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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
Then stop throwing a hissy fit about me not giving you attention. Your posts are nothing special, just more of the same droning condescending type response.
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Only because you pretend disagreement is a synonym of condescension. If someone does not agree with you you simply pretend they are attacking you or condescending you or whatever other narrative allows you to pretend to be persecuted. No one other than yourself appears to be buying that nonsense however. But if pretending it anyway makes _you_ feel better - have t it.
Even words like "hissy fit" when I did nothing but point out a statistical consistency without any emotion at all shows your agenda is to create narratives about other people, their thoughts, their feelings and their actions that simply allows you to fantasise negatives about them that simply do not apply.
The simple fact is - I repeat it again - that your main MO is to ignore and dodge significantly more of my posts than you reply to. Simple as that.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
And my brand of Christian is shared by the majority of Christians.
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You can keep telling yourself that but I have yet to meet a single Christian in real life or on this forum who espouses the thing you do _or_ the way you do - outside of my experiences with very vocal minority groups such as Westboro. I have met 100s of Christians in my life on this planet and you are representative of so very very few of them.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
If you think it is toxic to honor God's Word, seek to help people, show forgiveness and love even to those who have hurt us then you really have tthings backwards.
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I have no idea what "love" looks like in your word but in my world the "You people" and "your camp" and "messed up atheist world" - us against them narratives you steep almost every one of your posts in simply does not overlap with it whatsoever. Your abject and on going hatred for such people drips off every one of your posts and if you internally call that "Love" well then I can do little more than tell you that whatever way you are defining "love" is significantly different to how I or anyone I have ever met does.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
In the messed up atheist world, respect has to be EARNED first, mockery, insults and personal attacks are celebrated (well as long as it is only against God's people) and you always always 100% always have to get the last word in. That's quite the toxic brew on your side.
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It would be if most of it was not simply invented in your head. For example the "must get the last word in" nonsense you just spewed out here in reality is nothing more than this being a _discussion forum_ and when you talk to people in a _discussion_ they tend to respond. So you are taking a perfectly normal tenet of conversation and twisting it and spinning it into something negative in your imagination. Yet somehow when I reply to your post it is "have to get the last word in" but when you reply to mine as you have - and as we both know you are now going to do again - it is somehow not? One rule for you - one rule for everyone else - it would seem.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
All I'm doing is sharing the same viewpoint of the study that I posted. You, OTOH, has offered up NOTHING to support your baseless assertions. Typical.
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Except no you are not - because the view point you are "sharing" is one you have put on top of the study of your own invention. It is nowhere contained in the study itself. Go back and check if you do not believe me. It simply is not there. All the study does is show a correlation. It nowhere in any sentence anywhere makes a value judgement - or a causal claim - based on that correlation. _You_ do that. No one else.
All the study showed - all that study can show - is that if you seperate the groups into religious and atheist - there is slightly higher rate in the atheist group than the theist group. That is all. No more. No less. It does not claim to explain that statistic. It does not claim to offer a value judgement about it. Nothing.
_You_ then come along and start throwing out the most fantastical nonsense narratives off the back of it. In ways that are not even remotely supported by anything in the study in even the smallest way.
So no Jeff - you are not sharing the same view point as the study. You are sharing a view point that is not _even_ remotely congruent with the contents of the study. Partially because of your anti atheist agenda and narratives. And partly because you simply have no scientific knowledge or training - unlike myself - by which to be even capable of reading, parsing, and understanding the contents of such a paper.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
Here is more evidence to back me up:But of course, yes just because you use terms like "remotely" and "nonsense" then you have demolished my argument, huh?
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Exactly. Yes. I have. Glad you noticed. That quote too does not say anything different to what you quoted before. And in fact the quote _directly_ supports things I have already said to you. Not you to me. For example religions that preach the sinfulness of suicide are of course going to result in a reduction of suicide. Not a reduction of depression though - there is nothing to suggest the group you just quoted were any less depressed. Just less likely to turn to suicide as a solution.
But _again_ what your lay man misunderstanding here mostly is - is thinking there is a causal statement you can make here. There is not. There are any number of reasons why a religious group would show a smaller statistic here. Reasons I listed to you in large numbers already and - as I predicted when I wrote them - you have merely ignored.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
All I ask is to produce a sound counter argument with supporting evidence. All I usually get is vague garb like yours crowing about how stupid I am or I'm just ignoring or running away.
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That is because you contrive to only hear what you want to hear. I did point out what you were ignoring yes. I did point out where you were running away yes. But I _also_ pointed out many counter arguments _and_ other interpretations of the data you linked to. You ignore that and focus on the rest and then pretend I never did the bit you ignored. This is a dishonest approach Jeff - you know it - and I know you know it. But you do it anyway.
You are more interested in your pretence of persecution in other words than actual discussion of the arguments I have presented. So you ignore and dodge the arguments - and trawl the posts for anything you can fit to persecution. This is not big. This is not clever.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
I realize it's a complicated issue, but it's an issue that is becoming an epidemic
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I genuinely do not think you do realise that. You can _say_ you realise it of course but I have to observe what else you say and how else you behave. And when you trot out a thread blaming the epidemic of increasing suicide rates in a _huge_ population on one of the smallest minorities within that population - you are demonstrating as clear as it is possible to demonstrate that you do not at all realise how complex the issue is. It is like telling me you understand the construction of roads before then claiming concrete is made with flour. You claim understanding before then demonstrating none of it.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
People in past generations also faced much more difficult times than we do now. They were born with the same brains so logically I would think their suicide rate should have been higher than ours.
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And your logic would be wrong to assume that. Mainly because you are not comparing like with like. Even the phrase "more difficult times" is so empty and basic that it misses the complexities you are claiming to understand. I do not think they had "more difficult times". I think their difficulties were just different to our own. Massively so.
Further many of their difficulties were ones that would reduce the levels of suicide not increase them. For example they had much more difficulty with disease and infant mortality. So one reason they would have lower suicide rates was they were already dying of other causes. Hard to commit suicide when you are dead isn't it???
Further some of the reasons I gave for suicide rates today was increasing population and increasing demands on the time and resources of that population - such as parents working longer and more tiring hours and hence having less time for parenting. So these two are reasons why suicide would be less - not more as you claim - in the past compared to the present.
So note the difference here between you and me here. You just assert out of nowhere that "logic" dictates the rates should be higher then than now. But you present no actual arguments showing why this might be so. I - in contrast - do not just claim the opposite before just shouting "Logic" at you. I am instead giving you actual intelligible reasoning as to why I think what I do. So do not presume any more to sit there and say I am not arguing my positions and you somehow are when the _exact_ opposite is the case here.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
We live in a society now where the path to wealth has never been easier. Yet record numbers of people so hopeless that they want to die. It is simply intellectually dishonest to pretend that atheism has absolutely nothing to do with it.
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It is simply intellectually dishonest to pretend that atheist has anything to do with it - if you can not come up with a single argument as to why it does. What you are doing here is essentially a variation on the fallacy of "Argument from Ignorance". Which is basically to pretend that "If reason X does not explain it then reason Y must - even if there is no evidence for reason Y". even if you could - which you absolutely and demonstrably have not - shoot down every argument I have offered explaining suicide that _still_ would not mean atheism is the explanation. You would _still_ have to provide evidence atheism is the explanation.
But what you pretend is that we have to somehow accept atheism is the explanation - without evidence - until some other explanation can be evidenced. Which is simply not how it works outside your fantasy world.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
More baseless claims. I've dealt with "your kind" long enough to know that you HAVE to reject our evidence.
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Glad you started this paragraph with an honest description of the rest of it. You are right - what you wrote is more baseless claims. The problem is that you are not offering any evidence and then pretending to know how we will respond to it. It is just a cop out because you do not have the evidence but want to pretend you do. So the only option you have to do that is to pretend your not offering it is somehow our fault.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
Rightfully so? Mockery is nothing more than a crutch and poisons any hope for a respectful productive conversation. Besides you don't even know what evidence I was referencing.
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I do not need to know what evidence you are referencing if the mockery was not about the evidence you were imagining. No the mockery was about your MO of never presenting _any_ evidence and making up excuses about other people to explain that away. That is what is being mocked - rightfully so - regardless of what you imagine the evidence is, or is not.
And no mockery is not nothing more than a crutch. Mockery used correctly is as valid a rhetorical tool as any other. Our intellect gives us the faculty of humour - and that faculty should be used as part of a complete toolkit.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
There is no meaning to life or hope with athiesm.
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A position - as I said many times already and other users have too - that you can only maintain by simply ignoring and dodging the innumerable times atheists have stood up and describing their source of meaning and hope in life. I am sorry for you that reality refuses to conform to your fantasies but the reality remains that there are many 1000s of atheists walking around this world who have meaning in their life and hope in their heart. That you need to pretend such people - people such as myself - simply do not exist just so you can cling to your hate and your narratives - is very very telling and says more about you than I ever could.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
Love is nothing more than a chemical reaction in your world.
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"Nothing more" implies a value judgement that only you are making however. The suggestion being that somehow it being a chemical reaction somehow invalidates the worth of it. But it does not. At all. Emotions can be a chemical reaction - consciousness can be merely an emergent process of biology - art can be the misfiring of structures in the brain that evolved for other functions. But so what? That does not invalidate or even undermine their import and value to us.
You see the failing here is yours not ours - in that you appear to think the value of such things only comes externally from the foundation of a god. And you imagine without this foundation these things lose their meaning or value. But they do not. Quite the opposite in fact. Some of them _increase_ in meaning and value without a god based world view.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
If I believed everything I read in these discussions, I would believe that all atheists have wonderful perfect life and never struggle with anything. Baloney.
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That would be a weird thing to beleieve after reading these discussions given that there appears to be no one in these discussions making that claim. So once again it would be you choosing to believe things of atheists that none of them have ever claimed. Why you feel the need to do this A) so often and B) so consistently is alas something only you know. But _That_ you keep doing it is clear.
No I think the message that atheists are actually trying to send you - rather than the one you invent yourself - is not that we have a perfect life and never struggle with anything - but that we have the same level of perfection as you and struggle with pretty much all the same things as you. And that atheism or theism - we all face the same challenges for mostly the same reasons.
What you want to pretend is that we somehow struggle with more issues or different issues and even that atheism is the cause of those issues and struggles. And we are saying no - we just have the same struggles and solutions to those struggles come from a different source. We - like you - find meaning in our lives. We just find it in a different way in a different place. But you are pretending we do not have that meaning and we are not pretending that of you. So the errors, the lies, the fantasy narratives are coming from you and only you.
Further just because we are telling you we have meaning and hope and so forth in our life - that does not mean to indicate or even imply that that was a simple journey. Finding meaning in ones life and ones place in the world is a challenge. It is work. It is not easy. But who says it has to be? That you like a pre-packaged branded product you can pull off the shelf and don says nothing about value. Not only have I meaning in my life - despite your protests - I think the value of that meaning is increased by it being hard won.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
And what is the point of cherishing and honoring their memory? Eventually you will cease to exist as well and along goes your honored memory of them too. There is no purpose in it.
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For you. But when I die there are people who will cherish me in the same way. And when they cherish me they will be cherishing the best of me and the best of the people I incorporated into me along the way. And so on.
You appear to be suggesting finality undermines the meaning I find in my life while I am alive. It does not. Quite the opposite in fact - it is the main driver for it. The very thing you think falsely is the invalidation of my purpose in life is actually the core of it. Which is funny in it's own way.
I find the concept of an eternal life actually undermines the things that give this life meaning. For example you ask in the light of no after life why I think there is any point in cherishing and honouring their memory. For me that question is the opposite. What would the point of it be if they were in fact not dead but eternally alive somewhere else? It is precisely because they are dead and gone never to return or be seen again that I see reason to cherish their memory. If I thought they were eternally alive elsewhere and I would be reunited with them then I would see no more reason to do so than I would when they just popped down to the shop for bread.
It is the finality of death - the transience of life - that gives each life its value and meaning for me. Take that away and that value goes too. And at that point you have to invent a god - a god for which you have never once provided any evidence actually exists - in order to create the foundation for meaning in fantasy.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
I'm the one posting links and evidence.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
If you are going to reject it then it has nothing to do with me personally.
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Which is a great start and you should be commended for it. The issue as I keep saying however is that the links and evidence are _not_ for the claims you are making. The claims you are making are simply not supported by anything in the links you have provided.
That does not undermine the value of those links however. They are good studies with good data that should be noticed - used - and progressed with further study. There is good material there. It is just that it is not supporting that _you_ want to pretend it is.
So contrary to your second quote here no one is "rejecting" your links. At all. Quite the opposite. They are good links. What is being rejected is _your_ interpretation of what that data is telling us. Because _Your_ interpretation of the data is not supported at all by that data.
"Correlation causation" is not something we shout at you merely to dismiss your evidence - much as you seem to think so. It is in fact a key tenet in this form of study. Quite simply the data shows that if you split this particular group of people into "theist" and "atheist" then the suicide attempts rate is higher in the latter. That is all that the study shows. Anything _you_ infer above and beyond that is simply not supported by the data. You clearly do not like that fact - but it remains a fact none the less.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
You are rejecting the people who made the studies and came up with the conclusions.
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Nope. Their conclusions appear valid. Yours not so much. That's the difference. You are projecting your conclusions onto them and then pretending we are rejecting theirs.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
How ironic that you continue to make it about Jeff, not the topic at hand.
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I think we should be doing both. Equally. And I have been doing exactly that myself. You tend to focus on one more than the other though. That persecution narrative again!
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
Because when faced with the truth, that's the only hand you can play. Atheists just can't seem to admit they are wrong in this discussions.
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When I am wrong I admit it. So far on this thread I have not been that I have noticed - or that you have shown.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
I've been called everything here from being a pedophile, a sociopath, and being gay or that I need mental therapy
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
when people on your side constantly show me that they are just willing to make up gross and offensive lies about me, why on earth would I EVER listen to your opinion?
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I trust if you are being honest and open here that yuo will notice I have never done _any_ of those things myself. I can not speak for any other atheists here. Just me. And I have not done _one_ of these things.
However I do call a spade a spade. If you ignore significantly more of my posts than you answer - then it is right for me to call you on that. If you are a lay man to science - it is correct for me to mention that. While other people might be flinging baseless insults at you - and shame on them if they are - you will find anything you have been offended from out of me have at least been comments based on reality and not on personal insult.
If you do not want to make that distinction between my replies - and the replies of other atheists - that is on you and not me. You might feel offended but I have treated you fairly and honestly based directly on your own conduct and nothing more.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
Show me factual evidence that explains beyond any doubt the true root cause of the suicide rate going up.
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I already have but as I predicted while I wrote it - you did not engage with it when you replied but ignored it. I wrote a whole string of explanations and at the end predicted you would not reply to any of it. The prediction was 100% correct.
However there is something more important that I already pointed out more than three times but still has also been ignored by you. Which is not the explanations for suicide but your erroneous and simplistic demand for "
the root cause".
And until you divest yourself of _that_ error - any further discussion on the topic will go over your heard. You see there is nothing - absolutely nothing at all - suggesting there is a "the" root cause. You are therefore demanding an answer for us that we do not believe exists - and evidence of us for a position we do not actually hold. Neither of which is useful. Or honest.
No - the reality is that the socio-economic explanations for a variable such as suicide rates are going to be massively diverse and numerous. And thankfully the people _actually_ working on reducing suicide in our society understand that - even if you do not.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
Can you do that? Unless you can do this then you can not state that there is no way atheism has any effect on the suicide rate.
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But who is claiming is has not any effect on the rate? I certainly am not making that claim. Quite the opposite in fact as I already indicated what effect I think it does and could have.
What is being rejected is the effects _you_ think it has. Which is a much different thing to reject by far. Rejecting _your_ effect is not claiming there is _no_ effect. So stop pretending it is.
What is being rejected - for example - is your idea that atheism has anything to do with the fact suicide rates are at a "50 year high". There is no evidence for that at all but specifically there is absolutely none in the links you have thus far provided.
And also - you were asked twice but you dodged and ignored it both times - you have yet to explain how the suicide rate in a massive and diverse populace is being pushed to a high by one of the smallest minorities within that population. That falls under the remit of the phrase "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" but rather than extraordinary evidence you appear not to be compelled to even provide _any_ evidence.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
But resorting to just making up bold lies to assault my character does aggravate me because I have low tolerance for blatant dishonesty.
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Then lead by example. Because resorting to just making up bold lies to assault the character of atheists and atheism aggravates them because they have a low tolerance for blatant dishonesty.
I know I keep using this phrase but alas it fits with you more often than not. It has to stop being one rule for you and one for everyone else.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
Reasons backed up with zero evidence.
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Yet not once in the thread have you pointed to a reason or a specific claim from me and said "Ok that one there is interesting - what is your evidence for it?". Rather you just screech "no evidence" and run away.
Whereas when you make a claim I doubt I specifically reply to it and specifically demand evidence for it from you. And only when you _then_ refuse to offer it - I lament your lack of evidence for your reasons and claims.
This is no small difference so it is worth focusing on specifically and explicitly. You provide no evidence when asked. I provide evidence when asked - but you are not asking.
Try me. Pick out a specific claim - rather than hand waving at my posts in total - and ask for evidence for it. For example I wrote about social media being a root cause of mental health issues and a drop in well being. And here you are screeching "reasons backed up with zero evidence". But where did you ask for any? If you had quoted my claim about social media and said "Ok interesting - is there any evidence for a link between social media and depression, mental health issues and suicide?" I would then have replied with the evidence I have for that claim.
You provide no evidence when asked - I withhold a lot of evidence until asked. Very - very very very - very different approaches to conversation there Jeff. And one is honest. The other very very much not so.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
Did it ever occur to you that Christianity is not a factory? We don't push a button and get a cookie. Spiritually is a very individual experience.
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Exactly! Now you are getting it!
So you contradict your own narrative here about atheists having no meaning or hope in their lives. the reality is they very much do. They just find it in places that you do not - and fail to find it in places where you do.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
The real question is why are you wasting YOUR TIME tearing down Christians?
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No the real question is why you are projecting _your_ value judgement of "wasting time" onto how others spend theirs. You are assuming that people spending time in a way you do not are "wasting" it. And that is an arrogance of hubris that they do not share with you. I myself notice when people invest their time differently to me - but I do not share your assumption that theirs is a "waste" and mine is not.
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