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That is one of the most profoundly ignorant things I have ever heard you say. Or anyone else, for that matter.
When you find God you will know all there is to know.
You must be a very simple person if you are so easily satisfied. As for myself, I am not intellectually lazy.
The most brilliant minds the world has ever known have given themselves to understanding God, exploring His vastness, and explaining what they have learned to the world.
Isn't everyone?
Any reason for an Atheist doing the "Right thing" appears to necessarily come from some virtue held by believers. Without an acceptance of God as a First Premise, there is no logical way for an Atheist to answer the question "Why did you do that?" except with "I felt like it." Nothing can be described as "good" without reference to an ultimate, pre-existing good. That good, I would take to be God.
You know> I don't make a habit of starting topics like this on the forum, but in light of the fact Christianity is debated so passionately on the forum, and I have read the post for many years sometimes making a few comments, mostly not.
Why is there an issue when we take a look at atheism?
No I don't think so, you know that there are millions upon millions that follow religious scripture to the letter.
I have had a hard time with the hell issue
If social stability also applies to stability over time, by that I mean a society that lasts over generations, how would non-belief contribute to that? The Atheist might say "I'm willing to sacrifice my desires for the good of the future," but that's hardly believable.
I know of no one who considers the life of his great, great, great, great grandchildren, why should the Atheist consider anyone else's? Because it's the "right" thing to do?
Any reason for an Atheist doing the "Right thing" appears to necessarily come from some virtue held by believers.
Without an acceptance of God as a First Premise, there is no logical way for an Atheist to answer the question "Why did you do that?" except with "I felt like it."
Nothing can be described as "good" without reference to an ultimate, pre-existing good. That good, I would take to be God.
When you find God you will know all there is to know.
You must be a very simple person if you are so easily satisfied. As for myself, I am not intellectually lazy.
That is one of the most profoundly ignorant things I have ever heard you say. Or anyone else, for that matter.
The search for God, and the results of finding Him, are the most intellectually stimulating events that can occur in a person's life. The most brilliant minds the world has ever known have given themselves to understanding God, exploring His vastness, and explaining what they have learned to the world
No one has ever found the limits of God. While in one sense, we can know Him, in another, we can never know Him completely. It's simple for an Atheist to find the limits of his belief. He only has to explore as far as science will let him see, he's bound by the natural world.
If you want intellectual stimulation, study Thomas Aquinas or Augustine of Hippo. For centuries, men have been finding new riches in their work, and they were simply two people writing about God, the God an Atheist is forbidden to consider.
You've said some reasonable things in the past, dear AfterInfinity, but this is a huge blot on your copybook.
Ok, I've looked at this three times, and I'm going to need your help. You're saying that Atheists, who could have been left entirely alone just by lying a few times, decided to dedicate decades of their life towards producing some of the deepest and clearest Christian thought ever seen? That Atheists declared themselves Christian to stay alive? Then why didn't they say they were Atheists when that was all that was needed to save their lives? People were killed for being Catholics or Protestants. St. Thomas More was dropped from the King's favor and finally executed because he was Catholic.
The most brilliant minds the world has ever known have given themselves to understanding God, exploring His vastness, and explaining what they have learned to the world.
When people are threatened with political, social, or professional retaliation for not claiming a belief in an imaginary friend their works cannot be credited to their faith.
Yes, I believe that's proof that he was not pretending to be religious.
The monks nursed him for several days, and as he received his last rites he prayed: "I receive Thee, ransom of my soul. For love of Thee have I studied and kept vigil, toiled, preached and taught...." He died on 7 March 1274 while giving commentary on the Song of Songs.
I ignore them in this thread, because he has been unable to defend his theory against criticism. He tried in an article he wrote for The Huffington Post, but it was very unpersuasive. Here's the link:
How come you ignore Sam Harris's foundations for secular morality and instead erect a straw man to play with?
That, of course, is Mr. Harris' position, but have you examined it? Have you got a good definition for "well-being?" The only thing that Mr. Harris provides is some kind of healthy - sick dichotomy. He uses his mind and research to tell us that it is better to have enough to eat than to starve to death. I can understand why that kind of stunning revelation would be attractive, but it doesn't prove his point.
The well being of conscious creatures is a good reason to be good and you don't need anything other than common sense to see that.
Hi Richard, I’ll just clarify one thing: My objection to Harris in the post is not that he can’t provide an objective, precise, scientific defintion of “well-being”. It is that *if* he provides one, then science can measure it but can’t possibly tell us that it is right to maximize it. The same goes for a vague scientific defintion of well-being, although a vague definition would make measurement of well-being rather more difficult. We need to do a good deal of moral reasoning to discover the link between well-being, defined in such a way, and what it is right to do/maximize (that’s where Nozick’s Experience Machine, among other things, comes in). So it’s not true that “science can determine human values”, as Harris claims.