They were also *gasp* Foreigners! Aargh! Beware those genocidal Foreigners! Being Foreign must cause moral corruption!
So, we can excuse the Christians for the atrocities of the Inquisition, the witch burnings, the Crusades, the Heretic burnings, etc, etc, because those weren't the actions of "True Christians" (TM), but if fanatical scum with an ideology that isn't overly religious start slaughtering people it is a natural consequence of atheism?
Oh you also left fundamentalist Nazis out of your catalogue of Evil Atheist Ideologies.
God commands us to "Let both of them [believers and nonbelievers] grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn."
I wish you'd show this passage to the evangelicals, doesn't "the weeds first" bit contradict their bizarre 'Rapture' doctrine?
I'm becoming increasingly persuaded that not everyone can know God. I wish you'd make your mind up, or at least stop contradicting the bible:
"That if you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." - Romans 10:9 (NIV), emphasis added
BTW, you do know that the NIV is a dishonest translation of the bible? Get a good scholarly one based on the original Greek instead.
Now I am a pretty rabid atheist but I *love* believers such as yourself. I just wish the rest of your lot were more like you. I have no problem with personal belief, respect mine, and I'll respect yours.
As for the throwback evangelicals you have in the USofA... I don't know. It seems like there is a powerful combination of politics and greed at work in US Christianity. It is very disturbing.
Fortunately you are not alone. Many other countries have believers that are well-mannered and polite. And not all atheists are as ideologically extreme as Dawkins. So in countries like Australia we still have a sense of proportion about religious issues, i.e. most people don't give a damn about other peoples' beliefs. (Not that we don't have some contaimination of political debate with religious ideology, but it isn't too bad. Yet.)
The Church, an organization more than a millennium old at that point, was (perhaps overly) conservative about producing new, official, translations, but did eventually produce them out of necessity as more people became literate in their local tongues.
I would hardly characterise the treatment of John Hus and William Tyndale as being merely 'overly conservative'.
Attempting to spin The Church's behaviour in this regard into a evolutionary voluntary, process grossly distorts the 200 years of active persecution of bible translators it engaged in. And it was not concern for accuracy that drove the bans, in many cases the new translations (if derived from the original Greek) were more accurate than the Vulgate version. It was about Control.
I'd go so far as to say Atheism should be considered a religion in it's own right. Atheists believe there is no God despite the fact that there is no direct evidence to support this belief, just as Christians (and various other religions) believe there is a God even though there is no direct evidence to support the belief.
Annoying codswallop. The only difference between me and a Christian is that I don't plead a Special Case for one particular god. Neither of us believe in Vishnu, Ahura-Mazda, Zeus, Ba'al, Marduk, Tane, Babd or Xenu. I'm just more consistent in my disbelief when I get to Jesus.
Also there is plenty of direct evidence to prove any given god does not exist. Religions make direct claims about their gods, in some cases we can test these claims.
Look on top of Mount Olympus. Any Zeus? Hera? No? They do not exist.
Anyone driven over Bifrost recently? Pruned Yggdrasil? Poked Odin in the eye?
The Christian bible claims that true believers are able to perform miracles. Any decent miracles today? The Apostles could do them, why not current believers? The Bible also claims that when Jesus died the sky darkened, the earth quaked and the dead rose en-masse and wandered about Jerusalem. No corroborating evidence for these events can be found. Mary, a virgin, became pregnant with a boy. While parthenogenesis is possible where did Jesus get his 'Y' chromosome from? Is any of this believable?
Christians are only 99% atheist. I am 100% atheist.
My contention is that any posited god that is defined to have a direct and identifiable effect on the material world then becomes a potentially falsifiable theory. For all god definitions of this type that I have encountered I have either seen satisfactory evidence *against* their existence or zero good evidence *for* their existence.
At this point most soft-deists start proposing some sort of nebulous cosmic trainspotter sort of god. At this point I do stop being an atheist, I become an apatheist. If the god you propose is 'pointless' then I don't care if it exists or not.
I took too long to write this post last time, and got ACed somehow. Sorry about the repeat
Just what I thought when I read that bit about valve springs.
With magnetics in the solenoid actuator rod thingy would it not simply be a matter of reversing the current, as AcidPenguin suggests, to have the valve snapped shut?
Otherwise you could build rare-earth magnetics into the solenoid in such a way that the 'ground', or current-off, state of the solenoid results in the valve being pulled shut. Then the current flow would just be used to overpower the internal magnets and push the valve open. Switch the current off and the solenoid snaps back into the rest state.
Or is that complete crap? Hmmm, high heat is bad for magnets generally. Perhaps that would be an issue. Ah, well.
Yeah, I went to Catholic school too. A little odd given I was a Presbyterian. All my old school mates are Catholic, even the ones that don't believe, it's a cultural thing. I never understood The Guilt though.
Still I got to see two sides of Christian theology, many weird and interesting things I learnt. I was an Atheist by the time I was 16.
That is the bit I always found bizarre about that piece of Catholic theology. God can forcibly impregnate a *virgin* but a condom is too hard to break?? Just plain nuts.
Yeah, but given that the average IT project manager won't even spend budget on getting the doco finished properly, what hope have we got of getting them to apply good Engineering principles. Never mind *their* managers.
I'll have to investigate this "Aspect-Oriented Development" you speak of.
As a student, working with the Ops in the machine room, in the late 80s, how often did I see the mainframes issues instructions like "Change diskpack XYZ" and watch the BoFHs scurry about doing the bidding of their Cybernetic Overlords?
I have a degree in Computer Science. I've been developing software applications in the education and telecoms sectors for 13 years. And I *know* I'm not an Engineer, software or otherwise.
Once software development becomes a quantifiable, rigorous and reliable process, in other words once it becomes an actual engineering discipline, then software developers might be able to call themselves engineers with a straight face.
Disclaimer: Some IT folk, in some fields, may already be building software and systems to an engineering standard. They are very much the exception rather than the rule.
Truth Brother! That I why I only drive cars with fixed suspension and steering. None of this wishy-washy lurching over bumps and veering from the True Path for me!
Let's take this one step at a time and keep it general.
You accept that small but significant changes can occur in a species over time. Good.
Question, did Zebras exist 70 million years ago? Did Tyrannosaurus Rex exist 350 million years ago? Did multicellular life exist 1 billion years ago?
The real physical evidence suggests the answer to all these questions is no.
So where did all the different animals that exist now come from? How did we go from single celled creatures long ago to the Blue Whale now? Why were there no Blue Whales a billion years ago?
The answers are commonly a) 'God did it' or b) Some natural mechanism has promoted increased complexity in life over time aka Evolution.
For me b) seem the simpler and more useful answer. As far as I'm concerned I can see *no* valid reason to dispute that Evolution *has* happened. The how and other exact details of the process are open for discussion perhaps, but even here there is plenty of general consensus.
It's a long list, but basically falls into a few simple categories:
Military intervention in support of economic self interest
Overthrow of democratically elected governments
Support of oppressive regimes for political expediency and/or economic self interest
There are a number of examples, but I don't have time to list them now. Try the following book for an overview:
"Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq" by Stephen Kinzer
To summarise as a citizen of a longtime American ally I regard your country as the lesser of two (or more) evils. Better than being dominated by China but still a dangerous and erratic ally, and inconstant friend.
The Constitution which you regard with 'bemusement' is designed to protect the citizens of the US from a Government out of Control. Doing a fine job it is too.
The first 10 Amendments, known as the Bill of Rights are the foundation of American freedom. That freedom has served as a magnet, food and security provider and inspiration for the world. The only thing it inspires in my part of the world is fear and loathing. Fear that the United States may decide that some part of their 'Freedom' is threatened by one of our freedoms for some reason, with the usual consequences.
Loathing at the bared faced hypocracy of American Superpatriots who spew their uncritical jingoist garbage at the rest of the world while their country exports not Freedom(tm) but oppression, violence, intolerance, economic exploitation and ignorance.
Excuse me if I can't take your Constitutional Pride seriously. If you ever start practicing what you preach, get back to me.
Sorry, did I miss something? Was there a time when people weren't killed for "being an atheist or (or not of the approved god, even)"? I must've blinked and missed it.
Or did you mean to limit your comments to recent times in westernised democracies?
Slashdot Mirror
Ah. I see. Hmm, too much information. I am glad my life is not so complicated.
Thank you for your considered and detailed [1] response.
---
[1]Always did like a proper Latin Mass.
So, we can excuse the Christians for the atrocities of the Inquisition, the witch burnings, the Crusades, the Heretic burnings, etc, etc, because those weren't the actions of "True Christians" (TM), but if fanatical scum with an ideology that isn't overly religious start slaughtering people it is a natural consequence of atheism?
Oh you also left fundamentalist Nazis out of your catalogue of Evil Atheist Ideologies.
I wish you'd show this passage to the evangelicals, doesn't "the weeds first" bit contradict their bizarre 'Rapture' doctrine?
BTW, you do know that the NIV is a dishonest translation of the bible? Get a good scholarly one based on the original Greek instead.
Which is why He tortures humans for fun.
Now I am a pretty rabid atheist but I *love* believers such as yourself. I just wish the rest of your lot were more like you. I have no problem with personal belief, respect mine, and I'll respect yours.
As for the throwback evangelicals you have in the USofA... I don't know. It seems like there is a powerful combination of politics and greed at work in US Christianity. It is very disturbing.
Fortunately you are not alone. Many other countries have believers that are well-mannered and polite. And not all atheists are as ideologically extreme as Dawkins. So in countries like Australia we still have a sense of proportion about religious issues, i.e. most people don't give a damn about other peoples' beliefs. (Not that we don't have some contaimination of political debate with religious ideology, but it isn't too bad. Yet.)
I would hardly characterise the treatment of John Hus and William Tyndale as being merely 'overly conservative'.
Attempting to spin The Church's behaviour in this regard into a evolutionary voluntary, process grossly distorts the 200 years of active persecution of bible translators it engaged in. And it was not concern for accuracy that drove the bans, in many cases the new translations (if derived from the original Greek) were more accurate than the Vulgate version. It was about Control.
Annoying codswallop. The only difference between me and a Christian is that I don't plead a Special Case for one particular god. Neither of us believe in Vishnu, Ahura-Mazda, Zeus, Ba'al, Marduk, Tane, Babd or Xenu. I'm just more consistent in my disbelief when I get to Jesus.
Also there is plenty of direct evidence to prove any given god does not exist. Religions make direct claims about their gods, in some cases we can test these claims.
Look on top of Mount Olympus. Any Zeus? Hera? No? They do not exist.
Anyone driven over Bifrost recently? Pruned Yggdrasil? Poked Odin in the eye?
The Christian bible claims that true believers are able to perform miracles. Any decent miracles today? The Apostles could do them, why not current believers? The Bible also claims that when Jesus died the sky darkened, the earth quaked and the dead rose en-masse and wandered about Jerusalem. No corroborating evidence for these events can be found. Mary, a virgin, became pregnant with a boy. While parthenogenesis is possible where did Jesus get his 'Y' chromosome from? Is any of this believable?
Christians are only 99% atheist. I am 100% atheist.
My contention is that any posited god that is defined to have a direct and identifiable effect on the material world then becomes a potentially falsifiable theory. For all god definitions of this type that I have encountered I have either seen satisfactory evidence *against* their existence or zero good evidence *for* their existence.
At this point most soft-deists start proposing some sort of nebulous cosmic trainspotter sort of god. At this point I do stop being an atheist, I become an apatheist. If the god you propose is 'pointless' then I don't care if it exists or not.
I took too long to write this post last time, and got ACed somehow. Sorry about the repeat
Just what I thought when I read that bit about valve springs.
With magnetics in the solenoid actuator rod thingy would it not simply be a matter of reversing the current, as AcidPenguin suggests, to have the valve snapped shut?
Otherwise you could build rare-earth magnetics into the solenoid in such a way that the 'ground', or current-off, state of the solenoid results in the valve being pulled shut. Then the current flow would just be used to overpower the internal magnets and push the valve open. Switch the current off and the solenoid snaps back into the rest state.
Or is that complete crap? Hmmm, high heat is bad for magnets generally. Perhaps that would be an issue. Ah, well.
If it involves nuking Naboo from space, just to be sure, then I am *there*.
Yeah, I went to Catholic school too. A little odd given I was a Presbyterian. All my old school mates are Catholic, even the ones that don't believe, it's a cultural thing. I never understood The Guilt though.
Still I got to see two sides of Christian theology, many weird and interesting things I learnt. I was an Atheist by the time I was 16.
That is the bit I always found bizarre about that piece of Catholic theology. God can forcibly impregnate a *virgin* but a condom is too hard to break?? Just plain nuts.
Yeah, but given that the average IT project manager won't even spend budget on getting the doco finished properly, what hope have we got of getting them to apply good Engineering principles. Never mind *their* managers.
I'll have to investigate this "Aspect-Oriented Development" you speak of.
As a student, working with the Ops in the machine room, in the late 80s, how often did I see the mainframes issues instructions like "Change diskpack XYZ" and watch the BoFHs scurry about doing the bidding of their Cybernetic Overlords?
How is this different?
I have a degree in Computer Science. I've been developing software applications in the education and telecoms sectors for 13 years. And I *know* I'm not an Engineer, software or otherwise.
Once software development becomes a quantifiable, rigorous and reliable process, in other words once it becomes an actual engineering discipline, then software developers might be able to call themselves engineers with a straight face.
Disclaimer: Some IT folk, in some fields, may already be building software and systems to an engineering standard. They are very much the exception rather than the rule.
Ah, ok. So this *is* a Religious argument.
Why didn't you just say so at the start so I didn't waste my time?
Truth Brother! That I why I only drive cars with fixed suspension and steering. None of this wishy-washy lurching over bumps and veering from the True Path for me!
Let's take this one step at a time and keep it general.
You accept that small but significant changes can occur in a species over time. Good.
Question, did Zebras exist 70 million years ago? Did Tyrannosaurus Rex exist 350 million years ago? Did multicellular life exist 1 billion years ago?
The real physical evidence suggests the answer to all these questions is no.
So where did all the different animals that exist now come from? How did we go from single celled creatures long ago to the Blue Whale now? Why were there no Blue Whales a billion years ago?
The answers are commonly a) 'God did it' or b) Some natural mechanism has promoted increased complexity in life over time aka Evolution.
For me b) seem the simpler and more useful answer. As far as I'm concerned I can see *no* valid reason to dispute that Evolution *has* happened. The how and other exact details of the process are open for discussion perhaps, but even here there is plenty of general consensus.
An Australian company has developed an interesting new air powered engine:
5 .htm
2 46620391.html
3 1.htm
http://www.engineair.com.au/
I've seen it in operation on a science tech program:
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/newinventors/txt/s107206
It has some immediate potential:
http://www.engineair.com.au/development.htm
and:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/25/1093
Of course there are difficulties associated with deploying a new technology:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s11835
There are a number of examples, but I don't have time to list them now. Try the following book for an overview:
"Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq" by Stephen Kinzer
To summarise as a citizen of a longtime American ally I regard your country as the lesser of two (or more) evils. Better than being dominated by China but still a dangerous and erratic ally, and inconstant friend.
It has quietened down a bit since the Americans stopped funding IRA terrorists:. stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1563119
Loathing at the bared faced hypocracy of American Superpatriots who spew their uncritical jingoist garbage at the rest of the world while their country exports not Freedom(tm) but oppression, violence, intolerance, economic exploitation and ignorance.
Excuse me if I can't take your Constitutional Pride seriously. If you ever start practicing what you preach, get back to me.
Nah, it's obvious. Us Antipodeans are just less 'evolved'.
Thank God.
Sorry, did I miss something? Was there a time when people weren't killed for "being an atheist or (or not of the approved god, even)"? I must've blinked and missed it. Or did you mean to limit your comments to recent times in westernised democracies?
In much the same way you don't believe in Zeus.