I could say that the difference is that I'm NOT pretending. YOU ARE.

But at the very least I can say that I don't think that I'm pretending. BUT YOU KNOW THAT YOU ARE.

It really doesn't matter anyway, now does it? Life really has no meaning according to your atheism. So whether we believe anything or nothing...or do anything or nothing...doesn't mean jack.

(BTW if you're going to attack something at least don't build a strawman to attack. Deal with the real thing. Not some made up crap of your own imagination that you can throw rocks at.)

 

I'm pretending what? That there isn't a god? Why would I pretend that if I knew otherwise? Wouldn't there be repercussions ?

You're the one doing all the make believe. You're the one making the claim god exists despite having no evidence.

It's no strawman argument. You believe your god wants you to live a life void of sin, and that means no porn. Failing to follow these orders results in eternal damnation, thus you aren't free to live your life as you please. You are a slave to gods orders and disobedience to your master's orders means punishment.

Your love of porn and your love for your slave master is causing quite the dichotomy.

 

I wonder what your God thinks of you being on a porn site? Maybe he'll send you straight to Hell.

 

What in the world have we been talking about? Are you so dense that you can't follow a simple conversation?

Pretending that you aren't a nihilist when you really are. Pretending that life has meaning when it really doesn't according to your atheism. That's what we've been talking about.

The rest of your post is just the same old "You're being a hypocrite for being here" line repeated for the 5,365,789th time. Of course, I'm being hypocritical. But---and here's a key point that you need to realize---according to your atheism IT DOES NOT MATTER what I do...or not do? It doesn't matter if I'm a hypocrite (or a mass murderer for that matter). When I'm dead...I'm dead.

 

Life on Earth as a whole has no meaning, it's just complex and exciting chemistry. Life at a personal level does. That meaning is whatever meaning I choose to make for it, be it having an impact on those lives around me for a brief moment in time, or just living to make the most of my tiny existence. Size is relative, in relation to the universe, I am tiny. But I'm also a part of this universe that is able to comprehend and understand it's own existence. I am a way for part of the universe to know itself. And considering most of the universe is nothing, that means I rank pretty high. That's pretty damn big.

According to atheism, there is a lack of belief in a god, that is it. Nothing else.
It does not matter to me what you do as long as you don't interact with me. But you do interact with me simply by having an account on this forum. Therefore what you do here does matter, it just doesn't matter all that much.

It matters if you are a mass murderer. Not to me. But it matters to lives that were cut short, ending their one chance at existence and denying the world of whatever contribution they had left to give, be it love, insight, or even misery, it wasn't your right to take it away. It matters to the families and friends of the victims for causing pain and suffering. How many people would you be murdering exactly if you found out there was no god?

 

It's not even that. "Exciting" is your puny little subjective feeling that doesn't mean shit to the universe.

Do you realize how full of shit you sound? Your life has meaning because YOU---a speck of nothing---just say so? NOTHING says it's something? :lol:

No. There's much more to atheism than the mere lack of belief in a Deity. For example, by implication it says that there is no real meaning in life.

Who says that it wasn't the mass murderer's "right"? "Might makes right" according to evolution. If a mass murderer does it to eliminate the weak that's "survival of the fittest." Hitler was a good student of the racist Darwin.

Who cares if lives were cut short? People? People aren't important. They are mere specks of nothing. Cogs in a wheel. When they're dead they're dead.

Lives are cut short all the time due to sickness and natural disasters. What does THIS tell you about what the universe "thinks" about such matters?

 

You better be glad that I don't hold to your view.

[YOUTUBE]VYakrSp9DqM[/YOUTUBE]

 

The universe and I aren't separate. I'm not simply living in the universe, I'm a part of the universe. Therefore if I find something exciting, the universe is finding it exciting.

Why would I need to create something else to say my life has meaning, when I can just skip your pointless step and create my own meaning.

No there isn't. Look it up in a dictionary or an encyclopaedia. Atheism is only a lack of belief in a deity.

Except that says nothing of the sort.

Are you insane ? We as a society that make and enforce the rules say it isn't the mass murderers right. That's why in a court of law saying "God commanded me to kill my children" isn't a legitimate defence.

"Survival of the fittest" is a turn of phrase coined by Herbert Spencer, not Darwin. When the phrase was used in 5th edition of On the Origin of species it was used alongside "natural selection" to mean "better designed for an immediate, local environment" it has nothing to do with eliminating the weak.

People are important at the scale of our existence, in our everyday interactions. I value life more so than any religious person that believes this life is just a test. And therefore I value people more than religious people do too.

Given that life is the only part of the universe we know of that thinks. And people have a variety of views about sickness and death, then we can conclude the universe has a mixed opinion about sickness and death.

 

So you DO have a religion after all. It's a mushy atheistic pantheism.

If atheism doesn't imply that life really has no real meaning then cite to me the objective atheistic standard that says that life has real meaning. Don't give me your feelings. Feelings are subjective and prove NOTHING.

Until now you've given me NOTHING but your own subjective personal feelings. You ought to know just how wrong and self-deceiving such things can be.

 

I'm not a pantheist. I don't believe the universe is divine. I'm an atheist, which is practically the opposite of a pantheist.

Atheism is not a religion, there is no framework of beliefs, or objective standards associated with atheism. It's a single point. It's a lack of belief in a god or deities. It really couldn't be more simple. It doesn't say anything for or against any purpose or meaning in life. You are an atheist with regards to every religion excluding your branch of Christianity. I take it one religion further and reject all religions the same way you reject Islam, Hinduism, or Greek mythology etc.
Bald is not a hair colour, and atheism is not a belief system.

I think my purpose in life is whatever purpose I make for myself. At the moment that purpose is to enjoy myself. The reason I have given you my own subjective personal feelings on what I think my purpose in life is, is because they are the only things that matter when it comes to defining where I find purpose in life. I don't invent a magic man to obey to give me a purpose.

 

Here's your solution, magicboy...

Repeat after me: " Believe as we believe. Speak as we speak. Ignore what we ignore. Forget what we forget."

Or we'll throw your asses in prison!

http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/opinion/op_ed/2014/04/goldberg_activists_gone_wild_over_climate

Goldberg: Activists gone wild over climate

‘Deniers’ threatened with time in the gulag





Finally, someone has come up with a way to settle the debate over climate change: Put the people on the wrong side of the argument in cages.

A writer for the website Gawker recently penned a self-described “rant” on the pressing need to arrest, charge and imprison people who “deny” global warming. In fairness,

Adam Weinstein doesn’t want mass arrests. (Besides, in a country where only 44 percent of Americans say there is “solid evidence” of global warming and it’s mostly due to human activity, you can’t round up every dissenter.) Fact-checking scientists are spared. So is “the man on the street who thinks Rush Limbaugh is right. ... You all know that man. That man is an idiot. He is too stupid to do anything other than choke the earth’s atmosphere a little more with his Mr. Pibb burps and his F-150’s gassy exhaust.”

But Weinstein’s magnanimity ends there. Someone must pay. Weinstein suggests the government simply try the troublemakers and spokespeople. You know, the usual suspects. People like Limbaugh himself as well as ringleaders of political organizations and businesses that refuse to toe the line. “Those malcontents must be punished and stopped.”

Weinstein says that this “is an argument that’s just being discussed seriously in some circles.” He credits Rochester Institute of Technology philosophy professor Lawrence Torcello for getting the ball rolling. Last month, Torcello argued that America should follow Italy’s lead. In 2009, six seismologists were convicted of poorly communicating the risks of a major earthquake. When one struck, the scientists were sentenced to six years in jail for downplaying the risks. Torcello and Weinstein want a similar approach for climate change.
.
This is a great standard for free speech in America. Let’s just agree that the First Amendment reads, “Nothing in this clause shall be considered binding if it contradicts legal practices in the Abruzzo region of Italy.”

The truth is this isn’t as new an outlook as Weinstein suggests. For instance, in 2009, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman insisted that “deniers” in Congress who opposed the Waxman-Markey climate change bill were committing “treason” while explaining their opposition on the House floor. (That same year, Krugman’s fellow Timesman Thomas Friedman wrote that China’s authoritarian system was preferable to ours, in part, because it lets “enlightened” leaders deal with climate change.)

“The fact is that the planet is changing faster than even pessimists expected,” Krugman insisted. How fast the earth is changing is open to all kinds of debate, but short of an asteroid strike it won’t change as fast as the global warming pessimists have claimed. For example, in 2008, Al Gore predicted that the North Pole ice cap would be ice-free by 2013. Arctic ice, which never came close to disappearing, has actually been making a bit of comeback lately.

Gore’s prediction — echoed by then-U.S. Sen. John Kerry and countless others — was always ridiculous hyperbole. But even most serious, nonhyperbolic, computer-modeled predictions have overestimated the amount of warming we’ve experienced. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has had to retract several histrionic predictions, such as its erroneous prophecy that the Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035.

Its new report, out on Monday, contains a new raft of dire prophecies requiring trillions in new spending. If I greet it with skepticism, shall I pack a toothbrush for my trip to jail?
Climate-change activists insist that in science, revisions are routine, and that such corrections prove the good faith of scientists. Even if that’s true, one might still note that incentives are unhealthily arranged so that even well-intentioned researchers are encouraged to exaggerate the dangers of climate change and discouraged to criticize hyperbole. Moreover, were it not for the skeptics and deniers, many such corrections would never have been brought to light. (My own view is that man plays some role in warming, but the threat is overblown and the popular remedies range from trivial to unaffordable to ridiculous.)

The real problem is that political activists and many leading institutions, particularly in the news media and academia, are determined to demonize any kind of skepticism — about the extent of the threat or the efficacy of proposed solutions — as illegitimate idiocy.

That attitude is unscientific and undemocratic enough. But it sure beats calling for your opponents to be thrown in the gulag for disagreeing with you.

 

I'm going to bed now.

To summarise.

You say I'm a Nihilist

I say I'm not a Nihilist because I find purpose in life.

You say my purpose in life is subjective and meaningless after I die. And that the only true purpose in life comes from a make believe magic man that grants you existence.

I say your purpose is also subjective and meaningless after you die.

Then you go off on a tangent trying to redefine atheism, morals etc which have nothing to do with the argument.

Thus we still remain at the point, If I'm a Nihilist, you are no different.



If you wish to carry this on, start a new thread.

 

So really; what do we spray in the atmosphere, what do we spray it with, and why? How does it reduce green house gasses? Oh, and will it have enough of a positive effect that it will account for the exhaust of the planes spraying it?

And sure, we can build a nuclear submarine in 18 months, but that's a military deal not subject to all the environmental impact statements, the public hearings, the legal filings, etc. etc. etc.
15 years. No shit.

So, the US enacts drastic, draconian laws to reduce the amount of green house gasses, while the rest of the world, notably the developing countries continue to expand their "carbon footprint". Cause, you know, they ain't getting rid of their scooters that burn castor oil. Or their shit burning stoves, or their open dumping of sewage.

And then?

The climate will do what the climate does. And we adjust.

What incredible conceit to think that cutting green house gasses is either possible or worthwhile, and that by doing so we can control our climate. And in the mix are the robbers who will get their money out of it one way or the other; that's why I mentioned carbon credits.

Like I've said many times; when in doubt follow the money.

 

Stratospheric sulphate aerosols such as dimethyl sulphide, sulphur dioxide (SO2), carbonyl sulphide, or hydrogen sulphide (H2S). These result in the formation of compounds with the sulphate anion SO42-. one kilogram of well placed sulphur in the stratosphere would roughly offset the warming effect of several hundred thousand kilograms of carbon dioxide. It works by reflecting sunlight, so you effectively manage the amount of solar radiation that the earth receives.

You need to get the aerosols high into the atmosphere, aircraft could be used, but it would be more effective to use artillery or balloons.

It's not a perfect strategy, there are side effects. But it's relatively cheap,
relatively easy, and relatively quick. Ideally we could do with a large volcano going off and doing the exact same job for us.

 

I for one don't want my country dumping chemical compounds into the stratosphere.

And hey, wasn't it you save the world greenies that said "aerosols" were destroying the Ozone a few decades ago?

Now you want to pollute the stratosphere with them????

This whole man made global warming LIE is all about controlling people, money and power.

It has nothing to do with climate.

You and the rest of your kind have been easily duped by the powers that be......

 

I'm not saying Stratospheric Sulphate aerosols is the solution we must adopt. I'm just saying don't tell me climate change can't realistically be curbed in any economically viable way. When that simply is not true.

Despite whatever people's opinions on climate change are, one thing which is undeniable is that fossil fuels are not in unlimited supply. There will come a point in time when extracting and refining oil will become too expensive to meet the demands of our countries. At the moment we are reliant of fossil fuels for energy, freight and transport. It makes sense to invest in alternatives, because that will be the big industry of the future. If we can press on ahead and get things ready in advance before the market requires it, we might just not destroy the environment for future generations, as well as making the transition much more smoothly.

If ever there were aliens spying on us, can't help but think they would say

"look at these idiots, trying to burn hydrocarbons for power, when there is a G-type main-sequence star just over there putting out more power that you could ever dream of."

" You think that's bad zorg, they only have to dig down a couple of miles and it's hot enough to get free geothermal energy, hell at the edge of their tectonic plates, they barely have to dig at all, I mean look at them, they aren't even utilising their moon's gravity, and they are running away from tornados"

"Shall we help 'em?"

"Nah fuck 'em, if they can't figure this out, there is no hope for them as a species."

 

+1

 

Well, you've impressed the mixed nut from Australia. Good job.

Of course that much is easily done. All you have to do is agree with him.


In rebuttal all I would say is that it is only in the past thirty or so years the the human race could seriously contemplate drilling a two mile geothermal tap from an engineering perspective.

Likewise for the the technological challenges involved in efficiently tapping that G-2 star next door.

And how have we recently acquired the acumen to achieve feasibility in these areas? By developing our economies and growing socioculturally, using fossil fuels to drive the engine of creation.

Moreover, we have a long way to go. Solar and geothermal technology are not mature. And it is not simply a matter of lacking the will. It is not as simple as the old punchdrunk yarn that the Evil Oil Industry is hiding the necessary technology in a vault. Materials science and nanotechnology especially must improve by several orders of magnitude before the solutions that you envision will become commonplace.

To see why this is true, look at electric cars. You, yourself concede in another post that the technology is not ready for prime time. The Tesla Model S is a wonderful car, but it would not exist as a product if American taxpayers did not subsidize each and every purchase. And look at the irony there! We're talking about an $80,000 car, retail, which only the rich can afford, yet low income families driving used cars are helping the rich to buy them!

The Tesla Model S is awful technology. We should not be subsidizing it. We should let it sink or swim (and sink it would), because it is not ready.

When someone develops an electrical storage device that can hold the joule equivalent of a fifteen gallon gasoline tank in the same amount of volume and mass, electric cars will not need subsidies, and the entirely world will race to buy them.

But that technology does not exist. Gasoline is still the most efficient fuel on the planet, cost-per-volume.

We will not improve upon it with legislation, wishes and science fiction.

Engineering and technology will improve it. If, and only if, we do not cripple our economies and spoil the engine that propels human advancement.

 

Blasphemy, how dare you question the great minds of these geniuses? Sometimes I do wonder what the fuck they are drinking.

 

Our own bath water..