quote:

Originally posted by R!CH i'm pretty sure that by not going door-to-door in every neighborhood asking everyone if they're found god yet, or screaming obscenities at dead soldiers' funerals, or standing on a downtown street corner holding up a sign while yelling at passerbyers through a bullhorn, or bombing health clinics after harassing rape victims... i'm being passively resistent

its ridiculous isnt it? the only thing atheists do is engage in discourse in various formats. somehow we're as bad as those flying planes into buildings or dictating to a woman what she can do with her body

if we were here arguing against something like fascism would people still call us zealots i wonder? again, this special treatment peculiar to religion is just incredible.

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Last edited by pkcRAISTLIN on Dec-01-2007 at 05:15

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Originally posted by R!CH so glad to hear you're back in this thread to remind us how much better than all of us you are. i guess that makes you the most obnoxious

The only person posting in this thread I know I'm better than is you.

But that never took much to begin with, did it?

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Originally posted by R!CH then i commend the atheists who bite back...

You've got to love folks who advocate fighting idiocy with idiocy. Well in, Rich - you're an academic superstar.

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lol rjt, always good for a laugh...

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Originally posted by Fledz You also seem to convey the idea that scientists and theists do not mix and that most of the discoveries in the world came about due to atheist scientists breaking away from religion. This is simply not true and you can see that many scientists are in fact religious as well. How much, it doesn't really matter but they open to the notion of a higher power.

Maybe so, but it wasn't their religion that drove them to do scientific research. Religion itself hasn't been beneficial to society in any way. You know why? Because it always devolves into silly bedtime stories. That's what it is. You act like it's some amazing, spiritual thing, without taking into account that this shit was written by nutjobs 2000 years ago.

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Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN if we were here arguing against something like fascism would people still call us zealots i wonder? again, this special treatment peculiar to religion is just incredible.

Sums it up right there. We can't even have a proper argument without people throwing metaphysical bullshit at us, because that apparently justifies ignorance, war and oppression.

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Because it always devolves into silly bedtime stories. That's what it is. You act like it's some amazing, spiritual thing, without taking into account that this shit was written by nutjobs 2000 years ago.

Look, I'm not religious, but that's hardly true...

A lot of the 'stories' are fundamental codes of behavior in the form of parables. Some of them actually have important ideas behind them that can improve the quality of life for everyone involved, eg "do to others what you would have them do to you" - the ethic of reciprocity, a fundamental moral establishment in human society

Also, a lot of the stories are more or less personifications and embellishments of astrological events and explanations of inexplicable natural occurences. It's a lot easier for people to worship a figure like Jesus who has a human aspect than for instance the sun, which is much more mysterious.

I think the basis of religion is a conversion of astrological and natural observation into familiar, human terms. It is a way to understand the things that are too large and mysterious for us on a smaller, human scale.

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Originally posted by Fledz You also seem to convey the idea that scientists and theists do not mix and that most of the discoveries in the world came about due to atheist scientists breaking away from religion. This is simply not true and you can see that many scientists are in fact religious as well. How much, it doesn't really matter but they open to the notion of a higher power.

excuse me but you need to learn the difference between a theist and a deist... i challenge you to find a handful of the world's most revolutionary scientists and provide a shred of evidence that they subscribed to theism. as a matter of fact, most were completely opposed to the rigid dogma provided by western religion and it is well-documented in their writings. i could paste my collection of several hundred quotes that demonstrate this, but for the moment i'd rather name-drop a short list of these free-thinkers...

abraham lincoln, thomas jefferson, benjamin franklin, thomas paine, james madison, john adams, thomas edison, robert ingersoll, albert einstein, carl sagan, stephan hawking, richard dawkins, christopher hitchens, james watson, stephen jay gould, jb haldane, charles darwin, philip kitcher, sigmund freud, edward o wilson, clarence darrow, isaac asimov, friedrich nietzsche, gene roddenberry, andrew carnegie, ernest hemingway, samuel clemens, ayn rand, oscar wilde, aldous huxley, bertrand russell, henry louis mencken, robert frost, helen keller, charlie chaplin, ralph waldo emerson, vincent van gough, susan b anthony, leo tolstoy, voltaire, denis diderot, napoleon bonaparte, frank lloyd wright, frank zappa, john lennon, billy joel, seneca, epicurus, immanuel kant, aristotle and i can go on...

these iconic figures generally understand the self-evident truth contained within these statements:

" Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings, will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries. "

- Carl Sagan

" I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religion than it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. "

- Albert Einstein

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RJT is right, and I think what his views on this are what most people view on this issue.

both sides use sophist speak, use rhetoric, and use crazy latin phrases that have no application to most people to point each other's flaws in reasoning, even in a non-academic environment just to 1up people in their imaginary intellectual cock. Just look at this thread for example.

and atheists have every right to be angry, but if you want to be accepted in a religions society, some of them have to get off their high horse and stop belittling theists. Part of being accepted is being likeable. Look at the Dalai Llama. He's atheist and is respected by many people, both theists and atheists, he doesn't belittle anyone's beliefs even if he doesn't agree with them.

my problem with religion isn't with how people use it in their own personal lives, but how dangerous it becomes for people to develop the mentality of accepting statements as truth without adequate proof or disprovability, the warped morality that simply allows people to forgive themselves of any sin to be committed in the future just by apologizing to jesus, the absolute and unchanging nature of organized religion which hinders the pace of progressive thinking, the way it drives a wedge between people of differing views, the method in which truth is justified based entirely upon tradition and time elapsed, the chauvenistic nature of it all, and especially the misinterpretation and bastardization of the judaic old testament based on a politically-crafted king james translation of the text that is interpretted very literally by christian zealots who completely miss the point.

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as an example, this kind of bullshit can only be rationalized if you believe with absolute certainty that your actions are the will of a divine god that transcends every other cause or purpose in the sphere of humanity...



as a deist/agnostic/atheist/secular humanist, it is nearly impossible to rationalize this type of behavior when your morality is solidly grounded in humanism.

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For those interested...

The Religion Test

Free from Tickle.com until Dec 30th.

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Originally posted by RJT Fair enough, but Dawkins is still a twat

+1

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quote:

Originally posted by DJ Mikey Mike Social outcasts are often of the opinion that they must have a drink before being able to loosen up with their inhibitions, thus being able to have a good time. There's a word that sums up this sort of behaviour, and that word is 'reject.'