Religion: What it means to you

Had Jesus been executed 50 years ago, we'd all be wearing electric chairs around our necks. If you describe God to me as love or energy or the wonders of the cosmos, I would say, yes I believe in God because I believe in love and energy and the wonders of the cosmos. If you describe a personal God to me, a divine intelligent creator who fashioned the planets and life and listens and responds to prayers, then no. That is the sort of God I do not believe exists and the sort of God which my life has no room for.

Everybody knows what it is to be an atheist. There are millions of Gods all of us reject. Some of us just make an exception.

How ya doing, buddy?

I'm having a difficult time responding to that critique. Mostly I don't understand much of what the author is saying. He seems more content on criticizing Richard's character and not the content of his book. Unfortunately for Richard (and if you watch his videos and read his interviews on his website) he acknowledges he loses a lot of his readers because of his delivery. The same can be said of Sam Harris and a lesser extent Dan Dennett.

Quote:

If they were asked to pass judgment on phenomenology or the geopolitics of South Asia, they would no doubt bone up on the question as assiduously as they could.

Phenomenology is an interesting philosophy but it doesn't prove the existence of God. Neither does the geopolitics of South Asia.(?) Chapter 3 in TGD is devoted to the philosophy of religion and I think he makes some strong points. Richard also talks about phenomena under the heading: The Argument From Personal Experience so I don't understand the point of this comment. (Well I do understand, it's a pot shot at Richard. Terry mentioned something about straw men in his article).

Quote:

Dawkins considers that all faith is blind faith… children are brought up to believe unquestioningly... For mainstream Christianity, reason, argument and honest doubt have always played an integral role in belief. (Where… is Dawkins’s own critique of science…)?

Is this really the case? Do religious families all gather at the dinner table and have an open, reasoned argument about faith and the existence of God? I don’t doubt, doubt has always played an integral role in belief and however people reconcile their faith it, I am almost certain, is not through reason and inquiry. The film, Jesus Camp seems to suggest this.

Science is by definition, when it is working properly, the study and inquiry of… I don’t see a critique of God in the Bible and why should there be? Why should Richard write 400 pages about his views of religion and then provide another 400 pages about why he might be wrong. That’s silly. That book has already been written, it’s called, The Dawkins Delusion.

Quote:

This, not some super-manufacturing, is what is traditionally meant by the claim that God is Creator. He is what sustains all things in being by his love;

This is a problem of language. If we exist because of God's love then I suppose we have to concede God's existence because we know what it is to love. And this is a circular argument in a similar way as this is:

A: Why do you believe God created the universe?
T: Because the Bible says he did.
A: Why do you believe the Bible?
T: Because it's the word of God.
A: Why do you believe it's the word of God?
T: Because the Bible says it is.

Creationism: The religious doctrine that the world was created by a divine being, or that it owes its present form to divine agency. This term is frequently used to refer to the fundamentalist idea that the world was created in exactly the way the Bible says it was…stuff and more stuff. The Philosopher’s Dictionary, 3rd Edition by Robert M. Martin.

No mention of love. If we're going to talk about God, then we need to make sure we're talking about the same sort of God otherwise we're just fumbling over semantics and definitions.

I have more I could say but this quote war form generally makes for a boring read. If anyone is really interested I could take a few more points in the same fashion and respond to it but I'll stop at this for now.


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EDIT! If I may, I had to respond to a comment I found from another article.

Quote:

Accordingly, Dawkins does not understand why social etiquette requires respect for those who believe in God.

I find this comment interesting mostly because it is simply not true. The fact is, Richard does respect people of faith. What he does not respect is how religion gets a free pass when it comes to criticism. Richard (and Sam Harris) are fed up that religion belongs to this untouchable niche. His view is that religion is (or should be) counted as a scientific hypothesis and like all hypotheses, it should undergo the scientific method. Remember, the Bible is making universal claims about the cosmos and those claims should be open to scrutiny no differently than a physicist’s claims would be. This idea however offends many people of faith and Richard is not afraid to eloquently say, more or less, “tough shit”! Respecting a person of faith is entirely separate then respecting a person’s faith. Nobody is obliged to respect a person’s belief that elves live in their basement. Also, Richard is not willing to accept that God is just too mysterious for us dumb humans to understand and so therefore we should not even bother to inquire about it. I suspect what upsets so many theologians is that they are being shaken out of their comfortable nest's of rational immunity they have enjoyed for so many years.

http://www.albertmohler.com/commenta...ate=2006-09-26

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by GhaleonQ

As I stated, I did not mean to start a debate. I'm merely interested in reading people's perspectives. So, despite chomping at the bit to do so (theology's uselessness strikes me as the most agregious offense), I'll merely nod and thank those who posted for doing so.

Instead of explaining why I think religion is useless, I'll instead provide a quote which I think sums up just how precious life, in the here and now, not some eternal garden waiting for us, truly is.

Unweaving the Rainbow: We are going to die and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they're never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place, but who will, in fact, never see the light of day, outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. In the face of these stupefying odds, it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. -Richard Dawkins

Originally Posted by randy_ui

Why does God exist?
I use both the theories of "Evolution" and Christianity to explain why there is a God.

There has to be a "supernatural" power - God must be included in the equation in order for evolution to work..

It is just as comparible as placing a bunch of screws, a wrist band, a battery, a piece of glass, a minute hand, an hour hand, and a seconds hand, all into a wooden box, shaking it up, and getting a working watch in the outcome.. Stuff like that "is" technically possible - but I'm just sorry-I really can't believe it happened on its own... there must be a Creator!!

Many people seem to misunderstand what Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is really all about. Once you know it, it becomes extremely difficult to accept how it could ever be compatible with the design theory.

The design theory is a bit of a conundrum, in that, why does it help anyone understand the complexity of human life by invoking a being of even greater complexity? However improbable it was for human life to begin, it is even more improbable that a divine creator was the cause of it. The design theory is certainly attractive only in that we never see pocket watches designing a watch maker, but the theory fails to answer one very important question. Who designed the designer?

The greater the statistical improbability, the less plausible is chance as the solution. -TGD

Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is not a theory of chance. His theory is a way to describe how abundant simplicity gave rise, over millions of years, to a highly improbable system of complexity.

Richard Dawkins uses a helpful analogy: Climbing Mount Improbable. At the base of the mountain are the bacterial beginnings of life, at the top, humans today and other complex life. To jump up a sheer cliff to the top in a single vault is out of the question. Instead, if you go to the back of the mountain, you find a gradual gradient of 'evolution' inching its way up. All you have to do to get there is put one foot in front of the other (over millions of years) and you'll reach the top.

Whatever can be said of Darwin's theory, one thing for certain, is that it's a much more elegant way of describing human life than solving the problem of improbability by invoking the very improbable.

Originally Posted by Erisu Kimu

You do realize that Christianity cannot start without purpose, right? That Adam and Eve "story" is the reason why Christ came. Death through Adam, Life through Christ. You should stick with one religion in order to avoid confusion or conflict in beliefs. Don't get me wrong, I'm not Christian (although I did follow for two years), but I'm pointing that out just to let you know.

The story of Adam and Eve was only ever symbolic wasn’t it? Symbolic? So Jesus had himself tortured and executed for a symbolic sin by a non-existent individual? Nobody not brought up in the faith could reach any verdict other than, barking mad. –Richard Dawkins

If this is true, if the story of Adam and Eve is not an actual account of history, which is incidentally something some educated theologians would agree upon, it seems to undermine Saint Paul’s theory of atonement for original sin. And as you said yourself, as a consequence, it would almost certainly undermine the premise of Christianity.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by packrat

Would you rather have an openly atheistic person in office who is corrupted and incompetent, or an openly theistic person in office who is corrupted and incompetent?

This is a fundamentally flawed question to pose. Not a single intelligent person would prefer to have an incompetent and corrupted politician in power regardless of what their belief about the cosmos may be.

Originally Posted by LordsSword

I would stick with the theistic person. At least that individual could be held accountable to their belief system which is accessible to anyone who wants to point out errors in conduct...

It's astonishing that so many people associate atheism with immorality and devil worshiping. If even 10% of Americans were atheists and thereby on the lunatic fringe, we should be seeing murder and rape, excuse the pun, on a biblical scale.

How could anyone possibly think we get our morals from scripture? If the bible is the perfect guide to morality we should be stoning homosexuals. We should be stoning people for thought crimes. We should be keeping slaves. The bible clearly illustrates this to be man's moral imperative. Oddly, 6 of the 10 Commandments have nothing to do morality. 3 are honesty Commandments and the final one, murder, is just there for what could only be amusement considering the level of murder, violence, bigotry, and hatred we see around the globe.

Any decent, civilized, rational human being will be able to come to a conclusion that stealing, and murder, and cheating are wrong without the aid of a magical book.

Originally Posted by LordsSword

The reason why the spiritual is foremost on my mind is because I have seen plenty of death and suffering by volunteering in service to the homeless and visiting nursing homes on my job. Its ugly out there and my belief in heaven is sometimes the only thing between peace of mind and depression.

You fit the bill perfectly when Daniel Dennett says many so-called religious people don't actually believe in God. But instead believe in belief. Your belief that there is a second life after your natural life on Earth no doubt comforts you greatly. The idea removes the uncertainty of death and what will become of you. But at no stage in believing in the afterlife does it ever become true, simply because you believe it to be.
[Insert Sam Harris' example of believing you have a diamond the size of a refridgerator burried in your back yard]

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by LordsSword

Atheism on the other hand has a blatant contradiction when corresponding with reality. Darwin's evolutionary theory, which is at the root of atheism has no basis for moral decision yet even an atheist says they have an inherent capacity & a drive for having a moral compass. If evolution is a law of nature, lying, stealing & murder is in the long run a benefit so long as the person who is good at it benefits and their progeny benefit from it. On this basis alone the atheist cannot say that defying "moral" statutes is bad or wrong yet they do. Why?

You are misunderstanding Darwin's theory of evolution. Natural Selection occurs at the level of the gene not the individual. So far as we know there are no genes for lying and cheating and stealing. It may very well be that certain individuals benefit themselves by lying and cheating and stealing (President Bush has made a successful career out of these) but this is now entering the realm of Game Theory. Darwinism says nothing about how individuals ought to behave. That much we can all agree on.

It's really not difficult to understand how an atheist can have a moral basis once you understand how morality does not and cannot originate from the Bible.

Originally Posted by LordsSword

I have centuries of evidence that answered prayer has been proven.

Prayers have a tremendous psychological impact when the thing being prayed for becomes true. But this amounts to no evidence at all that prayers can influence an outcome. Many double blind studies indeed support this idea. And to add insult prayers often have negative effects.

Imagine I'm a doctor and I tell you, you have terminal cancer with 3 months to live. These are mere words but if you believe them there would be dramatic change in your physiology. Immediately you pray to your God to help you through this ordeal. 3 months later you return to me and I tell you your cancer has inexplicably gone away. You would be convinced God intervened. Unfortunately you never learn of the fact that I happen to be a nasty doctor and I just enjoy causing anguish and suffering in people. What you'll never know is that I lied to you. You never did have terminal cancer. Yet happy you will be with the false belief that God saved you.

Originally Posted by LordsSword

My religion is my source for purpose in life.

Life is not something to be endured. If you can't find purpose in life then that's your problem. At no stage in merely believing you have a diamond the size of a refridgerator burried your back yard because of the comfort and joy it brings you does it ever become true. Creation and the ressurection and the virgin birth aren't made true simply because of the comfort religion brings to your life.

This whole idea that religion is needed in order for an individual to have a meaningful life is rather presumptuous. Where is it suggested that if one individual has no purpose in life without religion that suddenly all individuals without religion must also have no purpose? Furthermore, those without religion not only have no meaning and purpose but also live an immoral life.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Technically speaking we should all remain agnostic about the God hypothesis until all of the evidence is in. In the same manner that we should also technically remain agnostic towards fairies and leprechauns and goblins and unicorns. Since we cannot disprove any of these things we have to instead measure their likeliness of existence on a scale of probability. So although an atheist may simplify the language and "reject" or "deny" God altogether, the atheist in this case is more accurately describing God's existence as being "highly improbable". It its current form this is the best Atheism can achieve. In the real world however, I do not think many people would seriously advance an argument of agnostism towards fairies. I think most people would quite happily deny their existence. In this way, I think the same can apply for God. Hence we have atheism and the "stronger" version antitheism.

:edit:
For those interested I recommend listening to Colin Mcginn a british philosopher talk about atheism. He has some interesting opinions. In fact for those of you that have a few hours of spare time I recommend watching the entire series. A 3 part BBC program on the history of atheism.

http://www.veoh.com/videos/v305743JaZKNJTT

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

As Christopher Hitchens would ask, you are to name a moral action or proposition by the religious that could not be made by an unbeliever. That is, if you need a religious reason to do what you ought to do in the interest of our species anyway, it seems to be at best superfluous, and at worst, slightly suspect. Why would you need a religious reason? Is it proselytization for a church? Or is it the expectation for a divine reward? Very often it is the case for both. As you will know the moral secularists who go out of their way to help their fellow man cannot be accused of this. Religion therefore only manages to pollute the integrity of our ethics and morality. Furthermore, religion is a complete misuse of ethics. Who in their right mind would suggest that praying to a foreign god or picking up sticks on the Sabbath is morally problematic? Yet this is precisely what is seemingly believed by many Americans who want the[*]10 commandments codified. Only on theological assumptions could a whole nation be so worried about homosexuality as though it were the great moral debate of our time while the world is visited upon by real human suffering and animal suffering. To get an idea of a classic theocracy, if you are a woman in Iran who is found guilty of a capital offence but are a virgin, you may not be sentenced to death under the law because Islam does not permit the execution of virgins. But you may be raped by the revolutionary guards in the prison so that you are no longer a virgin and then executed. This gives you an idea of the arrogance of what people think they are allowed to do when they have divine permission.

Steven Weinberg was rather accurate when he said; in a morally normal universe people of good intent will do the best they can while evil people will do as wicked as possible. But if you want good people to do evil things, that takes religion. Who would, when they saw a newborn arriving in the world, think it was necessary to start hacking away at the child's genitals with a sharp knife or stone? What moral person would do this if it wasn’t divinely warranted? If you truly believe our morality is original to the bible, you have had your ethical intuitions blinded by religious dogma.

Sam Harris pointed out, even if we knew one of our religions were true, every believer should expect damnation purely on a scale of probability. This should give pause to the religious when they make their metaphysical claims about the nature of the universe–though it rarely does. An atheist is simply someone who has read the bible, considered its claims, and rejected them on insufficient evidence. What dogma have any of us embraced to reject the thousands of dead gods that lie beneath the mass grave called mythology? What church does anyone attend once a week to be reminded that Zeus and Osiris and Thor are merely fictional characters? It’s not like someone of the fourth century conclusively proved the existence of the biblical god and meanwhile proved Zeus to be merely lore.

During the recent presidential candidate debate, when asked if anyone rejects evolution, three arms were raised. This should worry us all. These are people looking for the highest power in the land who clearly want a theocratic America. This is precisely why we need to continue the debate about religion. The religious are no longer contempt and they really mean it this time when they talk about the messiah. This is now a race between armageddon and the preservation of civilization.

[*]Even most fundamentalist Christians who claim to take God at his word cannot possibly take him seriously. If Americans really thought the 10 commandments and divine law ought to be established and used in court, every American Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and everyone else not Christian should be put to the sword. All the corporates, businesses and shop owners who remain open on Sundays and keep the economy going should be stoned to death. If you write a book called god is not Great or The End of Faith you should be stoned to death. If your child lies about having ate the last chocolate chip cookie you stone him to death. If your girlfriend is wearing a necklace with an odd symbol or ornament attached you stone her to death. If someone utters Jesus or Goddamnit after they spill their Krispy Kream Koffee you stone them to death. If your child talks back to you, you stone her to death. If it turns out your wife is not a virgin on your wedding day, you take her to her father's doorstep and stone her to death. If Americans practiced divine law the killing would never stop. Not a single person, not hugely derranged, would willingly want to live in this kind of a society.

FELIPE NO

Take a recent character in history like Sathya Sai Baba, born of a virgin and able to perform miracles. No one here would be willing to accept these claims without sufficient evidence which is precisely why there are no Sathya Sai Baba devotees here. Yet change the name to Jesus, place the same claims in an ancient text and suddenly the rules change. Suddenly the adherents to these claims want them shielded from criticism. This double standard by the religious is something we need to expose. When you don't have good reasons to believe the things you do, don't pretend you do.

I'd like to further my point about morality from my previous reply. Humans know the difference between right and wrong. Our morality is innate in us which has evolved ever since we stood up on 2 legs and continues to evolve. Societies will always advance as the zeitgeist changes. It should be surprising to none however when we do see backward people in dominantly religious countries who have not caught up to the rest of us. It's why we see Americans who parade the streets with signs saying AIDS Is God's Cure For Fags. Unfortunately humans tend to have a weak will and therefore do make the wrong choices even when we know we could have just as easily made the right ones. But religion takes this further by making a horribly ingenuous claim and says, without a celestial dictatorship to invigilate our every action and private thought we would have never known murder and theft and lying were immoral. This is not only false but disrespectful to the rationality of everyone here.

There is only a small pool of highly unconvincing arguments the theists have at their disposal in favour of religion. These being: creationism/intelligent design, the argument from morality and the argument from utility. But first let me make it very clear, I do not reject spiritualism. I can perfectly accept being able to transform our moment-to-moment experiences through reflection or meditation. If spirituality really could increase the function of the brain and our knowledge of certain truths and our health then we should be desperate to exploit it. What I advocate though is keep spiritualism but jetison the theological baggage. We do not need virgin births and resurrections to experience the transcendent.

Avalokiteshvara, as for the utility of religion or this idea that our religions comfort us; all your work is still ahead of you if you're trying to validate the claims of the Bible or the Koran. If religion is simply to comfort us then we can grow out of it. Life is no less meaningful or joyful when you let go of these childish assumptions. Plus you can't increase the true quality of a person's life through ignorance and willful deception. Fooling yourself into believing you have won the lottery does not change your financial situation nor does believing we won't really die when we do change the fact that we will die a permanent death.

As for my position I would consider myself a soft atheist. I am an unbeliever because there is no positive evidence that supports the existence of God. But more importantly I am an antitheist. I think the proposition of religion is dreadful. To wish Christianity true would be the equivalent of demanding to live in a celestial North Korea with only the right to praise and adore. I therefore am relieved that it is not true. We can relax.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by RacinReaver

Do you really think that religious people feel there was a massive change in the way people behaved before Moses came off the mountain with the Ten Commandments than after?

At the expense of sounding silly, as it is implied in scripture yes the Israelites got to the foot of Mt. Sinai under the assumption that murder was acceptable before being told no dice by Moses. All of us can see this notion even today by how often the religious ask the unbelievers, if not from God then where do we get our morality from?

As for whether I believe this, of course I don't. The Israelite could not have made it to that point as a society had they been slaying eath other in the thousands thinking the whole while it was just fun recreation. Obviously they knew murder was wrong which entirely defeats the purpose of Moses chiseling it into a slab of stone.

Originally Posted by GhaleonQ

...you should know that the Israelites, Hebrew or otherwise, were mostly bad, faithless people (as most folk are, in general) who constantly trespassed their bounds.

What is this nonsense? So humans are immoral but faithless ones especially. People like Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, the great lights who founded America, are roasting in hell as we speak. Alan Turing who did more than anyone to bring WWII to an end is also roasting in hell. It's only until the doctrines of the gentle Jesus meek and mild do we start punishing the dead under the disgusting banner of Atonement. But providing you say the proper latin phrase and sprinkle the right water an exception will be made in your case. Who can believe this? Why would anyone want this to be true???

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by RacinReaver

My bad on that front, I was getting you mixed up with the boatloads of anti-religion people we have coming in here all the time that think because they don't belong to a religion then they're better than everyone else. I'm just not used to talking with someone that isn't a complete asshole on here.

I know you don't actually mean to infer that antitheism necessarily leads to assholery. After all, if you happen to be anti-nazism are you not worried you may offend people sympathetic to nazism? It's not my business to respect what I believe to be at its core something evil. But my attacks remain polite and towards religion not the individual believer.

Originally Posted by RacinReaver

And, actually, another fun thing I was reading today in a journal that reminded me of an old argument is how the entirety of science is circular. How do we prove something in science is right? Well, we make observations and say that every other time has to be the same. Why do we believe this? Because it's worked so well in the past it should keep working in the future too! (Point being that there's no absolutes in anything. We can never know for sure the sun is going to rise tomorrow, there's always a chance it could just not be there.

You're talking about David Hume and his skepticism towards mathematical induction. My question however is, if empiricism can't answer our epistemological questions why would an ancient text like the bible fare any better? Which incidentally also relies heavily on empirical data. There isn't much a priori knowledge that I am aware of held within the text.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

The push back is simply unfamilar to the religious as they have enjoyed the last several hundred years sheltered from criticism. You didn't have to be an unpleasant bigot to be a deist in the 18th century. You just had to be educated. But they've entirely gone too far this time. They crossed the line when they intervened in the private life of the Schiavo's. They also have no business clogging up our court rooms attempting to remove science and impose their superstitious nonsense in the public classroom. Many people are finally fed up with this and are much on their guard towards the religious who are no longer contempt with the constitution which gives every person the freedom not only of religion but from religion.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by shadowlink56

Umm . . . I thought it was the science nuts trying to remove God from the Pledge of Allegience, and "Intelligent Design" is the hopelessly PC way of skating the line between atheism and religion.
I do agree that whoever was trying to get rid of evolution and Darwinism is an idiot. That's censorship. Everyone should have a full plate to choose from when it comes time to make a decision. Nothing should be removed because someone else thinks it's not good for you.

No, it's not science nuts trying to remove 'Under God' from the pledge of allegiance. It's people who understand America's founding heritage when Thomas Jefferson called for a wall of separation. The addition of God is unconstitutional and violates the First Amendment. No American citizen should be made to pledge allegiance to a non-existing celestial dictatorship. You'll notice this is actually the first ingredient to totalitarianism.

As for ID, it is a purely theological pseudo-science which doesn't even merit an ad on the inside of a gum wrapper. Those who reject Darwinism are not choosing faith and religion over this false association of science and atheism. They are choosing willful ignorance over knowledge. There's nothing politically correct about teaching nonsense to children. To understand Darwin's theory of natural selection you have to first understand his earlier theory of artificial selection. But to reject either of these two theories in favour of a theological non-explanation is simply embarrassing.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Capo

The evidence for a god is about as strong as the evidence proving there is no god. It's a personal choice; please treat it as such.

First of all you've committed a logical fallacy. It cannot be the case that God does and does not exist. Therefore it cannot not simply be a matter of personal choice or faith. This violates the law of noncontradiction. If 50% of us believe in God and God does not exist, then it logically entails that 50% of us believe a false proposition.

Secondly, there are literally dozens of specific sciences that are as close as we're going to get which prove there is no God. The evidence in many cases which support our naturalistic understanding of the universe is overwhelming. Even Israeli archeology has not managed to find a single shard left by our ancestors' 40 year trek through the desert. With regards to certainty we can be as close as makes no difference that there was no exile and there was no wandering. There is not a shred of evidence in support of religion or the existence of god. The best you can achieve to prove the existence of God is to infer him from an apparent harmony in the arrangements. This is an extremely weak argument which has been refuted time and time again. You also have the problem of evil to account for. Then again religion has a great deal of explaining which it cannot do.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I take the grand rule that any argument which explains everything explain nothing. What do I mean by this? Well it’s a tactic employed by the faithful when they attempt to prove their junk claims. Religion comes from a time when we did not know, to use just one example, the wonders of biology. It was a time when we thought human males were fashioned from clumps of clay. We now know a great deal about our species, its kinship with other life and its origins. Religion is in large part our first and worst attempt at both Philosophy and Science. Although the text has not changed, today’s Christianity is vastly different from its original doctrine. Because of advancements in Western culture, Christianity has had no choice but to adopt science with modernity. There are many Christians who happily accept evolution and the theory of natural selection only to conclude that evolution was the result of God. And here I return to my opening statement, you can be rest assured that an argument which includes any proposition as its assumption can be dismissed as false.

Originally Posted by Smelnick

Common sense tells me that the theory of evolution is bullshit. You're gonna sit there and tell me that something as complex as the human eyeball became perfected through random mutations. Common sense should tell you that ain't gonna happen. If you took apart a watch, and dropped the handful of pieces onto the ground over and over again. What are the chances of it landing in such an orientation as to work perfectly? Or even at all? Common sense will tell me that it's not going to happen. It's this level of common sense that is making scientists lean away from the theory of evolution.

Irreducible Complexity is such an insult to intelligence it need only be refuted with an amusing analogy.
The Stubborn Curmudgeon: The Michael Behe Minivan!

“But what is really great about this van,” said Mr. Sallis, “is that if any one part quits working, the whole van shuts down! Isn’t that great?”

Even if it was true that Darwin himself converted to Christianity on his deathbed, how would this undermine his theory of artificial selection and natural selection? How would Darwin's conversion eliminate the mountains of evidence which support his ideas?

Originally Posted by Smelnick

People who follow solely the bible are retards.

Originally Posted by Smelnick

The bible is a set of guidelines for living a righteous life.

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Therefore, people who live a righteous life are retards.

That was a slight digression but how can anyone pass up on an unintended syllogism full of irony?

You said you called yourself a Baptist yes? Do you hold the view of John Calvin’s doctrine of Predestination, and if not, then I would like to know on what authority you still call yourself a Baptist. Likewise, if you are a Christian but view the virgin birth, the Trinity, or any other fantastically inconsistent and false claim made as merely allegorical or metaphorical, then on what grounds do you call yourself a Christian? In this vain it is nearly impossible to refute religion and Christianity because those of us who try would need a different argument for everyone we debated with who just simply take their religion a la carte. It's very difficult to get a Christian to admit what they belief. They don't like the questions one bit. Which is why the faithful will try very hard to steer the debate into obscurantism. It’s a logical fallacy to say religion is a matter of faith or a personal opinion because it does not follow that a belief or opinion held is therefore true. It may be an astonishing fact for those to learn that reason and logic do not care about personal injury sustained when a deeply held belief is proven false.

I'll raise the issue of morality since a discussion on religion cannot properly be had without its mentioning. It’s a very serious question put forth by the religious and posed in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov: without God isn’t everything permissible? I submit to you the reason why the majority of us don’t go about murdering and stealing and raping at this very moment is not because we are afraid of divine punishment or are expecting a divine reward. No, I think there is a better explanation. Human solidarity demands that we look upon each other as brothers and sisters. If it wasn’t for our innate morality we would have never built a society or developed a language in the first place. Christopher Hitchens has a wonderful test which I enjoy repeating to those I speak with on the subject. You are to name an ethical statement made or a moral action performed by a believer which could not have been uttered or performed by an atheist. That’s all you have to do. So far from the debates I have listened to and of those I have asked myself, no one brave enough to tackle the challenge.

Now reverse the question. Think of a wicked statement or evil action in the name of religion which would have not been done otherwise. None of us would have even a moments hesitation in naming our favourite examples. And this leads rather nicely into Hitchens' second challenge in response to Nazism and Stalinism. Name a society that adopted the teachings of Epicurus, Democritus, Spinoza, Einstein, Hume, Russell, Paine, Voltaire, or Jefferson which fell into despotism, famine, war, slavery, and persecution as a logical consequence of its demand for evidence, reason, logic, and skepticism.

Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. I can't disprove God explicitly because it's just not possible. But I can disprove God implicitly by refuting the claims of religion. According to the dogma, God created Earth in 6 days roughly 6,000 years ago. This claim is made in the teeth of contradictory evidence from sciences such as: anthropology, paleontology, archeology, biology, astronomy, geology and likely dozens more. Absense of evidence is not evidence of absense. True. But what makes you think you can join us at this table and have a discussion about the origins of the universe when you have evidence amounting to nothing and not one single good reason to back up the claims you are making?

And that I think is quite enough for now. I won't bother providing sources as you requested because they are not necessary and I have not asked for any in return. I will however suggest to you a book to read which is Richard Dawkin's The Selfish Gene so you can increase your common sense about that bullshit fact of Evolution.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Smelnick

Its simple. I believe...

So then you must also believe the only way one may be a follower of Jesus is to hate your mother and father and siblings and you have also, I'm assuming, sold all of your earthly possessions. Or is this something we don't have to do anymore since we live in a different period?

Religion is nothing more than spiritual fast food for the undereducated and credulous. It could just as easily adopt the slogan, Your Way Right Away!

I should also say that is a very disappointing reply. You openly challenged me to a debate to which I provide a roughly 1,000 word essay including why I believe religion to be false and the best you can do is respond to an irrelevant ad hominine and provide a few short incomprehensible words regarding something I suspected already; your belief in religion stems only from the comfort it offers to you. What else can I do then but assume for the moment I have the stronger case. I gave to you I didn't count how many points to retaliate on which were ignored.

Originally Posted by LordsSword

As the years roll by, many of you will forget what you typed here on this forum but you must consider that it may be more evidence to condemn you.

Despite being so made that i cannot believe, I am according to at least one theory, created in the image of God. Which makes the image of God rather problematic does it not? The consequence of this is that even before I was conceived I was singled out in God's plan to be condemed for thought-crimes I did not choose to commit and could not have evaded. So regardless of what I may accomplish in my life in terms of spirituality and ethics I have an eternity of hellfire to look foward to. I suppose I can take some solace in knowing that God loves me.

Bollocks.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by RacinReaver

I can really see why religion is such a bane on human existence now.

Did you see how the Pope just recently dropped Limbo? Limbo is over now. Unbaptised children don't go there anymore to spend an eternity in loneliness and isolation because they didn't get the sprinkle of water. You can relax. No you can't. That's where millions of parents thought their dead children had gone for hundreds of years. Frightened, upset, it was real to them. It was cruel to tell them this nonsense to begin with it's even more to cruel to say, afterall it doesn't exist.

But nevermind that. After hundreds of years of being told this fabrication we can still be sure the universe was design so you could be here right now to download videogames off the internet. You are the object. And despite the fact that you were created a worm, a sinner, a wretch, the cosmos cares what happens to you.

I see we can agree on one thing. Religion is a bane to our species. Humans will be far better off once we have emancipated ourselves from these horrible bronze-aged, Palestinian myths.

I take some comfort from the fact that humans at one time used to believe in polytheism. Belief in many Gods. We then started to believe in monotheism. Belief in a single God. So you see, we're getting closer to the truth. This is progress.




I went jogging earlier this week and noticed these signs all over Guelph, my home city. How long they have been there I can't say. These photos are taken just outside my apartment which I snapped a few minutes ago. Even Canada isn't safe from this theocratic bullshit. I'm very tempted to write a letter to my local newspaper, The Guelph Mercury, to complain about it.





How ya doing, buddy?

Sarcasm eh? Are you trying to fool me or the guy that lives down the street? I'd give you a 1 out of 10 but I don't think you were even trying. I've been meaning to ask actually, how would you describe yourself anyway? A Christian atheist leaning towards agnosticism perhaps? You have a really interesting position I've been able to gather from your replies. The, all you bitches are wrong I don't have an opinion, argument. It could be some post-modern philosophical view I haven't manage to research yet.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by LordsSword

My faith tradition started with nonconformance and continues to this day. As a black man I have my brother in the faith Martin Luther King jr. to thank for his nonconformance. I am made free because he too made a stand in his day to speak out and not give in.

It's very unfortunate you don't study a bit of your cultural history. You could learn much about the great but sadly forgotten secularists, Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, the two men to actually organize the march on Washington. As for Dr. King, it's a very good thing he only took a very small portion of the book of Exodus and used it as a metaphor when he said, "my people should be let go." Had he quoted the entire book he would have followed, "And once my people are free, they are then permitted to steal your land, rape your women children, and kill everyone who gets in their way."

Originally Posted by LordsSword

I stand for the Bible, a document that has proven its worth, can be seen & researched by others and discussed openly to the benefit of all.

I stand for the Iliad, a document that has proven its worth, can be seen & researched by others and discussed openly to the benefit of all.

I stand for Das Kapital, a document that has proven its worth, can be seen & researched by others and discussed openly to the benefit of all.

I stand for Mein Kampf, a document that has proven its worth, can be seen & researched by others and discussed openly to the benefit of all.

Originally Posted by LordsSword

Many here don't have anything to stand on at all but their collection of rumor, here-say and shifting information that constantly needs updating.

You're right, many of us only have those silly, unreliable things like reason and logic and intellectual honesty and literature and scepticism and morality and ethics and science and politics and economics, mere piffle when having a discussion about humanity and its role in the universe.

Originally Posted by LordsSword

To me my book is a proven source of virtue but I have yet to see if my opponents seek to show the source from which they define what virtue is so as to show grounds for their judgments against me and my statements.
(Luke 6:42)
What makes YOUR opinions better than the bible? I bet you dont even know where your views come from even though it means "supreme authority over religious views" to you.

Even virtuous men can perform just acts for wicked reasons. If you need a religious warrant to keep you from murdering or stealing or to perform good deeds in the name of your faith, then very clearly this should not be confused with morality.

Originally Posted by LordsSword

My religion is backed by centuries of researchable facts of its benefits to humanity. To those who are critical of the bible, what about your belief system? What is its track record?

Science, reason and the others I listed above are to be wholly credited in finally giving humans the understanding and courage of stepping away from that horrible period we call the dark ages and leading us into the age of enlightenment. Something we can all be grateful for. Thanks to science we no longer have to burn women to death for casting spells on neighbours and people like J. K. Rowling can even make a very good career writing novels depicting fictional wizards.

Originally Posted by RacinReaver

An agnostic who's not arrogant enough to consider himself an atheist.

This is a weighted statement since you should have included theist to complete the definition of agnostic. Also, your use of "arrogant" is simply a red herring. Since atheism is a term devoid of any philosophical content I'll use the more appropriate worldview positions of the atomists, materialists or the physicalists. I'm here to tell you that arrogance has no relation with someone who holds this philosophical worldview which merely describes the universe as being made up of atoms or "stuff" and does not contain anything immaterial such as souls. It's a very serious and interesting philosophical view started by Democritus and Epicurus and persists today in Daniel Dannett, dare I say myself, and many others.

Now that you've broken out of your Socratic defense strategy, maybe you could share how your agnosticism works with regards to Santa Claus, Big Foot, Russell's Teapot, Sherlock Holmes, the inexaustable laundry list of other imaginery folk figures and the thousands of dead Gods which lie burried in that mass grave called mythology.

If God could be disproven then the logical consequence of this would see atheism as a truism or a tautology and theism as entirely nonsensical. Since God, or anything for that matter, cannot be disproven, anyone who describes themselves as an atheist is in a strong language describing themselves as agnostic with a lean towards a disbelief in the existence of the object in question (90-10). The problem of agnosticism is that it gives a false idea that the existence of the "thing" in question has an equal 50-50 chance of either existing or not existing, which is, I'm sure you must agree on, an entirely false impression. If you disagree then I can only describe you as a fundamental agnostic (strictly 50-50) which is a rather odd and frankly hopeless view.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Devoxycontin

Funny I thought the thing about agnostics was we don't claim anything. Why would you consider being agnostic as people who only think atheists are right or god fearing people are right? You don't think we might be of the opinion neither is right? That there are more options to consider? It's funny how you try and paint belief systems in as stark black and white as you can. Stop ignoring the grayscale.

I think you misunderstood me. Agnostics are the fence sitters who in the fullness of time will [should] eventually become a theist or an atheist once the evidence or argument persuades them in one direction or the other. I would divide agnosticism into 2 categories: weak agnosticism and strong agnosticism; those who do not know versus those who believe we cannot know. But inside this, and this is where I disagree, the agnostics try to claim that despite there being no evidence in support of a all loving, sin forgiving, universe creating God, the possibility for the existence of this God should be weighed equally against its non-existence. From this however, I do not understand how an agnostic can think both theism and atheism are false views. The atheist is simply saying that whatever process it was that began the universe and life; it is not to be attributed to a prime mover, who aside from creating universes, also forgives sins and answers prayers. What do you mean by other options to be considered?

Originally Posted by RacinReaver

...after all, aren't we all atheists to someone.

Precisely. As an agnostic you certainly have a damaging argument against yourself. When you have the intellectual honesty to understand why you're an atheist in regards to the thousands of dead Gods which our ancestors believed in, you will understand why I am an atheist in regards to the Gods people believe in present day.

Originally Posted by LordsSword

As you know the word "religion" has many definitions. These describe my view of atheism:

Please tell me what Atheism means to you?

I have a slight lean towards nihilism in that I don’t believe life has an objective meaning or purpose. I think it is a nonsensical question anyway. I am as close to certain as I can be that the universe was not created specifically for me so I could be here right now neither to participate in this discussion nor to play Guitar Hero 2 when time permits. As for the process of evolution which brought me here, it too did not intend for me to be here. Evolution does not know I am here. It won’t notice when I am gone. The stars look down, that’s all they do; they don’t care. My body does not contain an immaterial soul. At the instant of the destruction of my brain my consciousness will end with nothing beyond: no eternal hellfire, no heavenly paradise. We’re the only species on the planet that knows it is going to die. If I manage to hold out long enough I will witness the death of everyone I will have come to love. Instead of falling into wish thinking, I decide to take on this astonishing fact with some intellectual and moral courage.

It's entirely incorrect to label atheism as just another religion. Everything I described above may be a necessary condition for atheism but it is not a sufficient condition. The word itself, atheism, is really a non sequitur. If I were to say I am an a-Communist, this would say nothing about what form of goverment I do believe works. A-Monetarist says nothing about which economical theory I do believe works, et cetera.

Originally Posted by LordsSword

Science as you know it only denys God these guys believed why wouldnt you?
Famous Scientists Who Believed in God

Well, scientists are humans too, so no one should be the least surprised when a few of them put their faith in the scriptures ahead of the evidence of their corresponding field of research. Are you familiar with Pierre Simon Laplace? He’s the French mathematician who published the Celestial Mechanics in which he describes the motion of the planets and is the first person to talk about black holes among other things. After the critics read his work they came back to Laplace and said something of the sort; “well we see you’ve written about the system of the universe but there is no mention of God.” In one of my favourite quotes Laplace politely replies, “Sir I had no need to make such an assumption.” Laplace’s equations for planetary motion worked just as well without the need to mention God. This is what makes scientific understanding so elegant. There is no need to make a footnote on every page with: And God did it. It adds nothing useful.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Poison or Cure? Religious Belief in the Modern World

Thread over. Christopher Hitchens machine guns the theological argument in less than 20 minutes starting at roughly the 6:00 minute mark. I would ask our believers here to watch (at least partly) this video and please give us a serious answer to the points Hitchens raises. I highly recommend this to the forum infidels and skeptics too so that you may replenish your ammunition and have a few good chuckles along the way.

"Why was the Amish woman excommunicated?"
"Too Mennonite (2 men a night)"
*ba dum pssh*

Just an observation, but I'm disappointed that many of our defenders of reason here are pulling their punches in their criticism of religion which is wholly fair (the criticism).

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

He calls himself a Christian so his view is very clear. Both are an abomination to God in which death is the only possible and suitable punishment. If he gives some bullshit response then he is clearly not a Christian and is instead (something I have long suspected) just some weak sauce vague person of faith who takes his theology a la carte. Why do so many Americans oppose same sex mariage and homosexuality? Because the book says homosexuality is a sin.

I was speaking idiomatically.