even without these religious motives
First, Adolf Hitler was religious and frequently spoke positively about the German Christian heritage. Also I think you are linking the terrors of an absolute dictatorship to that of Atheism in the same way you link the "religious wars" to wars that don't really involve religion. Most dictators will kill anyone who doesn't agree with them, christian, athiest or whatever.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not, at its core, a religious one. It arises out of a dispute over self-determination and land.
WHAT?!?!? are you kidding me? Yes, it's a dispute over land but it's a dispute over HOLY land. Basically they are both claiming that the lands are spiritually significant to them.
While we're making stuff up, I'd argue that no, if it wasn't over a particular piece of hold land, they could more easily distribute land and neither would care that the other got this temple or that temple. The main differences that divide them are religious. Take that away and there are few differences between the groups and maybe they'd get along.
it also provides a moral code that condemns the slaughter of innocents. In particular, the moral teachings of Jesus provide no support for - indeed they stand as a stern rebuke to - the historical injustices perpetrated in the name of Christianity.
Unless you are Muslim, in which case you are required to kill the infidels, and by infidels they mean anyone who isn't Muslim. Also I hate to bring it up but the Crusades were a slaughter of innocents in the name of Christianity. I find your dismissal of the number of deaths a little alarming. Just because they didn't have access to weapons of mass destruction or the same mobility doesn't mean they wouldn't have done the same thing "in the name of God."
I believe that a large number of murders would happen with religion or no religion. Give someone enough power and it can go to their head.
The best example of religious persecution in America is the Salem witch trials.
I don't believe this is the best example, I believe the best example is 9/11. A small group of militant religious freaks killed a lot more than 25 people. I also feel the Salem witch trials really only used religion to get the support of the community to kill people that someone didn't like. The fears and superstitions of religious people were exploited in this case. While the crusades and the Salem witch trials may not be the best example of religious extremism, I don't think we should dismiss them. The best example are the Muslim extremists.
Of course, this doesn't get around the fact that usually the religious reasons are a pretext used by those with power to justify actions for their own gain. But therein lies part of the problem; when a leader uses a religion or ideology to motivate people to do wrong for his own gain, is that religion/ideology culpable? If a political figure or a preacher tells his followers to kill in the name of X, does X therefor share some of the blame? Does communism get the blame for what Stalin did, or Christianity the blame for what the Crusaders did? After all, the people doing the actual killing have probably been led to believe that what they're doing is right. The people in power may not be true believers, but you can bet their goons are.
And that gets you to a second problem. If the religion or ideology is not to be blamed for the evil it can be used to justify, should it therefor get any credit for the good it can cause? Christianity brought us intolerant fundamentalism on the one hand, and numerous charities on the other. If it can't be blamed for the former, can it be given any credit for the latter?
I'd suggest that one of two positions is possible. Either you can claim that religion is an ideology that can be used for good or evil, but is itself neutral, or that religion is a driving force that can cause people to turn into saints or monsters. Too many people on both sides want to cherry pick their facts to support both ideas when it suits them; fundamentalists would have you believe that when Christians do good, the credit lies with the religion, and when they do evil, the blame lies only with themselves, while people who dislike religion would blame it for all the evil it causes and ignore the good.
(Side note: I should probably mention that I'm a strongly secular agnostic. I don't dislike religion, but I don't particularly like it either.)
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Does religion require spirituality?
Unreasoning faith in something, whether it be an ideology or someone you treat as a god, is an essential part of religion and an essential part of totalitarian government. Although you can distinguish the two, they are very similar. So similar, in fact, that I'd guess that they are both perceived by their followers in the same way.
In short, I see your point, but I still think I'm right. Can you think of any more essential differences between, say, Stalinist Communism, and Islamic theocracy, aside from belief in the supernatural?
Only people who believe in gods think that way.
Um, no not really. See, one thing that Evolution teaches is that men are just evolved creatures with no purpose. There is no higher morality. Morality is whatever people make it to be. The only check is what others would force upon me. If I lived in a society that permitted killing my neighbor and eating his flesh then that's ok. If I lived in a society that didn't and I managed to do it anyway and not get caught... that's ok too. Evolution makes it clear that there are no concepts of right and wrong, they are just human fabrications, and so to follow them is really to just do what you need to do to avoid being punished by those who have power. If I have all the power then I have all of the right.
http://www.creationevidence.org/
Sorry kids, not the first.
Maybe you should study a little economic theory before purporting to evaluate an economist. Marx's seminal work, his theories on the unemployment cycle, remain fundamentally unchalleneged and virtually unchanged to this day.
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
...at the $300 level, and we'll provide you with a big hideous print of a badly rendered Noah's Ark, complete with velociraptors! Remembering at the $1000 level gets you the SAME hideous print, plus a frame to put it in and a poster with all the other hideous pictures on it!
Why do theists continually shift the burden of proof back to athiests?
Because the atheists keep talking about proof -- "science" they say "requires proof." Under a religious philosophy, proof is neither required nor desired. If science requires proof, then atheism as a scientific construct must require proof under a scientific philosophy. It's not the religious philosophers' job to do science -- so pass it back to the scientists!
But yes, I do know that science doesn't require proof. It's just that a lot of atheists who profess to follow a life informed by science don't know what science is, just like a lot of "religious" people (eg creationists, suicide bombers) don't know what religion is. Let's face it: stupidity does not descriminate on grounds of creed, colour or class.
If I were to insist that a teapot orbited the Sun (an analogy used by Dawkins), I would have to *prove* this to other people before they'd believe me.
That was Bertrand Russell.
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I wonder if in the eyes of the creationists
Hanna-Barbera's flinstones http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flinstones is considered reality-tv
Now really, would you even trust someone who goes around cuckolding someone else, never mind worshiping them and their bastard kid?
Worked for Zeus and Herakles. Of course they were Gods of cuckolds and bastard kids. When asked about adultery in Sparta the reply was "There isn't any," because Sparta had a culture of wife "sharing" and children as the property of the city.
Think about that the next time someone says, "It takes a village to raise a child." Read a history of Sparta - and ants.
KFG
I'm pretty sure my dog is more enlightened than I am, and I know I'm further down the path than most of the people I meet every day...
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
What about Big Bang/Creationistic hybrid view?
If you have read modern day Big Bang theory and pay attention to the phases of the Big Bang it is remarkably close to what is described in Genesis.
I and others believe that science and religion are telling the same thing from different viewpoints.
One viewpoint is from a scientist, using telescopes, math, and physics to study the universe.
The other viewpoint is from a simple shepard thousands of years ago that saw things that no-one could have fully understood till about 50 years ago, was written down in the best way a shepard could interpret it, and was subsequently translated (with mistranslations like "time periods" becoming "days").
Now there are those whack jobs that believe that every mistake in translation and every mistake in interpretation was by God's purposeful design with those saying otherwise heretics. Well... I guess that makes me a Christian/Heretic.
Mind if I introduce you the church of 'erisgeenrozeeenhoorn'. These people beleive there is no invisible pink unicorn. Since you do not believe in the invisible pink unicorn either, you are part of this church. Idem for the church of noflyingteapot or the church of noflyingspagettimonster.
Or you might accept that people that do not believe in your god or any god, are not therefore part of a group. Your 'us against them' stance is as stupid as your beliefs.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Since Mr. Bush hasn't made his mind up on evolution, why should I have to?
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13
That group of people that think dinosaurs coexisted with humans probably corresponds to the 27% of fundy nutjobs who would vote for Bush even if he ate a Jew baby.
And by definition that includes every believer. A believer by definition thinks that god created everything, there is no alternative to that answer no matter how deep into the nature of the universe you delve at some point, god dun it. By asking the question, why, at all, you're giving intent and assuming right from the start that god exists.
You're really missing the point of my post (and of Dawkins), perhaps I didn't present it well. Believers state that god did it, they are claiming ownership of both the how and the why. The question of how is in direct opposition to science and the question of why is answered by assumption implicit in the question itself.
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Religion IS the reason why poor people vote for Republicans against their own self interests. The Republicans do nothing to help the poor and much that hurts the poor. The only reason for poor people to vote for Republicans is that the Republican party has been taken over by the Christian Right.
That goes far beyond free speech
The light of keenness shines from the faces of the workers, too, as they chisel out mountain sides and work out where to put the Tree of Life. They greet us cheerily as we pass.
They, too, know they are doing the Lord's Work, and each has signed a contract saying they believe in the Seven Days of Creation theory. Mornings on this construction site start with prayer meetings.
So would someone who hadn't signed the contract been allowed to work on the job site? Or do people have to be good little Christians these days in order to feed their families?
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
The big question on my mind is: If you don't believe in this, why do you care? They're not funding it with taxpayer dollars, they're funding it on donations. If people want to spend their money on something, why is it anyone's business but their own?
I think people are idiots for paying thousands of dollars for a console on Ebay that they could buy in a store in another month for a couple hundred dollars. However I'm not writing an opinion piece on Slashdot, presenting it as news, and inciting a lot of community anger at a group of people just because I don't agree with their priorities.
When a public school has a school trip to it, then it's cause for news. Until then this is no bigger news than the construction of a really big church. And anyone who finds themselves being angry at these people (which is the general tone of this entire discussion) for spending their money in this way needs to take a step back and examine where their hate comes from, because such attitudes are bigotry, even if (especially if) you don't agree with it.
Last I checked, freedom of religion was still a constitutional right, and this is no more than exercise of that right. And as a personal disclaimer, I'm a non-creationist Christian (yes, we exist). I think this is exactly as much of a shame as the hype and zealotry over console releases, but it's their money to do with as they will.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
... Will also be the first "museum" that consists of nothing but a big sign that reads "God done it... No questions".
God Be Gone
I think that unquestioningly following an ideology, or a leader, is very similar to unquestioningly following a Bible. There is only one difference (supernatural stuff).
I am very interested in the history of religion, and I think that at least some ancient religions were created to give authority to a human leader. Things like Marxism and National Socialism are new equivalents of this - they inspire the same sort of devotion and the same kind of indoctrination. Stalin didn't claim to have supernatural insight, but there would have been no difference in his behaviour if he had.
I have a MA in physics from Berkeley, and I understand only very little of what we currently understand about the creation of the universe. I certainly couldn't explain what parts of it I know it to my wife, a smart, well educated but not technically inclined woman. So how would a guy with an ancient egyptian education be able to understand the creation of the world? What value would there be in trying to tell it to him literally?
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
Points for the use of the term claptrap though! Well done.
I don't have a microwave. I do, however, have a clock that occasionally cooks shit.
Ah, thats you're problem. You're trying to use logic against a religion. It doesn't work like that.
a) If evil happens, it's due to the fallibility of Humans, or the interfrence and corruption by a "bad" power.
b) If good happens it's due to God.
So, if you have a car crash with a drunk driver that paralysis you and kills your family, thats a human problem.
If you help an old person across the road, that's god at work and he should get the credit.
Sooo, anything Good = God, anything Bad = nothing to do with God. Except if you're a bad perosn and are being punished.
try to make ends meet, you're a slave to money, then you die
Do you think it is possible that there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of man at work there?
Well, that is obvious..Just as in Democracy, Communism supposes equality, but as G.K. Chesterton once said:
"The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man."
There is no basis for Communism either except in a dogma about the divine origin of man, and that's why it ideologically fails from the beginning!
Infinite time means everything that can happen, will. You being you is absolutely incidental. You do not exist.
"Even the soft religious beliefs like "there must be something different about humans" are being challenged. We are just animals, no soul."
So, if your behavior is just an effect of the physics in your brain, why are you IN IT? Why do you experience it? (at least i assume you are in it)
I myself find this question intrigueing, don't see how physics could answer it. Quantum randomness=soul idea has sprung up in my head, but see if computers(with neglible random effects) can do intelligence convincing of a soul. Lets not be overcertain of ourselves talking about it either.
Not that these people dont say absurd things like dinosaurs lived with man, humans arent animals, earth is the center of the universe, the stars and planets are fixed to a sphere round the earth, any alien actually looks exactly like humans, there is good and evil with some absolute measure.(the latter: your morals are measure enough!) Some less religous one: other species then man never destroy their environment.(right, and Australia isn't big enough for 2 bunnies) Its just there are philosophical questions out there.
(humans arent animals statement is partly political, because of fear people losing human rights)
I wonder how an ancient people on earth would have tried to describe being visited by some space faring race who partially modified the planets they visited. Possibly using gene manipulations and so forth on the native animals, even the humans themselves. And how they might try to describe natural disasters that wiped out a lot of the species and the humans, how would they try to preserve what knowledge existed at the time, those who lived through such a disaster?
Anyway, that's my pet theory because it fits quite well, seems to go along with most of the old legends and myths, etc, meets the occam's razor test with only one "belief" required, that the universe is quite large enough to contain space faring races and has for a long time. I also find that belief to be fairly rational, given the sheer size and age of the universe, ie, the ods against it are fairly high.
We have some decent records showing pretty much the same humans at least back 200,000 years from the fossil remains, yet "civilization" records are quite sparse until relatively recently..except fo the passed on legends which have a *lot* of overlap across cultures, and a few very rare but very tantalizing clues spread out throughout the museums of the world. I find it quite interesting and tend to take the long view, if you can parse it correctly the earth is a lot more interesting place to contemplate as a historical whole.
Just because one has a god, doesn't mean they're good and just because one is good, does not mean they are shackled by a god. If people would just strip the dogma out of their life it leaves them free to do good things for the sake of helping out a neighbor, not because after ignoring all the negative things religion has contributed to the world, one found a grain of goodness in it to inspire them.
I think this is great. Even if you don't believe the 7 days thing, you have to ignore massive evidence if you believe that life simply happened with no catalyst from outside of our plane of existence. Even Darwin admitted that there were holes in his thoery. With all of the skeletons they have found, they have yet to find the "missing link". I for one will probably take my family to visit this once it opens. ~AR
Wow. You have a lot of baggage. Lighten up, Francis!
would they be doing this if they didn't believe? Then they're "good people." If they're doing it only because they believe, then even their own bible condemns their actions as being hollow.
What makes someone "good"? How is "good" instilled in someone? Would you say it's by something other than teaching it to them?
Mary was Joseph's wife, not God's
Actually, they weren't married yet.
God is a fornicator and Jesus a bastard
And don't bring out the "God didn't have sex with that woman!" line.
So you would say David Crosby fornicated with Melissa Etheridge (or her partner; I don't know who actually carried the child)?
Heaven forbid an outsider come to this site and find this story in the science category.
IAA (i am an atheist). i do not have any evidence against the existence of many things that i still do not believe in: unicorns, fairies.......and even the flying spaghetti monster. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Mons ter
It's one thing to ask us not to believe the creationism myth, but now you want us to believe that there is intelligent life in Kentucky?!?!
At first this story made me laugh, then irritated me, then I thought 'who cares'. But it still irritated me, so I thought about it. This should not be called a musuem. *Perhaps* it could fit into a very technical definition because it could be considered art or of some 'value'. But it isn't scientific or historical, and that is what most people associate a museum with - science, history, or art. A museum is for storing FACTS. Creationism is not factual.
Now, you might say 'oh, who CARES?' Well, I do. Personally, I think Creationism is foolish bunk - but I also think that you can believe in it if you want to. But it isn't science, and don't call it that.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
From Article 11 of the treaty, as approved by the Senate and signed by President John Adams in 1796:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tripoli
The founding fathers were Deists, not Christian fundamentalists.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
When did the word "evolutionist" enter the lexicon? The word you're looking for is "scientist" or at the very minimum "scientifically literate person". Confidence in the theory of evolution through natural selection is no more a belief than confidence in gravity or the atomic theory of matter.
Whenever I hear the word evolutionist come out of someone's mouth I cringe because they are usually either a raving fanatic or wholely uneducated on the subject of science.
And then you learn that people revolt, and that even you must sleep.
Trying to rule wisely will bring about compassion -- that goes back to the Beowulf epic and Egypt.
And evolution does has precepts towards a kind of right:
Cannibalism has issues with prions (mad-cow disease)...
Extermination leads to loneliness...
"Have fun. Don't hurt anybody." takes on more power the deeper you go...
Even without religion, we have purpose (or at least are driven to several goals, eg):
To Exist Beyond Death (everybody wants to bequeath a legacy -- even without an heir)
To Parent / Nurture their children (see above, but also - I want my kids to be better than I am)
To hoard and amass great wealth (see 1 & 2... also, I'd like to live in luxury)
Sometimes, these goals hurt people or help others. Later, many believe their legacy should include others loving them, so they try to undo some of their assholeishness (cf. Carnegie)...
How is that that Communism, allegedly founded on a scientific basis, stressing rationality and scientific though, with principles regarded as altruistic (from each according to his ability to each according to his need), repeatedly produced such carnage and such leaders?
Intelligent Design claims to be founded on a scientific basis, stressing rationality and scientific thought as well. That doesn't mean it is.
Atheism is the lack of belief in God. It is not a religion--and calling it one is silliness. I've never met one of these "Militant Atheists" as you define them, we're much more likely to belive that God "Most Probably Doesn't Exist", as that better known atheist, Richard Dawkins, defines the belief of atheists. We also believe that Thor, The Tooth Fairy, and Athena most probably don't exist, but we know that we have no proof of the same.
It's a Red Dwarf reference.
Do you have any better hostages?
All those people in Italy just dig the Pope's hat? Religion has no geopolitical boundaries and there are millions worldwide who believe that God created the World in 6 days.
If you through faith would like to believe that some natural, unguided force formed everything in the universe from a highly dense speck of matter the size of the head of a pin that just happened to exist from infinity before, and for no apparent reason exploded with such force that it sent matter flying to the ends of the universe unimaginably faster than the speed of light, then all the complexities of life just happened to form out of non-living matter including the irreducible complexities of micro-biology, regardless of the laws of nature that say life always comes from life and everything is in a state of increasing entropy, even though no one has witnessed these events (Big Bang, MACRO-evolution) and they cannot be tested and the fossil records continue to have gapping holes that refuse to support (and if would let yourself accept actually deny) these events; then let the creationists believe by faith what they want to believe.
They have no avenue to bring forth any "evidence" in the school system because the courts have barred them out, so why not let them have their museum.
Also, I really recommend researching both sides of the argument before casting any stones.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
Um... I don't know if you'd noticed, but the question "why does blah blah" has an implicit assumption. It assumes that there is intent. It assumes that there was a reason for "blah blah blah". It assumes that god exists.
By asking "why" you are already assuming that god exists. There's no other alternative.
What I'm saying is that "why" questions are circular.
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museum: a building or place where works of art, scientific specimens, or other objects of permanent value are kept and displayed.
Since this building does not appear to contain any art, scientific specimens or anything of permanent value, I believe a more appropriate term would be theme park.
theme park: an amusement park in which landscaping, buildings, and attractions are based on one or more specific themes, as jungle wildlife, fairy tales, or the Old West.
This should be under politics, or perhaps a new category called "superstition".
For anyone interested, here is some good general information on religion and some specific info on religious skepticism including videos by Sam Harris, George Carlin and some informative stuff on Mormonism and a great video on why Atheists care about religion.
The bottom line is that people can believe what they want to believe. But when you start affecting public policy and public education, there needs to be an open dialogue on whether or not this is a good thing, and this involves examining religion's role in society and its validity as well. The problem is, as Sam Harris puts it, even the liberal and moderate theists are part of the extremist problem because they are part of the lobby which is against ANY discussion of the legitimacy and accuracy of religion. When the moderates won't even allow skepticism to be legitimized, they are almost as bad as the extremists.
This has nothing to do with science. Science by its nature requires that its theories always be open to scrutiny and change. Religion is the opposite of that. As long as religion is a personal thing, it need not be made into an issue, but when fundy extremists start spouting total bullshit, and start lobbying for their superstition to be promoted as legitimate knowledge, responsible, sane people have an obligation to expose this delusion.
Imagine if the USA's egocentric schooling system was instead based on what the individual needed. By egocentric I mean that the focus is on the teacher, the administration, the school board as well as the state/federal political-Elite who control schooling.
In the USA, we all now know that political-Elite - Rove/Bush et al use the schooling system as well religion (and religious believers) as election fodder and/or to suck up enormous amounts of money. But what better way to control people to gain political power or scam tons of money than to scare people with a "The Big BogeyMan In The Sky" and/or Creationism.
That's what "Creationism" is all about:
a] Scare them with "The Big BogeyMan In The Sky" + "Creationism" + All Children Born In Evil + Hell + Zombies
b] Hopefully everyone is well scared and behave like little puppets.
c] Then make sure they vote for the political party that "God" wants - you know the Republicans - who will do "Gods" work - like killing babies in Bagdad.
d) Then send lots of poor black, hispanic and white kids off to Iraq and other far away places to kill and get killed - so that as much middle class tax money can be funnelled to the "Right" people.
I wonder if the recent election shows the folks who scam money based on the "fact" that they know the right "God" - will produce thousands of Fairy Tale Creationism museums as a way of sucking up money and power - since it is obvious that Rove/Bush was never serious about "God's People power or tax money?
You'd think that, wouldn't you? Read this and then get back to me.
Actually, according to your own argument, secular goals, not atheism, are the cause of history's greatest atrocities. More precisely, power-hungry, megalomanic dictators who put their own goals ahead of everything used the fears, beliefs, and prejudices of others to get their way. You're talking about three men who led millions, but of those millions, how many were religious, and genuinely believed they were fighting for good reasons in the name of God? How many previous famous religious leaders genuinely believed in God, rather than just using religion to leverage their own power?
As for why these leaders were so powerful, it is not because they had some mysterious power of atheism, but because they were intelligent, charismatic men who were in the right place at the right time. It just so happens that Christians had been disliking Jews for 2000 years, and Hitler was able to use that. So, yes, religion was the cause; if Christianity had never come to be, and Jews weren't defined by their religion, then there would be no reason to apply those labels. Then it would be reduced to disliking each other for more secular reasons, as you asserted. However, take religion out of the equation and at least two of the three dictators you put forth as atheists would have never come to be.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
Are you still here?
Agnostics and Atheists dismiss gods, not faith. Most (I would argue nearly all) still have faith in mankind, and that is what their moral foundation rests on.
Once again, the boogeyman gets drawn out of the closet, "Atheists have no Gods therefore they have no Morals!", which is untrue, or else they'd all be out in the street killing people for fun.
If you do not understand how a person can have morals and not believe in a god or gods, the problem is not with them, my friend, it is with you.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
I hear The Flying Spaghetti Monster display is delicious.
"You CANNOT disprove an axiom of existence. You can only disprove an axiom of INEXISTANCE"
Uhm x^2=-1 so x=i or x=-i so there isnt a REAL number x that satisfies x^2=-1 so i have DISPROVEN that there exists a real number such that x^2=-1. Plenty of things you can prove existence of.
Please don't digg stuff up from math that simply arent true. By the way, axioms aren't used as lemmas or theorems. They are assumptions, and they cannot be disproven at all, it can only be shown that they are in conflict with other axioms. (assumptions) It is also true that at some point some statements cannot be disproven or proven without additional axioms.
By the way, in writing this article i used a couple of axioms, so with other axioms your statement maybe true. Dont think those apply to our universe though.
Why are there so many americans acting in ways that make all americans look like morons to the rest of the world?
- Do you have an extra high percentage of people with a low IQ and/or education?
- Is stupidity a side effect of excessive consumption of junk food?
- Are there so many americans brainwashed by the constant "America is great" message from the mainstream US media that you are blind to the things that are not so great in America?
The americans i known never fitted the dumb/ignorant/loud stereotype - in fact one off the more intelligent, knowledgeable, wise and mature persons i know comes from the US. Then again, the americans i know are university educated people that emigrated out of the US to a non-english speaking country: hardly a typical bunch.
What's so wrong with the US that it produces such a disproporcionatelly big share of western countries' idiots???
Please enlighten me.
"hidden among the reeds in the marsh."
Doesn't sound like metaphor or a synonym either, it's a plain description of an animal small enough to hide in reeds. Might be a hippo, or an elephant, certainly isn't a Sauropod.
There has been a Creationist Museum in Texas for many years. It is situated right next to the Poluxy river and the Dinosaur National Park. (Many dinosaur tracks were found in the river bed.)
http://www.creationevidence.org/
Maybe these guys think there's is different enough to claim theirs is "first of it's kind" for some definition of "kind". But it is not the first.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
Paradoxically, Marxism DOES fit your above definition of oppression.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
Everyone on Earth disbelieves in more beings than they believe in. Disbelief predates belief, and is more pervasive in humans than any particular belief. The burden of proof is on the believers.
Acts 4:32, which is no doubt a basis for the Hutterite beliefs, and predates Marx by well over a millennium.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
In a word: media.
The majority of Americans are not as shallow and ignorant as the mainstream media might lead others to believe. It's just that the American media is terminally sleazy and likes to display extremists as if they're more normal than they are - just for entertainment purposes.
Then there is a large faction of people who basically sit mesmerized at whatever appears on the television and are largely programmed to regurgitate the outlandish crap being suggested, which explains the epidemic of conservative republicans who don't really think for themselves and are convinced all the world's problems are the exclusive responsibility of the "other team."
If we could somehow get the Fairness Doctrine reinstated, the world would see that there are many intelligent Americans who at this time are not allowed to have appropriate public representation, mainly because their views do not align with the agenda of corporate America.
Purpose is arbitrarily defined and meangingless if you accept that there is no God (or some other higher power/purpose outside of yorself). Believing in legacy is stupid... you're going to die. Scientific theory makes that pretty clear. Who cares if people think you're the greatest guy in the world if you're dead... or if they' think you suck... you're dead. You don't know, you get no benefit. Hoarding wealth while you're alive makes sense from an no-God standpoint because wealth equals power. More power means you can do what you want to do without being constrained by others. Of course you're still going to die and you're still going to lose it. Parenting and nurturing children is a choice you make, but some people like to raise cats, and some people like to burn down churches... if that makes you happy... no?
As to operating in society... yes absolutely none of us has absolute power so we can't oppress the masses and not expect mass revolt at some point in time... but that still doesn't make one thing "right" or "wrong". Morality becomes an arbitrary and really universally meaningless construct, it's just a societal artifact, you do what you have to do to get what you want and do as much as you can get away with. Believing anything else, seems to me, that you're just subjecting yourself to a false and arbitrary constraint.
This is not the first Creationism museum. There has been one in Eureka Springs, Arkansas for years. The Museum of Earth History has exhibits like "Eden", "The Great Flood", and "The Curse". Hilarious, until you realize they are serious.
While others have already brought up that the poster was only talking about a small part of Marx's work, your point is also invalid because you seem to be assuming that the Soviet Union caried thourgh on his ideas. But in fact they sort of missed the whole point.
Marx said that Capitalism would run its course and come to a point where it was no longer workable. That so much of the wealth would be concentrated in a small group while the rest of the masses (the workers, or proletariat in his parlayence) would become more and more poor and oppressed. He then postulated that a revolution would then occur and the workers unite forming a workers paradise.
What the Soviet Union had was Marxist Leninism, because Lenin came along and said "why wait, we can have that paradise in our lifetimes", and started a revolution that he declared to be the revolution that Marx had envisioned. The big problem with this is that Russia at the time was not especially Capitalist (it was still a Monarchy), and Capitalism in the West was far from running its course (I think that it still is, but is starting to show a few cracks).
Of course, there are a few things that people at that point could not have known: the power of the media to keep people who would be otherwise discontent in check, the enormous productivity increases that have happened (suddenly it is much harder to starve... in comparison), and the push towards a service economy (servants for hire). All of these things set back Marx's ideas quite a bit.
I'll bet the outhouse is real big.
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
Great post! But I think you might have gone farther in illustrating the depth of Jewish scholarly tradition in analysing and debating scripture. Much of what Christians think of as "the bible" is drawn from this tradition; the bible is like an onion, containing commentary on the earliest parts, commentary on the commentary, etc. A fascinating and very readable survey of this tradition (in English) is James Kugel's The Bible As It Was.
A common thread in this sort of commentary is drawn from the perfection of God and his works; there can be nothing wrong or accidental in the bible, which therefore repays the most careful study. In extreme form this idea can lead people to look for coded messages, but generally it amounts to inference from close reading. An example from the very begining of the bible has to do with light and darkness. God created light and separated it from darkness on the first day of creation, but he didn't get around to creating the sun, moon and stars until the fourth day. So there must have been some other light involved. What was the nature of this light? Is it still around, or was it dispensed with after the fourth day? In this simple fragment there is food for endless thought and debate.
You can begin to see that fundamentalist Christians who claim to be reading the bible literally do no such thing - they are heavily editing the bible to pick and choose the "literal" bits that suit them. For example, a literal reading of Genesis states that the world has a roof - the vault of heaven that separates the waters above from the waters below. This view has gone out of fashion but it was commonplace in medieval Christendom. The medieval cathedral wasn't just a big church - it was a model of the cosmos, with the high roof of the building representing the high roof of the world, the lights fixed in the roof like the stars fixed in the world's roof. All this made perfect sense to the medieval mind. It explained why the sky is blue; where rain came from (leaky roof); and how God flooded the world when he decided to start over (really big leak.)
So along with the dinosaurs, this Creationist museum really ought to have a display showing an Apollo rocket bonking its nose cone on the roof of the world.
"The good reader is a rarer swan than the good writer."
Disclaimer: I do believe the Biblical account of creation. But these so called creationists do not follow the Bible!
Ok, so some creationists believe the earth is 6000 years old.
Strangely:
Seven Days of Creation theory.
Um, no. God created the world in six days, and rested on the seventh. Look it up.
Sometimes I think atheists are secretly funding the creationists just to discredit Christianity. These folks (creationists) don't take the Bible as literal - if they did, they wouldn't believe such stupid nonsense.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I am not saying "I know it happened this way", but I would like to posit that God created the earth with an appearance of age. Perhaps, he created a fossil record of creatures that never actually existed; or existed in some time frame we are unaware of. His purpose in creating humans was to have a relationship with them, yet he gave us free will. To do so would imply that he didn't want to force us to serve him; we aren't drones. As such, would he (or the devil, but that's a whole new discussion) not put some stumbling blocks before us? It is possible that such things exist to make us have a "walk of faith"; not just "have faith". I certainly don't have the same views as I did ten years ago, and don't expect to have the same views I have today ten years from now. Life is a learning process. The one thing I am sure of is that, when I am in Heaven, one of my first questions for Jesus will be "So, how did your Father create the earth?"
-- "Not all who wander are lost." -J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973)
This museum devoted to creationism causes me to recall a bit of insight by Karl Marx. He once said, "Religion
The opium that is creationism is some damned powerful stuff.
--
I am reposting the above as some moron has moderated it as a troll which it blatently is not.
This is proof to me that there are alot of very small minded nitwits out there who moderate down posts just because they don't aggree with the point being made. This is not what the moderation system is for, hence it does not have an option "-1 Disagree". So please stop using it as if it does.
Oh and by the way, anyone stupid enough to believe in creationism over evolution must have skipped too many science classes in school.
I dont read
In that respect he is much like Jesus.
Nice guy, rotten followers.
> People can be motivated to kill by just about any ideology, religious or otherwise.
No doubt. But there are way more people who kill *because* of religion than poeple who killed because they are atheists. Stalin was atheist but he did what he did not because of that. He also ate bread, doesn't make bread a dangerous substance
The whole creationist notion is based on the premise of biblical inerrancy.
... the list goes on and on.. it goes without saying god says believers have an obligation to murder non-believers, as well as innocent children, and take/rape the virgin women for their pleasure.
I submit to those that want to believe the earth is 6000 years old and man walked around with dinosaurs, fine, do that. But if you're going to take the bible literally, don't be a hypocrite, don't just believe the creation story in genesis, you have to believe in the rest of the old and new testament. This means:
* Working on the sabbath is punishable by death
* Disobedient children are to be publicly executed by stoning
* Owning slaves is perfectly acceptable
* Eating pork, shrimp, crawfish, lobster is punishable by death
* Poligamy is perfectly acceptable
* Women are considered property, and need be submissive to all men; they are not allowed to speak in church, nor should they wear makeup or jewelry
* To get to heaven you should become a Eunich, sell all your possessions, and hate everyone in your family
All the above ideas are very specifically outlined. They are not more taken out of context and improperly interpreted than the creation story. And Jesus himself in the new testament reaffirms that the old testament laws still apply.
Messed up that URL. Here it is again:
The Bible as it Was
"The good reader is a rarer swan than the good writer."
And you can't say Santa doesn't exist either.
That's some good logic!
The Tanniyn, B@hemowth (yes, it's spelled correctly--at least as close as it can be in Roman characters), and Livyathan.
3 animals spoken about in the Bible that have references to Dinosaur qualities. Now one could argue that these are other animals as well, but since the "Dinosaur" and all their individual names were created well after the Bible's books were written, so obvously you won't see brachiosaurus, or kronosaurus listed in the Bible's text.
However it is interesting to note that even as an athiest, you have taken the time to not only read the Bible once, but several times. Either way, even with reading something multiple times, it can be difficult to gleen all that is in such a book, without much external study as well, since most Bibles are linquistic translations, and with all things translated, there is not always precise terms in both the translated and original languages.
But needless to say, non of this really matters, because you will continue to believe as you believe, because evidence is something that we are not afforded, with such things, because we could disagree on what is evidence to begin with.
Self proclaimed wannabe geek. You know how it is. Most of us who read this stuff probably fit in that category.
Atheist: Stop worshiping that pink unicorn you superstitious drooling idiot; there's no way you could be a good scientist and believe in that crap. Your faith is offensive. You are the cause of every problem on earth.
Believer: Why should I stop believing?
Atheist: It doesn't exist, you are fooling yourself.
Believer: How do you know it doesn't exist, can you prove it?
Atheist: I don't, it's up to you to prove he does.
Believer: So, wait, you're telling me you don't have any evidence?
Atheist: Why should I?
Believer: Seems to me then you are making assumptions based on much less than I. You know what that is called?
Atheist: Reason?
Believer: Faith.
I know there are a lot of self-professed atheists who use that word (much as you do) the way I use the word agnostic, but for me an atheist has always been someone who believes there is no god (a religious belief), and an agnostic is someone who merely doesn't believe there is a god, but allows it as a possibility. Many of these self-professed atheists then talk about etymologies and what not, but my reply is simple, if you want to use the word "atheist" to mean "agnostic" what word do you use to describe people who believe there is no god?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
This time the 'others' are brown people who have a different, younger religion. The Christians got the murder out of their systems by the end of the crusades...but the Muslims are still taking part in their crusades. How can you denounce them, when the Christian Crusades are partially why Christianity is so wide-spread? Ah the hypocracy of religion.
Ah yes, the Republicans vote as they do because they suck at society. They can barely hang on as it is, but when changes keep happening the republican/conservatives find that their control slips...so they seek to prevent change.
Oh, and even if Republicans give 'more to charity', Democrats give more to the State. Democrats earn higher incomes, don't you know? I consider the state more worthy of my money than some biased charity anyway. The state funds the military which protects everyone, the state grants everyone equal rights.
Blar.
Technically, God just magically knocked her up, he didn't have sex with her. I'd think you'd have more of an issue with the magical pregnancy.
Compartmentalisation can be verified easily. Take an issue, for instance, "Does God exist?" then once you have answered the question, check: "Under what circumstances do I believe that something exists?" (You need to be specific.) You might answer: "everything that has a characteristic or property that cannot be witnessed by any living person does not exist" And that would be consistent with atheism, as almost all the properties of "God" cannot be witnessed or verified (e.g. omnipotence, his will, his form, etc) Such an answer is also consistent with the scientific method, but not with "faith".
Stupid answers might be:
"Everything that Fred tells me exists, I believe exist as well"
"Everything that is real, exists" (begs the question)
"Everything that has evidence that exists, does exists" (begs the question)
Basically, any reason you have for rejecting the existence of unicorns and living trees made of chocolate would also have to apply to God, so you must reject his existence in order to be consistent.
HTH
that still doesn't make one thing "right" or "wrong".
Yes, without a religion to decree it, there is no "right" or "wrong" (except for 2+2=5)
Morality becomes an arbitrary and really universally meaningless construct, it's just a societal artifact
Maybe so, but
you do what you have to do to get what you want and do as much as you can get away with.
Solidifies it into a meaningful and non-arbitrary construct.
The odd thing is that people don't see why we don't just go around killing everyone without God telling us not to. They fail to see that "Thou shalt not kill" is not only "Good" but also a good idea. Along with the vast majority of other things in there. Just remember, you're going to Hell if you touch your food to a surface tainted by raw meat, though even without a God to send you there, you're going to feel like it while you're spending the next day on the crapper.
I know, I've finished reading it a few days ago (and am now trying to get started with Gould's The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. I expect it'll be a good book to crack creationist stuff, especially skulls, the sucker's heavy as hell...)
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
but since I'm not, ROAD TRIP!!!!
;-)
Bring your own herb
"If you meet the Buddha on the road... kill him."
Do not uncritically believe what others tell you about Enlightenment.
Anyone who suggests you should take a book (or other information source) literally and without question is either trying to con you or has already been conned themselves.
Funny how we Americans love to take things literally. Everything has to be perfect and described in simple terms or it doesn't fit into our view of what the world should be. Unfortunately, the world isn't what we think it should be. It is what it is.
If you believe that God created the world in 7 days, then on one of those days He created dinosaurs, and on one of those days He created humans. Therefore, humans and dinosaurs coexisted. (I happen to believe in a literal interpretation of the bible so yes, I share that belief). Also Job 40-41 mentions a "Leviathon" which, if you go back to the original Hebrew (reading a commentary and consulting someone who knows the original language, as all pastors in our synod do) the consensus is a beast **larger** than a modern elephant or hippopotamous.
(I am not a theologian)
Erm, that was not my definition of oppression (hence the comment about "according to Marx").
That said, at the core of any institutionalized religion you will find dogma. Dogma is the authoratative and established belief or doctrine of any religion or ideology. In order to accept and practice the religion you must submit to the dogmata and in respect of those dogmata give up personal control.
i-name =twylite [http://public.xdi.org/=twylite], see idcommons.net
...And evolution is the means by which it happens; by which it is still happening.
Seven days? How can there be a "day" before light and dark existed? I would trust the work of modern scientists over the literal wording of religious prophets from 2000 years ago.
Evolution is creation at work and continuing to work, over all those millions of years and over millions more to come. That's simply how it is.
"Creationism" is simply a lie created by the same bigoted type of attitude on which, for an extreme example, the KKK employs against minorities; Christian fundamentalists believe they are special creations and could not possibly be the modified offspring of a primate. It disgusts them; like as if to tell them "Your mother was an animal." Try telling them that we evolved slowly from apes, and watch how offended they get that you are "insinuating they are mere beasts."
These unfortunate souls have not grown up.
I believe strongly in the message the Bible tries to put across. I also agree with the general teachings (well, those of which I am vaguely familiar with) from other religions; they all seem to be saying, in a nutshell, "No fighting, try to understand and respect each other and the world around you. Don't be greedy, help everyone else and their doing the same will in turn support you back." Many other aspects of religion where created to assure survival of our species in previous times, a good example being the Hebrew practice of keeping Kosher; Do not eat foods or combinations of foods which are likely to make you sick. Two thousand years ago, it was much more difficult to ensure sanitation and proper preservation. Not that I wish to slander the Jewish faith as unreasonable (far from it), but this is a good example of how necessity became tradition; in the modern day we can worry less about the problems of such a dietary style.
In this same light of "keeping tradition", extremists such as the Christian Fundamentalists have twisted the writings of the Bible, such as homosexuality as a crime against God (homosexuals will not reproduce, which was nessesary 2000 years ago to ensure the maximum chance of species survival).
It seems now that people are using their faith as less of a "respect the world" philosophy, and more of an explicit list of "dos and do nots".
Unfortunately, we're lost until these folks realize that the exact opposite is the way it was meant, and that their faith can easily integrate into the scientific facts. Faith is the why, not the how.
Someday I'd like to pour all this out as an essay, but I hope my words can enlighten someone as to why we're all correct in our faith and our science and the point being argued is moot. Let's focus our energies elsewhere, they are badly needed.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
May the Maths Be with you!
Good dog when will it end?
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Ok read it, now the reason they donate more money to charity is not because they give a shit, it is because of the following:
1) They can write it off against tax.
2) It makes them feel better about screwing people.
3) It makes them look better to people too stupid to read between the lines.
And by the way, my posts to this discussion are sounding more and more troll like as every humanist sounding post I read has been moderated as a troll already. So I might as well make clear that this is just as stupid as the loonies in the US govt supressing the teaching of creationism just because the thought of the US population throwing off the chains of religion scares the shit out of them.
Eventually the US will either drag itself out of the dark ages, or be overtaken by every other nation on earth economically as the value of knowledge surpasses the value of raw materials. (Ok - maybe not every nation, but all the ones with a decent education system which is available to all regardless of financial status or skin colour)
I dont read
I'd describe "Apple sauce, coca-cola and honey" as all being brown (at least for some versions of apple sauce and honey and/or perhaps somewhat liberal meanings of the word brown), and fermented apple sauce and honey (mead) can definitely get you drunk (perhaps Coke ferments, too?), so I think you're just strenghening the arguments that they are, in fact, beer.
Peraps "containing hops" might be more of a key feature, but I'm no beerologist. (Whatever you do, do NOT put that word into google search and click on I'm feeling lucky. Hey, I warned you... OK, seriously, if you DO, then at least turn off the volume of your computer first or do it in the safety of your own home.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
It has nothing to do with religion, or lack thereof. It has everything to do with the eternal struggle between liberty and the State. Communism is what happens when the State is in complete and utter control. Of course, society will always face individual conflicts based on religion, race, wealth, etc. But only the State has the power to turn those conflicts into war and genocide.
What exactly do you have faith in mankind about? The point is that morality and "faith" from an athiests standpoint are arbitrary decisions. Choose to believe in a higher power, choose to believe god, choose to believe there are aliens in an asteroid who want to take you to the town of Nanujibar... who fucking cares, it doesn't really matter because there is no foundational right and wrong.
I did not say athiests have no morals. Their morality is arbitrary and if there is no God then it's just as valid as anyone elses... of course your decision to light children on fire is not any better then my decision not to light children on fire. The decision about whether lighting children on fire is right or wrong is now determined by those with power to enforce their viewpoint.
What amuses me is that general conversation here, what I would percieve to the run of the mill athiest viewpoint, is that relgious people are silly because they "arbitrarily" believe in God/god/gods/a higher power and do things based on that belief all the while athiests make arbitary decisions about what they think is right and what they want to place their "faith" in. If there is no God then we're all equally delusional.
In the jewish culture of the time the engagement was a commitment that wasn't broken like it is today - which is why the bible says "Joseph's wife" even though they hadn't had the cermony yet. It was still considered adultery or "plowing someone else's field".
As an atheist I wouldn't say anything. Its only the religious nuts who have a problem with sperm donors and/or same-sex parents.
1. The religiousness of scientists is considerably lower than that of the US general public:
r y/FaithFAQ.htm
http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/001419.html
2. Religions from time to time decides to go a round against science. Religion, as a rule, loses out.
3. The real killer is evolution of course. As the far more eloquent than me John Derbyshire puts it:
http://www.olimu.com/WebJournalism/Texts/Commenta
"I can report that the Creationists are absolutely correct to hate and fear modern biology. Learning this stuff works against your faith. To take a single point at random: The idea that we are made in God's image implies we are a finished product. We are not, though. It is now indisputable that natural selection has been going on not just through human prehistory, but through recorded history too, and is still going on today, and will go on into the future, presumably to speciation, either natural or artificial. So which human being was made in God's image: the one of 100,000 years ago? 10,000 years ago? 1,000 years ago? The one of today? The species that will descend from us? All of those future post-human species, or just some of them? And so on. The genomes are all different. They are not the same creature. And if they are all made in God's image somehow, then presumably so are all the other species, and there's nothing special about us at all.
Now of course there are ways to finesse that point--intellectuals can cook up an argument for anything, and religious intellectuals, who cut their teeth on justifying some wildly improbable stuff, are especially ingenious--but the cumulative effect of dozens of factlets like this is devastating to the notion that human beings are a special creation. And without that notion, traditional religious belief is holed below the water line. The more you read and learn in the modern human sciences, the more your image of homo sap. fades back into our being just another branch on the tree of life, with all those wonderful features of ours--even language, the most wonderful feature of all--just adaptations, like fins or feathers, with an actual record of the adaptation written, and date-stamped, right there in the genome!"
So you wouldn't be good to people unless either your God or state tells you to?
That says much more about you than anything else.
>> According to the article, up to 50 million Americans believe this Wow. That is scary on so many levels.
What can I say -- as an American, this is just embarrassing. Argh! Then again, I suppose every country has it's idiots, and a country of 3e8 people is going to have quite a few of them...
Likewise, your ability to cut-and-paste religious teaching to suit your agenda is evolving. At the rate and direction you're going, eventually people like you will come to the conclusion that religion is unnecessary except as a means to control weak-minded people and create an often counterproductive false sense of hope in a world where a more realist perspective is much more beneficial.
Man created god. This is the most likely premise, and the more we learn about history and science, the more obvious this becomes, and people like you, who aren't willing to let go of the delusion, slide a little further outside the bubble, but aren't yet ready to let go. That's fine and dandy but you really do a disservice because even moderate theists refuse to recognize the possibility that much of their beliefs still don't make sense, even when you shed the most outrageous aspects like creationism or Noah's ark. The gods of the bible are inconsistent and immoral, even in the new testament, if you really read the bible, you find a messiah whose life was riddled with hypocrisy and does not deserve respect, much less worship. Even merely using these figures as symbols of an abstract goodness, gives them more credit than they deserve and it enables the extremist fundamentalists to nurture their radical viewpoints to the point of endangering others.
Congratulations on recognizing that the world is not flat. However, you haven't yet admitted it's a sphere.. you're more in the phase of recognizing that there are no edges, but you're still holding on to the belief that it's only two-dimensional.
Its proponents begin by asking you to suspend logic and assume an anti-entropic premise.
This is a canard--actually the reverse is true. It is the Christian faith alone that can account for logic, reason, and rationality.
Why should anyone be rational if the Christian God does not exist? Why are men under any obligation to be rational in a materialistic universe?
As a Christian Theist, I believe all men should be rational. I believe people should believe things on good evidence. I think we are under obligation to use our intellectual tools to glorify God, and to learn about this world--we should be consistent. I believe that becasse God requires all men to be rational. I can make sense of the obligation to be rational.
If this world is sound and fury signifying nothing, why must men be rational? Why don't I just live moment by moment and be inconsistent: thinking on thing one time and another thing another time, caring nothing for logic? After all, logic has no place in the material universe--it is an abstract, non-material set of laws. How can laws of logic actually exist in an atheistic universe?
The odd thing about the materialist is this: the materialist who wants to be rational has already departed from his materialism.
If you are a materialist, you have a naturalistic explanation for everything we say and do. What's going on in this gray matter in my cranium is controlled by the laws of physics and chemistry and biology. I don't really think, I'm really like a weed that's growing. Weeds don't think, and neither do I, we're all subject to the laws of physics, I'm just at a more complicated/complex level.
If naturalism is true, there's no such thing as rationality, there's just whatever people end up thinking and doing. Why call men to be rational then?
However, the Christian God calls men to be consistent and rational. For the Christian Theist, I can expect all men to be obligated to be rational. Not so for those who reject the Christian God.
Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff.
International Communism was atheistic in nature (note that most religion is illegal even today in China, Cuba, etc.), and yet was responsible for 60-100 million deaths in the last century. Nazism was responsible (directly) for 11 million deaths, indirectly perhaps twice that. No religion has ever come close to that. Not even remotely.
The lack of belief in a higher power, and the ultimate accountability that it brings, definitely opens people up to commit more heinous acts. If you're nothing but another conglomerate of matter, and I have absolutely nothing to lose by destroying you, then what exactly would stop me if you're in my way?
Stalin had no qualms about destroying life by the millions. You have to forgive people if they have hope that he's rotting in hell for eternity.
Do you have ESP?
No, what evolution predicts is that moral norms would form as part of societal evolution and complexity. Morality becomes a cultural function. What is clear is that there is never any universal "right" or "wrong". These ideas are just mental constructs. At one point is ok to slaughter children as sacrifices to imaginary gods... evolution would deem that the moral norms at the time permitted it. In our society it is no longer acceptable to slaughter living babies. Right is determined not by sometype of intrensic moral norm that is always true, but is determined by those who have the power to enforce their view on others.
Ultimately, following a non-God/higher power view of the world. You need to recognize two things. One, you're going to die and any pleasure you can gain for yourself while you're here is all you're going to get so maximize it and then die. Two, moral norms are constraints that have been formed by society. You are only bound to them by your fear of being caught and punished. Do what you will and take what risks you want, there is no "right" or "wrong".
I don't buy it... I believe there is a God... but I think it's funny how on one hand athiests/agnostics/etc. like to bash religious people for being arbitrary and yet don't accept their own arbitrary beliefs in hapiness for all, and human goodness, and the "rightness" of things. Without a higher power, strength and power are what makes one "right".
Well no, evolution doesn't "teach" anything, evolution is a fact. The current theories of evolution, on the other hand, pretty much tell us this yes.
Yes and no. Many "moral requirements" vary from country to country, or person to person, yet some obvious stuff stays: killing people of the insider group without any reason for example (while killing people outside your "group" is not absolute at all), which can be inferred as coming from evolution: humans are social animals, they come from close-knit groups (tribes and the likes) which meant that killing fellow members of the tribe/group was a huge hit on their survival chance. Evolution would therefore have favored groups of people who didn't kill each other (not giving a fuck about killing people outside the families/camps/tribes/groups), hence the reason why it's pretty much universally considered immoral to kill close relatives, family members or people who're close to you in general, while most humans don't give a damn about people from an other country being slaughtered.
There therefore are some kinds of "moral absolute" coming straight from our evolutionary past.
It's funny how religious people always derive that humans can't grow up their own morals, their own personal morality, and that they must always have someone with a huge stick imposing arbitrary morals on them.
If anything, this mostly shows that religious nutjobs are nuts, and would like nothing more than to kill and maim everyone.
I find it bizarre that you religious guys find youself "quite sane" when your only desire is to kill, rape and eat fellow humans. Your guys truly are sickos.
I myself am a human, and an atheist, I have no "absolute morals" but I do have my own set of moral rules mostly derived from "don't do unto others what you don't want other to do unto you", and some other pretty logical "rules of thumb".
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
This is a link to a Wikipedia article about the Documentary Hipotesis, which debunks the myths about the Genesis being dictated by God directly to Moses:
i s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothes
PENAROL: Seras eterno como el tiempo y floreceras en cada primavera.
You're a funny one Mark. You have to go with an ad hominem attack there huh?
The point Mark is that many people are enjoying bashing religious people because of their "arbitrary" beliefs, and yet are unwilling to accept that they themselves believe in a lot of arbitrary concepts and ideas themselves. They've simply accepeted them.
The implication of your statement is that you believe you are intrensically "good" and so you act out of that. Why are you this way? Assuming I'm not intrensically "good", why am I not? Why are you better then me?
Me believing to be the worlds greatest lover/hacker/driver isn't a religion, is it?
To quote from wikipedia:
So I'd claim that my personal belief that there is no god isn't religion, whereas if i were to get together with other similar-minded people for some atheistic rituals, it probably would be a religion.
Free as in mason.
People are so desperate to avoid the reality of their existance coming to an end when they die that they will blindly cling to anything that offers an escape from that realization. Even in the face of overwhelming proof, they will ignore it in order to shelter themselves from that terrible truth.
As for the reason it's christianity in the US, well, that was the religion of the people that settled here from Europe.
I lack belief in the existence of God. I don't know for sure that He doesn't exist. But I just see no reason to suppose He does.
When I am giving God's existence the same probability I give Superman or Wonderwoman's existence, it's disingenuous for me to call myself an agnostic. I am a weak atheist.
Then it's easy to believe.
People will walk through the museum. See dinosaurs playing with humans, and since it looks so gosh darn natural believe it without a doubt. Just like everyone in my class believes that wave mechanics can be used to describe very small simple harmonic oscillators. I'm not saying that it doesn't. But we sure as hell (heh) haven't been given enough empirical evidence to form opinions on the validity of the model. What we did have was a professor who seemed to know what he was talking about, with a pretty movie of a probability distribution function sweeping back and forth and some ancient book written by a dead guy (textbook) that agreed with everything he said.
Well no, evolution doesn't "teach" anything, evolution is a fact.
Sorry, thanks for the symantic check there... let's just say that one thing a person should derive from evolution then... does that work for you?
About higher morality: Your example is wrong. Througout history humans have killed their leaders, overthrown their own governments, etc. Although in general practice one guy killing his neighbor has always been considered wrong, toppling governments, killing Caesars, etc. is frequently just considered part of the deal. At best though, all you're saying is there is a pragmatic principle that tends to work most of the time but really isn't any sort of absolute and the only reason you would follow it is that the consequences of not following may be greater then the benefits (for example I have no desire to actually kill my neighbor).
About morality and strength: You didn't address the question, you attacked me. Which is fine. I've been misunderstood on this point. I'm not saying that I want to burn the world and roast marshmallows on the flesh of my enemies, I'm not saying that most people do. I am saying however that people have their own interests at heart all of the time. When presented with an opportunity to steal from their company... the person can ask themselves is it "right". If they believe in a higher power they would ask if the action aligns with their higher power's moral standard. If they do not, and believe that morality is a social construct, then they ask themselves... what would the consequences of this action be if I am caught and am I willing to accept those consequences. Now they might have all sorts of factors they they consider as consequences... legal issues, they've trained themselves to feal bad about stealing, etc. but the point is the decision is there's and attributing "right" or "wrong" to it isn't all that important. It just becomes a way to show how the culture feels about a certain type of activity... it's not so much a guide for anyone's actions.
Theories are just that: Theories. While the US variant of creationisim (creation started smack x years ago, 'Gods' days are the same length as humand days, etc.) is bogus, presuming that humans and dinos coexisted is not to far fetched. We do not no enough to say for sure that all dinos and humans are bazillion years apart. Given that entire theories found upon single scrap findings I wouldn't dismiss this one as totally bogus.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
This particular post looks like a troll because it is. Giving more money to charity makes you feel better about screwing people? Rich liberals and rich conservatives pay the same taxes and are afforded the same tax deductions for donations, regardless of the fact that the liberals would be more willing to vote for a tax increase. What keeps them from donating more?
There are also quite a few post Marx theories that suggested the Revolution would be permanently postponed since the industrialized west coul shift the oppression to undeveloped nations. As long as the West could carefully balance developing the third world enough to produce useful labor but at the same time keep them undeveloped enough to prevent the critical mass for Revolution. So that's what gave the justification to many of the communist leaders of the 20th century to act in such fascist ways, they felt unless they could break the cycle by any means necessary they would never be free.
I do think we see aspects of this playing out in the world. For example in India, during the last election cycle, the poorer people in the country expressed their unhappiness with the fact that properity from outsourcing and other things seemed unequally distributed. And as India develops more, you see Western nations turning to other countries for outsourcing. The issue is will we ever get to the point were the whole world is developed enough that local labor has no disadvantage?
Complicating this is the degree to which some countries will embrace aspects of socialism. For example, in the USA most automobile companies are in big trouble because they can no longer afford retirement and health care benefits for their already retired workers. This is a HUGE expense for them. Many of their overseas competition doesn't have to worry about this, because the gov't provides healthcare and retirement benefits. In this case a gov'ts degree of socialism can provide an advantage to a particular industry by removing a large category of expense.
The question of which direction competition between countries will drive work rights is still undecided. The India example is heartening, but most other developing countries don't have such a democratic institutions. Will workers in China start to demand more involvement in gov't? After living there for 3 years I am not sure anymore.
Peace, or Not?
These folks use a CNC router designed and built by the company i work for. A quick search of their website turns up the reason they decided to go with us...
Project: Acquisition of Sculpture Scanning-Carving Machine
Purpose: To acquire a computer numerical control (CNC) router, which will create enlargements of our miniature sculpture models by automatically scanning the prototype and then carving the design out of a sturdy material in its full-scale form
Specifics: Please pray for wisdom and contacts to purchase the right CNC router.
Deadline: ASAP
Religion can be explained with one word: Drugs. Lots and lots of drugs. We probably just ran across some guys drug journal and the first page that says "Holy shit man, I had the greatest trip ever..." just got lost.
I was afraid they would never finish it. I'm so there. I might need to go twice, once sober and once tripping. Chemically I mean; I'm sure it will be pretty trippy sober as well. I wonder if they'll kick people out for giggling.
Bullshit. Just because I do not believe there is a purple unicorn on my head does not mean I belong to the Church of purple-unicorn-on-the-head-less, it's just applying Occam's razor.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
If you are curious I suggest you read some history on the matter, but here are my recollections from history class. It should best be considered a myth, with bits of truth.
At some point, the apprentice-craftsman relationship broke down due to the emergence of the middle class. Specifically, the craftsman and his family became middle class, while the apprentice overwhelmingly came from the lower classes. The implication of this was that the craftsman began to keep the apprentice at arms length, instead of allowing the apprentice to somewhat integrate with the family and learn the ways of the family. As a result, the apprentice did not learn responsibility. This was also true of the working class of the industrial revolution. Workers, who no longer had the oversight of their family on the farm, were free to act as they wish. The younger generation became out of control.
One way of dealing with this was to have the church teach the values of the working class through revivals. The lot of the working was to work. You would be poor. Some would make it, particularly those that listened to and completely subjugated themselves to their master. Getting to work was critical, and long hours were mandated. Also mandated were no drink and no gambling. Both these hurt productivity. Faith in the lord was all that was needed, and prayer was all you needed to do. God would advance you to your desired state in life. These revivals were very helpful to the middle and upper class, so they supported the philosophy. Anything to keep the workers in line.
So, there it is. We still see elements of this in many christian churches today, particularly megachurches. Gone is the notion of Jesus that if someone does you harm, or treats you unfairly, you have the right to show the world that that person has done harm. Gone is the idea the if some one take your shirt, give him your coat as well, and stand naked, showing the world that this person who has everything, chose to be greedy and take the little you had. Now some churches advocate that you pray for the success of your boss or husband, so that you may be pulled up on his coattails. Or you should pray for a good meeting or a good deal at the cell phone store. It is all about making the best of the position in the world that god has determine for you, and not causing trouble for your betters by challenging the divine social norm.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
You gotta remember that the American forefathers were mostly Puritans - people so conservative ENGLAND kicked them out (thank you Robin Williams). All that has come of the USA is the ripples of their actions. We're only now going through the stages of casting off most of that. The evangelists are (hopefully) the last, abscessed leg of the religous superconservatism.
I'm not trying to argue about who's "right" about our definitions as we obviously use these words slightly differently, but for me, "atheist" means you're 100% convinced that there's no god, and "agnostic" implies you're somewhere between being a "complete agnostic" (50/50) and being a "complete atheist" (which emphasizes the 100%). If someone were quite certain (well over 99% probability) that there were no god, but not quite willing to go to the 100% level, I'd still consider them to be a weak "atheist" (emphasis on "atheist", not "weak"). On the other hand, I doubt you'll ever find a "complete agnostic" (or "agnostic" in your terminology). You'll find people who might be 30/70 (god/no god) who describe themselves as agnostic, and you'll find people who might be 70/30 who describe themselves as, for example, a Christian with doubts, but I doubt you'll find anyone who is truly 50/50 on that question - but, hey, I've been wrong about a lot of things before.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Indeed. Ironically, the killer seems to be tribalism; dividing the world into "us" and "them". Religious and irreligious people alike do that...
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Marx also lived in a time when capitalism meant something quite a bit harsher than what we have today (even in the US). In some ways he was right -- pure capitalism turns out to be pretty nasty so pretty much every decent sized economy in the world has some non-capitalistic features.
Allegedly (http://www.omninerd.com/2006/08/09/news/867) Hitler wrote his own bible.
:P
Nothing new, many leaders wrote their own version of christianity (or other religion).
"May God continue to bless US."
Or you can claim that the lack of thinking and loss of rationale that ideologies encourage in their proponents is the evil.
Adults with imaginary friends are stupid.
Goten Xiao
You seem to think that because some group doesn't believe in god that they are then associated with all those who do not. Religion, which generally refers to organized religion, is a group that chooses to define itself, that is not the case with atheism. There is no atheist convention, no weekly meetings, no book that all atheists follow. Trying to say that because some group of people were also atheist thus atheism is to blame does not make sense. There were many more reasons why soviet communism was so violent and oppressive, not letting people believe in a god was only a symptom not the cause.
Too many athletes on both teams want to cherry pick their performances to support both ideas when it suits them; athletes would have you believe that when they score points, the credit lies with God's personal interference/inspiration for their sports triumphs, and when they do lose, the blame lies only with themselves instead of God's tripping them up on the 30 yard line with a mere 3 seconds to go in the fourth quarter of the championship game....
a) If evil happens, it's due to the fallibility of Humans, or the interfrence and corruption by a "bad" power.
You're moderated Funny, but to be fair to Christianity, Jesus Christ did die for the sins of Man. Even though all humans sin and are fallible, God created humans so He's also taking responsibility. Pretty sweet deal if you're a believer. If you truly believe, you basically get a free pass for all of the bad stuff you've ever done in your life.
But I think God would find this Creationism Museum silly.
"You figured out a key aspect of how My universe works and you have solid scientific evidence! I'm proud! But some of you still think that Earth has only been around for several thousand years because a chapter in the Bible written by humans says so? Give Me a break."
I'd think that God is powerful enough to deliver symbolism in His divine inspiration. So, Creationists, you fail it.
Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
Well now we have an idea how many fools there are in this country that need to be culled from the herd. Osama, you listening?
>What's going on in this gray matter in my cranium is controlled by the laws of physics and chemistry and biology. I don't really think,
Your conclusion does not follow from your premise. Everything going on in your head could be entirely chemical and biological, and can still be considered thought. There is no violation of physical laws going on when you think.
>If naturalism is true, there's no such thing as rationality, there's just whatever people end up thinking and doing.
Once again, an unfounded logical leap. What is your evidence that rationality is anything more than 'whatever people end up thinking and doing'?
>However, the Christian God calls men to be consistent and rational.
No, he does not. The very premise of the religion, that man is born in sin because of the acts of the original man and woman, is illogical. If Adam and Eve had no knowledge of good and evil before they ate of the tree, they had no idea it was evil to disobey god. "When you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." If you don't know that an act is evil, how can you (and all your children for all eternity) justifiably be punished for it?
Your religion is no more rational than any other. Get used to it.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
From an evolutionary (naturalist?) standpoint, rational, logical thinkers have tended to outcompete those without any concern for rational behavior.
Someone who behaves irrationally, varying their moods, values, and actions from moment to moment is usually considered to have some form of psychosis, they usually don't even form solid relationships, much less breed.
"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."
"What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea."
* * * * *
The preceding poster is a wholly owned subsidiary of the the Mitsubishi Corporation and his post may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the consent of Major League Baseball.
Your lack of logic astounds me.
First, since the US has been more religious than most of Europe (surveys of national levels of religiosity typically exclude certain Meditaranean (I can't spell it!) countries such as Greece) for quite some time, the idea that the US will somehow NOW begin to lose ground against more secular countries in Europe goes counter to the evidence. The evidence is that one of the most Christian countries on the planet has been out-performing other countries for quite some time now. Explain to me how this works. US is more religious, and has led the world in many respects for quite some time. Now suddenly because Europe is becoming more secular, the world is going to suddenly reverse this trend? You'll need some other variable to explain this.
Second, the idea that people donate money to charity because they can use it as a tax write-off is simply ludicrous. You NEVER gain ground in this scheme. You actually end up spending MORE money than if you just paid the original taxes due. You give to charity, and then use the write-off if you like. It's pretty simple. Making a donation to charity or anything like that is not a good way to save money. It is a way to avoid giving as much to the government, but you are still out more money than if you had just paid your taxes in the first place. Arguments against this are just ignoring the facts. If you think I'm wrong, you'll need to cite tax codes and set up a full example. Otherwise, I think this point should be obvious.
Third, the idea that 'it makes them feel better about screwing people' it also patently absurd. It assumes that only Republicans that are arrogant jerks that are willing to crush everything in their path to succeed ever give money to charity. I suspect, however, that some people here would actually wonder if there were Republicans that weren't arrogant jerks, but that's another story. The truth is that there are some VERY inconsistent beliefs that people hold regarding Republicans. The idea that people vote Republican because they are stupid religious idiots is inconsistent with the idea that they are all about screwing people over as they grip corporate America by the balls. Either Republicans are dumb and ignorant or they are capable and greedy. How does this work. Only the capable, greedy crooks ever give money to charity? Except that some people in this thread (not you), have stated that Dems earn more. If Dems, on average, earn more, then obviously if they cared about the poor (as you seem to think they do), they should give more to charity. Oh, wait--the Dems just give more to the gov't and expect politicians to be fair in handing it out.
Fourth, making yourself look better to "people too stupid to read between the lines" is hardly a profitable venture. Most of the people who actually KNOW about charity donations are usually the ones who care. Most people don't vote because a politician gave so many millions to an orphanage.
Gah, this is crazy. Your post is simply an attempt to make it look like Republicans never do anything because they care about others. This could have been done simply by stating: Republicans==Bad; Democrats==Good. What a bunch of looney garbage! Anyone who thinks that way needs to check their brain in at the door--they obviously aren't using it.
The fact is that there are good, decent people at all points in the political spectrum. There are also evil, twisted scum at all points. Finally, there are really looney nuts at all points as well. No political party has a monopoly on good, bad, ugly, crazy or plain weird people. Thank goodness too.
Some Republicans give for the reasons you state. So do some Democrats. And some Libertarians, Green Party folks, and independents. Some of each also give for other reasons, such as human compassion.
As for the Museum itself? Sounds loony to me! I'm a Christian (Mormon, in point of fact), but I think that the whole debate is rather pointless in any case. Micro-evolution is real and pr
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
Theories are just that: Theories. While the US variant of creationisim (creation started smack x years ago, 'Gods' days are the same length as humand days, etc.) is bogus, presuming that humans and dinos coexisted is not to far fetched. We do not no enough to say for sure that all dinos and humans are bazillion years apart. Given that entire theories found upon single scrap findings I wouldn't dismiss this one as totally bogus.
In science, the word "theory" is much more than a hunch. So I don't think the word "theory" means what you think it means. In science, theory, is supported by empirical evidence. Outside science, theory, is just that, something we have no proof of it, just an idea, a hunch.
"In order to accept and practice the religion you must submit to the dogmata and in respect of those dogmata give up personal control."
That is absolutely untrue. Just look at all the practicing Catholics across the world who hear what the Pope says but live an entirely different way. Birth control, anyone?
Religious authority figures present an idealize (by their standards) way of life, and not even the figures themselves are capable of following their doctrine, except in strange cases.
Admittedly, there DO exist people who devote their lives to a particular brand of Christianity to the extent that they *try* to offload all decision-making duties to the dogma or to some notion of divine intervention and guidance. However, in the case of these people, is it really religion that causes them to do this, or are they the type of people who were going to be sheep no matter what, and religion just swooped in to give them their most convenient opportunity?
Obviously, a virgin birth via the Holy Spirit is not the same as sexual relations. God didn't come down and have sex with Mary like pagan gods often did in mythology (Zeus is a notorious example).This doesn't even make any sense. Mary gave God a blow-job?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The argument goes something like this:
"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says man, "the Bombadier Beetle is a dead giveaway, isnt it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you dont. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadnt thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
Watch cretins beat the holy fuck out of neanderthals! See them battle dinosaurs, history and common sense! Soon also in a church near you.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
You need to get yourself a dictionary. Atheism is not a doctrine on how to treat your fellow man. Whether an atheist kills or not is about as important as whether a pants-wearer kills someone. If I kill a person while wearing pants, would you say that pantsism is the reason for the murders?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Yes, without a religion to decree it, there is no "right" or "wrong" (except for 2+2=5)
Are you kidding me? One, I didn't say religion has to "decree" everything for it to be true. Two, are you so dumb as to equate observed principles with moral value applied to choices? Maybe I'm just not getting what you're trying to say.
Solidifies it into a meaningful and non-arbitrary construct.
No. First I said "universally meaningful". Doing what is "right for you" is completely and totally irrelevant to me. You might thing it's only right to eat tofu. I might think it's only right to eat meat. Given no universal standard, which a no-God/higher power theory requires, your view of right has no bearing on me. Of course if everyone thinks that only eating tofu is right and I choose to eat meat then you'd call me "wrong" and I may be punished. The point is that "right" and "wrong" become universally meanginless, they're entirely and totally relative to you and only enforceable by those who have the power to enforce them.
Again, my point is not that you can't abstract some useful principles about how to live your life or operate in society or that humans haven't managed to do that or that if you don't have a Bible you're going to just fall over and die because you have no way to live... I'm simply saying that non-God/higher power theories have absolutely no universal moral standards. All "right" and "wrong" choices are entirely pragmatic, or should be, anything else... claims to higher "right", platitudes about future legacies, etc. are all as arbitrary as you would believe people "arbitrarily" believe in God. Non-god theories are inherently pragmatic, there is no unverisal right and wrong for anything at all ever... if you believe that the two can co-exist or someone tells you there they do you're buying into a total sham.
This may be the first of it's kind in Kentucky, there has been one in Glenrose Texas for quite some time http://www.creationevidence.org/
Some Christians do that, but so do some atheists, some Muslims, some of everything. You're not fighting religion, you're fighting belligerence.
"No, he does not. The very premise of the religion, that man is born in sin because of the acts of the original man and woman, is illogical. If Adam and Eve had no knowledge of good and evil before they ate of the tree, they had no idea it was evil to disobey god. "When you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." If you don't know that an act is evil, how can you (and all your children for all eternity) justifiably be punished for it?"
This is where your argument falls apart. They were told not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. What more needs to be said.
If you look at the Hebrew that is written in Genesis the word "saw" when Eve looks at the fruit is the same word used when God creates something and "saw" that is was good. What is happening is that Eve decided that she was god and taking the place of God in her heart. The sin was not eating a fruit it was placing her self in the place of God.
Ross
And yet so far. Your explanation seems reasonable, but is a bit off. God is not capricious.
There is a distinct difference between discerning whether something is good or evil, and understanding that a boundary has been set and should not be crossed.
My 20 month old son does not discern that touching a hot stove will burn him, but he does comprehend that he must not touch the stove. Adam and Eve knew what God said, and that breaking the rule was BAD. In fact, God told them, if you break this rule, you will die.
Eating the fruit allowed them to understand the basis for discernment of good and evil. Before that, they clearly understood that there was a rule, and that violation of that rule made them subject to punishment.
The root problem is that they (like us) want to do what THEY want rather than obey God. When they chose to disobey God, the consequence was separation from Him, and ultimately, death - for themselves and for their offspring.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
A lot can be defined in math which is not "real" and can beproved totally utterly from a few axiom. Then again you would know that a lot do not apply to the real world. Like TADA !!! Imaginary number. We are speaking of reality. And god as far as I can tell is per religious definition a real being. Now if you want to define God as an imaginary entity, not definible within the real entity ensemble, I agree with you totally. But you cannot DISPROVE the inexistence of a real entity. Point. Final.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Please know that Answers in Genesis is not representative of all Chirstians, and certainly not all Christian scholars. In my opinion, (as a Christian) they are mis-guided. They have one particular theological interpretation that they are hung up on, and can't accept that they read it wrong. It is entirely possible to take Genesis as a historical account and be in agreement with ordinary science, without contradiction. The original language has enough flexibility to be interpreted as the universe being just a few thousand years old, or much older (billions). If you look at everything in the Bible that touches on the origin of the Universe, 13.5 billion years is a better fit.
Have a look at www.reasons.org for a group who approaches creation rationally. That is, they're willing to be led by the facts.
Assuming I'm not intrensically "good", why am I not? Why are you better then me?
Because he has decided to be, of his own free will.
The tax system in the US combined with the natural tendency towards sloth among many born to too much privilege (not all, obviously) tend to undermine Marx's predictions to a large extent in the modern US. Furthermore, the unabashed capitalism he was looking at isn't really what's practiced here in the US today.
Capitalism has been immensely successful long after the days of Marx. In the first part of the 20th century, these gains in overall wealth and productivity made people happier in the US (more leisure time, more conveniences of modern life, less hunger and disease, etc.). However, in he second half of the 20th century, gains in wealth and productivity have continued but we have failed to become happier as a whole in our society.
So you could perhaps argue that capitalism has taken us as far as it can and we need to look to other strategies to improve our happiness and well-being that work as a complement to as better replacements for the variety of capitalism we currently practice here. Portions of Europe seem to do a pretty good job of blending capitalism with the happier parts of socialism, though with their much simpler social structure and homogeneous ethnic makeups, these systems are much more naturally stable than they would be here in the US.
But I see no evidence of Marx's predictions becoming true in a democratic society like the US. When the people get restive, they vote out Congress and replace them with a more liberal group that will throttle back the collective id of capitalism and impose some super ego on it.
Wax museums don't even have the turtles!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Yes, good point. Here I am arguing other people's semantics while being sloppy with my own.
A personal belief that there is no god is Faith, since it's arguably impossible to gather sufficient evidence to prove that assertion. (Proving non-existence is generally a daunting task.)
People banding together and organizing around such a belief would be a Religion.
I meant to challenge those people who claim to be atheist (reject existence of god), yet claim there is no faith involved in that assertion.
They also tend to get thrown out of small communities that have enough trouble surviving without some loony doing stupid things. Such behaviour is by no means restricted to humans, but can be observed in other cooperative pack hunters such as wolves, wild dogs, orca, etc., none of whom will tolerate a member who flaunts the established rules (which are at least partially learned, and therefore vary from pack to pack). It was this ability to adapt their behaviour to prevailing social conditions that made wolves and their close relatives ideal companions for early humans, hence the fact that they were domesticated long (perhaps as much as 80,000 years) before any other creatures.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
I would think that any religion which incorporates the concept of a rational "creator" would qualify, assuming that rationality is dependent on the existence of a creator in the first place (something I do not personally believe).
Why wouldn't they be? Rational thought is a definition created by man, and such humanocentric concepts do not require the presence of a supreme being. The world as perceived is the world as is. Man is the measure of all things. I think, therefore I am.
A non-Christian universe is not always materialistic. Just ask most native Americans, or most of the Wiccans I know. Or a buddhist monk, for that matter.
Men are not obligated to be rational in a Christian universe, either. That's why a "leap of faith" is often required in order to understand or accept commonly believed Christian doctrine.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
If Christians are wrong, and absurdly so, why not let them tell people their beliefs?
Hell, I wouldn't start arguing if somebody started up a museum claiming that the world was created 5 minutes ago by a spaghetti monster. I wouldn't mind people linking to an article about it -- as I'm sure any Christian, Atheist, Humanist, or whatever wouldn't either.
Can't people believe what they want to believe? Do you want to prevent freedom of thought?
Why bother arguing against it though? I mean, in a few years time you'll be dead. I guess then you'll know if God is real or not... or you won't know a thing if there is no life after death. Plenty of people say they don't mind death... until their time comes.
Or perhaps SOME people DO realize that theft doesn't stop being theft if it's government doing it, and calling it "taxing the rich". And some of them do even have the moral fiber to stand against injustice, even if they benefit from it?
Except the people in question are the worst welfare leeches we have, so your "moral fiber" argument is worse than laughable.
Try it again when they give up their farm subsidies nad their utility subsidies and all their other entitlement programs and start pulling their own weight for once rather than leeching off of my productivity and then whining like little bitches about *exactly what they are doing*.
Sorry, but the completely contradictory and nonsensical nature of their various positions demonstrates their total lack of anything approaching morality. If not, why are they on the obviously wrong side of every moral issue?
Religion is about belief. Nothing else. You cannot prove or falsify a religious principle with scientific means.
By its very nature, religion doesn't offer itself to scientific approach. Any scientific theory must offer at least a theoretic way to repeat or falsify its foundation. The Christian religion dosen't offer that, it explicitly forbids you to try and test God. Since God does still exist, according to his believers (he is outside space and time, everywhere and forever, this does imply that he does exist now) the scientific way would be to give him a dead planet and tell him to recreate that seven days experiment.
This, though, is forbidden. It would be tempting God.
We cannot recreate the Big Bang either. True. But nobody claims that the necessary situation for a Big Bang exists today. We also cannot create Earth again. But we can show that according to gravity laws and the reaction of masses towards each other planets can form. We can theoretically prove it. And the theory offers itself to test and trial, with the option to falsify it if you find out that something has been omitted or wrongly calculated.
That's the difference between science and religion. It's not that science can recreate everything it claims as true, but its findings can, should and are being tested and tried.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
As an atheist I wouldn't say anything. Its only the religious nuts who have a problem with sperm donors and/or same-sex parents.
You've missed the point. The poster (not sure if that's you) argued that if there's a pregnancy, there was sex. I would argue that that's not true, whether or not you believe in God. By that argument, all surrogate mothers and sperm donors all had sex with the other party, and the product of all such fertilizations, as well as test tube babies, are "bastard whelps", in the poster's words. I think that's ridiculous. If you argee that that's ridiculous, then you affirm that a pregnancy does not necessarily suggest sex.
I think he was talking about Jefferson, Franklin, Madison and others who were Deists.
Who exactly were you talking about?
Hey, God created the universe, and he created all the rules. He didn't need Jesus to come to Earth and die to for everyone's sins - he could have just decided to forgive everyone instead. Heck, he could have just as easily just wiped out the universe and started over.
It's like playing a game of The Sims, deciding you think your sims are behaving badly, thus you create a Sim with the purpose of having that sim die to make up for the bad behavior of all the other sims. Notice that doing so makes absolutely no sense?
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
presuppositions presuppositions presuppositions presuppositions presuppositions .... presuppositions presuppositions presuppositions presuppositions presuppositions presuppositions .... presuppositions presuppositions presuppositions presuppositions presuppositions presuppositions .... arg! if i read that word one more time
As one of my friends puts it: it's just like two children arguing over who's imaginary friend is the best.
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
Well look, here we go again.
Most creationist talk about how science is fuzzy and has it all wrong and it's usually based on the fact that scientist never say : this is the truth and we know it for sure at 100%. Science proceeds by falsification, so the closest you can get to say something is true is: "We cannot prove it's false." When opposed to fundamentalists that hold things in the Bible for 100% true, of course they're gonna say science is fuzzy. Viewing science as "another belief" is assuming science proves things true and only shows a lack of understanding of science in general. Now the funny thing is that science and religion were not always ennemies. That only began when science began to disprove theories that religion sided with.( See flat earth, earth at the center of the solar system, evolution...)That's when religion, who took upon themselves to explain everything about world creation and dynamics, saw science as "heretic" and dealt with it as most as they could (ex: Galileo facing Inquisition). Science deals with things observable and disprovable. Soul, Gods, spirits, spaghetti monsters, this is the domain of metaphysics. Anything that is NOT disprovable, so about which there can only be questions and stale debates. Having a spiritual belief is in no way in contradiction with being very rational. Religion mingling with science is dangerous, as much as religion mingling with government. Anyway... why do I bother...
In the name of creating their version of a religion-free utopia, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong produced the kind of mass slaughter that no Inquisitor could possibly match. Collectively these atheist tyrants murdered more than 100 million people.
If your source is this poorly researched, then why would anybody lend it any legitimacy?
The Nazi regime was loudly and explicitly Christian.
Trying to pretend otherwise shows the deeply dishonest character of these religious loons.
Try doing a little bit of research next time little troll.
In addition to some of the other points made, the US is a very large country with a lot of rural areas in between the metropolitan parts. In rural areas you get a large number of people who don't often travel outside their area, an even less outside the country. In so doing, there are fewer vectors by which foreign ideas can spread in these rural areas, and you end up with a homoginization of beliefs and attitudes. And as it happens in the US, a more fundamentalist/puritanical version of Christianity was spread over a great part of the nation by settlers in the 18th and 19th centuries, and has been given little opportunity to evolve in areas with stagnant "idea pools". You can get the same thing to some effect in ethnic/cultural ghettos*, where large numbers of an ethnic group live and can more easily avoid interacting with other ethnic and cultural groups.
This is why you tend to see more "progressive" people near cities and more "conservative" people in the countryside - people in cities have little choice but to be exposed to dissonant ideas, which forces most people to reevaluate their preconceptions.
The GOP has for some time now oriented its politics around "values" issues which line up with what a majority of people (often in rural areas) have grown up believing, and it has taken a major issue like the Iraqi war/occupation to make people vote otherwise. Values issues have little to do with actual problems, like economics, and more to do with percieved problems which are more just manifestiations of a rpidly shrinking world. Indeed, sometimes these perceived "values problems" are just conflicting ideas becoming easier to access thanks to radio, tv and the Internet.
* (using the original meaning of the word, not necessarily synonymous with 'slums')
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
"Science demands proof, religion demands belief. You can be one or the other but not both."
So science requires no belief? That's hilarious.
Even science requires faith / belief of one sort or another, albeit a mitigated faith / belief. Faith that those scientists who have stood before you were correct. Faith that the instruments you use to observe are accurate enough for you to make a conclusion. Faith that the evidence you have observed is accurate / unbiased / directly related to the conclusion you draw.
For science to be wholly outside the realm of belief, knowledge itself must be finite. To remove even the slightest bit of hand-waving, the scientist must know the sum total of all knowledge.
Hell, if knowledge is finite, I sure don't want to be a scientist because that takes all the damn fun out of it!
Facts are unmutable. Theories are scientific conclusions are not.
What hilarious hyperbole you spin, however. Well, two can play at that game...
By your definition, then, anyone who is married or loves cannot be a scientist either, for that too involves faith, belief. Heck, emotions are irrational so anyone who has emotions cannot be a scientist.
Do you agree that humans are irrational? Are you human? Boy, then, one wonders how you haven't committed suicide yet because of these mutually incompatible philosophies.
I am constantly searching for and examining those things I take on faith (read Religion) in a similar manner or essence of the way I am constantly searching and examining those scientific truths / theories in the field I study.
Neither faith nor science is static. In that way the two are closer than you think.
I find no conflict in my daily life between the two.
The only problems I have are the arrogant types on either side who believe they can speak with any credibility when they say the two are incompatible. Ultimately, that's the biggest hand-wave of all.
7 states amended their state constitutions to ensure their already existing laws against same-sex marriage could not be struck down by state courts as being unconstitutional IN THE LAST ELECTION. That brings the total number of states to have done so to the number 27. Only 1 state (Arizona) that has had the amendment on the ballot has voted against it. On the bright side, that was also in the 2006 election, so maybe it suggests a very slow change towards rationality.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
How is that that Communism, allegedly founded on a scientific basis, stressing rationality and scientific though, with principles regarded as altruistic (from each according to his ability to each according to his need), repeatedly produced such carnage and such leaders?
Because it wasn't really founded on that basis. It was founded on a *religious* belief in Communism.
Just because you replace worship of a god with worship of the state doesn't make it any less of a religion.
As a believer in the non-fictitious,all-powerful Bob, I share similar beliefs as you.
It is the Bobism faith alone that can account for logic, reason, and rationality.
Why should anyone be rational if the Bob does not exist? Why are men under any obligation to be rational in a materialistic universe?
As a Bobist, I believe all men should be rational. I believe people should believe things on good evidence. I think we are under obligation to use our intellectual tools to glorify Bob, and to learn about this world--we should be consistent. I believe that because Bob requires all men to be rational. I can make sense of the obligation to be rational.
If this world is sound and fury signifying nothing, why must men be rational? Why don't I just live moment by moment and be inconsistent: thinking on thing one time and another thing another time, caring nothing for logic? After all, logic has no place in the material universe--it is an abstract, non-material set of laws. How can laws of logic actually exist in an atheistic universe?
The odd thing about the materialist is this: the materialist who wants to be rational has already departed from his materialism.
If you are a materialist, you have a naturalistic explanation for everything we say and do. What's going on in this gray matter in my cranium is controlled by the laws of physics and chemistry and biology. I don't really think, I'm really like a weed that's growing. Weeds don't think, and neither do I, we're all subject to the laws of physics, I'm just at a more complicated/complex level.
If naturalism is true, there's no such thing as rationality, there's just whatever people end up thinking and doing. Why call men to be rational then?
However, the Bob calls men to be consistent and rational. For the Bobist, I can expect all men to be obligated to be rational. Not so for those who reject Bob.
Proof positive that a large chunk of the US population is composed of idiots.
This is why you are going straight to hell
I don't think anyone is denying that these people have the freedom to practice their religion or believe what they want. But we have the freedom to express and criticize what we feel is silly, stupid, or even mildly dangerous delusions. For some reason people tend to feel that religion is the one topic that is beyond criticism. You can deride someone's politics, but you have to respect their cherished religious beliefs. No you don't. You only have to respect their right to hold them and practice them so far as it doesn't infringe upon other more basic rights (e.g., so murder in the name of religious belief is unacceptable).
My point is that people have a right to believe and practice their religion, and they have a right to express themselves verbal (I can't just beat people senseless because I don't agree with them), but there is no right not to be offended. Not only would such a right be completely incompatible with freedom of speech, it is completely unpractical to enforce. I, as the speaker, do not have complete control over whether I offend my listeners. Many important things that must be said will offend some either intentionally or unintentionally. This has as much to do with the listener as the speaker. And someone can always claim offense if they don't like what they hear, and such a right would quickly translate into a right not to hear anything you don't want to hear. Such a right would be nearly the opposite of freedom of expression, giving anybody the ability to silence anyone. No, a right not to be offended would quickly lead to a very silent world.
So one might say, "who cares what these people believe and profess; just let them live in their deluded world." I think that is the wrong way to look at this. While they have the right to believe this young Earth creationist crap, their evangelism of such beliefs has a real impact. Science and the pursuit of knowledge is endangered whenever we have pseudoscience that fools people or we replace science with dogmatism that we mislabel as science. Education of our youth is what is endangered here. I don't care if a particular person does not value science and chooses to live by faith while completely forsaking reason. Not everyone is even interested in science, and there is more to life than this one topic. What angers me, and what must be stopped is people being intellectually dishonest about science and twisting it. It degrades and pollutes science. Be honest. Say that science and literal interpretation of the biblical creation story don't match but that you believe the creation story by faith, which triumphs reason for you. I know Christians who do this. At least it is intellectually honest. But don't tell me black is white and hot is cold. Don't accept science everywhere else but be the biggest skeptic in the world only where it challenges your faith. These are the people that readily accept everything else in science, accept the play up the "it's just a theory line" only for evolution (or geology, cosmology, physics and nearly every other discipline if they are young Earth creationists instead of just "intelligent design adherents").
So in conclusion, there is no right not to offend, and this is a serious issue with real consequences. We should not be silent or complacent on this issue.
You surprise me, Qbertino... normally your posts make a lot of sense.
You look like you haven't read enough bibles. Please go read the fate of Jephthah's daugther in Judges 11, who god notably unluckier than Isaac, and much deader.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
International Communism was atheistic in nature (note that most religion is illegal even today in China, Cuba, etc.), and yet was responsible for 60-100 million deaths in the last century. Nazism was responsible (directly) for 11 million deaths, indirectly perhaps twice that. No religion has ever come close to that. Not even remotely.
First of all, Hitler was Catholic. He made multiple statements throughout the years to that effect. And the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis was strongly rooted in the religious anti-Semitism that had been around for a LONG time. It's a lot easier to draw connections from the Holocaust to religion than it is to atheism, so I suggest you drop that one now.
Second, just because brutal Communist regimes were meant to be atheistic doesn't mean that the people they killed were killed in the name of non-belief. It was always more of a "state religion" - have faith in the leaders and the Communistic dogma. Those regimes didn't kill in the name of religion as we know it, but they did it based on similar principles of doing with some authority figure told them to do, out of a strong faith that something someone else told them was right.
The lack of belief in a higher power, and the ultimate accountability that it brings, definitely opens people up to commit more heinous acts. If you're nothing but another conglomerate of matter, and I have absolutely nothing to lose by destroying you, then what exactly would stop me if you're in my way?/i?
What do I have to lose? Well, accountability to the law, and in cases where it's the leader of a nation, accountability to the rest of the world. We don't live in a vacuum, so all of our actions have impacts on others and will result in reactions from them.
Besides, a little logical thought will allow someone to derive a basic sense of morality relatively easily. Given the fact that I want certain freedoms in my life, and the fact that I assume others feel the same way, I should behave toward others in ways that I want them to behave toward me. (Yes, the "Golden Rule", which is present in many religions and cultures throughout history) That says a lot right there.
And I'll say I much prefer having people around who have come to their morality through the above means than through what a book tells them not to do - because if the latter ever lose belief in their book, they lose their entire sense of morality. I want people around who won't kill me because they know it's the wrong thing to do, rather than those who don't do it only because a book tells them not to.
Oh, and the simple act of sentencing someone to hell for eternity is a greater evil than anything that any human being could ever do. A human being, no matter how evil, can only cause a finite amount of suffering. No matter what scale you use for punishment (such as causing 1 day of suffering for one person is worth 1 billion years in hell), eventually it will become miniscule compared to eternity. The concept is fundamentally unjust, and any being who would create such a place and send people there for eternity is pure evil.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
That anyone modded that shit insightful just goes to show how cool it is to bash religion, especially christianity, on slashdot.
Well that's very ironic then, because in your attempt you've stumbled over your own beliefs and failed to provide an example of what you mean to point out.
Not exactly. If you would only do good because a god or a policeman told you to, then you really aren't a good person but a behaved person.
Personally I try to make some attempt to act out of compassion without thought of a god or policeman punishing me if I don't or rewarding me if I do. Does that make me intrinsically good? I don't know about that.
That's a very complex question, but basically because I can and do choose to be and because it's good to be good.
I don't know, you tell us? Does it not give you a sense of joy to help a person? Isn't helping it's own reward? Perhaps your brain is malfunctioned and you do not feel empathy. Or perhaps you are just a bit confused and you only think you aren't a good person because you were indoctrinated to think that way.
I think you just have a bit of ignorance blocking your way. Hopefully you aren't really the psychopath your worldview would imply.
Do you believe that there are mile-high monsters made of orange marmalade living on the moons of Jupiter?
Unless you do, by your own reasoning you are a member of the religion which denies the existence of the Great Jovian Marmalade Monsters.
Or do you have direct evidence to support your otherwise unsubstantiated belief that such beings do not exist?
Do you see the problem here?
Cress, cress, lovely lovely cress
If you are going to throw down the false idols and smash them under the feet of non-believers, you're going to have to show how your belief system is more right than religion. Religion has been around a long time and doesn't have to answer to you. To expect it to is like expecting the stones on the shore to suddenly become sand.
I think a better tack is just to point out how irrelevant and powerless "god" has become.. you can believe in him/it all you want, but with the advance of science it's not possible to attribute any power to him, and he's therefore become irrelevant - a purely philosophical entity. There's never yet been a single instance where a fundamental partical, molecule, cell, neuron, or anything else has ever done anything other than obey the laws of science. Not once has "god" ever intervened and made even the slightest difference whatsoever in the world (except in the mind of a believer). Constrast this to a few hundred years ago when due to lack of human knowledge all sorts of power over health, life, death, the weather, etc could be attributed to this mysterious "god" because we didn't know any better.
History shows us that scientific knowledge will eventually enter the collective consciousness and change the way people look at the world, and there's already a vast difference between religous belief as it existed a few hundred years ago and the way it does today. Even the most hardcore creationists often believe that animal species can change a bit(!) due to genetics and natural selection. Ideas/memes that are entrenched in society certainly take a very long time to change, but science is slowly displacing religion, and there's no reason to believe that it won't continue to do so. I don't think that fundamentalist religious belief (in the western world at least, even America!) will be regarded as mainstream in a few hundred years.
I applaud your general statement, but you might want to watch it with the "micro-evolution" vs. "macro-evolution" separation. They're not separate. Enough micro-steps means a macro-step. It's just a funky thing that Biblical literalists brought up as a talking point.
(Full disclosure: I'm Christian, think that the big-bang+old-earth hypothesis sounds like the best explanation of the facts that we have, and don't think that it precludes an all-powerful deity.)
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
!uh writes,
The world's first creationism museum was destroyed today when the Ohio River flooded. All of the animatronic dinosaurs were destroyed, but a family of visiting skeptics was able to escape on the backs of several large mammals. The museum did not return calls for comment questioning where the horses came from.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Athletes as a whole are horrible roles models for most of society because they got to where they are by spending more time in the weight room than the classroom. Modern professional athletes are more entertainers than anything, taking religious advice from them is like being a disciple of the circus strongman. But modern professional sporting events and modern churches like roman circuses have much in common so I'm not surprised people tend to mix sports and religion together. See also: Fanatical
We have the best government that money can buy.
Nazism was responsible (directly) for 11 million deaths, indirectly perhaps twice that. No religion has ever come close to that.
You need to move this one over to the religion column as Nazism was explicitly and aggressively Christian, not atheistic.
believe that "up to" means "approximately".
Or maybe you should just read about the Eurpoean colonization of the Americas to understand why the USA was founded by a bunch of Christian fundamentalists.
If perhaps the article in question would get it correct...most of the "founding fathers" were either Deists (Unitarians) or Anglicans. Both of these groups were the furthest from fundamentalsists that you can get...even in that day. Most of the fundamentalists were uneducated farmers & people away from the sway of the "in-crowd" of the day.
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia. - Charles M. Schulz
I am so seriously going to visit this meuseum! Animitronic Dinosaurs coexisting with humans? This totally rocks!
I have been to a lot of museums (my SO works at a Natural History Museum) and I never encountered one before that needed attack dogs. You might think twice before you visit and express a different viewpoint to the one they are hawking.
"E pur si muove!" - attributed to Galileo Galilei, 1564-1642
What animal has a tail like a cedar tree? That is how the behemoth is *described.*
Work Safe Porn
"they were all based upon unreasoning belief in a concept or institution, and religion falls into the same category."
Speaking of which, this has been my impression of Atheists for some time. They have an UNREASONING BELIEF system, based upon unscientific thought. They have a Thesis, but have never considered the ANTITHESIS.
Their thesis is "there is no god", and have developed a whole line of reasonings to "prove" this thesis. The Antithesis is "There is a god", and I have rarely seen any atheist spend the amount of time on this consideration.
I was an atheist at one point. One of the most brilliant things that was ever suggested to me was "have you considered the alternative", which led me on the journey to where I am now. I am not a "christian" in the traditional sense, neither am I a "jew". But I am one of those wackos, who believes the Scriptures, namely because none of the claims found in it have been falsified.
Perhaps they cannot be falsified in the minds of some, but the evidence (modern and recent practices of today, circa last 150 years, found in a story 3500 years or more old) is there, if one just looks.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Ms. Garrison: (speaking of evolution) It was thought up by Charles Darwin and it goes something like this. In the beginning we were all fish, okay, swimming around in the water. And then one day a couple of fish had a retard baby, and the retard baby was different, so it got to live. So retard fish goes on to make more retard babies, and then one day a retard baby fish crawled out of the ocean with its...mutant fish hands...and it had butt sex with a squirrel or something, and made this...retard frog-squirrel...and then that had a retard baby which was a monkey-fish-frog...and then this monkey-fish-frog had butt sex with that monkey...that monkey had a mutant retard baby that screwed another monkey and...that made you. So there you go. You're the retarded offspring of five monkeys having butt sex with a fish-squirrel. Congratulations.
Everything going on in your head could be entirely chemical and biological, and can still be considered thought. There is no violation of physical laws going on when you think.
Ahh, but to the materialist, the physical laws in the end control your thought process do they not? BTW, this is an internal critique of the materialist worldview.
What is your evidence that rationality is anything more than 'whatever people end up thinking and doing'?
Because the materialist cannot account for abstract, non-material laws of logic. They don't exist. They are conventions which can change, as conventions are wont to do. Also, if all our thoughts are governed by physical laws (another thing unaccounted for by atheists).
The very premise of the religion, that man is born in sin because of the acts of the original man and woman, is illogical.
What law of logic does this violate?
If Adam and Eve had no knowledge of good and evil before they ate of the tree, they had no idea it was evil to disobey god.
God told them not to eat of the tree (Gen 2:16-17). They disobeyed. Your straw men is impressive, but a straw man nonetheless.
Your religion is no more rational than any other. Get used to it.
It is the only rational worldview I have found. It can account for laws of logic, morality, human dignity, and the inductive principle. Materialism does not. I ask you, why should men be rational in your worldview? In the Christian worldview, God is a logical being, He created laws of logic and made us in His image. We are to be consistent and abide by these laws. In the Christian worldview, laws of logic exist.
How does the atheist account for laws of logic? How can abstract universal absolutes exist in a world where only matter exists? Why should men be rational in your worldview?
Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff.
The Puritants were a group of Anglicans who wished to reform the Church of England down more Protestant lines. The Pilgrim fathers were NOT Puritans, but Seperatists -- they wanted to break with the Church of England. Fundamentalism only really began at the turn of last Century, as a reaction to modernity. They have been rather successful in the past hundred or so years in turning the US into a "Christian nation," rather than a secular country overwhelmingly inhabited by Christians.
How dare you be so modest!! You conceited bastard!!
Wrong.
Re-read it. God told them they can eat of any tree in the garden, but NOT to eat of the tree in the center, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God went on to say that the day they eat of that, they will surely die. So they were told not to eat of that tree. Satan came in and told them a lie, and they had a choice: Believe God or believe Satan. The word for "die" in hebrew suggests not a physical death, but a spiritual one. So man was created in three parts: body, soul (that part of you that thinks and reasons), and spirit. Once spiritual death occured, man became two parts: body and soul. That is why the Bible says man is "spiritually dead" and why the "natural man" does not understand the things of the spirit. It is non-sense to him, which explains your post.
It's also why Jesus says you must be "born again." Not of water (the fluid from a mother's womb), but born "in the spirit."
If you were told there are higher levels of conscienceness, like VGER in ST, people would suck that up in a heartbeat. But as soon as you introduce a higher level being being the creator of all things as the God of the Bible, people get defensive. Why?
It's just some people expressing their first amendment privs, right?
I know many will say that there are Christians who are oppressive and opinionated, and this is true sometimes, for both Christians and non-Christians. But atheism and Christianity are at opposite ends: To advocate one is to oppose the other.
The possession of property has nothing to do with enlightenment, for an individual or for a culture. The twin myths of material progress = spiritual or intellectual enoblement (each fallacy possessed in its own way by both Capitalism and Communism) is also indicated in your surprise at this state of affairs. And there are some analyses (not mine necessarily) that would suggest since the USA is the richest country on the planet, it would necessarily be the stupidest. "To eat & sleep well does not make one civilised....".
This is nothing new. There was a museum dedicated to Noah's Flood in Tulsa, Oklahoma over a decade ago (sorry no link). Thankfully it went away. The building is now a daycare center. Most recently Tulsa almost had a creation exhibit at it's zoo. Darwin be praised and rationality prevailed. At least temporarily.
At least Tulsa is important enough for even The Onion to make fun of: Creationist Museum Acquires 5,000-Year-Old T. Rex Skeleton.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
As a believer in the non-fictitious,all-powerful Bob, I share similar beliefs as you.
Oh, on what basis is Bobism founded? Is there a set of Scriptures with an excellent pedigree that I might examine? Is there a historical record of this Bob?
Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff.
That argument would only make sense if a sizeable number of people actually believed in unicorns or tooth fairies. I could just as easily argue that the word "vegetarian" doesn't make sense since (most) non-vegetarians also eat vegetables. It's a label, and it is useful to the extent that it helps support an idea.
Are you in favor of getting rid of ALL words that can be described by other words? Perhaps we should just reduce the dictionary to about 1,000 words and just replace all other words with some descriptive combination of those 1,000. Why wouldn't we? Because it's efficient to use words as shorthand for deeper concepts. Atheism and agnosticism clearly fill that bill. If you never (or at least very, very rarely) see the need to distinguish such people from others (as I don't with aquinist or adentite) than you have no need for that word, but I would submit that a lot has been written about atheism and agnosticism as it contrasts with various forms of theism, whereas one cannot say that about your words.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
What are you talking about? Religious people choose to be believe what they believe. I don't have to do anything God says... that's actually one of the key points of the Christian faith. We're free to do anything we want, God gave us a free will. I choose to trust Him and obey Him, but I don't have to.
Morality and faith are not arbitrary to an athiest. They are arrived at through logical thought and rational deduction. Faith and morals are arbitrary to a deist because one's choice of God and religion is arbitrary, and even when one has chosen, one can choose which precepts to follow and which to reject. God says not to eat shellfish, but you know that part is just ancient tribal belief. God says not to kill innocents, but you know those guys are evil sinners so grab a stone!
Moral athiests have arrived at their morals through thought and introspection. There are good, solid, selfish reasons not to light children on fire, we don't need some arbitrary and unverifiable book of rules to know that. The fact is, either morals and rules come from outside the universe and there is no way of verifying their correctness because they are outside all possible experience, or they come from inside the universe and can be deduced from experiences had inside the universe.
If there is no God, then people who believe in God are not only more delusional than those of us who know that God's existence or lacjk thereof simply doesn't matter, they are less likely to arrive at correct action in any given situation. By correct action I mean the action that will most efficiently bring about the greatest satisfaction among the greatest number. Admitedly, it is an arbitrary definition, but you will find that it is one many can agree with and from a pragmatic standpoint, that is what counts.
Because "believers" have subjugated their ability to think for themselves to religious dogma, they will be unable to act flexibly and creatively in situations that cause cognitive dissonance within their religious framework. People who have arrived at their morality through logic and introspection can adapt and be good people in any situation.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Some that I've been to (these are all excellent):
Arizona Science Center (Phoenix, AZ)
St Louis Science Center
Tech Museum of Innovation (San Jose, CA)
The Exploratorium (San Francisco)
Some I have yet, even though I live in the area:
Children's Discovery Museum (San Jose, CA)
The Intel Museum (Santa Clara, CA)
Computer History Museum (Mountain View, CA)
If you're looking for geeky museums, the SF Bay Area probably has more of them in a smaller radius than anywhere else in the USA.
Including Copernicus, Sir Francis Bacon, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Robert Boyle, Michael Faraday, Gregor Mendel, William Thomson Kelvin, and Max Planck?
Take your ignorance somewhere else, friend.
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Religion without science is superstition.
If one believes that it is scientifically possible prove that God made the universe or that he exists then either the boundaries of science are overstepped or one is believing in the existence of a God which is lesser than absolute. If God is the force behind the entire universe, one cannot hope to observe it with the same omniscience as one who encompasses it. In other words, an element of a system cannot fully describe the system of which it is a part.
St. Anselm said that "God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived" (not perceived.) This does not prove the existence of a Divine Being but it certainly places it outside the limits of the human mind to understand if God or the nature of his existence. God has also been described by some(sorry no reference here) as the "ground of our being" putting it out of our grasp at the same level as the fact that we do not have memories in this world before our birth (or before past lives if you're one of those people.) Also, think of the difference in understanding which there must be between an insect which may only live for a week's time and a dog which lives for 15 years and a man who can live for 100. There is a huge difference in understanding of the universe and of time. Ultimately all of these physical beings die and do not see the entire process of time. It is assumed by theologists, religions, etc that God is timeless, exists throughout the infinity of time and goes beyond it and even on that level if God exists, we are transcended by God. If you assume these statements are true then God cannot be as simple as creationists wish God to be. It seems what creationists wish god to be is "That than which nothing greater can be perceived. Meaning God is simply the feeling I feel on Sunday and he's the miracle maker who does fancy wonderful things. I personally believe that miracles are meant for the people who were there to see them and that their true power is a spiritual miracle. That God is more complex than proving something wrong (i.e. evolution) because it makes you uncomfortable and that Adam and Eve had a pet T-Rex.
Btw, I do believe that evolution occurs on a physical level but I believe that the reality is that humanity has always existed and that humans have always been humans (in essence.) I don't believe that God is out to confuse humankind and that religion is meant to oppress. As Baha'u'llah said "If religion is a point of contention, there should be no religion at all." I believe in a better God than that.
This wasn't meant to be preaching or ranting. I am just tired of religion being called social control and of people who oppress half of their existence by attempting to ignore their brain and who are afraid of their ability to think. This isn't meant to be a full explanation or that I believe this logic is fully airtight, I just think it's better logic than exploding dinosaurs.
So Christianity is valid because there's an old book about it?
There are older books about other religions, you know. Are those more valid than Christianity?
You are simply asking the question of how rationalism and logic could arise without some magic intervention. I agree that we don't have all the answers (mostly because we are still working to understand how minds and consciousness work) but that's not a reason to leap across the false dichotomy and say that since there isn't a complete materialist explanation (yet!) then therefore there is an omnipotent, omniscient, compassionate being intervening in our daily lives.
... or possibly plans about thoughts). Once you have that feedback loop going you can bootstrap yourself up to logic, which is, ultimately, the analysis of thought to determine which ways of thinking are most effective.
You are still underselling the materialist viewpoint on mind and rationality however. It isn't hard to believe that biology could construct a mind capable of relfection of the real world - capable of doing the build and test work of evolution in the mind instead of in the real world: most birds and mammals, for instance, seem to have such a mind; they can "think" and reflect upon the world inside their heads and apply work done in that world to the external world. Rationality, and more importantly logic, could quite conceivably arise once the ability for the mind to reflect upon its own thoughts arises. In such a a scenario instead of mentally constructing and trying out different plans for a real world situation, one mentally constructs and tries out plans for "thoughts" (which is to say, mental plans about real world situations
Why don't other animals have logic? The best answer I can give is that, to have the sort of reflective thinking - thinking about thoughts - ultimately requires a complex language, or some equivalent, so that thoughts can be suitably transformed into something to think about. While other animals do have language to varying degrees, humans are the only creature to have, so far, developed a complex grammatical language, and brains designed to parse and process it. That means other animals haven't yet got the feedback loop going, so can't (yet!) bootstrap themselves to rationality and logic.
Why doesn't everyone automatically "think rationally"? Thinking rationally amounts to having climbed up that feedback loop over several layers of abstraction and indirection. Certainly while human brains are capable of this, they aren't really designed for, or particularly good at it. Take a look at psychological studies of how many layers of indirection in thought people can sustain. After about 5 things just start breaking down - the hardware isn't up to the task. That means that thinking ratonally is hard work - it's not something out minds were "designed" to do, it is something they developed the minimal capability for and the software took over from there: the hardware limits, making logic hard work, are still in place.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Maybe you didn't intend it, but your post seems quite harsh. I'm talking about what those words mean _to me_. I thought I was quite clear about that when I used the phrase "for me" in the above quoted text.
Funny, because I know quite a few. (And how do _you_ define agnostic, anyway?) And your last sentence really makes no sense at all. I believe there are no pink unicorns. I can state that with utmost certainty. That does not mean that I have to assume there is some valid basis for believing there are pink unicorns.
And that is a non-sequitor. (A) I made no argument, I talked about how *I* define two words. (B) How is that statement the slightest bit relevant to those two definitions? (Except for if I were to argue that my definitions would replace the word "agnosticism" for your word "atheism".)
If you really want to argue definitions, have at it. You're entitled to define the words the way you see fit. Of course, you still conveniently dodged my question about what "word do you use to describe people who believe there is no god" by making the false claim that such people pretty much don't exist.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
So the laws of Gravity are moot then?
"Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion." - Newton
Newton does not hand-wave and say god moves the planets so we shall not study them. There is a difference which you are missing.
Newton's religiousness does not preclude him from being a scientist, for if you preclude him, then you must preclude yourself. The underlying goal or purpose of science to society and individuals is to produce useful models of observable reality. Henceforth, by the definition of science, you cannot comment on things outside observation. To do so would be un-scientific.
So here we have the largest oxymoron of all, someone like you stating that Newton is not a scientist because he has religious beliefs which you yourself cannot take a position on because of the definition of science itself.
Netwon has a belief that God created all laws behind the things we can observe, Science has a belief there are only more laws beyond the laws we currently know. Both are things based on faith. Both are things you cannot completely prove. To claim otherwise is pure arrogance.
Science deals with how, not why - that's not a flaw, that's just what it is. Personally, I think we'd be better off if religion stuck to the why, and stopped trying to decide the how - but that's for another day.
Philosophy tries to deal with the "why", but it's simply an intractable problem. (42 -- but what's the question, exactly?)
You can say "because God says it is" or "that's just the way it is" but that's really the same answer. You've just added the ambiguously-defined word "God" in there. If that makes you feel better, well, you probably can't explain why, so nobody can convince you that it's silly.
There is no grand single "answer" to life, as if life was a trivia question. You make your own meaning in this world. For some people that means delegating it to an ambiguously-defined word from a political organization reading a poor translation of a copy of an ancient book. For others it isn't.
The fall of the Soviet Union hardly counts as repudiation of everything Karl Marx ever said, and if you think it does, your understanding of Marx must be pretty shallow. Marx's influence on theories of economic history is massive and can't be written off with the sort of knee-jerk opposition to his name engendered by the likes of Ronald Regan.
// This is not a sig.
"Actually, come to think of it, I have no idea how come religion (specifically, christianism) is so powerful in such a developped country as the USA.."
It's because people have an inbuilt desire to believe in something. Have a think about that sometime.
PS the correct term is 'Christianity'
which is totally what she said
Yes, but the Christian Bible says that if you reject it, your reasoning is reduced to foolishness. Which, when you examine the presuppositions of those who reject the Christian God, is as plain as the nose on your face.
Anyone can make claims--you can have some guy walk in off the street and say he's God.
However, saying that rejecting the Christian God will result in the undermining of all human knowledge, morality, dignity, and science--that's extraordinary proof for an extraordinary claim.
You see, once you assume laws of logic exist, and you obligate other men to adhere to them--you assume the Christian God exists. Your engaging in debate becomes your own refutation.
Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff.
the people that modded this as insightful have some issues.
immaculate conception, basicly conception (and thus birth) with out sex. the story does not say that god had sex with mary. It is MAGIC, deal with it.
No I am not a christian, I am an agnostic, I don't CARE about religion. However, I dislike fanatics, no matter what they are fanatical about, it is bad. This includes fanatical religion bashing.
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
Are they really Christians who believe Jesus died for their sins, or just people brought up in a society that they think is Christian? I know that Christians can be selfish too, I feel kind of selfish sometimes, but I also know that people in school used to think they were Christian just because they lived in the UK (same as Osama Bin Laden and his friends seem to regard the whole Western world as being Christian, which it clearly is not).
Anyway, the bible doesn't criticize doing well for yourself in life. It criticizes putting that as your primary aim in life, or not sharing if you do do (it's grammatically valid, just sounds silly) well.
which is totally what she said
So, there is no such thing as self-determination? if an atheist builds a house, is it that 1. the house doesn't really exist, or 2. although he thinks he did it out of free will, god really guided his will to undertake the project (thereby making him an unwilling theist)...?
I would argue that men are rational because that is the 'better' state of the world (as understood by mankind on the whole), and that religion follows on the shirttails of that concept, not vice-versa. It doesn't take a great deal of imagination or rationality to see that if a group of athests and/or agnostics were dropped off on an island with naught but the clothes on their backs, it would not take them long to start building shelter, finding food, creating social order and hierarchies, mating, etc. Why? Because a giant invisible hand is pushing them in that direction? Not so much...because they are inherently rational and seek order, due to the fact that irrational and unorderly specimens tended to not survive long in more spartan conditions, like the last ice age. I repeat, humans are rational because based on their genetic makeup, they tend in that direction.
Sand is small and coarse becase it has been pounded by ocean waves for many years. Giraffes have long necks because there is an untapped source of leaves up there. Most species on the planet like moderate temperatures because that is what our planet offers, for the most part-- those who prefer colder temperatures live at extremes of north or south; those who prefer it a bit warmer live near underwater thermal vents. Period. It really is that simple. Occum's razor says go for the simple solution, not to make shit up to fill in the gaps.
Because that wouldn't be rational, would it?
My debut novel AMITY now available: http://jeremydbrooks.c
His mercy prevented Him from destroying Adam and Eve. Their behavior justified Him killing them. He created them and had the right to kill them. That's one of the perks of being the creator. You get to set the rules and determine consequences. Because he loved Adam and Eve He didn't destroy them.
You hear the hot stove argument because it's tangible and obvious, not because it's "in in one of those ubiquitous books"
God provided a way for Adam to be restored to relationship with God - but the scar on my kids' hand from the accidental burn doesn't go away - it's the natural consequence of the burn itself. (Thankfully he's fully recovered and will only have a scar to show for the awful experience.) Adam
was not able to walk with God face to face any longer because he disobeyed God.
What God did was demonstrate that Adam and Eve's rebellion specifically separated them from Him. They were unable to have the same type of relationship and intimacy with Him that they once had.
I will never fully understand God - any more than my dog will ever fully comprehend me - *but* His actions make far more sense to me than any other explanation of the operation of the universe and of people within that universe than does any other explanation I've ever heard. God is *not* capricious.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Why do you assume that gaining pleasure for yourself must mean it comes with some moral expense? [Normal] Humans have a sense of empathy towards those around them, which partly means that by and large, people don't enjoy causing pain to others. I've never understood the position of "Without God I might as well go out and kill people in the streets and rape babies". Unless your idea of a thrill is causing pain to others, I can't imagine why you'd want to do this. If that's the case, you may be a psychopath.
As are religious teachings. Notice how religion is not static, how it's practiced differently in different places over periods of time. Did God command the change, or is this process dictated by the social pressures of the religion's practitioners? As for the fear of being caught and being punished, isn't that a basic tenet of many religions and secular societies alike? "Do as I say, or you won't get into paradise, and you may even be tortured for all eternity!" vs "Don't break the law or you'll spend you life in prison". Jail time is no more attractive to the non-religious than hell is to the religious.
The higher power is irrelevant. Religions rise through the acquisition of power. If there was one universal, incontrovertible true way, your "higher power", why are there and why have there been so many unrelated and incompatible religions? They all just duke it out from time to time, and the one with the most power declares itself "right".
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
You make some good arguments (and appeal to authority :) ), and I respect your desire to call yourself an atheist. In some ways, perhaps, this is similar to gays calling themselves "queer" and blacks using the "n" word to describe themselves. The argument is that if you call yourself by the label your enemies use on you, you take away some of the power of that label.
However, I suspect where one falls in this debate might depend somewhat on the types of people you find yourself in the company of. I know quite a few "kooks" (your term, not mine :) ), who believe in God, and I know quite a few "kooks" who are sure there is no god. Personally, I've struggled a lot with my faith, and I still have a lot of respect for those who do believe what I once believed. I'm not convinced that God does not exist, but it seems more likely to me that He doesn't than that He does. The point is, however, that when I have conversations with my "atheist" friends (those "kooks" who are quite sure there is no god), the distinction between their belief and mine is useful.
Your description of soft and hard agnostics makes me realize there's really even more categories here. There's people who are quite sure there is no god (A_0, where A can stand for agnostic or atheist, your choice), then there's people who are quite sure we can't know if there is no god (A_1), then there's people who aren't sure if we can know if there is a god (A_2). (Yes, I'm just making up these A_0, etc., labels.) And, of course, like your -9 to 9 scale there's who ranges of uncertainty involved in all of these. I'm mainly an A_2, whatever you want to call that.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Do you believe that logic and mathematics were created by God?
If you do, then that rather implies that God could change them or redefine them if He wished. Could you give an example of how a mathematical or logical law might be changed by an omnipotent being?
Will allow you to go your own way. You can spend this life and the next without Him - wouldn't it be cruel of Him to compel you to spend eternity with Him if you've clearly decided that you want none of that?
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
I have visions in my head of a mile-long line of museum patrons wearing American flag bandanas, threadbare cotton jogging pants, and Dale Earnhardt T-shirts (with the sleeves ripped off, of course). I don't know if I'd have the patience.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
But at the same time there are plenty of Atheists, Muslism, etc. who put a lot of work into feeding and clothing the poor and what's more , in the case of atheism, there is no religious incentive, these are humanitarian acts.
Software Freedom Day!.
Replace "Christian God" in your arugmant with "Invisible Pink Unicorn" and your argument still makes exactly the same amount of logical sense.
"Religion without science is superstition."
Let me correct that:
"Religion is superstition."
Plain and simple, and there's no way you can prove god exists. I don't need to prove your imaginary friend doesn't exist. You're the one making the claim. Common sense dictates that if you see a guy walking down the street claiming to be talking to Napoleon, he's more likely deluded than the possibility that Napoleon is really there. Christians seem to acknowledge this most basic scheme of logic when it comes to everyone else's delusions but their own. They're the worst kind of hypocrites, who can arrogantly claim Allah or Thor or Shiva are inventions in peoples' minds, but their Jeebus? Oh nooooos, not Jeebus.. he's REAL. Hypocrite.
Religion and science are at opposite ends of the spectrum. The definition of "faith" is to believe in something in the absense of any evidence. Faith is antithetical to the ideas upon which science is based. Anyone even trying to suggest anything otherwise, is undermining science, technology and common sense.
Screw that, we've got them beat in the greater San Diego area. Located in lovely Santee, CA (or Klantee, or Santucky depending on your preference...) A bunch of my grad school friends took a field-trip to the Institute for Creation Research and went on their museum tour. Apparently is quite well done, with out-of-context quotes of real peer-reviewed science papers, superb rhetorical slight-of-word, and a veneer of 'research.'
-Ted
-=-=- Quantum physics - the dreams stuff are made of.
I dont know about you friend but when I die I will be happy I have a hope and faith to cling to. Without that life would be meaningless. What will you cling to when your time comes? Or will you cling to anything at all. If not and your time comes I hope you have found peace somewhere in something.
I think your impression is incorrect. I can't, of course, speak for all atheists in the world, but I can speak for myself. I classified myself as agnostic for a long time, as keeping an open mind is important to me, but then I realised I was affording God a courtesy I don't afford to many other things. For instance, I don't believe that an invisible, intangible elephant follows me around; granted, there is the possibility that such a thing occurs, but without evidence to the contrary I am inclined not to believe in such a creature.
To me, atheism is not the belief that there is no God, but a lack of any belief that one does exist. There is a subtle distinction between these two states that many people miss. It is not that I have a thesis on God; it is simply that I have discarded any thesis on God as lacking in evidence. Either God has gone out of his way to leave little trace of his existence, save for that found in ancient books of dubious objectivity, or there simply is no God. With no other evidence, I can see no reason to believe in God, or even consider it, anymore than I'd consider believing in Thor or Cthulhu.
I suppose the views of my sister are representative of a certain number of Americans who respond to these polls.
A couple years ago, my sister was enrolled in a biology class while attending a state college here in Southern California. I asked here, "Cool, so you're finally learning about evolution?" to which she replied, to my utter astonishment, "Yeah, but I don't really buy it." We were brought up more or less secularly -- though she did attend a church school for a couple years in grade school -- and though further to the right than me and wavers between identifying herself as a Democrat or Republican, she is still a class example of the California fiscal conservative/social liberal.
Obviously, I wasn't going to persuade her of the scientific evidence supporting evolution over the course of a family dinner, but I did ask her what she made of the fact that her state-run school, funded with her taxes and backed by almost every expert in the subject both in government agencies and academia at large, accepted as fact the scientific theory she wasn't buying. A conspiracy theory so grand that, as E.O. Wilson suggests, God is in on it? She resisted but I could see this had some impact. She has since adopted a more indifferent view on the matter.
I think the explanation, from a cognitive science point-of-view, is that evolution just doesn't hit most people the way last Sunday's football scores -- or a drunk driver -- do. And they're blissfully unaware of the amazing contradictions that would confront them if only they paused to ponder the world in which they live for a few minutes.
Innovation makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old regime... -- Machiavelli
"If you have surrendered your capacity to take decisions, to think for yourself, and to control your own destiny, then you are oppressed (according to Marx and others)."
So what does that say about people who parrot the words of long-dead economists? Are Marxists oppressed? Is Marxism the opiate of the masses, too?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Have your fun. God deliberately decieved you. Yes, He does that and said He does that in the bible. It pleased God to stumble the wise and prudent and reveal it unto babes, such as would learn. Meanwhile, all the bible propehesies are fullfilled. The rapture will come and you won't know about it. The plagues will come and you won't believe they are the plagues. The new world will come and you won't be there.
Oh, on what basis is Bobism founded?
Well, the exact rationale is lost in the midsts of time, but I think they aspire to Slack, which is analogous to Nirvana or "The Grace of God".
Is there a set of Scriptures with an excellent pedigree that I might examine?
There were, but they got lost, and anyway they were probably in a language no-one can read anymore. Bobists make do with a series of translated writings inspired by copies of the original documents.
Is there a historical record of this Bob?
Yes, a Roman historian mentions him, and all the places mentioned in the sacred texts are real places so they must talking about real people too. Rumours that old-time Bobists inserted extra passages into ancient documents to make the case for Bob seem stronger are just heresay.
**TODO** Steal someone elses sig.
The story of adam and eve is, in my opinion, allegory that is often taken WAAAAAAY to literally. This is obvious to many devout christians I'm friends with, but seems not to be to many millions of others in this country.
Here's the fallacy of that concept. Jesus himself talked about Adam and Eve as if they were real, not allegory. And in one of the key treatises on Christian theology, Paul portrayed Christ as the "second Adam." If the first Adam was allegorical, there would have been no need for a second Adam.
prevents many of the affluent from doing their share to help those less fortunate
Why should the affluent help anyone? If Christianity is an outdated mind-virus, why should any individual do anything to help anyone besides themselves?
is it *really* possible for god not to have known what adam and eve would do?
Nope. It's not. But that does not change the fact that Adam had a choice to make, and he made it. He "chose.....poorly." God is not responsible for Adam's choice even though He must have known the outcome before the beginning. Adam is responsible.
could jesus microwave a burrito so hot that he himself could not eat it?
The question is nonsense. Could God make 4=6? Can God smell the color nine? Nonsense. Tripe. But you may ask nonsense if you like. Don't expect a sensible answer, though.
Do you kick him out of the house and stop talking to him?
Well, if my kid was self-destructive, I might kick him out of the house and set up boundaries about what constituted a healthy relationship with him. FWIW - God did not stop talking to Adam. Adam still had some relationship with God - it was simply fundamentally different from the previous relationship. Adam had hope of fully restored relationship with God on the basis of God's mercy.
I'm personally not capable of belief in that which is directly contradicted by reason
I'm intrigued by this statement. First, not capable, or unwilling to submit to that kind of truth (if it exists.) Secondly, can you give an example of Christian teaching which exemplifies this?
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
If you do, then that rather implies that God could change them or redefine them if He wished. Could you give an example of how a mathematical or logical law might be changed by an omnipotent being?
God is a rational, logical being. He created the laws of logic and holds men accountable to them--even creating man in His image, so that we too are logical, rational beings.
However, God does not change His mind. He doesn't change the laws of logic.
Num 23:19: Numbers 23:19 God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?
God does not do that which does not comport with his character. That's why he does not change His mind, nor do laws of logic change. However, if laws of logic were merely conventions agreed upon by men, they are subject to change. You'd find different systems of logic sprouting up all over the world. One debating society might use one set of logical laws, while another might not recognize that set of laws.
Now do you see why rejecting the Christian God results in foolishness?
Psalm 53:1 says:
The fool says in his heart, "There is no God."
When the Bible says "fool" here it isn't engaging in name-calling. Rather, it is pointing out the absolute futility of rejecting the Christian worldview.
Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff.
God did not create the laws of mathematics and logic.
Definitely. I'm 100% certain of this.
Consider all the mathematical proofs that have been found, and all the mathematical proofs that are yet to be discovered. These prove that certain mathematical relationships exist, and could not be any different. Unlike a "proof" of, say, evolution or indeed intelligent design, these proofs are absolute and immutable. Moreover, they are completely universal. There is no situation in which they do not apply.
If God had created mathematics, that would imply that there was a time, place or situation in which these laws did not exist. But that is an absurd possibility, as the proofs show that the laws always apply.
If God had created mathematics, he should also be able to change mathematics. But that is also an absurd possibility, as the proofs show that the laws cannot be any different.
So, we can prove with mathematical certainty that God did not create mathematics and logic. Any mathematician or philosopher will tell you this - omnipotence cannot include the ability to do logically impossible things.
"That said, at the core of any institutionalized religion you will find dogma."
Well, apparently at the core of your belief structure, there is this dogmata that religious people are brain-dead automatons.
You're welcome to your misperceptions, of course, but you look pretty silly espousing them.
I am a religious person. I find the notion that I give up my personal soverignty abhorrent, and I would never tolerate it.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
There were, but they got lost, and anyway they were probably in a language no-one can read anymore.
:)
How do I know that what you're saying is truly Bobism then? It sounds to me like you have to invent a worldview because you are unwilling to defend your own.
I guess I win, then.
Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff.
I daresay they must be portraying dinosaurs and humans together before the Flood, not the Fall. There were only ever two humans before the Fall.
Of course, the bible does not mention Noah failing to save any creatures in his ark, and one would think that God would tell him to build a bigger one, or two, if the dinosaurs had been around needing saving. But then again for centuries the "this mystical beast no longer exists cause it never made it to the ark but it was real once I tell ya!" excuse has been in vogue.
And of course, people stupid enough to make a museum of creationism as though biblical authoritarianism is a sound basis for scientific inquiry probably might be dumb enough to portray an eden with many people in it and the dinosaurs. Ah well.
"Why should men be rational in your worldview?" Because if men aren't rational, men get nothing from this world. You got to think to survive... or at least had to at one point.
If you really believe that people have created religion then blame the people and not the religion. I think you'll find that 'religious' people can still be compassionate and selfish the same as 'normal' people, but that the religious people spend more time actually trying to be compassionate. We are all naturally self-centred, we have to be really otherwise we wouldn't look after our own needs, but it's sickening how people can criticize 'religion' for pointing out to people how crap they are and have them want to improve themselves and help others.. people can be guilt tripped into helping the poor, but at least if they're doing it from guilt it's still not being forced. I'm not saying that all religious generousity is a result of guilt though *shrug* just pointing out how people shouldn't complain about someone doing some good unless they didn't actually want to do it. I know lots of generous kind loving Christian people (who give in other ways than money, for example just by being friendly to those that need it), just as I know some who are self centred, but who will one day probably become 'good' people once they have matured.. I personally feel I have a long way to go to consider myself a loving and generous person in all situations, though I never used to consider myself a 'bad' person, but recently after going through some serious depression I noticed how self centred and selfish I really can be. I used to be a 'nice' person, and still have that somewhere in me, but after going through university and only having myself to look after rather than my family and siblings I think that's possibly what made me more selfish. Anyway, will stop ranting, but I hate seeing people bashing people for trying to better themselves.. whether through their own 'morals' (which they really just get from society, and Western society got the base of their morals from Christianity, though are obviously moving away from that into.. well.. doesn't seem too much of an improvement to me), or through morals they discover through religion, etc. It is stupid if someone's just being nice to try and avoid hell, and means that they've entirely missed the point of Christianity anyway - as it doesn't matter how much you sin if you're a Christian, your sins are forgiven - the funny thing is that if you are a Christian then you *want* to follow God's commands because you love him and are thankful for the forgiveness of your sins *shrug* Someone is not a Christian if they are only doing good things to try and get to heaven. I don't expect many people here would understand that anyway, or at least want to admit it as true.. they prefer only to point out their bad experiences with 'Christianity', and contrast with the good things they have seen non-Christians doing - not the best comparison in the world.
which is totally what she said
except Jesus was Jewish...
I am in Western Europe and I define civilized world by "the vast majority of people lead comfortable lives, working, raising families, pursuing studies and various occupations, basic needs such as housing and food don't require a great deal of effort to be met, etc" you get the point.
What I meant anyway was not that people are shallow or anything like that. I simply noticed that most of the people I met, who belonged to the Christian, Islamic, Hebrew, and whatnot religion, seem to lead more or less the same kind of life, at the end of the day. "Very visible things" like casting away your possessions and joining the poor, or searching for Nirvana while not caring the current moment, are what *define* two of the religions that many, many profess to follow. So my point was that sure, everybody likes Christmas and most everyone here in Italy is baptized, even I am, though I don't believe in anything, but really it looks to me like "rituals and small things" are pretty much everything that's left of religion. Then again this might have to do with the fact that I live in a spoiled and pretentious society. Ot maybe I am bit jaded and there is more to it than meets the (my) eye.
Global warming is a cube.
There are many different kinds of atheists, and they base their morals on different kinds of things. Most atheist Slashdotters base their morals on a kind of enlightened self-interest. From there you can derive commandments like "Thou shalt not steal" and "Thou shalt not kill". First as a law, because community enforcement of those dictates makes for a more productive society and therefore has benefits to you. Also as a personal choice, because breaking that law degrades the society you benefit from.
It makes for some interesting answers to ethical hypotheticals. If somebody asks me, "If you could kill somebody for profit and nobody would ever notice," the direct answer could be theoretically "Why not?", but in practice there's no conceivable way for a murder to go completely unnoticed. I may not be able to forsee the negative effects, but I can demonstrate why they're likely.
One rarely does the actual calculations. As in so much in life one usually uses intellectual shortcuts, which can be called "intuition" or "conscience". But it does give the opportunity to know that one can check one's decisions against one's own ultimate self-interest as the basis, and re-train the intuition if it's found wanting.
No atheist is perfect, and nobody can see all the consequences, so sometimes they are wrong. But they find that they're right often enough to leave them with a moral base more satisfying to them than a religiously based one.
It gets very, very involved, which is just my way of cutting this post short rather than trying to explain it all at one go. I'd happily elaborate, if you wanted. But I just wanted to give the gist of the idea that there's a morality based on self-interest which coincides with a lot of religious dictates on morality. Religious dictates which don't suit one's self interest, like "Thou shalt have no other god before Me" or many of the more absolute restrictions on sexual morality, don't follow and are therefore ignored or rethought.
There are a lot of non-Christians who oppress their neighbors, too. What's your point?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
"The whole chrisitian religion is as full of logical holes as any other one. For example:
1. fornicators are to be shunned"
OK, I'm going to need you to quote me the place where Jesus said that.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
"America, F*** Yeah!"
RIP Rev. Hicks!
[UID-HeinzIntel]
It's curious though how the religious _always_ explain the oppression thru some good of the religion. And yes, Chrisitans are the worst - "The devil is upon thee! - Let me clense you of the sins brother!" Then he shoots you.
I'm still trying to get over the idea that atheism is some kind of unifying ideology. It isn't like there is some big atheist service on Sunday where we all congregate and discuss how glad we are there isn't a god. Or give praise to our sweet dark lord Athia.
To be fair, when an atheist purports dickery, it is because they, personally, are a dick. When a Religious Person does it, it is unfailingly the religion's fault, and then the word fundamentalist is used and somebody throws a chair. If you are going to look for why people do terrible things, it is probably best to go a bit deeper than religion, or lack thereof.
I would tend to argue that religion is just a tool that was/is used to gain mass support quickly. Atheism, which does not bring people together in the same way religions do . . . doesn't work so well in that regard. Fortunately for evil despots everywhere, a strong government can do the job religion used to do with nearly the same level of efficiency.
One other thing. I don't know if Hitler was a self proclaimed Atheist or not, but the man believed in the divine power of both God and Jesus, which tends to tell me he wasn't an actual atheist. You see, an atheist, by definition, doesn't believe in god, and somebody who believes in any god, even one they write the rules for themselves, isn't an atheist.
And don't even get me started about Jesus telling Christians to engage in fratricide or patricide if their family is non-believers. I'd quote that one out for you, but you probably know the Bible well enough I don't need to, right? "it also provides a moral code that condemns the slaughter of innocents." Sure, and it gives a remarkably convenient definition for innocent too. "Innocent == People who agree with me, and aren't standing so close to the people who don't that the bombs kill them too." But if religion weren't flexible, it wouldn't be much of a tool, would it?
Apathy; it does a body good.
Because rationality works. To an extremely high degree of confidence, the universe behaves according to a self-consistent set of rules. It is the basis of all science and technology. Your car, your television, the computer on your desk work because the laws of physics can be expected to behave in a predictable way. While abstractions like mathematics don't exist independently of their own accord, like physics they follow certain rules - self-consistent rules which we define, for we created mathematics and its relatives. Formal logic is a subbranch of mathematics.
Instead of leaving you guessing, I'll get this out right away - I'm a very liberal person of Faith (Christian, if you wish). What I find incredibly interesting is everyone's attempt to discredit each other's theories.
First, let's make something very clear: any attempt to describe what happened 5,000 to 100,000,000 (ad infinium) is purely theoretical. Aside from the scant remains of fossils that could possibly date back to that time period, we have no evidence whatsoever. Nobody was there, nobody saw the evolution of living beings or the big bang; nobody can go there to affirm or reject any claim.
What we pretend to know is very precarious indeed. We use a method of dating that appears to be accurate within our limited time-frame of knowledge (namely, carbon dating). However, consider that error, over the spans of time we're dealing with, has the potential to be exponential. Combine that with the fact that carbon dating, as our only "reliable" method of dating, has no way of being verified by an outside source (beyond several thousand years), and we could safely say that we know next-to-nothing about the history of this universe.
I am not here advocating Creationism. Nor Evolutionism (which, by the way, is as much a faith, if not more so, than Creationism). I am here to say that I am willing to be the first person to say "I do not know". I have absolutely no clue how the universe came about! All I can do is make as good a guess as I can with the information I have readily available to me. And even then, it's purely a guess. To say that we can unilaterally claim either Evolutionism or Creationism as correct is not only preposterous, but incredibly arrogant. Could everything have resulted from the Big Band, and it's ensuing randomness? Possibly. Could an omni-present Energy that everyone likes to call God be the source of all that exists? Possibly. Do I know the answer? Certainly not!
....The odd thing about the materialist is this: the materialist who wants to be rational has already departed from his materialism.......
It goes back at least one more level. A materialist is someone who ignores the most important component of the universe, the existence of information. Before anything can come into being, whether an airplane, computer or grass shack, someone has to WILL to want to make it and think about how to actually do it. The laws of ink and chemistry do not explain the arrangement of symbols that make up a play from Shakespeare or a symphony score from Beethoven. The laws of physics do not explain the arrangement of the DNA programming inherent in all living organisms. Indeed, the laws of physics determine how our world works. The materialistic matter-energy components do not determine these laws, but are governed by them. Therefore, the laws were laid down first in the mind of God and eternally operate the components of the universe. We also follow this procedure in everything we do. We think, imagine, conceptualize and plan with a goal in mind. We, unlike God, must use existing parts to assemble the products that begin their existence in our minds.
All theory is gray
Good grief. A slashdot poster who's actually read some Marx, studied some (Soviet) history, and knows that "the USSR was awful so obviously Marx was wrong" isn't exactly accurate. Bravo!
Somewhere very very hot, I presume ?
My point is the same as your point. Read the parent. Christians do good. Non-Christians do good as well. Good people do good. It's not because they are Christian.
Can I bum a sig?
I don't have time for a flamewar, and I doubt I'm going to convince you of anything, but nobody seemed to be bringing up what to me is the obvious answer:
You are talking about two different things here: 1) Platonic forms ("laws of logic", "abstract universal absolutes"); 2) rational thought (i.e. the behavior of men).
Your confusion as to 1) derives from your use of the word "exist" in two different ways. Matter exists as an actual material thing. Platonic forms, however, do not exist in this sense; they only exist as something that men think up. They consistently think them up, as all brains are pattern-recognition/building machines, so very consistently, seeing a triangle-like shape induces us to abstract that into a triangle. Similarly, our experience with logic working rather well in the real world is abstracted to logic working perfectly in our imaginations. There is no need for these to exist in the same sense that matter does; all they are is a series of patterns of neuron arrangements that most humans end up sharing.
Your confusion as to 2) seems to be grounded in a lack of understanding of, or perhaps a lack of consideration for, evolutionary principles. It's quite obvious that being rational is an evolutionary advantage. Let's develop some background. You seem to be familiar with the premise that we can't prove induction without induction (i.e. "it's worked in the past, therefore I'll continue to use it!"). I conjecture that there's nothing inherently true about induction, but simply that it fits well with our experience and thus it seems obviously true because of millions of years of evolutionary programming. For example, imagine a set of beings using the (logically consistent) principle of "negative induction." This states that if something has happened a lot in the past, it's definitely not a general rule. Well, as you can see, it proves itself: it's never worked in the past, so clearly it working is a general rule. However, such a (logically consistent, mind you!) principle is completely stupid from an evolutionary point of view. It would just get the creature killed. So induction, and other principles of rational thought, are simply evolutionarily advantageous modes of being.
You may have been using "should" in a different sense for "Why should men be rational in your worldview," to which I reply "they shouldn't have to be." I, personally, am not in favor of a universal imperative to act a certain way---even if it's a way I prefer acting. Just like I think there should be no governmental imperative to wear a seat belt, even if I would anyway.
"May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan."
What do you mean, "evolution is fact"? That evolution occurs? Of course it does! That evolution is the origin of all that is? Please, tell me, what makes this THEORY a fact?
Those are no more Christians than the guys with bomb belts are Muslims.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I thought about this some more and I am completely convinced that I am right. I made another post.
4 &cid=16953542
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=20783
I agree that logic is not defined by people. I also agree that logic is not subject to change. Clearly, we discovered it rather than invented it. But here's the thing - it wasn't invented by God either, because the laws could not be any different under any circumstance. Therefore, God didn't create them.
A lot of theists stop short of suggesting that God would be capable of logically impossible actions. Creating or redefining a mathematical law would be logically impossible.
I really like mathematics because it's about the only thing we can know for certain, as it's self-defining rather than being based on evidence and experiments. I love how I can look at a Mandelbrot fractal, see how beautiful it is, and know for certain that God did not create it, in any way. God, if he exists, would be incapable of changing it.
Mathematics provides certainty, with absolute proof. It requires no faith. Ultimately, everything else does.
>As an atheist I wouldn't say anything. Its only the religious nuts who have a problem with sperm donors and/or same-sex parents.
Trust Richard Dawkins to post as an Anonymous Coward.
"much simpler social structure and homogeneous ethnic makeups, these systems are much more naturally stable than they would be here in the US."
What's that joke from boondock saints?
So three guys, a Mexican, a black and a white, all stumble upon a magic lamp with a genie. The genie says that they can all have one wish each. The Mexican says, "I wish all my Mexican brothers can join together and leave the United States and live in prosperity in Mexico." And the genie grants his wish. The black says, "I wish all my black brothers can join together and leave the United States and live in prosperity in Africa." And the genie grants his wish. Then the genie asks for the white's wish. And the white says "You mean to tell me that all the Mexicans and blacks are out of the United States?" The genie affirms. "Well, I guess I'll take a Coke."
"Either God has gone out of his way to leave little trace of his existence, save for that found in ancient books of dubious objectivity"
t es.html
You personally established this as a fact, or are your relying upon people you trust? Or is it a mere assumption?
The reason I ask, is because I see evidence of a Supreme Being in all of this natural universe. Scientific evidence, starting with the laws of thermodynamics. You see, if you start where you are, you can clearly see that there is FUNCTION throughout the universe.
Mind you, you won't get this from churchianity's version of Genesis, but it is there. "It was very good" literally means "functional", and not "good" in the sense of good/evil. But what the hell do I know, I'm a wacko nutjob.
I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice. - Albert Einstein
http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/EinsteinQuo
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
This is a canard--actually the reverse is true. It is the Christian faith alone that can account for logic, reason, and rationality.
Wow, I think we have a winner for 'Clean Skies Initiative' award for diametric speech.
Why should anyone be rational if the Christian God does not exist? Why are men under any obligation to be rational in a materialistic universe?
No one is under *obligation* in the 'God demands' definition of obligation if you don't buy into God. I am not aware that people have suggested our species is obligated by rationality. The fact that rational behavior exists is different that it being obligated by something.
As a Christian Theist, I believe all men should be rational.
As a atheist, I believe humans are rational. Hell, I believe most animals, plants, living organisms big and small are rational. I also believe that 'rational' behaviors vary completely by circumstance.
I believe people should believe things on good evidence.
As a scientist, I agree with you. Now if you could explain the 'good evidence' for your Christian God, I'd like to hear it.
I think we are under obligation to use our intellectual tools to glorify God, and to learn about this world--we should be consistent. I believe that becasse God requires all men to be rational. I can make sense of the obligation to be rational.
I think we are under no obligation to do anything, certainly not by an omnipotent creator. I think we have, as a species, discovered that learning about the world brings wide and varied benefits. Being rational beings helps us live, makes living easier, and enhances life.
If this world is sound and fury signifying nothing, why must men be rational? Why don't I just live moment by moment and be inconsistent: thinking on thing one time and another thing another time, caring nothing for logic?
There is no must to it. You can be inconsistent, unmoved by logic, living by the moment (in fact we call those people politicians). It behooves you not to, though, since life is a series of widely connected events. If you are to minimize strife, and maximize benefit, then rational behavior is a great boon, and is realized as such.
After all, logic has no place in the material universe--it is an abstract, non-material set of laws. How can laws of logic actually exist in an atheistic universe?
Sure it does. Logic has no requirements for divine basis (in fact, I would argue that they are somewhat exclusive).
The odd thing about the materialist is this: the materialist who wants to be rational has already departed from his materialism.
No. If i understand your argument, you are saying that desiring material things means you can not act in a way that might decrease your material acquisition at the moment. That life is a series of events with previous behaviors affecting future situations means rational behavior is applicable to materialists. My boss is a dick, so I want to punch him in the face. I don't because doing so would harm my ability to buy food, ipods, smack, hookers, etc.
If naturalism is true, there's no such thing as rationality, there's just whatever people end up thinking and doing. Why call men to be rational then?
So, because I think I am nothing but a soulless meat-popsicle, nothing can be rational? If you are willing to accept that 'thought' exists, then rational thought is not a problem. If I can think, then determining a rational solution to a problem is quite normal. If you are claiming that as a soulless meat-popsicle, I can't think...well then we are at am impasse.
-Ted
-=-=- Quantum physics - the dreams stuff are made of.
Bobism is a translation of the Holy Bible, where Bob's true name is revealed. You may examine the Bible if you wish.
In the past, religions had decided to omit a god's name. Perhaps this was because using an explicit name sounded too much like an imaginary friend, or perhaps the use of the original different names tended to show the transition of the religion from polytheism to a monolotory religion, to monotheism.
But I disagree. I think using the true name of the one true god, Bob, helps to show the true nature of the religion.
Our purpose in life is worship Bob, and "glorify Bob"(?).
Our purpose after life is worship Bob, and "glorify Bob".
Bob's purpose is to be worshipped.
The first four commandments are basically "Bow down and neal before Bob".
The whole point of Bobism, is to come up with a fantastic tale of Bob trying to control the actions of people, then impregnate a virgin with Bob Jr. who dies then comes back to life. Then the people that believe the story will obviously be good and obedient worshippers.
Bob really needs to be worshipped.
As for the historical record of Bob and Bob Jr., well we have been working on that with various "scientists" and "historians", and websites like answersfrombob.com, but you know what, scientific and historic evidence of the magic and miracles is hard to come by, and often questionable. I mean there is historical evidence that "Sinterklaas" existed too, but finding historical evidence of flying deer is hard.
But Bobism is not about using the scientific method or using common historical methods to find any historic significance of the Holy Bible of Bob.
Bobism is about having Faith that Bob is all-knowing and all-worthy and we should worship Bob and Bob Jr. for eternity. Because it's fun.
Glory to Bob.
It would have 2000 years ago. :P
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
I agree. The problem is - there's so much more of them. Also, the shooting case was a bit extreme. What i reather meant was something in the lines of social alienation - kinda like the crazed teacher in Donnie Darko. You all know what i mean - i just can't really express with words these kind of people ;]
Their thesis is "there is no god", and have developed a whole line of reasonings to "prove" this thesis. The Antithesis is "There is a god", and I have rarely seen any atheist spend the amount of time on this consideration.
What a bunch of crap.
There isn't an atheist thesis.
There is a religious one "There is a God".
The reasonable response to which is "Prove it".
At this point the theists point completely falls to shreds and they generally start babbling about needing faith or threwatening to burn you alive or something since there is not one single shred of evidence for any of their religious beliefs.
You fall into the all too common trap of assuming that there is some arbitrary default weight to the religious belief which there isn't.
"Consider the alternative"?!? Seriously, "the alternative" is shoved in your face everywhere in this country.
Thinking it's silly to believe in far out delusions without a single shred of evidence is just simple basic common sense.
But I am one of those wackos, who believes the Scriptures, namely because none of the claims found in it have been falsified.
The thing about that makes you a "wacko" is the fact that there are plenty of proven falsehoods in the bible and you chose to ignore them if you ever actually did any investigation at all.
If that were really your reason, then you would equally believe in the invisible pink unicorn and the flying spaghetti monster as neither of those have been proven false either.
Heck, if you were telling the truth about your reasons for faith, then you would believe just as much in every single wacky insane nutjob theory that hasn't been explicitly disproven and probably some that have since the exact same argument works for anything.
Oh yes! Christians are soooo repressed and vilified in this country! Just the other day I was saying to a friend how nice it was that we got Beltane off as a nationally recognized holiday. And I was signing up for one of the weekly Bible burnings we hold in each city. And of course, thinking of the upcoming day of thanks to Brahma for all the good in our lives, I was so happy that we had elected so many atheists to national office.
Tell me, does that persecution complex of yours get old after a while?
That is all.
A lot of the displays in any natural history museum are fake.
That doesn't seem to cause anybody any problems.
What color was a T-Rex?
The Bob is not a person.
The Bob is pure light and energy.
The Bob will lead us all through Heaven's Chimney in a giant cigar-shaped UFO-brand flying saucer.
TERRA DELU
FC Closer
Nazism was Christian? You must be using a different Bible....
Do you have ESP?
"there's so much more of them"
I don't think that's true. I just think they get all the press.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Because the world works better when people are rational than when they aren't? Because one can recognize reciprocality as a principal that leads to better outcomes for all?
I think that the need for some deity to enforce ones morality with threats of eternal damnation says more about their rationality and moral character than about the nature of reality.
That is all.
This "HTML tag" right here...
<P>
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
You're incorrectly drawing lines dividing religious faith and the more general sense of faith or belief.
The two are not as different as you would believe.
"Generally, not changing your mind no matter what is considered a virtue when the belief is based on religious faith."
We are not talking about not changing your mind. In fact, what you describe is ultimately untrue.
A non-inquisitive, non-questioning, non-searching faith is a dead faith. Just like a scientist who stops and says, that is all, there is nothing left to be discovered is a dead scientist. To assume that science does not have the sort of arrogance you are trying to describe above is, in fact, wrong.
"Science is based on constructing models and then using observation and experiment to reject, confirm, or refine the model. Clearly, all forms of knowledge and seeking it DO NOT boil down to religious faith."
Again, what are you constructing those models, observations, et al. on? Laws from those who stood before you, the accuracy of your observations, your own intellect, etc, etc. Ultimately it boils down to trust, faith.
"Religious faith isn't a problem when the object of that faith is something that is outside human observation and testing."
And for people who really understand their faith, this is always the case. It is the why, not the how.
Science doesn't speak to why it speaks to the how. (i.e. how does gravity act, not why does gravity exist or what it's purpose is)
"Of course, more reasonable congregations just put up lightning rods as well."
And the more reasonable scientist doesn't say that Newton is a wacko and not a scientist because he believed in God. The ultimate scientist could not speak on whether God is real or not on scientific terms because he cannot speak on it by definition of the scientific method!
"The evolution/creationism debate is yet another manifestation of badly placed religious faith."
No, it is a mis-application of both science and religious faith.
"What science actually says is "It has proven useful to suppose an observer can see the same models apply no matter where in the universe he might be. We'll continue to build and refine these models unless and until it is no longer useful to do so." That isn't religious faith either."
The scientific method is closer to faith than it is to fact. It is faith mitigated by observable evidence, but it is still faith in one form or another.
For science to occupy a completely different realm than the general sense of faith, knowledge must be finite and scientists must know everything.
I happen to be a scientist and happen to also be religous; there is no conflict between the two. The same energy that drives me to investigate and explore my faith drives me to investigate and explore my field of study. The largest problem I have is when arrogant people want to draw lines between the two and say they are incompatible, when people who do/don't believe in God start acting as if they are God.
"There isn't an atheist thesis."
You just believe, without examination. How is this different from every other religious nutjob?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
"Be a patriot: Murder a Republican"
A fine example of tolerance and civility you are. Let's kill anyone that differs from our view point.
I know, I shouldn't feed the trolls.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
It's bad enough to have my nationality associated with such backwards mythology maquerading as science, but to have in my beloved Kentucky is even worse. Shoot... now it'll be another 50 years until we can shed our image inside the US. Just for the foreign readers, it should be known that "Louisville is a cultural oasis in the barren wastelands of the Midwest", (originally stated by the UMass Math Dept head, a very wise man)
It always sounds preachy to me when I try to describe my religious beliefs, so my apologies if this sounds that way.
Hey, God created the universe, and he created all the rules. He didn't need Jesus to come to Earth and die to for everyone's sins - he could have just decided to forgive everyone instead. Heck, he could have just as easily just wiped out the universe and started over.
Yes, that's how God did created the universe; by His rules. Sure, God could've taken the path of least resistance, but the Christian belief says He didn't. Wiping out the universe is counter-productive; if God wanted mindless followers, humans wouldn't have free will, and we would have been made that way in the first place.
Now, the questions "Why didn't God just forgive man's sins?" and "Why send Jesus to die for them?" are tricky. I don't have a good explanation for that yet, but I'll try to give an answer. A blanket "I forgive you all" is rather forced and forcing people to do or accept things doesn't really work well (see History, Human). Deep down, I don't think people want forgiveness forced on them; they must choose it for themselves and release their guilt. Which is basically what it reduces to: In Christianity (well, my denomination of Lutheran), if you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, your sins are forgiven by the grace of God. So we actually choose to be forgiven and accept eternal life. That's the second part.
Now we come to the more confusing first part. Logically, God could have said, "If you accept Me as your God, your sins will be forgiven by My grace." That would have sufficed, and really He was already saying that. So what possible purpose was served when Jesus was sent to die in such a way? The only explanation I can come up with is that it was to demonstrate God's incredible love, that he should send his son (and himself) to die in this way for our sins. Your Sims analogy might help.
It's like playing a game of The Sims, deciding you think your sims are behaving badly, thus you create a Sim with the purpose of having that sim die to make up for the bad behavior of all the other sims. Notice that doing so makes absolutely no sense?
To extend that, the Sim you created to die in that way is also an extension of yourself. Granted, you'll bring him back to your side in time, but only after he is tortured and dies in horrible pain at the hands of your misbehaving Sims to take on their sins. What love you'd have to have for those filthy, undeserving little Sims. If you could grant eternal life alongside you to every one of those Sims, if they chose it, by letting them torture you to death, would you? The physical act of "dying for the life of others" is an act of compassion.
At the time, when one spoke of honoring God, it was with fear. As in "God will punish you for that!" as we see in all the God-attributed disasters in the Old Testament. To this day we still have the phrase "God-fearing". Perhaps the purpose in sending Christ to die like this was an act of showing the unending and infinite compassion that God has for each of us. Though each person will be judged by Him, He is still a loving God after all.
That's the best I can do. Again, sorry if I come across as preachy; it isn't my intent.
Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
Immaculate conception refers to Mary's conception, not Jesus's
Self awareness - try it!
You're just as good as anyone to ask, I suppose.
Why is it exactly that I'm being punished for the sin of my ancestors? Why can't I just say, "Listen, God, I'm sorry Adam and Eve screwed up, but put me in the garden and make me innocent and protected; I'll behave!
Isn't me being punished for Adam's and Eve's sin a little bit like throwing a guy in jail because his father, a man who he's never seen or met and who died before he was born, once robbed a bank? Is that really the kind of god we want to believe in?
However, saying that rejecting the Christian God will result in the undermining of all human knowledge, morality, dignity, and science--that's extraordinary proof for an extraordinary claim.
I am speechless at the utter absurdity of this statement. It is not worth an answer - if you actually claim this, you are either so blinded by dogma that I could never get an argument through to you, or you are just plain putting me on.
Atheists do not believe in God. Usually this is because they view the existence of God/god/gods/a higher power as tremendously unlikely based on quantifiable physical evidence validated by the scientific method. Similarly, a humanistic approach to morality also relies on quantifiable physical evidence. Humanistic morality is usually a combination of rules that amount to the negative form of Christianity's Golden Rule: Do not do unto others what you would not want them to do to you. (Understanding that the spirit of the rule is important. For example, a masochist can't arbitrarily cause pain just because they like to experience it.) Humanistic morality relies on following the general laws of societal morality--the laws that have kept humanity around.
As such, if society deems it wrong to light children on fire, then it is wrong for a humanist to light children on fire. Those who do not follow society's mores are misfits and rightly considered disfunctional. Contrary to your claim, this standard is not arbitrary, but many Americans don't like it because of our cultures emphasis on individuality. They don't like the idea that they don't get to choose what is right and wrong for themselves. There are variations that give more power to the individual, but from a philosophic standpoint, these variations are more prone to logical attack and personal abuse.
The weakness of this system is that society's values can be hijacked (and example are strewn throughout this thread). An element of pragmatism, intelligence, and personal responsibility is necessary for a practicing humanist.
Interestingly, both religious and nonreligious people behave in largely the same way as is evidenced by the fact that the United States has a single society rather than two parallel societies. Faith forms subcultures, but not new societies. Religious people can readily interact with irreligious.
To validate this point, observe that atheists aren't running rapant in the streets, causing mayhem and chaos everywhere. Most people do whatever they want to do, regardless of religious belief and we seem to be trundling along just fine. Is it nature or nuture?
The proof's in the Wedge Document, among many other places, another great thing to check out is the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial where the fact that Intelligent Design and Scientific Creationism are identical was established in a court of law.
You do however rehash the same fallacy that's been said over and over again through history. (Maybe just as an illustration, since you say you don't make that point.)
The problem, however, is that the same can be said for any other religion. Islam, Flying Spaghetti Monster, or my own favourite: the Great Game Designer In The Sky. If you're not with us and you're wrong, baaad things could happen to you. Better be one of us, even if we're wrong, than take that risk, right? So, come on, what do you have to lose?
And for that matter, if you fall for that line of reasoning, can I interest you in some tickets on the Vogo Space Fleet? When they come and destroy Earth to build a highway, do you want to be among those saved or be left down on an exploding planet? And, hey, if you're with us and you're wrong, you only lost some money. If you're not with us and you're wrong, I hope you can breathe vaccuum. Do you want to take that risk?
And for that matter, want to buy some cold-iron amulets against dark elf magic? Same reasoning: if you're with us and wrong, you just bought a useless iron amulet. But if you're not with us and you're wrong, weell, those dark elves are known to do very very nasty things to unprotected humans. Do you want to take that risk on the day the ancient Lords And Ladies return?
Etc.
It's not just a shitty reason, as you do say, it's really shitty logic too.
Occam's Razor. I'll believe something when it has the reproductible experimental data that can't be explained otherwise.
If someone claims their Flying Spaghetti Monster can perform miracles, let them show some reproductible and falsifiable way of invoking His Noodly Appendage. Dunno, make a coin levitate each time you draw that deity's symbol over it with your finger. I'm sure an omnipotent god could change reality to work that way. It's not just proof, but it's reproductible and it can't be easily explained away by just tweaking the laws of gravity and such. That one would pass Occam's Razor all right.
That's just one example, off the top of my head. I'm sure an omniscient and omnipresent deity can come up with better ideas than that, if it wanted to. It can do better than expecting me to believe because of such shitty "what if you're against us and you're wrong" reasoning.
Until then, I'll go with my gut feeling and put my faith in The Great Game Designer. Join us and be saved. In fact, auto-saved every 10 minutes and backed up to tape every Sunday
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"Atheist: a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings."
"Agnostic: a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience."
From American Heritage:
"Atheist: One who disbelieves or denies the existence of God or gods."
"Agnostic: 1. One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God. 2. One who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess true atheism."
Notice that second definition highlights the distinction from atheism. So, we agree that usage is important. I was obviously basing my usage off of how people around me use it, and the first two dictionaries I looked in support my usage. Perhaps you're the one with the "usage" problem? (You'll notice that I'm not very militant about usage, because I realize that there are regional and cultural differences in usage, which unfortunately do lead to misunderstandings. That's why I was very careful to make the statement that this is how *I* use the words and wasn't trying to "correct" others.)
I never said I'd establish a belief system. You said:
Now, read my statement again. Really try to understand what I'm saying instead of just trying to figure out how you can restate it to make it fit your preconceived notions. What I'm saying, and I don't think it's very hard to understand, is that I believe that pink unicorns don't exist. I don't merely believe that they might not exist, I actually believe they don't exist. I don't have to go an "extra mile to set up a belief". Every statement you make automatically engenders in me some state of belief about it. I might believe it to be true, I might believe it to be false, or I might not be sure what to believe. It's really not that hard to create a belief. A belief system requires more work, but a belief is really quite simple and as automatic as breathing in many cases.So, you really don't believe such people exist? Hm. It seems you've formed a belief there. I hope it didn't put you out. Oh, sure, you're now going to go some great lengths to mention that you didn't use the word "belief" (as if that matters some how), but you clearly have this (rather irrational) belief that people don't exist who actually believe that there is no god (as opposed to people who just aren't sure). What is the basis for this belief system you've created? I've met several such people, so you must believe that either (a) I'm delusional, (b) the people I've met were lying to me, or (c) I'm lying. Which is it?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Take at any widely accepted scientific theory, and the mountains of evidence backing it up. For instance, there have been literally millions of experiments carried out on Quantum Physics and General Relativity, with terabytes of data being produced daily. Compared to the rigorous, methodical tests carried out on any well established theory, evidence for God is decidedly thin on the ground.
But that's clearly not the only explanation one could raise. For instance, if there were many Universes, randomly occuring either in serial or in parallel, then given enough Universes, one would eventually come across one that is suitable for life. The lifeforms in this Universe may marvel at what a coincidence it is that they are alive, but in reality it's just a case of rolling the dice until its all sixes.
I'm not saying that is the case, of course; merely stating that arguing for the existence of God based on the design of the Universe just doesn't hold water. There are too many alternative, equally valid explanations. And even if you accept the design theory, it could equally be applied to God Himself.
One wonders why a supposedly perfect God would create a Universe that was merely "functional". That's the other difficulty I have with God; a perfect being just throws up so many contradictions, especially if you're going to believe in God's Old Testament shenanigans.
You do realise that the reason that quote is so famous is because it's widely considered to be one of Einstein's greatest errors. Einstein had a problem with the randomness inherent in Quantum Physics, but after almost a century of experiments we haven't found anything to suggest that there is any deterministic order behind the randomness we observe.
Is the FSM a metaphor for string theory or should we take it literally?
I have always though it the other way round -
"If god exists, anything is permitted."
As I can do what I like, and be totally correct in doing so, as long as I am convinced my particular God told me to do it.
If it does not exist, I have to make my own decisions.
located in the heart of gods country, Santee California. you might recognize the from the high school shootings a few years back, or perhaps the town having an unusually high concentration of white supremacists. I'm sure those little details are just a coincidence and have nothing to do with this fine learning institution.
/
http://www.icr.org/discover/index/discover_museum
oh, and Pen & Teller featured this "museum" on an episode of bullshit, which I'd highly recommend.
The line of argument and the point of this particular thread have clearly been lost. Let me recap:
Poster said there are logical loops in the Bible, and gave an example.
The example made two assumptions: God forbade fornication, and God fornicated with Mary.
The second point relies on the belief that pregnancy means sex took place.
I gave several counter-examples to this belief, showing that an valid argument can be made that "He did not have sex with that woman!". At the very least, it's a matter of opinion, which cannot be used to prove there is a logical loop.
The lack of artificial means of conception 2000 years ago has no bearing on the argument.
"up to 50 million Americans believe this"....
/boggle
There are A LOT of really, really ignorant Americans.
I know a lot of Christians who seek to oppress their neighbors, as Christ didn't teach. You're lucky your experience has not been the same.
Yes, they even go so far as to try and claim our entire country was founded on their silly beliefs! Of course they don't know what to think when you point out that most of the important founding fathers of our country were either atheist or deists, and that many early documents from our government clearly state that it is NOT founded on any religion. For example the Treaty of Tripoli, which states "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion". No, historical documents clearly show that our founding fathers understood the need for a separation of church and state. Of course little things suchs a facts and the truth never seem to stop these religious idiots from spewing their slanted revisionist history view of things. But they are just flat out wrong and we have the papers to prove it! To bad they are all taught to ignore logic and reason, so good luck trying to convince them other wise.
I still find it hard to beleive that, in modern times, people can still be stupid enough to beleive in a god. Hasn't logic and reason PROVEN it self to you people enough yet? How many more inventions such as heated homes, cars, and computers, will it take before you people finaly admit that logic and reason are correct and faith is not? Your collective religions attempted to destory ALL human knowledge and science back in the dark ages. If your religious leaders had their way NONE of what you take for granted would exist right now! Honestly, I don't think people who beleive in god deserve to have ANY of these things! No modern convienences for you! You people tried to stop science from ever taking off, I don't think it's fair that you be allowed to continue promoting your stupid beleif systems while benefiting from the hard work people like my self are doing every day to further the causes of logic and reason and use them to improve our world. A chruch having a web site is THE most HYPACRITICAL thing I can think of! I mean, it took until 1992 for the catholics to finally understand that the earth is not flat and rotates around the sun. Faith is just pathetic...
> Why should anyone be rational if the Christian God does not exist?
The men who wrote the bible and all the other religions were people just like us, except they were rather more restricted in their view of the world. The way they thought and acted, barring differences in knowledge, was just as we do - regardless of whether we are theists or not.
They attempted to explain the world as they saw it, but all they had was a few stories and the evidence they could see around them in the small corner they occupied.
What is called 'rational' is 'what we do', or what the majority do. This has come about by natural selection. Those who were considered 'irrational' were shunned and outcast by the group (for example heretics) and did not survive, or were not suited to survival in other ways. I am the way I am because of my ancestry, not because of any magic space pixie. Those who did not survive to have children are not my ancestors.
While your views may be genuine and firmly held, I consider them to be rather limited and misguided if not arrogant.
....Even in the face of overwhelming proof......
I'd like to see that proof. The fact is that all life struggles against death. That's why we have ambulances and ER departments and the entire medical establishment. The various conservation laws of physics all point in the opposite direction of your assertion. Nothing ever goes out of existence, but only changes form. Neither will you simply go out of existence when you die, but you will face the One who brought everything into existence. The real you is an information generator and neither you nor the information you generate every moment of your life will go out of existence. There WILL be a final judgment:
Revelation 20:11-13 And I saw a great white throne, and Him sitting on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away. And a place was not found for them. And I saw the dead, the small and the great, stand before God. And the books were opened, and another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead in it. And death and hell delivered up the dead in them. And each one of them was judged according to their works.
All theory is gray
The Soviet Union disproved Karl Marx about as much as the Third Reich disproved Fredrich Nietzsche.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
I'm a Christian but even I haven enough sense to know that the Genesis creation story is overly simplified childrens tale. Nothing more. If you want to know the true story just ask the creator in the after life.
I wondered if anyone on slashdot would get that. You get bonus points. :)
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Anyway, the bible doesn't criticize doing well for yourself in life. It criticizes putting that as your primary aim in life, or not sharing if you do do (it's grammatically valid, just sounds silly) well.
Ummm, have you actualy READ that thing? The bible contradicts it self on practicaly every other page! I don't have time to look up the specific passages, but here is a quick example: Supposedly the bible states that you are not to judge other people, you are to "turn the other cheek". But then jesus contradicts this by supposedly saying that "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live", which means you should kill any one with the opposing religious view point that wiccans have. I fail to see how that is turning the other cheek and not judging someone. This is only one of literaly hundreds of contradictions in that poorly written book...
Notice I say supposedly a lot in that paragraph. That's because I doubt any of this actually happened and refuse to base my life on some poorly written book that fails to match up with all other documented history from that time period... (like no mention of the earth flooding in other religion's documents. Gee, you would think a major event like that would have been written down by just about everyone during that time period)
religion and faith are not the same thing. If you accept any premise such as axioms in math or scientific data, you have to believe that it has some truth to it. As you said, you don't just believe that Napoleon is that guy on the street.
You seem to have some kind of hatred going against religion which is based on a few people you don't like and so you make broad generalizations. Faith is required in science to believe that what you are seeing is real. That's simplifying it but that is the basic. If you read my post then you would see I said that it could not be proved that God is exists. Certitude is the fusion of faith and reason which leads you to a belief system. Yours is that "Jeebus and religion suck, LOL!" Certainly people have right to believe that religion has been misleading and controlling. Why is that? because of what man has done to religion. The bible doesn't say anything about clergy or needing to believe that christ was resurrected.
You also seem to have ignored the part where I said that miracles are for those who were present. The reality of the resurrection is a spiritual one, whether jesus existed exactly as people think he did, i.e., unmarried, married, actually crucified, not even killed etc. what matters is the spiritual reality. People get pissed off at religion when they have to accept a premise that is absurd or unnecessary. Religion is not an exclusive club of control it is humanity unified(hopefully.) As G.K. Chesterton said: "Christianity has never succeeded because it has never been tried." People who hate Christianity and who are Fundamentalists both have one thing in common, they think in black and white. It's either religion is evil or it's completely and literally right.
I don't mean to get too personal - but... have you been good? Have you ever sinned? If so, your question is moot. Because of our heritage (descendants of Adam) by nature we're inclined to sin. By decision, if you're honest with yourself and me, you'll admit that you have fallen short of perfection.
As a result, even if you were not isolated from God because of Adam, you already would be on the basis of your personal decision.
It's not like you're being unfairly or unjustly condemned. There is none righteous. All have sinned.
As to the point of your question, in spite of the fact that it's moot, it's like this. If cancer or alcoholism runs in your family, you have a genetic marker toward that. We all carry the genetic marker of sin.
Does this explanation make sense?
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
This is nothing more than the Free Will Argument in sheep's clothing. Does man control his own destiny, or is fate pre-determined? At the end of the day, it doesn't matter. Sophisticated biological entities exist without clear and well-defined demarcation between systems and sub-systems, in a spiral of scaling complexity that extends to the subatomic. In totality, it is not possible to both quantitatively and qualitatively measure the exact nature of such systems and the environment that influences them, thus no perfect prediction of individual human thought is possible, even if it is pre-determined by physical law.
That's not a straw-man argument. "Straw-man" is a debate tactic where one deliberately responds to an opponent with a logical fallacy derived from intentionally altering, misrepresenting or side-stepping the opponent's argument, either literally or via context. It is intended not to convince the opponent or others that the debater has won on the merits of his/her argument, but rather that the opponent's argument was something other than what was actually put forth. It's called a "straw-man" because, metaphorically, the responding debater has erected a flimsy substitute for the true debate point, purely for the purpose of being able to easily knock it down and thus appear victorious to the inattentive onlooker.
well quite. I see that we're doing the selectively responding to sentences out of context thing. Fine.
"Here's the fallacy of that concept. Jesus himself talked about Adam and Eve as if they were real, not allegory" And here's the fallacy of that concept: using material from within a source to show its own veracity. Relying on circular reasoning would cause one to fail an assignment in my 9th grade speech/rhetoric class: why is it being proffered in this discussion? The bible was not sent down on a fax from heaven. It is a product of Man, and Man is fallable. Add on top of that the fact that the gospels have been translated numerous times over the past couple thousand years, and you get a document which should not be treated as a factual record. Ever played telephone? yeah... Does this undermine the moral lessons contained within? I see no reason why it should. The golden rule, for example, suffers not one whit from my skepticism over whether or not Adam and Eve were real people.
Do unto others is one of the most fundamental moral imperatives in the western tradition, as you can see by its presence in everything from aristotle to the bible, to disney movies.
"Why should the affluent help anyone? If Christianity is an outdated mind-virus, why should any individual do anything to help anyone besides themselves?" Well, this is not a problem specifically constrained to Christians, obviously. By the by, using rhetoric like outdated mind-virus as if it was somethign i was saying or implying is total bullshit. Respond to what I *actually* said, or fuck off. However, my point was that there is an inherent contradiction between the explicit dictates of all 3 faiths of the book, and the sense of responsibility for Fate implicit in the losing of Paradise. To specifically answer your initial question, the affluent should help anyone because it is the good moral action, and Christianity, by and large, just like all religions, advocates good moral action. I would argue that all deviations from this principle stem from ignorant people misinterpreting the Word, or the varying importance of different parts of the Word. Anyone who has read any of the new testament would have a hard time arguing that Christianity was meant to be anything but a big hippie love fest. Ideas reified as authoritarian institutions, viz. The Church (not the catholic church, just organized religion), have a way of messing up good ideas.
"that does not change the fact that Adam had a choice to make, and he made it" Well, of course not. But whats the lesson from being so drastically punished for a bad decision made in the absence of Knowledge of Good and Evil? Respect Mah Authoritaaaahh!!!! Punishing people so disproportionately for a bad decision made in the absence of a moral understanding of the ramifications is one of the less compassionate acts ever ascribed to a deity. I choose not to ascribe cruelty to my concept of the divine.
"The question is nonsense. Could God make 4=6? Can God smell the color nine? Nonsense. Tripe. But you may ask nonsense if you like. Don't expect a sensible answer, though" please see above regarding bullshit rhetoric. That simpsons reference was placed there purely as an acknowledgement that i was aware that my musings could be construed that way and that i did not mean them that way. The completely fucking obvious way in which that was originally stated leaves me with no other conclusion than you're either just being a cock, or you have an axe to grind about pseudo-intellectual questions like that. Axe to grind, I feel you; being a cock, fuck off.
"Well, if my kid was self-destructive, I might kick him out of the house and set up boundaries about what constituted a healthy relationship with him. FWIW - God did not stop talking to Adam. Adam still had some relationship with God - it was simply fundamentally different from the previous relationship. Adam had hope of fully restored relationship with God on the basis of God's mercy." We're talking about your 20-month old
Come read my stupid blagablog. Rants and Giggles
For some, yes - it's boredom, and the "meaning of life thing" - (packaged up in a neat little book that just about anyone can understand, for the same reason that a McDonald's Cheeseburger is packaged into a neat little box that just about anyone can enjoy).
At least in America, anyway, I think that over the past 40-50 years or so, there's been a growing sense of loss of control of our country, our laws, and our governments. The Evangelical movement has arisen primarily as a tool, a corporate tool, to make money, and keep people distracted from the real problems that affect their lives and make them angsty. Don't worry about Sony installing rootkits on your computer, Jesus is Coming! Don't worry about Wal Mart tracking you with RFID tags, Jesus is coming! Don't worry about nightclubs scanning your driver's license, Jesus is Coming! Don't worry about the bank giving your purchasing information to the FBI, Jesus is coming!
(then there's - Worry about the evil terrorists, Mohammad is coming!)
The nature of this movement is evident when you look at the sheer ruthless industrial efficiency of the new suburban "mega church". A tax-free enterprise, with relatively low operating costs; all they need to do is tell sweet stories a couple hours, one day a week, 2000 or so believers at a time, and sit back and rake in the tithing. Occasionally sponsor a mission or a soup line. And all those angsty people learn is; don't associate with those heathen hippies and their commie ideas.
This is coming from someone who DOES believe in a God, and Jesus.
I used to go to my local suburban megachurch, after I relocated to a different part of the country. What they're teaching, is not the Christianity I was raised with. A whole new set of memes has taken hold. A set of memes that used to be relegated to lunatic fringe wingnuttery. For example: The official stance of the Catholic church, as long as I've been aware, was that Evolution was God's way of making Mankind on Earth - and if it took hundreds of millions of years - well, that's how long it took, and don't hold the scripture to perfect inerrancy, because some parts are allegorical. That shit's just out of style now.
I don't really know what, if anything, can be done to stop this trend. Maybe after a few more scandals, people will stop realizing that their leaders are not God's Messengers. If nothing else, this has brought their leaders great power, and power always always corrupts. (and stealing God's power is "absolute power"). And from that corruption comes arrogance. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
No, what i mean is there are so much more of bad Christians than bad muslims, at least throught my life there was always like that (and i have lived in Lebanon, Syria and Angola - was working as a UN troop). There ratio good/bad muslim is so much better than good/bad christian.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Well said! You will probably be modded as a troll from some narrowminded person but well said anyway.
What foolishness the commentary on this is. SInce the Flying Spaghetti Monster sees the fit of this Museum, there must be some humor in it. We must find that.
What could be funnier than asserting that the universe is less 6000 years old? All the rocks show the false evidence and thus must be refuted. But of course knowing better scientists have little reason to argue with them. I have tried to convince both sides of the truth, but meet with disbelief and nothing can be done to sway the faithful. This is the nature of religion. Revealed truth cannot be overturned by facts. If one can't smile at this, there is no hope for them. They will be condemned to a life of serious, humorless plodding negativity.
I of course believe in creation 100 years ago. Who can deny that our ancestors have caused the present? What happened before the creation is subject only to speculation, no one I know has a clear recollection of those events.
How can the orthogonality between these truths be reconciled. I laugh at the thought. What could be more intersting than the embodied delusions of an influential sect in the USA? Can there be some insight into the personality structure of believers in the exhibits there?
than a few moments you may see that too.
The turtles evolve in the pond that they have there and take over museum operations???
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Why should anyone be rational if the Christian God does not exist? Why are men under any obligation to be rational in a materialistic universe?
Why are you under the delusion that men are rational?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Those are no more Christians than the guys with bomb belts are Muslims.
That's the funny thing about religions, everyone has their own idea of what they beleive and the other people who claim to be of their faith that they disagree with "aren't true xxxx" (fill in xxxx with any religion). I am sure the gun toting christians and bomb carrying muslims considered them selves to be of the "true faith".
Personally I think the whole thing is sick and twisted, and look forward to a time when people are just individuals and we have no use for religion, it just ceases to exist and be a problem. Richard Dawkins is 100% correct in statintg that religion is the root of all evil.
From the article Ken Ham said "You'd never find something like this in Australia," he says. "If you want to get the message out, it has to be here."
I suspect it is merely a numbers game. We have proportion of guillable people in Australia, they just haven't hit critical mass where they can have such a disturbing influence on society.
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
....anyone stupid enough to believe in creationism over evolution.....
Why does it have to one or the other? Darwin certainly made some valid points in his ideas of natural selection. However natural selection has to have working functions to select for and gradually improve over time. Natural explanations work for certain mechanisms of life, but cannot show how these arose through nothing more than the laws of physics. The interactions of ink on a page do not explain a poem or musical score on that paper. Why is it so hard to accept the idea of a mind wherein arose the laws by which everything operates. Darwin only discovered one of these laws. Everything we humans do first begins in someone's mind.
All theory is gray
Then the word you are looking for is "fanaticism", not "religion". There can be fanaticism without religion, and religion without fanaticism, to the two issues are completely orthogonal.
That moded this piece of misinformation "Interesting"?
Obviously not, evolution only starts after life has started, evolution isn't the origin of life, or the universe, or anything, in fact. Evolution is the process by which life gets more complex over time.
The only ones who claim that "evolution is the origin of all that is" (or may be) are those who don't know jack about it, and there is no "theory" about evolution being the origin of "all that is".
And the "theory of evolution" is not about "evolution" (which is a fact), it's about how evolution works, it's a structure of ideas that tries to interpret the facts and explain how evolution works (and what it leads to).
An other things that the religious guys / young earth creationists / IDiots (such as you, as it seems) always miss (intentionally or not) is that when one talks about the Theory of Evolution, "Theory" is taken in the scientific acception of the term, not in the layman's. This means several things:
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
My god I swear I will never laugh so hard in my life.
I know I will be kicked out of the place.
http://saveie6.com/
and thus I've been reading a lot of these absolute morality arguments as of late. If I misunderstanding this argument, I would really appreciate someone not only pointing that out, but answering my question if it still applies.
The argument, as I understand, says that one of these has to be correct:
1) There is no god and thus no right and wrong. (We can set up or own moralities, but cannot logically hold those to other people.)
2) There is a god and he determines what is right and wrong and thus we are subject to an absolute morality.
To me, 2 makes a lot more sense (and it makes me a lot happier to think about). But I can't remember hearing anyone argue against the fact that 2 is concluding that god is subject to no right or wrong. As a Christian, I don't mind thinking that. But when I doubt and start to assume that the God I felt like I had a relationship with does not exist, I think: how is it anymore logical that a god, and not us, is subject to no right or wrong? Why is one of those options more logical. Either one allows someone (be it us or god) to do terrible things that cannot by any standard be considered right or wrong, good or bad.
There is no need to "account" for them. It is purest hubris to think that we know anything definitive about how this universe settled out to work the way it does, as the event(s) are not in any way directly in evidence. What an atheist can do, however, is use science to discover what the various "laws" seem to be, and from there, continue to build a rational, consistent world-view -- at least so far as the world appears to be rational and consistent. Which so far, has been 100% with the single exception of human superstition.
Why do you feel that it is necessary to think that they do so? Why do you feel it is necessary to pretend you know how -- and why -- everything started? Why are you so uncomfortable that a tiny biological organism, alive for a tiny fraction of the time the universe has been relatively stable, even if you consider the entire race instead of your single instance, restricted in direct observations to a tiny, tiny, tiny corner of that universe, might legitimately not know, and for that matter never know, the answers to questions like these? I'm not saying it is improper to ask them, that's a very interesting process indeed, I'm simply saying that the presumption you already have an answer is more than a little absurd. Trying to invalidate a materialist world-view on the basis that some questions don't have answers is just silly.
Men should be rational because it brings good to the individual, to society, to other species on the planet, to the planet itself. Because it caused science to arise; because science is a system that continually generates advancement in knowledge and goods; because when we look at irrational systems like religion, we see far fewer benefits of any particular significance.
Where did the microchip from from, rational thinking or superstitious thinking? Where did the understanding of the human genome come from, rational thinking or superstitious thinking? Where did our understanding of the heliocentric nature of the solar system come from, rational thinking or superstitious thinking? Where did the laser, the nuclear reactor, space flight, penicillin, LCDs, chemotherapy, the SSC come from? Not from superstition, that is for certain. Superstition produces no output that advances society, defends society, bulwarks society. Superstition is a mechanism for explaining things by making up answers without regard for the known behavior of the universe and as such, it literally serves to retard society. Rational thinking, on the other hand, results in steady advancement. The penultimate example of rational thinking is represented by science; the penultimate example of superstitious thinking is represented by organized religion.
So we have every reason to be rational; we also have every reason to reject superstitious thinking. Rationality is the key underlying principle that has brought us quite a distance, through many objections from the superstitious crowd. Because of rational thinking, it is a lot more difficult today for the superstitious to jail people like Galileo; it is a lot more difficult to foist off utter nonsense like creationism on anyone who simply has a basic understanding of science.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
As humorous as I found your comment the chilling truth comes from OBL taking the same extreme. "... the Koran teaches that unbelievers lives have no value... " and he goes on to rationalize suicide bombings agaisnt unbelievers claiming American troops hurting muslims in Iraq is bad but its ok for him to continue his jihad.
Very dangerous thinking indeed
http://saveie6.com/
I firmly believe that within 2 or 3 decades intelligent computer systems and robots will almost completely replace the service economy. The workers paradise approaches.
There is the "Institute for Creation Research" which has some sort of exhibit. I've never visited but there are routinely school buses parked outside so I guess they bring the kids for a big dose of claptrap. I have heard they award a MS in "Creation Science".
I should point out that the whole virgin thing is commonly attributed to a mistranslation in any case and that the original word used meant 'young woman' not 'virgin'. The bible is a mismash of contradictory stories cobbled together at different times for various reasons, you really shouldn't be taking it seriously.
So there are immutable, absolute, and correct laws of logic - nice to know. Out of curiosity which ones would those be? Intuitionistic logic? Modal logic? Classical logic? Relevance logic? Some Paraconsistent logic? Computability logic? Fuzzy logic (as a particular specialisation of Intuitionistic logic)? Free logic? Tense logic? Linear logic? Quantum logic? If there's an absolute logic that is true, then all these others must be wrong - so which one is the true one? Or is it perhaps possible that logic is simply a human construction based on reflection of thought - the application of analysis to itself to determine the most effective ways of thinking? That would certainly provide good reason for the profusion of logics - each serves a different purpose depending on the sorts of results one wishes to determine with their thoughts. One last thing - is the Continuum Hypothesis true, or false?
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
It's obvious through your paragraph that you need to understand some things a bit more. For instance, though divinely inspired, that "witch" quotation actually comes from Moses (Deuteronomy), when Israel did serve as an instrument of judgment/justice from God (which the Old Testament itself points out is not because of Israel being "good" but because of the practices of the other nations).
An interesting point: in order to be hit on the right cheek, you must hit with either your left hand or the back of your right. Hitting someone w/ the back of your hand is what you would do when calling someone a heretic, infidel, et cetera. About turning the other cheek: Jesus is not talking about when being mugged you just do nothing and turn the other cheek, he's saying don't retaliate, don't take justice into your own hands. You are allowed to defend yourself, but not punish. That's for the government. In the Old Testament, punishment was to fit the crime. But some of those who Jesus spoke to used this guideline to take vengeance into their own hands. This was not the point.
And to understand ancient Mesopotamian history... Look up the Epic of Gilgamesh, Atrahasis Epic... actually just take a quick browse through Ancient Flood Mythology [wikipedia.org] for a summary of all sorts of accounts.
To say "Gee, you would think a major event like that would have been written down by just about everyone during that time period)," think about first, that only Noah and his family survived. "Everyone during that time period" would just be Noah's family. It would spread through there. As people repopulated and spread through the earth, certainly there would get to be great variations. And there are.
I am not, I was simply pointing out that the general consesus on Jesus' birth is divine intervention (aka MAGIC *waves fingers*)
Aparently I am also wrong about immaculate conception referencing Jesus' birth (acording to another poster it is about Mary's birth), The "Virgin Birth" is what refers to Jesus.
either way, I don't really care that much (again, not christian my self), was just pointing out that the concept of trying to flame a religion using science is kinda silly as the entire POINT of religion is that it often does not.
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
As I understand it, it's a symbol of denying oneself, picking up one's cross, and following the Son of Man.
Honestly, that didn't sound preachy to me, so I think you managed to avoid that. :)
:)
And thanks for the explanation, but to be honest, it sounds contrived to me, an explanation to try and make the nonsensical sound like it makes sense. It doesn't do too bad of a job though.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Strange, you rant about faith, yet you evidently have a very strong faith that there is no god... it isn't exactly a supposition that can be proven. Despite what christian nutjobs say, science can't prove (nor disprove) the existance of a god. You're not critically thinking, and are placing your beliefs above logic, which incidently is what you seem to have a problem with religious people doing.
Myself, I'm an agnostic who believes in god. However, I don't see how my belief interfers with the findings of science in any way. The two concepts can coexist without any problems. I know that I certainly don't have a problem applying the scientific method on a day-to-day basis, or believing that evolution is the theory which best explains what we've observed. Perhaps you could explain why I must reject science if I believe in God?
> Regardless of whether these regimes were truly religions or not, they were all based upon unreasoning belief in a concept or institution, and religion falls into the same category.
So, to sum these up, does that not imply that atheism neither promotes rational thought nor prevents uncritical beliefs in institutions or ideals? I mean, being atheists obviously did nothing to stop them from being unreasoning and uncritical, and they had no shared moral values (although I'm sure that each one had their own personal moral values) to compare their actions to and realize that "hey! we're killing tons of innocent people for no good reason, and that's wrong!"
Thus, not only is atheism clearly insufficient to stop this unreasoning following of those evil murdering regimes of Stalin & Mao, but neither does it carry any intrinsic upside or inspiring people to do good or charitable things. Certainly, they do them anyhow, but that would seem to make atheism (though not atheists) objectively inferior on strictly practical outcomes. And that holds even if those religion(s) it's compared to are actually predicated on false beliefs according to this simple metric.
I may be a lot of things, but an idiot, certainly not ;-) Such people commonly resort to insults. I was merely asking for a definition of what the parent meant by "evolution". To say that things evolve is indeed a fact - evolution happens daily. Bacteria evolve, people evolve, animals evolve, on both macro- and micro- scales. However, in the context of the discussion it appeared as if the parent meant that the "origin of life as evolution" is a fact (which makes sense, since comparing evolution to creationism only makes sense in regards to the origin of life). That, I am not entirely comfortable agreeing with.
T-T-T-Troll!
The fact you lack any morality and rationality unless coerced by fear of the imaginary man in the sky doesn't mean that every body else is so simple.
... just another way to say "church?"
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
So, when your parent poster claimed that atheism is a religion and has its own dogma, s/he was correct; s/he simply didn't explain it in detail.
The only view that really requires no belief nor faith is agnosticism. In fact, I suspect that most Slashdotters who are responding to the OP are actually agnostics, not atheists as they profess to be. Most people don't seem to catch the subtle difference between agnostic and atheist, but that difference is actualy quite profound.
I am quite aware that my existance is finite. In the grand scheme of things, we are nothing. No more significant in time than the countless bacteria that just died when I cleaned my desk. I have come to peace with that fact. I am sad for all the people who can not come to peace with it. I live my life with a passion to know and experience all I can, because this is all I will ever have. The instant I die it will all be lost. I only need to consider the eternity that passed before I was born to know what I will face once I die. Nothing.
Does this make me sad? Well, to me, ceasing to exist is not a pleasant thought at all. But my drive to employ the mental abilities evolution has granted me requires me to acknowledge the logical and rational truth, no matter how cold and absolute it may be.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
What is there to examine? Books that are hundreds or thousands of years old that are themselves based off of second hand accounts, oral tradition, or "revelations". Those same books have been translated, retranslated, edited, translated again, then usually abridged down into a form of the language that people can understand, all the while being subject to political influence and the whims of those who were transcribing. It doesn't really matter which book you claim to derive your belief in a god from, they are all subject to the same problems- a total lack of evidence, contradicting evidence that we know otherwise, or contradicting themselves.
Let's face it, how many Christians go and read the Koran? How many Muslims learn the oral traditions of the Navahos? How many Navahos read the Tripitaka? So on and so forth. If you expect an atheist to examine every religion out there from Atenism to Zoroastrianism to decide that the lack of evidence for supernatural entities seriously diminishes the likelyhood of any god to some chance approaching zero, perhaps all relgious groups should find a way to argue why their particular flavor of gods/goddesses is a better fit than any other group's.
Using my designs, my creations, and my story without permission, and they're not even getting it right. They've got the colors of the dinosaurs wrong for one thing, and their timeline is just way off. Please await official notice from my lawyer and/or a plague of some kind.
Sincerely,
God
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
My father-in-law and his wife. In every other aspect of life, I admire the man, but his stubborn adherence to anything that comes out of Pat Robertson's mouth is very troubling. I don't care what he believes, as long as he doesn't waste our time trying to convince me of it--and stays away from my children with that nonsense.
He's been talking about this "museum" for at least five years. He gets way too excited about it, like an Amway distributor inviting you to something that features his personal Amway hero.
This weekend should be interesting; first time we'll have spoken at length since the mid-term elections.
PS: Did y'all know that The Rapture Is Not In The Bible? I think I'll research this factoid thoroughly before we drive to Northeast Texas to celebrate Thanksgiving in an RV park.
"Press to test."
(click)
"Release to detonate."
You're splitting hairs. The fact that the matter that makes up my body will continue to exist, as it has for all time as either matter or energy, in no way translates into my having a "soul". What you are (and I am) is a complex pattern of matter and energy. That matter and energy have always existed, and will continue to exist after we're dead. But, the patterns that make you "you" and me "me" will break down once we die. There's nothing of my conscience that will endure after that point. There is no "One" that we will stand before, because what we are will have been lost.
> in the case of atheism, there is no religious incentive, these are humanitarian acts.
It's called serving your own pride.
To say "Gee, you would think a major event like that would have been written down by just about everyone during that time period)," think about first, that only Noah and his family survived. "Everyone during that time period" would just be Noah's family. It would spread through there. As people repopulated and spread through the earth, certainly there would get to be great variations. And there are.
So all of the historical documents from around the time period that the earth supposedly flooded and Noah supposedly built the arc weren't actually written? I mean, how could they have been if "everyone during that time period would just be Noah's family"? You are so full of shit I don't know where to begin! But why bother? You religious dumb asses don't use logic, reason, or common sense. I can quote and link all the historical documents I want, you will just continue to ignore the truth in favor of blind faith... No, if you actually bothered to look into the facts, instead of bending over and taking it like the sheep you are, you would find that there are PLENTY of other authors from that time period and NONE of them except the christians write about this supposed flood. And the fossil record also dispells your claims. But those are facts, not blind faith, so I don't expect you to understand them...
Have fun at the museum of ignorance...
'Cause this so called 'museum' is just a way for fundamentalists to make creationism appear as science. 'Cause this 'museum' has been designed with the goal of proselytizing to the young and the ignorant. 'Cause this 'museum' will try to compete in funding and influence against true museums, which exist to spread "science" and "knowledge". 'Cause this 'museum' is just another silly theme park, as fictitious as, let's say, Disneyworld, but triying very hard to 'sell' its contents as the only truth.
Cheers.
Sorry.
When you are trying to put down another faith based on your knowledge of their holy books you may just want to take the 5 seconds to research your argument on Google.
The "witch" line comes from Exodus and not from anything Jesus said while the "turn the other cheek" philosophy comes from the Sermon on the Mount and also the Sermon on the Plain; two of Jesus' more famous speeches.
It is also pretty clear by using the original texts and the definition of the term at the time that the 'witch' being referred to in the Exodus verse is not what we view as witches today. This was not meant to condemn wiccans or those of similar beliefs who pray to Mother Gaia or which ever power they believe in, to death, but a condemnation of those who would actively try and bring harm to others through the use of some powers or poisons.
So one statement has to do with a personal reaction to an affront or assault while the other has to do with how to deal with an ongoing attempt to bring harm to others. Since they do not even deal with the same circumstances they can be hardly contradictory.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
It isn't the theoretical aspects of Marx that are important so much as the practical. In practice, off-shoots of Marxist ideology were responsible for killing approximately 100,000,000 people in the last 100 years. Pound for pound, Marx's papers may be the most toxic substance ever created by mankind. I don't think that any Communist country has lasted more than 80 years yet. They generally implode, but only after causing almost untold misery and death. If we are fortunate, in the future Marx's theories will not only be unchallenged and unchanged, but also unused.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
When creationism finally dies out, the only place you'll be able to find a creationism museum will be in a museum!
Oh wait...
http://outcampaign.org/
.....The fact that the matter that makes up my body will continue to exist......
/. likely has it that you earn your living by coming up with products of mind, such as software. The real you is software that happens to run in a CPU we call "brain". Just like we can load software into different hardware, so can the divine programmer keep a backup of you and someday load the real you into some new, better hardware. All atoms in your body and mine are identical. It is their arrangement, as determined by information (such as carried by DNA) that makes us different. Information in and of itself is immaterial and not subject to the constraints of matter and energy. One of these constraints that information is exempt from is entropy and by extension death. That information, the real you, your conscious self, will one day be loaded into a new pile of atoms and face the MIND that created it all. With the correct backup procedures, information is forever, even if a temporary carrier thereof is destroyed. Theologians have dubbed this information "soul" or "spirit".
You are right about that, but are leaving out the most important part. All materialists consider only matter and energy, but are neglecting to mention the immaterial part: INFORMATION. Just as a book is more than ink molecules and paper, so you are more than a carbon-chemical protoplasmic water bag. Everything you do and make first begins in your MIND. Being on
All theory is gray
religion
1. a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.
I agree to a certain extent that religion, if thought of and used in the wrong way religion can be a form of oppression on the person believing what other people tell him. But I also think that the person who makes his own decisions on what is right or wrong can also use religion as a practice or ritual that helps people connect with each other on a common ground as to what can make this world a better place to live in. Its not the end all solution, and people are free to make there own decisions on what is right and wrong. Religion becomes the most dangerous when it is imposed on people, by people that don't understand the implications of their actions. Secondly, Rituals still have significance in allot of cultures and are used to help boys become men, our society has allot of people running around that are still in boyhood as we lack a standard "coming of age" ritual. This is problem the reason why this country is so messed up now.
Seriously, what's your point? Since when should an ideology be judged by the unrelated, hypocritical actions of isolated cases?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Three quotes from Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism - "Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has", and "Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his reason", and "Reason should be destroyed in all Christians".
Can you quote the scripture where there is a call to be consistent and rational? Having read the Bible a few times myself, I can't say I'm familiar with such a line. OTH, I'm more than familiar with such reason-defying snippets such as a famous mistranslation from "young woman" to "virgin" during the first translations from Aramaic to Greek. (I'll let you figure out the context).
"Software is too expensive to build cheaply"
That answer is a total non-starter. Because I, and most everyone else, can honestly say that we have never violated a direct command that was given to us, face to face, by a creature that we knew with complete certainly to be the creator of all existence. If you can't understand that difference, then I don't think you should bother with a subject as complex and subtle as theology.
(C) Kaki Sain, 2011. By reading this, you have illegally copied my property to your brain.
This is nothing more than the Free Will Argument in sheep's clothing. Does man control his own destiny, or is fate pre-determined? At the end of the day, it doesn't matter. Sophisticated biological entities exist without clear and well-defined demarcation between systems and sub-systems, in a spiral of scaling complexity that extends to the subatomic. In totality, it is not possible to both quantitatively and qualitatively measure the exact nature of such systems and the environment that influences them, thus no perfect prediction of individual human thought is possible, even if it is pre-determined by physical law.
Wouldn't it have been easier to just say "Yes, our thought processes are controlled by physical laws"?
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
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You started of okay. Your first paragraph wasn't too bad. But then you reveal your obvious, near religiously fanatical, disdain for religion. You say that our "collective religions attempted to destroy ALL human knowledge and science". Let me correct that statement by specifying monotheistic religions (even more specific would be christian religions, but that would just open the door for the argument over whether catholics are christians).
Science does not preclude religion just as religion does not preclude science. If only those with a fanatical belief that one can not exist with the other (such as yourself) would stop pontificating for a bit, along with those annoying people who talking during the movie, the world would be a much quieter place.
Oh, and I guess Sir Isaac Newton and Galileo Galilei were hypocrites since they believed in god.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Men should be rational because it brings good to the individual, to society, to other species on the planet, to the planet itself. Because it caused science to arise; because science is a system that continually generates advancement in knowledge and goods; because when we look at irrational systems like religion, we see far fewer benefits of any particular significance.
But that is not a Materialist, or Logical Positivist, or whatever you want to call it, statement.
"Should"s have no role in material, scientific discourse. There is only what is and what is not, and their various probabilities. Once you start throwing around the word "should" you are using a different mode of thought.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
XML Tools for Mac OS X
Hit 'em where it hurts.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
We do not no enough to say for sure that all dinos and humans are bazillion years apart.
Science doesn't deal in absolute proof of anything, but it require that we follow the simplest and most reasonable explanation that best fits the evidence we find and observations we make. It would be an extraordinary claim indeed to say that 'man and dinosaurs co-existed' when absolutely every fossil dig ever performed has found no dinosaur fossils beyond the end of the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago, and the earliest hominid fossil ever discovered is dated at between 6 and 7 million years old.
The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
Depends on you definition of "life". Viruses, for example, are comonly not considered to be life forms yet they evolve...
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
One last thing - is the Continuum Hypothesis true, or false?
Very interesting. Thanks for the link.
But not sure the connection with the question of whether or not God invented logic...?
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
XML Tools for Mac OS X
Why didn't he create heaven on earth to start with? I think this might have been the original question the Adam and Eve allegory was supposed to answer - if god exists, why are we stuck here on our own? I think the story is supposed to explain that our free will is what makes us human - it depicts us living alongside but in thrall to god, just like all the other creatures. But, the story tells us, we're not just any old animal - we're made in god's image, and I guess that includes free will. For better or worse, we need to do things for ourselves, we thirst for and pursue knowledge; we crave this more than we crave eternal contentment. So we eat from the tree of knowledge in the story, and leave the garden of eden, but I don't think this is supposed to be a form of punishment for disobedience. The idea of this amounting to some kind of 'original sin' just doesn't seem to fit with the story. I think this slant has been added over time, along with the evil satanic snake etc, and the intent of the story has become twisted as a result. Otherwise, the moral appears to be a bit muddled - if we're simply being punished for disobeying an order, what's the significance of the tree being the tree of knowledge? There are simpler ways of saying 'do as you're told, or else'.
In short, Nature does not care about your opinion, and we are unimpressed by your argument from rhetoric. Argument dismissed.
Other than the whole global communist revolution thing ending history, withering the state to nothing and evoking proletariat paradise....
And what makes you think that will or thoughts cannot be simply electrochemical reactions in the brain?
The hell they don't. I can easily put those into a computer. Our minds could simply be a more complex computer.
Or are you arguing that such beautiful things can only exist because of <deity>? If so, I suggest you look at a fractal. Pure, rigid logic -- you'd expect it to look fairly random to someone who doesn't understand the math -- but it's beautiful. The arrangement of symbols was created by a human mind, and is thus pleasing to another human mind -- not unlike one computer reading a core dump from another computer.
They certainly do. It's called natural selection.
What if I changed it to: "Therefore, the laws were laid down first in the mind of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and eternally operate the components of the universe." Would you stand by that argument?
You are a moron. If you would like to at least appear intelligent, try meeting us halfway. I've read the Bible. You need to read your basic Evolution textbook.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Strange, you rant about faith, yet you evidently have a very strong faith that there is no god... it isn't exactly a supposition that can be proven. Despite what christian nutjobs say, science can't prove (nor disprove) the existance of a god. You're not critically thinking, and are placing your beliefs above logic, which incidently is what you seem to have a problem with religious people doing.
WHAT?!? No, I have NO FAITH. What part of that don't you understand? Atheism is a complete lack of any faith or religion, it is NOT another form of religion. I know that is hard for religious people to understand, because most of them grow up only knowing what it is like to have religion and not understanding what it is like to never have had that mind set. How ever, never having been brought up that way I do not have the need for faith of any kind. I believe in what has proven to make sense up to the current moment in time, and that is constantly changing as we learn new things. Unlike religions which typically teach a static unchanging view of reality until they are forced by overwhelming evidence and popularity of an idea to adopt and change. I accept that change is always present. Religion and faith fight change.
As for your comments about my belief that there is no god, and that some how means I am not using critical thinking. You couldn't be further from the truth! It is BECAUSE I use critical thinking that I do not believe there is a god. I can only believe in the existence of items and concepts which have proven them selves to be valid. I believe that matter exists because I can see it. I believe in sub-atomic particles because I have seen them used to interact with our environment and can measure their effect. I have NEVER witnessed ANY THING that falls out side of what logic and reason can explain. There IS NO MAGIC in reality, or at least none that I have seen in my 30+ years on this planet. Therefore I fail to see how there can be a mystical being known as a god, and I find it especially improbable that there is a god like the one described in the bible!
Here's something for you to ponder. Most religions assert that their god(s) are all knowing and all powerful, that they created everything and know everything that ever has been or ever will be. Yet many (such as christianity and catholicism) assert that their god gave them freewill. The concept of freewill means you can make your own choices, that your future is not pre-determined. The problem is, if you apply critical thinking, you find that the concept of an all knowing entity contradicts the concept of an undefined future. In other words, it cannot be both at the same time. If this god entity is all knowing then that means it knows the set path you will take through your life and you do not have freewill. If you have freewill then you can change that course and your god doesn't know what you are going to do next, which would mean your god is not all knowing.
But you want to know what really pisses me off about religion vs. having no faith and relying purely on reason and logic? If tomorrow I have some new experience that shows me there could be a god of some kind, I would be willing to research that further. What I believe to be real is constantly changing and evolving based on my experiences, NOT what someone tells me to think or have faith in. Religion, on the other hand, will fight change until it cannot do so any longer. I am always changing and expanding my "beliefs", where as religion tries to stop that process from even occurring. Now, this wouldn't be such a big deal if it weren't for the fact that these religions are constantly trying to mess with my way of life! I could tolerate this if it just stayed in the churches. But no, they have to go out into the world on a mission to convert people and try and force their ignorant ways on the rest of us. I would be willing to leave religion alone if it left me alone, but it does NOT.
So, who isn't using critical thinking here?
Myself, I'm an agnostic who believ
Actually, come to think of it, I have no idea how come religion (specifically, christianism) is so powerful in such a developped country as the USA...
I've read an interesting hypothesis that it's because there is no state sponsored religion. The result was that a lot of independent sects of Christianity (as well as other religions) started to compete with each other in a free market way--and they got good at bringing people in. (Sure the US has lots of fundamentalists, but on the other hand, we also have a lot of the world's liberal christians.) For something that people would assume is unchanging, is, actually, quite adaptable.
In comparison, Europe is full of state sponsored institutions that are stagnant and dying. The Anglican chuch in England, the Roman Catholic church in France or Italy. With those churches not adapting to modernity and no particularly strong competition elsewhere people basically go down a path of agnosticism/atheism.
Hmmm. If I tell you
"stand under the waterfall, and you'll get wet" or
"get hit by a large mass moving at great speed and you will be injured or killed" or
"touch your tongue to a pole when the outside temperature is below freezing and it will stick and hurt when you pull it off"
Is that throwing a fit, or stating fact?
God knows that if man rebels against Him, no good will come of it. He is explicit about bad things as a natural consequence of actions you choose.
Seems to me like He's pretty much saying "it's light outside during the daytime"
YMMV
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Seriously why would someone create a creationist museum. The "theory" is completely illogical and basically a pile of sh*t (No offence Theists). The day I step foot in a creationist museum is the day a giant spaghetti monster comes down from the clouds and devours us all..
Actually, come to think of it, I have no idea how come religion (specifically, christianism) is so powerful in such a developped country as the USA...
1: Basic grammar compels you to actually call it "Christianity". Anything else is just, well, improper.
2: From a strictly agnostic standpoint, Christianity tells you that "it's Ok, do your best, the most powerful being there is likes you and will watch your back." This encourages risk, forgiveness of others, and contentment all at the same time -- three things that are vital to any modern middle-class economy. If we had all listened to the first pundits of the Age of Reason and abandoned religion wholesale, we'd likely still be a British Colony and still all live in a agrarian, feudal society.
(I'm skipping the necessary argument of "because it's true", because I presume we can just take that as argued to a standstil and get on to an actual discussion.)
You, like many Christians, seem to be ignoring the Flying Spaghetti Monster argument. Take any argument for the existence of a god, and substitute "God" with "Flying Spaghetti Monster" and see if you still like the argument. For instance:
I want you to consider a third option, though. Consider that perhaps there is an absolute, universal right and wrong, but it's not any God that decides. It's just part of the inherent nature of the Universe.
Or take #1 farther -- there is no God, and we can set up our own right or wrong, but we certainly can logically hold these to other people. Everyone past the age of about 2 has a basic concept of fairness, so that's really all that's needed.
In fact, most of the time, we don't need a God for our own moralities. If someone told you to kill your child, what would your first thought be? Absolutely fucking NOT, right? Did you need to tell yourself "God says 'Thou shalt not kill', so I better not!"
And certainly, I don't think we should hold others to any morality other than that basic of fairness. Consensual gay sex is entirely fair. Rape of any kind is entirely unfair.
Anyway, remember the Flying Spaghetti Monster. In fact, if you can, go back and read your Bible, but mentally replace God (or the Lord or whatever) with something ludicrous, like the FSM, or Alfred E. Neuman. If you can really do this, you'll realize what a complete asshole God really is -- at least, according to the Bible. And if you reject the Bible, what is it that makes you still a Christian?
I'd say, keep your morality, but lose the arrogance and the ritual. If I'm entirely wrong and there is a Christian God, I'd expect Him to, in His infinite compassion, forgive you the unimaginable sin of doubt.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
You don't have to go too far to find the lunacy of God. Just read the book of Judges. God likes genocide. If you don't like genocide, don't worship God.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The term is Subgenius, pink boy.
Praise "Bob".
Web consulting +
Irrelevant. Answered as asked.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
OK, I'll admit vegetarian might not be the best example, but think about it: why do we even need the word "vegetarian"? Can't we just say "people who don't eat animals"?
Now, see whether that comes closer to "atheist" than "aquinist" or "adentite". Is there a reason to use the word "vegetarian" rather than "people who don't eat animals"? Yes, because it comes up often enough that the shorthand is useful. Is there a reason to use "atheist" rather than "people who believe there is no god"? Yes, because it comes up often enough that the shorthand is useful. Is there a reason to use "aquinist" or "adentite"? (Ignoring the fact that they have no meaning to anyone else - that's presumably not the point here, because if there was a reason to use them, then they'd have that meaning.)
The word "atheist" exists because it is a useful shorthand. If you want words that might be a better example, how about aperiodic or anaerobic?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
The book of Job talks about such things, if I recall correctly. It's also in several other parts of the Bible, IIRC. Other cultures also have records (either written or word of mouth) of dinosaur-like creatures. What do you think dragons are? Surely dragons did not come about in European folklore due to Asian influence, long before such influence was likely.
Which is more probable: that these "folklore stories" are latent 'whatever' from our evolutionary history as small primates (hunted by large dinos), or that they're a cultural record of something that previously existed and does no longer? You'd think we'd have the same historical memory of, say, being apes or lemmings or whatever, too, and that there'd be large predatory mammals which have been immortalized in our psyche, if they were indeed a problem to our ancestors. I know of no other animal/creature which has been so consistently remembered amongst different cultures.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
It's probably bad taste to point out to them that "museum" is actually the title of the temple to the Muses - the Greek pagan goddesses of the natural sciences and arts. Of course if we pointed that out to them they'd respomd with "well that word has changed in meaning since then"... just unlike the bible.
I am an Old universe, evolution supporting Christian. Intelligent Design is a fraud. So is this "Museum".
The CH is a classic example of a question whose truth is "well, it depends". It depends on what logic you use, what you consider to be your base for the "absolute truths" of mathematics, etc. The reality is that mathematics is far from absolute, and shows all the signs of human construction, including dependency on what exactly it is that you mean.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Good. And I agree with the contrived thing. I suspect if anyone tried to explain an irrational belief that can't be substantiated by proof it would sound contrived. :)
Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
i don't understant why religion is by definitoin oppression. religions suggest answers to question but don't eliminate your ability to to make them for yourself. religion can tell you about destiny, but it doesn't eliminate your ability to control your own.
Generally, an agnostic would answer the question "Does god exist?" with "I don't know". An atheist as you define it would answer "No". I, and I suspect many self-described atheists, would answer "I think not". There's a difference; I'm equally agnostic with regards to Santa as I am towards God - that is , I don't *know* that Santa doesn't exist, but I have no reason to suppose that he does. That doesn't mean I live by some creed of Santa-denial, where I stick my fingers in my ears at the sound of jingle bells overhead. However, if I were to actually declare myself as agnostic towards Santa, I suspect I'd be regarded at best as excessively open-minded. For the same reason, many "non-theists" hesitate to label themselves as agnostics, and given the choice, prefer to go with atheist. Since you linked to wikipedia, let me quote from their article on atheism:
"However, others--including most atheistic philosophers and groups--define atheism as the simple absence of belief in deities (cf. nontheism)".
Makes sense - after all, if someone's apolitical, they don't deny politics, they just don't participate.
Wish I thot of it.
1) Build silly museum from funds of fanatics - and we all know how well fanatics donate
2) Become major tourist attraction due to a) visiting fanatics b) people who can't believe such a museum can exist
3) Profit!
Plus, running the museum would be so much fun! Just make up whatever you feel like! Make fun of the tourists while explaining creationism as if you were serious!
Not quite... what the grandparent did was say that unthinking obedience to an ideology - such as that typically asked for in a religion - is the root of all evil. They then pointed out non-religious examples of same.
Repeat after me: B is bad. B is a subset of A. A is also bad. This does not mean that B is no longer bad. Or did I lose you with big words like 'subset'?
"Software is too expensive to build cheaply"
Chemistry does not explain what we would call "information", but Shakespearean plays and symphonic scores are products of intelligence and creativity (which are fundamentally the same process, if the theory turns out fruitful). The brain is not some black box that requires magic to *poof* create consciousness and intelligence. Chemistry and physics are the laws by which the atoms and matter in the brain are constrained, but based on those laws the brain is able to wire itself into intricate, self-regulating, feeding-back patterns that are able to receive sensory input as well as feedback on themselves to create predictions. I'm currently rereading "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins (founder of Palm and the Graffiti writing system) and his theories on how the brain creates intelligence, prediction, and creativity are logical and intriguing. We we think of as "thought", I believe, ultimately can and will be described in terms of physics and chemistry, but more important in the patterns that can be created through these laws that are self-regulating.
Don't they, though? The laws of chemistry tell us that certain atoms and molecules can only bond together in particular ways, and the molecules in DNA do so in a way that enables it to be self-replicating. Nothing magical about that. I understand that you may recognize all of this in your next point that follows:
But the leap you've made after that in concluding that a complex, intelligent being must have been the Creator and definer of these laws is just that: a leap. Organization and order do not necessarily require an organizer or Watchmaker. Obviously the question of ultimate origins in the universe remains open. The difference is that science continues to probe for the answer to that question, whereas religion asserts that it already knows it.
A materialistic matter-energy universe does not invalidate our existance. IMHO, of course. :)
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Can someone please explain to me how this qualifies as Science? Religion is a far cry removed from the empirical rules of science...
Because they aren't isolated cases. If I recall correctly, millions of so-called "Christians" came out to vote in 2004 because they wanted to oppress gays. Yeah, Jesus was all about oppressing people. Like that time he invited prostitutes into the temple. Oh, wait...
Jeremy
why must men be rational? Why don't I just live moment by moment and be inconsistent
From where I'm sitting, taking the sum total of mankind into account, this seems to be more or less what we do do.
I think the gp had his own rant, but your question is very important. Belief in God is first and foremost a cultural phenomena. We typically designate the cultural superstitions / rituals into formal religeons which help insiders identity and outsiders to properly categorize. Even being agnostic (like myself), all elements of the quasi faith can be tied to your cultural upbringings and unresolved superstitions. I still have an irrational fear of taking the office of God in contempt. I call it respect, but its really just superstition. No different than people that get scared "Tempting fate" when someone says "nothing could possibly go wrong".
Thus, your quasi belief in God (I mean no disrespect) necessitates adoption of SOME pre-established notions/rituals/organizational structure. And part and parsel of those ideas are non-imperical/untestible cause and effects. You are in essence captive to the irrational fears (irrational because you have necessarily never directly experienced the wrath of Fate or the judging God). I say this arrogantly - pre-judgeing that you could not relay any personal experiences that I would qualify as being a divine consiquence. For that shortness I appologize, but could elaborate if need be.
To be "Scientific" implies that you embody the philosophy of Science. This is different than saying you occasionally support science in your thinking. Not terribly diferent than saying you are honest or reliable or productive. More specifically, to say you are Scientific in the context of a religeous discussion is a dichatomy. You can be a dad at home and a porn star at work, but those two roles don't belong together- their focuses are mutually exclusive.
Likewise, if your defining essence is empirical/logical discovery, then you should have a distaste for the event horizons of our culture. The super being complex (e.g. religeous/divine faith) should be something that you feel compelled to seek out or irradicate (prove/disprove).
To pasively accept that there is a fairy tale-like order to the world is like passively living next to an active volcano; Never second guessing that it would ever become a larger issue.
-Michael
Errr.. no, actually you say supposedly because (it sounds like) you haven't actually read the bible, whereas I have all the way through (old testament about 1.8 times on my own, new testament many times, and thousands of talks and sermons). I don't think Jesus says anything about witches personally (give me a chapter and verse if I'm wrong, as I'm not infallable, but I think that's more old testament Judaic teaching). Also the flood was thousands of years before Jesus, I mean wtf.. could you sound any more like you have absolutely no clue about the bible and are just generating your opinion from random out of context things you've heard mentioned about the bible? Try reading it yourself before spouting any more lame-ass 'contradictions'. Witches do deserve to die, so does everyone in fact, but Jesus came as the last and true sacrifice for sin. He died so that witches, and everyone else, could live. I doubt you'll think much of that, but it's what the bible teaches.
which is totally what she said
Ahh, but to the materialist, the physical laws in the end control your thought process do they not? BTW, this is an internal critique of the materialist worldview.
But the physical laws *do* influence your thoughts. I can administer all sorts of physical substances into you that will change your thoughts or behavior. If your mind was not a chemical reaction inside your brain, how can chemical changes to your brain change your mind?
How does the atheist account for laws of logic?
Like logical statements like 2+2=4? Are you stating that an athiest can't add because all logic is somehow relative if there isn't a God?
Learn to love Alaska
....but based on those laws the brain is able to wire itself......
The brain is a very sophisticated hardware (wetware?) device. Just as the hardware and software in a computer are distinct, so are the brain and the MIND distinct. Your brain executes software put there by a programmer. It is this software that determines the real conscious you. In a computer it is the same. It is the software that determines the "personality" and activity of the computer. You can boot OSX or Windows XP on a piece of hardware that is made by Apple. The same physical computer has very different qualities, only depending on the software, a product of human minds.
All our experience demonstrates that software arise only by the activity of mind. This true of everything we are and make and it is true of the whole cosmos. It all begins in a mind and goes out from there. Physics and chemistry arose from processes in a mind, not the other way round. All human laws arise in human minds and all natural laws originated in a great mind. I call this mind Jesus Christ.
All theory is gray
I'm not a Christian because of religion. I'm a Christian because I believe that "love thy neighbor" is a pretty good way to live your life. What's twisted about that? Is that a belief unique to Christianity? Certainly not. Jesus is the teacher I happen to follow, but that doesn't diminish or de-value the teachings of anybody else.
Dawkins' aggressive sort of atheism seems to me to be evangelism in a different coat. My spirituality has nothing to do with him, so what's his beef with me?
Do you seriously believe that if everybody magically became Dawkinsite atheists tomorrow, that there would be no strife? If you do believe that, I think you're way more deluded than the craziest snake-handling evangelical bible-thumper.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Beleiving, faith, is a much different process. It is taking something at face value because it is part of a big idea that you attached yourself to.
Now, these are not dictionary definitions, but being born in a christian family and having been a hardcore beleiver for quite a few years, until I went "w...wait a minute...", I can honestly say the way someone puts faith in an idea, and someone -think- that idea to be true, is totally different.
I'll show you where Jesus shunned fornication, and even where he condoned stoning people and witches to death (there's a difference) when you can show me where Christians can get divorced. My best guess is that the bible has to completely contradict itself on a given topic at least once per thousand year cycle.
My festitous point is that people cobble unrelated and inconsistent texts together, glaze over the special cases then claim that not only is the combined text completely true (since it was devinely edited), but that we can read in between the lines to derive further divine truth.
--
lying for fun and profit
-Michael
The creator of a thing has the right to do whatever he or she wants with the thing that he or she created. The creator gets to make the rules.
Besides, God says "you can do A and bad things will happen, or do B and good things will happen" That's a little different than your analogy.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Oh yeah, forgot to say, but supposedly a lot of ancient cultures have stories about a great flood, but I'd expect that they don't refer to the flood in Noah's time, because it KILLED EVERYONE FFS. You need to think of a better excuse to ignore the bible (why do you even pretend to have one other than you don't like the idea of having to submit to God's authority because you suspect that he wants to make your existence dull?).
which is totally what she said
> I have no idea how come religion (specifically, christianism)
Calvinism, in a word.
If you're rich, it's because God has seen fit to bestow His favors upon you.
If you're poor, it's because God has withheld His favors.
Once again:
Rich==Good
Poor==Bad
Because of this, you can never have enough, and in particular, you can never have a big enough gap between you and then next rung on the ladder. Competitiveness is literally for Father's Love.
Anything that inhibits the pursuit of happiness (i.e. property) oppresses the ability for God to bestow grace, and thus is sacrilege. Also, it's only okay to provide charity to people who are truly in miserable straights, because you are insulting others if you assume they need your help. And while you're providing charity you should probably mention that all their hardship would go away if they'd just be more the way God wants 'em to be.
Way to move the goal posts to avoid my point.
Jesus said, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." I really, really want you to explain to me how that idea is the root of all the badness you rant about.
You come up with something Jesus is reported to have said that is really a bad idea, and we've got a philosophical discussion on our hands. I like those.
Heck, I'll start. I think that Jesus' "I am the way, the Truth, and the light" is problematic, since I believe that other teachers are valuable too. However, it is hard for me to understand how somebody who lived according to Jesus' teachings (note: I did not say "religious fundamentalists' teachings misattributed to Jesus") would be a Bad Person.
Maybe I've got a blind spot. Maybe you know something I don't. But I really think that you're just reacting to an ideology that you don't understand very well. (You're in good company, by the way. The President is the president of that club.)
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Two reasons:
What one needs to consider is that Churches often play a practicle role in peoples' lives. For example, I once briefly attended services at an interfaith church. (It didn't impose a belief system like Christianity does.) What it did do was provide a support system for families in dealing with domestic issues. I once attended a session where one of the ministers described how she and her husband were able to work at their communication issues and have a happy marrige.
No, I will not work for your startup
Why must result in god. There's no other explanation for why. The anthropomorphic principle explains how not why. The ONLY possible answer to why is god because the question why itself insists that there was an intelligence and intent behind the reason we're here. That intelligence and intent could only come from god. So you ask why, you come up with god, it's inevitable.
I mean, you could fuck about for 50 years questioning this and that but that seems like a right old waste of time when the answer is in the question in the first place.
Deleted
People who believe in god are irrational, they don't respond to rational arguments. They do respond to logical ones though.
You simply knock away their belief structure a bit at a time until there's nothing left but belief itself. Then without that steadying belief structure, it's a simple step from belief to lack of belief.
And I dispute your statement that atheism is a belief, in fact it's a lack of belief.
Deleted
Supposedly the bible states that you are not to judge other people, you are to "turn the other cheek". But then jesus contradicts this by supposedly saying that "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live"
Could you point me to the place where the words "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" emmanate from Jesus' mouth? You can't, of course, because that quote is from Exodus. Now unless you accept the unity of YHVH (the one who wanted witches killed) and Jesus as part of the Holy Trinity, which apparently you don't, you can hardly say that Jesus contradicted himself there, can you?
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Why should anyone be rational if the Christian God does not exist? Why are men under any obligation to be rational in a materialistic universe?
Why is he under any obligation to do so if he *does* exist? That is the real question, as the history of Christianity itself demonstrates. It was not until the concept of God began to change, from the capricious God who is involved in nearly everything, to a distant God who sets the universe in motion and then lets it work itself out from that point forward, according to the laws He built into it, that reason began to escape from its theological chains... the Renaissance and the Enlightenment -- both aptly named -- are the results.
Rationality means to accept the world as real, its facts as absolute, and that the task of one's mind is to grasp those facts, one by one, by a specific method. It is based on the axiom that the universe *is what it is* (existence exists), and cannot be anything else at the same time and in the same respect (A is A), and that consciousness is fully capable of grasping its facts.
Reason is useless in a universe where everything is flux, subject to complete and arbitrary change and/or reversals at any instant, by some consciousness. It is negated by the very idea of a God. It is why the era dominated by Augustine's interventionist God stagnated for over a millenium, while the era ruled by the Deists' view of a distant, nearly irrelevant God flowered in the span of a few centuries.
If you are a materialist, you have a naturalistic explanation for everything we say and do. What's going on in this gray matter in my cranium is controlled by the laws of physics and chemistry and biology.
Yup. Thankfully, there exist philosophic alternatives to both materialism and theistic primacy-of-consciousness philosophies.
However, the Christian God calls men to be consistent and rational.
That must be why the Dark and Middle Ages were such shining examples of human achievement, only to have everything end up in the ditch after that bastard Aquinas, eh?
Id further this by saying that the danger of the fearing of a godless society is very tell tale. A supressed child overcompensates when the controling authority goes away.
If the only reason someone does not "sin" is divine justice, then the nautural reaction to the concept of there not being such justice is to act in a most defiling way.
Its best to maintain a healthy societal perspective so that we dont come into chaos when historical evidence is eventually dug up contradicting long held faith in certain religeous institutions.
-Michael
You're going to have to do better than that, saying it ain't so doesn't make it reality. Belief is fundamentally incompatible with science... By definition. It does however fit neatly and comfortably with atheism though.
LOL. Not qualified... You crack me up.
Deleted
You responded politely, so I will address your query straight up.
... for a rational decision.
Your key premise appears to be:
"Why should anyone be rational if the Christian God does not exist? Why are men under any obligation to be rational in a materialistic universe?"
I think you may be underestimating the full depths of logic. Without a deity to assist us, deep survival is the operating principle. Therefore, actions that promote survival get modded +1 Useful.
I think you know the basic level; the Commandments had it down. "Thou Shalt Not Kill". Killing is the highest grade of Anti-Survival. (We'll ignore complex exceptions like War for now.) Therefore, Refraining From Killing is encouraged as a rational act. *In the same class*, but several stages weaker, the social strictures are not as strong, but the morality is the same. "Thou Shalt Not Steal/Harm".
You might be more surprised at performing positive actions that seem to defy level 1 rationality. "Why give someone $200 when you know the guy cannot pay it back anytime soon?" The answer is that you have a Credit for SOME OTHER KIND of repayment. Maybe he can't pay you back. But he knows the owner of the store you shop at every week, and can make damn sure your favorite sandwich is stocked.
Start thinking about translation of benefits, and you will find no external forces are needed. As for JHVH, here is my reply. My post above was worded humorously, but the last 25 years introduced the Information Age. JHVH is not very responsive. And all superior beings should be able to communicate down, to the level of their subjects. Until that can be demonstrated just like any human form of communication, JHVH cannot be relied upon
Regards,
TaoPhoenix
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
>Ahh, but to the materialist, the physical laws in the end control your thought process do they not? BTW, this is an internal critique of the materialist worldview.
Of course physical laws control my thought processes. How could it be otherwise? There is no magic going on inside my brain. I've got a massive collection on neurons that have come together in such a way that they can represent both the outside world and also the container that holds them. If that brain wasn't there, neither would I be.
>Because the materialist cannot account for abstract, non-material laws of logic. They don't exist.
They exist where all the other abstract, non-material things do - inside our heads. The laws of logic are useful abstractions of how our universe works. If all humanity disappeared tomorrow, all of our laws would go with us and the universe would keep on following its rules even if we aren't here to argue about them.
>They are conventions which can change, as conventions are wont to do. Also, if all our thoughts are governed by physical laws (another thing unaccounted for by atheists).
What's unaccounted for? The rest of that sentence?
>>If Adam and Eve had no knowledge of good and evil before they ate of the tree, they had no idea it was evil to disobey god.
>
>God told them not to eat of the tree (Gen 2:16-17). They disobeyed. Your straw men is impressive, but a straw man nonetheless.
Eh? As I said, how did they know it was evil to disobey god? If they didn't know it was evil, why the harsh (and eternal) punishment? It's kind of like handing a baby a loaded revolver and telling him not to shoot anything - he has no idea what you're talking about.
>It is the only rational worldview I have found. It can account for laws of logic, morality, human dignity, and the inductive principle. Materialism does not.
Whatever makes it easier to sleep at night...
>I ask you, why should men be rational in your worldview?
Because natural selection drives us towards rationality. It is the ultimate survival strategy. Our environment no longer controls us, except in extreme cases, we control it.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
If they believe in a higher power they would ask if the action aligns with their higher power's moral standard. If they do not, and believe that morality is a social construct, then they ask themselves... what would the consequences of this action be if I am caught and am I willing to accept those consequences.
Do you honestly believe this? Do you believe there's no capacity in mankind for true altruism and goodness unless they believe in a higher power?
Hell, maybe it's true - I believe in a higher power myself, but it has nothing to do with God. I imagine myself - then ten of me, then hundreds, then billions. Not me - but people nonetheless - individuals. Billions of conscious minds with hopes and dreams and feelings. How can you not be in awe of that much sheer consciousness?
And as far as I'm concerned, it's my purpose during my short time on earth to improve the lot of that consciousness as much as I can. In no small way, I'm helping myself - or at least many like me.
Last post!
Just because Komrade Karl's ideas could potentially 'work', doesn't mean they are logical, reasonable or at all desirable. And they aren't. So far the best working method is Capitalism with a few anti-trust constraints to prevent power from getting too concentrated.
Karl Marx is overrated, and a mediocre economist at best. One only has to glance at his rantings and ravings to realize he is a weak-minded fool with decidedly limited mental acuity.
Dont be too quick to dismiss someone's understanding of a doctrine. You leave yourself vulnerable.
That plus Im not sure your responding to me, as I said nothing about badness. Merely the unrelatedness of the collection of books called the Christian bible.
-Michael
You seem to think that Jesus shunned fornicators (which you might note is not the same thing as saying that fornication is perhaps not the best idea in the universe), which leads me to believe that your understanding is faulty. I am absolutely certain that you do not have a good understanding of my spirituality, which I call Christian, but is not very similar to the "Christianity" that you see on TV all the time.
You also seem to think I've got some sort of investment in the integrity and/or historicity of the Bible, which I do not.
The medium is not the message. The message is the message. "Love thy neighbor" is a good idea. The Beatitudes are a good idea. I don't care if this is a philosophy espoused by Christ, or a guy named Floyd. They're still good ideas.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
You call it magic - I call it stupidity. Magic, just another word for stupid superstitions.
I am thinking of starting the Flat Earth Museum. Ticket payers suddenly fall into an abyss (after they pay, of course).
Table-ized A.I.
The bible says worse - they're all going to hell. Whee!!!:
17 And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.
18 He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness,
Personally, I'd rather rule in hell than serve in heaven.
For more info, try looking up the origins of the practice of excommunication by the early church, why they did it, and what the bible says aboit it - not to keep company with your brothers and sisters who "fuck around", or "live in sin" or whatever you choose to call it.
I'll go further. The bible is hate literature.
I don't think anyone read the parent post above mine. My point is the same as yours. If a Christian does good then you shouldn't judge all Christians as good. If a Christian does bad, then you shouldn't judge all Christians as bad.
Can I bum a sig?
Oh, I see. You're assuming that I take all the things that the apostles wrote as Gospel (pardon the pun). A frequent misconception.
I'm a Christian. Not a Paulian.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I am an orthodox Jew.
I would also like to say that I think creationism is fairly silly.
Then you are not Orthodox. Acting Orthodox, perhaps.
Orthodoxy is generally defined as keeping the Sabbath. Why? Because G-d said the Sabbath is a sign that the world was created in six days, and He rested on the seventh. If someone does not keep the Sabbath, he is saying that he disagrees with the belief.
If you do not believe the story, you are short-circuiting this idea, and going strsight to the issue. So, if you do not believe it, you are not Orthodox.
Have you read my journal today?
I happen to be a theistic evolutionist/progressive creationist -- I believe that God brought about life through evolution). I don't see the doctrines of creationism and evolutionism as incompatible at all; after all, if God is God, does He not rule over random events (such as mutations)?
I suppose that I should put on some asbestos...
How to enable garbage collection on a system without protected memory: #define malloc() ((void *) rand())
Good! You realize that the brain and the mind aren't very distinct!
Some hardware is programmable via means of firmware. We can certainly imagine a fabrication lab which creates hardware on demand to meet the changing needs of the software -- fabricating a special chip just to handle a particular website, say. And there is software which is hardcoded into ROM -- what is it that makes this so distinct from the hardware itself? That software cannot be changed...
What is it that distinguishes hardware and software?
If it is that software runs on hardware, then is a virtual machine hardware or software? If it is that hardware is physical, then what do you call software on CD (physical holes burned into it), or programmable hardware (a chip for every website)?
Perhaps the brain and the mind are distinct, but you then go on to say:
Sorry, what?
Your brain executes software. OK. But why do you assume it must be put there by a programmer?
Not all software is generated by a programmer -- in fact, most of it is now written more directly by compilers, and is subject to reflection (software rewriting itself)... In fact, there have even been experiments with taking effectively line noise of instructions (no Perl jokes here) and selecting a goal, then running a number of random programs to see which comes closest to the goal -- then making random variations of the closest ones.
Not true -- read above.
Imagine for a moment that I hooked up an infinite number of infinitely powerful computers to a completely random source, and had them execute that random source as code. One of those computers would end up running OS X, another one Windows, and another one Linux. At least one of each.
One of them might even end up running some software that randomly generates programs, sets up some arbitrary goal for them to solve, and kills off the ones which fail. It might even combine the ones that succeed into new programs. One of those programs might get intelligent enough one day to generate this output:
And yet, when you get right down to it, this program was generated from line noise, and even if it thinks it has "thoughts", these are just the shifting of bits in the limited amount of memory that it can call its own, and perhaps a bit of boolean logic or arithmetic.
You see, the program assumes that it's special because it's here, because as far as it can tell, it's astonishingly unlikely that it would ever have existed. Of course, we know that's not true -- it's inevitable that it would exist, but the program isn't aware of the infinite number of complete and total failures it took.
You could say that a mind had to be there to set up that infinite number of computers, but of coures, that's not true at all -- they could've been created the same way, just whatever random assortment of molecules happened to produce an array of computers like that.
I'm not saying I necessarily believe our universe was created that
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Why is it that some people consider ignorance such a virtue when it comes to philosophy? I point out that Dawkins has no qualifications in Philosophy generally, or in Epistemology and the Philosophy of Science in particular, and you chortle thusly.
Do I really? Is that because philosophy is a non-subject? Not science and therefore worthy of no respect? If so then why should I give a damn what you or Dawkins say about "belief", which is a subject of philosophy, not science? Indeed, all of your assertions about science, and what it is and isn't, fall under the banner of the Philosophy of Science.
If you had studied so much as a brief introduction to Epistemology, then you would be aware that the most broadly accepted definition of "knowledge" is "justified, true belief"*. If science is, by definition, incompatible with belief, then it is also, by definition, incompatible with knowledge. It's obvious that you don't actually mean to make that claim, so I have to take a guess at what you mean by "belief". I'm guessing that you mean "belief without evidence", as though "I believe X" meant "I have no evidence for X, but I think it's true anyway". That's an unjustified belief, specifically. A belief is just a relationship between a person and a statement: if Fred believes X, then Fred considers X to be true*. If you think the statement "the earth is billions of years old" is true, then you believe it.
Stop being such a bloody great exhibitionist with regards to your ignorance. If you are going to talk philosophy, then at least learn a little bit about the field. That way you'll (a) stop talking crap, and (b) start realising that other people don't actually hold the ridiculous straw-man views you are inarticulately attacking.
* Even those who disagree with this definition use it as a starting point from which to diverge.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
He didn't say anything about this country as a whole. He said something about Slashdot. Slashdot != this country.
Tell me; does that illiteracy of yours get old after a while?
If you propose the existance of an all-powerful god... then the point isn't that it is impossible to disprove its existance, the point is that you've just postualated the existance of a being whose existance is impossible to prove by ANY means! The only way to prove the existance of an all-powerful god would be if the being wanted you to do so.
:)
This is a situation beyond the domain of science. As such to make a decision regarding the existance of god is to blindly make your decision based on faith. Without any faith in your decision you would be locked in indecision. To state the you believe that there is no god, is to state that you have made a decision.
I have yet to come to a decision regarding if black holes transfer matter from one universe to another. I have yet to come to a decision regarding the existance of microbes in sulfuric vents on other planets. Yet, unlike the question regarding gods existance, these questions and others are ameniable to science. We can create testable hypothesis.
"Furthermore your allowing your self to "just believe" means in some cases you are willing to abandon scientific method in favor of faith. How do you decide when to apply logic and when to apply faith? When you choose to apply faith how can you be sure you decided correctly with out running any experiments to check your hypothesis?"
When the decision to be made is one in which the scientific method is inherently unable to be applied.
And you never know that you decided correctly. That's why it's faith.
It's also why I don't attempt to convince those who are undecided or disbelievers to believe. There's no point in making the attempt, there's no reason I or anyone else can give to make one reason over another, and there's no way for us to know if we're even right in the first place.
However, that doesn't mean that I don't try to convince disbelievers that they made a decision regarding the same question I did... and that the question is one that requires faith in order to make the decision... regardless of which decision is made
As for my choice, I sat on the fence for most of my life, and only have recently moved off. Why did I finally choose to take a stance? Because I finally realized it was an inherently insoluable problem and at that point not making a choice was something of a choice in itself.
Bertrand Russell coined the term agnostic (in the context of religious belief) as a way of making it clear that his atheism included a willingness to consider evidence. But I just call myself an atheist for the reasons stated. I have no reason to believe in a deity. If such a reason presented itself, I'd rethink my beliefs. But for now, from my perspective, the evidence is no more compelling for YHWH than for the FSM.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
Jesus said, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." I really, really want you to explain to me how that idea is the root of all the badness you rant about.
I really don't think my neighbor would like it if I started wacking him off too...
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+1, Correct
The United States of America: We do what we must because we can.
My question to you would be, how do you select Jesus' teachings from any other teachings in the world? How do you know that his teachings are the "good" ones, and say Mao's are the bad ones? Is it because you were told by someone that Jesus was the bomb, or because humans have evolved a sense of morals since it's reproductively advantageous?
See, the way I see it, you can be a "good christian" (or, as I prefer just a good, moral person) without ever having to appeal to God or Jesus or any religion.
I think rules like: act in a maner which is most beneficial to people as a whole. Or: minimize suffering. Are sufficient.
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"My question to you would be, how do you select Jesus' teachings from any other teachings in the world? "
Why do you care? My choice is my own. I choose my path. You choose yours.
"See, the way I see it, you can be a "good christian" (or, as I prefer just a good, moral person) without ever having to appeal to God or Jesus or any religion."
OK. I agree with you. You don't have to. But my choice to follow the teachings of Jesus are not a failure of intellect or morality or imagination on my part"
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I was just discovering this by reading The Brick Testament, and going back to the actual text on Project Gutenberg. You just pointed me at Evil Bible, which is even better -- I was thinking I'd compile something like that myself.
Mostly just posting this to give evilbible an advantage with search engines (you didn't link to it), but this is interesting. Thanks.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Nope, and you seem rational and inteligent and it seems that you've thought about your choices. The trouble is, when you label yourself "christian", you fall in with the "young earthers" and the "homosexuals are evil" people who (unfortunately) claim that that is at least partially what christianity is about. And they are the vocal ones, not the quiet, rational ones like you.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
So? Most Christians I know get along fine hanging around with non-Christians. Sam Harris is a lot more hostile to Christians than I am to non-Christians. And, after all, doesn't he "condemn everyone else"? Why, yes, he does. Same room, different filter.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
I don't much care what you, or they, label me. If you are a person of intellectual integrity, you will realize that the loud people and the smart people are not always the same people, and apply your labels accordingly.
If you're not, well, that's up to you, isn't it?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
As it is, you run the risk of being regarded as excessively closed-minded.
I, for one, declare myself as agnostic towards anything, except (perhaps) my own existance. I live my daily life inside of a set of useful assumptions, but I don't include any god in those assumptions, at least until a god decides to take part in my daily life. However, I don't believe anything, and I am often excessively open-minded towards gossip, which often has me labeled as naive.
You know what? I'm proud of my naivete.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Heres a question:
Ever read a translation of a book and feel like you didn't exactly get the essence of what its trying to portray? Hmmmm... well most translations of the bible are originally from Hebrew.
How many people who are not Jewish are experts in the Hebrew Language allowing a proper understanding of God's word? (Here's one: http://www.vendyljones.org.il/vendyl.htm)
So for all those die hard science backers (and science should not have to be contradictory to religion), wouldn't the scientific approach indicate that all translations (effectively most of the non-hebrew speaking world) be incomplete in terms of communicating the word of God?
Another question:
Have you noticed that every religion has one guy that says "God spoke to me and told me to tell you......?" How about that there is only one religion that claims that God spoke to 2 million people and told them the 10 commandments... (you really should know which one that is).
Last question:
Laws of probability indicated that the probability of something that happens almost never (limit approaches zero) = 0. Thus, I'm assuming that the scientific approach would be to say that since the chances for a world to evolve from "insert whatever exactly it is here (I forget)" are infinitely small - then the probability of that happening is ZERO.
So what are we left with:
- 2 million people claim they saw God give them the Bible.
- They all have the same exact story even 3000 years later. Parchment Bible scrolls written in Hebrew (some of them thousands of years old) all have the same exact text, word for word.
- The probability of 2 million people making this claim and succeeding without it being true are equal to zero (again, probability theory).
- The probability of "scientific" atheism being true, is equal to zero.
Now if you really were scientific about this, what would your choice be?
Fix your Dell XPS m1210 screen! -- http://m1210screenfix.blogspot.com
Good job attacking him on a point he wasn't addressing. He was rebutting "God fornicated" nonsense, not defending his entire platform on a scientific basis.
Besides which, the virgin birth by definition is not explainable or provable by normal, sane science, and does not attempt to address or involve science -- at least, not the way young-earth creationism (with which, incidentally, I largely disagree) attempts to.
So yes, don't counter someone on something that's completely unrelated to what they're talking about.
(Posting anonymously not to avoid your wrath -- I don't particularly care about your wrath -- but rather to avoid putting my name beside my disagreement with young-earth creationism. I abhor the fact that I feel it necessary to post anonymously, but unfortunately my brethren are notoriously closed-minded about stuff like this. Yes, I'm aware that that's a failing of my sect, so there's no need to call me on it, thank you.)
.....What is it that distinguishes hardware and software?........
....)
Ultimately, both hardware and software are from a mind. A human mind or minds in the case of computer technology. Our body hardware is determined by the software program stored in the DNA. We know that all computer programs, not matter where they reside or manipulated, come from a mind. The compiler originated in a mind. The universe is finite, both in time and space and so you cannot build an infinite anything. Infinity is a mathematical construct that has no counterpart in any measurable reality we know about.
(....We make poop,....)
But your mind decides it is time to go to the toilet, based on your the prompting of the bowels and the training your mother gave that mind when you were still in diapers.
(....Everything I make is temporary; must this also be true of the universe?.....)
Indeed everything, including the universe, has a beginning and an end. The universe has structure and operates by certain laws and principles, just as the machines we build. Why should that not be? We conceive of designs and build them with a purpose in mind. Why should this not also be true of the Universe? There is no such thing as random or chance if you have all information.
(....Calling something God
This article is about the existence of a Creator. It does not address who He might be or what He is like. That is something we can only know by faith if this Creator has chosen to reveal anything about Himself. I happen to BELIEVE that the Bible is God's revelation of Himself. You do not believe. Someday we'll both find out who was right.
All theory is gray
>> in the case of atheism, there is no religious incentive, these are humanitarian acts.
>It's called serving your own pride.
Welcome to the "Lincoln's Pigs" paradox. I'll give you the short version (the story is apocryphal, but the lesson is not). One day, future-President Lincoln was walking down the street around a small town. He walked past a farm, with a pig sty, and in the sty he spotted a small piglet that appeared to be drowning in the mud. Without heed to his expensive clothing, he climbed into the sty and pulled the piglet from the mud, saving it. On exiting the pen, someone exclaimed what a truly kind and generous person he was, to do such a selfless act. Quickly, he replied that his act was not selfless, but exactly the opposite: merely selfish. "Had I simply walked past and let the piglet drown, I wouldn't have gotten any sleep tonight, thinking about it. In order to make sure that I would, I had to save the pig. I did it purely for my own benefit."
The onlookers thought about this for a few moments, until someone said "But, Mr. Lincoln, that doesn't make sense. If you were as selfish a person as you say you are, then why would you care about the piglet at all, enough to have lost sleep over it, if you had just kept on walking?"
My point here, is that it doesn't really matter if the immediate motivation for a virtuous act is 'selfish,' such as alleviating one's own conscience, or stroking one's pride or ego. A truly selfish person wouldn't need to help others in order to have pride in themselves, or to sleep better at night -- they wouldn't care.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Eating of the tree was not the sin, hiding from God was. You have good logic though, but you should join Christianity so that you'll give more effort to complete the process.
If you propose the existance of an all-powerful god... then the point isn't that it is impossible to disprove its existance, the point is that you've just postualated the existance of a being whose existance is impossible to prove by ANY means! The only way to prove the existance of an all-powerful god would be if the being wanted you to do so.
WAIT, WHAT? WOW! That statement you just made flys in the face of the very religion to purport to be a part of!
Because your religion DOES try to claim its one god is the god, all knowing and all powerful. And it further claims that he has tried many times to make his presence known. The bible clearly makes it sound like this god guy was messing with the earth like every other day. Miricales left and right. He obviously wanted to prove his existence, at least that's what the book claims. Your statement directly contradicts this. So then you admit to following a belief in a god that not only cannot be proven to exist but has NEVER contacted ANY ONE? Why in the world would you believe in THAT?
This is a situation beyond the domain of science.
There is no such thing! science is a method of observing and comparing ANY THING. You obviously know little about it, or at least little about how to properly apply the concept.
To state the you believe that there is no god, is to state that you have made a decision.
Well, yes, I have made the decision not to beleive in something that has no proof and has not been shown to exist in real life. The existance of the super natural is included in that list, which includes all gods. So far there is no proof that the idea of a god is any thing more than a man made fairy tale.
You have also made a similar decision, wether you realize it or not. You say "god", singular. You have choosen to ignore a large percentage of religions that have worshiped multiple gods, and procliam that there is only one. I can only assume you beleive in a christian or similar style view of a single god, but for arguments sake that doesn't even really matter. What matters is that, given a large set of mythogly, none of which has any proof, you have decided that one myth is real and choosen to be "an atheist" to the others. The problem is you are using a leap of faith to do this, you admit you have no way of proving if this is the right choice or not. Given that there is no proof that ANY of these myths have been true, why would you choose one god over another? How do you know all mighty Zeus isn't going to strike you down for ignoring his wife Hera? No, you might as well have randomly picked one. Now, if you decide to use the "well, but a large number of people believe in my god, no one worships Zeus any more" tact, that just makes you a lemming. Would you jump off a bridge just because a large number of other people are doing it? No, the number of people who believe something, or the amount of time that it has been believed, are not logical reasons for following an ideal. Because history has shown that large numbers of people have believed incorrectly for long periods of time untill it became common knowledge that the idea was wrong. For example, for a long period of time it was a common belief that the earth was flat. We now know that not to be true.
When the decision to be made is one in which the scientific method is inherently unable to be applied.
See, you selectivly turn on and off logic and reason when you "feel like it". That is unacceptable. That is the pit fall of your having faith, finding it acceptable to say logic cannot be applied universaly.
And you never know that you decided correctly. That's why it's faith.
Apperantly there is just no way to get this message through to you, so I will only say it one more time than I give up on you.
I only believe in what has proven to be REAL. In most cases I KNOW what I have "decided" (not really, more like deduced through proper observation, I don't "decide" how reality works, I discover it) is correct bec
Read about quantum theory. There is randomness, and there is chance, and we cannot have all information. The nature of a being which could (possibly God, but not necessarily the Creator) is so far beyond my experience that I cannot even imagine the nature of its existance or nonexistance, and therefore, I cannot begin to believe or disbelieve.
This is where we disagree. If you allow randomness, then you allow the possibility of a program being randomly generated.
True enough. And we would not be able to measure it in any case.
However, it's worth noting that if what I described were our reality -- we are all within The Matrix, and there are an infinite number of Matrixes (Matrices?) -- then we would have absolutely no knowledge of what lay outside that. It could easily be infinite. It could be a wannabe hacker in his parents' basement. We just don't know.
Admitting what we do not know is the first step towards wisdom. (That's probably a quote from somewhere, but I can't remember where.)
Our discussion is. The article is about the existence of a Creationist museum, which suggests that the Bible be interpreted literally (as much as it can be), in a very bizarre way.
That much is true, and said another way, it is something we can only believe by abandoning logic. That's not necessarily wrong or bad, but it's something I choose not to do.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I was replying to a parent comment that misinterpreted Marx. Religion, according to Marx, is a symptom of social and economic problems; it develops as a social response to and defense against those problems, as a means to console its adherents. Then, according to Marx, religion can be abused by those in positions of authority so that belief and doctrine is used as an explanation or justification for the social and economic problems, as a result of which the population accepts those problems rather than trying to correct them. In this way, according to Marx, religion is used to oppress people -- they allow religious doctrine to control their destiny rather than tackling the social and economic problems facing them.
So the definition of religion, according to Marx, includes oppression.
One of the criticisms of Marx' views is that spirituality is fundamental to religion, and spirituality deals with the search for a higher truth.
i-name =twylite [http://public.xdi.org/=twylite], see idcommons.net
"What is there to examine?"
So much for inquiry. You are only interested if it fits your ideas. No different from most religious nut jobs.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I don't care what it symbolizes. Open your eyes. We're wearing crosses. We eat and drink things said to be symbolic of the flesh and blood of Christ. He's going to come back and wonder why we all celebrate his death... Or maybe he'll assume we want to crucify him AGAIN and then eat him...
Actually, I do appreciate your explanation of "picking up your cross", but I'd like to hear something as short and sweet explaining how Christians take communion and don't call themselves cannibals.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Did humans kill off the aquatic dinosaurs, or was it the, uh... er, flood?
It's not cool, it's the only sane thing to do outside of bashing those believers physically.
A person that happens to think Jesus gave some advice that is reasonable is not a christian. A person that believes Jesus was the son of God and you can only be saved by believing in this, is a christian.
Certainly, there'll always be conflict, even if everyone where atheists, there'd be wars, there'd be conflict, there'd be arguments. That's just human nature. Atheists do have one major advantage though:
Everything is open to debate.
If you honestly believe that God exists, and he himself set up a certain rule. Then obviously, that rule ain't debatable by mere humans. A christian leader can't meet with a muslim leader and agree that the christian God will drop the requirement to not have other Gods if the muslim God drops the requirement to travel to Mekka. It just doesn't work.
An atheist, on the other hand -- is free to discuss and compromise on anything. He recognizes that *all* human rules are made by human beings -- and thus can have mistakes in them. So, he is -- atleast in principle, willing to hear arguments why they may be wrong and adjust the rules as needed.
It also doesn't take a genius to realise that Genesis 1 is not an eye witness account or a scientific dissertation, but a spiritual text with the message that God didn't just create us, but the entire universe. It puts God in a much bigger perspective than the much older text from Genesis 2 does. But it's not meant as a scientific theory of the exact details of how God created the universe.
I do believe in the bible, but I prefer to take the bible seriously. Did you know, for example, that Genesis 1 is not actually 6000 years old, but only about 2500? It's a lot younger than the rest of Genesis, and it's even younger than much of the rest of the OT. Genesis 1 was probably written during the Babylonian exile. The rest of Genesis is younger, but that too is not an eye witness account; at the earliest, it was written at the time of Moses, so you're still looking at a thousand years of oral history.
Many early christian thinkers and church fathers who selected the books and stories that make up our bible also didn't take everything as literally as creationists do. It's a much too short-sighted approach to something this important. It's really not a sin to use your god-given brain, and accept the world around you as real. If you do that, you can see God's hand in his creation, you can learn a lot about how he actually created the world, and evolution is clearly a big part of that.
Unless ofcourse you consider the world around you, God's creation, as not real, or you consider God a liar, or at least a practical joker, who created a seemingly consistent world that isn't, with evidence of an age that's false, with fossils of creatures that never lived. Personally, I find all of these options much more offensive than the idea that Genesis 1 is not a scientific dissertation, and that God created a much bigger, and much more complex universe with complex processes like evolution producing wondrous life forms like us.
By that logic, Marx's theories were responsible for halting Hitler and stopping the spread of Nazism; and Jesus Christ is responsible for the death tally in Iraq. Get a grip.
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
Hey, like I said - if I hear jingle bells, I'll look up. I'm just not sure how useful a designation like 'agnostic' really is since, as you say, technically we should consider ourselves agnostic towards everything (we don't know anything for sure, even whether or not we really exist). I think if you consider yourself agnostic with regards to religion, you are effectively an atheist - one who does not believe in a god. That doesn't mean that you're adamantly opposed to the notion, just that you don't happen to hold that particular belief - as you say, it's not currently a useful assumption to make. I guess declaring oneself atheist feels too much like one is taking a position on the matter - there's no word for someone who doesn't believe in Santa, for example.
Wow. I mean. That is Great. I am curious, have you read much commentary on "anochi Hashem"? There is a fairly famous machloket between Ramban and Rambam, as to whether that is a commandment, or a preface. Ramban Holds that it is a preface, and that without it, you cannot fulfill any of the Mitzvot. Rambam Has it as being a Mitzva, that one can be in violation of.
So according to Rambam, I can still be an observant Jew, and Not believe in God. Granted, I will ommiting the commision of a mitzva, that I am required to do. But that doesnt put me out of the group. I am still Kosher For Eidut.
Now, as it turns out, I do believe in God. So I am All good From ramban, and Rambam. Just a side point.
Now, on to your, terribly ill-informed little rant. According to Rambam, one cannot give reasons for the Torah. Sure, Shabbat is there to remeber creationg (and Yetziat Mitzrayim). So, yes, I say Kiddush, and dont drive et al. I also put on tefilin today. Did you? Whatever. At any rate. Most of Judaism is a function of practice. So, yea, the shul I go to (or dont, when it is snowy, or the rabbi decides to give a lecture about the importance of keeping marrige between a man and woman (I live in Mass.)) is an othodox one.
Now. Lets go on. You are claiming that belief that the world was created in 7 days is a cornerstone of Jewish Being.
I dont think you have a source.
The first place one would go to look would be Rambam's 13 attributes. Lets look shall we (I am just reciting them by heart, cause well, I am too annoyed with you to spend my time looking them up. Here is your chance to pounce on me, fool (yes, that is ad hominem, and shouldnt be part of the argument. Merely a statement of my opinion of somone who would pass judgment in a public forum without knowing a damn thing about me).
1. God Exists
2. There is only one God
3. God has no Physical form (an interesting thing to have as a cornerstone of permitted belief's, if you have ever bothered to read Masechet Rosh Hashanna, or simply ezekiel, at that, but who wants to get into that debate)
4. God pre-dates everything
5. he is the master of the universe
6. He has given prophecy to chosen people
7. Moshe was the greatest prophet ever
8. He gave to tora to his people
9. His will is eternal
10.He Knows all our secrets
11.He rewards and punishes justly
12.He will bring Mashiach
13.He will bring the dead back to life
Hmm. So according to rambam, were I not to believe the world was created in 7 days, I would still be well within the fold. You wanna cite something that puts me out? Or do you just prefer to shoot your mouth off in public forums (in case you are wondering, no, I havent memorized the Mishne Tora. But Yigdal is something of a sum up of Rambam's Ikarim).
Now. Lets ask, does Orthodox Judaism believe in Creationism? And the answer to that, is, according to most sources (I say most, cause I havent read all of them, but all the ones I have read on Breshit) there is a sharp divide in history, between the 7 days of creation (yes, the _7_ including getting thrown out of the graden), and the rest of History. So if you bother to study the matter, you will find most Rabbinical sources will say things like "sure the world 5767 years old. Well 5767 + 7 days". See, traditional rabbbinical authority keeps those days, and their history, entriely seperate, from well, the rest of history. Traditionally, we hold that they are true, and that what they say happened, happened, but we dont so much claim to know what they mean. See, christians will typically hold that they know exactly what those words mean. The rabbinical souces I have read on the matter keep those days seperate, and somewhat kabbalistic. So, a studied tradional approach would have that of course the world was created in 7 days, but we dont really know what that means. It certainly doesnt make much sense to talk about the 7 days being 24 hour days, as there was no sunrise or sunset for the first 3-4 (th
Just out of morbid entertainment, I'll continue this thread.
My knowledge of the bible is more than sufficient. I was brought up in a fanatic household.
Plus, you seem to have completely missed my sarchasm. Thats understandible in such emotional discussions. That plus I mispelled "factitious", which means "made up".
But in other news, "Love thy neighbor" would be a great message. But it's got little to do with modern Christianity. The "message" actually was called "The word of God". And this word was perverted to become that "The Son of Man" or the son of God has come to free us of Gods punishment for original sin. "Love thy neighbor" you must be confusing with the speach Jesus gave to a bunch of Rich guys just before he told them they had to become poor to better honor God( a fact missed by most rich Americans, who pull out of their asses that God wants us to be rich and powerful - google Jabez which predates Jesus by some time). My favorite modern quote "Will Dick Cheny go to Heaven, or will a camel make it through that needle eye?" Anyway, that speech simply identified the 3 most important commandments. Hardly a new doctrine.
If all of Christianity was based on "Love thy neighbor", we wouldn't be killing Jews in the middle ages to get them to convert. Nor would we be burning witches, pagens. What would be the significance of confession, Easter, 'accepting Jesus as your personal savior'. These are rituals derived from a complex story. Not logical conclusions of 'Love'. In fact they were merely artifacts of Jewish cultural history. Jesus was nothing more than the embodiment of the reaction of the times. He was to Judaism as Karl Marx was to capitalism. Or Luther was to Catholicism.
Now you may be referring to modern new religeon, many of which were started by charletans who have invented facts to give themselves credibility, and thus a flock. David Koresh, Joseph Smith, etc. Thats fine, but Im hard pressed to call them Christians, just because Jesus was part of their teachings.
-Michael
I agree with you. And I disagree with the response to your post in that he contradicts himself. On his premise, he cannot disagree with you nor can he tell you that you are wrong. You have no control over your thoughts, nor does anyone else. He can't say that anyone is wrong because he is only judging from a chemical reaction. While it could be considered thought, it is by no means rational.
That is not what the Bible says. Therefore they are wrong.
I didn't say "idiot", I said "IDiot" which is slightly different. But I admit having very badly phrased it as the part between parens was to be applied to the whole (religious guys / young earth creationists / IDiots) expression, not specifically to the last word.
Well I am the parent and I told you what I meant by "evolution" and how it relates to the origin of life (it doesn't).
I strongly disagree. Not a single evolutionary biologist ever said that evolution was about the origin of life (and neither did darwin, his landmark work was named The Origin of Species not The Origin of Life). And comparing evolution to creationism doesn't ever makes sense since creationism doesn't make sense in the first place.
I sure hope you're not comfortable with evolution saying anything about the origin of life, because it definitely doesn't.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Essentially this argument is a form of projection, where a religious individual views an atheism as a "religion", and then proceeds to impart many negative aspects of religion, which they will not consciously admit to themselves, onto atheism.
Religions are altogether invalid as logical arguments. Even in their best case scenario, with n distict religions in the world, at least n-1 of them have been completely fabricated out of nothing. They contain no divine revelations or truths. Any honest individual, when confronted with the argument, must admit that all religions are essentially baseless within their own framework. They call upon divine entities, but these entities are simply fabrications of human thought.
Atheists are simply stating the truth. Gods and godesses are fabrications of the human mind. They exist only as considerations in the minds of those considering them. That is the truth, but it is one which most people will never admit to themselves, and will bitterly reject in any way possible those who try to convince them of it.
May the Maths Be with you!
Generally, the world has become incredibly more complicated and less "stable". In the 50s, there was stability. Ike was always president, Mickey Rooney was always funny and the Russians were always evil. The whole world loved the US, the economy boomed, even the youth was interested in the country and being a "rebel" was accomplished by wearing leather jackets.
Now, the Russians stopped being evil and were replaced by some intangible "terrorists", which are not somewhere far, far away but "everywhere". A lot of people around the world outright hate the US, or at least their president and his politics, the economy is shaking and young people waste away in a mix of entertainment, drugs and self pity.
People long for stability and a meaning. And times of peril and dull future visions were always a high time for religions, sects and cults. In a different way this was appearant in the youth secs of the 60s. Young people wanted to abandon their parents' ways and were looking for new ways of 'enlightenment', some meaning for their life. It wasn't a lack of stability, though. More like, a surplus thereof.
Old and very traditional religions usually prosper in times of change and instability. Like today.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
But apparently that's how you read my response. I'd appreciate it if we could keep this civil - can we agree to avoid character assassination and profanity, please?
I can see that for us to come to a place of understanding may take a great deal of time. Let's start at the beginning of your response, if you don't mind. Your mention of circular reasoning is totally valid in terms of rhetoric. However, in terms of assessing the validity of a world view, one factor is whether the content is internally consistent. My point is this: As you evaluate the teachings of Christianity, it is totally relevant to understand what Christianity says about itself. The fact that Christ, and Paul both dealt with Eden as a factual scenario tends to put a great deal of emphasis on Eden as a fact, rather than an allegory.
Appeal to the New Testament as a "proof" of the New Testament, or the Old Testament, would be employing the fallacy you describe. (an example of one of the ways we have already miscommunicated.)
Ever played telephone?
I've heard this argument before, and I belive you to be sincere when you make it. However, the facts do not support your assertion. The telephone game relies on silliness and rules that amplify the likelihood of an error. The process for making copies of New Testament letters was designed to assure consistency and eliminate errors.
The New Testament has more documentary evidence than *any* other book of antiquity, with copies from closer to the original manuscripts than *any* other book of antiquity. Most books from ancient times have less than 10 early copies from within a few humdred years of the time that they were originally written. There are more than 5,000 New Testament document fragments which date from the first century until more recent dates. To be sure these are fragments and not complete copies, but scholars are able to show conclusively that the documents have been unchanged fundamentally since they were written. The difference - in terms of hard evidence we can hold in our hands today - between the Christian Bible and every other work of antiquity is so great as to make the reliability of every other text laughable by comparison.
the affluent should help anyone because it is the good moral action,
But... Why? If Christianity is untrue, then why whould anyone do anything helpful for anyone else?
Ideas reified as authoritarian institutions, viz. The Church (not the catholic church, just organized religion), have a way of messing up good ideas
We're in agreement here. Power corrupts.
whats the lesson from being so drastically punished for a bad decision made in the absence of Knowledge of Good and Evil
Am I to understand that your position is that God's punishment was unjust?
Here's the thing. God is God. As Creator He gets to set the rules. Whether you agree with them is... (and I don't mean this disrespectfully - it applies to me as well) it's irrelevant.
As to the justifiability, God is Holy and Pure. Only things that are Holy and pure can be in His presence or the impurity will be completely destroyed by the force of His Goodness and purity. Impurity in man would have been purified by direct contact with God with the outcome being the physical destruction of Adam and Eve. God knew this and showed mercy on them - letting them live.
Let me ask you this. When you determine that God is unjust, are you not judging Him? If so, on what moral basis do you stand when you do that? If there is no God, then there is no absolute Good. Does this question make sense to you?
I choose not to ascribe cruelty to my concept of the divine.
As do I. God is kind, compassionate, and loving. Many times my kids may perceive that I'm cuel. For example, when my 2 year old needed stiches and I held him down while the doctor stuck a needle in his face many times. Was it cruel? Perhaps from Mark's perspective it was. Perhaps many of the cruelties we perceive God to have
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
So according to Rambam, I can still be an observant Jew, and Not believe in God.
That is taking it to the other extreme, and that is not what he meant.
Granted, I will ommiting the commision of a mitzva, that I am required to do. But that doesnt put me out of the group. I am still Kosher For Eidut.
No, you would not be, if you did not believe. Atheism has the same problems are an oved avodah zorah, which is not kosher for eidus. Further, anyone who willingly and blatantly does not do a commandment is also not kosher for eidus.
Now, on to your, terribly ill-informed little rant.
It was not a rant. It was to remove your foundation when you said "well, i'm an Orthodox Jew and i still don't believe". That's impossible. You can be Jewish and not believe, but not Orthodox and not believe.
According to Rambam, one cannot give reasons for the Torah.
Unless the Torah itself gives a reason.
Most of Judaism is a function of practice.
No, it is not. Judaism is working on your middos. Of course, that only works when done lishmah which require a whole set of beliefs.
Now. Lets go on. You are claiming that belief that the world was created in 7 days is a cornerstone of Jewish Being.
I dont think you have a source.
See the verse itself that calls it an "os". Also, see the Chinuch on this mitzvah (and on anochi Hashem).
Hmm. So according to rambam, were I not to believe the world was created in 7 days, I would still be well within the fold.
Your citing the "13 middos" is inherently flawed. That is a summary, and perhaps not a very good one. The real thing is the introduction to the eleventh perek of Sandhedrin (found in most sets of shas, i presume). He also explains what he is doing, which is not to say "believe these and you're ok". He's listed some main points to put an end to some mistaken beliefs. Like the Moreh N'vuchim, it should not be taken out of the context of a response.
So if you bother to study the matter, you will find most Rabbinical sources will say things like "sure the world 5767 years old. Well 5767 + 7 days".
The sixth day was Rosh Hashanah. So, 5767 years plus 5 days...
See, traditional rabbbinical authority keeps those days, and their history, entriely seperate, from well, the rest of history.
I have no idea what you are taling about. Rashi and the Midrash Rabbah (the two major mefarshim on B'reishis) make no such distinction.
Traditionally, we hold that they are true, and that what they say happened, happened, but we dont so much claim to know what they mean.
Yes we do. The Midrash Rabbah painstakingly goes through the entire creation process. There is more Midrash Rabbah on the Creation narative then on any other subject.
The rabbinical souces I have read on the matter keep those days seperate, and somewhat kabbalistic.
I'm calling your bluff. Name one peirush that says it is to be understood with sod, and not p'shat.
So, a studied tradional approach would have that of course the world was created in 7 days, but we dont really know what that means. It certainly doesnt make much sense to talk about the 7 days being 24 hour days, as there was no sunrise or sunset for the first 3-4 (the sun and moon being created on the 4th.). If you bother to READ the commentary, you will see that we dont wash that nasty little fact under the rug, but look at it, and are interested in it, and claim a level of ignorance because of it.
Rashi clearly states that the Sun (and everything) was created on the first day, but put in place over the other days. The verse itself says light and dark (and the separation in between them) was created on this first day. Further, on the fourth day it says that the sun will rule the day. The diurnal cycle already existed at least in name, but control was now shifted to the solar system.
Have you read my journal today?
Fortunately, I do not subject myself to your judgement. You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but my faith isn't open to your criticism.
You seem to think that the Christian God and the Muslim God are different. If you think that, you're mistaken.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
This is going way off topic, and not directly applicable to the discussion, but, labels should mean something specific to be useful. If I start calling my neighbor a pedophile because he seems to love his kids, I imagine the other neighbors would start to treat both of us differently. The same with "Christian" and "God". Since the meanings of those vary so much, if you use them, don't be surprised if the reaction you get from someone doesn't agree with what you'd expect.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
"But it's got little to do with modern Christianity."
It's got everything to do with the modern Christians with whom I'm familiar. Unfortunately, reasonable people who care about one another and the people around them don't usually make the evening news, and they certainly don't show up on the 700 Club.
You seem to be conflating what I believe with what the reactionary religious freaks think. I deny them my imprimatur. They do not speak for me, they do not define my faith, they don't know a thing about my relationship with God. You may dispense with the comparisons between me and them, they are irrelevant.
I happen to think that people who believe like I do vastly outnumber people who agree with those sorts of "Christians". Again...we don't make the news.
""factitious", which means "made up"."
"Factitious" doesn't mean anything. I don't know if you're going for "facetious" or "fictitious", which do not mean the same thing.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I deny the Religious Right the authority to define "Christian" as "Those people who agree with us". Similarly, I deny the current Republican party the label of "conservative". Both of these words have been changed in common parlance, but I am tilting at windmills and defining them in my own terms, for my own reasons.
That's really my point: Judging all persons who self-identify as Christians (or Democrats or Slashdotters or immigrants or single parents) as homogenous wholes, as opposed to groups of individuals who may share a few particular traits, leads to sloppy thinking and incorrect conclusions. I recommend you be less promiscuous with your labels.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
All four Gospels mention the Last Supper and the institution of Communion. For example in Luke:
Slashdot is simply a metaphor for intelligent people as a whole. Idiocy is in the mind of the beholder...
That is all.
"Atheists do have one major advantage though:
Everything is open to debate."
Except the existence of God. According to Dawkins (the self-appointed Atheist poster boy) belief in God is the root of all evil and strife and badness, and people who believe in God are morally and intellectually defective.
He's entitled to his opinion. I don't agree with him, and I don't think he's particularly rational on the topic, so there's no point in me debating him.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
"The bigger they are, the harder they fall"
Corollary:
The bigger they are, the more people they squish when they fall.
If you think that you can separate the "software" of the brain from the hardware, then can you point to where that software is stored?
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
.....The nature of a being which could (possibly God, but not necessarily the Creator) is so far beyond my experience ........
You are not the only one here that feels this way. I too know that God is beyond our imagining and comprehension. That is why, if such a God would reveal Himself to us, he could only tell us a small part and ask us to simply BELIEVE His message. This is exactly what He has done. The writer of the book of Hebrews tells us:
Hebrews 6:6 But without faith it is impossible to please Him , for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
(......That much is true, and said another way, it is something we can only believe by abandoning logic. That's not necessarily wrong or bad, but it's something I choose not to do......)
Faith and logic are not in an exclusive OR relationship. Faith begins where logic cannot follow. You mention that believing is something you CHOOSE not to do. All machines we make, including computers are deterministic and therefore cannot love. If your computer expresses love to you, it is meaningless, but when your significant other does, it pleases you and warms your heart.
There cannot be two wills or more in the universe. One must always be supreme. God has made us such that we may choose to submit to Him or not, whereas our machines and the lifeless creation MUST do the will of their creator. So far you have CHOSEN your own will over that of God. God respects that choice and will allow you to spend eternity apart from Him. That state of being separate, away from God, estranged from Him forever, is called Hell. He will not send you there against your will but tells you to submit your will to His if you want to be with Him. God tells us to love Him. Love is and act of our will, not a warm fuzzy feeling. You can choose to love or not.
If you are willing to submit your own will to God, you can begin by telling Him that you want to believe, but are unable for whatever reasons you care to name. Ask Him to show Himself to you as the God who really is there. Don't bother coming to Him if you are not totally honest with yourself and Him. You must be ready to submit your will to His. If you are unwilling to bend your will to His, it would be a waste of your time and you might as well speak to the wall.
All theory is gray
You say [Gg]od[s] don't exist. Show me the proof that [Gg]od[s] is/are a fabrication. Until you open the box and see whether Schrödinger's [Gg]od[s] is there or not, you don't know with any certainty whether [Gg]od[s] exist, and unfortunately it's currently impossible to know. Yet you have a belief without really knowing any provable truth.
Basically, it boils down to this:
- religous aka theist: You have no proof, but you believe that [Gg]od[s] DOES exist
- atheist: You have no proof, but you believe that [Gg]od[s] does NOT exist (i.e., flip side of the above bullet point)
- agnostic: You have no proof, so you say that you have no idea whether [Gg]od[s] exists or not...You have no belief one way or the other
According to the Wikipedia page on atheism, some philosophers have redefined agnostic to be a subtype of atheist. Regardless, those philosophers are not using the conventional definitions of angosticsm and atheism, IMO.Wow, you must have a very firm unshakable belief to be so confident in something that's not provably true nor false.
.....Wire the brain up in a different way and you've fundamentally changed the "software" that is running........
It is interesting that you should mention wiring in terms of software. The very first computers, both analog and digital, were programmed by changing the wiring. To make this easier they were made with interchangeable plug-boards which contained the wires that "programmed" the computer. The software is not the wires per se, but the ARRANGEMENT of the wires. On a chessboard it is not the pieces alone that convey the game information, but primarily their arrangement and the rules by which they get arranged.
The hardware of your body is determined, not by the DNA as such, but by the sequences of the amino acids in the strands of the double helix. The software a programmer writes is a series of sequences the hardware can eventually execute. A poem or story is also a series of sequences of symbols which a human can interpret. The production of such sequences is the action of an intelligent mind ONLY.
The reason that our modern digital society is having such constructs as DMCA and DRM is because information is fundamentally different and distinct from matter and energy. Information, such as the codes in your DNA or brain is immaterial and is not subject to some of the constraints matter and energy are. Software as such has no mass for example and thus is not subject to gravity. A disk drive will weigh exactly the same before and after it is filled with data. The same software can be used in multiple places simultaneously and unlike matter can be transmitted at the speed of light. Our universe not only is comprised of matter and energy, but also contains huge amounts of information.
When you see a heart with an arrow through it on the beach, such as "John loves Mary", you know it got there not the result of the wind and waves, but from an intelligent mind sending a message. I'll let you think about how it is that you know this is so.
All human laws originate in a human mind. Why then do the laws of physics not originate in the mind of the Creator?
All theory is gray
Thanks for that! When can we start the petition to ban the bible? It's obviously caused more deaths than marijuana, and that's scheduled as a narcotic (which it isn't). Let's classify the bible as a narcotic (which it isn't)!
It is just right and proper of any thinking individual in the XXI century since the alleged birth of Jesus.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
He could certainly tell us more. And if he did, belief in God might be more like belief in Sunrises -- a reasonable default position. As it is, God has left us in a reality where the sane default is disbelief -- if you must believe or not believe, it makes more sense to not believe.
I am not judging that action, and it does not make me angry at God (if he exists), but that is the reality that I find myself in. The most natural leap of faith for me to make would be straight to hard atheism.
That would actually fit an exclusive OR, but you're right -- you can actually have both faith and logic. For instance, I have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow, and at least a few logical arguments to support that belief. However, even without recalling those arguments at the moment, I can have that faith.
And yet, that is the extent of my faith -- an assumption that appears to work. When I am truly honest with myself, I realize that I cannot possibly know anything, and must be prepared for any of my assumptions to change.
I, personally, do not have faith where logic cannot follow. I have curiosity and an open mind, but not faith.
Computers are not necessarily any more or less deterministic than we are. What is special about our own bodies?
I think if my computer was able to truly express love to me -- and not simply duplicate other expressions of love (for instance, an email from my significant other) -- it would probably frighten me, but I would have to be touched.
Why would it be meaningless? At what point do we say a creature has free will, or that its love has meaning?
For that matter, can't love have meaning even if we are all deterministic? If you discovered that you are so predictable that it was inevitable that you'd fall in love with a particular person, would you feel any less love for them at that realization?
I am not talking about rape or coercion, but I know women who like to talk about fate and destiny. One tells me she doesn't know why God sent me to her, but she's grateful that he did. Does she love me any less at the thought that I had no choice in the matter -- that God sent me to her? You could say it's her choice, but then, she says she can't help but love me.
I know my own will. If my will exists, then I choose it. If my will does not exist, then I have no choice but to say "I choose my own will" anyway, so there is no point in debating that.
I do not know the will of God, and I don't believe you do, either. Until we do know, it makes sense to choose my own will.
I call it freedom.
I sound like Milton's Lucifer, don't I? But I stand by it. I am more free for choosing my own will than to willingly become a slave to a deity.
It is also possible to love God without submitting to his will. Just look at any healthy relationship -- we no longer expect the woman to submit to the
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
.....That is the only way I can be honest. I cannot honestly and completely submit myself to something I'm completely unsure of.......
There are many things in your reply that I could comment on. I have only chosen this one statement.
God doesn't ask you to submit to Him as if He were some cosmic dictator or tyrant. He asks you into a father-son relationship. Many in our culture have bad models of this because of so many single moms or abusive, and/or uncaring fathers. Knowing of our president of the governor or some other pubic figure is not the same as knowing such one personally. God's will for you is to know Him personally as a loving father. He does not want to have anyone as a slave, to be trodden underfoot by a mean task master. He wants your love and respect as a son normally should have for his father. When we hear the expression eternal life, we generally think of a life somewhat like we already know but with no limit on time. That is not Jesus definition:
John 17:3 And this is life eternal, that they might know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
You CAN know God, but only if you WANT to. If you do not want such an intimate relationship, He will let you do your own thing forever.
All theory is gray
If there's an absolute logic that is true, then all these others must be wrong - so which one is the true one?
Are you being serious?
Most of those are subsets of the Philosophical Logic of which I speak. This is not a list of eleven mutually exclusive different forms of logic. For example, read how
Others, like Quantum Logic are fields that apply the symbols from formal logic to describe quantum mechanics--this isn't some separate form of logic that philosophers are using in formal debates.
There are a few logical schools of thought that disregard the law of the excluded middle for example, but when you understand why, this isn't to say there are philosophers that hold to different conventions or forms of logic. Fuzzy Logic allows for truth values between 0 and 1--it's used mainly in engineering applications for making decisions about the physical world.
Logicians disagree in some areas--even in defining what logic is. However, the mere fact that our world expects men to be rational and to apply laws of thought to their reasoning, shows that we all believe that there are universal, invariant, abstract laws that exist. We believe them to be universal because we expect the Law of Non-Contradiction (A cannot be !A at the same time) to apply to everyone everywhere when they reason with us. We don't assume the law only applies to Americans or Europeans, for example.
My question to you is this--do you disagree with the classical, philosophical logic that I am referring to? Do you employ a different system of logic in your reasoning?
Are laws of logic merely conventions, agreed upon by men?
If they are merely conventions, do I not have the right to adopt my own conventions, and can I win debates using my own logical system?
If laws of logic are merely conventions, how do we know they won't change in the future?
How is knowledge possible within this worldview?
Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff.
it wasn't invented by God either, because the laws could not be any different under any circumstance. Therefore, God didn't create them.
I'm glad we agree that laws of logic are abstract, universal, and invariant. However, I'm having trouble following your reasoning.
Specifically, how do you know the laws could not be any different? Why couldn't God have created them differently?
Secondly, I hold that the laws of logic reflect God's eternal character. He would not create the laws of logic contrary to it. How does the statement that "the laws could not be any different under any circumstance" imply that "God didn't create them."
It smells like a non sequitur, so please clarify.
A lot of theists stop short of suggesting that God would be capable of logically impossible actions. Creating or redefining a mathematical law would be logically impossible.
The laws of logic and mathematics do not change because God does not change. God created these laws and they reflect His character.
There is much hay made about the "can God build a rock so big that He cannot lift it," and "Can God make a square circle." The answer to both of those is no. God cannot do that which isn't in His character. God cannot lie--this doesn't remove His omnipotence. It just clarifies the bounds of omnipotence.
I really like mathematics because it's about the only thing we can know for certain, as it's self-defining rather than being based on evidence and experiments.
How do you know that all the mathematic tests you've performed in the past will be the same in the future? Will 2+2 always equal 4? How do you know for certain?
Mathematics provides certainty, with absolute proof. It requires no faith. Ultimately, everything else does.
What proof do you accept for mathematics? How do you know it is acceptable proof? I assume you believe logic requires faith, because logic isn't mathematics. How can you prove something in Math without using logic?
Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff.
I apologize, I haven't had much time to develop my argument because I am debating 20 people at once.
The Bible teaches that if you reject the Christian God, you will be reduced to foolishness. I know you don't accept that on the surface, but if you will take it for a Christian claim at this point, I'd appreciate it.
What I've been showing to the folks here on slashdot is this:
The materialist (I'm aware not all non-Christians are materialists--I'm only tackling the prominent veiwpoint on
Hume recognized that the Inductive Principle is really a "rule of thumb" if you will. The Inductive Principle basically teaches that the future will be like the past. Hume saw that you can't prove that the future will be like the past because we can't experience the future. Even as time marches forward, at best we can say that the past will be like this morning. Hume rejected the Inductive Principle for this reason.
By the way, the scientific method utterly depends on the Inductive Principle. You pull that carpet out from underneath Science, and that baby, she crumbles.
As for Laws of Logic--we need those for validating ideas and thoughts. They are universal, abstract, and invariant--if they weren't all three, they would be undermined. Philosophy depends on laws of logic being all three. If you pull that carpet out from underneath Philosophy, that baby, she crumbles. How can laws of logic "exist" in a world that denies that the supernatural cannot exist? How can Laws of Logic be forced upon the thoughts of others, if it is merely a chemical process in the brain?
No, Laws of Logic exist and they exist outside of the material world. It is right to impose them on other thoughts and ideas because God requires us to be rational beings, as He is.
The Inductive Principle can be relied upon because God made nature to be uniform and tells us that He fixes the world to be consistent in advance.
I will posit that the Christian Theistic Worldview is the only worldview that can account for and supply all the preconditions necessary for knowledge. Laws of Logic exist because God requires men to reason rationally.
If your worldview does not account for Laws of Logic or the Inductive Principle, how can knowledge even be possible?
That's why the Bible says that if you reject God, your worldview is reduced to foolishness. That's my position. Would you be willing to put your worldview up against mine to see if I'm "blinded by dogma?"
Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff.
Once someone makes a coherent statement as to what exactly they mean by "God", including one or more verifiable properties, they're free to argue their case just as much as --say-- those who believe the Higgs exist are free to argue their case. (the jury is still out on the Higgs, personally I think it doesn't exist, but I'm perfectly willing to be shown wrong.)
The thing many atheists have a problem with is that most "God"-definitions are *internally* conflicting. It's sort of like claiming a>b and b>a in math. You don't need to actually examine the values of a and b to know that is BS.
Examples include: (I have no idea if you personally are guilty of any of these)
*such* definitions of "God" aren't really debatable, because they're *internally* conflicting, you need to resolve the *internal* conflicts in a theory before you can even start to examine if it corresponds with reality.
Does man control his own destiny, or is fate pre-determined? At the end of the day, it doesn't matter.
It does if you argue (like most naturalists) that logic is a physical reaction in the brain. You see, the materialist/naturalist camp can't actually state that there are abstract, invariant, universal laws of logic, because that would require a departure from naturalism. When you dig further and find that the consistent materialist would claim that our entire existence and thought processes are controlled by physical laws--it becomes even more damning.
You could have evolved differently than I. How do I know that the "laws of logic" at work in your brain are the same "laws of logic" at work in my brain? Who would be able to decide the winner of a debate given the premise that they could both be operating with different laws of logic in their heads?
You can't decide the winner in that scenario. Everyone becomes a law unto themself--they alone decide the truthfulness of a claim--and the laws of logic in their head could be different than everyone else's in the world, too.
In order for knowledge to be possible, man needs (1) nature to be uniform, yesterday, today, and forever and (2) abstract, universal, invariant laws of logic that can be applied to all thoughts and ideas of men.
The Christian Theistic Worldview is the only one I've found that can supply those preconditions of knowledge. Would you be willing to defend your worldview and show how you can account and rely upon those two preconditions with absolute certainty?
That's not a straw-man argument. "Straw-man" is a debate tactic where one deliberately responds to an opponent with a logical fallacy derived from intentionally altering, misrepresenting or side-stepping the opponent's argument,
Yeah, I'm aware of what a straw man argument is. Go back and read our interaction with the Adam and Eve thing. I showed that Eve knew that she shouldn't eat from the tree because God told her ahead of time not to. The poster I was responding to was claiming that she had absolutely no knowledge that it was wrong, which is clearly false if one would simply let the text speak.
He misrepresented my position, tackling it and sending straw everywhere. I still have straw in my shoes from the collision.
Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff.
DeviantQ,
Sorry I couldn't get back to you quicker. I was out of town for the Holiday and I'm debating 20 different people at the same time. I must give you credit, however, because you actually understand what I'm trying to say. Most of the knee-jerk responses about "the Bible is stupid" and "religion is irrational" get old quick. I appreciate your tone and I'm shocked your post didn't get modded 5, Insightful.
Your confusion as to 1) derives from your use of the word "exist" in two different ways. Matter exists as an actual material thing. Platonic forms, however, do not exist in this sense; they only exist as something that men think up.
Yes, Yes, I'm aware of Plato's dualism! I'm glad you know of it, too. Do you have an answer to Plato's problem--that he can't give an account for how the world of ideas interacts with the world of matter? How can abstract, invariant, unchanging laws or ideas interact with the physical world?
If men simply "thought up" laws of logic, how can two people debate anything? How do we decide who won? Doesn't debate require a set of rules that are outside of the debaters? How can one justify imposing a Platonic form on the physical world?
Your confusion as to 2) seems to be grounded in a lack of understanding of, or perhaps a lack of consideration for, evolutionary principles. It's quite obvious that being rational is an evolutionary advantage.
Evolution boils down to survival of the fittest right? If I want to feed my family, and my car is broken down, is it not better to adopt a form of logic which says, "It is the case that this is my car and it is NOT the case that this is my car?" Steal anyone's car because my logic allows me to steal it--therefore, I can feed my family and survive?
The evolutionary argument for imposing rationality on other men has a very complex refutation. It boils down to this:
"Who cares."
Why should I adopt a form of logic that makes it easier for you to keep your car, food, and wealth? If evolution is true, it would be to my advantage to take whatever I want from you.
You have a very weak argument to impose rationality on other men. Instead, you should allow men to say and think whatever they want--why be rational if the Christian God doesn't exist? Why not let men be inconsistent and think whatever they want? After all, men think up whatever Platonic forms they want and there's no reason to believe the Platonic forms can actually interact with the physical world.
Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff.
"some folks belive the End Times are Coming or God Hates Fags." Not just God: they're a smelly nuisance, and since smoking indoors in public places has been banned in Scotland you can hardly walk past a pub or a bookies without passing a huddled group of addicts puffing away at their fags. I'm with God on hating tobacco abuse.
Apple sauce, coca-cola and honey are all types of beer. Why do I think this?
What a revelation! See how I did that? I just set aside the key features of beer (it's brown, it gets you drunk, etc) and all of a sudden everything is just like beer! Wow!
GP made some poor points but you are making a faulty argument yourself. You said you set aside the key features of Beer to prove the fallacy of his argument. Meaning thereby that you can remove all the 4 points from the list and it would still be a Beer. I agree. Now take a look at GP's list:
2. removed without a problem
4. removed without a problem
3. Tricky one. Will people really believe in a religion and its doctrines if they were not told that there is some sort of reward at the END for behaving and living in a particular way as described in their holy scriptures ? I have my doubts. (I personally think its almost as important as the next point to the belief in any religion)
1. This seems the most relevant of the points. Can there Be any religion if the followers did not completely believe in their 'God'?
Politicians and Pedophiles: Two groups of exploitive bastards who are most dangerous when they're thinking of children.
No, Laws of Logic exist and they exist outside of the material world. It is right to impose them on other thoughts and ideas because God requires us to be rational beings, as He is.
The Inductive Principle can be relied upon because God made nature to be uniform and tells us that He fixes the world to be consistent in advance.
You were doing a good job arguing logically up to this point. Here, you suddenly veer wildly off course and claim that your argument holds because of a vague statement in a millenia-old book.
I can easily make the exact same claim as you, but replace "God" with the oh-so-popular Flying Spaghetti Monster. Other than the paragraph in the old book, the argument is exactly the same, and exactly as valid. Any claim of authority for the book amounts to circular reasoning, and is easily dimissed. The whole argument amount to nothing but wishful thinking.
(A side note: If "God requires us to be rational beings, as He is", why did he forbid Adam and Eve to gain knowledge? Did he change his mind later on?)
You're the one who strayed the argument from the bible as a whole to Jesus. Also, as I pointed out in the first quote, Jesus made it plain that fornicators don't go to heaven. Period. "Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle" and all that.
So, you're another one of those "cafeteria christians" who picks and chooses what they want to believe ... why not just admit its all a fraud?
No, what I was saying is that he is right, dogmatic beleif in anything can be compared to religion, but you can't claim something is religion unless it has a spiritual aspect as that is what religion is defined as being.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I can easily make the exact same claim as you, but replace "God" with the oh-so-popular Flying Spaghetti Monster. Other than the paragraph in the old book, the argument is exactly the same, and exactly as valid.
You can certainly claim that the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) provides the necessary preconditions for logic--however, the Scriptural evidence for the FSM utterly pales in comparison to the Christian God.
There are Scriptures in evidence for Christianity--not so with the FSM.
There are thousands of manuscripts that textual critics can use to have a certain level of confidence that we can reconstruct the autographa.
And lastly, the FSM worldview is not available to you today. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you are not a true adherent to the FSM religion--you don't really believe in it. If not, you cannot use it as a worldview in order to try to disprove the Christian worldview.
Remember, the Christian claim is that if you reject God, knowledge is impossible. What happens when you construct a worldview that is obviously false to refute Christian Theism? To what worldview do you return if you were to show that the FSM provides the necessary preconditions for intelligibility? Do you become a FSM follower?
At the end of the day, you still live inside a non-Christian worldview that cannot account for the preconditions to logic that I specified earlier. That is, you are being inconsistent. You are living inside a worldview that contradicts itself.
Now, when you must invent a worldview in order to defeat mine--I ask, why aren't you willing to defend your own worldview? Why won't you put your worldview up to the challenge?
Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff.
You can certainly claim that the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) provides the necessary preconditions for logic--however, the Scriptural evidence for the FSM utterly pales in comparison to the Christian God.
Irrelevant. The number of times a statement has been written, as well as the age of said writing, has no bearing whatsoever on its truth, from a logical standpoint. Even if you still wanted to use this measure of authority, then there are just as ancient and widespread writings that deny your Christian texts, and you would end up losing anyway.
And lastly, the FSM worldview is not available to you today. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you are not a true adherent to the FSM religion--you don't really believe in it. If not, you cannot use it as a worldview in order to try to disprove the Christian worldview.
I was under the impression that we were arguing by logic here. My personal subjective beliefs should at no point be relevant.
Remember, the Christian claim is that if you reject God, knowledge is impossible. What happens when you construct a worldview that is obviously false to refute Christian Theism? To what worldview do you return if you were to show that the FSM provides the necessary preconditions for intelligibility? Do you become a FSM follower?
I am not sure what your argument here is - you seem to have misunderstood my intent. I am making the argument that the FSM does not provide the necessary preconditions for intelligibility, in just the same way that Christianity does not.
Now, when you must invent a worldview in order to defeat mine--I ask, why aren't you willing to defend your own worldview? Why won't you put your worldview up to the challenge?
My worldview is that it is, indeed, impossible to find solid logical ground for knowledge. I have no way of trusting even my own senses, so how could I ever make a statement about the "real world", when I might be being continuously deceived about its nature? It might even be your christian god who is deceiving both me and you, and neither of us can ever know.
My worldview is that this does not matter. I apply Occam's razor liberally, and accept the universe at face value. I do not feel the need to create a greater authority than myself to make the universe absolute. I accept that the world will always be ambiguous, and I adapt to it. I live by morals of my own choosing, and I am "good" out of my own free will. I see all acts of kindness as being made by humans, and I do not devalue them by assigning their existence to some outside influence.
It's for agnostics that is everything is open to debate. Atheists believe there is no God (that's what it really means to be an atheist). Agnostics believe there is not enough evidence either way so they don't believe in God but they can't say there isn't one.
So yeah, atheists will stand their ground stating there is no God, no debate there.
Go hug some trees.
"I have no idea if you personally are guilty of any of these"
Wow. Way to cast the debate in non-prejudicial terms.
Bottom line: I do not care to debate whether God exists. I think the rational pursuit of a proof for or against is a waste of time. I'm rational enough to know that humans are not entirely rational beings, and I do not choose to submit my faith to rational scrutiny. I also don't use my faith as a crutch to patch up holes in scientific hypotheses.
The thing I can and will debate is my contention that MY faith has nothing to do with YOUR freedom to do whatever you damn well please, and MY faith isn't responsible for starving children in Africa, bird flu, war, strife, pestilence, death, and tooth decay.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
"Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle"
That was talking about rich people, and Paul wrote those words you referenced about fornication. Jesus!=Paul.
Again, I have no use for your disparaging labels. My faith is my own, and nobody else gets a say. I don't disparage your choice not to believe. Why is it so important to you that I believe as you do? Don't you have the courage of your own convictions?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Hey, I'm not the one labeling, you're self labeling "christian", and the wacky "christian right" self-identify as "christian". How am I supposed to tell _anything_ about you from your self-identification as a "christian"? (Or democrat, conservative, or anything... :-)
Actually, I'd be surprised if there were more than 5% "christians" who didn't believe that Jesus was the son of god, or at least a prophet spoken to directly by god..., but I've been surprised before.
As for me, I'm a "Radical Athiest" (thanks to Douglas Adams for the term), but I don't deny the possible existence of God, but I'd say it's no more likely than orbiting tea pots or invisible fire breathing dragons hiding in my closet.
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"How am I supposed to tell _anything_ about you from your self-identification as a "christian"? "
You can't, which is my point. Prejudices are bad, mmmkay?
I don't know if Jesus was the son of God. I don't know what a prophet sounds like. I don't think that a book written 1300 years ago by a committee is the Unvarnished Word of God. I do know wisdom when I read it. I am very comfortable with the idea of not knowing stuff...certainty is not a requirement for my mental health. I think that's where a lot of people have problems...they get all antsy if they don't KNOW stuff, so they make up stuff for themselves to KNOW.
Does that make me a "cafeteria Christian" like some other poster labeled me? Don't much care. I am responsible for my own belief structure. I think it's cowardly and shortsighted to outsource that to somebody who Knows The Truth.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Well it would help if you could define it. Do you mean free logic or classical logic? I tend to use intuitionistic logic and modal logic rather classical a lot of the time. I don't use free logic because it simply isn't practical - it's incapable of adequately yielding practical results in almost any situation. So yes, I guess I do disagree - not to say that those logics are "wrong" merely that they aren't always the most useful, nor the most definitive.
It would seem that way, given that there isn't even agreement over what to call logic, and exactly which rules should count, and which should be ignored. Is it so hard to believe that logic, which is ultimately just the modelling and systematizing of thoughts, should be able to be created by minds, such as those of humans, that are capable of reflecting upon themselves, and thinking about thoughts?
You might ask why there is as much agreement as there is - but that's a matter of practicality and the experience of a (presumed) common external world shaping things. If I were to create a basic rule for what happens when I drop and object from a height, would you be surprised if I arrived at "it falls" just like you did? Probably not. Our shared experience of the world results in a limited set of rules that produce practical and useful results. The rule "It completes a small circle before hovering", for instance, doesn't get us far. There are, of course, many different answers of varying practicality. My "it falls" isn't as useful and Newton's laws which provide both more detail of how it falls, and situations of when it might not. You can use general relativity to cover even more situations in even more detail. None of those rules for what happens when you drop something, however, are "true" as the inconsistency between general relativity and quantum mechanics shows. There is some other rule that we haven't found yet that is more practical because it cover quantum mechanical scales.
By the same token you can expect considerations of rules of logic to generally converge upon systems and rules that give practical results - that is rules that provide chains of thought that are extremely convincing. Originally logic was a matter of syllogisms, and was it competition with rhetoricians. Logic, however, found a different niche - it needed to be able to convince you, as well as convincing other people, and picking apart problems in your own and others arguments, and diverged from rhetoric. But given the shared external world, and the relative similarity of human minds, it should not be a huge surprise that we converge toward similar rules when determining how to systematize our thoughts so as to be most convincing to ourselves and others. Exactly which rules one converges upon really depends on exactly what phenomena, or what thoughts, one wishes to render more rigorous. Depending upon your interest you can arrive at different logics - or, if you're a pluralist like me, you can use whatever logic seems best suited to dealing with the problem at hand.
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That's fine. That's what you've decided... but someone else may have decided something different. I'm simply saying, unless you cite a higher power, you can't say your view of things is "right" and someone elses is "wrong". Of course... you can "say" that, but the only way it realy matters is if you have the power to make them change their behavior.
My point, is that your morality is only relevant to you and those who agree with you. If there was a larger/stronger group of people who had a different sent of values your view of "right" means shit. Furthermore, your morality is exactly like you defined it... entirely deduced... if I was a miserable person who found great pleasure and only great pleasure in butchering helpless puppy dogs it would be "right" for me to gain as much pleasure for my miserable existance by butchering those little puppies.
If there is a God and He has a standard by which He expects us all to live and will judge us by (say like the Muslim Allah) then you might want to do what He wants. If there isn't... then fuck it all live for yourself now because tomorrow you die.
I've never understood the position of "Without God I might as well go out and kill people in the streets and rape babies".
I agree that killing people and raping babies isn't something most people want to do even if they could do so without consequences. My point is that without a universal standard for "right" and "wrong", a standard that could only be provided by something outside of man... you can't say killing people and raping babies is "wrong" and mean it any way other then "I don't like it". Morality simply becomes a way to express your personal feelings towards particular actions.
To your second point about moral norms. I don't entirely disagree that peopel have interpreted God's word differently or slightly differently troughoutout history. But the point isn't the interpretation... the point is that God has set a universal moral standard that He will hold people accountable to. A universal moral standard outside of man is radically different philosophically then a standard deduced and created entirely by men (and therefore subject to change by men).
To your last point. Relgion is powerful because it explains things... Athiesm, Agnosticism, Buddhism, Christianity, etc. all explain things. The only thing that really matters is if your beliefs are right. If you believe in God and there isn't one... you're probably not too bad off. If you believe in Buddah, but there is only Allah then you're in some trouble I think. A higher power is only irrelevant if he/she/it doesn't actually exists or if they do exist doesn't give a flying fuck about you. If however a higher power does exist and does expect something from you and intends to act on that expectation... well that matters.
I actually think we agree. Without a universal standard of right and wrong it's up to each person to choose what is right for them in any given situation and that decision is based entirely on their situation and desires (however "healthy" or "twisted" they may be). Nonviolence was "right" for Gandhi and extreme violence was "right" for Pol Pot.
The weakness of this system is that society's values can be hijacked (and example are strewn throughout this thread). An element of pragmatism, intelligence, and personal responsibility is necessary for a practicing humanist.
I disagree. The weakness of the system is that it's only power is based on the societies power to enforce its norms. If a stronger society with a moral norm of violence and opperession of a different societies was to exist it's system would be "right". Right and wrong, in any non-universal system, will be determined by the society with the most power. Ultimately even God-based morality systems are based in this understanding... except God has the ultimate power to excert His system of morality and hold humans accountable to it.
A moral system without the power (not always violent power is required) to enforce it is a pretty meaningless sytem.
The purported virgin birth - there is no proof whatsoever that such was possible, and a lot of evidence that it never happened. For example, the chromosomes would have to come from somewhere ... or are you implying that Jesus only had chromosomes from his mother, similar to "virgin births" for reptiles that have parthenogenesis under stressful conditions - which would have made him a female ... (no y chromosome donor) ...
My claim isn't that God is a fornicator, but that God doesn't exist, and that he would be a fornicator by the definition of the bible, which is a ridiculous book. Lets face it, if someone today gave birth to a kid and said it was a virgin birth, you wouldn't believe it ... in those days, they were a lot more ignorant about such things. No sex education in the schools. No tv. No dirty magazines.
Why would I want to ban the bible? As hate literature, it should be studied as an example of what small-minded delusional psychotics will cling to to justify their fantasies of self-importance and significance. After all, it was written by people who were seriously out of touch with reality.
Humans have been superstitious for tens of thousands of years, long before the bible. Why should this new god be any different? Oh, right - he's not - its the same old fables and promises with the names and places changed.
Coryoth,
If I'd known you don't believe in absolute truth or universal, abstract, invariant laws of logic--I wouldn't have wasted my time trying to reason with you. What is the point? I mean, why don't I just adopt the logical convention that says "Theism is true" and then just declare myself the winner of this little slashdot debate?
Yes, logicians differ and prove things using different methods, but that doesn't mean that logic is merely convention. You don't treat it as if it were a convention when you disagree with a colleague, calling a statement irrational.
You are clearly a very intelligent person. You have studied Philosophy and you are aware of Epistemology. That's why I'm so surprised that you make claims that you don't know the laws of logic will change in the future, and that absolute truth does not exist--or at the very least, is unknowable.
You have admitted that within your worldview (your presuppositions that you take as self-attesting) knowledge isn't truly possible.
You have a pragmatic approach to logic: it works, but if it stops working, the laws could change in the future. That assumption about laws of thought and reason make this debate (and all debate) worthless.
You are inconsistent. You have the knowledge of God within yourself which makes it possible to know things about the world and about yourself. Because you know God, you have a rationale for the laws of logic, the uniformity of nature, man's dignity and ethical absolutes. You can then pursue science and other aspects of life with some measure of success--even though you cannot account for that success. You cannot provide the necessary preconditions for the intelligibility of logic, science or ethics.
It is the Christian's contention that all non-Christian worldviews are beset with internal contradictions, and beliefs which do not render science, logic, or ethics intelligible. OTOH, the Christian Theistic worldview demands our intellectual commitment because it does provide the preconditions of intelligibility for man's reasoning, experience, and dignity.
The proof that Christianity is true is that if it were not, we would not be able to prove anything. This is the boat you're in. Within your worldview, you cannot prove anything. You actually oppose yourself.
Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff.
If there is a God and He has a standard by which He expects us all to live and will judge us by (say like the Muslim Allah) then you might want to do what He wants.
You still have no legitimacy making any claims about what He wants. Al you have is a book writen by people telling you what to do. One of a hundred different contradictory books, and the only reason people follow some particular book is hereditary indoctrination. It's the book their parents had, the book their parents were indoctrinated in. It's nothing but peopler claiming it is The Word Of God. If you were born to different parents, you would be insisting a different human-written set of instructions was The Word Of God. And even for any given book, it's still just people telling you what it means. You've still got Sunni-Christians saying homosexuality is a sin against Shia-Christians saying homosexuality is not a sin.
Every religion on earth is a minority. There is no religion that even approaches 50% of the global population.
Now maybe this is a peculiar artical of pure religious faith that I have, but I happen to beleive that if there is a God and he did hand down true-word-of-God-Scripture, I beleive that God would not and could not be an ABSOLUTELY INCOMPETENT MORON. I believe that if there were a true-word-of-God-Scripture, that it would be infinitely obvious and infinitely beyond any fraudulent scripture written by man. No possible man made fake could possibly compete with any genuine divine scripture. And by that standard, every supposed scripture on earth is a dismal failure. No genuine divine scripture could possibly sit around a thousand of years being in minority status being debated against various other minority bogus scriptures.
And based on the faith that God would actually be divinely competent and obviously better than human fakes, the only possible conclusion is that all supposed scriptures are equally fradulent. There may be a God, but he sure as hell did not hand down any genuine Diive Scripture of His Will. Everyone proclaiming what God Wants is equally full of shit. Kill the infidels! Kill (or Cure) the gays! Sacrifice a goat!
And to any extent you want to claim there is some "common aspects of morality shared by almost all religions", well guess what? Those are the ones accepted by Atheists as well. And Atheists are the only ones who can unbiasedly pick out the true and good and selfevident aspects of morality from the various religions, to unbiasedly sort that out from the various batshit items being pushed by the various competing religions and competing sects of any given religion.
And I would like to close with a killer fact. If we were to attempt to measure the morality... that is obviously a an impossible thing to actually do and which various religions would be contradictory on... but it seems to me that crime rate would be about the closest objective measure to approximate "morality"... it turns out that Atheists are substantially UNDER REPRESENTED as a percentage of the US prision population compared to the percentation of national population, according to published US government statistics. I can Google up a link if you don't beleive it.
Atheists are substantially less likely to be in prison. I see only two possible meanings to that. Either Atheists are more moral (to the extent that violations of law tends to parallel violation of morality), or Atheists are all high-IQ supra-genious criminal masterminds and don't get caught and imprisoned from the crimes they commit. The second option seems pretty silly to me... I hardly think Atheists have some special uber-smarts over everyone else. So it seems to me that Atheists not only *do* have morals, but that they tend to be better at creating and following them. I would suggest it's exactly because Atheists need to actively and fully internalize morals/ethics in a way that mere religious decree does not involve.
Some people consider di
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Because there are contradictory points of view on God, doesn't mean that God didn't speak.
the only reason people follow some particular book is hereditary indoctrination.
This is stupid. People convert from Islam to Christianity, from Athiests/Agnostics to Islam, from Christian to Buddhist. Hereditary indocrination has as much to do with what religion people choose as it does in what they consider "right" and "wrong". Either way, it still doesn't free you up from the ultimate question of whether or not God exists and if so how does He interact with you.
I happen to beleive that if there is a God and he did hand down true-word-of-God-Scripture...
Great, so you have a belief. And you've chosen to elevate your belief about the beliefs of others... that's fine for you, make your own choices, but it doesn't give you belief any creedance outside of your own head.
Your logic is flawed... as I understand it you seem to think that if God spoke He must speak in a way that everyone would be forced to beleive He spoke (you're defining what your God would do... and if the real God doesn't live up to this then you write Him off, and since things haven't unfolded in the way you have defined you're essentially justifying your own conclusion).
Show me your athiest statistics. Your two possible options fail to include the fact that the study may be wrong, that people may choose religion after they have been convicted or committed a crime, that many people say they are some religion but don't practice its tenents, etc. And of course at best... you end up with a situation where you have a correlation which as we all know doesn't prove causation.
My original point and the point I still stand by is that athiests cannot claim any sort of absolute morality that transcends all men. There is no universal "right" and "wrong" in an athiest morality model. There is only the choices men make and the consequences and viewpoints imposed upon those choices by other men. Moral norms are are just norms, cultural artifacts, and are only as relevant as the power they have supporting and enforcing them. Pol Pot is wrong now only because our society thinks he is wrong, not because he violated any sort of universal principles. If Pol Pot had some how gained power then he would not be "wrong" today... at least according to the limits of non-God/higher power moral systems.
I'm sure you're aware that christians through the agers are guilty of a multitude of astrocities, many of which commited in the name of God. But even if we leave ancient history and talk only about oh say stuff that's happened this last century, christians in Norway (the christian church in norway is significantly *more* moderate than the catholic church in USA) are responsible directly or indirectly for all of the following:
You're rigth -- I haven't personally suffered much at the hands of christianty. I'm luck enough to live in a country where christianity have little influence and little power. I'm very very happy that christianity has mostly been losing it's battles lately.
Two points:
Wanna buy a bridge? After all, you've already bought a "stairway to heaven", sight unseen.
But you can extend "higher power" to such a broad definition as to be meaningless in the context of religion. Can "reason" be a "higher power"? I argue that it can. The basic axioms you start with (E.g.: Maximum happiness for the maximum number of people) lead you to a moral life. So while you can argue that a "higher power" is neccessary, it becomes a fairly meaningless phrase, since everyone believes in something that could be considered a "higher" power.
Last post!
Let me see if I can explain this in very small words.
I (this carbon unit, right here sitting on my sofa)
Am not (statement of negation)
Responsible (culpable, the cause of, had anything whatsoever to do with)
For the actions (the bad stuff you're talking about)
of ANYBODY ELSE (any person, place, thing, or idea that is NOT this carbon unit sitting right here on my sofa).
My faith, my PERSONAL relationship with God, is not responsible for ANY thing that you've ever heard of. I have nothing to do with the alleged Christians that touched you in your bathing suit place.
You don't have a beef with Christianity. You have a beef with certain humans with whom you have crossed paths. I (along with 99.999% of the Christians on Earth) had nothing to do with it.
So take it up with them.
For the record, I am a staunch believer in a secular society, the separation of Church and State, the availability of secular education, and the teaching of evolution as an important study of the fundamental mechanisms of life. I am NOT a Creationist. I think that Creationists lack intellectual integrity, and that stories of how God was involved in the creation of the Earth are not scientifically based (although they are sociologically interesting, and valuable to adherents of some religions). I support gay marriage, gay divorce, gay child support, and/or any other legal relationships that two consenting adults might wish to undertake with one another. I think the State should have nothing whatsoever to say about marriage, apart from the normal enforcement of contract law.
Equal rights? Come on now. You don't seriously think I'm arguing that, do you?
You might have a beef, but it's not with me.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
You're cute when you're feeling all superior.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
It sjust that I've been there, done that, saw the lies and wilful ignorance, and figured that being an atheist was at least intellecutally honest ...
You've been somewhere, and jumped to a bunch of unsubstantiated conclusions, and decided to be an atheist because you thought that's the cool thing to do. And now, as an Evangelical Atheist, you feel the need to denigrate people who disagree with you.
That's what you call intellectual honesty? Sounds to me like you're looking for other people to validate your choices, and rag on them when they don't.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
If you were being honest with yourself you would probably realise that that is essentially what you started out by doing: you have essentially made it axiomatic that God exists from the outset. You should also realise that, as much as you may wish to adopt that particular logical convention, there is no compulsion for anyone else to accept it. If no-one else accepts it then the only person you are convincing that you've "won the debate" is yourself - and I think you were convinced of that before we began, and will be long after we cease arguing.
On the contrary, I do. The reason I can object is because we share a particular convention. It is entirely reasonable to point out when a person contravenes a logic that both they and I accept. If they don't agree with that particular logic, well nothing I can say is going to change their mind, not unless I can convince them of the effectiveness of the logic in question first. The point of logic, particularly, say, classical logic, is that it has near universal agreement: almost everyone accepts it (People who have more experience dealing with logic, of course, tend to be more inclined to quibble - but then they can make the case for the greater efficacy of their preferred logic for the particular case). With that near universal agreement it is entirely possible to discuss things, and object to contravention of the convention. Logic doesn't have to be absolute for this to work, merely very widely accepted. And I've already given good reasons for wide acceptance - that logic is constructed from experiences of a shared common external world - that don't require any absolutes or eternal Platonic forms.
On the contrary, I have admitted that absolute knowledge is not possible in my worldview. That still allows knowledge, it's just that it becomes contingent knowledge. Of course contingent knowledge is hardly something new - us mathematicians (who I suspect you would argue are playing in the world of eternal platonic absolutes) have been dealing with it ever since the questions about foundations got seriously explored. Take the Continuum Hypothesis - that there is no cardinal number between the number of natural numbers, and the number of real numbers - it is neither true, not false, in any absolute sense; it is independent of ZFC, and is, if you like, a contingent truth: it is either true, or false, depending on what assumptions you wish to accept and either case is as valid (and as consistent) as the other. This is, of course, hard for people use to thinking in terms of absolutes to accept - surely there either is, or is not, such a cardinal number? Not in the mathematical universe, no - it is a choice that can be made and there simply isn't an absolute truth either way. Once you get used to dealing with such contingent truth (the axiom of choice and any results that follow from it, for instance, are such a truths) in your everyday work it doesn't seem so bad. We've been trained to think in absolutes so it takes some practice, but it is easy enough to get the hang of it.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
No, you misunderstand. I'm not talking about each person having a basic axiom or believing in some higher power... I'm saying that morality based on a true real existing higher power that has a moral system and intends to at some level enforce it. Personal beliefs and axioms are subjective and individual.
... lead you to a moral life." What do you mean by "moral life"? I think you've predefined this term based on your personal moral system or upbringing or culture. I think your "moral life" may differ very much from that of a Muslim extermist or Amish.
If your choose a supreme axiom, who cares? I don't. So your axiom has not value to me unless you and others who accept it intend to enforce it on others. When morality, the actual defintions of "right" and "wrong", is based in any human system and truly open to human interpretation is doesn't matter what you choose as your moral system only how well you can enforce it and act it out in your own life (meaning others will not enforce their views on you). For example, in Christian systems, Christians (or at least people who claimed to be Christians) slaughtered thousands of people during the crusades. It's honestly and ultimately not up to them to determine if it was right, they would say it was... the Muslims woudl say it wasn't... today we may say it wasn't... but that's all irrelevant. God sets the standard and ulitmately God will hold them accountable for His standard. Outside of this, a moral standard outside of man, you cannot have a universal morality.
Belief does not make for reality.
So at the risk of extending this longer... it's odd to me that someone who doesn't believe in a higher power and doesn't believe in an after life would honestly accept something like the "Maximum happiness for the maximum number of people". Why should any one else honestly matter to you? You will die. You don't realy know when... would it not be more honest to seek pleasure for yourself at all costs. Now obviously a sophisticated person realizes they have to compromise and play nice with others b/c others have power and others will not take being mistreated or treated unfairly for too long... but given the chance shouldn't you always do whatever is in your own best interest? I also wonder why someone would actually care about what happens after they die? It seem that that is the most meaningless of all pursuits... you're dead... you have no idea what happened, whether it was good or bad. You get no real reward... who cares if everyone thinks you're the greatest person who ever lived and celebrates your life every other day... you're dead and rotting just like Pol Pot. It seems to me that this type of system is just an elected set of beliefs to make someone feel important and meaningful and less hopeless, and is promoted by many because it does a wonderful job of keeping the masses in check.
I think I will not post again so one last thought: you said "The basic axioms you start with
Thank you for explaining. I'm no Marxist scholar so I didn't put it all together.
I can see how, if you define religion in a certain way and oppression in a certain way, then you can make conclusions such as oppression is an essential feature of religion (or, as I think you said it, religion *is* oppression). Since I don't really agree with the conclusion, I guess if I knew more about the general argument, I might be able to say which of the more fundamental assumptions or definitions I disagree with. But, I don't, so I'll just bow out of the conversation by thanking you again for the explanation. You were +4 Informative.
You've told me nothing I do not know; God is the result of instinctive thought morphing into conscious thought, the explanation of the unexplainable; the scientific process at work in a mind without the ability to draw full conclusions; before that mind had the prior knowledge to asses the full scope of what those conclusions could even have been.
Basically what I am saying is that "The Story of Creation" and the entirety of scientific explanation of the existence of everything to this point in time tell the same story; one just tells it prior to the 190,000 years of knowledge we have gained since man acquired conscious thought.
Almost like in the Matrix (and I'm sure the movie is referencing this concept); "Most minds are not ready to be woken up." The transition will not happen overnight; people have to evolve, just like how it has happened up to this point. Screaming "Attention religious people! Mankind made up God to scare ourselves into survival!" will not solve anything, but pointing out to people that science is not some new evil but merely the "how" to the "what" they've had all along will surely ease that process along.
The bottom line: Science didn't kill God, it just figured out what God really is, and that's OK.
Oh, and just to clarify on that Noah's Ark thing:
No, it's a total fairy tale, but the point is not the event but the moral of the story: Don't sit around and forget about the world around you like everything that was washed away by the flood did. Be aware of what could happen (God told Noah), help others achieve this awareness (Noah told his family), and think not only of yourself but of whatever other pieces of nature possible (Noah brought animals to repopulate).
Shortened: Be Aware, alert the herd, preserve the enviroment you exist in.
Shorter: Ensure survival.
That's all it ever was.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Isn't he omnipotent? "Hey, I'm God, the burn's healed. And there will be much rejoicing."
Oh, wait, we have to treat the burn ourselves or decided to have it treated ourselves because otherwise it won't have any meaning? Buddy, if I'm burning, just treat the frakking burn. The Christian god's neediness when it comes to forcing people to love and worship him only further convinces me that if he's real, I don't want anything to do with him.
Christian God says: "Love me or burn! It's your choice to love me, and worship me, but if you don't I'll send you straight to hell. You're supposed to be thankful to me for providing you with a way out of the cleverly designed damnation trap I allowed you to fall into, I designed a system where the only way you could be saved for falling into my trap is through blood sacrifice. Now, either you're going to appreciate that, or you're going to this nasty painful place I designed for people who don't see how neat I am, where they are punished with eternal torture. Don't you see the love?"
I really don't.
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
In regards to your point, a humanist living in a society with a moral norm of violence and oppression would tend to oppose those facets of the society as conflicting with the "do not do unto others" touchstone. A humanist won't be hurting people even if society says it is all right. For instance, a humanist in United States culture today is likely to oppose the death penalty, have given serious thought to to both sides of the issue on abortion, and be extremely uncomfortable with portions of U.S. foreign policy.
>Do you have an answer to Plato's problem--that he can't give an account for how the world of ideas interacts with the world of matter?
The world of ideas interacts with the world of matter through us human beings, especially since that world of ideas is completely dependent upon us.
>How can abstract, invariant, unchanging laws or ideas interact with the physical world?
I wasn't aware that they had to.
>The evolutionary argument for imposing rationality on other men has a very complex refutation.
That's the beauty of it. You don't have to impose rationality on them, since evolution already has.
>If evolution is true, it would be to my advantage to take whatever I want from you.
No more than it makes sense for an individual bee to steal honey from its hive. Individual humans are less able to survive than a group of humans, so while stealing from others may have short-term advantages, it will hurt your chances of survival in the long run.
>Instead, you should allow men to say and think whatever they want--why be rational if the Christian God doesn't exist?
Because the existence of the Christian god has nothing to do with rationality. Humans were rational before that god was invented.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
Interesting opinion... doesn't Buddhism offer enlightenment as the ultimate goal and the path to attaining enlightment requires practicing, at least to some degree, the principles that it teaches? I've never studied Buddhist morality models... that may be interesting.
I agree with yoru second point, but restress that the humanists view of morality is no more valid then Pol Pot's. We all think Pol Pot was an evil guy who did terrible and wrong things... and we think that because we have views of morality different then Pol Pot's, but without any sort of objective non-human standard to measure morality by there is no real difference. Morality, under these systems, is a way of describing one's opinions on a particular action, but is not universal, it's entirely and completely relative.
Yes, the Christian Scriptures age and claims are relevant when compared against the FSM. The FSM is clearly invented and its credentials are clearly fabricated. Not so with Christianity. Even if you reject the Christian claims, you must admit that the manuscriptural and historical evidence beats the snot out of the FSM.
Besides--It is not the Flying Spaghetti Monster claim that if you reject it you undermine knowledge, science, and human dignity. That is the Christian claim and it is proven by our very dialog.
I was under the impression that we were arguing by logic here. My personal subjective beliefs should at no point be relevant.
Your worldview is very relevant here--because you are arguing from it. Every argument you make needs to be analyzed within the light of your basest presuppositions. For example, my worldview accounts for miracles and abstract universal absolutes like laws of logic. Your worldview denies them.
The age-old Christianity vs. Atheism debate ultimately comes down to a debate between two different worldviews. I have my set of presuppositions, you have yours. So the task before us is to become philosophically tough minded and to determine whose worldview is more rational. Whose worldview provides intelligibility to the human experience?
My worldview is that it is, indeed, impossible to find solid logical ground for knowledge.
Thanks for being intellectually honest here. My question to you is this: Do you really believe this? Do you live your life this way? If you are even unsure of your own senses--why not jump out in front of the next bus you see to see what happens. After all, you could be deceived--what looks like a bus may actually be a fluffy down pillow.
I'm not actually asking you to do this. I am trying to make a point: you say that a solid logical ground for knowledge is impossible to find. But you don't live your life that way. Rather, you presume upon the Christian Theistic worldview for a time, assuming things like laws of logic and the uniformity of nature, and then proceed forth denying that the Christian God exists.
It is like the man who denies he is breathing oxygen--even though he took a breath to tell you.
Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff.
The world of ideas interacts with the world of matter through us human beings, especially since that world of ideas is completely dependent upon us.
So we humans have the ability to make nature be uniform? Seems you think man is pretty powerful if we can make matter obey our ideas.
How can abstract, invariant, unchanging laws or ideas interact with the physical world?
I wasn't aware that they had to.
If you want to rely on the Inductive Principle and uniformity of nature--they have to be abstract, invariant, and unchanging laws that rule over the physical world.
That's the beauty of it. You don't have to impose rationality on them, since evolution already has.
Ahhh, the "Evolution of the Gaps" argument. If you can't explain it--Evolution did it! Brilliant! Yet, it's unargued philosophical bias at work here. Why, it couldn't be God who created the Laws of Logic and uniformity of nature--therefore, it must be evolution!
No more than it makes sense for an individual bee to steal honey from its hive. Individual humans are less able to survive than a group of humans, so while stealing from others may have short-term advantages, it will hurt your chances of survival in the long run.
You misunderstand me. This is not a compelling reason to demand that man be rational. By the way, humans don't live in hives--unlike bees, humans can and do survive on their own. So, are you going to stand on a soapbox and say to your fellow man, "Now come on, be rational everyone! After all, evolution created it!" Silliness of the highest order. I ask the non-Christian again: what compelling reason is there to demand that humans be rational in their thoughts?
Because the existence of the Christian god has nothing to do with rationality. Humans were rational before that god was invented.
Question begging, my friend. It's your worldview speaking here.
Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff.
Yes, the Christian Scriptures age and claims are relevant when compared against the FSM. The FSM is clearly invented and its credentials are clearly fabricated. Not so with Christianity. Even if you reject the Christian claims, you must admit that the manuscriptural and historical evidence beats the snot out of the FSM.
The manuscriptural evidence is words on a paper. Once again, no matter how many times you write a statement down, it doesn't make it any more true. You simply cannot argue validity from the age or number of copies of a text. And sure, there is historical evidence for a number of things in the Bible, but I doubt very much that you can point me to historical evidence for the exact parts you are arguing here.
Besides--It is not the Flying Spaghetti Monster claim that if you reject it you undermine knowledge, science, and human dignity. That is the Christian claim and it is proven by our very dialog.
The FSM claims anything that is convenient in a debate such as this. That is its purpose - to show that arguing from divinity is meaningless. The point of the FSM is that I can take any argument you make, and make the same argument but replacing the christian god with the FSM. As you really can't claim any kind of authority from the age of your words on a paper (no, really, you can't) both arguments are equally valid, or more specifically, invalid.
Your worldview is very relevant here--because you are arguing from it.
No, I am arguing from logic, about my worldview. The two are distinct. Any rational participant in a debate should be able to tell the two apart.
Thanks for being intellectually honest here. My question to you is this: Do you really believe this? Do you live your life this way? If you are even unsure of your own senses--why not jump out in front of the next bus you see to see what happens. After all, you could be deceived--what looks like a bus may actually be a fluffy down pillow.
Of course I believe this, and of course I don't - that is a particularly weak strawman argument. You seemed to have missed my point: I know I can not ever trust my senses, but the only useful choice is to take the world at face value: What I see and experience really is real. It might not be, but if it isn't, there is nothing I can do about it anyway, and I have no idea whatsoever the "real" world is. So the possibility does not need to be considered in any choice I make. I can dismiss it as remotely possible but irrelevant.
I'm not actually asking you to do this. I am trying to make a point: you say that a solid logical ground for knowledge is impossible to find. But you don't live your life that way. Rather, you presume upon the Christian Theistic worldview for a time, assuming things like laws of logic and the uniformity of nature, and then proceed forth denying that the Christian God exists.
I do not deny that he exists. I conclude that, having seen no evidence of his existence, he most likely does not exist. If somebody wants to convince he does, I require some quite extraordinary proof for such an extraordinary claim. But if such evidence was presented, I would change my opinion. On the other hand, I see evidence for uniformity in nature and logic every day.
My argument was never that I can prove my own position from absolute principles, because I know I can not. My point is that you can not, even though you claim to. Let's jump back to this question:
Whose worldview provides intelligibility to the human experience?
Not yours, and not mine. This is a useless measure of validity.
Your argument is nothing but circular reasoning - "if my worldview is correct, I can prove it is correct". You can create any number of exactly equivalent worldviews that make the same claim but call on different authorities, such as the earlier FSM. These are obviously not true, but the only difference between those and yours is words on a paper.
It is like the man who denies he is breathing oxygen--even though he took a breath to tell you.
I deny that I am breathing pixie dust. Yet I still take a breath to tell you.
I'm afraid that I'm only familiar with Buddhism in a layman's sense. I'm much less concerned with enlightenment or heaven or nirvana than with how the practical, real-world application of related religious beliefs work. In this regard and in my opinion, the Buddhist Eightfold Path is passes with flying colors. It is worth noting that the basic tenets of most major religions pass with flying colors if you restrict yourself to ignoring dogma and look only at easily accessible teaching of the texts. For example, if Christians actually followed the Sermon on the Mount, it doesn't take much to imagine that most criticisms of contemporary Christianity would evaporate.
If I am allowed to put words in your mouth for a moment, I think you are arguing against the practical flaws of moral relevatism. This is a tremendously valid critique of many styles of humanism. The question rapidly becomes how one defines society, which is unfortunately a bit of a wiggle word or loosely defined term. As you point out, it is an obvious fallacy to evaluate someone's actions if their society isn't included in your source society. This is a grey area in which discussions of humanism tend to end up, with a trading of sterile hypothetical or historical scenarios. There are plenty of tricky examples you can work out. Whether humanism resolves these tends to come down to individual opinion and interpretation.
That said, your extreme choice of Pol Pot is easily resolved. If you take the "safe" choice of global society, Pol Pot's actions are terrible. Unfortunately, "global society" doesn't really exist (in my opinion.) Expecting most humanists to be fully engaged with society on a global level is troublesome at best. However, would Pol Pot's actions be considered moral for a humanist of Cambodian society? Clearly not. Pol Pot caused tremendous harm to many people.
Sometimes discussion of "greater good" comes up at this point, since one could pedantically argue that Pol Pot believed he was doing more good than harm by speeding the arrival of Communist utopia. I personally don't think that greater good works as a measure in real life because it requires immediate harm for hypothetical good. For example, in my construction of humanism, I could not justify torturing a terrorist to save a city from a bomb, because there is no guarantee that the terrorist will be truthful or that the city can actually be saved. The only life I am justified in sacrificing to save other lives is my own. Your milage may vary.
Does not answer the question.
Awww ... is the fundie all upset because people think that religion is stupid?
Too bad, but religion is just plain dumb. Always has been. Always will be. Just like all superstition.
Aww, is the little bigot all patronizing?
You're entitled to your opinion, Sparky. What a novel concept, huh?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Aw - the religious bigot xian is all mad because I made fun of the wiggly man on a stick being a bastard.
Tough shit.
Simple facts:
No matter how you slice it, Jesus WAS a bastard. And next time, maybe they should use Wilson's Nails. Anyway, have fun arguing with yourself for the next week, because I'm moving and will be too busy to bother with something as foolish as God or "faith-based religion".
Now if you could show me a religion that wasn't faith-based, you'd have something. But you can't, so you have nothing. That's not being bigoted, just realistic.
>So we humans have the ability to make nature be uniform? Seems you think man is pretty powerful if we can make matter obey our ideas.
Nope. Nature is uniform, regardless what we think of it. All of our so-called Platonic forms are just internal representations of what's going on "out there", and they will never be anything but an approximation of it, based on the rules we can agree to.
>If you want to rely on the Inductive Principle and uniformity of nature--they have to be abstract, invariant, and unchanging laws that rule over the physical world.
I like your idea of proof by assertive statement. You say it, so it must be so! To me it sounds like you're putting the cart before the horse, saying that the ideas are what's behind the reality. How do you know that your abstract laws are anything more than your generalizations about reality instead of the rules behind it?
While I agree that *nature* may have invariant and unchanging laws, our ideas about them are only shadows of reality.
>You misunderstand me. This is not a compelling reason to demand that man be rational.
And perhaps you misunderstand me. I make no demands that man be rational - he strives to be by nature. I can no more demand it than I demand a bee live in a hive.
>By the way, humans don't live in hives--unlike bees, humans can and do survive on their own.
Yes, but it is a less fruitful existence than for humans who can get along with one another, and as far as evolution is concerned that is all that matters.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
It might not have value for you, and that's fine. If you think you're the final authority, you're welcome to your delusions.
I do not care what you believe. I welcome you to do as you wish. I'll need you to explain to me how that makes me a bigot.
"Now if you could show me a religion that wasn't faith-based, you'd have something."
Um, yeah. That's like having a lemonade that's not water-based. Of COURSE religion is faith-based...otherwise, it would not be a religion.
You don't choose to make the leap of faith. That's fine. It just seems rather, I don't know, small of you to assume that people who don't agree with you are stupid.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Sorry, I stopped reading half way into the first line when you realised you were unable to spell something and decided you could not be bothered to look it up. Anyone who is that lazy cannot expect to have their opinion taken seriously.
I dont read
> happen to beleive that if there is a God and he did hand down true-word-of-God-Scripture...
Great, so you have a belief. And you've chosen to elevate your belief about the beliefs of others.
No I did not.
You are are perfectly welcome to disagree with the belief I stated. If you disagree with the belief I stated I will glady agree to disagree. If you disagree with the belief I stated, I will gladly agree that my logical argument built upon that basis falls down.
So lets try looking at the belief I stated. Lets look at the part you sniped out of that incomplete quote. I said:
I happen to beleive that if there is a God and he did hand down true-word-of-God-Scripture, I beleive that God would not and could not be an ABSOLUTELY INCOMPETENT MORON.
Ok, so if you dissagree, if your next reply says that you believe God is or might be incompetent, fine. I will then gladly admit my argument bult upon that assumption falls down. On the other hand if you AGREE with it, then wouldn't you agree that you're being a bit silly in attacking me on it??
as I understand it you seem to think that if God spoke He must speak in a way that everyone would be forced to beleive He spoke
Not exactly, but close. I certainly wouldn't say "forced". I'm saying that if any of the various books were actually from God, that God's work would be infinitely above and beyond fiction written by any human, and there's no way it would linger at maybe 30% or less and being matched or out-competed by various peices of human fiction.
Stories of some guy driving a flaming charriot across the sky, infinite towers of turtles, talking snakes, and interstellar airplanes, they are all equally written by humans and all equally silly.
God doesn't live up to this then you write Him off
I did not argue against God. I did not write Him off. I said there may be a God, but he did not hand down any Divine Scripture of His Will, that all of the supposed scriptures are plain old human authored. I'm saying that everyone proclaiming What God Wants is doing so with a purely human voice and purely human claims.
Show me your athiest statistics.
The 1997 Federal Prisons statistics were 0.21% atheist, but after a while of searching I didn't locate that in an official document on a government website... and I am fully aware of the importance of citing an official government website. I did however come across an official Minnesota government PDF hosted on an official Minnesota government website, which shows less than 0.24% atheist.
the study may be wrong
If you were to site government statistics on a government website documenting the fact that atheists commit far more crime than the general public, and I were to resort to a completely baseless position that the official statistics are wrong simply because I dislike them, you would laugh in my face.
people may choose religion after they have been convicted or committed a crime
The figures were taken at intake. I don't think you can realistically to suggest that the majority of atheists run out and religion between committing a crime and getting admitted to prison.
And of course at best... you end up with a situation where you have a correlation which as we all know doesn't prove causation.
Yep. I am claiming a correlation. I did suggest a particular cause-effect explation for that correlation, and I explicitly used the word "suggest" in I would suggest it's exactly because Atheists need to actively and fully internalize morals/ethics in a way that mere religious decree does not involve.
I merely a suggested explanation. If you think the correlation is due to cause-effect in the reverse direction (good behaviour somehow makes someone more likely to become an atheists), fine. If you think behavior and atheism are both effects and are correlated
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(1) Just because theists claim some "absolute morality that transcends all men" does not make it a valid claim.
Sure... claims mean nothing. The question is whether or not the claim is true. If there is a God then it matters, the claims don't, the fact that God exists does.
Someone with a gun can win declare that 2+2=5, and can force people to use it in all their calculations, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who would accept that as a valid basis to determine "right" or "good".
You're logic is wrong here. 2+2=5 is an observable truth. The "rightness" or "wrongess" from a moral standpoint isn't observable. You cannot calculate or measure the morality of something without a standard. People define all sorts of standards.
Symmetry... you've selected this as a rule, but why should I care? Why would I not say that I'll do what is in my own best interst all of the time and call that "right". Even the concept of morality... why have it... why is it required? We're all going to die, assuming their is no afterlife, why follow any manmade moral code that claims "universiality" if it doesn't serve my purpose?
Your response is similar to, but more in-depth than the first response, yet still avoids my question. I agree the Bible is a collection of works, some obviously meant to be artistic and others fact, but that does not tell us how know which are history and which are poetry. What defines the marker that separates the myth part of Genesis with the historical account of the Jews? By what standards do we use? Do we go by intuition? Or do we mark sections as allegorical based on their evident absurdity?
If it is the former, than we are in the same quandry as before: the Bible ultimately means nothing because it is up to you and I to determine which parts we should take seriously and which we should laugh at. (This has another implication in that it shows morality does not come from scripture, but I digress.) The second reply to my original post delves into why this is silly and foolish quite well.
Now, if it is the latter, then it is only a matter of time before the entire Bible is used as a work of enterainment or curiosity, just as the Egyptian Book of the Dead or the Upanishads or any other ancient religious work. People used to believe the earth was 10,000 years old, created in seven days. We now know this to be false. People used to believe you could fit two of every species onto a single boat. That is also beyond being taken seriously. The Bible tells us the bat is a type of bird. The list of verifiably untrue statements in the Bible goes on and it is only a matter of time before sciences of geology, astronomy, physics, and even ethics show that none of it is meant to be taken literally.
Two marginal remarks cover cases like Abraham and Isaac, and Revelations. In the cases of near sacrificing your son or daughter to your god, it does not matter if the story is meant to be taken literally or not. Such stories are hideous and are best rejected outright. Then for the matter of Revelations, one can only imagine what mind altering substances the authors were using to concoct dragons with 7 heads and 10 horns and the idea that Jesus will bring death by a sword coming out of his mouth. I suppose it is clear we are not meant to take this part literally?
But then again, how do we know that?
Why bother.
I agree the Bible is a collection of works, some obviously meant to be artistic and others fact, but that does not tell us how [to] know which are history and which are poetry.
I read this sentence as self-contradicting. If you read Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" with all formatting removed, which is essentially how manuscripts of biblical books look, it is still quite obvious that it is poetry. The same goes for a historical text from, say, the 3rd century. Granted, we today are not reading the Bible in its original languages and history has changed our common forms of speech or idioms, so we depend on scholarly research to aid us in determining what's what, but it isn't nearly so difficult as you imply. I have dabbled in it myself and am acquainted with biblical scholars who are very much "in the know" - both secular and Christian. I will not claim that they are in total agreement, but in my experience that has been the case. Note that I am speaking here solely of determining the type of text - history, poetry / song, apocalyptic lit, etc.
Your specific Genesis example would require a detailed research report which I hope you will forgive me for not providing, but the reputable information is available should you choose to seek it yourself - it is my guess that the example was more to show me what you mean than to actually go about verifying.
You may claim that my Frost poetry recognition exercise above is intuition, and I would disagree and call it context. We may have to agree to disagree here and leave it at that because to delve further, from experience, will not be fruitful =)
(This has another implication in that it shows morality does not come from scripture, but I digress.)
I agree with you here.
The second reply to my original post delves into why this is silly and foolish quite well.
The post you reference makes a critical mistake in the first point:
(1) It is authoritative, and thus you must believe every word of it as it is written.
I do not agree with that logic. If you read a book on quantum physics, and the date is wrong when it references an experiment that confirms quantum theory A, the mistake does not invalidate the book's authority when it is explaining theory A itself. That would be throwing out the baby with the bathwater (and it is unfortunately a mistake that is made far too often nowadays in general). In the case of the Bible, this means that though the Bible calls a bat a type of bird, the Bible's claim of authority in spiritual matters is not invalidated. This is what the OP meant when saying "The Bible was not meant to be a science textbook." Also, (1) seems to claim that the Bible's authority warrants strict, literal reading of the texts instead of the proper contextual reading I outlined above. This is nonsensical. If you try to read this post strictly literally you are still wondering what baby I am referencing and why a mistake in a book warrants throwing it out.
I am in full agreement with the author's final paragraph.
In the cases of near sacrificing your son or daughter to your god...such stories are hideous and are best rejected outright.
First, simply because a story is hideous or gruesome does not mean that it should not be told. Second, I personally do not believe that the Old Testament is relevant for much more than providing the source of quotations used by Jesus in the New Testament, so in my case the point is moot.
Then for the matter of Revelation...I suppose it is clear we are not meant to take this part literally?
No - the book of Revelation is mostly
Your brain is not a computer.
I am otherwise obligated at the moment, but this was refreshing to read and I should hopefully get around to making another reply soon.
Why bother.
"Be a patriot: Murder a Republican"
A fine example of tolerance and civility you are. Let's kill anyone that differs from our view point.
What a completely ridiculous statement.
When and where have I ever suggested killing anybody for disagreeing with me?
That's right! I didn't!
Promoting killing people who are sending innocent people to be tortured and murdered in third world death camps is known as "self defense". It's in response to direct *actions* by a group of people who have declared war on our constitution, on integrity, and on every founding principle of this nation.
You are welcome to think whatever nonsense you like to.
When your *actions* send innocent people to death camps then it's an entirely different thing than a "differing viewpoint", now isn't it?"
Yeah, I thought so.
Now that was pretty simple and obvious, so the question is why couldn't you figure that out for yourself.
Why'd you have to go for an interpretation that doesn't even match up to reality in any way?
Go ahead -- try.
I Am not Responsible For the actions of ANYBODY ELSE.
You don't have a beef with Christianity. You have a beef with certain humans with whom you have crossed paths. I (along with 99.999% of the Christians on Earth) had nothing to do with it.
By this logic it's not *possible* to have a beef with any organization, country, religion or indeed anything consisting of more than a single individual. One can *always* pulverize responsibility by claiming that the country, religion, organization or whatever does nothing, it's all actions of *individuals* and the beef would be with those individuals only.
I'm sorry. But that's too easy.
The church in Norway is a democratic organization. It is the official opinion of the church in Norway (not just of any single individual) that, for example, certain kinds of life-saving reseach should be forbidden, that homosexuals should not enjoy equal rigths and that I should be restrained (by force if nessecary) from for example cutting my lawn on a sunday.
Thus I have a beef with the *organization* and not just with individual members.
But there are groups that aren't formally organized as groups, but which nevertheless form a coherent group with a coherent set of opinions and actions. I think, for example, that it is fair to say that the group "muslims" generally do not accept homosexuality. This is fair *despite* the fact that there is no official "muslim" organization, there is significant variation internally in the muslim community, and the group is somewhat fuzzy around the edges. Nevertheless the word "muslim" has a meaning, and in most cases there is a simple uncontroversial answer to the question: "is X a muslim?"
I'm perfectly aware you personally aren't a member of the church in Norway. You didn't say which church, if any, you are a member of. If you are not a member of any church, I agree you have no responsibility for what any church does or says.
Willingly being a member of a group, formally organized or not, and being aware that the group does something bad makes you somewhat responsible for that bad -- as long as you do nothing to try to prevent the bad. If the group is democratic, and you vote in *favor* of the bad thing, then doubly so offcourse.
By the way -- you take this far to personally. I'm just saying, in actual fact, I as a non-christian *do* experience, regularily, that my freedom is limited based on the ideas of religious organizations, and that those same organizations actively try to limit my freedom further. Luckily it seems they're losing that battle. But nevertheless I *do* have a legitimate beef with that. And *not* just with a few single individuals.
I am NOT a Creationist. I support gay marriage, gay divorce, gay child support, and/or any other legal relationships that two consenting adults might wish to undertake with one another. I think the State should have nothing whatsoever to say about marriage, apart from the normal enforcement of contract law.
I'm perfectly aware that not all christians are nuts. I'm glad to hear you're not. If you also advocate these views internally in whatever church you may be a member of and/or vote for people who have similar opinions, then I agree you're doing your part, and are blameless for the religious crap I (and every other non-believer) has to put up with.
I am just sick and tired of the all too many people who form a silent majority in many organizations, being members, but never in any way trying to affect anything, and then turn around and claim they have no part whatsoever in whatever evil the organization they support do.
Um,
I've never been to Norway. Never set foot there. Whatever the Norwegian church may do, has nothing to do with me, or any organization I'm affiliated with. You assume homogeneity where there is none. That's called bigotry.
Collective accountability is a pretty immoral philosophy. Do you agree?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
In a much earlier comment you said:
one thing that Evolution teaches is that men are just evolved creatures with no purpose.
That is absolutely untrue.
You are effectively declaring that if some element of your Faith is incorrect, that if God did not do things exactly the way you believe, then YOU are saying that God is not permitted to exist at all.
You are the one making the stong atheistic presumption and implying the strong atheistic argument, not me.
You're using the exact same reasoning that they used to attack Galileo in the middle ages. One element of their Faith, derived from their clear and literal reading of the Bible, was that God created an earth that did not more, an earth at the center of the universe. They had the hubris to tell Go how He could and could not do things, the hubris to say that if any element of their faith was incorrect, if any element of their literal Bible was incorrect, that God is forbidden to exist at all.
The majority of Christians on earth accept both evolution and God. The majority of Christians accept evolution as God's chosen mechanism operating in God's perfect universe to create the diversity of life, just as they accept the laws of optics as God's perfect mechanism for creating rainbows.
Imagine someone beleiving God directly creates rainbows and directly inserts them into the universe as a sign of his covnentant with man, based on the Biblical Noah story, and that person were to say exactly what you said... that the the laws of optics explaining the mechanism of rainbows "teaches is that men are just [] creatures with no purpose".
I'll do what is in my own best interst all of the time and call that "right".
Allow me to point out the irony trying to claim moral superiority over atheists by argument that *YOU* and other theists would behave like monsters. Heh.
You know what atheist organisation activity was for the US National Day of Prayer? Give their very blood to save the lives of others. I dunno about you, but I think telling everyone in the country to sit on their asses praying is worse than worthless. I dunno about you, but I think sacrificing of your very body to save the lives of others is not merely good and noble, most importantly it is EFFECTIVE. Passive prayer vs effective real action to improve the lives of real people, who are in real need, in the real world.
Atheists don't pray to God asking Him to make the world a better place. They believe that 100% of the responsibility for the future of the world lies with people, that the only way to make the world a better place is through our own action.
Atheists donate blood (not all of them of course, but at least as much if not more than the general public). They sign up as organ donors. They sometimes even become living bone marrow donors for complete strangers. Atheists donate billions of dollars per year (again, as much or more than the general public) and countless hours of their time to virtually every charitable group under the sun - in many cases giving money or working in religious-established charities simply because it is *the* big available group doing the good work. In fact atheists somtimes even wind up RUNNING explicitly religious related charitible organisations. I recently came across an atheist post amusingly citing the fact that he wound up at he head of his local YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association). Presumably he got that position because he was the best man for the job, because he was the one most willing and most competent and most dedicated to helping the local kids.
Why? Because they are good people. Because they enjoy it. Because they care. Because they think it is the right thing to do. Because they like being good people. Because they like doing the right thing. Because they feel a resposibility to do so (one memorable atheist quote was that if God does not exist, that places MORE responsibility up
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To Evolution... you are correct, and in other cases I made the point of using the more correct term non-God systems... typically what could be classified as Naturalism. I'm completely open to God using evolution and understand that a thiestic worldview could include various methods for the creation of man.
So to the "I'll do what is in my own best interst all of the time and call that "right".". I used I here simply to pick a place holder... I could have said you... I could have said 'person X'.
What you continue to fail to understand is that you have a set of values you continue to impose on "me". You say "I" can act in my own interst and I'll be a "monster". You've defined certain behaviors that you don't like (that you think are "wrong") and if I do those acts them you think I'm a monster. If I did the same "say not going to a Baptist Church every Sunday morning and Evenign and on Wednesdays" I could say you're a godless monster too... the point is that unless the moral measures are not grounded in some power outside of man, then they're simply relative and up for debate.
You obviously don't believe in God and don't like Christians. That's fine... but debating the activities of Christians or any other relgion is not what I'm going to do here. I've made my point over and over and over again. You can pick any moral standard you want but if you deny a God or higher power you can't claim that the system is universal... at best it's just a calculation for what one should do to best get along in society, but one has to wonder why one would follow such a system if an opportunity arose to further their own lot by breaking one if its rules.
I've also never said athiests were the most evil people in the world bent on world domination and crushing their enemies, friends, and mothers.
You use the term "good people". What does "good" mean and why? If you really think about it... you've just picked behaviors that your society has deemed "good" but their not universal. Other socities have picked other behaviors that are "good" or given preference to their own society. Slavery was acceptable one point in time... some even said it was "good". Murder has been acceptable and right in many societies. Now you'll say "we're more evolved and we've realized that this was not "good"". But really all you're saying is "we have different values and currently we have power, we're alive, and so we say that those things are "bad" and "wrong". In 1000 years another society could look back on you and say you were "evil" because you did not realize that killing weak children and the old was the only way to preserve the good products for the best of men. Your entire morality system is based on your current societal power, it's not universal, it's not permament.
Of course that still doesn't mean you will not do "good" things...
Why should symmetry be appied to behaviors?
Yes, absolutley... "Ceaser" will imprison you if you violate the law. What does that have to do with morality... if you violate the "law" of the land you're going to suffer consequences. This is about living underneath law, not a moral code.
You've got a whole series of issues here... you want Christians aren't morally superior to Athiests in public life, you want to point out that Christians can believe in evolution, you want to make the point that Christians shouldn't use law to force others to apply to their moral views.
I've said none of these things. You apparently have a stereotype of Christians in your head and think I must be one of these Pat Robertson loving abortion clinic bombing... must have prayer and Bible classes in school people. I've tried to keep this thread on the topic of the foundations of a moral system... which has nothing to do with Christianity specifically... and really has everything to do with Thiestic and Transcendental worldviews.
In respect to your paragraphs on Caesar and creation in schools... since science can't really speak to the what created
Yes, it would have been easier. It also would be completely disregarding the point, which is not that thought processes are or are not controlled by physical law, but rather that presuming such to be true does not automatically preclude the objectivist argument.
The only "laws of logic" that exist are mathematics or derived there-from, and it is indeed abstract, invariant and universal. It doesn't matter how you or I "evolved", or even what planet we are from. A mathematical proof can be shown to be completely consistent and universally true, once the "proover" has attained enough knowledge to understand the proof. If I were to "disagree" with your proof, you could either (a) demonstrate that I was incorrect and I would lose, or (b) be unable to demonstrate this and thus not have a solid foundation for the pure objectivist argument.
Any other line of debate or reasoning does not involve invariant logic and thus may or may not be flawed and no perfect winner can be decided. In such cases we resort to consensual agreement on certain basic aspects of perception which cannot be strictly proven.
I think your "moral life" may differ very much from that of a Muslim extremist or Amish.
:) One strong point for improving the lot of others is brought up later in your post - I am going to die, and I believe that after that point, I will be nothing. The universe will go on without me, and a great many people like me - and unlike me - will follow.
This is true, but it stands as a testament to the fact that just because religion begets morality, does not mean that morality is absolute. The "axioms" (interpretation of God's will) accepted by the two above groups lead to completely different moral codes. If there is a divine source of morality, then one of these two groups has it completely wrong, and yet is absolutely sure of their correctness. If there's no way of telling whether your moral code is the "correct" one or not, then is this any different from there being no "true" moral source - at least from our myopic view here on earth?
it's odd to me that someone who doesn't believe in a higher power and doesn't believe in an after life would honestly accept something like the "Maximum happiness for the maximum number of people"
I can see why this could be considered odd, but I've had a lot more time to think about it than you have
I have the choice of dedicating my life to the transient pleasure of 200lbs of flesh for about 80 years - or to the improvement of thousands or more people for possibly generations to come. Once I'm dead, I will have no memory of this life, and the pleasure I experienced would have had no lasting impact - or worse, a negative one. Perhaps it is just a genetic chance, but it seems to me that people crave purpose - and living a life of selfish pleasure does not satisfy that need.
Finally, I do believe in justice and goodwill and all of the other aspects of society that have no base in atoms and photons. However, without a god to enforce them, that leaves it up to us. If angels do not exist, then we must become them.
Last post!
No, not many of us are good enough to actually cast of possessions etc. Given that we are not saints, yes our lives look much the same as everyone elses.
Many of the things I am thinking of could also be true for an atheist - but if I behave in a certain way because of my religion, then it has had an effect in my case, even if an atheist could get there by a different route.
Even though we may not have a dramatically different life style there may be lots of comparatively small decisions that add up to a lot. For example, we may not buy a flashy car because we believe that a possession that is meant to impress others is morally corrupting, we may give up some luxury and give the money saved to some charity.
Of course, as I said before, I do now a lot of people who have made more visible and dramatic choices.
An analogy: Christianity (and, I think, the other theistic religions) is about a relationship NOT a code of behaviour. Suppose your acquintance Y, has a close friend X, who you ahve never met. Y thinks that X is not someone you would get on with so never talks to you about X. How well placed would you be to assess the importance of X in Y's life?
Living in the country where there is some scattered persecution (church burings and thngs like that) of Christians also opens up a whole other line of possiblities of effects on my life from living in Britain (as I did most of my life)- even though I and my familly are not in any danger (we have been affected by things like school carol services being canceled following threats). It has opened by eyes to the risks and hardship many people face.
Finally thanks for your comments which made me think about how to explain things to people. Hopefully I will make a beter job of it next time.