Talking about god...

[S.A.M.]

Boy, I'll bet if an atheist society were set up it would be a utopia. No mass killings, no blind followers of leaders, no crushing of individual lifestyles, no bombing. It would be great!

Wait a minute? Didn't they try that in Russia and China? Wasn't the atheist Stalin responsible for millions of deaths? And Mao wasn't so great either. Hmmmmmmm. Maybe religion isn't to blame. Maybe it's just human nature.

Complete nonsense. Look at all the Gandhian atheists here. Its just the religious people here who want everyone to follow their beliefs. All the atheists here are laissez faire and tolerant of diversity in human thought. Why, if a mugger accosted them with a gun, they would weep all over him for his weaknesses

 

[lightgigantic]

"You'd like to think I'm all for rounding you up and having you shot, but that would take all the fun out of it. No, far more effective and entertaining is to create no martyrs and inflame no causes, but to slowly, effectively, teach your children to think for themselves, to expose them over and over to the duplicity of beliefs and make them realize that you, and the Moslem, and every other belief system, can't all be right, but you can all be wrong."

Alt.Atheism

ever wondered why persons who make the claim that all religions are completely irreconcilable have never seriously studied world religion?

 

[superluminal]

It's an endless fascination to me to see a bunch of people who absolutely and freely admit to basing their entire worldviews on faith (i.e. the complete lack of any need for proof, evidence or reason, other than it's a tradition based on some ancient writings and a completely arbitrary set of interpretations that vary hugely, even within a given religion) to be pretending to use reason and logic in their arguments.

Every bit of it is rhetoric. You all remind me of department store mannequins. Mere shells of people with nothing below the surface.

You don't even know that your god(s) exist. You pray, you hope, you take any individual positive result and proclaim, for the masses, that, Hear Ye! I was sick, asked for god's help, and I got better! Halle-fucking-lujah!

You all are rather silly people, blindly accepting what's set before you on a plate.

 

[superluminal]

I forgot, how do you know god exists? A simple answer please?

 

[Reiku]

I beleive in a God - just not a conventional one. Not one that would require the aroma of sacrifices, nor one that would go out the way to stop the sun for Joshua. Or a God that shows Himself, or one that is worried with sexual orientation or what we might wear or think. None of this is my God bound by.

 

[superluminal]

I beleive in a God

A pretty silly and intellectually dishonest thing to do, wouldn't you say?

 

[(Q)]

Tell me, do you find any dichotomy in the fact that you are using a quote to teach people to think for themselves?

Just asking.

Fact and fiction are the duality of thinking and using that ability to distinguish between them.

 

[S.A.M.]

A pretty silly and intellectually dishonest thing to do, wouldn't you say?

He lives in the eighteenth dimension, of course.

 

[S.A.M.]

Fact and fiction are the duality of thinking and using that ability to distinguish between them.

So when you say, think for yourself, you mean think in a way that agrees with what you believe.

 

[lightgigantic]

It's an endless fascination to me to see a bunch of people who absolutely and freely admit to basing their entire worldviews on faith (i.e. the complete lack of any need for proof, evidence or reason, other than it's a tradition based on some ancient writings and a completely arbitrary set of interpretations that vary hugely, even within a given religion) to be pretending to use reason and logic in their arguments.

its not clear how you arrived at the conclusion that the writings are completely arbitrary without also relying on faith

Every bit of it is rhetoric.

even if that's true, welcome to the club
(here's your hat and party whistle)

You all remind me of department store mannequins. Mere shells of people with nothing below the surface.

oh you deep reservoir of substance you

You don't even know that your god(s) exist.

lol
which begs the question mr mannequin how do you know that?
You're not relying on some issue of faith perchance?

You pray, you hope, you take any individual positive result and proclaim, for the masses, that, Hear Ye! I was sick, asked for god's help, and I got better! Halle-fucking-lujah!

and then you come along and say, "Nope its all in your imagination - see I just proved it because I said it was in your imagination" and smile smugly to yourself

You all are rather silly people, blindly accepting what's set before you on a plate.

:shrug:

 

[superluminal]

So when you say, think for yourself, you mean think in a way that agrees with what you believe.

Oh. Sam is a free thinker who has come to the rational and logical conclusion that god exists. Not because she was simply raised to believe such a thing.

Right.

 

[lightgigantic]

I forgot, how do you know god exists? A simple answer please?

by practice

and how do you know that no one can know god exists?
A simple answer please?

 

[(Q)]

So when you say, think for yourself, you mean think in a way that agrees with what you believe.

If you believe yourself to believe in the supernatural, then you aren't thinking at all.

 

[S.A.M.]

Oh. Sam is a free thinker who has come to the rational and logical conclusion that god exists. Not because she was simply raised to believe such a thing.

Right.

Why not? you're a free thinker who thinks homophobia is evolutionary psychology.

 

[S.A.M.]

If you believe yourself to believe in the supernatural, then you aren't thinking at all.

Why? I think the supernatural is like science fiction; its a taste of whats there, just not at this time.

 

[superluminal]

its not clear how you arrived at the conclusion that the writings are completely arbitrary without also relying on faith

Ok. Let me help you.
Nothing in your precious writings points to a single way to test or observe this god they all speak of. You yourself know this. Therefore, unsupported rhetoric. QED.

which begs the question mr mannequin how do you know that?
You're not relying on some issue of faith perchance?

Not at all. Every theist I have ever spoken to has gone through or is going through a crisis of faith. It is fully documented that this happens all the time.

and then you come along and say, "Nope its all in your imagination - see I just proved it because I said it was in your imagination" and smile smugly to yourself

Nice try, strawman. Show some evidence that god did it. Or give up.

So, how do you know your god exists?

 

[superluminal]

by practice

and how do you know that no one can know god exists?
A simple answer please?

I never said that you man of straw.

 

[superluminal]

Why not? you're a free thinker who thinks homophobia is evolutionary psychology.

I know it is. The question really is, as a scientist, why don't you?

 

[Reiku]

A pretty silly and intellectually dishonest thing to do, wouldn't you say?

Well, as i said before, i find atheism a bit of a strangity; afterall, there are so many things we can't attempt to contemplate, an infinite amount of suggestions, and whilst they may seem pertinant, they also remain the most irrelevant, since there is an infinite amount of spacetime for an infinite amount of possibilities and proabilities for such a divine entity...
In short, let's not be selfish.

 

[superluminal]

Why? I think the supernatural is like science fiction; its a taste of whats there, just not at this time.

Finally some theist admits to the truth about their beliefs.