Originally posted by LoneWeasel

Originally posted by TruthTellist
"i would like to know how these religions get away with telling children in sunday school each week that they will burn in hell and tortured for eternity if they don't worship god...."

It works... Fear of imprisonment doesn't work on everyone.

These are very peculiar sunday schools you lot are going on about. I went to sunday school for about 5 years, I don't remember hell being mentioned once. In fact I'm pretty sure nothing more exciting than painting eggs and dressing up as shepherds happened at my sunday school - or those of any of my peers. The idea that it was some sort of subversive, cult-like brainwashing centre is, frankly, completely laughable.

LW

churchs here in n.ireland are all fire and brimstone....

Originally posted by LoneWeasel

My wider point is simply this. Anger at basic Christian principles of kindness, generosity and hope is misplaced.

actually no one is anti kindness generosity etc its the fire brim stone sinner burn in hell beleive now or forever pay side of the religeon that people object too

I know plenty of people who resent paying taxes to support faith schools, which then go on to exclude their children on the basis they don't share the faith in question. I believe they have a reasonable case.

they have more then a reasonable case it is ILLEGAL for a private/public school of what ever denomination of faith to exclude any child on grounds of race creed or religeon. as long as the child meets the requirements of the school and its academic requirements they have as much right to a place in that school as any other child regardless of religeon but you do loose your right to opt out of things that may be against your religeous beliefs in terms of school trips or parts of the sylabus as you have placed your child by choice in an enviroment where they would be exposed to such teachings

that is if your in the UK anyway ^_^

Originally posted by Yarcofin
About damned time.

If the church by my school is allowed to put up a giant tasteless 20+ foot poster on the side of their wall declaring "GOD LOVES STUDENTS", then we need more stuff like this to combat it. Someone needs to write "(Citation needed.)" below it.

Anyone claiming this ad is offensive or discriminatory... suck it.

I'm always slightly bewildered by the concept of a passionate atheist.

When you see someone drowning, the nice thing to do is to help them out. There are a lot of people out there drowning in the stupidity of religion right now, and we're just trying to reach a hand out to them.
Most people are so indoctrinated (including my parents) that they will choose blind faith over any amount of evidence, but for the 1 in 100 that we can wake up and snap out of their delusions, it's worth it.

[edit on 10/22/2008 by Yarcofin]

Excellent post took the words right outa my mouth, dwakins says it all =

Professor Dawkins, the author of The God Delusion, said: "Religion is accustomed to getting a free ride - automatic tax breaks, unearned 'respect' and the right not to be 'offended', the right to brainwash children.

Nothing the matter with that, saying there is no God!

What if a bus said there is a God and God loves you!

So it's ok for a bus to go around promoting God?

There is millions of people on this planet that don't believe in God!

I love this ad campaign, its tongue in cheek. In reality im annoyed by the amount of tip toeing around religions, im disgusted religion gets tax breaks. Im fed up people knock on my front door to tell me about their beliefs. Im sick that faith preaches love and expresses it with intolerance. If jesus existed i wonder what he would make of the vast wealth of the church, of priests dripping with gold with ruby rings on fingers, of art worth billions hanging on walls. Ive been to rome and it was like going to the zoo, you are amazed by the beauty of the things you see but depressed at the context you see it in. Its just religion depresses me, it casts a shadow and I think when religion is gone thats when i'll see the light.

Alright theres no god.


But I'm going to campaign my own ads.

"There's probably a fourth dimension!"


=)

take a look at the official website scroll down a bit on the left

radio 4 mentioned it, yes a priest decided to comment on it and say how similar the view of christinity and atheism was on this issue

and she didnt really understand the need for the campaign but was glad it only said probabily didnt exist as it leave room for debate

theres a link to send them nice emails about how redicuolous and detahced from reality she is ^_^

try not to swear it is bbc4 radio after all

If i had the money i would pay for the buses myself.
I watched Starship Troopers 3 last night and a good film was ruined by the religious rubbish at the end of it.

It is hard to understand why in an advanced world people still believe in this rubbish.
If someone went around saying that they worshipped the sun or a rock or an alien then they would be labeled a loony, well what is the difference between that and people going around saying that they believe in an invisible supreme being that supposedly created everything.

All religion is pure bull, and the world will not advance in the way that it should socially and scientifically until all religion is eliminated.

Originally posted by AlienGhandi
Alright theres no god.


But I'm going to campaign my own ads.

"There's probably a fourth dimension!"


=)

Ha ha ,very good.I think the aetheist bus is a great idea .Very refreshing to see an antidote to the religous clap-trap you see all around you ruining life on a daily basis eg barmy ideas about women and how to oppress them.Hatred and intolerence etc Funny how we've never seen an aetheist suicide bomber or seen aetheists bash up gay people with the excuse Richard Dawkins does'nt like them.

Also the aetheist bus can be justified on the grounds that if self -deluded people insist on teaching their children the Earth is only 2,000 years old and Satan put fosssils in the ground to confuse people (in saying that,how do they explain the existence of oil and gas?)then why should'nt people who have an opposing point of veiw get some airplay too.

I've never heard of non-believers burning the Bible .However,Christains have burned Harry Potter books to stop the corruption of children by withcraft.
I rest my case.The facts speak for themselves I believe.

Originally posted by full997
All religion is pure bull, and the world will not advance in the way that it should socially and scientifically until all religion is eliminated.

What utter nonsense. The world would not have advanced in the way that it has either socially or scientifically without religion. Religion and philosophy are symbiotic, and asking questions is the cause of both religious and scientific exploration.

The fact is that at the moment, and throughout the history of mankind science has not had all the answers. Religion, potentially, always has. Whether or not they're the RIGHT answers is another matter, of course. But my point is that it is inconceivable at the moment that science will ever answer ALL the questions. Because there is always a "Why?" beyond its next answer.

The world needs both science AND religion to advance "as it should" (as you put it). A mature analysis of the current state of humanity would stop using religion as an excuse for everything that goes wrong, or as something to blame for discord and trouble, or as inherently obstructive simply because it seeks to exhert humility and discretion upon the cocky, accident-prone morons who make up mankind.

Yin and yang.

Science and religion.

Originally posted by noobfun

as long as the child meets the requirements of the school and its academic requirements they have as much right to a place in that school as any other child regardless of religeon but you do loose your right to opt out of things that may be against your religeous beliefs in terms of school trips or parts of the sylabus as you have placed your child by choice in an enviroment where they would be exposed to such teachings

that is if your in the UK anyway ^_^

Quite right, noobfun, I misrepresented things slightly - what I meant was that the child could not go to the school if the parents did not want their children to be influenced by the faith the school operated with. That said, I think my secondary school was nominally a C of E operation, but I can't remember any influence whatever being exerted on me that would not have been exerted elsewhere. But your point is quite right.

LW

Originally posted by LoneWeasel

What utter nonsense. The world would not have advanced in the way that it has either socially or scientifically without religion.

true the world would be very different without religeon, i make no claim if this world would be better or worse, at some point religeon played a valid part in society

Religion and philosophy are symbiotic, and asking questions is the cause of both religious and scientific exploration.

........ but religeon always answers god did it/made it/thought it/dont question of gods will you idiot/ burn the heretic. a far cry from sciences well we dont really know lets go find out

The fact is that at the moment, and throughout the history of mankind science has not had all the answers.

but has strived to learn, science may not have all the answers but its getting there

Religion, potentially, always has. Whether or not they're the RIGHT answers is another matter,

good job you put that disclaimer there ^_^ . the answer of reliegon is a blanket answer though if we applied reliegons blanket style god wanted it that way to say maths

1+1 = god
2+2=god
3452x3244723=god
4-67678643=god

not likley to get a passing grade

of course. But my point is that it is inconceivable at the moment that science will ever answer ALL the questions. Because there is always a "Why?" beyond its next answer.

science is a question, religeon is an answer ... if the answer has big holes and falacies shouldnt it be disregarded and a better question asked or a correct answer sought?

The world needs both science AND religion to advance "as it should" (as you put it).

should is relative, as religeon is an answer it doesnt really advance anything just subtley change its beleief system and tell people its always really been this way hence why we dont go stoning kiddies anymore

so for advancing in any way shape or form religeon doesnt aid the process, some of the people involved in religeon may but thats them not religeon doing it

A mature analysis of the current state of humanity would stop using religion as an excuse for everything that goes wrong, or as something to blame for discord and trouble, or as inherently obstructive simply because it seeks to exhert humility and discretion upon the cocky, accident-prone morons who make up mankind.

unfortunatley it is also massivley easy to change for your own purposes as reliegous books are soo badly written and has a whole lot of excuses for hatred racism and violence to be used in the name of god its like throwing bullets on a fire sooner or later ones gonna go off and casue damage

it is not the cause of the bloodshed and strife admittedly(in most cases) it is however the number 1 excuse, and as such it is used to draw others in who will act in the name of god, but think twice about raping killing and general massacering of folk all acting in the name of "he gave me a funny look i didnt like it and also the leaves on his filed overhang my path and he didnt listen when i told him about it"



[edit on 24/10/08 by noobfun]

Religion has had its uses in the past, but i see no place for it in the future.
I could go and write a book that potentially has all the answers but the fact is that one of the biggest strengths of science in this type of argument is that science doesn't have all the answers.

Nothing and no one can have all the answers because we don't even know all the questions yet.
The only way that we will find the questions and answers is through science and no through sitting in a building talking to some invisible entity or through using religion as an excuse to kill and control as it has in the past and is somewhat being used in the present.

Science has given us cures for diseses, has taken us to the depths of the oceans and to other worlds.
Religion has given us things too, but those things are far outweighed by the bad things religion has caused.
Science isn't innocent as a lot of attrocities have been waged in the name of scientific progress but at least the results of those attrocities can still give us more in terms of progress than religion can.

Years ago people worshipped the sun and moon as gods and now the world has moved on we have realised and science has proved that was almost idiocy.
The world has advanced beyond those religions and become better for it and one day the world will advance beyond current religions to.
In a thousand years people will look back at the religions now and think the same things that we think about those who used to worship the sun and moon, how wrong and backwards they really were.

Science doesn't have all the answers but you can be damn sure that it will give us a lot more in terms of technological advancement than religion ever will.

Philosophy is one thing and theology is quite another.
Science and philosophy may 'meet in the middle' at times but science and theology should be kept separate.
There will come a time when we will evolve beyond religion, but we will never evolve beyond science.

( i had to read through what i wrote a few times over because the last time a friend of mine got involved in a discussion on ATS about religion he was banned with no warning!)

Originally posted by noobfun

Religion, potentially, always has. Whether or not they're the RIGHT answers is another matter,

good job you put that disclaimer there ^_^

of course. But my point is that it is inconceivable at the moment that science will ever answer ALL the questions. Because there is always a "Why?" beyond its next answer.

science is a question, religeon is an answer ... if the answer has big holes and falacies shouldnt it be disregarded and a better question asked?

I like this point - nicely put. And almost certainly correct.

However, it isn't true to say that religion doesn't evolve. The church I'm nominally a part of was more or less founded for political expediency (Henry VIII wanted a divorce). If that's not religion evolving practically I don't know what is...

It IS true that we are all a lot more aware of fundamentalist religious feeling these days, whether it be in Islam in Afghanistan or Christian in Alabama. In times of crisis people retreat to things they feel certain of, there's no question of that, nor that there are problems when people too strongly cling to dogma that is demonstrably false. For example, it seems clear to me that we have moved to a point where Creationism - in its strict, biblical sense - is no longer rational. Others would disagree and I respect that. I would not want my kids to be taught that it was true, however. I would not want my kids to grow up in a country where the preaching of anything other than one religion was punishable by death, either.

So there are extremes of religious feeling that I agree are dangerous. This specific thread, however, seeks to discuss Dawkins' plans to advertise atheism on buses and I would contest the rationale behind that on two grounds. 1) That science does not yet answer the questions that religion seeks to answer and 2) that the advertisements for religion that Dawkins is railing against do not do the harm he claims they do.

And my wider point to full997, who says that we will one day evolve beyond religion but never beyond science is that he may be right, but I'm not so sure. I still think there's a decent chance that science will actually end up bringing us closer to religion - in the practical sense of leading us there, rather than driving us to cling to it - at some point in the future. And I think there's an even greater chance that it will end up asking more questions than it solves. Which is often where the whole God thing comes in.

LW

Originally posted by LoneWeasel


I like this point - nicely put. And almost certainly correct.

However, it isn't true to say that religion doesn't evolve. The church I'm nominally a part of was more or less founded for political expediency (Henry VIII wanted a divorce). If that's not religion evolving practically I don't know what is...

to use the evolutionary analogy

little fishy swimming around in the sea then climbs out on land grows legs starts walking around learns to stand on 2 legs and becomes a t-rex

the problem is the t-rex truley beleives it is still a fish, it acts like a fish tells everyone its a fish and that only by bieng a fish can a creature truley be alive so all the other t-rex are false and wrong and should also become fish

religeon doesnt evolve it changes its infrasturucture and beliefs but demands that it is really the same as it ever was

we now have over 3600 brands of christianity preaching 3600 different versions that are nothing like what is in the bible but all demanding that we pay attention to them as they have the one true word of god

worst still we took what is supposedly the unflitching unchanging word of god and shoved a middle man in and then totally overturned the word of god

by gods own law jesus should be dragged to the town square and stoned to death for being rebelious against his father and his message as well as defying his earthly parents so we should stone him twice to make sure

and as jesus is supposedly the only one without sin we should make him throw the first stone at him self so we can all join in .... both times that we stone him to death

now theres a reserection story worth preaching


[edit on 24/10/08 by noobfun]

[edit on 24/10/08 by noobfun]