Any atheists here who were once believers?
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You misunderstood Jan. He was saying that atheism is not a religion, just as theism is not a religion.
Oh, Jan. We were doing so well, too. Sigh.
I have a question: Beyond the "debunking" videos and articles you link to, what is your education level in the sciences? How much of your knowledge of evolution, say, comes from study of actual evolutionary biology? Which authors have you read on the subject?
Is that what you believe? LOL.
No, we are asking you believers to stop the smashing, you've been at it for centuries and all it has accomplished is conflict and wars.
It was question about trying to understand how words turn into actions. So you nearly gave me an example when you said am I naturally "deliberately obtuse". The "deliberately obtuse" is a perceived action yet all I did was ask a question. That is the sort of negativity I see around here with the atheists jumping to conclusions. Unless the Christians (theists) end up bowing down to the superior God of atheism we ought to do the frog jump.
Well is Christianity a religion or is it a form of atheism? If Jesus came back tomorrow I think he would class most of the so called Christians atheists for they never believed from their hearts in the first place.
You're still not getting it. The point is that theism itself is not a religion. Like how television isn't a program, but a medium? Theism is a kind of belief, but theism itself has no dogma or scripture. Understand now?
I had understood that previously thanks so that is why I went on to the next question for you: "Well is Christianity a religion or is it a form of atheism?"
Christianity teaches that Jesus was divine. If people think he was conceived in a natural way, he couldn’t also be divine. A person CAN believe that, but the teachings of Christianity encompass the belief that Jesus was born of a virgin, and he was therefore born without original sin, and also/therefore, divine.
Going with this…if a person disbelieves that Jesus was born of a virgin, that same person isn’t following Christianity. Going with that…Jesus was therefore an ordinary man (if he existed) and could have been crucified …but there wouldn’t be a resurrection.
There would be no resurrection, because the rest of the story leading up to it, doesn’t support it.
People can’t take a domino or two out of the line up, and expect them to all fall nice and neat into place. Christianity already has a story. If people rewrite the story to suit their worldview, etc…that’s not Christianity.
If people wish to rewrite the story to suit their worldview, then they should examine why they are following the story to begin with.
That goes for any belief system. You can't rewrite it to suit your worldview and still say you follow that religion.
Going with this…if a person disbelieves that Jesus was born of a virgin, that same person isn’t following Christianity. Going with that…Jesus was therefore an ordinary man (if he existed) and could have been crucified …but there wouldn’t be a resurrection.
There would be no resurrection, because the rest of the story leading up to it, doesn’t support it.
People can’t take a domino or two out of the line up, and expect them to all fall nice and neat into place. Christianity already has a story. If people rewrite the story to suit their worldview, etc…that’s not Christianity.
If people wish to rewrite the story to suit their worldview, then they should examine why they are following the story to begin with.
That goes for any belief system. You can't rewrite it to suit your worldview and still say you follow that religion.
"The Book of Truth" will solve all of these questions which I have no way of answering myself.
Trampled to death? How utterly ridiculous.
Clearly, when it comes to death, try remembering real, real hard about the Inquisitions, Crusades and Witch burnings, dude.
Are you fucking serious? Is that all you think about, raising armies and fighting? No wonder your religion causes so much conflict and grief in the world. Truly sickening behavior.
The question makes no sense if you understood the point Jan was making.
I don't really follow the authors I just read the bits of information I want to find out.
Why?
Jan.
I think Jesus' teaching was so profound, he would be considered an atheist. The kingdom of heaven is the here and present potential of a utopian society where people just do the right thing out of the goodness of their hearts. The Father is the grand mystery of the material world that is the source of all things.
Sorry I don't attempt to understand Jan. He is behind the times as far as I am concerned. If he becomes an evolutionist then I will try and correct him.
But go back to my question. Why is it so difficult?
You have made a good point so was Jesus an atheist?
There is a source of truth well out of the reach of natural man but it can be revealed to the chosen, like ........
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That helping hand is genetically no different than the helping hand given to bacteria which evolve drug resistance. It's just a change in the DNA. Surely that's not so easily dismissed. Try selecting a foreign font to view your documents, and change the font size. It's just a small change to the coding -- but what a huge difference in physical appearance. What difference does it make if the code change adds a tail fluke or if it removes the tail human ancestors had? (You do realize that a small percentage of people are born with tails.) Whether it is added or subtracted, elongated or reduced, colored or not, feathered/scaled/furred or not -- and so on -- the physical traits are strictly the outcome of four extremely small molecules -- those of the grandparents -- which are blended randomly at the moment of meiosis (egg and sperm formation) and fertilization. In order to stabilize populations, mutations are kept relatively low, but not so low that they will not continue to offer alternative physical traits in the indefinite future, when environmental conditions may change and survival may depend on it. But they're there. That's why everyone eventually encounters people with rare genetic disorders. And it's also why people vary by geography according to physical attributes.
And as you know cetacean evolution was not done in a blink of an eye -- the time scale here is in biologic time, not geologic time. The whale does not have an ungulate as an immediate ancestor but as a far distant one. However, the intermediate fossils you've seen before contradict your assumption that some kind of 4-legged animal cannot also share the traits of a whale. They are similar in their heads, jaws and teeth, and spine to the body of a whale. And they show gradual progression from the terrestrial ungulate to the aquatic cetacean.
Considering the evidence which reveals the evolutionary history of whales--plus the evidence for the history of human mythology--you've chosen the least viable way to judge the evidence, and then added to this the dimension of fundamentalism (Biblical literalism) which suffers huge deficits in viability on its own. You've put these together and concluded that science is wrong.
In what country?
If you've ever been around a schizophrenic, you would know that it's a very serious condition. Without psychiatry, these people would be suffering severe consequences of the illness. And the public would be terrorized by some of them.
Talk about denial.
That's not even close to being correct. Anti-psychotic meds are often all the person needs to live a relatively normal life.
This sounds like the clandestine stuff done in a particular place in the 1950s in conjunction with the Cold War. It has no bearing on modern medicine. Brain surgeries are done to help people with epilepsy and other brain disorders known to benefit from such intervention some of which include mental health symptomology. They are last ditch efforts, not done frivolously, and subject to constant pressure from malpractice lawsuits. Your source seems to think there is no such litigation which is naive at best.
That person really is a crank. :bugeye: They haven't ever worked in the medical field. They're just making this stuff up.
How is this relevant to the discussion here. :bugeye:
Are we at war with the Reich? :bugeye: This is beginning to sound like Arauca, reliving the horrors of his youth.
How ironic that you should post such insane material as an argument against the science of mental health care.