The 100 Latest Debate Point Responses
1 - People who've experienced God KNOW that God exists
Comment #180415 by Answer on May 14, 2008 at 9:17 pm
One should never trust an experience that they cannot reproduce empirically or share with another person. True, there are 4 billion Christians and most of them claim to have experienced God. However, this God that they experience has a multitude of different traits depending on who is experiencing it.
My first example was that of Christians, because I live in America where most people are Christian, and because that is what I felt I was personally experiencing before I found the truth.
But what about those genuine followers of Allah, or the people who believe in a pantheon of Gods? Are they simply wrong because the one "true" God told someone so? No, they're all right, because they're all wrong.
The "God" one experiences is more than likely oneself. We are all made out of the same things that stars are made out of. We are all following the same laws of nature and physics as everywhere else in the universe (except for where omittance is necessary i.e. black holes, etc.). It is not hard to believe that we are capable of doing all of the things the Bible claims we are capable of, therefore I assert that we are all Gods in our own way ( I have an interesting theory of relativity).
But if we could all move mountains and if we could all raise ourselves from the dead, there would be no God, because it would be the norm. So, not surprisingly, humanity invented a glorious (damnable) inversion of our limitedness.
So tell me, how can you experience a man who is three people and one of those persons was incarnated 2000 years ago, killed on a cross for claiming to be the son of God, and then neatly folded his dressings and ascended to heaven to be with his father and the holy spirit...who also happen to be him?
I would also assert that several people claim to have experienced being oranges, but they don't look or function much like oranges. They look and function like people whose minds have degenerated.
I apologize for the implied connection between theists and the mentally disabled, but that apology is only because it hurts people to hear the truth.
2 - What are your qualifications to question religion anyway? Just who are you?
Comment #180412 by Answer on May 14, 2008 at 9:02 pm
I don't know if or that this has been said already, but I feel that if I am qualified to spend an eternity in an endless fire pit of suffering for all of eternity just for being born (unquestionably without consulting my free will because I did not HAVE a will at my conception) then I am extremely qualified to question the suggested authority and laws of the party that will send me there.
Comment #179435 by cpiasminc on May 13, 2008 at 8:44 am
A phrase I've often used to describe Hinduism is that it is not an organized religion. It is fundamentally a disorganized religion. It doesn't have any sort of fundamental rules unto itself insofar as "this encompasses all of the forms of Hinduism." Sure, the words like Dharma and Karma and so on exist everywhere, but they aren't very explicitly defined in any sort of universal way. Because it's an introspective and reflective type of approach, it really opens itself up to just about anything from the mild to the completely insane. And there are communities who form all sorts of new sects and new castes based on the philosophies of some particular leader/philosopher simply because they don't want to have to sort it out for themselves. There is indeed less likelihood of finding a Hindu for whom The God Delusion was highly offensive as there is to find a Hindu who agrees with every word in the book. Well, I suppose if the book had come out 50 years ago or so, the story would be quite the opposite.
Now if we were to get into the specifics of Vaishnavam, Shaivam, etc... Now you start getting into a little bit more uniformity. Now when you get down even further and look at specific castes under these, it really gets to that point. When you get down to the subcaste level, there's fundamentalism like any other religion. I have an aunt who would qualify as a pretty extreme example of a Vaishnavite fundamentalist. And things like "God of the gaps" arguments are old hat for her. It's actually quite funny how she can concede things like how rainfall works on a scientific level, but then ultimately fall on "oh, but somebody had to make the water molecule such that it is a highly self-cohesive solvent!" But one thing that you do find in there is also a certain underlying prejudice. And it's the condescending kind of "oh, you worship Vinayak! You're one of those lost and confused people!" type of prejudice. The sad part is, that I can't completely argue that she would be the worst among people I've seen. Depending on the generation from which people come, you can find some who are much worse. When you get down to that level of Hindu philosophies, I find that the argument that it presents a more sophisticated world view falls apart.
Where you might see it is at a broad overview of the populace. The thing is that most people aren't really super-religious and they sort of practice the stuff they grew up on as a sort of identify themselves with their prior culture. The sciences and mathematics (and the teachers) are things we revere as a sort of general rule of thumb. For most people, their religion contains only certain rules of life that they happen to agree with and the rest are kind of unimportant. One point that Prof. Dawkins made was that the moderate and not-too-deeply religious people are statistically insignificant. If we were talking strictly about raw populations, I don't think I'd totally agree with him on that. But if we were talking about (at least in the Western world) political power, wealth, etc., and even more importantly, the people who actually have a voice of sorts and actually talk about things which relate in some way to morals, then there's little doubting where it all comes from. But then, that's the big difference in India, where almost everybody is politically active, and almost everybody puts their opinions on paper, and so it ends up looking like the religions themselves are inherently moderate and non-intrusive because the rhetoric reflects something closer to the voices of the masses, and also, we see the effects of this. Look at how long it took the US to get to even the possibility of a female president as opposed to India. We see schools like IIT producing some of the top engineers in the land. We see things like the caste system slowly crumbling because of the modern generation of youngsters who largely don't care about it anymore. We see that science and mathematics are huge deals in the education system in India, and the religious are highly supportive of that. An odd sort of joke about Hinduism in general is that where the Western religions face up to scientific discoveries with an attitude of "That's blasphemy! You're going to Hell!", Hinduism faces up to them with an attitude of "See? I told you so! We knew it centuries before you did!" Sure, this gives you a positive overall picture, but then the brighter the image, the darker the negative, and that's where things like the dropping babies onto a sheet thing come up.
Although, I'm certainly less qualified to talk as explicitly on Buddhism, I would add I wouldn't completely agree with the notion that Buddhism isn't as "missionary" as the Abrahamic religions. It just spread in a direction which the the Western world had no contact with for so long. People have fought wars and killed in the name of Buddha, and it did spread rather forcefully at one time. Today, people try to spread it in a more seemingly gentle way through all sorts of lofty spiritual discussions and speeches wafting in all sorts of artful poetry and metaphors making the listener see it with an air of profundity. But in the end, the goal is still to spread it.
4 - You can't be moral without God!
Comment #178245 by SimonPengelly on May 11, 2008 at 2:17 am
Follow-up to comment #127075 by Ascaphus on February 14, 2008 at 11:10 pm
HA: God "created" humanity (through a process, possibly) as part of a developing universe and to have an in-built tendency to seek understanding, meaning and purpose.
Predictions:
1) "tendencies" being not-absolute will allow people to be different: some to seek harder
2) gaining understanding and finding meaning and purpose implies that there is something to understand and some meaning and purpose. If any or all of these exist, then they are (to the extent that they have been found - as a product of seeking) part of and harmonous with what God set in train [**obviously this is exploring the hypothesis rather than insisting on a truth]
3) Atheists and people of any faith/religion will do some things that are harmonious with God's creation [As **] and some things that aren't. The extent to which they do (and also therefore "don't") depends not on which particular label they apply to themselves (or that others apply to them) but to what extent they have really found understanding (not mis-understanding or just thinking they understand) and the extent to which they decide to implement the implications.
5 - You can't be moral without God!
Comment #178221 by SimonPengelly on May 11, 2008 at 12:16 am
"You can't be moral without God!"
The question is a little more philosophical and a lot deeper than whether the behaviour of people believing in God is different from those who don't.
The means of determining between what is moral and what isn't has to be defined first and that depends on a number of very basic scenarios:-
1. If there is no (absolutely, none, zilch) free will, then morality is an irrelevant word. People do what they have to and the consequences include others doing what they have to.
2. If there is free will but no God, then morality can only be a cultural-genetic "norm" against which others of the same culture and genes can judge. People with different genes or different ('inclusive or' not exclusive), have no basis whatever on which to say that each other's "norms" are contrary to Morality. In practical terms, this is resolved by a 'might is right' mechanism which leads to "morality is what you get away with".
3. If God exists (and has included free-will in humanity's makeup) then there exists the possibility of a universal morality: if only people could fully understand what it is and then follow it.
Sadly, most people (one could be reasonably tempted to say "all") throughout history have either not fully understood or not followed. Even for the most thoughtful (atheist or believing: putting aside the distinction beween faith and religion for the moment), life is a "work in progress". The life of the less-thoughtful could perhaps be described as a "work not currently in progress".
6 - Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. were atheists, and they were terrible! Answer that!
Comment #178217 by qoqo on May 10, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Sorry if this has already been raised...
Atrocities motivated by otherworldly desires and/or fears cannot be debated rationally.
Atrocities motivated by desires and/or fears pertaining to this world CAN be debated rationally.
Hence, secular atrocities are amenable to correction since the underlying motivation is within our understanding. Such is not the case with supernatural incentives.
7 - What does atheism say about the purpose (or the meaning) of life?
Comment #178134 by SimonPengelly on May 10, 2008 at 2:57 pm
The only thing that atheism as such says about any purpose or meaning to life is that God needn't be taken into account.
Atheists say some of whatever comes into their minds - some of it is about meaning or purpose to life but without any consistency or coordination between the different views.
8 - What is the role of free will to an atheist?
Comment #177962 by SimonPengelly on May 10, 2008 at 4:29 am
It's clear that our 'decisions' are influenced by our previous experiences, personal characteristics and current circumstances. It's also clear that most people go through the process of using their mind to select between options available at the time and consciously ally themselves at that time with the choice made (even if it is or turns out to have been a bad choice).
So, is that 'choice' totally, 100% illusiory and merely a mechanistic bio-electro-chemical response: or is there an element of the "I" being, to an extent, independent from the physical existence and environs and able (even if the opportunity isn't always taken up) to make a real choice?
In practice, I personally go through life on the basis that "decisions" I make are real; even if heavily influenced by circumstances and background. If it's an illusion, it's a pretty effective one and I can't see that there's any point in going through life rejecting the opportunity to choose. However, if there isn't any free will, I would obviously just do what I had to do (and had to choose!) so there wouldn't be any difference!
Once there is understanding that free will exists, there is a consequent responsibility in using it; which leads to the issue of ethics.
9 - What is the role of free will to an atheist?
Comment #177776 by LouWeeGee on May 9, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Historically, I see the concept of freewill being developed in early Christianity as it tried to establish concepts that set it apart from Roman mythology. In contrast to being the 'play things of the gods', where man had no control, early Christians defined their belief as having freewill. The word simply means the ability to exercise choice. Using their concept of freewill, the early Church proclaimed that one decides to accept Jesus as their savior. As with most patterns in belief thinking, consistency is not required. Once freewill led to belief, one was required to relinquish it and allow the Church to make their choices for them. Freewill also disappears when one is under Satan's spell, as it contradicts the established story pattern in this scenario.
Ironically, Christian freewill/choice was to be predicated on knowledge, specifically knowledge of Jesus Christ. When one obtained the knowledge of Christ, they would exercise their freewill/choice and accept him as their savior. I say ironically, as belief thinking is antithetical to knowledge. Christian freewill, based on knowledge, is only acceptable within the confines of what they determine to be knowledge. Hence, they work so diligently to obfuscate the knowledge we have acquired through scientific inquiry.
As an atheist, I had no freewill/choice in determining who I am. I didn't choose to enjoy reading, or choose my thinking style or patterns. However, knowledge does play a major part in my decision making. The more knowledge, the more choices. The more choices, the less likely one is going to choose to believe in fairytales.
10 - What is the role of free will to an atheist?
Comment #177733 by SimonPengelly on May 9, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Comment #125748 by the_ultimate_samurai on February 12, 2008 at 1:30 am
the real question is: "what is the role of free will to a theist"
following the premise that god is omnicient and there is nothing he doesnt know, then a person cannot make a decision god didnt know he would make, therefore all decisions are known in advance as well as the decision they would ultimately make, thus that person would have no free will at all, since its all predetermined in god's divine plan. therefore:
if god is omnicient then man has no free will; if man has free will then god is not omnicient.
But science currently tells us that time started when the universe began (carefully avoiding words like 'created'). So, God is presumably independant of the physical universe and hence outside of our constraint of time. The human brain finds it difficult (at least mine does) to understand either infinity or being "outside time" but a logical corollary is that God can be both omniscient and omnipotent whilst enabling free will in humanity that is independant of any pre-destination or 'pre-knowledge' - because they both imply time-constraints.
Comment #177518 by CKava on May 9, 2008 at 8:15 am
I think that Buddhism and Hinduism have certain aspects that recommend them over the more commonly criticised monotheistic religions namely:
1. Generally they are less concerned with conversion.
2. The promotion of Holy/Righteous wars is not commonly emphasised.
3. There seems to be more tolerance of multiple viewpoints.
However the notion that they are completely compatible with science and are not pray to the kind of issues found in monotheistic religions is completely false. Looking at Buddhism in particular the idea that it is a rational, scientific and atheistic philosophy is almost entirely a result of the way it was marketed to the 'West' at the start of the twentieth century. The Zen promoted in the West for instance bears little resemblance to how Zen/Ch'an has been actually practiced throughout history or indeed how it is practiced today in the societies it originates from.
Most people from non-Buddhist countries are only familiar with the various exported 'brands' of Buddhism and the image they promote for themselves in the West. The most popular by far are Japanese Zen, Tibetan Buddhism and to a
lesser extent various Theravada schools and New Buddhist movements like Soka Gakkai. The progression of these specific types of Buddhism are not a random phenomena either and often largely rely on the efforts of certain popular missionary type figures. D. T. Suzuki is one prevalent example...
All in all the Buddhist groups prominent in the West tend to reflect only a small proportion of Buddhist schools and how they are practiced and taught and presented in their European and Western contexts is often radically different from how they are taught/practiced in their original contexts. Buddhism like every religion has been adaptated in each new cultural context it has developed in however the issue I take with this in terms of 'Western' Buddhism is that many of the characteristics of 'Western' or 'modern' Buddhism are portrayed as being characteristics of some eternal or 'real' Buddhism when in many cases they are clearly modern interpretations.
Looking at the replies on this thread alone one can see clearly that many self-identified Buddhists who I would hazard a guess are mostly from non-Buddhist countries appeal to Siddhartha Gautama as an example of a purely rational figure
who would not approve of the superstitutions that surround Buddhist practice in Buddhist countries. What this convienantly ignores is that A) what the Buddha 'said' is a matter of debate as he wrote nothing down himself and the authenticity of
texts is a matter of heated debate and B) even accepting the texts most commonly identified as the early teachings as the Buddhas teachings they are rife with supernatural components. One can make an argument that these are not the core
component of the texts however to me that very much seems like picking and choosing what to regard as authentic. Whats more there is a lot of evidence that even the early Buddhist community was involved in many things which today would be regarded by most as superstitious but yet according to the early texts they were approved by the Buddha. One example would be the various protective chants or parittas. Early texts are also rife with supernatural figures and settings which are often dismissed away today as metaphors for pyschological states which seems to bear a strong similarity with Christians attempts to dismiss outlandish aspects of the Bible as just metaphors.
I'm not arguing that one cannot practice a kind of modified Buddhism that is entirely compatible with science but it is simply false to try and assert that 'real' Buddhism is scientific and non-supernatural. Core components of most forms of Buddhism include notions of karma and reincarnation and often include very complex but scientifically dubious concepts of the mind as something entirely distinct from the physical body. There are also numerous claims in Buddhist literature about the various super powers of old Buddhist masters and discussions of the powers that are developed from certain sorts of practice. And the list could go on and on...
The point at the end is that Buddhism and Hinduism suffer from the same kind of drawbacks and dubious claims that all religions I'm aware of do. The rebranding of both (and Buddhism in particular) as a philosophy is also a quite apparently the legacy of how they were promoted to Western society and how they are now continue to appeal to modern secular audience. There is also often more than a pinch of exoticism in how people perceive and comment on these specific religions.
Lastly and to highlight the above points in response to the comments of jpollard & :
Buddhists do not have a GOD.
- The Buddha functions much like a God in every Buddhist country and even disregarding that the early texts make no attempt to deny the existence of Gods (Buddha in fact meets with several).
Buddhists do not have a FAITH.
- Depends on the Buddhists. Again most Buddhist countries have elements that certainly look like faith and if one looks into the massively popular Pure Land schools of Buddhism it's very hard to argue that faith is not a part of Buddhism.
Buddhists do not have a RELIGION.
- Yes they do- Buddhism. The fact that some Buddhists mainly in Europe and North America chose to regard Buddhism as a philosophy does not make Buddhism any less a religion. Taking Christianity as a moral philosophy wouldn't stop it being a religion.
Oh and agree with harishkumar about Hinduism being a British invention but still I think the term is useful for simplifying and due to the fact that there are actually quite a lot of shared beliefs in the different religious groups termed under Hinduism.
12 - People who've experienced God KNOW that God exists
Comment #177346 by Chato on May 9, 2008 at 12:42 am
My experience certainly could not be be proof of anything. In fact I cannot say it answered all my questions - it left me with far more unanswered questions. Ofcourse it means to me there is more to the world than science generally accepts but that only has personal value. However, after having such an experience you cannot then accept the view of the world accepted by the majority of the scientific community. Maybe it is just part of the human condition to struggle to find answers to questions that we are incapable of answering.
13 - How do you explain the lack of transitional forms in nature, the gaps in the fossil record?
Comment #177265 by Destrado on May 8, 2008 at 8:42 pm
New video on YouTube. 10 minutes and 30 seconds of pure repeated and relentless answering of this very question from any and every angle. It was posted today and is receiving a somewhat of a standing ovation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfoje7jVJpU
14 - How can the Earth be so perfectly suited for life by coincidence?
Comment #177158 by LiseYates on May 8, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Jake Atkinson, you're my hero.
15 - People who've experienced God KNOW that God exists
Comment #177100 by LiseYates on May 8, 2008 at 2:51 pm
When I hear someone use the "experience" topic as proof of a god, I can only think of the experiment a couple of Swedish scientists performed in 2006. These scientists were studying the effects of electromagnetic stimulation on the left temporoparietal junction of a patient's brain. The results produced caused the patient to believe that someone was very close to her although she was the only person in the room.
I mention this because the religious are adamant about saying that you can't judge someone's personal experiences with a god but what if those personal experiences are nothing but the person's mind responding the stimuli people tend to create during worship (the latter is most likely the cause)? This is why I'm am furious about this distinction of science among the religious as evil. It seems some people would rather be ignorant and brainwashed all their lives than to actually think for themselves.
16 - What are your qualifications to question religion anyway? Just who are you?
Comment #177068 by LouWeeGee on May 8, 2008 at 2:07 pm
I hold multiple degrees in science. I understand the historical significance of the J,E, and P documents and their contribution to the canonization of the Pentateuch. I've read the the ancient literature; the Bible, the Kabala, the Code of Hammerabi, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Nag Hammadi Library. I am well versed in the history of the Hittites, Amorites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians and Europeans. I stay up-to-date on Middle East archeology. As a teenager, I was confirmed Lutheran. As a young adult, I was a member of a fundamental, evangelical church for 10 years. I am an atheist.
Comment #176791 by harishkumar09 on May 8, 2008 at 3:21 am
You need individually critique each of the religions I mentioned above if you want to make any sense.
Of course most people take hinduism as represented by advaita philosophy.If that is the case then I have no problems.But since this is a rational forum one must state explicitly the connection.
Clarity in thought is essential.
Comment #176781 by harishkumar09 on May 8, 2008 at 2:53 am
First of all , there is no religion called hinduism
In India there are the following five major systems or religions.
1.Vaishnavism
2.Shaivism
3.Tantrism
4.Ganapathyam
5.Kaumaram
apart from non-denominational advaita philosophy.
1. considers Vishnu is the omnipotent , omnipresent (GOD) 2.Shiva,3.Shakthi(feminine omnipotent , omnipresent principle)4.Ganesh 5.Karthikeya.
Then there is advaita which considers consciousness to be the only reality and everything else is maya , a "world-appearance".
Then in India (which is a country)there are atheists,businessmen,software professionals,iconoclausts,madmen,theives and all sorts of people.
When British first came to India they saw all these different people living the same neighbourhood together peacefully.Since their own experience of religion was one of intolerance, persecution and nurder and mayhem , and all the vaishnavites, shaivities, atheists were all living together peacefully , they cae to a conclsion they all belonged to the same religion which Britishers called Hinduism.
Hence anybody can be a hindu.You can worship Vishnu , Shiva, be a thief , break idols and travel by train as well and still be a hindu !!! How remarkable !!!
Only a brain damaged fool will use the words "Hindu" and "Hinduism".
And since most Indians (99%) have a colonial mindset , they parroted and continue to parrot what the Bristishers said. This includes accepting that a religion called hinduism exists and anybody can be a hindu.
19 - You can't be moral without God!
Comment #176711 by powerboy on May 7, 2008 at 10:22 pm
It seems to me that a simple evaluation of human history would lead a logically thinking individual to the conclusion that the burden of proof is on those who claim that morality is axiomatic with belief in God.
This question is an attack on a human beings deepest personal integrity. It suggests that I, or you before you found your faith, could not possibly decide upon a moral action. That we are totally incapable of deciphering the difference between good and evil. That we, individually, or collectively, would not know that murdering someone is wrong; that stealing from someone is wrong; that watching a child run into traffic without doing anything to stop that child is wrong etc.
If morality is only derived from religious faith, then why are young children sexually abused by their catholic priests? Why were the last words uttered by those who decided to kill nearly three thousand people on September 11, 2001 "Allah akbar"? Why do the parties of God continue to slaughter people indiscriminately in Iraq. Why were people publicly beheaded in Afghanistan, before a nation that SEPERATES CHURCH AND STATE intervened? Why does it take two women to be counted as one person in a court in the Islamic Republic of Iran? Why was there Islamic Jihad or Christian Crusades? Why were young children brainwashed and forced to marry middle aged men at a polygamist compound in Texas? Catch the drift?
20 - Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. were atheists, and they were terrible! Answer that!
Comment #176706 by powerboy on May 7, 2008 at 10:10 pm
Not believing you're created by a God doesn't make you a morally superior human being. Atheism is the refusal to believe that which cannot be substantiated with respect to the Universes' origin; not a moral guidepost with which to determine what things should or should not be done; what actions are justified or not.
Religion, however, does provide courage for evil acts and even motivation. People are willing to do things they otherwise would not do if they believe God is on their side.
21 - A Rational Universe Implies a Creator, Science points towards Theism
Comment #176689 by powerboy on May 7, 2008 at 9:40 pm
This argument is made as if we didn't know the Universe is destined for destruction. The Universe is not "rational", rather we have observed the Universe and understand why certain events within it occur, which in turn allows us to develop rational explanations for things we see. That is not to say that the Universe is rational. Suicide isn't rational. It is the opposite. It is, at its root, the most irrational action one could take. However, if someone chooses to commit suicide, and does it by overdosing on medication, a police detective would be able to determine how the suicide was committed. He would be able to determine how a completely irrational event unfolded. He would, in essence, rationalize an irrational situation. Family members might also try to rationalize it by making the case that the man was distressed. It is still an irrational, but sometimes emotionally necessary action.
The Universe doesn't operate according to any rational logic. Everything that happens is a direct consequential result of its origins. Black holes exist because a star died that was so massive, when it collapsed it caused that region of space to become so dense that the subsequent gravity produced doesn't allow anything to escape. We can make sense of it, but it doesn't make what we are observing rational at all. This star, which would eventually produce the black hole, came from gas left behind from the big bang. Again, there is no rational logic with which the universe operates. There is only cause and effect. What the original cause was, we don't know. What we can be sure of is that if scientists don't know, theologians don't come close to knowing.
22 - People who've experienced God KNOW that God exists
Comment #176613 by Chato on May 7, 2008 at 7:13 pm
I was an atheist before i discovered Reiki. I have had many profound experiences - the most powerful was when what felt like two chords of pain around my heart snapped and I then vommitted what felt like static electricity (that is the best description I can give). At the moment before I vommitted, both times, I heard my own voice in my head speak to me. It was very strange - it sounded like the voice that normally thinks my own thoughts but it called me "You". What the voice told me directly pertained to an emotional crisis I was having and was not so profound to anyone else that it is worth repeating - the message was for me and was personal. The voice that spoke inside my head was extremely wise and compassionate. From the way it spoke I could tell that it knew everything and would forgive anyone for anything. you could call this God, spirit, collective unconscious - whatever you like - the Buddha called it mind because he wanted to get away from the false concepts the word "God" engenders. This force is real but it would never punish anyone - most if not all religions have seriously failed to understand thsi phenomena. I think the Buddha did understand it but modern Buddhism has been corrupted by earlier forms of ancestor worship and other such ancient religions. But in the recorded words of the Buddha himself you will find the truth - if you can understand it!
23 - Pascal's Wager
Comment #176335 by cpiasminc on May 7, 2008 at 7:30 am
This is more than a bit ill-posed. For one, I don't think that according to Christian doctrine, that simply "being" a Christian is enough to grant passage to Heaven. Moreover, doesn't this amount to little more than trying to fool God? If he's a supreme being, do you really think he's going to fall for that? And if you do go so far as the doctrine suggests you should, then you have wasted a great deal of time on prayer and evangelizing the so-called "Word of God" that could have been spent doing something constructive.
Secondly, if you were to really play the odds, wouldn't you want to belong to every religion part-time? What happens if you've got the wrong God? Why not pray to Ahura Mazda, or Odin, or Shiva, or Ishtar, or the "Great Juju at the bottom of the sea"?
There's the counterpoint of what are you going to do in this life? You have an impact on people, whether positive or negative, by doing something during the time you're on Earth. Whether you go to Heaven, Hell, or nowhere, once you're dead, you're gone. Whatever happened to the idea of doing something in this life as opposed to dedicating the whole thing to the next life where you can only do nothing and for nobody?
24 - What are your qualifications to question religion anyway? Just who are you?
Comment #176201 by powerboy on May 6, 2008 at 10:02 pm
Who is in need of more qualification: a person casting doubt on the claim that something unprovable actually exists, or someone claiming that something that is unprovable actually exists. Believers go one further by claiming that not only does something that cannot be substantiated by evidence actually exists, but that they know his mind, what he wants, what he thinks, what he likes, what he dislikes; that he cares about you, cares about what you do, what you say, who you sleep with, what you eat, what holidays you observe etc. The only suitable qualification to make these claims as if they were a matter of fact would be to know God himself. Since that is impossible, nobody is qualified to make the religious claims they do. They proclaim that an collection of ancient books are their source of authority; I think that human intellect is a more credible source of authority, along with science and reason.
25 - Science and Religion BOTH make faith claims
Comment #176173 by Chato on May 6, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Science does make faith claims and at the core of modern science is one of the biggest faith claims ever made. As a former applied chemistry student I discovered in the course of my studies that at the core of all matter science can find nothing but pure energy. A Hydrogen atom has nothing that we would call "matter" at its core. So then how does pure energy 'become' matter? The theory is that there is an invisible stream running through the universe and when energy comes into contact with this stream it somehow transforms into the solid matter that makes up the universe. Funnily enough - this stream has never been found. Why? Because it is as ludicrous an idea as the idea that the world is a few thousand years old and that Adam and Eve were sharing the garden of Eden with dinosaurs. The missing ingredient is spirit and actually matter is nothing more than an illusion. Buddha said the physical world was both an illusion and real (some of his disciples felt this meant life was pointless and committed suicide when he first explained this concept). I cannot claim to fully understand what this means but maybe only someone who has achieved enlightenment can truly understand? I don't know. Science should keep trying to understand, but the missing ingredient is spirit. Until science learns how to measure spirit it will not be able to overcome this fundamental hurdle to understanding the true nature of the universe which is what most of us actually hope to achieve.
26 - Why do atheists care about what others believe when it doesn't affect atheists?
Comment #176087 by powerboy on May 6, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Beliefs have consequences for everyone. The people massacred during the Christian Crusades, or Islamic Jihads, would beg to differ with your opinion that peoples beliefs don't affect others.
27 - Atheists only promote divisiveness, as any other separatist movement.
Comment #176083 by powerboy on May 6, 2008 at 2:10 pm
The thoughts of human beings are not euphoric. Therefore, the collection of their thoughts will inherently be divisive.
Atheists, however, do not seek to divide, but rather are proposing that humankind reconsider its existence. Because something is divisive, doesn't mean that it is meant to be.
28 - What does atheism say about the purpose (or the meaning) of life?
Comment #176081 by powerboy on May 6, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Human beings, above all else, are creators. It is just what we do. It was predetermined by nature. Everything we are responsible for, from a lawn chair to a skyscraper, has an exact purpose. Therefore, it is inherent that we will always view things through the prism of creationism. Since we know we didn't create the Earth, something must have. Since we know we didn't create the universe, something must have. Since we know we didn't create ourselves, something must have. Furthermore, all of these things must also have purpose. There is no reason to believe that there is a purpose to life to begin with.
29 - People who've experienced God KNOW that God exists
Comment #176077 by powerboy on May 6, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Again, you're placing an unjustifiable degree of trust in a claim that isn't trustworthy. Because someone said they had a "personal experience" doesn't make it true.
Rational inquiry dismisses this argument through the simple observation that Christians "experience" Jesus Christ; Muslims "experience" Allah; children "experience" the flying spaghetti monster etc. Logic dictates that not all of them can be right, and not all of them can be telling the truth.
Therefore, which God is real and which is not. Who is genuinely having a "religious" experience and who is being "deceived" by the devil? Perhaps none of them are correct. Perhaps they're having natural experiences and confusing them with religious experiences. Perhaps they are attributing to God, something that shouldn't be, out of loyalty to something they perceived as having helped them. Case and point; Pat Robertson claimed that in South America (of course somewhere remote where only he and his missionaries were) people were being "raised from the dead". Now, when pressed on this matter he admitted that someone had only died and was brought back to life while being rushed to the hospital from the inside of an ambulance while they were there. It didn't matter that emergency medical technicians were working to revive that person; it was all a work of God.
So you see, these "experiences" can, and should, be attributed to the truly wonderful reality of nature, and righteous intervention into the troubles of people by other people who care enough to help. If they were remotely inspired by God, then why aren't all believers saved from dying a horrible death, or suffering great tragedies? The most common response by the religious peddlers and personal kingdom builders of our time is that they were not paying their tithes! So you see, some things just don't deserve faith.
30 - Atheism is a religion and you're as bad as the fundamentalists
Comment #175642 by Chato on May 5, 2008 at 6:55 pm
Defining religion is problematic - most people would say Buddhism is a religion but it does not fit any of the standard western definitions as it teaches there is no soul and no god, only a universal mind - something like the collective unconscious that scientists working in the field of psychology have observed. If Buddhism is a religion than atheism is too. Whether atheism is a religion or not it is definitely possible to be a fundamentalist atheist. I say this becuase I was one until a series of experiences I cannot scientifically reproduce lead me to Buddhism. I practice Reiki everyday and it is a very physical experience and generally very painful. It is nothing left to faith - you can feel it very physically although you cannot see it or smell it. When I learned Reiki I was extremely sceptical and definitely no true believer but I was just open enough to experience it. Since then I have learned Reiki to the master level and taught somewhere between 100 and 200 people. Of these most were highly sceptical - less than five of these people were convinced Reiki was real before they felt it themselves. Of the approximately 200 people i taught only about half a dozen were unable to experience the phenomenon. I believe these people are fundamentally opposed to the possibility and they block the experience. As a former atheist I found this extremely disappointing. I had always been fairly closed minded and I thought if someone as closed as me could experience Reiki than anyone could. I no longer teach Reiki and I only practice on myself - I'm sick of being looked at as a whacko! And as a former disbeliever I am accutely aware of how whacko it sounds. The problem with Reiki is that not everyone has the same experience - I for example cannot give distance readings or diagnose people's illness as some people claim to be able to do. The truth is that even the most experienced practitioners' of Reiki do not really understand it or know how it works. We need science to help us here but the fundamentalllist atheists that dominate the scientific community make this possibility difficult to achieve. Reiki can be scientifically measured - a friend of mine learned Reiki as part of a martial arts course (the potential applications for Reiki do include fighting - not just healing - exactly what it can and can't do are unknown), he went to Seaworld where there was a device for measuring the electromagnetic current that sharks detect. The device explained that the higher a person's body mass the higher they would be on the scale. The largest member of their group barely registered a quarter of the way up the scale. My friend and a couple of others in the group that were part of the same martial arts class that had learned Reiki, all went off the scale. Therefore there is a device right now that can measure Reiki scientifically - perhaps this should be the starting point for a real scientific study into Reiki and other similar phenomenons (which are probably the same but given different names by different cultures).
Comment #175012 by Chato on May 4, 2008 at 5:51 am
I was an atheist until I discovered Reiki which led me to Buddhism. I still have enough of my atheist origins that I do not belong to any groups - my practise is completely personal, but I know Reiki is real. I have to say when reading what has been recorded of the Buddha's words I could never find anything he said that science has disproved and in fact science has since proved many things he said were true. For example he was once asked if the world had and would last forever? He categorically answered that the world had not always existed and that it would not exist forever. Ofcourse modern science has since proven him to be correct, but two and a half thousand years ago that was quite a statement. Actually I have found many insights in the Buddha's teachings that could only be backed up by science as late as the 20th century. We have proven some of the Buddha's ideas are true - in time science will no doubt prove more of them are true.
32 - What does atheism say about the purpose (or the meaning) of life?
Comment #174694 by Nichon on May 3, 2008 at 9:18 am
Atheism is the belief that a god did not create the universe,
its belief that there is no all knowing being that cares about what you do, who you have sex with and whether or not you curse that often.
What does atheism say about the purpose of life?
I would say that the purpose of life is to explore the natural world, to explore and understand why we are here and not have blind faith in 2000 year old Bronze Age books. The true beauty and poetry of life is the physical laws that govern the world.
Is a rainbow suddenly less meaningless when you know it's a refraction of light in water droplets? Is love any less real to the person when they understand it's a biological condition? Is cancer any more painful to the patient and any less a scourge on your body when you know it rises as a genetic defect and not from some divine punishment? The meaning of life is unclear, but if you're looking to atheism to tell you your place in the universe you're going to get a surprise.
The earth is 4.4 billion years old, and you are most are about 100 years old. The earth is not the center of the universe, in the fact it's the third small rock from a pretty regular looking star. The meaning of life is that we are a part of this universe; we play a role in it. But we are not the stars of this show. Our civilizations rise and fall in the blinks of time, amounting to mere nothing. Zeus and Thor as might as they were to the people at the time are now Disney movies. Islam once conquered half the known world but now lies mired in the past.
Religion seems unable to cope with a modern reality that proves to us though the scientific method that we are not the center of the world or the universe or any grand system. Atheism says there is more to life than what we know and that we can use our tools of reasoning and science to come to understand our world around us. Religion and blind faith says we know everything already, and that by closing our eyes and ignoring though purposeful ignorance we can somehow become the most important thing in this world.
33 - Pascal's Wager
Comment #174565 by vhdgdr on May 2, 2008 at 5:33 pm
An atheist or any other person who has led a good life will go to heaven. If you live a life as well as you know it should be led - heaven is open. The question is do you? Can you?
We all know right from wrong, but do we help the poor and defend the oppressed? Or do we just let them rot?
In the end, there will be a reckoning. All the good that we could (should) have done but did not and all the wrongs we did do will be laid before us. The question is do we want to submit to this justice - or do we declare bankruptcy now and plead for mercy?
The sacrifice of Christ enables this mercy to operate. It is a free gift. But you must surrender to Christ to claim it.
34 - If you don't have religion, where do you find your sense of community?
Comment #174560 by tba93968 on May 2, 2008 at 4:47 pm
There can be no doubt that the church provides significant assistance and solice to many in the community. The sick, the greiving, the lonely and down and outs. This is not being addressed particularly well by the secular community. Other facets of 'community' are provided well by non religious organistions. However whatever aspect of community is provided it does not require a God to be involved in any way to make it work.
35 - What are your qualifications to question religion anyway? Just who are you?
Comment #174127 by BudGar on May 1, 2008 at 5:22 pm
anybody who has the ability to think with logic and reason has the qualifications to question religion.
36 - How do you explain the lack of transitional forms in nature, the gaps in the fossil record?
Comment #173710 by dadamo on May 1, 2008 at 6:40 am
Question: "How do you explain the lack of transitional forms in nature, the gaps in the fossil record?"
Answ r: Th re are g ps in this sent nce.
A Creat onist fu ls those ga s with G d.
A Sci ntist just says th re is more
w rk to be done.
37 - How can the Earth be so perfectly suited for life by coincidence?
Comment #173707 by dadamo on May 1, 2008 at 6:35 am
Question: "How can the Earth be so perfectly suited for life by coincidence?"
Answer: The Earth is not suited to life by
coincidence. Life is suited to the Earth by
natural selection.
38 - Why do atheists care about what others believe when it doesn't affect atheists?
Comment #173672 by dadamo on May 1, 2008 at 5:17 am
"Why do atheists care about what others believe when it doesn't affect atheists?"
I put a clip on YouTube where R.D. answers this question.
http://www.youtube.com/v/TW5NIfZodEk
39 - What are your qualifications to question religion anyway? Just who are you?
Comment #173616 by born-again-atheist on May 1, 2008 at 12:37 am
I am who I was born to be.
By nature I am inquisitive, questioning, desiring of truth. I seek that which can be answered and explained, and that which answers and explains.
You ask me who am I to question religion? I ask who are you to follow it?
40 - What are your qualifications to question religion anyway? Just who are you?
Comment #173583 by tba93968 on April 30, 2008 at 9:52 pm
I gained my qualifications to question religion the same way as I gained my qualifictions to question other elements of my life. That is by formal education and the informal education of life's experiences.
Religion is treated no differently to any decison I make. I ask 'does the product I am being offered perform as it states on the label? What evidence does the sales person provide to make those claims? Is the source of evidence reliable?
Be it Rinso or Religion if it really works the evidence will prove it very quickly.
41 - What is the role of free will to an atheist?
Comment #173580 by DanDare on April 30, 2008 at 9:45 pm
Edward DeBono style provocation here, a statement designed to be used for moving forward, not for evaluating.
PO Free Will is that mechanism that allows our single world awareness to choose which of the many quantum alternatives to experience.
42 - That's not MY God or Religion you're criticising
Comment #173163 by Sugaree on April 30, 2008 at 1:14 pm
I've come across "liberal" theists who define "their" God as "love" and "life energy" (whatever that is supposed to mean) respectively. These definitions reduce the omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent and eternal being to just one aspect and thus rob him/her/it of most of his/her/its conceivable divine qualties. Defining one's very own special, personal God equals creating him/her/it in that context. And lo and behold: the atheist and the theist have arrived at the same point in the debate: God is man-made.
43 - What is the role of free will to an atheist?
Comment #172708 by DanDare on April 30, 2008 at 12:54 am
To my mind "free will" describes the unfettered working of the mechanisms of my mind. This mechanism exists regardless of whether it is part of a deterministic physics or not. Chaos theory shows that it is unpredictable regardless of having an underlying deterministic physics. Quantum Physics suggests that it does not have a deterministic physics (at least in any "single world" theory of QP.) since quantum fluctuations may work, via the butterfly effect, to produce unpredictable results in the working of my neural network.
Making decisions and holding opinions are not under the direct control of material entities outside of my neural net although chemistry introduced into my body can alter the underlying perceptions and operating mechanism.
Right and wrong are assessments that appear in my neural system and other peoples neural systems may hold me accountable for those assessments.
44 - Science and Religion BOTH make faith claims
Comment #171756 by Converse02 on April 28, 2008 at 7:28 pm
Science is a faith with evidence.
Religion is a faith without.
Theists trick you because faith can mean "to believe,"
they will say "you have faith in science!"
To say you don't have faith in science is to say you don't believe in science, which is untrue.
We have faith in science because of the evidence.
Just be sure to add the word "evidence" in the same sentence to avoid the trap.
45 - How can the Earth be so perfectly suited for life by coincidence?
Comment #170370 by Verily on April 27, 2008 at 5:36 pm
That the conditions of the universe are specifically designed for human life is basically the anthropic principle. It is difficult for humans not to perceive reality anthropocentrically. If I were a microbial organ with consciousness and language and could trace my origins back billions of years to ancestors very similar to myself, I would be saying that I was the most successful form of organic life on planet Earth and that all the parameters of the cosmology had evidently been designed around my interests and finely tuned in my favour. Not only that, I would be saying that I had out-survived millions of intervening species and would probably still be here as a form of life when humans had all disappeared. Much of the argument for the anthropic principle seems to depend on the uniqueness of the kind of evolved intelligence without which we could not even state or discuss it. But we prize and quarantine human intelligence because we have it. Charles Lineweaver discusses a similar kind of issue in Australian Science (Jan/Feb 2008): 'If you were an elephant, you might be interested in nose size and whether there was a trend in the fossil record towards increasing nasalization quotient (NQ)'. Tracing your evolution, you would discover that you now represented 'the pinnacle of nasality'. It is in the same way that we see ourselves as the pinnacle of evolved intelligence, and assume that all cosmological conditions combine to underpin our self-image. However, as Lineweaver suggests, this would be 'a foregone conclusion without meaning simply because you have chosen to examine your most extreme feature'.
46 - What's the evolutionary advantage of offering your place to an old woman on a bus?
Comment #169444 by Reason1958 on April 26, 2008 at 5:54 am
- Experience has taught that women of breeding age find kindness and altruism attractive in a potential mate. By demonstrating kindness to the old woman, observing females of breeding age will be attracted to me.
- My social status in the tribe/community is elevated, thus giving me advantage.
- By giving up something to a lesser member of the tribe/community, I am demonstrating my power and strength (if I can afford to voluntarily give up something to a weaker one, I must have inestimable power/wealth). Such power is attractive to females and intimidating to rival males.
47 - People who've experienced God KNOW that God exists
Comment #169365 by Crazy_Steve on April 25, 2008 at 9:57 pm
How many people here have seen a skilled magician? They can do magic, so magic is real right?
The basic functioning of the brain and an overview of how concious percepion is different than reality should be required in all education programs around the world.
48 - How do you explain the lack of transitional forms in nature, the gaps in the fossil record?
Comment #169264 by Reason1958 on April 25, 2008 at 4:50 pm
For reasons already cited (rarity of fossilization, relatively small number of existing fossils so far found), plus the challenge: "I assume you agree that many amphibians, such as frogs, go through a metamorphosis from egg, to tadpole, to transitional phase with traits of both tadpole and frog, and finally frog. You tell ME why there are no fossils of these transitional states--especially considering the number of amphibians that have lived since your accepted time of the 'creation'."
49 - What are your qualifications to question religion anyway? Just who are you?
Comment #166284 by T4Baxter on April 23, 2008 at 5:00 am
My qualification to question religion is an open mind. I have heard much of the evidence on both sides having converted from Christianity. Through inquisitive investigation from the historicity of Jesus, historicity of the old testament, the nature of the early church, Previous and directly comparable messiah stories based on the zodiac, genetics, evolution, chemistry, physics-history, quantum mechanics, double-blind prayer studies, mysticism, philosophy you name it. though I am a laymen in my understanding, a broader picture presents itself. Sadly, as much as I would like to defend the honor of my nearest and dearest, I've simply come to accept the overwhelmingly probable position that only a deist perspective is defensible in any real sense. If the position you are arguing is GOD is beyond the reach of science for example. 'the first mover etc'. You may as well throw the 'instructions' (bible) away, if thats the only sensible religious perspective. All arguments for the interfering GOD fall flat on their face, it seems.
50 - Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. were atheists, and they were terrible! Answer that!
Comment #165743 by nalfeshnee on April 22, 2008 at 7:59 am
Who voted for the Nazis?
I think this is interesting line of argument - it's often conveniently forgotten that Germany was a Christian democracy at the time. For me, this is a far more interesting line of enquiry that what Hitler thought or did.
Look at this neat summary. Note how (Christian) women preferred the Nazis in the early 1930s!
http://www.historystudystop.co.uk/php/displayarticle.php?article=66&topic=meu
I think this point has to be made a lot more forcefully.
We have not yet had an atheist democracy cause an atrocity on this scale for the obvious reason that no atheist democracy has yet existed.
But we have certainly had a Christian democracy provide the basis for one.
51 - People who've experienced God KNOW that God exists
Comment #165177 by L-Young on April 21, 2008 at 7:14 am
No one had ever experienced god as god doesn't even exist.
http://perspectivevision.blogspot.com/2008/04/origin-of-god.html
52 - Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. were atheists, and they were terrible! Answer that!
Comment #165026 by CentabyteZero on April 21, 2008 at 12:04 am
For the last time Hitler wasn't an atheist. Also, even if he was that doesn't mean he or any of the other people you listed killed in the name of atheism. While the perpetrators of the Inquisition and the Crusades and the Salem Witch Hunts and all that horrible stuff did it in the NAME OF RELIGION. Even if Hitler, Stalin, etc. were killing in the name of atheism, does that mean God exists? No. It just means evil people used their lack of belief to justify actions that no sane person today would find justified or justifiable.
53 - You can't prove that you love someone, so don't expect proof of God
Comment #165025 by CentabyteZero on April 20, 2008 at 11:59 pm
You'd think that if you had an all powerful, all knowing being, who created the universe and everything in it, and was everywhere at the same time we'd know by now.
54 - If you don't accept the supernatural, you obviously think life is depressing, meaningless and cold
Comment #165024 by CentabyteZero on April 20, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Yeah, that's why I want to be a musician when I grow up. You don't need God, well maybe you do, but I don't need to believe in a supernatural creator being to enjoy music, art, or any of those things. They're completely separate things.
55 - Atheists don't believe in anything
Comment #165021 by CentabyteZero on April 20, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Atheists don't believe in anything that can't or hasn't been proven with evidence.
56 - What does atheism say about the purpose (or the meaning) of life?
Comment #165016 by CentabyteZero on April 20, 2008 at 11:44 pm
Atheism is the lack of a belief. The lack of a belief cannot state the purpose or meaning of life.
57 - What are your qualifications to question religion anyway? Just who are you?
Comment #165015 by CentabyteZero on April 20, 2008 at 11:42 pm
What are your qualifications to question who has the qualifications to question religion?
58 - You can't be moral without God!
Comment #165002 by CentabyteZero on April 20, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Is that why Buddhists are so violent?
59 - You can't be moral without God!
Comment #164840 by Seth3481 on April 20, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Religion gets its morality from us. This is why religious people "cherry pick" the bible. There's numerous stories of god commanding his followers to murder. The bible also, at times, supports slavery and the oppression of women amongst other things that are in no way moral regardless of the time. There is an evolutionary advantage to being a good person.
"Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." -Steven Weinberg (Nobel laureate in physics)
60 - What does atheism say about the purpose (or the meaning) of life?
Comment #164397 by L-Young on April 20, 2008 at 7:52 am
There's no meaning for us to have life. It wasn't for a purpose to have life. Life just emerges when chemical bonds and formed the basic units of life. Then slowly through evolution, Humans emerged.
61 - What are your qualifications to question religion anyway? Just who are you?
Comment #163767 by engeln on April 19, 2008 at 2:21 am
as Wafa Sultan said, "Brother, you can believe in stones, so long as you don't throw them at me...". If you want to inflict bronsage dogmas on the society I live in I going to criticize it.
62 - I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist
Comment #163400 by dadamo on April 18, 2008 at 9:49 am
On "Being an atheist takes as much faith as being a theist"
I once heard Matt Dillahunty of the Atheist
Experience answer this as follows:
Do you mean to say it takes as much faith to
disbelieve in Big Foot as it takes to believe
in him?
63 - What is the role of free will to an atheist?
Comment #161273 by jpollard on April 15, 2008 at 5:04 am
What is 'Free Will'? That is a very 'relgious' term at best. A Will, that might be free? Excuse me????
64 - What are your qualifications to question religion anyway? Just who are you?
Comment #161271 by jpollard on April 15, 2008 at 5:00 am
It is not unreasonable to ask such a question. Priests, etc. spend many years learning the 'basis of their faith' and the means by which it should be protected. Therefore I see no reason why their combatant should not be someone equally learned. Else it could become a 'fools errand'. Nothing is served by arguing from a basis of emotional belief - that is the religious position after all. Should not we argue from the basis of proveable investigative logic (science)?
65 - Science and Religion BOTH make faith claims
Comment #161268 by jpollard on April 15, 2008 at 4:50 am
Faith is 'something' that you believe without having any personal experience of the 'thing'. Religion happily allows such a position - in fact it demands it. Science on the other hand precludes such a proposition - in fact it demands it.
Comment #161251 by jpollard on April 15, 2008 at 4:27 am
1. Buddhists do not have a GOD.
2. Buddhists do not have a FAITH.
3. Buddhists do not have a RELIGION.
Having just read TGD and thinking a little about my upbringing as a C of E child in Australia - including a short period as an alter boy. I find that my 'movement towards Buddhism' somewhat insightful. I initially started out with Zen, which was a bit like a thought experiment exercise - could I reach satori on my own, could I even understand it on my own - I was 14 or so. I know it moved me far from GOD, because there is no GOD to consider - if fact ZEN precludes the existance of GOD by precluding the existance of SELF. Over the next 30 years I finally managed to meet and 'converse' with Tibetan Buddhists in Tibet, and while I would never claim to be a Tibetan Buddhist I marvel at their 'joy in life'. These people have no GOD, there is no omnipotent being, there is only 'on-going reincarnation'. But the over-riding fact clear to me is that it is a way of life one must be born into. It is not something one can become - of course we can understand the basis of the belief, but we would not swap our lives would we??? I know little of Hindi, other than it has GODs and to me it falls into the same chasm as any other GOD based religion.
67 - Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. were atheists, and they were terrible! Answer that!
Comment #161058 by Dog Boots on April 14, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Religions. Contain. Instructions.
68 - How do you explain the lack of transitional forms in nature, the gaps in the fossil record?
Comment #160839 by curly on April 14, 2008 at 1:06 pm
The "Talk Origins" website has some really good essays on this question
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html
69 - The US is a Christian Nation
Comment #160829 by dadamo on April 14, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Is the U.S. a Christian Nation?
(The following is from http://www.jhuger.com/)
I frequently hear Christians claim that the United States is a Christian nation, or that the Founding Fathers intended us to be a Christian nation. When they bother to offer evidence it's usually some McCarthy-era addition to our pledge or our money, or some quote (often bogus) from a speech or a letter by one of the Founding Fathers.
Think about this for a second: If you were starting a Christian nation, how would you go about it? Would you make oblique references to "Great Powers" and "Guiding Hands" in obscure speeches and letters, or would you fill your foundational documents with references to Jesus Christ and the Bible?
The Founding Fathers were brilliant men. They spent months and months working on the Constitution. They were very, very careful about what they wrote, discussing and debating every passage at great length. It seems to me that if they had intended this to be a Christian nation they would have said so somewhere in the Constitution. The Founding Fathers had no reason to be vague. There was no ACLU, no "Activist judges." If they had wanted a Christian Nation they could have written:
God Almighty, in Order to form a true Christian Nation, establish Divine Justice, insure adherence to His Laws, provide for the defense of His Church, promote His Word, and secure His Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, has led us to ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Instead they wrote:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The words "Jesus" "Christ" "Bible" "God" and even "Creator" appear nowhere in the Constitution ("Endowed by their Creator" is in the Declaration of Independence.) Just how stupid would someone have to be to create a Christian nation then forget to mention Christ in the Constitution?
Also notice that nobody ever asks what the Founding Mothers might have said. There were no Founding Mothers. The Founders were all men; White men, many of them slave owners. White male slave owners who may or may not have been Christians, but explicitly forbade any kind of religious test for office. In other words, you have a far stronger case if you'd like to argue that the Founding Fathers intended us to be a racist and sexist nation.
I think you can make a good case that some or even most of the Founding Fathers were Christians, but it's absurd to think that they wanted to impose that belief on the nation, and even more absurd to imagine we should be bound by their prejudices.
70 - Arguments Against Evolution
Comment #158157 by Rodewaryer on April 10, 2008 at 6:45 am
It's understandable why those with less fortitude or ability to reason fall back on a supernatural answer for something that takes at a minimum, the order of geologic time to occur. For the human mind to comprehend something that borders on the infinite (millions/billions of years are not easy periods of time for many to conceptualize) is difficult at best and requires work to even begin to understand. Religions failing to have supporting evidence much beyond a book written millennia ago and droves of people with faith is a weak case at best in challenging Evolution. Dr. Darwin's logical prediction of the existence of the yet to be discovered (Hawk) moth with a precisely predicted proboscis length, on an island he never visited based of the existence of a plant with it's nectar that very same distance from the flowers outer opening is pretty substantial evidence of the workings of natural selection and parallel evolution. This is but one very small sample of the overwhelming evidence that Evolution is indeed a fact.
71 - The US is a Christian Nation
Comment #156992 by KeepEmSeparated on April 8, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Everything posted here is ALL AROUND the most important issues; NO GOVERNMENT should have religeous leaders or Dogma involved in it AT ALL. DO you need more proof than the Muslim fundamentalists?
Since time began, tyrants knew they had to keep the religeous leaders at thier sides to do two things;
1. So they could KEEP their subjects subjugated; the King had you in life AND, commanding the Bishops, in the afterlife as well, so you DID what he SAID.
2. Propaganda; Normal well educated human beings do not go into another country and kill people wholesale and take their stuff on a kings whim. Not when there is a "higher power" to answer to. "God" then had to be "on the side" of tyrants who were smart. Why do you think the bishops (powerful pieces) are on either side of the King and Queen on a chessboard? A WAR game?
The proliferation of the Judeo Christan faith was at the expense of millions of mostly small brown semi naked peoples who were deemed "less than human" and "Heathens." Separation of government and religeon is an absolute necessity in preventing tyrrany and wholesale slaughter and enslavement "In the name of God."
I offer known History; The Crusades, The conquistadors, The "Discovery of the new world," The Nazi's, The Spanish Inquisition, 911 and muslim fundamentalists, ad nauseum, prove it ad nauseum. Separation of Church and State is the single most brilliant piece of legislation in recorded history, and it is certainly the most important, regardless of your faith. NO TRUE US CITIZEN AND PATRIOT should want religeon in their government any more than they want government in their church.
72 - Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. were atheists, and they were terrible! Answer that!
Comment #156567 by Sarmatae1 on April 7, 2008 at 10:05 pm
I am re posting this from an argument I made
Claim by some atheist people: Theists have followed their ancient dogma for millennia
causing untold and incalculable deaths and misery upon humanity throughout history.
A common theistic response: Atheists have killed many more!! Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler killed millions. Atheism has a higher body count!
The first problem with this argument would be to juxtapose Theism and Atheism as if
they were an equal and opposite ideologies to each other. This beginning premise is the
false assumption by which this argument is based. I will restate the argument with the use the spaghetti monster I heard Dr. Dawkins refer to once.
Theism may have killed or caused misery in the name of or by the tenets of spaghetti monster. But there were leaders in history such as Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler that did not believe in Spaghetti monster and they killed even more people and caused more misery. Atheism had its shot.
By this supposedly reasonable statement it follows we are expected to assume that non belief
in the spaghetti monster leads to consequences as bad if not worse than the belief in the spaghetti monster. Which attempts to at the very least give an equalization in the argument of atrocities commited by opposing ideologies. Also it serves to steer the debate into another direction altogether of moral fortitude. Taking for granted as inarguable that atheism is as capable of as much if not more misdeeds as theism. This serves as a transposing of the same motivational reasoning of theism onto Atheism as a rival or an equal opposite ideological position. Able to function with the same reasoning. Which atheism is not and cannot.
These two types of applied rationalization are not in fact opposites. Atheism is by some simple definitions a non belief in a god(s). To most unthinking people who cannot imagine a world without religious ideologies this makes atheism by default an opposite ideology to theism. Untrue.
Atheism is the cessation of non-information as a factor in motivation or the reasoning process. Put another way. Atheists are incapable of using the non-belief of the supernatural or the tenets of the non-spaghetti monster for good, bad or
for any motivating factor for that matter, and still be acting in a reasonable manner. It
simply is an impossible consideration in an atheist mind set. The spaghetti monster = non
information. Non information is taken out of the equation in atheistic motivation.
We will take an imaginary atheist person who posses by default this non information.
They have no conception of religion or the spaghetti monster and we will observe her
behavior. When we see her misbehave we can come to the conclusion she did it because she has
no belief in the spaghetti monster. When we see her do good, we can conclude it is because
she does not believe in the spaghetti monster. This type of logic simply does not come to a
satisfactory conclusion. It is not rational to expect that someone is acting upon non-information. Or to expect that lack of this information may lead to an inferior moral
development. This person obviously has other ideological motivations for the behavior good
or bad. As in the socio-political motivations of the affore mentioned despotic leaders.(fascism etc etc...)
These despot leaders cannot DO any act in the name of not believing in spaghetti monsters.
The non existence of the spaghetti monster as a motivating factor cannot come into the
decision making process for any atheist, as it is non-information.
Should the fore skin of this newborn child be cut off in the name of the non existent spaghetti monsters tenets? I dont believe in the non existent spaghetti monster and the non existent spaghetti monster hates condoms, so by this decree millions should die of sexually communicable diseases. It is unreasonable to expect these are the things that should be going through an atheist mind if held as an opposite to theism but with the same reasoning. This is exactly what is being argued when one insinuates these atrocities were commited by strictly the criteria of being a society based on atheistic motivations.
In fact this type of motivational reasoning is reserved for the theistic mindset.
It is easy to see the motivation of theism to need a "them" or an opposite, but in casting
atheism as an opposite, most unthinking people will carelessly concede the logic of applying
theistic reasoning to atheism. Unable to think outside the box of a world without religion
or theistic motivations.
I would suggest yes Stalin, Pol Pot, and any other person that can be lined up against
the wall and be labeled as an "atheist" can in fact do good and bad things. BUT to state
they did these things BECAUSE they were atheists is simply not a logical statement. Also to state "These leaders did these things and they were atheist". Is but a small unreasonable insinutaion to "Therefore they did these things BECAUSE they are atheist"
This is trying to tie together two non sequitur premises. As if one were to state "He robbed
a bank and he is african american." As a logical insinuation to. "Therefore he robbed the
bank BECAUSE he is african american".
Today its easy for one see the inherent falseness of that statement and to label it
racism. Only because in recent history this type of false logic has been pointed out at length to the general populace that this type of racism(false logic) has no ethical base because it is
based on a non sequitur set of assumptions and labels all african americans with attributes
unfairly.
Should Atheists be offended when a theist with a none too informed opinion of what an
atheist is, makes the comparison of all atheists to badly behaving despots as representatives of an imagined atheist ideology in opposition to theism? As if atheism was a something that existed and may also be transposed onto a portrayal of a conspirital opposing world view bent on oppressing or obolishing the theistic mindset. or at the very least this imagined opposing ideology may be portrayed as inferior.
I think so.
To accuse atheists for these things is paramount to----?(Athei-Racism?) When it is clear these atrocities were clearly commited on socio-political fundamentalist rationalities.
73 - If you don't have religion, where do you find your sense of community?
Comment #156394 by legionlabs on April 7, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Family and friends are important to me, however I find that the hacker subculture is an excellent extended community. No matter where I am in the world I am not alone, having access to effectively instantaneous communication with a large group of interesting and rational people. Many of them are fellow scientists or self-educated to an equivalent or higher level.
As a community that exists over a text-only medium, racism is a non-issue. There is a distinct lack of authority figures, and the anonymity of the internet combined with a high level of technical expertise empowers us to decide for ourselves what is right in the modern world. It is my opinion that most hackers freely choose to labour towards rather noble goals. It's almost utopian.
Unfortunately, poor news reporting has labelled us all after a few criminals that abuse the freedoms they have (fateless cowards!). Now you may be viewed with moderate suspicion for having technical interests outside of your field of expertise. Images of "mad science" are often invoked.
Overall my experience has at its centre a hilarious irony: As a scientist/hacker I feel I'm met with unfair suspicion for the knowledge I hold... and as an atheist for that which I do not.
74 - What are your qualifications to question religion anyway? Just who are you?
Comment #156362 by Seti on April 7, 2008 at 11:59 am
Why would I need any special qualifications to discuss religion? At least in terms of xianity, it isn't supposed to be difficult. Matthew 7:7 says "Seek and ye shall find." And after all, why should it be difficult? What kind of god would deliberately choose to make it difficult? Certainly not the kind of loving god xians claim.
75 - What does atheism say about the purpose (or the meaning) of life?
Comment #156057 by aavanton on April 6, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Only religion would dare propose an absolute meaning of life.
76 - Atheists are just as dogmatic as theists, and the only reasonable person is an agnostic.
Comment #156056 by aavanton on April 6, 2008 at 3:04 pm
The beauty of the scientific method is that it requires no belief.
77 - People who've experienced God KNOW that God exists
Comment #156055 by aavanton on April 6, 2008 at 3:02 pm
...then it should be kept as a personal experience and not imposed upon others, not without evidence or reproducible results.
78 - Pascal's Wager
Comment #154315 by Enge on April 3, 2008 at 5:14 am
I have come up with a counter-wager:
If a Christian (let's retain the simplistic either-or worldview of the original wager for the sake of the argument) dies, and it turns out there is no god, he will have gone to grave believing a lie, without ever getting the chance to get it right.
If a, atheist dies, and it turns out god is real, he will learn that he was wrong and adjust his beliefs accordingly.
Therefore the atheist will always know the truth in the end, while the Christian only has 50% chance of doing so.
79 - Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. were atheists, and they were terrible! Answer that!
Comment #152644 by nalfeshnee on March 31, 2008 at 9:39 am
I just wondered if people knew about this archive of Nazi posters. English translations provided.
Some may be surprised how some of these use an explicitly religious theme.
For example:
"He who has faith in his heart has the greatest strength in the world. Adolf Hitler."
"The victory belongs to those who have the stronger faith."
"Ours was the faith - ours is the will. Adolf Hitler."
"We human beings are not to question why Providence created races; we are only to recognize that Providence punishes him who disregards their divine creation. Adolf Hitler."
Full archive here: http://library.marshallfoundation.org/posters/library/posters/browse_expanded.php?war=wwii&country=germany
Stuff like this carries more weight IMHO than things Hitler (and others) may have written in books. This is HOW they waged the Nazi "campaign", and it is repeatedly religious and anti-Semitic (a term that has little sense outside a religious environment).
Oh, and in reply to marshall1: I think this undermines your argument somewhat. Hitler is not appealing to atheism to stir up people's nasty tendencies, is he?
I would agree that it is perhaps hard to argue that religion CAUSES atrocities. But it can certainly be used to whip people up to perpertrate atrocities in a way that atheism cannot.
(Apart from anything else, 99% of theism promises people life after death, so atheism is a revolting concept for the masses precisely for this utterly understandable reason.)
Comment #152443 by eblonk on March 31, 2008 at 3:15 am
"However...all these things that wind up being blamed on religions are really people-issues. People invented r