Atheism is a religion

I think the issue is explained by Harris well, its a matter is determining what is beneficial and what is harmful, and how to balance. He argues that neuroscience is the best means of determining what is harmful and what is beneficial.

 

There are ways to handle issues rather than killing the undesirables. It doesn't matter how much you justify it, killing homosexuals, rebellious kids, and owning slaves is not acceptable in any civilized society.

 

You are misunderstanding me or dodging the issue. I'm going to give you benefit of the doubt even though you continue to use ad hominem attacks and call people delusional and saying " Your mind is not a vessel to be filled with garbage produces by child abusers aka scientists, college professors and intellectuals, but a fire to be kindled. " I hope everyone sees that you have called the smartest people in society child abusers, even though the Catholic church has the handle on that .

Anyway. I'm going to outline what you are saying in logical form. If you say God exists and refuse to say logic and refuse to tell me why your methods will actually lead me to the creator, then you're being intellectually dishonest. There has to be some sort of logic involved for me to accept what you say, otherwise I am being a blind follower. God may ultimately be above logic, but unless we go around just believing what we want, we cannot completely abandon it. I think you misunderstood me when I say that God is above logic. It isn't that we can just throw our hands in the air and say oh God is above everything, have faith and be a good Christian. It just means that as human beings, we cannot be the measure of ALL things, but we cannot overcome our humanity either. According to you actually, we are completely wrong about everything else except whatever version of Christianity you adhere to (though you don't say how you know this).

1. If God exists, then IT (unless you want to continue being sexist) is above science and logic.

2. God exists.

3. Therefore God is above science and logic.

That seems to be the outline of what you are saying. Saying God is above logic does not mean that you can just throw logic out the window, just that it may have limitations. But using it to show that God is above seems ok to me. Maybe you are taking the position that God is self-evident, but then I would have to ask why you think that is so. Logic is not completely escapable.

I partially agreed with you on premise 1. What I asked you to do was explain why God exists and you give me The Church, The Bible, etc. And I have asked you why this method is a more a reliable way to know God exists, when all other methods fail? You can't just define God as so far beyond humanity that we cannot understand. That's vacuous. There would be nothing more to say at that point. I could make up anything I wanted and shield it from criticism by claiming the same thing as you. You are making the positive claim that God exists and that there is a more reliable way for humans to know it than science and logic.

You may disagree with me. You can object I've used a logical argument when you claim logic isn't good (even though that is what you have done, GOOGLE MODUS PONENS). Conditionals are based on affirming the first part of it, known as the antecedent. If A, then B. A. Therefore B. Maybe you are self-refuting, since you are using logic to defend God while at the same time saying God is above logic, but I'm not taking that stance since logic does need to be used somewhat, and I understand the tricky situation here.

If you COMPLETELY refuse logic, then you are taking the position of faith alone. And my question would be why you use the specific church you do to determine that God exists? What if I made a claim, that all of your reality is an illusion and you are in the matrix. You would rightfully ask me to defend it. I couldn't just say, well my faith say so. You wouldn't believe what I was saying. And that is the case here. Faith alone won't do it.

 

Or a final solution could be that I completely agree with what you say. God is above human understanding. Then my question becomes how you can expect ever to talk meaningfully about such a being? If it is beyond our understanding, that strikes me as impossible. You are taking the position of skepticism in regards to knowledge humans can have, but then say the Bible and the Church give us knowledge.

 

Who is killing homosexuals? Rebellious Kids?

Who owns slaves?

Seriously, you think running around, based solely on a persons religion, and accusing them of murder and slavery is what makes YOU a good person?

Allright slick. Call the police.

Tell them that your Christian neighbors are harboring slaves and murdering people, and when they show up, you can detail your rich and extensive list of religious studies that indicate that you fiured out how most of the people around you are savages that kill and enslave people.

It your hat, wear it with pride!



Love the hat man.

 

You are clueless. Or at the very least pretned to be. However the guise simply does not completely cover your inability to engage in an issue without red herring and ranting.

 

The opposite of atheism is not religion; it is theism (belief in God).

Religion = theism + many other things.

Ludwik Kowalski (see Wikipedia)
.

 

Yes, but whether atheism is a theism or not is not an active discussion. Whether it is a religion or not is.

 

Why does it matter?

 

Religion is an outdated form of thought that contained a lot of good and useful ideas about behaviour, and 'atheism' is an obsession with what is outdated in it - the 'God' notion and so on. It seems to me, as an outsider, that both American religion and American Atheism are obsessions artificially kept alive by the fact that religion - not Christianity, which scarcely struck root there - is important in business dealings because it helps sellers make contact with others. If this is 'psychologizing, so be it. I left the Church in Wales regretfully, and have no urge to attack the good and honest people who find it possible to keep on - but that is in another Country, and has to do with our opinion of Jesus of Nazareth, carpenter and socialist, not 'religion'.

 

What is the subject of the thread?

And what have you done in this thread besides attack religious people from a position of total ignorance about our faith?

Tell me, the fact that Leviticus 18, the commands from God, include warnings against beastiality, incest, adultry, and homosexuality, with the punishment being caste out from teh community - not death.

For some reason this was relevant to you faith not being a religion?

For some reason, your cherry picked quotes from Leviticus, which you failed to actually read in context in the Bible and grossly misrepresented, was more relevant to the subject?

You do understand that point?

That Christians are tired of arrogant, uneducated, idiots spewing lies and accusations about a faith they know nothing about.

If atheists want to define themselves through ignorance and deliberate bigotry, so be it.

We do not have to stand here and be abused by atheists. We will correct the egregious lies you spread about our faith whether you like it or not.

Enjoy the hat.

 

There are places where the Bible says that death is the penalty for some of these things. YOU are cherrypicking the Bible to make it seem nicer and more coherent than it actually is.

 

No, I understand the difference between a code written by priests and now rejected, commands listed from God with the punishment being explusion not death, and Jesus responding to adultry with, "Then neither do I condem you, go and Sin no more," means.

So, I am pretty sure that the Son of God not killing someone over adultry and his earlier commandment for it not requirin the death penalty means that the priestly code was wrong - and that would be why both Juddaism and Christianity no longer follow the Deuteronomic code. It was not of God, but mistaken priests.

You, who have apparently been involved in a church, and are an expert on the Bible, should know this.

Yet you insist on applying the deuteronomy code as if it is a commandment from God? You INISIST on being ignorant and advancing a dictate that is CLEARLY at odds with the teaching of every Christian and Jewish doctrine currently taught.

But YOU know better? YOU KNOW we are actually murderers and rapists who kill people for glee and the delight of God? And all your supposedly superior brain power lead you to conclude something that clearly conflicts with the reality you see every day .... but heh, why let facts or reality get in the way of perfectly good bigotry right?

If you cannot define yourself without crapping on other, that is a rather serious personal issue. We do not have to simply stand there an accept egregious lies about our faith for you. We will correct the lies of atheism about our faith.

People need to know that the basis of atheism/nihilism is nothing more than idiotic, uneducated ranting born of an unspecified and apparently untreatable, anger.

 

Imagine you would be able to give life to Charly Brown and the other peanuts and you would tranform their world in a computer world where they can do whatever they like to do. How could they know what happens if you are switching off the computer for example? How could they know anything about our world here?

That's really a very very very very very bad comparison - god father, god son and the HolyGhost (or Holy Spirit) are something completly different - but it can show to you what's the problem with the word "existance". You are not existing in their world until you start to communicate with them.

How Schroedingers cat shows we are for examople also in our own real world sometimes not able to say exactly wether this cat is alive or dead. We are often only able to see the possiblities - and the possibilities are even all facts in case of Schroedingers cat. Schroedingers cat for example is as well alive as it is dead.

I don't know why you have a problem because you are not able to believe in god - but it seems to be a very heavy problem for you.

http://youtu.be/PjFE9uy3N38

 

You are clueless. Or at the very least pretend to be. However the guise simply does not completely cover your inability to engage in an issue without red herring and ranting.

 

This only creates new problems, such as it gives the impression God has changed his mind about the old rules and implemented new ones, which of course implies that God is not perfect.

This is why it's impossible to argue with fundamentalists. They have an infinite series of answers to every objection, ignoring the fact that every answer causes new problems that contradict other answers already given.

 

Even if I could do this, why would I? For my own amusement to watch my inferiors twist and spin for no reason? That would be cruel.

 

So prove it. Prove that the exact quote from Leviticus is not accurate.

You are doing what all bogots do when confronted with the errors in their logic. You are just lashing out because you lack the strength to apologize for ripping into someone based solely on their faith choice.

You shoudl verify your information before you attack people with it, and you have no one to blame but yourself for the horrific falsehood you spread about someone else faith.

Its embarassing to be so wrong, but entirely your fault. Due diligence would prevent it. Lashing out with absurdities will not.

 

No it creates something called context. Wisdom is teh application of rules in the correct context, and the reason deuteronomy is left the way it is, is to highlight the faulty rules based approach that has been rejected by the faith - to prevent it from happening again - to teach the lesson.

Its quite simple. A man stealing food to feed his family is a thief. A man stealing money from a convience store at gun point because he wants a new video game ... is also a thief.

Stealing in both cases is a crime. They do not deserve the same punishment though do they?

We get it. Our system of justice gets it. But you think God should punish all people the same way regardless of circumstance and context?

Of course, then he would be unjust because he does not take these things into account.

In other words, you are just looking for a way to fault God no matter what he does. That is your problem to deal with, but we will continue to point out the wisdom the Bible, throughout, strongly suggests we get - and you have failed to get.

Again, you claim the mantel of expertise by having been 'secretly' in a church, and yet you remain ignorant of these things? You chose to reject them, and that is a choice - but that does not mean your analysis is correct.

It isn't, and we will continue to point out the errors in yoru interpretation of our faith.

 

This just AVOIDS YOUR OWN ADMISSION that the old rules have been replaced by new rules. How do you explain this without dethroning God? Just curious.

 

No, Sin remains the same. The list of Sins has not changed, just the punishments for them.

At any point in the Bible does it say it is OK to steal? To commit adultry? To screw a horse?

Not my fault you still don't get it.

Not anyone's fault but yours that you insist on seeing contradictions where there are none.

 

It had absolutelly nothing to do with god or spirituality what I said to you - it gave you only the chance to find out that you don't know the reasons why you say what you say. Independent from this all I'm quite sure god loves you more than anything else in this world. That's maybe why it's not so easy for her as it is for you.

http://youtu.be/TwpP12lki68

 

Let's say it again: atheism is a survival from religion, showing an unhealthy preoccupation with its more nonsensical elements. Sensible people, surely, don't feel the need to carry labels round their necks to say they don't believe in a flat earth, slavery or the Book of Revelation. It is all long, long gone, and good riddance. Let's look at what's positive in in both.

 

In my opinion, it is more about persons of alleged morals not actually having the morals they claim to have, rather than "really" being about Religion. I don't think people would have any problem with Religion, if we could confide in the sincerity of persons of alleged morals.

In my view, this dilemma is similar to the one presented by gun lovers who refuse to love their republic as much as they love their guns.

 

As far as I know it was an american author who spoke the first time about a "flat earth" because he liked to make a hero out of the idiot Columbus. Some monks told Columbus that he never will arrive in India because the distance is to far for his ships. They were right - but Columbus was an idiot who did not like to understand. Because Americans liked to be proud on Columbus an american author found the story that Columbus and other modern people believed not in a flat earth what the antiquated people did.

By the way: The world is indeed flat. A hundreds of lightyears big triangle has exactly 180°. That's really very astonishing because on earth for example it's not this way.

So what do you think now what "survived" means in case of atheism? Prejudices? Superstitions? Do you like to see a symbol of conformity in the clothing of secular slaves and slaveholders? Yes? Then take a look at this senseless piece of cloth:



http://youtu.be/ncBhCpd8KgE