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Old 07-01-2011, 02:40 AM
 
7,801 posts, read 6,340,914 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Clintone View Post
Blanket statements make people sound stupid.
Nice blanket statement you made there.

Quote:
Originally Posted by laysayfair View Post
I think the former Soviet Union backs you up about how the Atheist might behave when they are the majority.
Not even close I am afraid. Such a state has no similarity to what atheists, and most especially secularists, espouse at all.
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Old 07-01-2011, 03:28 AM
 
Location: South Africa
5,563 posts, read 7,188,949 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD View Post
I understand why you conflate theism with religion, Seeker . . . because you have explained your background. But they are NOT the same phenomenon. Specific BELIEFS ABOUT God constitute religions . . . a belief in the EXISTENCE of God constitutes theism. They are separate issues that can be addressed on their own merits or lack thereof. Beliefs about God (right, wrong, insane or . . . whatever) do not and cannot have any impact on the existence of God.
Theism and religion cannot exist w/o each other. To separate the two is merely a deflection from reality.

God(s) only exist in the minds of folk as ALL the gods including yours have no tenable way of proving themselves or their existence.

I cannot call any believer insane as I one was one of them, however I do feel that saying they are deluded is the correct term. No one gets into theism except through religion. I of course know the spin of having a "relationship" is the current meme but really explains nor proves anything of substance.

You and I have beat around this topic and in the end you still revert to your foundation the bible. You criticize religions as much as I do but try insert this was some "spiritual milestone" or your newly invented "spiritual fossil"

Theism need to be taught ad usually in a religious institution to add the necessary nuances for folk to buy into the lie. A simple perusal of holy books in a religious studies group of a secular nature is not going to make anyone a believer if they are not already conditioned from childhood to being open yo this as "truth". Taking such studies to a master's level and examining all the evidence wrt to history, secular folk are likely to remains as such.

The bible alone is its worst enemy to a critical thinker and researcher. Thankfully the internet has oodles of info in support and criticism and the critics tend to have far better arguments and facts.
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Old 07-01-2011, 02:56 PM
 
63,419 posts, read 39,666,813 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SeekerSA View Post
Theism and religion cannot exist w/o each other. To separate the two is merely a deflection from reality.
Restating it does not make it true, Seeker. God either exists or doesn't irrespective of what people do or do not BELIEVE ABOUT God. That makes it a philosophical and scientific question about the nature of reality . . . NOT a war of religions.
Quote:
God(s) only exist in the minds of folk as ALL the gods including yours have no tenable way of proving themselves or their existence.
This is an interesting proposition that presumes that things of the mind are not real. Scientifically you would have trouble explaining how something comprised of energy isn't real simply because it may not be comprised of measurable matter or have an independent presence outside the minds of humans.

Biblegod is too easy a foil for your disbelief, Seeker . . . you intellectually hide behind it.
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Old 07-02-2011, 02:38 AM
 
Location: South Africa
5,563 posts, read 7,188,949 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD View Post
Restating it does not make it true, Seeker. God either exists or doesn't irrespective of what people do or do not BELIEVE ABOUT God. That makes it a philosophical and scientific question about the nature of reality . . . NOT a war of religions.
I do not have to restate anything, it is a fact. No one "finds god" w/o religious indoctrination. There is really nothing philosophical about it, it is just a way to pretend to ascribe some modicum of logic to a totally illogical claim
Quote:
This is an interesting proposition that presumes that things of the mind are not real. Scientifically you would have trouble explaining how something comprised of energy isn't real simply because it may not be comprised of measurable matter or have an independent presence outside the minds of humans.
If this god has a presence outside of what is commonly and universally agreed to methods of observation and detection, then my statement stands, it is all in the minds of men.

If mankind was today wiped out by some cataclysmic event, all gods would cease to exist. No thought, no god.
Quote:
Biblegod is too easy a foil for your disbelief, Seeker . . . you intellectually hide behind it.
No I do not, I apply the process of logic, rational thought, and for lack of any substantiated evidence which should be repeatable with all identically, is not forthcoming.

Searching for god is equal to searching for the pot-'o-gold at the end of the rainbow, it or they simply do not exist.
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Old 07-02-2011, 07:36 AM
 
Location: Missouri, USA
5,671 posts, read 4,325,894 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nozzferrahhtoo View Post
Your error is the same error as saying something absurd like "Clothes cause diversity in the size of people.... because look at all the different sizes clothes come in". The reason clothes are different sizes is that people are diverse. People cause the diversity in religion/clothes. Religion/clothes does not cause it in people... nor have you adumbrated a single way in which it does or would.
I'm going to worship a baked potato. I'm going to attempt to gain converts. Eventually, baked potato worshippers will view insults to baked potato worship as insults to their families, as their families and communities are generally baked potato worshippers, as religion tends to travel through families, and sometimes spreads through local communities. We now have a culture which would not have existed without religion. Our culture is that we wish to defend baked potato worship. This is how religion creates diversity, by creating cultures which wouldn't otherwise have existed. Baked potato worship, and religion, can travel beyond families, creating bonds with others merely with the same name, hence the phrase "Good Christian." I see no reason why this won't eventually happen with atheism too, and I want some competition. I want a substantial percentage of people not to be atheists, to keep it less likely that one side gets all the power. Who knows what atheists of the future could be like? Christianity certainly didn't turn out like I would have thought a religion whos founder preached love and forgiveness would have. I'm thinking of the very, very long term, and I'm guessing that, because atheism makes more sense than most beliefs, it will become a majority view. Atheism may well be twisted into a religion by then, and I want enough competition that one rule is not unopposed.







Quote:
Diversity is the key and again I really do not think you are the go to guy for advice on this matter. Whatever the voice used in atheism the one common important thing for ALL of them is honesty. People who make up facts out of nowhere to suit themselves, such as "People do not often change religion" are not being honest and they are NOT what the atheist movement needs. Liars can keep their lies to themselves and out of our way.
Atheist movement? I am an atheist. I think it's more important to sound intelligent than to be intelligent. I also view lying as a good and usefull thing. I'm thinking of becomming a communist, robbing a gas station, and seeing a few strippers. My atheist movement is currently to watch cartoons. Please do tarnish my viewpoint's good name by implying that your philosophies apply to it, unless it is already devolved from a group of logical individuals to form definite rules and become a religion. If this is the case, I would prefer Christianity, as I'd know what to expect. I've also always been curious about Hinduism.








Quote:
Then do so. It has nothing to do with me, nor has it anything to do with the point I am making. The point I am making is that fairy belief is neither useful nor necessary nor helpful. Just like the belief in god. Therefore that belief is superfluous to any requirements and does no good... so if it therefore even causes ONE piece of harm it has entered negative equity of usefullness and is harmful and you should divest yourself of it.
You assume that religion/a belief in fairies is not helpful or beneficial to someone. As you cannot read minds, and as most of the world is religious, I find this to be an extremely arrogant train of thought. Many, people claim that religion helps them. Much of the time they claim it helps them emotionally. This is primarily what I am referring to.

I sometimes wonder if the human mind is meant to have religion. I wonder if the religious are happier than atheists and agnostics. It's not possible to prove or disprove this either way, so far as I know. Human beings are attracted to imagined things though, videogames and television. We like to escape into that. I had a literature professor make a comment that everyone has a religious shaped hole inside us which we fill with a faith, or else we just play a lot of videogames. I'm not saying this is true, but it's a possibility.







Quote:
The point I am making is that fairy belief is neither useful nor necessary nor helpful. Just like the belief in god. Therefore that belief is superfluous to any requirements and does no good... so if it therefore even causes ONE piece of harm it has entered negative equity of usefullness and is harmful and you should divest yourself of it.
Also, religion travels through families. If my family is, say, Muslim, and it is important to me to not cause strife in my family, and it could cause strife should I become an atheist, even if I have begun to believe the Islam faith is damaging, I should not become an atheist if my family is more important. You claimed that things which cause us harm should be discarded. That claim is false in many situations.






Quote:
The issue really is that religion certainly does NOT create diversity. It stiffles it. Many people of faith are not only not happy, they can not BE happy until everyone else believes what they do.
How are the non-religious any different from this? Religion being the terribly damaging thing that it is?

The most open-minded groups religious persons I've found are those religious folk who read their religious text and change it to become a reflection of their morals. These are most of the religious persons I've known, by the way, and they've tended to be extremely open-minded.

Atheists have the potential, perhaps, to compose a sort of utopian society, as atheism has no encouragement of blind faith, but potential means nothing if not acted upon. There's no proof that atheism is better than religion, until atheists make it that way. I think atheists have duty to be better, and more tolerant, than other religions, or else they have no business viewing atheism as any better than religions.

Last edited by Clintone; 07-02-2011 at 07:49 AM..
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Old 07-05-2011, 02:17 AM
 
7,801 posts, read 6,340,914 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Clintone View Post
I'm going to worship a baked potato.
Have fun with that. But thank you for making my point for me and showing how it is you that is taking diversity to religion, not religion taking diversity to people.... because it is you that invented this diverse, and thoroughly insane idea.

It is good when people who think they are disagreeing with you actually end up making your point for you. Love it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Clintone View Post
This is how religion creates diversity
It did not. YOU did, and then you assigned the blame for what you did to religion. The diversity came from you. Nowhere else. You retrospectively assigned it to religion. As I said: Thanks for making my point for me.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Clintone View Post
Atheist movement?
Er yes, you are aware there is one right? You are aware that there are media spokesmen that have become part of it like Dawkins, Barker, Fry, Hitchens, Harris, Nugent, Dennett, Myers. You are aware that most countries have organisations as part of the movement... such as Atheist Ireland? You are aware that there is a global two pronged umberella organisation - Called AAI - under which groups such as Atheist Ireland operate?

Sounds like a movement to me anyway.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Clintone View Post
I am an atheist. I think it's more important to sound intelligent than to be intelligent.
I disagree, because just sounding intelligent when you are not is just another form of dishonesty and such dishonest is always found out in the end. That is why religion is starting to fail in fact. It is based on pretending to know things that one does not actually know... and more often than not now a days such hypocrisy is being uncovered and the ignorance hiding behind the religious facade is being revealed.

So it would be lunacy to make the same mistakes as they did, and pretend to be intelligent when one is not and to pretend to know things one does not. Such things the atheist movement does NOT need.... such as for example you entirely making up "facts" like the one about "People do not often change religion". Keep your made up facts in your head where they belong. You are entitled to your own opinions of course. You are not entitled to your own facts.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Clintone View Post
I also view lying as a good and usefull thing.
Thankfully most atheists I know do not and I have to say I am ashamed to have you under that banner. The lies you have told already, and now your admission you think lying is good, has quite literally eroded any credibility you had, or ever could have had, in my eyes. I added bold and underline to your text in the hope that more users on this site become aware of this too. In fact the only comfort I find in this is that having read what you have written on this forum I have come to the conclusion that you being an atheist is another one of the lies you have chosen to tell.I see no indication that you are in fact one.

What more I can say to someone operating at this level, with such a character, I am unsure. Maybe this is the book for you.
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Old 07-05-2011, 05:10 AM
 
Location: S. Wales.
50,079 posts, read 20,486,028 times
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It's a pity that you are falling out because both of you are making good points. I do see the advantages that religion gives, individually and in society, both on a practical and entertainment level. But I do agree that the damage done and the falsity perpetrated does not justify teaching religion as true.

I also agree that being economical with the truth where blunt honesty would cause offence is arguably good, but it would be better if people were able to take honest criticism on the chin (if delivered in an amicable and bubble- packed manner) rather than we have to go along with their delusions.

You two have more in common than differences.
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Old 07-05-2011, 05:38 AM
 
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I would not say we are falling out because the person in question is unknown to me and so there was never a friendship for us to "fall out" of. However I would repeat that someone who openly lies, and when caught lying says "I also view lying as a good and usefull thing" is some one whom I would distance myself from both professionally, and personally, in every way possible.

I am not talking about tempering the truth in order to withhold offence.... such as telling someone their hair style looks good when it does not (still arguably bad, but not what I mean here).... I am talking about where the user outright invented a fact that was simply 100% entirely false.... and then when caught doing it.... openly said that lying is a good thing.

Lies are generally bad things, but there is a difference between one told to protect the feelings of someone, and one told to twist reality in order to come off better in a debate.... or in his/her own words.... to try and seem intelligent even when you are not.... or to defend (as the title of the thread suggests) the otherwise indefensible.

However to push my reply, and the thread, back on topic, you say that you also think religion can be a good thing, can be advantageous... but I am yet to have anyone adumbrate to me how. I CERTAINLY have had no one adumbrate a "how" that is not just as achievable without religion.... which is why I make the point that if you think X is good, and X is achievable without religion, and with religion, but religion is harmful... then you should only pursue X in the without religion context. If you can achieve a good thing by a bad route or a good route, then why choose the bad route?
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Old 07-05-2011, 08:44 AM
 
Location: S. Wales.
50,079 posts, read 20,486,028 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nozzferrahhtoo View Post
I would not say we are falling out because the person in question is unknown to me and so there was never a friendship for us to "fall out" of. However I would repeat that someone who openly lies, and when caught lying says "I also view lying as a good and usefull thing" is some one whom I would distance myself from both professionally, and personally, in every way possible.

I am not talking about tempering the truth in order to withhold offence.... such as telling someone their hair style looks good when it does not (still arguably bad, but not what I mean here).... I am talking about where the user outright invented a fact that was simply 100% entirely false.... and then when caught doing it.... openly said that lying is a good thing.

Lies are generally bad things, but there is a difference between one told to protect the feelings of someone, and one told to twist reality in order to come off better in a debate.... or in his/her own words.... to try and seem intelligent even when you are not.... or to defend (as the title of the thread suggests) the otherwise indefensible.
I agree that white lies are probably needful (at the present time) to avoid being brutally open but untruths intended to deceive are requiring of a lot of justification. Churchill though it was ok to lie to deceive the enemy and that's hard to argue with. Others might say it is ok to lie in order to save souls and that might be defensible if it were not on the cards that no souls are being saved and only brains are being bamboozled.

Quote:
However to push my reply, and the thread, back on topic, you say that you also think religion can be a good thing, can be advantageous... but I am yet to have anyone adumbrate to me how. I CERTAINLY have had no one adumbrate a "how" that is not just as achievable without religion.... which is why I make the point that if you think X is good, and X is achievable without religion, and with religion, but religion is harmful... then you should only pursue X in the without religion context. If you can achieve a good thing by a bad route or a good route, then why choose the bad route?
I can see how some people who would otherwise be running about with a gun rubbing out rival gang - members could be better off in church praisin' de lawd. Christians may well be in the forefront of charitable relief work and many an athelete, artist or whatever might claim to derive their drive and inspiration from their faith.

That said, perhaps a rational worldview would beep the blighters off the streets as well as religion and perhaps a globe with resources not poured into religious claptrap would have more dosh to spend on famine relief and the inspiration derived from faith does not in my view, justify perpetuation of myth.

So the advantages are recognized by me simply so I can say that they do not justify having religion even if it known to be untrue.

And I don't think our pal Clintone (did he used to be in the 60's band, Clemmy and the Clintones?) above would disagree with that.
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Old 07-06-2011, 02:26 AM
 
7,801 posts, read 6,340,914 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AREQUIPA View Post
Churchill though it was ok to lie to deceive the enemy
Yet the liar on this thread claims to be a "fellow atheist" so I am not sure who the "enemy" is here.... but thankfully I have seen indications this is also not true.

However what we are talking about here is the atheist movement, which is against the religious movement, and one of the greatest strengths of atheism is that it has the truth on its side in the face of 100s of years of religious lies.... or religious pretending to know what it did not.

So to dilute the usefulness of that advantage by inventing false facts is a bad move by any atheist I think, especially on forums where more often than not if you invent an entirely false fact... someone will call you on it very quickly.

Quote:
Originally Posted by AREQUIPA View Post
I can see how some people who would otherwise be running about with a gun rubbing out rival gang - members could be better off in church praisin' de lawd.
I am unsure at the usefullness of attempting to justify a bad thing by suggesting the people engaged in the bad thing could be doing something still worse. Saying religion is useful because people engaged in it could be shooting each other is about as useful to me as saying..... raping women is not that bad.... after all the people doing it COULD be out raping children.

My answer would be the same. We should tackle gun crime without resorting to harmful things. Unless it can be shown there is no religionLESS way to tackle gun crime, then there is no justification for inoculating against gun crime by using a harmful medium such as religion.

I repeat, if it is possible to achieve X by using a harmful Y AND by not using a harmful Y, then the latter option is the one to go with is it not?
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