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Originally posted by Capitalizt I don't think we should tolerate stupid ideas. Should they be legal? Yes...but I think Jefferson got it right when he said "Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions." The time for polite and passive acceptance of crazy ideas is over, especially when people want to use government power to impose them on others.

What John Gray is doing is calling atheists out of this hysteria. The reason why religion went berserk last decade is because a bunch of clueless guys trolled the world saying they did it because of religion. And then a bunch of other people kept feeding the trolls. We don't need people saying religion poisons everything. We need people remind others that we can poison pretty much everything if we're not critical enough.

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Originally posted by Capitalizt Christianity and reason have been enemies dor years.. I don't know where you're getting this. You should read the George Smith book I recommended a while back.

No, they haven't ever been sworn enemies or anything. Attempts of reconciling Christianity and reason are as numerous as the attempts to divorce them.

Just because I don't agree with them, it doesn't mean I should completely ignore the endeavours of people like Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, and countless others.

As a matter of fact, the strand of Christianity that most concerns me where I live happens to be a very rational science-friendly sect.

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Originally posted by Capitalizt Most Christian stuff I read is about otherworldiness..de-emphasizing the importance of this world..looking forward to the passing away of this "veil of tears", in favor of the better life to come.

The sole difference is that the concept of a paradise in another realm has shifted to a concept of a paradise in a world without religion where we can all live in peace thanks to reason and science.

As if.

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Originally posted by Capitalizt On a popular level..yes it is. The numbers of people identifying themselves as "none of the above" in religious polls is soaring..not necessarily people who identify themselves as atheists..but all agnostic/secular/non-religious people. This is the fastest growing segment of the population and I'm pretty sure that's a new thing.

Reason why, more than ever, it's crucial that we understand what's going on rather than just turn this into a simple battle between the enlightened and the cursed by religious superstition.

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Originally posted by Capitalizt Many religious people colonized America, but the founders made a conscious effort to keep religion completely out of the business of government. Aside from "don't kill" and "don't steal" (which are universal laws in every stable society), I don't see anything that can relate our government to the Christian faith.

Oh, yeah? Just a little something you probably have never thought about : the law system.

How does it work? If you do something wrong, you're punished, right? What's Christian about it? Well, the fact that this is far from being the only possibility. The Hittites had a completely different take on this, as far as I recall it: their society focused on repairing the things you did wrong rather than just punishing your for messing up.

Homosexuality is still a legal problem and, for that matter, even suicide is sometimes punishable by law. How more Christian can you get!?

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Originally posted by Arbiter I don't have any more use for a book which aims to tell me why god is not great than I do a book explaining why unicorns do not fly.

Shows what you know about unicorns.

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Originally posted by Lira Oh, yeah? Just a little something you probably have never thought about : the law system. How does it work? If you do something wrong, you're punished, right? What's Christian about it? Well, the fact that this is far from being the only possibility. The Hittites had a completely different take on this, as far as I recall it: their society focused on repairing the things you did wrong rather than just punishing your for messing up.

Calling this system "Christian" is a bit naive, Marcus. Our current system of punishing transgressors has been with us for a long, long time way before Christianity emerged. Recent research has shown that it is a product of evolution and that it isn't even an exclusive trait of the human species. Marc Hauser's book Moral Minds explains this in a more detailed fashion.

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Originally posted by woscar Calling this system "Christian" is a bit naive, Marcus. Our current system of punishing transgressors has been with us for a long, long time way before Christianity emerged. Recent research has shown that it is a product of evolution and that it isn't even an exclusive trait of the human species. Marc Hauser's book Moral Minds explains this in a more detailed fashion.

Sure, that is the tendency and it was present long before Christianty popped up, but nativist arguments against homosexuality notwithstanding, if we had a different religion/culture, it could be different, reason why I mentioned homosexuality and suicide along with that. In this case, religion helped sanction this kind of thought.

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Originally posted by leph555

awesome.

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Last edited by Capitalizt on Jul-23-2010 at 12:41

quote:

Originally posted by Marcus Summers

That's not the theory at all. Learn2Astrophysics.

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Originally posted by Fledz That's not the theory at all. Learn2Astrophysics.

It's nice that you can't explain it yourself. Most "Atheists" claim they understand science when most of them can't even add or subtract! It's amazing that the numbers god created are least understood by non believing heathens and the true followers of Christ are given the brains to do the work for them!

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Originally posted by Marcus Summers It's nice that you can't explain it yourself. Most "Atheists" claim they understand science when most of them can't even add or subtract! It's amazing that the numbers god created are least understood by non believing heathens and the true followers of Christ are given the brains to do the work for them!

omg marc, tell me this is a parody post.

If not, kindly tell me how the idea of an infinitely complex magical being who creates universes by wishing them into existence explains anything. If you demand an explanation for matter, why do you not demand an explanation for a being who creates it by magic?

Give us a coherent answer that doesn't boil down to special pleading..then tell us how you draw the line from "some god" to the CHRISTIAN god..who cares about us, reads our minds, is concerned about what we do in private with our "naughty bits", etc..and I'll become a theist immediately.

Last edited by Capitalizt on Jul-23-2010 at 13:57