Poll shows atheism on the rise in the U.S.

reply to post by blackcube


No, these Atheists are a bunch of normal people who do things for pay or reward just as most people in the world do. The actions of Jesus as written in the bible were for a strictly charitable reasons to help the needy. Choosing a profession that helps mankind is not evil because you get paid a reasonable wage. Everyone has to make a living.

Originally posted by HIWATT

Originally posted by Aloysius the Gaul
reply to post by HIWATT

 

So he did not equate communism with athesim at all as you er trying to imply - but was pointing out that it is only a condition for starting communism.

= semantics.

If you are going to use a quote to make a point then you can hardly complain that it is semantics when someone else points out your error.

I thought deists prided them selves on having higher ethics than atheists, or some such illusion??

congratulations on proving it wrong!

I did not say a deity was needed in order to "believe in something good"

No-one said you did.

rather that the simple belief in goodness itself is sufficient to counter the onset and affects of apathy.

A simple answer - and even simplistic. apathy is lack of interest - not lack of goodness.

Some people find that in a deity, others do not. I find atheism dangerous in this regard, as I sense a lot of anger coming from those who aspire to it.

Why is atheism dangerous if people do not need to believe in a deity in order to have a belief in goodness??

you are contradicting yourself.

BTW I do not "aspire" to atheism - I am an atheist - there are no gods.

I guess people who are struggling with becoming atheists might well struggle with getting over their brainwashing - but that is an issue with being brainwashed - not with adopting atheism.

Unresolved anger eventually becomes apathy

where did you get that little gem of pop-psuchology??

, which...... (see my previous post)

"....is still self contradictory." - hapy to complete the sentence for you

reply to post by Annee


You are no different than the people I know who are Atheists. They are about as overpowering as you on the subject requiring proof of everything to show it is real. Three of them have been good friends of mine for over thirty years, so I know them very well. The other two I have known fairly well for about ten years. By the way, they say they are Atheists if you mention god almost immediately. I do not even try to bring up anything about religion with them because I hate listening to them rant.

What is wrong with knowing a couple thousand people of all sorts of backgrounds. Some people know five hundred from just belonging to an organization. If you work in a lumber yard or store for a couple of years you get to know almost everyone in the community if you have a good disposition. I know people who know way more people than I do. Maybe it seems unusual for people who can't strike up a conversation with ten strangers in a restaurant but it's normal for me and others like me. Don't you know people who seem to know everyone? They didn't get that way by lacking confidence. I

Originally posted by rickymouse
reply to post by Annee

 

You are no different than the people I know who are Atheists. They are about as overpowering as you on the subject requiring proof of everything to show it is real.

Where did you get that? Now you are interpreting.

I consider myself atheist. I've never casually met one in public. I'm curious about people that do.

How is that overpowering?

Nevermind.

Originally posted by THE_PROFESSIONAL
All part of the antichrists plan: eliminate god, encourage mass murder, immorality, homosexuality. the exact opposite of the teachings of god and his prophets. .

So how do you square this with the fact that the same god created the evil to begin with ?

They are about as overpowering as you on the subject requiring proof of everything to show it is real

reply to post by rickymouse


Indeed, that is generally how intelligent beings operate, a claim is made and they ask for evidence, the opposite being faith ie igorant gullability.

Originally posted by RealSpoke
This is great news for the USA.

There are people that are against stem cell research because it is against their "religion". All they do is block scientific advancement and brainwash people.

They also genuinely believe that those "clump of cells" constitutes a HUMAN BEING and that life begins at CONCEPTION.

You disagree withat, that is quite all right for me. But DO NOT dismiss certain opinions simply because they do not fit in with what is you idea of being "rational."
Believe it or not, having an opinion different than yours does NOTmake one "brainwashed."

reply to post by ChristianJihad


Yes let's all adopt a philosophy that assumes a priori that 'God' is a job for objective evidence and that the scope of science is unlimited. That way we can fit into the smart kid clique.

Originally posted by nixie_nox
I have noticed that all my cousins, brother and myself, so this entire generation of grandkids, are athiests, we have religious parents.

I am not athiest, I am pagan. But not many people know that.

Cool!!!! What "denomination" of Pagan?

Just asking..............................

Nice screen name, too.

reply to post by ParacelsusPontifex


It's fair to have the opinion/belief that the cell culture constitutes a human life with a soul. It's an unfortunate irrational belief that is preventing great strides in medicine though. But you're right we can all have our opinions on the matter, but in the mean time other human lives are paying the consequence.

reply to post by BlueMule

Yes let's all adopt a philosophy that assumes a priori that 'God' is a job for objective evidence and that the scope of science is unlimited.

The scope of science is unlimited within the constrains of the physical universe.

Science can't prove supernatural things don't exist if they exist outside of nature.

But it's one thing to believe in God and another thing entirely to believe you know the mind of God. People often present these arguments for God existence but those arguments don't extend to why it follows that Christianity represents that God over say Islam or any other monotheistic religion.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. No claim is more extraordinary than saying one knows the thoughts and wishes of the creator of all of existence.

Originally posted by Lucid Lunacy
reply to post by BlueMule

 

Yes let's all adopt a philosophy that assumes a priori that 'God' is a job for objective evidence and that the scope of science is unlimited.

The scope of science is unlimited within the constrains of the physical universe.

Science can't prove supernatural things don't exist if they exist outside of nature.

Well then lets hear no more calls for objective scientific evidence from atheists.

But it's one thing to believe in God and another thing entirely to believe you know the mind of God. People often present these arguments for God existence but those arguments don't extend to why it follows that Christianity represents that God over say Islam or any other monotheistic religion.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. No claim is more extraordinary than saying one knows the thoughts and wishes of the creator of all of existence.

If I claim I know the mind of God (I do), then you should test that claim. How, you ask? With science? No. With theology? No. With philosophy? No. You 'build your own telescope' and see the mind of God for yourself, to put it in Sam Harris terms.

This question, I think, lies at the periphery of everyone's consciousness. We are all, in some sense, living our answer to it—and many of us are living as though the answer is "no." No, there is nothing more profound that repeating one's pleasures and avoiding one's pains; there is nothing more profound that seeking satisfaction, both sensory and intellectual. Many of us seem think that all we can do is just keep our foot on the gas until we run out of road.

But certain people, for whatever reason, are led to suspect that there is more to human experience than this. In fact, many of them are led to suspect this by religion—by the claims of people like the Buddha or Jesus or some other celebrated religious figures. And such a person may begin to practice various disciplines of attention—often called "meditation" or "contemplation"—as a means of examining his moment to moment experience closely enough to see if a deeper basis of well-being is there to be found.

[...]

But the problem with a contemplative claim of this sort is that you can't borrow someone else's contemplative tools to test it. The problem is that to test such a claim—indeed, to even appreciate how distracted we tend to be in the first place, we have to build our own contemplative tools. Imagine where astronomy would be if everyone had to build his own telescope before he could even begin to see if astronomy was a legitimate enterprise. It wouldn't make the sky any less worthy of investigation, but it would make it immensely more difficult for us to establish astronomy as a science.

To judge the empirical claims of contemplatives, you have to build your own telescope.

richarddawkins.net...

But since the vast majority of people, especially atheists, don't know jack squat about mysticism, they are hardly in a position to build thier own contemplative 'telescope'. They have only one tool in their toolbox - a hammer. So they try to pound everything because when all you have is the hammer of scientism everything looks like a nail.

But hey, it's all good.

Originally posted by BlueMule

Originally posted by Lucid Lunacy
reply to post by BlueMule

 

Yes let's all adopt a philosophy that assumes a priori that 'God' is a job for objective evidence and that the scope of science is unlimited.

The scope of science is unlimited within the constrains of the physical universe.

Science can't prove supernatural things don't exist if they exist outside of nature.

Well then lets hear no more calls for objective scientific evidence from atheists.

Just as soon as believers in the supernatural stop claiming that their beliefs actually really do existance.......

If I claim I know the mind of God (I do),

by god it looks like you mean the x-ian god?

If so, isn't she/he/it supposedly infinite? In which case how on earth (sic) could you possibly think that you "know the mind" of an infinite being??????

Originally posted by dominicus

Atheism does absolutely nothing in the long run.

It frees one to evolve their moral understanding as it's no longer based on something that cannot be critiqued.

Completely neutral and pointless

To believe the existence of 'non-believers' is pointless is heartless.

its just the anti-religion, and so just like religion, is also capable of producing mass killing monsters and movements of chaos and militancy.

No it is not.

Atheism has no rules, rituals, commandments, tenets... just the lack of belief in God. That's it.

If an atheist went on a killing spree he would being doing so under a set of beliefs unrelated. Or that person was just broken psychological from the onset.

I left Atheism/Agnosticism because in the long run, I saw that to take these views results in pure random chaos.

If your life was pure random chaos when you were an atheist perhaps that was the result of something other than having a lack of belief in God My mother is an atheist and her life as lots of meaning and she is a very compassionate and moral person who spends her time helping medically fragile children. But sure you go on believing atheists lives are pointless and void of morality. If that helps reinforce your religious conviction good for you I guess.

There ends up being no point to anything.

A life well lived?

Were no different than bugs, than squirels, cats/dogs.

That's not atheism. That's your assumption that with the lack of belief in God an atheist would view the world that way.

In that case its survival of the fittest, dog eat dog, all rules, morals, ethics out the window. Now there are no rules, no morals, no ethics .....

The notion that Christianity, or any other religious dogma, is the only source for ethics is an insult to humanity.

But anyways. Here is some from another religion. Maybe you will like that more.

“If you think that it would be impossible to improve upon the Ten Commandments as a statement of morality, you really owe it to yourself to read some other scriptures. Once again, we need look no further than the Jains: Mahavira, the Jain patriarch, surpassed the morality of the Bible with a single sentence: "Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature or living being." Imagine how different our world might be if the Bible contained this as its central precept. Christians have abused, oppressed, enslaved, insulted, tormented, tortured, and killed people in the name of God for centuries, on the basis of a theologically defensible reading of the Bible. ” ― Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation

Originally posted by Aloysius the Gaul

Just as soon as believers in the supernatural stop claiming that their beliefs actually really do existance.......

Um, no. That's not the way it works. People can have faith in the 'supernatural' and make faith-based claims and there isn't a damn thing science can do about it. Science should stay the hell out of it. Faith-based claims are outside the scope of science.

But they are not outside the scope of mysticism. Want to test a faith-based claim? Build your own contemplative 'telescope'.

When science tries to interfere with faith-based claims it turns into scientism. That's bad.

When religion tries to interfere with science-based claims it turns into literalism. That's bad too.

by god it looks like you mean the x-ian god?

I mean the transcendent God, the God of apophatic theology and mystics, not the God of exoteric fundamentalist simpletons, God bless 'em.

reply to post by Lucid Lunacy

But it's one thing to believe in God and another thing entirely to believe you know the mind of God.

Well revelation is a different matter. Take the Sinai experience: that was God contacting man.

You can claim that it was actually mans wild imagination, but that's besides the point. You cannot say with immunity: God doesn't interact with man. Because history contradicts that argument. The Jews contradict it. Divine law - which coincidentally is the basis of early modern law - contradicts it.

People often present these arguments for God existence but those arguments don't extend to why it follows that Christianity represents that God over say Islam or any other monotheistic religion.

Perhaps there exists a divine relativism?

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Once again, there is more divine a claim than that made by the Jews. The parting of a sea? Millions of human beings pass through? A wall of fire? 10 Plagues?? God speaks to man from a mountain in the Sinai desert? There's not another people on earth who makes such a claim. It's far more modest: one man makes a claim about his being the son of God, and 12 guys confirm this claim from 'miracles'. The scales are drastically different.

It's really difficult trying to make sense of Sinai. If it's a lie, how on earth did they ever get so many people to believe it? At what point was this lie devised? Furthermore, Judaism - Hebraism - is so drastically different from traditional pagan thinking that it begs the question: Did God really contact man?

The modern evidence for something that happened 3400 years ago, granted, is lacking. But perhaps there's an academic bias against such evidence? After all, our modern academic institutions are unequivocally Hellenistic in their foundations, based on Hobbesian and Humeian thinking. This couldn't be anymore antagonistic to the traditional 'judeo-christian' paradigm. Why would the intelligentsia - the elite - want their advancements in these areas to be stifled by evidence for something wonderous as the Exodus from Egypt? It wouldn't happen. Academia would do everything in their power to conceal such evidence. And why, you might very well ask? What could compel academia to challenge the biblical God?? Perhaps, it stands to argue, they don't think the biblical God is actually God, as the ancient gnostics, theosophists, and many others believe. And perhaps man's ingenuity - his ability to build a world in whatever way he likes - the lack of miracles in nature, contributes to his skepticism in the power of this God.

Originally posted by BlueMule

Well then lets hear no more calls for objective scientific evidence from atheists.

That's an okay from me

My new signature is a fitting enough response to that.

That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. - Christopher Hitchens

But can I ask you. Not why do you believe in God, but why do you believe your religion represents the mind of God and not another religion? Your telescope didn't just show you God but it also showed God affirming the pages of a book?

to put it in Sam Harris terms.

Ironic you would use Sam Harris considering he considers himself agnostic atheist and is very vocally against Christianity (and other dogmatic religions)

But anyhoot, since you claim all atheists don't know jack about spirituality and mysticism there is no point in furthering this with you.

Originally posted by Lucid Lunacy

Originally posted by BlueMule

Well then lets hear no more calls for objective scientific evidence from atheists.

That's an okay from me

My new signature is a fitting enough response to that.

That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. - Christopher Hitchens

Oh, I have evidence. If you want to examine that evidence then feel free to build your own contemplative telescope, because the evidence is outside the scope of science.

But can I ask you. Not why do you believe in God, but why do you believe your religion represents the mind of God and not another religion? Your telescope didn't just show you God but it also showed God affirming the pages of a book?

Your question makes no sense to me. I know the mind of God because I am a mystic who has acheived a unitive state. I have united with God. That's what it means to be a mystic.

I don't need a religion just as the sun doesn't need to shine on itself, just as a knife can't cut itself and teeth can't bite themselves. And as a student of comparative mysticism, comparative mythology, and comparative religion I have seen how God transcends the cultural and religious and conceptual borders that we tend to think 'he' respects.

reply to post by BlueMule


So you believe the Bible to be entirely written by man and not inspired by God?

I am honestly just curious and want to understand.

I call myself an atheist in some discussions and a deist in others. Why? Because God said I could Really I am anti-theist, it just so happens atheism best represents my position in most discussions about dogmatic religion. My contemplative telescope certainly doesn't dismiss the possibility in a 'prime mover', and in fact I have belief in their being one. What I am strongly against is groups of people parading around the world pretending to understand the thoughts and feelings of a being that by nature would be infinitely impossible to fully grasp.

reply to post by Lucid Lunacy


By inspired do you mean dictated?