It seems to me that something can only have value TO someone or from someone's point of view. Taking some god out of the equation only means that life wouldn't have any value in respect to the nonexistant god since it isn't around to value anything.
We are, however, here. Life has value to me, and probably to you too, and probably to most of the population on the planet. For someone to say that without God life has no value... I can only feel sadness for them and hope that they aren't my neighbor.
We have that. They're called private schools. Unfortunately, it seems that the majority of private schools are religious in nature. That's how it is here in New Orleans, I don't know about the rest of the country but I can't imagine it is too much different. Someone correct me if I'm wrong please.
There's also home-schooling. Again, the majority of home schooling families and home school groups that I'm aware of all seem to be of a religious nature. Probably because they don't want their kids exposed to dissenting ideas regarding their religion.
My experience only, grain of salt and all that good stuff.
But the abortion-rights lobby decided that it would be far too traumatic for a woman to hear, "I'm sorry, I can't fill this prescription, but Joe's pharmacy down the street can."
No, I'm merely pointing out that in the modern world it is systematically ok to bash believing in the tooth fairy.
People keep babbling the assertion that believing in the tooth fairy has no place except in its own "safe childhood age" yet are quite happy for science, and philosophy (and other realms) to go outside "safe childhood ages" (as in only a loony would believe anything but what we think science/philosopy/etc tells us). It's a pathetic double standard, that I find very objectionable.
As long as it's your religion, right? Some people, when they see bullshit, don't have a problem with calling it out. Others get offended when their sacred bullshit is called on. It's systematically ok to bash religion these days because for the most part you don't get killed for doing so anymore. For the most part.
Besides the fact that none of your points you bring up ever make sense logically, it certainly doesn't help your case that you can't even put together a coherent sentence. Or that you're just an ignorant, argumentative fuckwad. If you want to play pretend with everyone about your god, go to fucking church. No one is stopping you. Just stay the fuck away from our public, tax-payer funded schools. Why are you so unable to do that?
The explanation is that the question is a non-starter: man didn't come from monkeys. Man and monkeys have a common ancestor. We also have a common ancestor with cats, fish, and everything else around, depending on how far back in the tree of life you want to look. In fact, everyone's favorite "militant atheist" (what the fuck is that supposed to mean anyway??) wrote a book on exactly that. It's a very entertaining and informative read, like all of Dawkins' works.
At least the question would be a little closer to the truth if it had been apes instead of monkeys, although of course it would still be incorrect.
How many explicitly Atheist Channels are there on tv? Now let's compare that to the number of channels where you can flip to and watch a religious service happening 24/7? There's about 5 in the basic cable package here.
Sure, I have the right to flip the channel and ignore it. And you have the right to not listen to the atheist saying that your imaginary friend is imaginary. You're just complaining because we have the right to complain, and you just can't stand hearing it.
Well so far at least, we human mice are still very much inside the universe, the piano. Even if the piano were a "player piano", someone still composed the music and cut the roll. Someone also built the piano.
Now you're just abusing the analogy into the realm of silly. The Universe isn't a piano. You can say it looks designed all you want, but that doesn't make it so, nor does it look obviously designed to everyone. In fact, quite the opposite to quite a lot of people. Even if it was designed, unless you can somehow infer anything about the designer specifically from those designs, it's extreme arrogance to think that you got it right with YOUR god, as opposed to everyone else who got it wrong with their god(s).
Even if you do not accept the Bible as truth, or as God's message to mankind, you certainly should be able to consider that it is a very unusual book.
You got that right, it certainly is unusual. Tales of God-inspired genocide and rape, yet people look to it as a moral guide. Very unusual indeed.
Actually it is a collection of 66 books penned by 40 different writers over a time span of at least 1500 years. Yet it has a very unified central authorship and message concerning the dealings of God with mankind.
A book written by a bunch of people who all believe they have an imaginary friend that talks to them, yet no one else can hear or see this person and verify what was said, yet somehow it all manages to make sense together? Shocking I tell you! Also, did God get tired of inspiring people to write books? Who's writing the newest book of the Bible today? What about the Mormons? Why stop all the inspiration all of a sudden? Maybe the newest book of the Bible is titled "Timecube"...
Much of it depicts human history written down before it ever took place. Some of this history, written in advance, is taking place right before our very eyes in our time. We can read the content of tomorrow's newspaper headlines in some of the passages of the Bible.
Ok then, show me where in the Bible it says what's going to happen tomorrow? No? Then don't use silly exaggerations. Any prediction can be made to fit something, somewhere if it's vague enough. Then there's the phenomenon of always finding what you're looking for. Not to mention self-fulfilling prophecies.
For thousands of years, all human writing had to be laboriously copied by hand. When the art of printing was finally invented in 1439 by Johannes Gutenberg, guess which human writing was first printed?
The Bible was the first printed book? Guess that must make it all true! Or that the church controlled most of the world and quite a bit of money and printing Bibles as well as other church documents such as indulgences was quite lucrative.
Guess which human writing is distributed more widely than any other and translated into more languages and dialects, by far, than any other?
Guess that makes the Bible true! Or that the nature of the religion is to spread itself as far as possible, and has been one of the main controlling forces of civilization for quite a few centuries since the alternative was quite often death.
Guess which book its enemies have endeavored to destroy more than any other? There are many religious writings, but none of them come even remotely close to the content and distribution of this remarkable book.
Some people don't buy the bullshit, and may even want to actively fight back against what they see as quite an oppressive regime and ideology? No way! Also, I believe that the Muslims and quite a few other religious groups would differ in their opinions of your book.
In the King James Version of the Old Testament, the phrase "saith the LORD" occurs 802 times, according to my computer search program. Did God really say those things or are these 802 lies? In
One day the mice finally were able to see outside of the piano, and found that it was simply a QRS Player System making the piano play.
Nice poetry, but that's all it is. You could just as well substitute the FSM and his noodly appendages playing the great harp strings of the cosmos and it would be just as valid and make just as much sense. So when do we start teaching FSMism in science class?
Name a few tangible, verifiable predictions that Intelligent Design makes besides just arguing that evolution isn't sufficient to explain X.
Your second "method of knowing" is great on its own, but what you forget is that it also has to be grounded in physical reality, otherwise you're just much adieu about nothing. One could come up with an incredibly complex, self-consistent logic set that doesn't mean anything because it's not based on anything in reality.
As for your third method of knowing, "spiritual senses, well, you just assert as much with nothing to back it up. Also, define "spiritual". And define "higher" as in higher truths. And how can you know there is knowledge and truth that we simply can't, no way, no how, discover if we.... can't discover it?
Calling Secular Humanism a religion is at best a bastardization of the meaning of the word religion. Despite popular claims, the Supreme Court never ruled that secular humanism is a religion. It was only stated as such in a dicta footnote, which is not a binding rule. By its very nature, the secular in secular humanism makes it pretty obvious that it isn't a religion...
Actually this is backwards. There's nothing but chemistry going on, it's only "information" because you anthropomorphically ascribe meaning to it. There's no more information in DNA than there is in any other molecule, but no one is asking who put the information in the formula for water or how it interacts with any other chemicals.
The only difference is that DNA has the interesting property of being able to replicate itself (although it isn't the only molecule able to do that).
If you look at DNA without also taking into account the history of how DNA got to be where it is now, certainly it looks pretty implausible. Context helps.
Slashdot Mirror
If they actually knew what they were talking about, maybe so.
We are, however, here. Life has value to me, and probably to you too, and probably to most of the population on the planet. For someone to say that without God life has no value... I can only feel sadness for them and hope that they aren't my neighbor.
[citation needed]
Also, TalkOrigins.org says otherwise, with citation included.
The claim about the oxygen is also shown incorrect in the above link, as well as the next claim in the list.
Wanna try again?
Soylent Green is corporations?
There's also home-schooling. Again, the majority of home schooling families and home school groups that I'm aware of all seem to be of a religious nature. Probably because they don't want their kids exposed to dissenting ideas regarding their religion. My experience only, grain of salt and all that good stuff.
*woosh*
Because survival of the fittest is actually not a very good term to describe natural selection. It's more like survival of the sufficient.
Mmm, hot particle-on-particle action.
zip bang!
It does in Soviet Russia.
But the abortion-rights lobby decided that it would be far too traumatic for a woman to hear, "I'm sorry, I can't fill this prescription, but Joe's pharmacy down the street can."
I'm sure that wouldn't be too traumatic, but what about when a pharmacist not only refuses to fill the prescription, but also refuses to have it transfered or give it back to the woman to take down to Joe's?
Says the person typing on the computer that was conjured up by prayer. Oh, what? You aren't? Science you say?
Science works, bitches.
No, I'm merely pointing out that in the modern world it is systematically ok to bash believing in the tooth fairy. People keep babbling the assertion that believing in the tooth fairy has no place except in its own "safe childhood age" yet are quite happy for science, and philosophy (and other realms) to go outside "safe childhood ages" (as in only a loony would believe anything but what we think science/philosopy/etc tells us). It's a pathetic double standard, that I find very objectionable.
As long as it's your religion, right?
Some people, when they see bullshit, don't have a problem with calling it out. Others get offended when their sacred bullshit is called on. It's systematically ok to bash religion these days because for the most part you don't get killed for doing so anymore. For the most part.
Besides the fact that none of your points you bring up ever make sense logically, it certainly doesn't help your case that you can't even put together a coherent sentence.
Or that you're just an ignorant, argumentative fuckwad. If you want to play pretend with everyone about your god, go to fucking church. No one is stopping you. Just stay the fuck away from our public, tax-payer funded schools. Why are you so unable to do that?
At least the question would be a little closer to the truth if it had been apes instead of monkeys, although of course it would still be incorrect.
Sure, I have the right to flip the channel and ignore it. And you have the right to not listen to the atheist saying that your imaginary friend is imaginary. You're just complaining because we have the right to complain, and you just can't stand hearing it.
Let's stick to the realm of what actually exists.
We would ask the same of you before demanding special rights of your supernatural belief system. Try working on that first, then we'll talk.
Well so far at least, we human mice are still very much inside the universe, the piano. Even if the piano were a "player piano", someone still composed the music and cut the roll. Someone also built the piano.
Now you're just abusing the analogy into the realm of silly. The Universe isn't a piano. You can say it looks designed all you want, but that doesn't make it so, nor does it look obviously designed to everyone. In fact, quite the opposite to quite a lot of people. Even if it was designed, unless you can somehow infer anything about the designer specifically from those designs, it's extreme arrogance to think that you got it right with YOUR god, as opposed to everyone else who got it wrong with their god(s).
Even if you do not accept the Bible as truth, or as God's message to mankind, you certainly should be able to consider that it is a very unusual book.
You got that right, it certainly is unusual. Tales of God-inspired genocide and rape, yet people look to it as a moral guide. Very unusual indeed.
Actually it is a collection of 66 books penned by 40 different writers over a time span of at least 1500 years. Yet it has a very unified central authorship and message concerning the dealings of God with mankind.
A book written by a bunch of people who all believe they have an imaginary friend that talks to them, yet no one else can hear or see this person and verify what was said, yet somehow it all manages to make sense together? Shocking I tell you! Also, did God get tired of inspiring people to write books? Who's writing the newest book of the Bible today? What about the Mormons? Why stop all the inspiration all of a sudden? Maybe the newest book of the Bible is titled "Timecube"...
Much of it depicts human history written down before it ever took place. Some of this history, written in advance, is taking place right before our very eyes in our time. We can read the content of tomorrow's newspaper headlines in some of the passages of the Bible.
Ok then, show me where in the Bible it says what's going to happen tomorrow? No? Then don't use silly exaggerations. Any prediction can be made to fit something, somewhere if it's vague enough. Then there's the phenomenon of always finding what you're looking for. Not to mention self-fulfilling prophecies.
For thousands of years, all human writing had to be laboriously copied by hand. When the art of printing was finally invented in 1439 by Johannes Gutenberg, guess which human writing was first printed?
The Bible was the first printed book? Guess that must make it all true! Or that the church controlled most of the world and quite a bit of money and printing Bibles as well as other church documents such as indulgences was quite lucrative.
Guess which human writing is distributed more widely than any other and translated into more languages and dialects, by far, than any other?
Guess that makes the Bible true! Or that the nature of the religion is to spread itself as far as possible, and has been one of the main controlling forces of civilization for quite a few centuries since the alternative was quite often death.
Guess which book its enemies have endeavored to destroy more than any other? There are many religious writings, but none of them come even remotely close to the content and distribution of this remarkable book.
Some people don't buy the bullshit, and may even want to actively fight back against what they see as quite an oppressive regime and ideology? No way! Also, I believe that the Muslims and quite a few other religious groups would differ in their opinions of your book.
In the King James Version of the Old Testament, the phrase "saith the LORD" occurs 802 times, according to my computer search program. Did God really say those things or are these 802 lies? In
Nice poetry, but that's all it is. You could just as well substitute the FSM and his noodly appendages playing the great harp strings of the cosmos and it would be just as valid and make just as much sense. So when do we start teaching FSMism in science class?
That's impossible.
Forgot to mention, we're completely RIAA-free also. Completely self-funded and self-owned. :)
Let me know what you think and come see us at ROS Fest in 2009. :D
Who gives a fuck? Get over the obsession.
Your second "method of knowing" is great on its own, but what you forget is that it also has to be grounded in physical reality, otherwise you're just much adieu about nothing. One could come up with an incredibly complex, self-consistent logic set that doesn't mean anything because it's not based on anything in reality. As for your third method of knowing, "spiritual senses, well, you just assert as much with nothing to back it up. Also, define "spiritual". And define "higher" as in higher truths. And how can you know there is knowledge and truth that we simply can't, no way, no how, discover if we.... can't discover it?
Calling Secular Humanism a religion is at best a bastardization of the meaning of the word religion. Despite popular claims, the Supreme Court never ruled that secular humanism is a religion. It was only stated as such in a dicta footnote, which is not a binding rule. By its very nature, the secular in secular humanism makes it pretty obvious that it isn't a religion...
The only difference is that DNA has the interesting property of being able to replicate itself (although it isn't the only molecule able to do that).
If you look at DNA without also taking into account the history of how DNA got to be where it is now, certainly it looks pretty implausible. Context helps.