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Religion IS crazy!

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I have already answered your questions.

Anyone that expresses good in here gets attacked by the wolves.

You are the one that commented that she didn't think like you, no compassion, yet she just helped a lot of people and believes in preserving life.

So which babies are you going to keep, the boys or the girls
Just line them all up and shoot them

Socialists/Communists are destroyers.
 

As an outsider looking in it does look as though the suggestions you are making about Mclovin seem to be quite far from the actual content of his post. There is a long stretch between an abortion and shooting babies after birth, that just seems a little farfetched.

As far as I can tell, the only thing he has said is that religion stood in the way of women having the choice to not have a baby which was the result of a rape and this could ultimately change the rest of the women's lives. I think that is the topic raised here.

I understand that you may have issue with him placing the blame on Mother Teresa as she did a lot of good for the world but the remarks you make don't address the issues that he actually raised which I think just derails the discussion. In my view you have created a straw man argument by providing comments such as gunning down babies and suppression/communism which as far as I can tell were comments that were never made prior to you making them. It makes it difficult for any discussion to arise when this argumentative style is used. I don't think it's going to go anywhere meaningful or worthwhile with that approach.

Anyway, that's just my opinion. I'm sure there are many opposing views.
 

Tink you are all over the shop. Have you been over imbibing on the consecration wine? It's funny watching you contort yourself into ever more bizarre conclusions. You still haven't answered my question, not that it really matters anymore.

So I am now a Communist, baby shooting, freedom suppressor. What else can we add to the list? Oh yes, I'm a wolf too.

Anyway, thanks for the laugh, it brightened my day.


Spot on.
 
Well I am glad you got a laugh, but it is truly happening, picking and choosing the sex of their baby.

Whatever happened to being grateful for what we have/get?
 

Yeah yeah, I should have been clearer: whenever I see something that a person believes that's just too silly for words, I shrug and don't think less of them - because I would be just as blind to my own silliness, and I can't see any reason to think that I just happen to hold all the right beliefs.

Like I said: thinking you're right is absolutely no indicator for actually being right.

I don't think less of the faithful. From an objective point of view, people with faith may just have an ability to perceive some sense of the divine - an ability I lack. Like colour blindness.

Both points of view can co-exist, at least in my head. I can have no belief in a god because, duh, but I also have to accept the possibility that people with faith have more information than me.

Fact is, a universe that looks atheist is entirely consistent with a god who doesn't want people to be sure he/she/it/they exists. A god who doesn't want to be proven, will never be proven. That's fine.

We all just have to go with what we can see.


...and who the hell am I to tell other people what they see?
 
See how religion starts conflict !!! You people are nuts
 
Tisme said:
See how religion starts conflict !!!
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And that's my objection to it. I couldn't care less if someone wants to put their trust and faith in something I personally can't believe in. None of my business as long as they don't come badgering me to do the same.

But inevitably there's conflict between atheists and believers. Agnostics, at least, sit non-commitedly on the sidelines.

And then more conflict between branches of the believers where they feel justified in killing their opponents.

And so it escalates.
 

Yep.

I must admit though I was very intrigued at visiting the dead sea scrolls in New York and the remarkable accuracy of the comparable texts between the scrolls and the KJ bible. It kinda put the notion in my sceptical head that aborigines might actually be telling the dreamtime that their prehistoric families did.
 

Humans will always find something to fight about. Look at the hatred Bolt's reader have for the Greenies. Look at football hooligans beating up people who are identical in almost every demographic detail, apart from which team they support.

Humans suck. We'll find any excuse. Religion gets blamed a lot, but it's just an enabler.

And personally I don't believe many true agnostics actually exist. It's a pretty complicated position about the epistemological impossibility of having any useful discussion about god, which probably only philosophy professors actually understand enough to believe.

If you go with the broader meaning of agnosticism - that a person has doubt - then all people are agnostics and the term becomes meaningless. Atheists can't be sure, since a sufficiently powerful god who doesn't want to be seen is indistinguishable from the absence of god; and the faithful can't be sure, since without doubt there can be no faith.

Do you presently believe in the existence of a god? No? Then you're an atheist. A rock, for comparison, is also an atheist. So are babies.

Most people who say they're agnostics are just atheists who are too chicken to admit it.

That's my thing: beating on the agnostics.
 
I seem to recall you (or perhaps it was someone else) saying all the above before, weatsop.

Personally I just don't care enough to be bothered even wondering if there's a god or not. I have no way of knowing. I do not assert there is no god and neither do I assert there is one. Therefore I am, if anything, agnostic.

Certainly I'm not interested in offering myself as some sort of sparring partner for you on the issue.
Believe what you like. If I felt obliged to accept a label, it would just be "I don't care".
 

Actually, I think apathy is a good form of agnosticism.

Just keep in mind, atheism doesn't mean you have assert that there is no god. It only means that you don't believe there is one. The common example being a teacup floating along in the same orbit as Mars. I can't prove it's NOT there, but without a pretty good reason to think it IS, I'll go on *not* believing that it's there.

Many would say "there is no god" and "there is no teacup", but that's just a linguistic shortcut. Same as you can say "there is no santa" - even though you can't be 100% sure - he might just be magic enough to alter your memories to make you think you bought that junk.

Not trying to spar, just it's a common misconception of what atheism is, and it leads to a lot of confusion. Especially among atheists. Funny how if you tell someone that people of a certain label believe a certain thing, a lot of people will pretty uncritically believe that thing.

You can be an agnostic AND an atheist.
 
Two healthcare workers recently contracted Ebola after working with Ebola patients in Africa. Both became gravely ill but survived the disease after weeks of medical treatment. The woman, an American nurse (I think), said in her first interview on TV after her recovery.....’'I’m so grateful to have been cured – first and foremost I want to thank God”.
The man, a doctor, said as he walked out of hospital after his final test came back clear...”Praise be to the lord”.

I wonder if either of them considered what their outcomes would have been without medical treatment. Would they have survived their illness, would God have saved them?
Was it God who was risking his life to give them first class medical care, or was it the dedicated medical staff? Was it God who worked long and hard and spent millions of dollars in research to find out the best way of treating Ebola? Or was it the medical people and the scientists?
Do the medical staff deserve any credit for saving the lives of these two people and countless others, or does the credit belong to God?

This is a pretty good example I think of the way Christianity has brainwashed people into believing that anything good that happens in the world is always the work of God.
 
I understand completely your point, but I guess they'd been through a very frightening time both physically and psychologically and the comments might even have been a figure of speech. I agree that it would have been desirable to express gratitude to the people who provided medical care.

I occasionally catch myself saying stuff like "Oh, god" when I'm really irritated, or "for god's sake". It doesn't mean for a moment that I'm actually calling on any sort of supernatural deity.
 

Points taken, Julia. And yes, I was aware that it may have been a figure of speech. All the same, I think they should have given thanks first and foremost to the medical people who risked their lives to nurse them back to health. If they wanted to add the God bit as an aside, then that’s up to them. But for God to be first in line when they were handing out gratitude was a bit rich I thought.

So many people are brought up with the mentality that God has a hand in everything good that happens. And while the more realistic ones will abandon that belief as they grow up and start thinking for themselves, many of them nevertheless continue with the ‘thank God’ reaction whenever something turns out positively.
It gets a bit irritating sometimes. When I was under treatment for Leukemia I had one devoutly religious relative who asked me every few weeks if I feeling any better. And if I said yes, her automatic response was ‘thank God’.
It started really getting up my nose to the extent that one day I said to her ‘Listen – how do you think I’d be faring if I wasn’t undergoing medical treatment – do you think God would save my life? I’d be dead – that’s how I’d be faring. So if you really want to thank anyone then I suggest you thank the medical staff who are treating me, and the medical scientists who developed the treatment’.
Her response was ‘Oh, God is helping too’.
Anyway, thankfully the message got through to her and she laid off with the ‘thank God’ routine after that.
 
Weatsop said:
Most people who say they're agnostics are just atheists who are too chicken to admit it.

That's my thing: beating on the agnostics.
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Actually the terms atheist and agnostic describe different things,

Atheist / Theist are terms used to describe belief.

Agnostic / Gnostic are terms used to describe knowledge.

the terms are not mutually exclusive, for example I consider myself an Agnostic Atheist.

You put yourself in a dangerous position if you are going to claim not to be an Agnostic Atheist, Because if you say that your a Gnostic Atheist, then you are claiming to know a god doesn't exist, and that's a positive claim you might not be able to back up, and that makes it an intellectually dishonest position.
 
The term atheist should not really exist, yet it does and it's a term that is generally reviled by the religious for totally irrational reasons. While I identify as an atheist from time to time, I generally prefer not to since the vitriol and sometimes outright loathing and hatred the use of this term attracts from some religious types makes rational discussion of religion impossible. Simply declaring oneself an unbeliever based on lack of credible evidence seems less offensive to the flock.

Declaring oneself to be an agnostic atheist is a plausible but unnecessary qualification of one's position in my opinion. If the existence of any God is unknowable, then declaring non-belief on this basis is redundant phrasing. I don't know any atheist who claims to know for certain that a God does not exist, rather that any current God concept is improbable and compelling, indisputable evidence for any God non-existent.

Playing semantic games with such terms runs both ways. Why call oneself a gnostic Christian for instance since this is implicit in the belief system. What is intellectually dishonest and frankly dimwitted is the certain confidence that any God exists based on the mythology scribed in iron-age scrolls and related magic books.
 
FxTrader said:
The term atheist should not really exist, yet it does and it's a term that is generally reviled by the religious for totally irrational reasons.
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I think its a perfectly sound word to use, and often the best word to use. Put "A" if front of "Theism", simply means "lack of Theism", When referring to a person with a lack of belief, the person is an Atheist.

The fact that groups have a distaste for another group and the word that best describes them means we need to stop sheltering them from the concept and who we are.



Declaring oneself to be an agnostic atheist is a plausible but unnecessary qualification of one's position in my opinion
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.

It's helpful because the first thing theists ask in a debate is can we prove there is no god, explaining that we are actually agnostic, and that it is them that must prove their belief stops the switching of the burden of proof.

Also, it puts them in their place when they say things like, "I don't mind agnostics, but atheists are terrible people who just hate god"


Many atheists do make the mistake of making positive claims to know there is no god, so explaining the agnostic part can be helpful in getting them to think about it deeper, and help them avoid making snap positive claims in the future.


Pav would describe him self as a Gnostic Christian, and getting him to understand the 4 position, eg Gnostic theist, agnostic theist, agnostic atheist and gnostic atheist. I think helped embed the concept that it was up to him to prove his claim, also any time I can get a theist to openly admit to being an agnostic theist is a good day, it helps if that seed of doubt can be firmly planted by getting them to spend time examining their own position.
 

I don’t think there’s much chance of getting friend Pav to prove his claim – all he’s been able to come up with so far as proof of the existence of God and the resurecction of Jesus is what’s written in the Bible. One day he might, just might, realise that what was written thousands of years ago by unnamed authors when very few people could read or write, and much of it written most likely from stories and legends told around desert campfires over probably hundreds of years, is not credible proof of anything. But I’m not holding my breath with somebody like Pav – in my experience fanatics believe what they want to believe, proof or no proof.
 
Nice one, VC, well said.

It's trivial to point out that the existence or non-existence of god is impossible to prove (with the sole exception being if god exists and WANTS to be proven). Agnosticism is a much deeper position than doubt, and atheists can (and should) doubt at least at a basic level.

Theists should doubt, too, as long as they value "faith"...

...at least until god decides that they shouldn't.
 

Pav mistakes the case if he thinks there needs to be proof. Or even that there CAN be.

The old and famous contradiction in the bible (there are many, but this is the famous one): the descent of Jesus from King Dave via Joseph is given twice in the bible. Each time the descent is different. You can't have more than one descent! It just can't happen. Therefore, the bible is flawed. You don't need to think about any interpretation or metaphor, it's shown very clearly.

...and that's missing the main point, that Christian dogma claims that Jesus isn't Joseph's son anyway. Why does the bible say (twice!) that Jesus is Joseph's son when that means he's NOT god, as Christian dogma requires?

DOESN'T MATTER.

If god wants us to doubt, then the bible MUST be flawed, or we might not doubt.

If god wants us to doubt, then the universe MUST look atheist. That is, it must be explainable in the absence of a god.

God's not an idiot, he won't get caught out.

So all these people who try to prove god, or deny science on the grounds that god invalidates it (e.g. the anti-evolution crackpots in the US) are basically saying: god is an idiot.

If god wants us to know, we'll know. He's all powerful. He could just flip the switch marked "know of My Terrible Existence". If we don't know, it's because he doesn't want us to know. And there's nothing any of us could do to outwit god. If we could prove the existence of god despite his opposition, we would have outsmarted him.

Pffff.

So anyone who says something proves the existence of god is blaspheming. They are calling god an idiot.
 
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