it's a form of insanity

 

It definitely IS insanity. We already established that.
What I find interesting is the lengths religious people go to when trying to maintain dissonance.
Religious dogma must be a real bitch to deal with.
Comfortable lies vs reality. Get a fucking grip.
You religious believers have no problem understanding and accepting MOST realities, but when it gets a little tough...well then fuck understanding, just "leave it in god's hands" or some shit. You pick and choose where to draw the line, and return to concocted unverifiable nonsense based on your surrounding religious influence and accept it as truth.
Then when an atheist or agnostic asks questions you respond with what you "know" such as "the bible tells us" as a supposed answer! FOR FUCKS SAKE!!!

 

I'm tempted to turn this into an infinite regression, but I fear the world may run out of "very"s to apply. :-|

 

And so you're also going to assume that all of us are Christian and we all follow some Bible.
Simply cast us all under the same label and judge us accordingly, is that it?
Where is your "understanding"?

And Kimiko asks why theists are adverse to talking about their faiths to atheists.

And I still find it hypocritical that supposed atheists are more than willing to celebrate Christmas, a tradition based on beliefs, but no hard evidence.

 

You mad, bro? You need a hug or something? Take a your meds and calm down. This is a civil discussion between adults who believe differently and have chosen to discuss it in a mature and civil manner.

Now go outside and play while the grown ups talk for a while.

 

What `mess'? The state of society? This is man's doing, not God's! Evil God?
Many people see the world/God through `welder's goggles'. This colours their judgement, 25 to 35 years ago I came to my own conclusions about the nature of God. It was me that coloured him as a punishing `Higher Power'.
I see the indirect effects of God everyday. I can also say I see the manifestations of the Devil too: anti-socials and pathological liars, sycophants and cowards, be they in deed or word.

 

no way

 

I realize quite enough about the definition, I happened to give it. Try to Make your cryptic dodge more cryptic and less dodgy.

As for your point? Your point does not exist, it is merely a collection of letters which are little more than pixels on a screen. Because, you see, the circle only goes one way.

 

You don't even understand what you believe anymore.

A christian is a follower of the teachings of jesus christ (very...very loosely) and the teachings..nay the very existence of christ was thought and concocted in the Judeo Christian bible.

no you nimrod. what you are describing is the method through which I communicated the point to you. the point itself is a thought process, something you clearly have difficulty understanding.

Point
Def: the most important essential in a discussion or matter

 

Okay, so you DON'T think human life is sacred. I don't either. Why devote so much verbiage to arguing the point with someone who agrees with you?

And by the way, if someone doesn't follow your "logical progressions", it's probably because life is far too short to attempt to track your constant barrage of words in search of a point. Usually it just culminates in an insult, and you could have done that with much more brevity and clarity.

 

Well good for you, now go tell that to a christian.. I am a pagan.
My Gods do not answer prayers and expect everyone to be responsible for their own actions. We do not have a concept for "good" or "evil".. those are results of the actions of men, not the Gods.
And for every wrongdoing I have done in my life I will be held accountable. My Gods do not forgive.
They also tell us to question, to know, to understand. That only a fool dismisses information, only a fool can presume to know everything with absolute certainty.
We do not have "blind faith" nor do we have "commandments" laid out by the Gods.
Honour the Gods, but do not look to them for salvation.

Bear that in mind when you are blathering on about how ignorant and stupid theists are. You are simply assuming we are all Christians or Muslims or Jews. Like a fool who speaks before they listen and understand.

 

If you believe in god/gods, then you are equally delusional, regardless which "god" you choose.
I don't celebrate krassmass or any other religious tradition.
Sure, there are hypocrites out there. Just because the majority of the world's most intelligent people that ever lived were atheist does not make all atheists intelligent.

 

Listen dude you can play Pick a God on the Deity Spinning Wheel from now till the cow comes it makes little difference.

The idea of gods was a concept that early man developed out of ignorance about the natural world.

It's old, worn out and obsolete. Mankind has leaped forward in intellectual aptitude since we left the caves all those millenniums ago.

It's high time you and people like you stop dancing around the camp fire chanting to the spirits and hop on the train.

either keep up or get left behind.

Now....GOOD DAY SIR

 

Maybe I should repeat the phrase: Intellectual honesty.

While I realize you have picked your "team" and now you will back them blindly no matter the action, I myself try to remain a little more objective and honest. Whether or not I agree with someone, will not change the fact that they lost the debate. A horrible argument should be pointed out as such, no matter who makes it, or what they stand for.

And for the record, I do not agree with your simplistic view on the sacredness of human life. I never said I agreed with his either. I used a hypothetical and even was so generous as to include the word "perhaps," multiple times. And yet...whiz, it still got past you.

Indeed, it must be my fault that three paragraphs is "beyond you." How convenient.

I would think it more likely that people have simply lost the ability to follow a coherent argument because we live in a sensationlist society. People get their news in headlines and give their opinions in blurbs. What gets lost is any deep understanding of the issue at hand. And this is why a seemingly smart man can present an argument as backwards and ridiculous as he did. Who can blame him? Reasoning the thing out logically would have involved too many...words. Ooh, I shudder to think.

If you prefer half-thoughts and unsubstantiated points. That is fine. But don't insist that everyone sink to your level. If the equivalent of one-half page in a novel is "too heavy" for you to follow, that might explain your striking ability to miss the point. And perhaps the 45 seconds it should take to read is simply too long for your busy life. But don't expect me to switch to children's books simply because it suits an increasingly shallow number of thinkers.

 

I most certainly will "hop on the train" if you die, come back, and prove to me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, there are no Gods.

 

Kimiko, as an atheist, what is your explanation

for the many regularities discovered in nature? For example, we can measure the speed of light to six decimal places. Gravitational attraction can be precisely measured. In vacuum all objects fall with the same speed. In chemistry we can predict the outcome of a chemical reaction with a high degree of exactness. The physical laws found to apply to earth are found to apply through the universe. How does anti-chance, which is quite abundant in our lives, occur without the presence of a consciousness that is running this place, i.e. the entire universe? The results here are found completely from empirical observation, able to be replicated by atheists and theists alike. Give me a train of thought that explains how there can be precise repetition so repeatable that it can be formulated as obeying specific laws, which we are still building, repetition ad infinitum throughout the universe, without there being a consciousness pulling the strings.

The hypothesized consciousness that I speak of has no resemblance to the God in the Bible, obviously an anthropomorphic creation of uninformed people, who did not have access to the astrophysics and astronomy we have today.

 

This article reminded of this thread ...interesting read for both sides...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/b...ok-on-god-and-science.html?src=me&ref=general




http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/books/review/Holt.t.html?scp=1&sq=%22god%20delusion%22&st=cse

 

Good grief!

You plan to base your entire belief system on an act that is impossible? To die and come back to life?

During life you have absolutely no evidence of a soul or spirits but you're banking on after you're dead and have no hope of returning to life that maybe, just maybe there is a spiritual world?

That's akin to jumping off a cliff and hoping that at the bottom of that cliff is a dump ground for used mattresses

that's..that's....that's so :wall:

 

how can consiousness evolve before there was anything in the universe to be conscious of?

your explanation for the laws of physics is that there is a conscious being pulling the strings? this ideology just amplifies the limits of your confined human brain. You seek to associate humanoid attributes to everything around you. It's perfectly natural to think that way because that's how we evolved.

For instance look at this picture of a door:



first thing you see is a smiling face right?

That's because your brain seeks out common patterns.

Thinking that there is a conscious being governing the universe is an abstract realization of this same pattern seeking habit.

Now is there really a face in that picture? of course not, it's a double door and a velvet waiting line rope.

Is there really a supernatural being overseeing the cosmos? of course not, it's just the unchangeable laws of natural physics at work.

 

Seeing as your premise to deny any spirituality is based on what currentscience has told you, theories and conjecture, but absolutely no hard evidence to refute my beliefs, I think it only fair.
I cannot prove there are Gods.. you cannot disprove. But you have such faith in the power of man's intellect and science you feel justified to admonish and mock those of us whom believe otherwise.
And yes, when you honestly believe something without hard clinical facts and evidence, you are taking it on faith what you are told is true.
Unless you currently hold evidence there are no Gods.
Isn't it wonderous to have faith in something?