The Creation According to Atheists
Atheists are often an unfairly feared and scorned group. Many people tend to look upon them with disdain just because they have doubts about theology and like to go on TV and scream about how the majority of Americans are stupid for believing in God. This has led many religious people to have negative misconceptions about atheists, thinking among other things that they are followers of Satan.
That’s ridiculous. Atheists don’t worship Satan. They worship Athor, rational god of logic, who cherishes all that is logical and smites all that is illogical, such as religion. His worshipers leave him gifts of logic, like Sudoku puzzles, at his altar so that Athor might bestow upon them rational thought and they can better spot ideas that are stupid and worth mocking. This leads to the greatest gift Athor has to offer his followers: a feeling of superiority.
Ever notice how many Bibles are labeled “Holy Bible” on the front? Ever wonder what other types of Bibles there are? Atheists learn the teachings of Athor from the “Logical Bible,” as atheists consider “Logical” infinitely better than “Holy.” To help you better understand atheists, here’s part of the story of creation as written in the Logical Bible:
In the beginning, there was nothing, the most logical state for the universe to be in. Though Athor, rational god of logic, approved of such a logical existence, he longed for there to be beings who foolishly believe in irrational things such as religion so that he might laugh at them and their stupidity. Thus Athor set about to create conditions in which such beings would arise in a purely logical and scientific manner. So he created the universe from an infinitely dense and infinitely hot singularity in the Big Bang. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
Photons continued to form as the universe cooled. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
More cooling. And the evening and the morning were the third day.
Again, more cooling. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. …
Eventually, a planet was formed at the right distance from a star for life to be sustained — as was likely and logical to happen given the size of the universe(s) — and Athor saw it and declared it “good enough.” Thus was formed the planet Earth. And the evening and the morning were the three trillion, three hundred forty-five billion, six hundred eighty-eight million, seven hundred twenty-three thousand, five hundred forty-second day.
The earth cooled. And the evening and the morning were the three trillion, three hundred forty-five billion, six hundred eighty-eight million, seven hundred twenty-three thousand, five hundred forty-third day.
More cooling. And the evening and the morning were the three trillion, three hundred forty-five billion, six hundred eighty-eight million, seven hundred twenty-three thousand, five hundred forty-fourth day. …
Athor determined that the earth was now in such a condition that life might logically form, and thus it became so, through means still unknown though we have many theories about them. Athor’s ways can be enigmatic to us, but eventually we always figure them out and they are no longer so. So while the means by which Athor formed life are currently unknown, we can have faith that the means were quite scientific and logical and by no means mysterious.
Love it, love it, love it!!!
Haaaaaa! Now atheism makes perfect sense to me!
I can’t speak for all Christians, but I don’t hate or fear atheists. I’m just concerned that they will succeed in taking away Christians’ prerogatives to pass on their beliefs to their children. You have people like Richard Dawkins suggesting that raising one’s children to become Christians is child abuse, and should be a good reason to take their kids away.
Of course, if other atheists would smack their famous spokesman down for saying such things, perhaps that would do a lot to assuage any residual “fear” or “hate”.
“from an infinitely dense hot singularity”… well, sure, for a quadrillionth of a second.
But what about before that?
Logically, I mean.
There was nothing. From which, presumably, nothing springs, ex nihilo, so to speak.
Athor the god of logic did not exist. space, time, matter, energy, NOTHING existed.
Until it did.
Logically, of course.
You forgot that these events are a string of random coincidences. Other than that, nice job.
I suppose I am just stupid. I don’t think that the Biblical explanation of the creation of the world, and man, etc., is literally true. Even accepting that it was Divinely Inspired, it was what was intelligible to the ancient Hebrews.
On that basis, there is no necessary contradiction between (1) a belief that God created the universe, the world, and all that is in it, and (2) a theory that a process of natural selection over some millions of years best explains the biological, geological and historical evidence of how life developed over (a very long) time.
Assuming God to be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, and that He reveals Himself and His ways as He chooses, which of course means that He may appear to contradict Himself, or at least tailor His explanations to the audience, I am not especially troubled when the explanations have differing time lines.
After all, it was men (think Bishop Usher) who spent so much time trying to interpret the rather vague Bible to determine precisely when Creation took place. It seems risible now.
For its part, the theory of evolution does not even address the question of “why” things have evolved as they have. In the most extreme form, evolutionists insist that evolution is completely random, with successful mutations succeeding over time. Yet, what is our concept of random other than a construct of man-made mathematics that is infinitely useful, and logically true, but rarely observable in the real world over time. Hmmm. I think the fundamental conclusion is that we just don’t know “why” the process has occurred. Could be purely “random;” could be some sort of intelligent design worked out in ways about which we don’t have a clue; could be (dare I say) God.
I hope (& change) everything is as logical as this. Because if thine world is not logical, I don’t have a prayer.
Bof !
Sometimes the simplest solution is the best. Logic works – faith doesn’t. That’s all there is to it.
Peace.
DS
“Logic works – faith doesn’t.”
Logic inevitably hits the wall—and faith must take over. Atheism, for instance, is a faith proposition.
David S.:
You used logic to come to that conclusion which makes that circular reasoning which logically is an illogical proof.
Not all atheists are of the scornful and proselytizing variety. I’m a Republican, and I just happen to put Jesus on the same level that I put Dracula and Indiana Jones. Cool stories…
If, in the end, you believe I am to be judged by some all-powerful deity, and cast into fire for my beliefs, I ask that you show me mercy here while I live, and let my eventual fate be enough punishment in and of itself.
Very droll, here’s the thing though. The big bang really happened. We can prove it happened. The expanding universe proves it. The cosmic microwave background radiation proves it. The experimental data for CMB radiation fits the hypothetical curve exactly, it’s one of the most successful hypotheses in scientific history. If there’s an elephant standing in your driveway it doesn’t do any good to keep shouting about how elephants aren’t native to North America because the thing is plainly there.
I heard a “creationism scientist” on the radio the other day explain why Noah was able to build his ark. After all, it would be quite a project to put 2 of every animal on it, no? Well apparently Noah lived to be 500 years old and had over 100 years to build it.
And you want to ridicule scientists? rofl!!
Sometimes the simplest solution is the best. Logic works – faith doesn’t. That’s all there is to it.
Remind me again what justifies the axioms in axiomatic logic?
I offer proof of God’s existence….Obama’s falling poll numbers.
David:
I agree William of Occam had it right. However, a quick persual of string theory and its adherents reveals a whole lot of faith and absolutely no evidence for the theory outside of a few self validating mathematical proofs. Physics has devolved into faith-based system of thought. It has for many become a substitute religion.
I suggest you read the theorectical physicist Lee Smolin’s “The Trouble with Physics,” although I suspect that your limited intelligence will prevent you from actually understanding anything in the book.
@David S: The use of logic is appealing, but logic itself cannot prove that using logic is the best way to find truth or solve problems. That takes faith. So even if you have determined to always and everywhere use logic, you have taken that one small leap of faith to put your faith in logic as the best answer. I’m not saying your faith is misguided, merely pointing out that you have a point of faith. Faith is the essence of things hoped for and the expectation of things unseen — but whether things unseen are merely in the future or are preternatural, faith is NOT blind nor should it ever ignore evidence.
I agree with Cato – why is it not considered possible to marry belief in God and in evolution? (and I am not talking about intelligent design here) -
there is much to believe in the process of growth and change over time (evolution) just as there is much to believe in that speaks of God – the natural beauty of the world we inhabit – the complexity and immense diversity of the plant and animal species that inhabit it. The existence of the act of creation of new life itself in all of it’s forms -
All in all, I consider myself extremely fortunate to be able to perceive and appreciate my existence in this place – regardless of how it actually happened.
It must have really cracked Athor up when a Christian priest (Msgr. Georges Lemaître) defined the Big Bang Theory.
David gives his opinion and then offers a sign of peace and jerryofva has to insult his intelligence. Don’t you have a better argument than that, Jerry? Because that speaks to your limited intelligence. This is what bothers me about so many people of faith. If someone doesn’t believe the same way they are evil or stupid. Brother.
There are 2 kinds of atheists.
The first are the religious atheists who despise religion so much they can’t stop talking about it and think people of faith are so stupid and boring they can’t stop seeking us out to ridicule (see Bill Maher).
The second are the type I can be friends with. They examined religion and they just don’t buy it, but they’re happy for the peace that my faith brings me. They also understand that asking me not to believe is as silly a request as asking them to believe. To my surprise I’ve found these relationships to be enriching.
Wanting to laugh at someone is not logical.
who is mocking who ?
this artical is nothing more then an obvious ploy at demeaning athiests.
personally for me religion ..all religions are a human defect.
none of the “holy books” are anything more then novels written by mortals (…right GOD whispered in my ear and I just wrote what he told me) ..I don’t mean to belittle people but how else can I point out to people the shallowness of the premise.
here is the big question ….is it easier to create the world …sun unisverse etc or is it easier to create GOD.
HERE is my answer ….I DON”T KNOW !(period) and YOU DON”T KNOW either so WHY make up a story !
HERE IS THE WHY (religious people feel the need to make up a story)
…..as I said it is a human defect. from an evolutionary standpoint (yes I said evolutionary BECAUSE there is NO repeat NO evidence of any other force at work presently) …that human survived better in some communal group (family, tribe, religious faternity etc)
given this group effort it is easy that religion held and hold power over people. it is an ideology which precludes and avoids though …blind following is required / mandated.
genetically we are predisposed to live in gtroups and rel;igion or “globable warming” or marxism (or religion of choice) can easily supplant the underlining predisposition to group or herd.
I hope that if you read this you can at least see my position (I don’t care if you agree with it or not)
FAITH IS BELIEVING WITHOUT THINKING ..hey if that works for you great.
religion also shows a huge ego …yes GOD has chosen me to lead the church of Scientology ..he has a special place for me in heaven ….don’t forget the 72 virgins (sorry you women …no virgins for you)
sounding cynical ?? no sh!t. what do you think! step back and open your eyes.
waiting for the next inquistion.
10. Dr. Mayhem: . . .”Remind me again what justifies the axioms in axiomatic logic?”
The same thing that justifies God . . . human beings without proof.
Personally…I’m a faith-follower…and I most certainly believe in evolution. So I have atheists who despise me and religious fundies who despise me…best of both worlds!
From Babylon 5 (a show written by an atheist):
Brother Alwyn: Faith sustains us in the hour when reason tells us that we cannot continue, that the whole of our lives is without meaning.
Brother Michael: Then why were we born able to reason, if reason’s useless?
Brother Alwyn: Not useless. But it’s also not enough. Faith and reason are the shoes on your feet! You can travel further with both than you can with just one.
Vicsmith:
My My, how you leap to the conclusion that I argue from a position of faith because I pointed out that Physics has become so complex that its theories have taken on all the aspects of religious faith. From all I can tell Lee Smolin is not a man of faith and he attacks string theory for its religious-like qualities. He even quotes Nobel Laurite Steven Weinberg as example of how adherents of the theory have thrown out the scientific method.
My comments on David S. intelligence do not strictly relate to this topic. My judgment on his intelligence comes from an accumulation of his posts. Your rush to judgment that anybody who disputes David’s post must be some sort of creationist places you in his intelligence category.
Some things cannot be proven (Godel’s Theorem) and one always must make a leap of faith. All systems of thought rely on axioms. Some people choose God as the ultimate axiom while others choose some other actor, force or phenomenon.
Logic works when one can have a summation of all of the parts. Looking through the Hubble telescope we can surmise that there is more than a little of which we do not know. Logic is what we know in Plato’s cave with the absence of sunlight and familiarity with the surrounding rocks.
It Athor didn’t exist, it would be logical to invent him.
That’s partially fair, and partially unfair. The string theorists I know are painfully aware of the problem. They know it can’t, with current knowledge and technology, be falsified. They believe it not in a religious faith sense, but in a Bayesian sense – it’s the best game in town, but of course, it’s not currently provable.
This is very different from the religion of AGW, where they have a theory that, if you analyze it probabilistically, has a far lower probability of being correct than string theory. The adherents of AGW insist that it’s true, the debate is over, there’s a consensus, yadda, yadda. That is a faith-based pseudoscience; when they outright refuse to talk about uncertainty and doubt, and resort to ad hominem attacks on anyone who blasphemes. I think everyone here knows the drill. Denier, wingnut, blah blah.
I guess we have some atheists who don’t get the joke. It reminds me of the old bit…
Q: How many feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: That’s not funny…
The methodology of science does NOT EQUAL the dogma of atheism. We have far too many people equating the two and attempting to use the former to dictate the latter in mocking, irrational, and often illogical terms. From here, we get to what G K Chesterton said on the issue – “The man who does not believe in God will not believe in nothing – he will believe in anything.” I’d love to go to a group and say “stand up if you are an atheist” then systematically toss out “sit down if you believe in…” and fill in the blank, magic, UFOs, various conspiracy theories, and so on.
Richard Dawkins did much to propagate the atheism=arrogance model of behavior. It is interesting to note that his “science” career began with his “selfish gene” philosophy-marketed-as-science, which he repackaged from his college mentor and marketed successfully until it was pointed out that the evidence he rooted it within could just as easily be used to come to the opposite conclusion. Then along came Memetics, which he stole, repackaged as Memes, and sold at a profit until that, too, became exposed. Throughout this time he made arguments against religion. Those same arguments were directed at Selfish Gene and Memes until he was forced to either give up the rationale for his attacks on religion, or give up the philosophy-posing-as-science of his two main claims to fame. So now he just markets atheism. I’m sure he’ll steal another idea someday, but in the meantime, there you go.
#22 Jennifer Waite: Good post but I’d like to add one more category that I fall into: Deism.
Someone that isn’t a Christian or Jewish, etc., is NOT automatically an atheist. Important distinction to me and others I’m sure.
Please do not think that all creationists are of the literal seven day variety. There are those of us who are not. Even when evolutionary theory was proposed in the 19th century many Christian theologians saw its plausibility and began contemplating its meaning for creation – in a positive way. Darwin even mentions the Creator’s role in evolution in the Origin of Species. We see evolution as God’s way of allowing a degree of freedom in the created order – it follows ‘laws’ but the variety is simply amazing. Obviously there are things that are difficult to explain on both sides but atheists have some tough problems. Atheists cannot admit that there is a teleology or some sort of logical direction to the process of cosmology. To do so admits that there is an unknown driving force not a random process mechanism. Moreover, it is also necessary to ask why
we have evolved beyond the basic needs for survival, mainly eating and reproducing. Why do we even ask the question why? Why is seeking meaning in life, even atheism is an attempt to so, necessary for survival. I’m sure that in the end things will pan out – either we die and we’re dead and we won’t exist to worry about such things or we will face the Creator who is gracious beyond measure even to atheists whom I believe God will offer the opportunity to be a part of his Kingdom. If they still don’t want any part of what God has to offer – God will oblige them. Otherwise – I’ll be there to welcome you to the Kingdom!
Only reason can help decipher why 7 reasonably intelligent people, including a Professor, a capitalist, and a fearless crew of two could build wacky transmitters, comfortable huts, and interact with natives, adventurers, and reams of evil Russian spies…but never figure out how to repair a two foot hole in their beached sport fisherman in order to sail three hours back to civilization.
I wonder…
Strawman:
The problem with string theory is that many its propositions can never be proven because observing the predicted phenomena is either impossible or almost beyond human existence. Smolin points out that since string theory became the “it” thing that physics has gone nowhere. Unlike biology, you can pick up a physics books from 1975 and still be current. By that criteria string theory appears to be a dead end yet it continues to enjoy dominant status in theoretical physics while alternative theories whither on the vine.
TO: Frank J. and All the ‘Believers’ in Athor, et al.
RE Still Waiting…..
….for them to explain away Chernobyl/Wormwood.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
P.S. Why does Athor remind me of God?
@Cato – or, better yet, no science can explain “why” any of this (including us) is here. That’s not a deficiency of science, it’s just an unscientific question. However, I categorically deny the notion that *only* scientific questions are worth asking.
Like you, I see no complications between an allegorical interpretation of Genesis (basically, “Intelligent Design”) and whatever theories sciences has/does/will gleen from observation.
Science tells us how things happen(ed), religion tries to discern a value to it all.
Andrew:
Richard Nixon once remarked that “We are all Keynesians now.” Well, since Fred Hoyle died it can be safely said that “We are all Creationists now.” We all accept that our universe was created by deities, entities or forces that are unknown and unknowable. This little piece of religious satire is all about the unknowability of the ultimate question of how things came to be. Like all good satire it pokes fun at the pretentiousness of the illuminati around us who so often ridicule the role faith plays in understanding the world from any point of view.
#27 “My judgment on his intelligence comes from an accumulation of his [David S] posts.”
Precisely. His ending word, “Peace”, is a mockery in his case. He comes here, possibly as a volunteer, possibly as an employee, to pick fights. Peace really is the last thing he has on his mind.
24, you don’t like it? How does it feel? This post is tremendously mild compared to what people of faith get regularly. Hm, and you couldn’t help yourself from attacking people of faith in your own post. I see in your world only your opinions count and all others must be ridiculed and preferably destroyed. Then everyone can think just like you eh?
Paul:
Very droll, here’s the thing though. The big bang really happened. We can prove it happened. The expanding universe proves it.
Not necessarily disputing the Big Bang, but this is bad thinking. The Big Bang was invoked to explain the expansion of the universe, so saying the expanding universe proves the big bang is silly. If I invoke murder to explain MJ’s death, the fact that he’s dead does not then prove that he was murdered.
homero:
here is the big question ….is it easier to create the world …sun unisverse etc or is it easier to create GOD.
I can’t think of any definition of easier which doesn’t favor the first option. An infinitely powerful being (which is how one typically defines God) can perform any action with zero effort: the complexity of the task is irrelevant. The first option is also the easier one in the sense that it has less preconditions (the existence of the universe is a precondition of man ‘inventing’ God).
3. Lee Dise: – Of course, if other atheists would smack their famous spokesman down for saying such things, perhaps that would do a lot to assuage any residual “fear” or “hate”.
I am an atheist. Lee, I won’t smack down anyone because of his or her beliefs. When those beliefs become action, then possibly there might be reason (Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Saddam etc.) to proceed as you suggest. I will say this about Dawkins – I don’t agree with much that he says when he moves into the political realm. I have read The Ancestor’s Tale, and know of him, and while I find the science interesting, I would say that the ridicule of believers is unnecessary and counterproductive. Remember Alinsky’s Rule 5 – Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. I think Mr. Fleming might do well to reflect on Rule 5 as well. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Yes, some of those damn atheists can be quite annoying.
I have always been a non-believer. I have studied The Bible, parts of the Koran, many religious tracts and books, and have had an active interest in religion since I can remember, and still do. I have had many in depth conversations with believers over the years, and will say that I have learned much from all these experiences. I have never ridiculed believers; I have made my share of jokes and comments, hopefully in good-natured way, and if I become aware of offense, I apologize. After all, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I have always encouraged others around me to be strong in their beliefs, again, while trying to be aware of blatant evil being acted upon. If individuals reap benefits from their belief system, then we all prosper; if there is damage, then the suggestion would be to find a mentor who believes likewise and/or to look within and without and be honest with oneself.
I must say that I have never felt what others have experienced, that conversion, the light, the belief or faith that believers talk about. To say that I have would be dishonest, I can’t be false in this, it’s too important to myself and to the believers who really do believe. I would be bearing false witness. Don’t misinterpret, I am not agnostic, or New Age, I don’t believe in higher powers or in the spirit world in any form. And I am not incomplete, I just see that others have chosen a different path, allowing themselves to believe, and that that is valid, just as my philosophical makeup is valid.
From my point of view, only a single person can be religious/spiritual. Once groups are formed, then religion becomes political. This does not negate the religious/spiritual element, and of course people have the natural right to form groups, this is a good thing, while bearing in mind that any political group has the potential for unwanted coercion. Maybe this could be a reason why some react negatively to some religious systems. I choose not to join, not out of fear, disgust or because I desire a feeling of superiority, but because as stated above, it would be false.
I maintain the viewpoint that there is room for all of us, we should respect each other as the default, and above all, recognizing that honoring this wonderful existence that we all take part in is very, very important. There is common ground.
Frank, I love you. But it’s not gay.
Someone mentioned an elephant in the driveway – it’s taken logical scientists only several thousand years to confirm elephants actually have self-awareness. I could have told them that as a toddler. I must be BRILLIANT! But wait, I still pray and like to think there is something “bigger” than mankind – so I guess I’m crazy brilliant.
And so many doctors and scientists pray too – weird, huh?
Science, while quite helpful, is proven wrong every day – and the Bible may simply be the writings of men, but it seems with good intentions for the most part and some of the insight could have divine intervention – it contains some pretty valuable information for it’s time.
Not all conservatives are Christians but some may choose to believe in a higher power than our own. I think it would be truly insane to think that simplistic humans know all the answers.
#39 – I agree concerning David S. Peace really is the last thing he has on his mind.
Homero believes that religious belief is an exercise in ego-gratification. Interesting definition, if you ask me. Belief in God requires me to abase myself, to kneel down before an infinitely greater Being and acknowledge my fundamental unworthiness.
Does that sound like an ego stroke to you?
Atheists, however, have a supreme being that does indeed pet their personal egos. If there is nothing greater in the universe, than the supreme being must be…ME! Talk about an ego boost! Wow! I may be a meaningless sack of animated meat, raised from the slime for no purpose whatsoever, but at least I am AS GOOD AS IF GETS! YIPPEEEEEEEEEEE!
Sorry, it is a rare theist indeed who would be willing to place himself on that kind of pedestal.
Interesting thread. Seems like everyone overlooked the description of the author in the introduction: “writes political humor.” Athor indeed.
That said, there are some good thoughts contained above. However, let us not forget that we still have the denizens of the religious right with us, and they spare no effort to try and cram their particular views down the throats of all citizens. Christian prayer in public schools (written of course by them); anti-non believers; anti-birth control; anti-sex education; the list goes on & on.
I firmly believe that the religious right is the greatest threat to freedom and liberty as we know it. Forget about Obama and his alleged socialism for a moment and try to picture what the USA looks like with the American taliban & theocrats in control. It ain’t pretty.
That doesn’t prove diddly. And Smolin is promoting his own crackpot faith-based LQG theory.
The fact that science is stuck doesn’t mean it’s wrong. It just means it’s stuck. And while it’s pretty obvious that we can’t build machines to verify string theory, it’s possible that there are traces of evidence from the big bang that will do it. Proof of string theory isn’t foreclosed; it’s just beyond our reach for now.
The god of the atheists has not conceived humor, just yet.
People claim to reject God’s existence because it is “not scientific” or “because there is no proof.” The true reason is that once they admit that there is a God, they also must realize that they are responsible to God and in need of forgiveness from Him (Romans 3:23, 6:23).
If God exists, then we are accountable to Him for our actions. If God does not exist, then we can do whatever we want without having to worry about God judging us. That is why many of those who deny the existence of God cling strongly to the theory of naturalistic evolution—it gives them an alternative to believing in a Creator God. God exists and ultimately everyone knows that He exists. The very fact that some attempt so aggressively to disprove His existence is in fact an argument for His existence.
None of these arguments can persuade anyone who refuses to acknowledge what is already obvious. In the end, God’s existence must be accepted by faith (Hebrews 11:6). Faith in God is not a blind leap into the dark; it is safe step into a well-lit room where the vast majority of people are already standing.
The amusing thing about religion is, it’s in the rules that you must “believe”, therefore it’s against the rules that you can “know” anything. If you know, there’s no faith involved.
Yet they have the audacity to call you wrong if you don’t believe what they do.
Me, I don’t know. But I admit it.
I have a problem with all these theories. They usually start from nothing, which is impossible. You can’t get something/anything from nothing. Even God’s existence required that something came before. Omnipotent or not, and disregarding any temporal existence, nothing creates nothing. So something has always existed.
This is the type of 1950′s thinking that will kill us as conservatives. We trust science in so many areas of our life, yet when it comes to our origins, many people make every effort to refute overwhelming evidence.
I too can understand and be fine with atheists (actually, I think the correct word here would be agnostics) who just see no reason for them to believe in God, but are live and let live about it. I can’t understand the rabid religion-hating ones. They are as deity-obsessed as the most devout catholic, and spend as much time on religion. Seems odd to me. Kind of like the girl who says she can’t stand her ex and is SO over him, but calls him 50 times a day to hang up on him and wants to know everything he’s up to.
I have no problem reconciling God and evolution. Who is to say what a “day” was to God? I also have no problem reconciling all the various religions and God. Religion is man, attempting to explain God. There are various theories. Most every religion-even the ones with many many Gods-have one God above the other Gods. The Aztecs, for example, had lots of gods, but each nation had one it held supreme. Everyone has always recognized there has to be one creator over all this.
As for the Bible and all it’s “arcane” laws on food and clothing etc etc: many of those were for health reasons back then in times of lower sanitation. Even the prohibition on promiscuous and gay sex-it spreads disease. Disease they couldn’t cure, that could decimate populations. It was common sense attempting to improve lives.
I do have a problem believing there was nothing, then that nothing exploded, and now here we are. We have no proof of that-believing in it is no different a leap of faith than believing in God.
What a bunch of BS !!!!!
46 AB
where is the EGO
one needs a big BIG ego to believe that life is created so he can have a swell time in the “afterlife”
I don’t suffer from any illusion such as you state. I am not putting myself ahead of anyone. and I do not put anyone ahead of me. you are putting your religious beliefs as a moral authority to belittle me and others who chose not to believe in what is (to someone who can step back from the issue and be objective) frankly UNBELIEVEABLE.
the abasing of oneself is just folly …I don’t know if you are stupid or not, so I wont call you stupid. abase away ..enjoy.
have you ever met this being (god) that you abase yourself too. and why is he/it/she “the” god and not one of the other “the” god.
I understand the need of humans to strive to assign purpose to their lives ….but why make it all up.
I have no problem with …”I don’t know” but to apostate oneself to some made up “crap” (for lack of a better term).
that is no different than a marxist imprisoning perceived enemies of the state.
I will take it further …separate church and state ! the republicans can be conservatives without dragging the imaginary friend into it. the founding fathers of the USA knew this …they “believed” but left it at the door.
conservativs make themselves easy to attack by progressives because all in all you cannot prove there is a god. in fact all things point to there isn’t. …or he has a real sick sense of humour.
again not meaning to offend but I have not seen any argument here or elsewhere to prove there is a god. the fact that all cannot at this time be proven with our understanding of science does NOT prove there is a god. (I know it doesn’t prove there isn’t one, incidently I do not say there cann’t be a god but that I don’t believe there is a god, believers cannot say that. they have too much invested in their belief.)
circular logic or unexplainable things are not proof of anything other then our limited understanding.
“SwampWillow:
Personally…I’m a faith-follower…and I most certainly believe in evolution. So I have atheists who despise me and religious fundies who despise me…best of both worlds!”
You and I, as a conservative atheist, have opposing views on religion but similar beliefs on evolution. That gets me despised by exactly the same people as you, and yes it is the best of both worlds isn’t it? Unlike the left, I am not intolerant of religion and believe that most of them (except Islam) have over time been a force for good.
“antaine:
@Like you, I see no complications between an allegorical interpretation of Genesis (basically, “Intelligent Design”) and whatever theories sciences has/does/will gleen from observation.”
So-called “Intelligent Design” is nothing more than a Trojan horse to get full-on “Young Earth Creationism” (the belief that the universe is no more than 10,000 years old) taught as SCIENCE in public schools. The Discovery Institute back in 1999 produced a White Paper called the “Wedge Strategy” about their 20 year plan to get creationism accepted as “science”. When creationism was thoroughly discredited by their own ridiculous “theories” about the Flood and the 6 day creation, they used “Word Replace” to change all the references to “creationism” in their Wedge Strategy paper to “Intelligent Design”. Now that ID has been pretty much debunked, even they don’t use the term anymore and have switched to “Teach the Controversy”, again designed for nothing more than getting the creationist camel’s nose into the tent of public school education.
A few years ago, Michael Behe, one of the heroes of Intelligent Design, was forced to admit, under oath in a case about teaching ID as science, that there was NO RESEARCH whatsoever that has been done to prove ID, as in none, zero, zilch, zip, nada. Despite generous research grants avaible from the Discovery Institute for many years, they have had also ZERO applicants for them. Why?
Because all ID does is point to breaks in the knowledge that we understandably have about things that have occurred in the last 13 billion years and billions of light years away and say “gee, we can’t understand how something like this or that could have happened, therefore the only possible explanation is that goddidit”. This is known as Argument from Ignorance.
Like this sophomoric article, they also deliberatly conflate the “origin of life” (abiogenesis) with “evolution”, which specifically is only about how life evolves over time, not how it started. They’ll even insist that “evolution” can’t prove that light wasn’t a million times faster 10,000 years ago, which is one way they explain how we can see the light that left a galaxy a billion light years away. The other way is even more ludicrous, that God created the universe in its present size all at once, and also created the light from those 70 SEXTILLION (7 followed by 22 zeros) stars already in transit to trick us into thinking the universe is billions of years old in order to test our faith.
Duh-uh.
For those of you who are scientifically minded, there is a massive website, enormously well documented that debunks every one of the creationist claims:
http://www.talkorigins.org/
51. Idahoser, 52. eburchelli: I’m more interested in your musings than I am in the other stuff on this thread.
50. Dwoods: Nope. You need to argue with fellow person-of-faith Jennifer Waite #22 and not with “atheists” whom you clearly don’t understand.
If you believe in a creator more powerful than you and you pray to him and have faith in him/her…
Well…
It certainly can’t hurt!
–Especially in this economy and whacked out nutter administration. ;p
53 Stephen in Afganistan
…well put !
“SteveB/Colorado:
I firmly believe that the religious right is the greatest threat to freedom and liberty as we know it. Forget about Obama and his alleged socialism for a moment and try to picture what the USA looks like with the American taliban & theocrats in control. It ain’t pretty.”
Typically dishonest leftist.
Exactly what political direction have all the following threats to freedom and liberty come from?
- mandatory campus speech codes
- reintroduction of the concept of the “Fairness Doctrine” under different names to squelch right wing talk radio
- hate crime legislation (soon to be followed with laws against “offensive speech”)
- attempts to regulate speech on the internet (already proposed as legislation)
- state level “human rights” commisions, modeled after the the kangaroo commissions in Canada as a means to punish anyone against the liberal, gay and Muslim agendas
- creation of over thirty “czars” to oversee huge swaths of American commerce and culture, all of them not subject to Senate confirmation and unaccountable
- all anti-2nd Amendment legislation at all levels
- etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, ad infinitum, ad nauseum
I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t even count and I’ll even give you some hints – it’s not coming from either the right or the Christians
Yeah, those atheists! We hate’em! And there are a lot of us!
“Fools are the majority in every town.” Mark Twain
I’m with Swampwillow too. I was taught evolution in Catholic school and have never had an issue with it. I consider myself both a believer and pro-science.
To Geokstr:
*High Five!* fellow ‘conservative’!
I believe (there’s that word again) that everyone can believe as they want…respect each other…quit belittling the ‘opposite’ side.
Especially for the ‘militant’ atheists who get so bent out of shape when ‘attacking’ militant ‘faithers’. Don’t the atheists realize that they’re just reinforcing religious beliefs…their Bible says they will be persecuted for believing in God. So in effect, those kinds of atheists are PROVING the beliefs of those Christians or Jews or whomever.
No matter what side of the ‘God’ issue you are on, you shouldn’t get so upset when you can’t change the other side’s mind and turn to mindless, childish belittling. Lead a good life as an example of whatever it is you believe in. Nothing pisses your ‘enemy’ off more than your not finding them worthy of confrontation.
This article is an excellent way to alienate atheist conservatives (who, believe it or not, exist). Nicely done, Mr. Fleming. That GOP tent just keeps getting smaller and smaller…
One thing is for sure: we are all going to find out in the end whether there is a God or not.
Unlike the left, I am not intolerant of religion…
Did you know that most people on “the left”, as it seems to be commonly defined here (Democrats, anybody who voted for Obama), are religious? According to the 2007 Pew survey, only 16.1% of Americans identify themselves as having “no religion.” Even if you assume every single one of those 16.1% is “on the left” (which, as we see on this thread, isn’t true), then it is still less than half of “the left.”
And just because someone identifies as having “no religion” does not mean they are intolerant of religion. Just as I’m sure all the religious folks here are very tolerant of atheists.
I don’t hate on athiests. I used to be one…or an ‘agnostic’…whatever.
I’m not your typical ‘believer’ either though [for that matter]. I don’t believe in ‘church’ in order for me to have a personal relationship with GOD. I don’t have a ‘religion’ by which I go by. I think ‘church’ is great for people who want/need that though. My daughter is attending a church even though she was never brought up that way. It has helped her grow as a person and I’m happy for her in that regard.
But, as usual, I digress.
Blarty: Please…show us evidence of how atheist conservatives were alienated? If anything, this shows conservative atheists that others like them exist.
Funniest thing in this site in many a day. As a reward, Frank, I will tell you Kenneth’s frequency: 1.21 GigaHertz.
Thanks again!
Blarty: Please…show us evidence of how atheist conservatives were alienated?
I didn’t say any were alienated, simply that this kind of smug condescension is an excellent way to do it.
So this columnist invented Athor to belittle those who question the God Concept? I am proud, proud to be called an atheist! Once this country is cleared of this mythological belief, the sooner we can get a handle on the issues that really matter to humanity. Hey look, if you need a crutch go to your local medical store. I guess ignorance truly is bliss for those that lack intellect.
I guess this “humor” is above the heads of those Catholics, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, etc. that have no problem with the science behind the latest understanding of the Big Bang and Evolution. I guess the mocking tone of this article is part of the reason scientists are abandoning the conservative/GOP platform.
eburchelli: You may have it wrong. Nothing has always existed.
“67. Blarty Blarckleblart:
Did you know that most people on “the left”, as it seems to be commonly defined here (Democrats, anybody who voted for Obama), are religious? According to the 2007 Pew survey, only 16.1% of Americans identify themselves as having “no religion.” Even if you assume every single one of those 16.1% is “on the left” (which, as we see on this thread, isn’t true), then it is still less than half of “the left.”
And just because someone identifies as having “no religion” does not mean they are intolerant of religion. Just as I’m sure all the religious folks here are very tolerant of atheists.”
Blacky Blanketyblank, or Binkyberty (or whatever):
Nice try, no ceegar.
I said the LEFT – not everyone who voted for Obama. There are Democrats, there are liberals, and then there’s you and the rest of the hard-core leftists.
One of Obama’s most loyal voter groups is actually very conservative when you examine their actual culture and religious beliefs, but they’ve been hoodwinked by race-mongers like Wright, Sharpton, Jackson and even The Won. They’ve been lied to. They haven’t been told that it was really the Democrats who instituted and perpetuated Jim Crow laws, who did the lynchings in the South, and who were against most of the civil rights legislation in the last 150 years.
In fact, the leftists you feel at home with are probably far less numerous than that 16%, you’ve just learned how to combine your own “religious” belief that the ends (power) justify the means (lying, smearing, cheating, intimidating) with Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals into your tactics, making you much more effective at spreading your propaganda than we are at getting the truth out.
Which is probably why you’re here when you should be spewing your leftwing diatribes on DKos, HuffPo or DU, where you’re actually wanted. I think you should understand, though, that a lot of us on the right first learned about Alinsky in the last year or so when researching your Dear Leader’s real beliefs and methods. We are now going to start using the Rules too, and I don’t think you’re going to like it when we do.
As they say in the country of my ancestors – tough sh*tski.
I don’t understand … is the ultra-conservative right wing actively trying to alienate the last 5 intelligent people it has left? Because that’s what it appears to be doing by publishing crappy articles like this that mock reason. Apparently the conservative taliban will not be happy until it’s distilled its membership down to a tribe of science-hating, book burning creationists.
God is that thing that is capable of creating something from nothing. Everything else said about God is mythology.
With the exception of the unnecessarily insulting adjectives used to describe Christians as apparently being completely without intellect, this is fantastically entertaining! I am curious, though: where do you get the idea that science and logic are incompatible with basic Christianity? Granted, it’s an unfortunately common belief, but it is highly inaccurate. I will be the first to admit that there are ignorant Christians – just as there are ignorant atheists and Buddhists and short people and people with blue eyes, etc. (For any missing my point: humans, being highly and invariably fallible, will have people from all levels of intelligence in just about any grouping.) But there are those of us who believe in the Christian God and in Christ’s salvation and in logic and in science all at the same time. In fact, for me, the more I learn about the pure logic behind the complexities of everything on this planet the stronger is my belief in an intelligent design – not to mention my appreciation of its pure beauty. Science is simply the means by which we continually learn ever more about this fascinating world of ours and subsequently, of course, about its Creator.
I guess all I’m saying is that, while this was a really fun read, maybe it’s not just Christians who need to work on being more tolerant of other people’s beliefs.
Whew…atheists find this belittling, faithers find this belittling…can anybody see the humor here?
Just shows to go ya’, that people will find what they’re looking for, no matter the venue.
TO: geokstr, et al.
RE: SteveB/Colorado
You’re right…..
….he’s ‘projecting’.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[The Truth will out.....]
P.S. The REAL ‘theocrats’ are the Muslims, amongst which Obama admitted to being…..via a CLASSIC Freudian slip-up talking the Stephanopolis before the General Election….
Strawman:
What do you mean by Faith based Loop Quantum Gravity Theory? Are you claiming that Smolin is some sort of creationist or are you merely stating that LQG doesn’t generate testable hypotheses?
I think you are engaged in an act of self-creation here. My point has never been whether String Theory or LQG or any other particular theory in physics is true or not. I have been arguing that physical theory seems to have reached the point of becoming axiomatic. I am arguing that not only are we all creationists now but perhaps then in the realm of physics and cosmology that we are all faith based now.
The religion of science claims that all is knowable and that the ultimate knowledge is within out grasp. We know this is a fallacy. As Steven Weinberg points out in the ”
First Three Minutes” the initial conditions of what ever caused the Big Bang to go off were destroyed during the event. The ultimate cause has been lost to us forever. The Big Bang is an Axiomatic, i.e., a faith based event so unless you want to reject the theory then you have taken the creation of the universe on faith.
further to what Chuck wrote ….. obuma was born muslim since it is automatic if the father is muslim.
I guess he could become an apostate and renounce the religion …something I am not aware he has done.
It was just supposed to be funny, without any actual opinions on science or religion in it.
LOL!
Athor can’t be the god of logic and reason as displayed by the very first line of “his” “word”, “In the beginning, there was nothing.”
It’s COMPLETELY illogical and unreasonble to even SUGGEST something came from nothing.
Athor must be the god of dumbasses.
Thank you LT.
From ample acquaintance with “atheists” I can indeed attest that “Athor’s” greatest gift to his followers seems to be “a feeling of superiority” … a smug, shallow, self congratulating sense of superiority. Ample acquaintance with “atheists” however has sadly provided little evidence of devotion to logic, rational thought, open mindedness, knowledge of actual Christian doctrine and practice beyond Sunday School(if that), or even civil tolerance for those with whom they disagree on matters of faith.
*
*
*
BTW: Mr. Flemming you might be amused to your compare your take on Creation to that of physicist, Dr. Gerald Schroeder, in “Genesis and the Big Bang: The Discovery Of Harmony Between Modern Science And The Bible”
… and thanks for the distraction from worries about mounting US deficits.
There is plenty of evidence that the “Big Bang” theory is correct. I know of no one who disputes it, but there is a lot of ignorance about it.
Its proper name is the Ovoid theory. Some journalist re-named it to sell papers or magazines. Had to sensationalize it. Idiot. There’s no sound in space. It should’ve been re-named the Big Flash theory. Big Flash… as in “Let there be Light!” Then people wouldn’t be so confused.
The proof of God is in the six “days” (meaning ages or eras) of Genesis. It is an essentially correct account of the formation of the universe. There lies the miracle. See, either some primitive came up with the Big Flash theory on his own, or Someone told him. God is the lesser miracle in this case. Either that, or the Fermi Paradox is answered, and there is other life out there. But, you will not get me to believe some primitive came up with this accurate theory. It is far easier to believe in God.
One final thought: God has revealed just enough of Himself to engender faith in Him. He wants us to choose His ways. To actually know God is to lose one’s free will. Perhaps even God needs a challenge… thus, free will.
Hey look, if you need a crutch go to your local medical store.
Rick Black Sr.: People who are truly trying to live Christian lives are doing a very difficult thing. Christianity sets a very high bar and nobody can live it perfectly.
I could just as easily say that people are atheists because they all wish to live selfishly, with no guilt for their bad behavior, or that all atheists have the morals of Pol Pot.
Except that isn’t true. I understand that there are many good people who do not believe in a God and that it is their right not to believe. But atheists like you feel free to paint a childish picture of beliefs you do not share and don’t make the slightest attempt to understand – you’re every bit as irritating and intolerant as any loud-mouthed TV preacher.
BTW, here’s a paradox: The birth rate among the religious, in any country, is significantly higher than the birth rate among atheists. Contrast, say, the secularists of Manhattan and Paris with the population of Salt Lake City: who’s doing a better job of passing their DNA along? Ironically, atheism does not appear to be a winning strategy from the evolutionary POV.
Only among the Trekkies. Real scientists don’t believe that. There are scientists, and then there are scientific pom-pom girls. It’s the scientific pom-pom girls who are claiming that everything is known, the debate’s over, etc. It doesn’t really matter whether we’re talking about the TOE or AGW, or evolution, or anything else. If you think it’s settled, you don’t understand it.
I’m reminded of Feynman’s quip, that he could safely say that no one understands quantum mechanics. There’s a corollary to wit, if you think you understand it, you don’t. I think it’s safe to say that if anyone is claiming that the science is settled on anything, that person doesn’t understand science.
And as far as quoting Weinberg goes, you’re making that exact same mistake of deferring to authority. Weinberg believes that. He’s a big, important respected Nobel laureate. No disrespect to him whatsoever, but that’s just his opinion, not rigorous physics.
This is the point that seems to be lost on the public; even the Weinbergs and Hawkings’ are just thinking out loud. Their musings are just that, not the final word. And they’ll be the first to admit it.
I would suggest one small change. Instead of using the long form:
three trillion, six hundred one billion, three hundred sixty-three million, eight hundred seventy-two thousand, nine hundred third day.
Use X, X+1, X+2, etc.
Would’ve been funnier if you’d have found a way to work in a link to the atheist religious service, Frank.
So, the major difference between my God and Athor is that mine is loving and Athor is a bit of an arrogant a$$.
The truth is knowable without blind faith, but it can not be realised without first knowing what you are, because you are made of the stuff of the universe. The starting point in your search for understanding is to break down the self into it’s seperate parts, and then those parts into thier parts and so on, analyzing each part until it cant be broken down further and then defining each fundamental part. In doing this you will begin your search for understanding. It is not a quick process.
BTW: Mr. Rick Black, Sr.
If one understands the anthropology behind how religion and myth are fabricate out of human interaction with a human scapegoat (a murder victim), one will likely find that ALL religion is found upon myth. Anthropologically however Christian should not exist because it is in substance an anti-religion of sorts because it tells an accurate story about a actual murder of a scapegoat without hiding the fact that the scapegoat was innocent.
84. Frank J.,
Franky baby, don’t play innocent.
he-he
88. Donna V.:
“BTW, here’s a paradox: The birth rate among the religious, in any country, is significantly higher than the birth rate among atheists. Contrast, say, the secularists of Manhattan and Paris with the population of Salt Lake City: who’s doing a better job of passing their DNA along? Ironically, atheism does not appear to be a winning strategy from the evolutionary POV.”
Don’t forget the hard-line Islamists. *shiver*
Here I’d thought building straw men for an ignorant echo chamber was something they only did on Democrat Underground.
For the scientifically-inclined, that first organism is a big problem for atheists. Try to build a functional protein molecule at random with 100 amino acids in the right order, while fighting the Law of Entropy. With 21 amino acids that can be either left- or right-handed (and only left-handed ones in proteins), the probability would be 1 chance in 2×10^162 (2 with 162 zeroes after it).
Assume the Earth covered with water to a depth of 1 km, that’s 5.1×10^17 cubic meters. Assume 100 moles of each amino acid per cubic meter, that’s 6×10^25 molecules/m3, or 3.1×10^43 molecules of each amino acid, or 1.3×10^45 total molecules of all amino acids. Assume 10^14 collisions per second (a reasonable number in liquids) for 5 billion years, or 1.58×10^17 seconds. This results in a total of 2.1×10^76 collisions, meaning that the chance of getting one protein molecule in the right order in 5 billion years would be 2.1×10^76 / 2×10^162 or 1 chance in 10^86, or 1 chance in 100 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion.
Extremely unlikely, to say the least, and this doesn’t account for the chances of randomly making a DNA molecule with its bases in the right order, not to mention the rest of a living cell.
Question for atheists: Who, or what, undid the Law of Entropy, and designed the program in the distant past to form the first living cell? Science alone doesn’t have an answer for that.
OR….In the beginning, God created…
You just saved time reading.
TO: Frank J.
RE: Heh
Funny. Isn’t it….
…the mysterious ways in which God works.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[And you never know who God is gonna use..... -- Who God Is Going To Use, Rich Mullins]
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
Keep laughing, but remember…”Every knee shall bow and profess Jesus Christ as Lord.” That means you. Get ready.
Darius,
Bad bet. What could you possibly gain by betting you have no eternal soul? A sense of intellectual superiority?
#50 Dwoods,
Great post. Every time I see the Sun set, or a beautiful tree, I think G-d is an Artist, and wants to be loved.
But, I will not cut your head off for not believing as I do.
homero,
You know NOTHING of faith. True faith is backed up by evidence and testimony. The eye witnesses of Christ’s life have given us a report. You have rejected it out of hand. I have studied it and concluded Christ’s testimony reported by the Apostles is The Truth.
When you find yourself in The Great Tribulation and all the signs predicted are taking place around you …. try and repent. Believe me it beats crawling into a hole and calling the rocks to fall on you.
Steve Z:
Please take the time to educate yourself on what the Second Law of Thermodynamics actually says before trying to apply it to anything. If you don’t you risk making a fool of yourself in front of people who actually do understand what you’re attempting to talk about.
I heard somewhere Jesus rode a T-Rex to the crucifixtion.
According to a possible reading of ancient commentators’ description of God and nature, the world may be simultaneously young and old.
by Dr. Gerald Schroeder
One of the most obvious perceived contradictions between Torah and science is the age of the universe. Is it billions of years old, like scientific data, or is it thousands of years, like Biblical data? When we add up the generations of the Bible, we come to 5700-plus years. Whereas, data from the Hubbell telescope or from the land based telescopes in Hawaii, indicate the age at about 15 billion years.
Let me clarify right at the start. The world may be only some 6000 years old. God could have put the fossils in the ground and juggled the light arriving from distant galaxies to make the world appear to be billions of years old. There is absolutely no way to disprove this claim. God being infinite could have made the world that way. There is another possible approach that also agrees with the ancient commentators’ description of God and nature. The world may be young and old simultaneously. In the following I consider this latter option.
In trying to resolve this apparent conflict, it’s interesting to look historically at trends in knowledge, because absolute proofs are not forthcoming. But what is available is to look at how science has changed its picture of the world, relative to the unchanging picture of the Torah. (I refuse to use modern Biblical commentary because it already knows modern science, and is always influenced by that knowledge. The trend becomes to bend the Bible to match the science.)
So the only data I use as far as Biblical commentary goes is ancient commentary. That means the text of the Bible itself (3300 years ago), the translation of the Torah into Aramaic by Onkelos (100 CE), the Talmud (redacted about the year 500 CE), and the three major Torah commentators. There are many, many commentators, but at the top of the mountain there are three, accepted by all: Rashi (11th century France), who brings the straight understanding of the text, Maimonides (12th century Egypt), who handles the philosophical concepts, and then Nachmanides (13th century Spain), the earliest of the Kabbalists.
This ancient commentary was finalized long before Hubbell was a gleam in his great-grandparent’s eye. So there’s no possibility of Hubbell or any other modern scientific data influencing these concepts.
A universe with a beginning.
In 1959, a survey was taken of leading American scientists. Among the many questions asked was, “What is your concept of the age of the universe?” Now, in 1959, astronomy was popular, but cosmology — the deep physics of understanding the universe — was just developing. The response to that survey was recently republished in Scientific American — the most widely read science journal in the world. Two-thirds of the scientists gave the same answer: “Beginning? There was no beginning. Aristotle and Plato taught us 2400 years ago that the universe is eternal. Oh, we know the Bible says ‘In the beginning.’ That’s a nice story, but we sophisticates know better. There was no beginning.”
After 3000 years of arguing, science has come to agree with the Torah.That was 1959. In 1965, Penzias and Wilson discovered the echo of the Big Bang in the black of the sky at night, and the world paradigm changed from a universe that was eternal to a universe that had a beginning. After 3000 years of arguing, science has come to agree with the Torah.
It all starts from Rosh Hashana.
How long ago did the “beginning” occur? Was it, as the Bible might imply, 5700-plus years, or was it the 15 billions of years that’s accepted by the scientific community?
The first thing we have to understand is the origin of the Biblical calendar. The Jewish year is figured by adding up the generations since Adam. Additionally, there are six days leading up to the creation to Adam. These six days are significant as well.
Now where do we make the zero point? On Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, upon blowing the shofar, the following sentence is said: “Hayom Harat Olam — today is the birthday of the world.”
This verse might imply that Rosh Hashana commemorates the creation of the universe. But it doesn’t. Rosh Hashana commemorate the creation of the Neshama, the soul of human life. We start counting our 5700-plus years from the creation of the soul of Adam.
We have a clock that begins with Adam, and the six days are separate from this clock. The Bible has two clocks.
That might seem like a modern rationalization, if it were not for the fact that Talmudic commentaries 1500 years ago, brings this information. In the Midrash (Vayikra Rabba 29:1), an expansion of the Talmud, all the Sages agree that Rosh Hashana commemorates the soul of Adam, and that the Six Days of Genesis are separate.
Why were the Six Days taken out of the calendar? Because time is described differently in those Six Days of Genesis. “There was evening and morning” is an exotic, bizarre, unusual way of describing time.
Once you come from Adam, the flow of time is totally in human terms. Adam and Eve live 130 years before having children! Seth lives 105 years before having children, etc. From Adam forward, the flow of time is totally human in concept. But prior to that time, it’s an abstract concept: “Evening and morning.” It’s as if you’re looking down on events from a viewpoint that is not intimately related to them.
Looking deeper into the text.
In trying to understand the flow of time here, you have to remember that the entire Six Days is described in 31 sentences. The Six Days of Genesis, which have given people so many headaches in trying to understand science vis-a-vis the Bible, are confined to 31 sentences! At MIT, in the Hayden library, we had about 50,000 books that deal with the development of the universe: cosmology, chemistry, thermodynamics, paleontology, archaeology, the high-energy physics of creation. At Harvard, at the Weidner library, they probably have 200,000 books on these same topics. The Bible gives us 31 sentences. Don’t expect that by a simple reading of those sentences you’ll know every detail that is held within the text. It’s obvious that we have to dig deeper to get the information out.
The idea of having to dig deeper is not a rationalization. The Talmud (Chagiga, ch. 2) tells us that from the opening sentence of the Bible, through the beginning of Chapter Two, the entire text is given in parable form, a poem with a text and a subtext. Now, again, put yourself into the mindset of 1500 years ago, the time of the Talmud. Why would the Talmud think it was parable? You think that 1500 years ago they thought that God couldn’t make it all in 6 days? It was a problem for them? We have a problem today with cosmology and scientific data. But 1500 years ago, what’s the problem with 6 days for an infinitely powerful God? No problem.
So when the Sages excluded these six days from the calendar, and said that the entire text is parable, it wasn’t because they were trying to apologize away what they’d seen in the local museum. There was no local museum. The fact is that a close reading of the text makes it clear that there’s information hidden and folded into layers below the surface.
The idea of looking for a deeper meaning in Torah is no different than looking for deeper meaning in science. Just as we look for the deeper readings in science to learn the working of nature, so too we need to look for the deeper readings in Torah. King Solomon in Proverbs 25:11 alluded to this. “A word well spoken is like apples of Gold in a silver dish.” Maimonides in The Guide for the Perplexed interprets this proverb: The silver dish is the literal text of the Torah, as seen from a distance. The apples of gold are the secrets held within the silver dish of the Torah Text. Thousands of years ago we learned that there are subtleties in the Text that expand the meaning way beyond its simple reading. It’s those subtleties I want to see.
Natural history and human history.
There are early Jewish sources that tell us that the Bible’s calendar is in two-parts (even predating Leviticus Rabba which goes back almost 1500 years and says it explicitly). In the closing speech that Moses makes to the people, he says if you want to see the fingerprint of God in the universe, “consider the days of old, the years of the many generations” (Deut. 32:7) Nachmanides, in the name of Kabbalah, says, “Why does Moses break the calendar into two parts — ‘The days of old, and the years of the many generations?’ Because, ‘Consider the days of old’ is the Six Days of Genesis. ‘The years of the many generations’ is all the time from Adam forward.”
Moses says you can see God’s fingerprint on the universe in one of two ways. Look at the phenomenon of the Six Days, and the development of life in the universe which is mind-boggling. Or if that doesn’t impress you, then just consider society from Adam forward — the phenomenon of human history. Either way, you will find the imprint of God.
I recently met in Jerusalem with Professor Leon Lederman, Nobel Prize winning physicist. We were talking science, and as the conversation went on, I said, “What about spirituality, Leon?” And he said to me, “Schroeder, I’ll talk science with you, but as far as spirituality, speak to the people across the street, the theologians.” But then he continued, and he said, “But I do find something spooky about the people of Israel coming back to the Land of Israel.”
Interesting. The first part of Moses’ statement, “Consider the days of old” – about the Six Days of Genesis – that didn’t impress Prof. Lederman. But the “Years of the many generations” – human history – that impressed him. Prof. Lederman found nothing spooky about the Eskimos eating fish at the Arctic circle. And he found nothing spooky about Greeks eating Musika in Athens. But he finds something real spooky about Jews eating falafel on Jaffa Street. Because it shouldn’t have happened. It doesn’t make sense historically that the Jews would come back to the Land of Israel. Yet that’s what happened.
And that’s one of the functions of the Jewish People in the world. To act as a demonstration. We just want people in the world to understand that there is some monkey business going on with history that makes it not all just random. That there’s some direction to the flow of history. And the world has seen it through us. It’s not by chance that Israel is on the front page of the New York Times more than anyone else.
What is a “day?”
Let’s jump back to the Six Days of Genesis. First of all, we now know that when the Biblical calendar says 5700-plus years, we must add to that “plus six days.”
A few years ago, I acquired a dinosaur fossil that was dated (by two radioactive decay chains) as 150 million years old. My 7-year-old daughter says, “Abba! Dinosaurs? How can there be dinosaurs 150 million years ago, when my Bible teacher says the world isn’t even 6000 years old?” So I told her to look in Psalms 90:4. There, you’ll find something quite amazing. King David says, “One thousand years in Your (God’s) sight are like a day that passes, a watch in the night.” Perhaps time is different from the perspective of King David, than it is from the perspective of the Creator. Perhaps time is different.
The Talmud (Chagiga, ch. 2), in trying to understand the subtleties of Torah, analyzes the word “choshech.” When the word “choshech” appears in Genesis 1:2, the Talmud explains that it means black fire, black energy, a kind of energy that is so powerful you can’t even see it. Two verses later, in Genesis 1:4, the Talmud explains that the same word — “choshech” — means darkness, i.e. the absence of light.
Other words as well are not to be understood by their common definitions. For example, “mayim” typically means water. But Maimonides says that in the original statements of creation, the word “mayim” may also mean the building blocks of the universe.
Another example is Genesis 1:5, which says, “There is evening and morning, Day One.” That is the first time that a day is quantified: evening and morning. Nachmanides discusses the meaning of evening and morning. Does it mean sunset and sunrise? It would certainly seem to.
But Nachmanides points out a problem with that. The text says “there was evening and morning Day One… evening and morning a second day… evening and morning a third day.” Then on the fourth day, the sun is mentioned. Nachmanides says that any intelligent reader can see an obvious problem. How do we have a concept of evening and morning for the first three days if the sun is only mentioned on Day Four? There is a purpose for the sun appearing only on Day Four, so that as time goes by and people understand more about the universe, you can dig deeper into the text.
Nachmanides says the text uses the words “Vayehi Erev” — but it doesn’t mean “there was evening.” He explains that the Hebrew letters Ayin, Resh, Bet — the root of “erev” — is chaos. Mixture, disorder. That’s why evening is called “erev”, because when the sun goes down, vision becomes blurry. The literal meaning is “there was disorder.” The Torah’s word for “morning” — “boker” — is the absolute opposite. When the sun rises, the world becomes “bikoret”, orderly, able to be discerned. That’s why the sun needn’t be mentioned until Day Four. Because from erev to boker is a flow from disorder to order, from chaos to cosmos. That’s something any scientist will testify never happens in an unguided system. Order never arises from disorder spontaneously and remains orderly. Order always degrades to chaos unless the environment recognizes the order and locks it in to preserve it. There must be a guide to the system. That’s an unequivocal statement.
The Torah wants us to be amazed by this flow, starting from a chaotic plasma and ending up with a symphony of life. Day-by-day the world progresses to higher and higher levels. Order out of disorder. It’s pure thermodynamics. And it’s stated in terminology of 3000 years ago.
The creation of time.
Each day of creation is numbered. Yet there is discontinuity in the way the days are numbered. The verse says: “There is evening and morning, Day One.” But the second day doesn’t say “evening and morning, Day Two.” Rather, it says “evening and morning, a second day.” And the Torah continues with this pattern: “Evening and morning, a third day… a fourth day… a fifth day… the sixth day.” Only on the first day does the text use a different form: not “first day,” but “Day One” (“Yom Echad”). Many English translations make the mistake of writing “a first day.” That’s because editors want things to be nice and consistent. But they throw out the cosmic message in the text! Because there is a qualitative difference, as Nachmanides says, between “one” and “first.” One is absolute; first is comparative.
Nachmanides explains that on Day One, time was created. That’s a phenomenal insight. Time was created. You can’t grab time. You don’t even see it. You can see space, you can see matter, you can feel energy, you can see light energy. I understand a creation there. But the creation of time? Eight hundred years ago, Nachmanides attained this insight from the Torah’s use of the phrase, “Day One.” And that’s exactly what Einstein taught us in the Laws of Relativity: that there was a creation, not just of space and matter, but of time itself.
Einstein’s Law of Relativity.
Looking back in time, a scientist will view the universe as being 15 billion years old. But what is the Bible’s view of time? Maybe it sees time differently. And that makes a big difference. Albert Einstein taught us that Big Bang cosmology brings not just space and matter into existence, but that time is part of the nitty gritty. Time is a dimension. Time is affected by your view of time. How you see time depends on where you’re viewing it. A minute on the moon goes faster than a minute on the Earth. A minute on the sun goes slower. Time on the sun is actually stretched out so that if you could put a clock on the sun, it would tick more slowly. It’s a small difference, but it’s measurable and measured.
The flow of time varies one location to another location. Hence the term: the law of relativity.If you could ripen oranges on the Sun, they would take longer to ripen. Why? Because time goes more slowly. Would you feel it going more slowly? No, because your biology would be part of the system. If you were living on the Sun, your heart would beat more slowly. Wherever you are, your biology is in synch with the local time. And a minute or an hour where ever you are is exactly a minute or an hour.
If you could look from one system to another, you would see time very differently. Because depending on factors like gravity and velocity, you will perceive time in a way that is very different. The flow of time varies one location to another location. Hence the term: the law of relativity.
Here’s an example: One evening we were sitting around the dinner table, and my 11-year-old daughter asked, “How you could have dinosaurs? How you could have billions of years scientifically – and thousands of years Biblically at the same time? So I told her to imagine a planet where time is so stretched out that while we live out two years on Earth, only three minutes will go by on that planet. Now, those places actually exist, they are observed. It would be hard to live there with their conditions, and you couldn’t get to them either, but in mental experiments you can do it. Two years are going to go by on Earth, three minutes are going to go by on the planet. So my daughter says, “Great! Send me to the planet. I’ll spend three minutes there. I’ll do two years worth of homework. I’ll come back home in three minutes, and no more homework for two years.”
Nice try. Assuming she was age 11 when she left, and her friends were 11. She spends three minutes on the planet and then comes home. (The travel time takes no time.) How old is she when she gets back? Eleven years and 3 minutes. And her friends are 13. Because she lived out 3 minutes while we lived out 2 years. Her friends aged from 11 years to 13 years, while she’s 11 years and 3 minutes.
Had she looked down on Earth from that planet, her perception of Earth time would be that everybody was moving very quickly because in one of her minutes, hundreds of thousands of our minutes would pass. Whereas if we looked up, she’d be moving very slowly.
But which is correct? Is it three years? Or three minutes? The answer is both. They’re both happening at the same time. That’s the legacy of Albert Einstein. It so happens there literally billions of locations in the universe, where if you could put a clock at that location, it would tick so slowly, that from our perspective (if we could last that long) 15 billion years would go by… but the clock at that remote location would tick out six days.
Time travel and the Big Bang.
But how does this help to explain the Bible? Because anyway the Talmud and Rashi and Nahmanides (that is the kabala) all say that Six Days of Genesis were six regular 24-hour periods not longer than our work week!
Let’s look a bit deeper. The classical Jewish sources say that before the beginning, we don’t really know what there is. We can’t tell what predates the universe. The Midrash asks the question: Why does the Bible begin with the letter Beit? Because Beit (which is written like a backwards C) is closed in all directions and only open in the forward direction. Hence we can’t know what comes before — only after. The first letter is a Beit – closed in all directions and only open in the forward direction.
Nachmanides expands the statement. He says that although the days are 24 hours each, they contain “kol yemot ha-olam” — all the ages and all the secrets of the world.
Nachmanides says that before the universe, there was nothing… but then suddenly the entire creation appeared as a minuscule speck. He gives a dimension for the speck: something very tiny like the size of a grain of mustard. And he says that is the only physical creation. There was no other physical creation; all other creations were spiritual. The Nefesh (the soul of animal life) and the Neshama (the soul of human life) are spiritual creations. There’s only one physical creation, and that creation was a tiny speck. The speck is all there was. Anything else was God. In that speck was all the raw material that would be used for making everything else. Nachmanides describes the substance as “dak me’od, ein bo mamash” — very thin, no substance to it. And as this speck expanded out, this substance — so thin that it has no essence — turned into matter as we know it.
Nachmanides further writes: “Misheyesh, yitfos bo zman” — from the moment that matter formed from this substance-less substance, time grabs hold. Not “begins.” Time is created at the beginning. But time “grabs hold.” When matter condenses, congeals, coalesces, out of this substance so thin it has no essence — that’s when the Biblical clock of the six days starts.
Science has shown that there’s only one “substance-less substance” that can change into matter. And that’s energy. Einstein’s famous equation, E=MC2, tells us that energy can change into matter. And once it changes into matter, time grabs hold.
Nachmanides has made a phenomenal statement. I don’t know if he knew the Laws of Relativity. But we know them now. We know that energy — light beams, radio waves, gamma rays, x-rays — all travel at the speed of light, 300 million meters per second. At the speed of light, time does not pass. The universe was aging, but time only grabs hold when matter is present. This moment of time before the clock begins for the Bible, lasted about 1/100,000 of a second. A miniscule time. But in that time, the universe expanded from a tiny speck, to about the size of the Solar System. From that moment on we have matter, and time flows forward. The Biblical clock begins here.
Now the fact that the Bible tells us there is “evening and morning Day One” (and not “a first day”) comes to teach us time from a Biblical perspective. Einstein proved that time varies from place to place in the universe, and that time varies from perspective to perspective in the universe. The Bible says there is “evening and morning Day One”.
Now if the Torah were seeing time from the days of Moses and Mount Sinai — long after Adam — the text would not have written Day One. Because by Sinai, hundreds of thousands of days already passed. There was a lot of time with which to compare Day One. Torah would have said “A First Day.” By the second day of Genesis, the Bible says “a second day,” because there was already the First Day with which to compare it. You could say on the second day, “what happened on the first day.” But as Nahmanides pointed out, you could not say on the first day, “what happened on the first day” because “first” implies comparison — an existing series. And there was no existing series. Day One was all there was.
Even if the Torah was seeing time from Adam, the text would have said “a first day”, because by its own statement there were six days. The Torah says “Day One” because the Torah is looking forward from the beginning. And it says, How old is the universe? Six Days. We’ll just take time up until Adam. Six Days. We look back in time, and say the universe is approximately 15 billion years old. But every scientist knows, that when we say the universe is 15 billion years old, there’s another half of the sentence that we never say. The other half of the sentence is: The universe is 15 billion years old as seen from the time-space coordinates that we exist in on earth. That’s Einstein’s view of relativity. But what would those billions of years be as perceived from near the beginning looking forward?
The key is that the Torah looks forward in time, from very different time-space coordinates, when the universe was small. But since then, the universe has expanded out. Space stretches, and that stretching of space totally changes the perception of time.
Imagine in your mind going back billions of years ago to the beginning of time. Now pretend way back at the beginning of time, when time grabs hold, there’s an intelligent community. (It’s totally fictitious.) Imagine that the intelligent community has a laser, and it’s going to shoot out a blast of light, and every second it’s going to pulse. Every second — pulse. Pulse. Pulse. It shoots the light out, and then billions of years later, way far down the time line, we here on Earth have a big satellite dish, and we receive that pulse of light. And on that pulse of light is imprinted (printing information on light is called fiber optics – sending information by light), “I’m sending you a pulse every second.” And then a second goes by and the next pulse is sent.
Light travels 300 million meters per second. So the two light pulses are separated by 300 million meters at the beginning. Now they travel through space for billions of years, and they’re going to reach the Earth billions of years later. But wait a minute. Is the universe static? No. The universe is expanding. That’s the cosmology of the universe. And that does not mean it’s expanding into an empty space outside the universe. There’s only the universe. There is no space outside the universe. The universe expands by its own space stretching. So as these pulses go through billions of years of traveling, the universe and space are stretching. As space is stretching, what’s happening to these pulses? The space between them is also stretching. So the pulses really get further and further apart.
Billions of years later, when the first pulse arrives, we say, “Wow – a pulse!” And written on it is “I’m sending you a pulse every second.” You call all your friends, and you wait for the next pulse to arrive. Does it arrive another second later? No! A year later? Maybe not. Maybe billions of years later. Because depending on how much time this pulse of light has traveled through space, will determine the amount of stretching of space between the pulses. That’s standard astronomy.
15 billion or six days?
Today, we look back in time. We see 15 billion years. Looking forward from when the universe is very small — billions of times smaller — the Torah says six days. They both may be correct.
What’s exciting about the last few years in cosmology is we now have quantified the data to know the relationship of the “view of time” from the beginning, relative to the “view of time” today. It’s not science fiction any longer. Any one of a dozen physics text books all bring the same number. The general relationship between time near the beginning when stable matter formed from the light (the energy, the electromagnetic radiation) of the creation) and time today is a million million, that is a trillion fold extension. That’s a 1 with 12 zeros after it. It is a unit-less ratio. So when a view from the beginning looking forward says “I’m sending you a pulse every second,” would we see it every second? No. We’d see it every million million seconds. Because that’s the stretching effect of the expansion of the universe. In astronomy, the term is “red shift.” Red shift in observed astronomical data is standard.
The Torah doesn’t say every second, does it? It says Six Days. How would we see those six days? If the Torah says we’re sending information for six days, would we receive that information as six days? No. We would receive that information as six million million days. Because the Torah’s perspective is from the beginning looking forward.
Six million million days is a very interesting number. What would that be in years? Divide by 365 and it comes out to be 16 billion years. Essentially the estimate of the age of the universe. Not a bad guess for 3300 years ago.
The way these two figures match up is extraordinary. I’m not speaking as a theologian; I’m making a scientific claim. I didn’t pull these numbers out of hat. That’s why I led up to the explanation very slowly, so you can follow it step-by-step.
Now we can go one step further. Let’s look at the development of time, day-by-day, based on the expansion factor. Every time the universe doubles, the perception of time is cut in half. Now when the universe was small, it was doubling very rapidly. But as the universe gets bigger, the doubling time gets longer. This rate of expansion is quoted in “The Principles of Physical Cosmology,” a textbook that is used literally around the world.
(In case you want to know, this exponential rate of expansion has a specific number averaged at 10 to the 12th power. That is in fact the temperature of quark confinement, when matter freezes out of the energy: 10.9 times 10 to the 12th power Kelvin degrees divided by (or the ratio to) the temperature of the universe today, 2.73 degrees. That’s the initial ratio which changes exponentially as the universe expands.)
The calculations come out to be as follows:
The first of the Biblical days lasted 24 hours, viewed from the “beginning of time perspective.” But the duration from our perspective was 8 billion years.
The second day, from the Bible’s perspective lasted 24 hours. From our perspective it lasted half of the previous day, 4 billion years.
The third 24 hour day also included half of the previous day, 2 billion years.
The fourth 24 hour day — one billion years.
The fifth 24 hour day — one-half billion years.
The sixth 24 hour day — one-quarter billion years.
When you add up the Six Days, you get the age of the universe at 15 and 3/4 billion years. The same as modern cosmology. Is it by chance?
But there’s more. The Bible goes out on a limb and tells you what happened on each of those days. Now you can take cosmology, paleontology, archaeology, and look at the history of the world, and see whether or not they match up day-by-day. And I’ll give you a hint. They match up close enough to send chills up your spine.
Pretty funny. Perhaps believers believe atheists are condescending, morons who value nothing and therefore have no value to contribute to human existance.
So, how does it feel to be a raging douche bag?
I had decided to give up my faith in god today but I asked him to send me a single sign that this was the wrong move to make, than I read this. I feel completely assured in abandoning my faith. Thanks Frank!
You can erase my comment, that doesn’t make you any less an unfunny douche bag.
As a Christian, I am complete unpersuaded by evolution. I don’t agree with others here that Christianity and evolution are compatible. The Evolution theory is contrary to Christianity for these reasons.
1. Randomness. The God in the Bible says everything is created and planned by him. By the seventh day, all the work is done. There is no more evolution involved.
2. Natural Selection. Same as 1. God has finished his work. Nothing left to see here. There maybe some basis for micro-biological evolution, but it is a minor detail. Let’s not extend it to the creation of species and man.
Conclusion. The Bible does not contradict scientific research. There haven’t been a lot of science in Evolution. It’s mostly faith of another kind. Don’t let the scientific talk fool you.
I think the Catholic Church is completely wrong about Evolution. How can they not see through the basic scientific (and philosophical) arguments of Evolution?
LOL…according to your rationality, there can’t be an “infinity” that you reference (everything had a beginning). Before the Big Bang there could not have been logic because everything was chaotic and random. How could logic evolve out of randomness and chaos? Laws of logic aren’t rational either…ever “see” a law of logic? How would you know it was there if you could not feel it or see it? Guess it would have to be “necessary” before anything existed. Kind of sounds like God…a necessary being before anything existed, a rational God of truth and logic.
I thought that was Steve Martin in The Jerk.
For all the atheists out there, you may want to read a book entitled “It takes more faith to be an Atheist” Its interesting and approaches the existence of God from a scientific view – such as demonstrating empirically how finely balanced and fine-tuned things are otherwise there would be no life. Or you may want to take a raft trip through the Grand Canyon – if you don’t believe in God after that, well, its hopeless.
Strawman:
Weinberg’s point in the First Three Minutes is not an opinion. It is based upon the laws of physics. The Big Bang was a huge transformational process that obliterated the initial conditions.
One more thing Strawman. Do you believe that the Universe is a created entity with a zero point or does is have no beginning and no end? For whatever you believe define a falsefiable experiment to support your belief.
Good grief. The author bills himself as a “humorist.” Yet we must recall the declining standards in the arts.
It shouldn’t have to be said, but I’ll say it. There is no incompatibility between logic and belief in God. There are such between logic and some religions, true. But religion is not the same as belief.
I can understand the author’s intent, but it fails. Pretty badly too. Sorry.
I suggest taking a peek at Frank Tippler’s work. He finds very little illogical about Christianity and physics.
#108 Steve,
I enjoyed reading your post.
TO: Steve
RE: The ‘Tome’
I mean….WOWZERS!
That’s quite a read.
On the one hand, I can point out how the Biblical description of the first six days correlates well with our understanding of the development of the Universe and planet Earth.
On the other hand, I can offer a correlation of the creation of mankind and the creation of Adam and Eve….and why there are no more Neanderthals nor Cro-Magnon folk about.
On the third hand, I can offer ‘prophecy’….and why what happened a Chernobyl was written about almost 2000 years earlier.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Only the courageous need apply.....]
It was just supposed to be funny, without any actual opinions on science or religion in it.
It was funny. You might as well not sweat the opinionating everyone does on this topic because there is no way you have enough time to track them all down and make them shut up.
Although I would contribute to that cause if you wanted to try.
I really despise these types of harangues, sloppy thinking and faulty logic abound.
First, logic itself proves that logic cannot tell us about all truth. And that’s even discounting the need for starting axioms! (You might want to google “limits of logic”). Logic has logical limits, which means there are some truths that are not provable through logic.
Second, science is not logical. The scientific method is logically flawed. This is not to discount the value and usefulness of science in discovering truth, rather it is pointing out a fact that has to be considered in an philosophical analysis of the ways of discovering truth.
Additional problems include misuse of the word “Scientifically” life does not evolve “scientifically” what you mean to say is that life evolved in a way as predicted by science. This also fails to recognize that the hypothesis of evolution is not scientifically testable because it can not be subjected to control reproducible experimentation. Rather it depends on the weaker Aristole method of observation and conjecture. (This is not to dismiss evolution, as I believe the evolution hypothesis- to my mind it best fits the current observations we have).
Third, logic does not disprove the existence of God. Science does not disprove the existence of God. In fact currently there is no method to disprove the existence of God. Therefore, while the inability to disprove God’s existence does not prove He exists, I would think a little less snarkiness towards believers might be in order.
Fourth, you argue for the creation of life as essentially a random event. This however requires glossing over the fact that we still don’t know how life began. Does order randomly appear out of chaos? Is not the normal flow to go from a high level of order to a high level of chaos? (2nd law of thermodynamics).
Does a functioning Swiss watch randomly form for us just discover? Or does not the order of a Swiss watch suggest construction and thus a Creator?
The argument by design for a Creator is not a weak argument. Is it Scientific? No, since it can not be tested. Logically it is sound, however it does depend on a contested axiom: Order does not randomly come from disorder.
In the absolute sense this is probably untrue, but when we are considering the relative levels of order and chaos in the debate over the creation of the universe… the probability of this order appearing at random must be considered so very extreme, that I do not find the assumptions of atheists to be very persuasive.
After all, we do not have any proof that life does not exist elsewhere in the universe. Even if we did, it would not explain the perfect condition of several universal constants that allowed the evolution of life. To truly argue this is random, you would need proof that several billions of alternate universes exist that do not have such conditions.
No… the argument for Atheism is rather weak at best.
We have also not even considered the personal interaction that many individuals have had with divinity. Will you dismiss all of them as hallucinations? How can you be so sure that it is not your senses that are deceiving you?
We as individuals are unique….just like everybody else.
At the beginning of the 20th century scientist assured us that the smallest unit of matter was the atom.
At the time of Columbus scientist knew he was going to fall off the edge of the world if he sailed due west from Spain.
Once upon a time scientists thought the world was flat and the Sun revolved around the Earth.
For 40+ years at the Carneige Institute they had the wrong head on their “brontosaurus”.
Scientist, honest ones at least, realize and admit that they don’t “know” very much. They have lots of theories, which they attempt to prove but most often these theories are accepted and then proven wrong anyway.
The great thing about God (at least the one I’m familiar with) is that he wants everyone to believe in him and to be able to bless them ( because he love us) but he won’t make anyone believe. He doesn’t force them, he doesn’t trick them- that would be people who really don’t understand how it works.
So feel free to not believe just give the rest of us a break and stop shoving your personal inability to transcend the corporeal sphere down our throats. Kay.
Jerry. You don’t get it. I don’t believe anything. That’s the whole point. that’s why I’m not an atheist. Atheists believe something in the affirmative. Often fanatically so.
I dunno, I’m an atheist and I found this pretty funny, really. Good old Athor.
As for those who argue against science – are you familiar with the “god of the gaps” argument?
This is, fundamentally, the idea that God exists, but we just haven’t seen him yet – he is doing thing things we cannot yet explain. But this means that, over time, as science advances, God’s influence grows smaller and smaller. It is neither wrong nor illogical to extrapolate and say “God doesn’t exist at all; he wasn’t in the prior gaps, he didn’t create the planet Earth, he didn’t create humans, so why would we think he would have created the universe?”
Now, as for not believing in god being a “faith preposition” – no, no it isn’t. Belief in God requires faith; I don’t believe in God the same way I don’t believe in invisible pink unicorns. That doesn’t require faith, and I doubt you’d say that you have faith that there aren’t invisible pink unicorns or a dragon living in my garage. That’s because they don’t require faith – indeed, they’re simply the absence of it. It is much like how baldness is not a hair color, even if it can be used to describe the top of someone’s head.
JMIHU, you are correct that a literal interpretation of Christian theology is fundamentally incompatible with science and evolution. This is unsurprising, because a literal interpretation of Christian theology is fundamentally incompatible with reality. The Catholic Church has acknowledged that scripture should not be literally interpreted, being more parable and symbolism than reality.
The reason the Catholic Church has acknowledged evolution is quite simple – it is because they are educated, intelligent people who understand that denial of reality won’t change it, and it puts off a lot of people who have even the most basic of education.
There aren’t “holes” in evolution. We know it happened. We observe it constantly – it happens all around us, and via the fossil record, we can see creatures changing over time. But more importantly, the legacy of evolution resides in our very beings. DNA, that which makes us human, is the strongest evidence of evolution there is. If you look at our genes, and those of chimpanzees, you see how similar they are. If you look at gorrillas, its a little more different; orangutans, more different still. You can go back down the line, and see how they group together. We are far more similar to dolphins and whales than we are to fish, for example, whereas all reptiles and birds are as closely related to us as one another. You can keep going back, to the fish, the molluscs, the plants, and even to bacteria, and you see a constant rule – the more closely related two things are, the more similar their genetic codes are, and the more distant they are, the less similar they are. This is not coincidental, and moreover, not divine – whales, if divinely created, would not be related in the manner they are to other mammals, while something like the platypus would be an agalmalation, rather than a mammal who split from the rest of us a hundred and sixty million years ago.
The only explanations are that evolution occurred or that some being intentionally set things up to make it seem as though evolution occurred. EVERY line of evidence – genetics, the fossil record, observation of evolution, observation of modern things – point towards the same source. And if you believe the latter is the case, that your God intentionally made it look like evolution occurred, then he is obviously unworthy of worship – I’d be happy to take my chances with the other guy.
We know that it happened. There aren’t “holes” in it. It is incredibly simple and easy to understand. Things which have beneficial mutations are more likely to survive and pass them on than things which do not have them, and ergo over time you will expect that the population will tend to accumulate positive mutations. There’s nothing non-obvious about this, nothing controversial about this, and nothing hard to understand about this. The barrier in your mind is your inability to see and understand what a million years is.
I might additionally add that anyone who says that evolution is random is talking utter nonsense. Evolution is a non-random process. You see, mutations in our genetic code are random, and we observe them all the time. But which mutations are selected for is highly nonrandom – beneficial mutations are selected for, deletorious ones are selected against, and neutral mutations are neither selected for nor against. So while mutations, the mechanism which allows for evolution, is random, evolution itself is not because it is affected in a non-random way.
That Nostradamus dude could make those on an assembly line. Just as long as “mostly right” is good enough.
Recommended reading– http://tinyurl.com/nk58je
TO: Steve, et al.
RE: Understanding Those ‘Six Days’
When was the last time you watched Disney’s original Fantasia?
Pay particular attention to the sequence done to Creation as depicted therein.
Notice how they do a ‘fade-in/fade-out’ sequence between phases.
Now….imagine how God would give a vision of the Creation to a man in order for him to pass it on to his contemporaries.
How would He do it? The options would be:
[1] Make the poor fellow sit through the entire 6+ billion years of video tape.
[2] Make him sit through a time-lapse version.
[3] Show him stages of the development process.
Options 1 and 2 look to be rather ‘dicey’ in terms of having the fellow remember what he is supposed to report.l Option 3 looks rather useful.
But how would the fellow describe the fade-in/fade-out? In his limited understanding of video techniques…..
Would something along the lines of….
“On the first day He did this”?
“On the second day He did this”?
And so on and so forth?
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[God is subtle. But He is not plain 'mean'.]
I’m an atheist, and I thought this was pretty funny.
ANYWAY, in order:
Evolution is not random. Mutations are random. However, some mutations are harmful, some are beneficial, and some don’t really do a whole lot. Harmful mutations are selected against – those with these tend to leave fewer descendants. Beneficial mutations are selected for – those with these tend to leave more descendants. Neutral ones are neither selected for nor against, and thus can spread through the population or die out, pretty much at random. Because evolution acts upon these in a non-random manner – selecting for some, and against others – evolution itself is a non-random process which acts on a random one.
Science is incompatible with and therefore will eventually destroy almost every religion. Only the most abstract of religions will survive, and over time existing religions will become more abstract. Indeed, the Catholic Church does not endorse a literal reading of the Bible, because they are smart, educated, and understand that not believing in how the world works won’t change how it functions. They know that evolution occurred.
As for the idea that evolution is disputed – hogwash. Evolution is universally accepted by people who understand reality. The reason is pretty simple – it is incredibly obvious, and many people are actually surprised at how long it took for people to notice something so obvious. Simply put, the idea that positive traits are selected for, and negative traits selected against, is pretty obvious because if something dies in the womb, it is not going to be leaving descendants, whereas something which is resistant to some disease or can eat a plant which others of its species cannot is going to be more likely to leave more descendants. Nothing about this is complicated, nor controversial, nor non-obvious. And yet, you dispute it. Why?
Because you do not understand, or do not want to.
Evolution is all around us. We see it in the fossil record. We see it occurring in modern creatures. We see modern creatures and the similarities between them, and how they fall together. We see genes, which hold a record of evolution, and are exactly as we’d predict – closely related creatures have much more in common than distantly related ones, and in the pattern you’d expect, with humans being closer to chimpanzees and gorillas, being all equally close to orangutans, being all equally close to, say, a whale, being all equally close to a bird or crocodile, being all equally close to a fish, being all equally close to a mollusc, being all equally close to a bacteria… this is not the work of a creator, but the work of evolution. Even vestigal traits show the work of evolution, and the modification of existing structures how evolution acts on things.
All of this is evidence for evolution, and massive, overwhelming evidence. We can make predictions based on evolution, and they come out. Your belief in God does not allow you to do that.
You have two choices in acknowledging reality – either believe that your God intentionally made it so that evolution appeared to have occurred, or that evolution actually occurred and your God had no hand in it.
As for the idea that atheism requires faith – it does not. You are an atheist, save for your one god; you do not believe in any of the others. So why do you begrudge me adding just one more to that total?
Do you think you have faith that there aren’t invisible pink unicorns trotting around? How about a dragon in my garage? How about Cthulu lurking under the Pacific ocean?
We lack faith, we do not have it. It is much like how baldness is not a hair color – it may describe your head, but it isn’t the same thing.
“Many people tend to look upon them with disdain just because they have doubts about theology and like to go on TV and scream about how the majority of Americans are stupid for believing in God.”
Not because they have doubts, but because they have a CERTAINTY God does not exist. It is easy for us religious folk to understand the agnostic, but the hubris one must have to be an atheist is truly staggering.
Also, the “logical” versus “holy” dichotomy perfectly illustrates where atheism will always falter. What is “holy” is a value judgment – what SHOULD be. Logical does not create values – even assuming you can figure out what is the most “logical” doesn’t mean it’s the RIGHT choice. Logic cannot get you to “should.” Logic tells me, e.g., that we should kill off all of those who are a drain on our system – old/sick people, homeless people, etc. That’d save money, prevent a drain on resources, etc. Only if you hold that people are endowed with certain rights – life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. Logic does not lead to such conclusions. Holiness does.
I like Dorothy Sayers’ approach. It satisfies my mental training as a chemist and my spiritual awareness of God. (My experience, which is the only thing I have to share, is that a person has to deeply and truly desire to know God, and God will be present. And yes, I have had that God-filled experience of light and incredible love.)
Anyway, on to Dorothy:
“…the book of Genesis was a book of poetical truth, and not intended as a scientific handbook of geology.”
“…if the theologians…had chosen to think of God as a great, imaginative artist – then they might have offered a quite different interpretation of the facts… that [perhaps] God had at some moment or other created the universe complete with all the vestiges of an imaginary past…It is the way every novel in the world is written.”
“…if a prehistory that never happened exercises on history an effect indistinguishable from the effect it would have made by happening, what real difference is there between happening and not happening? If it is deducible from the evidence, self-consistent, and recognizable in its effects, it is quite real, whether or not it ever was actual.”
- from Letters to a Diminished Church
At the basis of the theory of neo-Darwinian evolution we find the following two basic assumptions: that changes in morphologies are induced by random mutations on the genome; and, that these changes in the morphology of plant or animal make the life form either more or less successful in the competition to survive. It is by the aspect of nature’s selection that evolutionists claim to remove the theory of evolution from that of a random process. The selection is in no way random. It is a function of the environment. That is true. The randomness however remains as the basic driving force that produces the varied morphologies behind the selection.
Can random mutations produce the evolution of life? That is the question addressed herein.
Because evolution is primarily a study of the history of life, statistical analyses of evolution are plagued by having to assume the many conditions that were extant during those long gone eras. Rates of mutations, the contents of the “original DNA, ” the environmental conditions, all effect the rate and direction of the changes in morphology and are all unknowns. One must never ask what the likelihood is that a specific set of mutations will occur to produce a specific animal. This would imply a direction to evolution and basic to all Darwinian theories of evolution is the assumption that evolution has no direction. The induced changes, and hence the new morphologies, are totally random, regardless of the challenges presented by the environment. With this background, let’s look at the process of evolution. Life is in essence a symbiotic combination of proteins (and other structures, but here I’ll discuss only the proteins). The history of life teaches us that not all combinations of proteins are viable. At the Cambrian explosion of animal life, 530 million years ago, some 50 phyla (basic body plans) appeared suddenly in the fossil record. Only 30 to 34 survived. The rest perished. Since then no new phyla have evolved. It is no wonder that Scientific American asked whether the mechanism of evolution has changed in a way that prohibits all other body phyla. It is not that the mechanism of evolution has changed. It is our understanding of how evolution functions that must change, change to fit the data presented by the fossil record. To use the word of Harvard professor Stephen Jay Gould, of blessed memory, it appears that the flow of life is “channeled” along these 34 basic directions.
Let’s look at this channeling and decide whether or not it can be the result of random processes….
http://www.geraldschroeder.com/Evolution.aspx
Evolution Bible Style
What about dinosaurs? Why doesn’t the Bible mention dinosaurs? It’s a question posed by believers and skeptics alike. The former in an attempt to better understand the God’s role in the world; The latter to challenge the Bible’s authority. It is also the opening question I raise in The Science Of God. Extensive beds of fossils record the rise and demise of these amazing animals. There were swimming dinosaurs, running dinosaurs, even a form of flying dinosaur. According to scientific data, they first appeared some 250 million years ago. About the same time, mammals make their first appearance in the fossil record. And then till 65 million years ago, dinosaurs and mammals co-existed, but on anything other than equal footing.
Dinosaurs ruled the roost, getting bigger and tougher, reaching sizes that rival today’s great blue whale. All the time mammals occupied much more modest ecological niches, never getting larger than a few kilograms. Then 65 million years ago, the rules of the game changed. What appears to have been a meteor some ten kilometers in diameter punched through our atmosphere, slamming into the earth’s surface at 30 kilometers a second. The resulting massive explosion appears to have formed a crater 150 kilometers in diameter off of southern Central America. Dust and debris thrown into the atmosphere shrouded the earth in a cloud that blocked incoming sunlight for half a year. Temperatures plummeted; photosynthesis all but stopped and all animals larger than about five kilograms disappeared from the fossil record. Mammals survived the ecological disaster. The large dinosaurs did not.
From a secular view – what luck for us; not so lucky for the dinos. From a theological view, God has stepped into re-direct the development of animal life. Dinosaurs were getting bigger, but they were not getting smarter. A vessel was needed that could eventually embrace the neshama – the soul of humanity – and dinosaurs were not heading in that direction. Perhaps mammals would.
Dinosaurs raise two basic theological questions.
First, 250 million years?? 65 million years?? I thought the Biblical calendar reaches to less than 6000 years. So from whence arise the millions of years? In my book, The Science Of God, I discuss in detail the age of the universe and the universal perception of time adopted by Genesis for the first six days, a view that sees the flow of events from the beginning, looking forward from a time when the universe (and in parallel time) was highly compressed. In essence, the 15 billion years of cosmic history compress into six 24 hour days, even as the hours remain 24 hours as we know them and the billions of years remain years. I bring the scientifically accepted concepts for this transformation of time in The Science of God….
http://www.geraldschroeder.com/EvolutionBibleStyle.aspx
According to growing numbers of scientists, the laws and constants of nature are so “finely-tuned,” and so many “coincidences” have occurred to allow for the possibility of life, the universe must have come into existence through intentional planning and intelligence.
In fact, this “fine-tuning” is so pronounced, and the “coincidences” are so numerous, many scientists have come to espouse The Anthropic Principle, which contends that the universe was brought into existence intentionally for the sake of producing mankind. Even those who do not accept The Anthropic Principle admit to the “fine-tuning” and conclude that the universe is “too contrived” to be a chance event.
In a BBC science documentary, “The Anthropic Principle,” some of the greatest scientific minds of our day describe the recent findings which compel this conclusion.
Dr. Dennis Scania, the distinguished head of Cambridge University Observatories:
If you change a little bit the laws of nature, or you change a little bit the constants of nature — like the charge on the electron — then the way the universe develops is so changed, it is very likely that intelligent life would not have been able to develop.
Dr. David D. Deutsch, Institute of Mathematics, Oxford University:
If we nudge one of these constants just a few percent in one direction, stars burn out within a million years of their formation, and there is no time for evolution. If we nudge it a few percent in the other direction, then no elements heavier than helium form. No carbon, no life. Not even any chemistry. No complexity at all.
Dr. Paul Davies, noted author and professor of theoretical physics at Adelaide University:
“The really amazing thing is not that life on Earth is balanced on a knife-edge, but that the entire universe is balanced on a knife-edge, and would be total chaos if any of the natural ‘constants’ were off even slightly. You see,” Davies adds, “even if you dismiss man as a chance happening, the fact remains that the universe seems unreasonably suited to the existence of life — almost contrived — you might say a ‘put-up job’.”
According to the latest scientific thinking, the matter of the universe originated in a huge explosion of energy called “The Big Bang.” At first, the universe was only hydrogen and helium, which congealed into stars. Subsequently, all the other elements were manufactured inside the stars. The four most abundant elements in the universe are: hydrogen, helium, oxygen and carbon.
When Sir Fred Hoyle was researching how carbon came to be, in the “blast-furnaces” of the stars, his calculations indicated that it is very difficult to explain how the stars generated the necessary quantity of carbon upon which life on earth depends. Hoyle found that there were numerous “fortunate” one-time occurrences which seemed to indicate that purposeful “adjustments” had been made in the laws of physics and chemistry in order to produce the necessary carbon.
Hoyle sums up his findings as follows:
A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintendent has monkeyed with the physics, as well as chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. I do not believe that any physicist who examined the evidence could fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce within stars. Adds Dr. David D. Deutch: If anyone claims not to be surprised by the special features that the universe has, he is hiding his head in the sand. These special features ARE surprising and unlikely…..
http://www.geraldschroeder.com/finetuning.aspx
Existence: What the Meaning of the Word “is” is
There are any number of unanswerable, uncomfortable questions a person can ask, but the first one, the question from which all other questions are descended, is “Why is there an ‘is’?” Why is there existence in the first place? In our fascination with life’s origin and evolution, we bypass this most fundamental of conundrums. Does the very fact of existence in itself provide proof that some metaphysical non-thing. perhaps even the Godly, some undefined whatever-it-is, produced the physical by transcending it?
If we consider the finite aspects of the world we see around us, the limited nature of the time, space and matter from which we are constructed, the answer is certainly yes. Some non-thing, above or outside of the physical, must have preceded our universe or has our universe imbedded in it.
But what is the material world, that which frames the puzzle of our existence? Why even bother with the existence of empty space, or even time? The basic enigma is not whether we evolved from apes or not, but why is there “being” in the first place? The very existence of existence is mind boggling. Yet we are so much a part of existence that we take it for granted, it’s a “given,” to use a scientific term. But step back from the subjectivity and think about it. What caused the Big Bang? What caused existence? What is existence?
In his introduction to The Guide For The Perplexed, Moses Maimonides, the great 12th-century Jewish philosopher and codifier, laid the basis for probing these questions:
We must form a conception of the existence of the Creator according to our capacities; that is, we must have a knowledge of metaphysics (the science of God), which can only be acquired after the study of physics; for the science of physics is closely connected with metaphysics and must even precede it in the course of studies. Therefore, the Almighty commenced the Bible with the description of the creation, that is, with physical science.
One might conceive of a science without religion, but it is an oxymoron to conceive of religion without science. Revelation and nature are the two aspects of one creation. Yet in Maimonides’ time, the idea that science might have something to add to our understanding of spirituality was so anathema to the religious establishments that his book was burned by Jews and Christians alike.
Some 250 years ago, a great Jewish saint and mystic, the Gaon of Vilna, taught that when the light of Torah came into the world it split into two parts. Only one part was revealed directly, the prophetic experience The other part was hidden in the wisdoms of nature and the time will come, he said, when those hidden wisdoms will be discovered. revealing aspects of the Torah never before understood. That time has come. The hidden wisdoms of nature and science are being discovered. At the turn of the century, a physics professor would have lost tenure on the spot if caught teaching the concept that matter in all its forms of solids, liquids and gases was actually condensed energy. What hokum it would have seemed! Then came Einstein, relativity and E = mc^2, the theory that matter, m. intrinsically represents a specific amount of energy, E. And the type of matter was immaterial. As bizarre as it seems, a gram of rose petals and a gram of uranium contain identical amounts of energy. The constant in the equation, c^2 is the speed of light squared or multiplied by itself. It is a massive value, telling us that even a tiny amount of matter contains a huge quantity of latent energy. Having personally witnessed the detonation of six nuclear weapons. I suggest that we pray for peace. The fractions of a gram of matter converted into energy during those tests turned the mountain on which I stood into a quivering Jello-like substance.
In 1923, almost a decade after Einstein published his general relativity theory (no longer a theory, of course: now it is a law), the French physicist Louis de Broglie introduced an idea that was even more bizarre in its assertions than Einstein’s claim that matter really was a form of energy.
De Broglie claimed that all matter has related to it a wave length and a frequency of that wave, a certain number of wave cycles per second. Not only had humanity learned that matter was not matter, we now had to believe that everything is a wave. Everything you and I concluded. Seventy years of experiments have sustained both Einstein’s and de Broglie’s preposterous, counterintuitive claims….
http://www.geraldschroeder.com/existence.aspx
The author is definitely an intelligent individual and this article is full of serious and useful information.
/sarcasm off
You’ve got that right about the Catholic Church TD at #131. If fact, the Early Church Fathers did not limit their interpretation of the Bible to a literalist interpretation.
.
I recall years ago reading an interview in the Biblical Archaeology Society’s now discontinued “Bible Review”. In that interview, Hershel Shanks, founder of the Biblical Archaeology Society, asked the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican whether the Catholic Church supported a literalist reading of the Bible. The Prefect answered that “the Catholic Church had no intention of committing intellectual suicide”. Who was the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith? He was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.
.
*
.
Neither reason nor science is incompatible with either Christianity or Judaism. As I understand it, His Holiness The Dalai Lama, is pretty fond of science too. It helps not to be taken in by Enlightenment propaganda on the topic of science, reason and a religion. In fact there would be no modern science without the Catholic Church. What ever the Enlightenment told you about religion and science and reason … you-can-foeget-about-it.
.
I think you mistaken about surviving religions becoming more abstract. What is happening is gradually across the globe we are all losing a sense of “The Sacred” along with the dissolution of myth, ritual and culture. This loss of a sense of the sacred is more advanced in Western Europe but it is universal. Science is not the cause of this. The Gospels are. The Gospels uniquely reveal and thereby undermine the “Victimage Mechanism” which is the foundation of ALL religion, myth, ritual and culture. Religion will vanish. Thereafter, Secularism will either be abandoned or Secularism’s violence will know no limit.
Thanks, Frank J. I’ve never been able to get very far past “In the beginning was singularity…” myself, so this is what I’ve been waiting for
132. Bobbo:
False. Moral concepts depend on how means relate to ends in a process of goal-directed action. Values are perfectly natural, and can be understood logically. For the details on where goal-directed action comes from, and how facts have value-significance to living beings, see Harry Binswanger’s book “The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts”.
The basic teachings of the world’s major religions can be boiled down to love God and love your neighbor.
If we believe and do these things we will be with God for eternity.
If we don’t we will suffer the eternal anguish of separation from God.
Given the stakes, a logical person would believe in God. If you are wrong you live a life of service to others, make the world a happier and better place, and then you die. If you are right you live a life of service to others, make the world a happier and better place, die, and live eternally in paradise.
If the atheist is wrong he spends eternity in sorrow and pain.
Logically, what possible benefit could compare to the risk, no matter how small, of infinite pain?
Fun satire. But what I need to know is, why do so many logical thinkers have no religious faith and then go for the hook, line, and sinker when it comes to belief in environmentalism? Same thing, in my book.
“JMIHU, you are correct that a literal interpretation of Christian theology is fundamentally incompatible with science and evolution.”
STOP RIGHT THERE. I didn’t say that. Nice to create your own little strawman. I said Christianity is incompatible with Evolution. There’s a difference if you haven’t noticed.
“This is unsurprising, because a literal interpretation of Christian theology is fundamentally incompatible with reality. The Catholic Church has acknowledged that scripture should not be literally interpreted, being more parable and symbolism than reality.”
Not again!!! This is where I have to say the Bible is clear about where it is literal and where it is symbolic. In that the less information on the 6 days of creation, there’s room for interpretation and relating to reality as it fits to the scientific research IF IT EXISTS.
The Catholic Church errs in fundamental philosophical reasons for not understanding what Evolution means. In essence, Evolution destroys any faith in God.
However, Evolution in itself is flawed for its own lack of evidence. There’s a leap in faith for the lack of scientific rigor.
See here.
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2009/07/simulation-is-not-science.html
“Nei said that to obtain a more realistic picture of natural selection, biologists should pair experimental data with their statistical data whenever possible. Scientists usually do not use experimental data because such experiments can be difficult to conduct and because they are very time-consuming.”
Steve: Thank you for the introduction to Dr. Gerald Schroeder.
Frank: Thank you for the introduction to Steve.
I learn something new every day!:)
I scrolled and didn’t notice, so apologies if this is repetitive – there is no god named Athor, and as an atheist, I don’t worship anything, including bat-winged logic gods – like the rest of the gods, they don’t exist. Fun times when believers use bible verses to refute atheists – if only life were so simple. Anyway, good wine, beautiful women, low taxes and a college football playoff, these are things that may not be divine, but they are worthy of worship.
I take that back – good wine and low taxes are divine. Everything else is probably relative.
I find the idea that the world is only 6000 years old to be completely risible… and I’m devout. It’s based on the ridiculous notion that Adam was the first man. He was not. He was the first Jew. It’s in the Bible, in the story of Cain and Abel.
Cain slew Abel. Godd went to confront him to see where his head was. Was he repentant? No. He got snotty with God, essentially asking if it was his day to watch his brother. So God exiled Cain. Cain’s immediate reaction was fear of a death sentence. “Every man’s hand shall be raised against me.”
What men? Adam, Cain, Abel. Abel’s dead. Cain is going into exile. What “every man’s hand”? Right there the Bible tells us there were other men in the world… lots of them.
Adam was the first Jew. This is why they don’t look like everyone else around them, neither in features, nor in skin color. Everyone else in the Mideast and Africa are brown or black-skinned. Physically, quite different, too. Jews look like someone from Northern Europe… because God kicked them out of the Garden of Eden and dumped them into the desert. (“Go pound sand” comes to mind.)
So, no conflict with science. Dinosaurs did exist.
#131 TD – Your support of evolution is flawed. Are species similar? Yes. Does it follow that they evolved from one another? No. Gorillas and Apes are similar. So are Chevies and Fords. The DNA sequence is merely the design specs. Gorillas and Apes can no more change their own DNA specs and become humans than can Fords suddenly become Ferraris.
There are no fossil records anywhere catching a species in transition. Every species comes into this world suddenly and whole… just as the Bible describes on the fifth day. Your statement to the contrary is false.
We did not descend from apes or such. We merely had the same Designer. When He mixes certain patterns of DNA, He creates different species. He’s still doing it. New species come into existence all the time, fully formed. God is tinkering in His lab. Some species thrive. Others do not. Whatever. They don’t evolve.
Evolution is a failed theory. There is no evidence yet to support it. None. There IS evidence which points away from it towards Creation, such as the lack of fossil records, and the impossibility of the development of certain physical characteristics.
Like eyes. An eye has 20 separate parts, none of which work without the other. It had to be developed all at once, or it would be a useless appendage. Evolution argues against useless appendages. (Like Liberals)
Evil is another good example. It is always self-defeating. It is contra-survival. Yet it is always with us. You’d think we’d've learned by now. No. We automatically tend towards evil without God. Generally speaking, only Man fights to the death. Only deep spirituality frees us from tyranny. The Tytler Cycle always brings us back to tyranny. We always seem to choose evil as a species.
Evolution is belied by the real world. The devil is in the details. There are simply too many things that evolution cannot answer.
Its not hubris, its reality. God does not exist. No human religion is correct. They are all wrong.
The only gods which can exist, at this point, are as follows:
The Deist god. This is the god which basically does not intervene at all – ever – in the universe post-creation. This is what is left of the “God of the Gaps”.
The FSM. The FSM is not specifically the flying spaghetti monster, but rather a god (or gods) who intentionally conseal themselves and make the universe LOOK like they don’t exist.
The IPU. Invisible pink unicorns are invisible, untouchable, and undetectable, and due to the last don’t actually -do- anything. If they are instead manipulating things, doing things but making it seem as though they are not, then they are FSMs instead.
Now, just because you can hypothesize the existance of these gods doesn’t mean they do, in fact, exist. Indeed, the reason we cannot rule out these gods is that, currently, they are unfalsifiable, and that two of them – the FSM and IPU – are utterly so in much the same way we cannot prove we are not part of some sort of advanced simulation or dream, or part of something like the Truman Show.
Thing is, we can say they don’t exist for this very reason. The fact that they are unfalsifiable means that [i]they make no predictions[/i]. This means that it doesn’t even matter if they do exist, because things are no different if they do and if they don’t. As there is no reason to believe they do exist, and they’re incredibly complicated things, Occam’s razor leads us to the conclusion that they are nonexistant, and we can take a great deal of confidence in that – indeed, exactly the same degree of confidence we have that you aren’t just a computer program.
As for the idea that logic leads to killing off old people – you suck at logical thinking. Which is probably part of the reason you’re religious, to be fair. Reciprocal altruism is a logical system. Yes, obviously there is no “right” and “wrong” – that is because right and wrong are entirely arbitrarily defined terms. Instead, in a logical system, we look at what we do and what the consequences are, and try to optimize. So while you, the sucky logical thinker, may say “Why not kill off the old, the sick, and the weak”, the reason is that someday you yourself will be old, sick, and/or weak, and you yourself do not want to be killed off.
“One must never ask what the likelihood is that a specific set of mutations will occur to produce a specific animal.”
You don’t really understand probability or evolution. But this is utterly unsurprising.
The odds that a specific animal existed in the past is either 0 or 1. This is because, being the past, it is determinant – that is to say, we already know the result, and therefore the probability is either 1 (it happened) or 0 (it did not). A similar principle makes it so that anyone who says that it is unlikely for us to exist is simply wrong. For us to ask the question, the universe MUST be in a state which allows for intelligent life to exist. If the universe was not in a configuration which allowed us to exist, then we would be unable to answer the question. Ergo, the probability of the universe allowing for the existance of intelligent life is 1, because we are asking the question. This is very obvious. This is also why it is impossible for us to fill in all the variables of the Drake equation at the moment.
If you were to ask the question “If we were, hypothetically, there two billion years ago, what are the odds that things would turn out the same way they did?”, that’s a more interesting question. We do not know the exact probability, but I would suspect that it is, to some degree, both large and small – we’d probably end up with multicellular life, but how close it would be to US is much more questionable. It is, however, irrelevant, and here’s why – ANY endpoint of such a system is improbable, but as a whole the endpoints sum to 100%.
It is much like the lottery. The odds of any individual person winning the lottery are very low. However, that does not mean the odds of SOMEONE winning the lottery are low, just that any specific person’s odds of winning the lottery are low.
“The induced changes, and hence the new morphologies, are totally random, regardless of the challenges presented by the environment. ”
Wrong. They are NOT “totally random”. Why do all amphibians, birds, reptiles, and mammals have four limbs? The answer is simple – our ancestors did. New morphologies and new mutations are NOT totally random – they only affect what already exists. Birds turned their hands into wings; dolphins turned their hands into fins. They did not sprout new things, but changed existing structures. Likewise with blood types, ect. Genes were changed, duplicated, mutated, ect. Portions of genes were gained and lost, genes were activated and deactivated.
With this background, let’s look at your argument. Oh, wait, that’s right, it is COMPLETELY WORTHLESS. The mutations are NOT creating random new things – rather, they’re only modifying existing things in certain ways.
Without understanding this, it is no wonder that you don’t accept evolution – you do not understand how it functions on the most basic of levels.
“At the Cambrian explosion of animal life, 530 million years ago, some 50 phyla (basic body plans) appeared suddenly in the fossil record. Only 30 to 34 survived. The rest perished. Since then no new phyla have evolved.”
This is both false and misleading. Firstly, they existed prior to the Cambrian explosion; we simply have few fossils which predate the Cambrian. Things simply got large enough, and enough structure, to fossilize much more often around that era; we know from molecular dating that many groups existed considerably prior to it, and some fossils indicate the existance of some of them over a billion years ago.
Secondly, saying “no new phyla have evolved” is to not understand what a phylum is. It is a very high branching point on the tree of life, but that means that for phyla to mean the same thing across species, they must all have occurred at about the same time in the past. Ergo, saying no new phyla have emerged is meaningless, because by definition they’ve basically all emerged at the same time, otherwise some would be inside other phyla according to modern classification schemes. Of course, they are also inconsistantly used to some degree – for example, Aves is classically considered to be a family, but really, mammals and reptiles are, with birds being a subtype of the latter. If you were to actually trace down through the levels, we’d find that Aves would be on about the species level, with all birds falling far, far below even that – which is clearly absurd. The reality is that each branching is a speciation event, at at one point, the differences between the phyla were no more than the differences between species. Its just that as speciation events become more and more distant, they go further and further up the tree. There’s nothing special about phyla.
Gorrillas and apes cannot become humans (or rather, it would be monumentally unlikely), that is true. But you see, it is also misleading. A gorrila-like creature could indeed evolve into a human-like creature. They would not be human, but they could well look pretty similar. The ancestors of gorrillas DID evolve into humans, and also into gorrillas and chimpanzees.
In reality, creatures change their DNA all the time. In my testicles right now, my DNA is changing, my chromosomes recombining into new ones from bits of my own. Sometimes, this process has errors, and these errors are mutations. Other times, parts from one gene are recombined with a different allele of the same gene, thus creating a new allele. And in my body, as my cells divide, some mistakes occur.
So in fact, you’re wrong. Yes, they will not go backwards, then mutate forwards into humans – it would be absurdly unlikely for them to reverse all those mutations, or to have mutations so that they matched up with the genome of humans. But it isn’t nearly so unlikely that they would evolve into intelligent, tool-using creatures. The DNA does indeed change itself, and it is selected upon – if it is beneficial for the creature to become more intelligent, or be in larger social groups, ect. then over time it is not unlikely for it to become as we, even if it wouldn’t be “human”.
“There are no fossil records anywhere catching a species in transition. Every species comes into this world suddenly and whole… just as the Bible describes on the fifth day. Your statement to the contrary is false.”
I’m sorry, you have swallowed the biggest lie of all. We have indeed found a huge number of fossils which describe transitional forms. Indeed, EVERY fossil EVER is a transitional form. Your entire idea of what a “transitional form” is, is wrong, because it is a lack of comprehension of evolution on the most basic level. Evolution occurs continually, and ergo, we are all transitional forms, including we in the modern age. You are a transitional form as much as archeopethyx is. If you look at species over time, you do indeed see changes – look at fossils of hominids with intermediate features. The trouble is that you do not understand evolution, and think it means that chickens will hatch from fish eggs. That’s not how evolution works; you’ll see only small differences in any given generation.
Incidentally, the idea that eyes cannot have evolved was discredited well over a century ago, and is blazingly obvious. Have you ever, I dunno, LOOKED at an eye of anything other than a human? How about a squid eye? A cephelapod’s eye? How about light-sensitive chemicals in various protozoans? In jellyfish? Eyes are actually pretty easy to evolve, and the mechanism has been well described. None of the “20 parts” are actually useless without the others, and it is, again, your lack of understanding of evolution which misleads you. It all started with photosensitive chemicals, then built up from there – it is true that without the photosensitive chemicals, the rest is useless, but photosensitive chemicals aren’t useless without everything else. Indeed, there are many organisms which lack eyes, but have photosensitive chemicals simply so they can tell light from dark.
I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Barack Obama
Interview in Christianity Today, January 22, 2008.
“Frank J. Fleming writes political humor at IMAO.us and once used a copy of Origin of Species to start a campfire.”
Of course, the whole article is a joke. Unfortunately, the humor is not there.
The wide response shows people have too much time in their hands.
No big deal.
I take a handful of lint out of the dryer filter, put it inside the dryer and a perfectly knitted sweater comes out.
Happens all the time. Order from disorder.
And as we all know, bombs make wonderful things, too. All explosions do.
Strawman:
My apologies. I thought you were attempting to have a serious discussion rather than engaging in nihilistic contrarian ridicule. I guess I am slow. I should have seen that by your screen name.
There is no current argument against evolution that is taken seriously by any man or woman with an ounce of scientific knowledge. The fact that we still have this ridiculous debate at this point is a blemish on our culture and civilization.
The author of this piece has made rather childish arguments. If you are interested in having actual debates about this I suggest you stop writing these juvenile snippets, actually research the topic at hand by looking at the arguments presented by both sides, and only then should you come out and attempt to sound smart (which I doubt you really can).
105 Scott ..or is it Scotty (why would your parents name you after toilet paper ?)
poor Scott …there were no eyewitnesses to Jesus Christ who wrote the bible. the bible was written generations after his death.
your lack of religious fact is astounding!
if I told you I was God would you believe me ? (I hope not) …but you are willing to believe someone else …why because he/they wrote a book?
todovia buscando un milagro verdad.
why is it that you believe in what ever God you do believe in? can you even answer that question (honestly please)
I know why! ..but for me to state it would be meaningless, this is something you need to be able to come to terms with on your own.
75 geostkr
If “the left” is as small as you say, why are y’all so worked up about it all the time?
Quote from TD: “I’m sorry, you have swallowed the biggest lie of all. We have indeed found a huge number of fossils which describe transitional forms. Indeed, EVERY fossil EVER is a transitional form.”
Ha!!! If transitional forms are a lie, they lie is coming from Evolution defenders who are still looking for them and failing spectacularly. The scientific consensus thinks transitional forms will arrive some day via fossil evidence. Heard of Ida?
58. arhooley:
“51. Idahoser, 52. eburchelli: I’m more interested in your musings than I am in the other stuff on this thread.”
Well, this is a first for me. No one has ever commented on my posts here before this.
Got lots more to say on the subject but not many who want to listen. LOL
66. Foont:
“One thing is for sure: we are all going to find out in the end whether there is a God or not.”
Not necessarily. If the end is the end, then we’ll finally reach the nothing that never existed anyhow. That’s only in abstract. Since our remains are useful for something beyond ourselves.
♪Hand me a heart
Show me a soul
Give me a mind
Let’s rock and roll.♪♫
Atheists don’t worship Satan. They worship Athor, rational god of logic…
[EPIC_FAIL]
this is blah blah, why can’t people be more “simple” !
BTW I’m related to my dogs, funny thing, they haven’t got blue blood, just like mine, it’s read !
99. Steve Z:
Question for atheists: Who, or what, undid the Law of Entropy, and designed the program in the distant past to form the first living cell? Science alone doesn’t have an answer for that.
Answer to person who makes false assumptions about atheists: Atheists don’t claim that science alone has all the answers.
you spelled Hathor wrong,genius.
LT:
“With the exception of the unnecessarily insulting adjectives used to describe Christians as apparently being completely without intellect, this is fantastically entertaining! I am curious, though: where do you get the idea that science and logic are incompatible with basic Christianity? Granted, it’s an unfortunately common belief, but it is highly inaccurate. I will be the first to admit that there are ignorant Christians – just as there are ignorant atheists and Buddhists and short people and people with blue eyes, etc. (For any missing my point: humans, being highly and invariably fallible, will have people from all levels of intelligence in just about any grouping.) But there are those of us who believe in the Christian God and in Christ’s salvation and in logic and in science all at the same time. In fact, for me, the more I learn about the pure logic behind the complexities of everything on this planet the stronger is my belief in an intelligent design – not to mention my appreciation of its pure beauty. Science is simply the means by which we continually learn ever more about this fascinating world of ours and subsequently, of course, about its Creator.
I guess all I’m saying is that, while this was a really fun read, maybe it’s not just Christians who need to work on being more tolerant of other people’s beliefs.”
===========
What LT said,
Arrow
Thanks for the clue, Erico.
If you stand back and consider the general character of this article, it’s clear that there’s a basic cultural mismatch between the form of a primitive Hebrew genesis story, and the actual origin of the scientific mode of thinking, which was Ancient Greece.
A rewrite in terms of Greek gods and goddesses — such as Athena the goddess of wisdom — would be more consistent.
88. Donna V.:
“BTW, here’s a paradox: The birth rate among the religious, in any country, is significantly higher than the birth rate among atheists”
The Catholic News Service and Encyclopedia Britannica Book Of The Year, 1989, shows this breakdown of world religions (and nonreligions ):
Christianity: (1.7 billion) 32.9%
Nonbelievers: (1.1 billion) 21.6%
Islam: (880.6 million) 17.4% etc
According to the US Census the fastest growing part of the Religious Affiliation question are the Un-Affiliated (Agnostics, Atheists, Secular affiliations) and are now at 16%.
Considering that less than 300 years ago you could get burned at the stake for claiming to be a Atheist and the pervasiveness and cultural pushiness (that’s putting it mildly) of Religious organizations – we are doing better than good.
Statistics show that the more educated a population is (and I don’t mean religious education like at Sunday School or a Madrasah) the more likely it is to drop it’s superstitions.
Atheists do better:
72% of the National Academy of Sciences members have a ‘personal disbelief in god’ and another 20% claim ‘doubt or agnosticism’.
Less than 1% of the US prison population is ‘atheist’ vs. about 10% in the general population.
The Divorce rate among atheists and agnostics is 21% vs. 30% for Jews, 27% for Born again Christians, and 24% for other Christians.
So drop your imaginary friend – live better, stay out of jail and be happier.
The problem with Atheists is they assume religion is simplistic and only simpletons believe in it. I am not saying that isn’t true for some people, but it isn’t that easy. If it was that easy than religion truly would be dead in the world, and would have been a long time ago. Russia, for instance, tried every trick in the book to ban religion and teach the “logic” of Marxism and science. Once that fell the Churches rebounded in adherents, if not with as many as before Communism. History has proven time and again, the death of G-d is a pipe dream for Atheists who don’t understand religion past a Sunday School sermon.
Why a person believes in G-d or a particular religious organization is a complicated set of reasons. It is a combination of tradition, ignorance, education, family ties, LOGIC, personal experience, and encounters with the divine. It is neither proven or provable, but it isn’t made out of whole cloth. There are reasons, but they might not be scientific, even if science might be one supporting tool. As for Conservative Athiests warning that the religious are going to scare them away, I guess they will join the Democratic Party. Good luck with that!
To be honest I have no idea what Fleming is trying to say and have no idea how it is humor. Can anyone please explain the joke?
166. Arrow:
“not just Christians who need to work on being more tolerant of other people’s beliefs.”
Considering that just recently (300 years ago) Christians stopped burning Atheists (among others) at the stake and nonbelievers still find disdain if not outright persecution in many parts of American society today a few choice words about the exceptional intolerance, chauvinism, brutality, ignorance, bigotry in the dogmas and beliefs of all the Abrahamic adherents is warranted.
BTW before you start about Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot – I would like to point out that:
Hitler was considered a Christian by his contemporaries including the Pope. He was born and baptized as a Roman Catholic. He served mass as a young boy and actually contemplated becoming an abbot.
Stalin studied to be a priest until he was 16 in an Eastern Orthodox seminary. It was a Church education that helped to form the mind of a man who was to become known for his dogmatism and his propensity for seeing issues in absolute terms, in black and white.
Pol Pot was raised a Christian, attended a Catholic school and like the Religious Right in America today developed a deep seated hatred of “elitist intellectuals”.
So if you want to suggest that Atheism leads to despots and killers – please find one that at least is 2nd generation non religious and got a secular education.
“So drop your imaginary friend – live better, stay out of jail and be happier.”
Is this a guarrantee of happiness? Happiness isn’t a scientific measurement. It is certainly not something that an Atheist should care about or be a priority if given to reason and logic.
Not believing in God or any major religions will give rise to other supernatural beliefs.
“absolute terms, in black and white.”
Science is black and white, binary. True or false.
“So if you want to suggest that Atheism leads to despots and killers – please find one that at least is 2nd generation non religious and got a secular education.”
Wrong assumption. Nobody lives in isolation. Those people came to Atheism after exposure to religion. Why is it so hard to understand that Atheism is the root of many political experiments that lead to genocide. You have to study the underlying philosophies of Stalism, Communisms, Marxism, and Hitler, to decide whether Atheism is at fault.
“Answer to person who makes false assumptions about atheists: Atheists don’t claim that science alone has all the answers.”
You gotta be joking. That’s news to me. They absolute claim no God without evidence.
Actually, science itself has not been taken to the limit. The science is flawed and incomplete. Something should be done about it. In other words, put up or shut up.
169. Jettboy:
“death of G-d is a pipe dream”
Religious people don’t understand Atheists. There are at least 4 different kinds:
Recent disbelievers: people brought up in a religion who lost their belief. Usually young and like alcoholics prone to jumping off the wagon. It is hard for them because of all the years spent being indoctrinated from birth, including some very nasty and scary rituals. It’s like Military folk can never leave their boot camp days behind.
Secular Agnostics: Often from religiously lapsed families where the whole God thing gets “who cares” kind of treatment but you still adhere to some of the trappings like Yule tide trees, lighting candles or overeating on certain days. Many religious people don’t realize that they are also lapsed Mithrans, Asgardians, Partheonians celebration other peoples feasts as their own.
Strong Atheists: Often people who grew up in Atheist families and received a secular education (I am 3rd generation Atheist which makes my 3 children 4th generation). People who see Atheism not as a disbelief in God but as a clear fact as discernable, knowable and provable as the fact that the sun will rise in the East tomorrow. We see the struggle between the faith based and reason based world view as important and fundamental to the future of Humanity. The Scientific Method is the best way know of coming up with a commonly acceptable and experimentally provable universal reality. I personally work very hard at not excepting anything on “faith” which leads to a lot of questioning and fact checking not just of others but of myself. We can go into a long argument about where the border between knowledge and faith is but I have found that it leads religious people to proclaim that there is no knowledge with out faith which I find simply absurd.
171. JMIHU:
“Not believing in God or any major religions will give rise to other supernatural beliefs.”
The point of Atheism is to free yourself of supernatural beliefs. If you have them you are not an Atheist. I have found this to be a very hard part for “believers” to understand. Maybe being raised from birth with some kind of imaginary boogie man scars you for life.
“Happiness isn’t a scientific measurement.”
If you consider staying out of jail or happily married on the better end of the continuum between happy and sad:
Less than 1% of the US prison population is ‘atheist’ vs. about 10% in the general population.
The Divorce rate among atheists and agnostics is 21% vs. 30% for Jews, 27% for Born again Christians, and 24% for other Christians.
Atheists are happier.
Cichawoda, did you even read what I wrote? If you did I have no idea why you quoted what you did and responded the way you did. I said the idea that religion will someday be gone (the whole meaning of the quote) and science and logic will take its place has historically been proven a false belief. You then stated the religious don’t understand atheists and gave a listing of the kinds of atheists that exist.
172. JMIHU:
“Those people came to Atheism after exposure to religion.”
1 – many deeply religious leaders were despots and committed genocide claiming their religious beliefs as an excuse
2 – you can not point to a single Atheist leader who was raised as an Atheist and committed genocide
ergo – at least at this point of our knowledge we can assume that it was exposure to religion that has led to the assumption that genocide can resolve social issues.
“Science is black and white, binary. True or false.”
You obviously are not a scientist and do not understand science. Science is a systematic knowledge-base or prescriptive practice that is capable of resulting in a prediction or predictable type of outcome. A scientific theory is empirical, and is always open to falsification if new evidence is presented. Even the most basic and fundamental theories may turn out to be imperfect if new observations are inconsistent with them. – Where is the black and white to that?
JMIHU
“Not believing in God or any major religions will give rise to other supernatural beliefs.”
Huh? How does that follow? It’s not a requirement that an individual believe in anything. I certainly don’t have any beliefs of which I am aware. I treat all mysticism with the same bored disdain, whether it be Catholicism or UFO-ism or Paganism.
I’ll accept the existence of [insert belief here] when I am shown unambiguous proof.
Pardon me if I don’t hold my breath
“Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy!”
-Benjamin Franklin
“The point of Atheism is to free yourself of supernatural beliefs. If you have them you are not an Atheist. I have found this to be a very hard part for “believers” to understand. Maybe being raised from birth with some kind of imaginary boogie man scars you for life.”
By definition, you’re wrong. But what the heck!!!
“Atheists are happier.”
If you say so, I should be believe you. Right?
176. Jettboy:
“Cichawoda, did you even read what I wrote?”
I guess the quote I should have used was – “problem with Atheists is they assume religion is simplistic” – we don’t and we are complicated ourselves – was my point.
What I meant to write about the Dodo;
Today’s religions will eventually go the way of last millennium’s superstitions. We still put up Yule trees, knock on wood and bless each other for convulsive expulsion of air from the lungs through the nose and mouth. The hold religious organizations have on the population was cracked with the Renaissance and possibly broken with the Enlightenment. Western Europe than conquered the rest of the world and the local faiths don’t stand a chance. Sure there will be surges, similar to the Counter Reformation, but that is just the organization trying desperately to hold on to power. 2 to 3 generations from now the struggle of Fundamental Muslims will be remembered like the Spanish Inquisition is today.
Stalinizm lasted in Russia a little more than a generation. The church still existed and people still practiced – the vast majority of Russians under Stalinizm where baptised. Today there is no pressure on the church, in fact religion is considered a form of revolt against the past. It is trendy. Still today 36% self identify themselves non believers and over 50% never attend or participate in any kind of religion. Think what would happen if you took the power of religious organizations completely away for say 2 generations.
Sure a thousand year from now some people will still cross themselves when they get scared but, knock on wood, they won’t have a clue why.
179. JMIHU:
“By definition, you’re wrong. But what the heck!!!”
Atheism can be either the rejection of theism, or the position that deities do not exist. In the broadest sense, it is the absence of belief in the existence of deities.
A deity is a postulated preternatural or supernatural immortal being, who may be thought of as holy, divine, or sacred, held in high regard, and respected by believers.
So – The point of Atheism is to free yourself of supernatural beliefs.
“Even the most basic and fundamental theories may turn out to be imperfect if new observations are inconsistent with them. – Where is the black and white to that?”
So all the discussions about Global Warming, Evolution, and Gravity as fact is not so…. Yeah, that’s not what I’m getting from the scientific consensus.
Oh, maybe there isn’t much there afterall. For all the studies, there is contrary information NOW coming out.
This discussion relies on what is considered black and white. So far, the scientific community for political reasons have make clear about what they consider to be facts and one fact is EVOLUTION.
“Huh? How does that follow? It’s not a requirement that an individual believe in anything. I certainly don’t have any beliefs of which I am aware. I treat all mysticism with the same bored disdain, whether it be Catholicism or UFO-ism or Paganism.”
Look up definition of Atheism. It doesn’t exclude supernatural beliefs.
“2 – you can not point to a single Atheist leader who was raised as an Atheist and committed genocide
ergo – at least at this point of our knowledge we can assume that it was exposure to religion that has led to the assumption that genocide can resolve social issues.”
———-
This is irrelevant. If one is religious, they will say so and act accordingly. Otherwise they are not.
I’m still wondering what religion gave rise to Karl Marx’s “Religion is the opiate of the people”. You can’t claim he is acting out of religion.
99. Steve Z:
“Question for atheists: Who, or what, undid the Law of Entropy”
The simple answer is “closed systems” but we can go into the math of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and information theory or we can put it to words:
“The apparent paradox between the second law of thermodynamics and the high degree of order and complexity produced by living systems has its resolution in the information content of the Gibbs free energy that enters the biosphere from outside sources. The process of natural selection responsible for such local increase in order may be mathematically derived directly from the expression of the second law equation for connected non-equilibrium open systems.
183. JMIHU:
“Look up definition of Atheism. It doesn’t exclude supernatural beliefs.”
Read my post 182. Cichawoda: and apologize to everybody for being wrong and obstinate about it.
Steve- (Gerald?)
Thanks for the great posts and link. I’ll check out those books. As for your “tome”, I find this comment most interesting:
“But I do find something spooky about the people of Israel coming back to the Land of Israel.”
Indeed. If we need a “proof” for the hand of God in man’s affairs that one is a biggy.
I know it’s not in your Torah, but a verse in Hebrews (interesting that it was written to the Jews!) says much about this whole subject:
“And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.” Hebrews 11:6 (NAS)
Now WHY would it “please” God that we come to him in faith? What is it about God that he requires the human intellect (logic) to be “discarded” or “disregarded” for “FAITH” and for us to take him for his “WORD”, casting all “reasonable” and “rational” thinking to the wind? (Actually, he’s NOT as your posts so eloquently pointed out…)
There are actually two components to this answer.
The first is that by accepting God’s existence in faith, his “absolute never-changing eternalness”, his “I am that I am”, you “please him” by EMBRACING this reality in your life. To NOT accept that he exists (non-faith or non-belief) leaves him “apart” from YOUR reality. Sure, he is and will continue to STILL be GOD (even if YOU don’t accept the concept of “god”) and you can STILL BE YOU, but he is not YOUR GOD unless you accept that he IS. Now, this may seem at first to be “silly logic”, and one can say, “Well, of course…if I don’t believe there is a God, WHY would I CARE that he exists AT ALL?” And the point is…”You won’t!”
So it “pleases” God to be acknowledged, accepted, embraced…because when you do, you allow HIS REALITY to become part of YOUR REALITY!
Until that happens (and it will NEVER happen until you bring yourself “by faith” to ALLOW it to happen)…you can NEVER know the second part of the answer, which goes to the TRUE ESSENCE of God:
God is a God of LOVE! He is a “REWARDER of those who seek him”
Behind this assertion that God is rewarding is the fact that God is so full and so completely self-sufficient that he overflows! Rather than needing our service (he is STILL GOD even if we don’t accept that HE IS), he is like a never-ending Spring of Life and energy and joy and beauty and goodness and power.
Therefore, it “pleases” God when we come to him in a way that affirms this and he delights in it – when we come to him as a “Rewarder”. When we “accept” his TRUE NATURE as being LOVE.
Now I can’t convince those with “logical” arguements about how a God who is loving and full of beauty, goodness, and power, can be the SAME God of the Old Testament who told Moses and Joshua to slaughter thousands including women and children. If you have trouble accepting THAT GOD you may have trouble accepting ANY GOD. Does simple fact of YOUR NON-BELIEF make the TRUE GOD any LESS the TRUE GOD???
No, of course not!
IF (and I’ll let the “if” stand there for those still not “in faith”) there IS A GOD, does it not reason that he will still be “GOD” even if I don’t accept that he is?.. i.e. God is GOD, (if there is a God) regardless of my “belief”, right?
And on the other hand, if I do NOT accept or acknowledge a “faith” in God does it not reason that my “non-acceptance” is VALIDATION for me that he (meaning God) will NOT reward my NON-BELIEF??? i.e….if there is NO GOD, there is NOTHING that can reward my “belief” in him, right? So, logically, I don’t accept that God’s essence is one of LOVE, because I don’t accept the reality of God in the first place…so how can I accept HIS LOVE toward me?????
That’s a problem for most atheists. That, and the problem of:
“NOW what do I DO with my life, if I ACCEPT that there IS a GOD and that he is a God of LOVE?” (a Rewarder of those who seek him”)
A terrible kind of chill can envelope a soul who realizes that he is not “worthy” of being loved by such a God. Even hopelessness…or despair…or anxiety….or hmmmm….NOPE!!!!!
Much better to retreat back to the “warmth” of my “godless” existence…no consequences to face, no sticky issues I need to deal with…everything clean, logical, modern, W.Y.S.I.W.Y.G…..ahhhhh, where’s my beer and my remote?
Just leave me alone, okay God?
God: “Okay”
183. JMIHU:
“So all the discussions about Global Warming, Evolution, and Gravity as fact is not so….”
Global Warming – the rise in the average earth temperature
Evolution – change of complex systems over time
Gravity – a natural phenomenon by which objects with mass attract one another
Quantum – an indivisible entity of a quantity that has the same units as the Planck constant and is related to both energy and momentum of elementary particles of matter (called fermions) and of photons and other bosons.
are all facts. Now Scientists propose different theories (sometimes competing) on how they work. As more knowledge is gain through observation and experimentation the theories are refined so that we can use them to make better predictions about the material (as opposed to the one just in your head) world. It’s as simple as that.
And yes sometimes scientists can be wrong but science, unlike religion, is a self correcting process because it relies on the Scientific Method. A sceptic can only be wrong for a while but a believer is doomed for eternity.
184. JMIHU:
“You can’t claim he is acting out of religion.”
Karl Marx was a philosopher and economist – he lived and died in poverty and never hurt anybody – so how is he relevant in discussing tyranny, despotism and genocide.
we have got values of y and z for x, and values of x and z for y—all our equations are indeterminate; all our knowledge is relative, even in a narrower sense than is usually implied by the statement. Under the whip of the clown God, our performing donkeys the philosophers and men of science run round and round in the ring; they have amusing tricks: they are cleverly trained; but they get nowhere. I don’t seem to be getting anywhere myself. – Aleister Crowley “Liber CLVIII: The Soldier and the Hunchback”
I used to believe in the Christian God and I saw him actively involved in my life. Then I believed in pagan gods and saw them actively involved in my life. Hell, I invoked deities into myself… some weird experience let me tell you. (Identical to the feeling of Holy Spirit I used to think)
Then I found I can do that with comic book superheroes if I try.
We humans have a neurological system that seems pretty good at making sure we survive in this environment, but otherwise we can fool it into anything we like… belief in God or Global Warming… its all a matter of matching data to beliefs and thinking its TRUE.
Richard Dawkins appears as rabid and dogmatic as Pat Robertson… they both believe that they KNOW the TRUTH and sadly millions of people follow after them, desperate to believe in something.
“The only thing I believe, is that the Universe is far more complex than I will ever understand.” – Robert Anton Wilson
I’m with RAW, the whole damn universe is extremely complex. To think there’s absolutely a God, or absolutely not a God seems absurd and egotistical. That so many think that their beliefs should then be imposed on other humans is sad and pathetic (Dawkins view of teaching your kids about your beliefs, religious people view that since they consider X life, everyone else should as well…).
The best any honest person can claim is Spencerian Agnosticism… anything else is just make believe.
“Look up definition of Atheism. It doesn’t exclude supernatural beliefs.”
This is a true statement. Cichawoda quote “Atheism can be either the rejection of theism, or the position that deities do not exist. In the broadest sense, it is the absence of belief in the existence of deities.”
If you’re taking the narrow definition, supernatural beliefs is not excluded. In the broadest definition, maybe so.
You gotten away from my original assertion that “Not believing in God or any major religions will give rise to other supernatural beliefs.” You admitted that the goal of Atheism is that there is no supernatural beliefs, but life is not perfect. And Atheism in itself is not dogma so why do you insist on “The point of Atheism is to free yourself of supernatural beliefs.”
Go ahead and not believe in God, but there are other things people will do.
“And yes sometimes scientists can be wrong but science, unlike religion, is a self correcting process because it relies on the Scientific Method. A sceptic can only be wrong for a while but a believer is doomed for eternity.”
No it isn’t. Not exactly self-correcting at this rate. Obstinate if I say so.
“Karl Marx was a philosopher and economist – he lived and died in poverty and never hurt anybody – so how is he relevant in discussing tyranny, despotism and genocide.”
He is certainly a danger….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism
Gave rise to “Marxism-Leninism”, “At least in terms of adherents and impact on the world stage, Marxism-Leninism, also known colloquially as Bolshevism or simply communism is the biggest trend within Marxism,”
Then Stalism. Get the picture.
“The following countries had governments at some point in the twentieth century who at least nominally adhered to Marxism: Albania, Afghanistan, Angola, Benin, Bulgaria, Chile, China, Republic of Congo, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Ethiopia, Grenada, Hungary, Laos, Moldova, Mongolia, Mozambique, Nepal, Nicaragua, North Korea, Poland, Romania, Russia, the USSR and its republics, South Yemen, Yugoslavia, Venezuela, Vietnam. In addition, the Indian states of Kerala and West Bengal have had Marxist governments. Some of these governments such as in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Chile, Moldova and parts of India have been democratic in nature and maintained regular multiparty elections, while most governments claiming to be Marxist in nature have established authoritarian governments.”
191. JMIHU:
You must be Christian. Let me explain – when Atheist reject God we are not referring specifically to the Abraham’s God but to the notion and idea of God, Gods, Sprites, demi Gods, Angels, Devils, trolls, Elves, Santa Clause, vampires etc. – all supernatural beings. Remember that if you can give me empirical proof for the existence of any of these beings they no longer are in the realm of faith but of science and we can study them.
190. Ratatosk:
It is not a rejection of just God but of the faith based world view – that’s where science comes in. Quoting the bitter nut Aleister Crowley is a trip – you must be young.
“men of science run round and round in the ring; they have amusing tricks: they are cleverly trained; but they get nowhere.”
Stop for a minute and think of the past 500 years in science, since Copernicus, and look at yourself and your surroundings. Now tell me honestly where you would be with out the men of science?
BTW – you can’t use Hollywood movies as a reference to what life was like for the average person in the past.
I don’t see Christians taking up a cry of “suppress the atheist!” I do see the atheist groups calling for suppression of Christians and Christian thought. Yes Christians bring their religion to everything they vote for. Hmm, looks like atheists bring their philosophy to everything they vote for also. Some also bring it when the belittle anyone who disagrees with them.
One must laugh at all those who are excitedly proclaiming the demise of the Republican Party. If I were them I would worry about the Democratic Party. Even at this time twice as many Americans see themselves as right of center. If things don’t go just spectacularly well those who believed in the largely undefined “CHANGE!” may wonder what they had been thinking. Face it, if things don’t become the very “second coming” (if you will excuse the religious reference) then the next election could see the Democrats at as great a disadvantage as the Republicans are now. The one thing liberals don’t want to understand is that the Republicans lost because they ran too much like Democrats.
Ok, I am ready for the ad homonym attacks.
187. Dave ll:
“Does simple fact of YOUR NON-BELIEF make the TRUE GOD any LESS the TRUE GOD???”
YES IT DOES!!!
The simple fact of me knowing that the “sacred” OAK has no power makes it not sacred.
The simple fact of me knowing that the “divine” THUNDER is just an electrical spark makes it not divine.
The simple fact of me knowing that the “magical” FAIRIES are just made up makes them not magical.
Godliness, divinity, sacredness, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder – so yes the simple fact of my non-belief makes God less true. Once we all stop believing and get on with our real lives he will disappear all together and go live with all the other superstitions in our fairy-tales.
192. JMIHU:
“Gave rise to “Marxism-Leninism”.
So since Christianity gave rise to: the Crusades, Teutonic Knights (responsible for the genocide of Prussians), witch hunts and burnings, genocide of European Jews (1300 – 1600), the Spanish Inquisition and other Christian massacres and atrocities committed in the name of the religion.
Does that make Jesus of Nazareth – “He is certainly a danger….”
“No it isn’t. Not exactly self-correcting at this rate. Obstinate if I say so.”
I guess my response to your wicked retort should be – YES IT IS!!!
But seriously to you have any evidence that science is not self correcting or is this a belief?
Cichawoda, given the other smart things you’ve been saying, I have to interpret the above statement as evidence of profound intellectual dishonesty, as measured by the shear volume of facts that you would have had to evade in order to negate the connection between Marx and (…wait for it…) Marxism, the ideology responsible for roughly 100 million deaths.
Is Obama, Athor??? Same amount of letters.Hmmm
198. Kim:
Just like many people “choose” to ingnore the connection between Jesus of Nazareth and Christanity – responsible for many massacres, atrocities and genocides not to mention brutal theocracies, political abusses and the supression of knowledge and science.
Because you are on this site I will assume that you are not a fan of Marxism. Yes, his ideas where missused usualy by revolutionaries in agricultural societies as a means of subgigating the population in a, usually successful, atempt to industrialize (Russia, China, Cambodia etc). This kind of “Marxism” both Marx and Engels would likely reject.
On the other hand his real ideas:
The dialectical and materialist conception of history.
The critique of capitalism.
and his analytical methods – materialist dialectics, the labor theory of value, etc.
have contributed greatly to the creation of the kind of country you live in today. The revolution Marx was hoping for did, in a way, happen here and in all the other industrialized countries. He proposed that workers in order to get their fair share of the Capitalist deal must unite in labor unions and political parties, to take some of the political and economic power away from the capitalists. All the niceties we enjoy like a 5 day work week, 8 hour day, paid vacations etc are very much the result of the struggle for the implementation of his and other like minded 19 century philosophers, thinkers and economists.
Considering Atheist genocide is in much greater numbers and happen to occur pretty recently in the 20th Century when compared with Christianity atrocities that goes back centuries and in fact have motives that are not directly attributed to Christian religion (“turn the other cheek” comes to mind), I wonder why Marxism, Communism, and Nazism should not be held in LOWER REGARD is beyond me.
It makes me wonder if the Atheists just want another round of their political ideas. Cichawoda, I’m talking about you. You speak in glowing terms about Marxism. I can’t wait for the next do-over.
BTW, Christian doctrine has very little political content, as if you didn’t notice, and they do have high regard for human life. Materially, it does not compare with Atheism, which has no such code where all life is equal in origin and purpose.
The problem with Marx is that he had no concept of human nature. He made a “castle in the sky” with no foundation in reality. The same human nature also can pervert anything good. Christianity was used for political purposes just as science has and is being used for political purposes just as atheism is being used for political purposes. People and politics, now we see the real culprit. People are not inherently good.
Christianity was used for evil things in the past. Now atheism is attempting to suppress faith, to belittle it. My, the atheists seem just like those nasty Christians. Yes indeed their theology is being used for political goals.
Oh and when there are no more people left on this ball of dirt God will still exist as he did before man.
Cichawoda-
God does not “disappear” because of your non-belief. He is only not a part of the reality you wish to acknowledge. You do realize there is “reality” beyond what your five senses can dictate to you, right? Are these “realities” any less true because of your belief or non-belief?
Actually, your “acknowledging” or accepting a “reality” has VERY LITTLE if anything to do with wether that “thing” exists, except in your own mind.
The bigger question becomes: “What is TRUE?”..or more precisely TRUTH…or even MORE precisely..
THE TRUTH???
I can’t answer that suffiently for YOU, because that is THE CHOICE that we are all given as breathing, living, thinking entities.
I believe God gives us ways, be they signs, wonders, circumstances, creation, and yes, even the Bible and the Holy Spirit (I can see you rolling your eyes!) to point us to himself…and we can continually and deliberately dismiss and ignore those signs…until we no longer even notice them. And then…it is usually (not always though) too late! We are SO FAR down that road we wouldn’t even recognize God if he came up behind us and tapped us on the shoulder!
As for your Oak, Thunder, or Fairy gods, mankind has used an infinite number of substitutes, idols, religions and superstitions to explain the “unknowable” (… gee even scientific theories for that matter!) and you can say, “to each his own”, or it’s all “in the eye of the beholder”, but NOT EVERYTHING can be TRUTH, and yet…NOT EVERYTHING can NOT be Truth! (Oh sure, everything can have a GRAIN of truth…but is it THE TRUTH? Because only THE TRUTH will not have a grain of NOT being True!)
It is some kind of quandery we are in, eh?
WHERE or WHERE do you go? What can you do to REALLY seperate the LIES from what is, in effect…DESTINY???
You can, like most people do, ignore the whole arguement and just live your “real life” (whatever that really IS) or say, I already KNOW THE TRUTH and NOBODY or NUTHIN’ can change my mind because well, I just KNOW IT, and frankly, I’d rather be GOD of my own life than have any other god! At least you know YOU are TRUE…right?..or do you???
“There is a way WHICH SEEMS right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” Proverbs 14:12
As for your “oak, thunder, or fairies”
195. Michael:
“I don’t see Christians taking up a cry of “suppress the atheist!””
I was going to give you a full account but ran out of time. Suffice to say – the history of the suppression of Atheism is long and sordid and continues today form the Ayatollah saying the Atheists “do not deserve to live” to the BBC trying to delay and eventually showing the “Jonathan Miller’s three-hour series Brief History of Disbelief, on the history of atheism was put out on BBC4 rather than one of the terrestrial BBC channels where it could be seen by the wider audience. Its quality and influence and a certain amount of adverse publicity, led to its eventual showing on BBC2..” all due to clerical pressure.
I don’t have time to go into all the stuff and pressure going on in America – From Kansas to Alaska and back to Washington DC the Atheist view has been suppressed, hidden and obstructed.
Your biggest worry is that Atheists call believers dumb from time to time – hey at least we don’t want to burn you at the stake or break you on the wheel.
That’s why some of us are “Mad as hell and we are not going to take it anymore.” – unbelievers are the second largest “denomination” in this country at 16% of the population and growing at nice clip of 6.8% every 8 years – wait till we get organized!!
202. Michael:
“My, the atheists seem just like those nasty Christians.”
We haven’t burned, hung or jailed anybody for being a believer.
“Now atheism is attempting to suppress faith”
How are we doing this? Apart from speaking our minds I am not aware that we have anybody in power. Is telling you that I think your idea of an imaginary, omnipotent friend is childish and dumb a suppression of your right to go on believing?
“He made a “castle in the sky” with no foundation in reality.”
Decent pay for work, safe conditions at work, child labor laws, the right to strike etc – you are living in his “castle in the sky”.
201. JMIHU:
“Considering Atheist genocide is in much greater numbers”
Since you can’t refute 177. Cichawoda: you are now talking from the wrong orifice in your body.
Christian doctrine has very little political content
As opposed to atheism, which has NO political content.
“As opposed to atheism, which has NO political content.”
But they have science, which is full of politics. Reason, logic, and rationality can lead to much ridiculousness.
“Since you can’t refute 177.”
I did!!! I said you made a wrong assumption. You’re very wrong that an Atheist leader can’t be a first generation tyrant.
Lovely, you didn’t deny there are FIRST GENERATION ATHEIST TYRANTS.
203. Dave ll:
You sound like a preacher – talk a lot and not say much.
“God does not “disappear” because of your non-belief.”
As long as it is a figment of our imaginations, which as far as we know it is, every time somebody stops believing it gets smaller. Lets face it there is no difference between your Abrahamic God and Zeus – and where is Zeus at today. They are all manifestations of a belief not of a reality. The apple falling of a tree on your head, thunder hitting your key on a kite, the Sun’s gravity bending the path of photons from a distant star – these are the representations of Reality, this is where you will find TRUTH. Don’t believe me? Just have a look at the math.
“WHERE or WHERE do you go? What can you do to REALLY separate the LIES from what is, in effect…DESTINY???”
let me explain with the words of a song (I also recommend you see the movie “The Meaning of Life”):
Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That’s orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it’s reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the ‘Milky Way’.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It’s a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it’s just three thousand light years wide.
We’re thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go ’round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that’s the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space,
‘Cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth.
This is false. A rising standard of living for the general population is only possible if there is a rising productivity of labor, and this can only happen through the accumulation of capital — we’re able to make more stuff for the same work because we have more machines. This happened in spite of Marx, not because of him.
For a full refutation of Marx’s bogus economic theories, see CAPITALISM: A Treatise on Economics by George Reisman.
“Since you can’t refute 177.”
I decided to take up the challenge. Pol Pot is an Atheist. You can’t say Pol Pot is religious in any form since Cambodian is largely a Buddist country that does not believe in any God. He went to school in both a monastery and a Catholic School.
Again, this is still irrelevant since Atheists can be first generation genocidal maniacs.
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761579038/Pol_Pot.html
“Pol Pot was born Saloth Sar in Kompong Thom Province. At that time Cambodia was a Buddhist kingdom under French control. His parents had royal connections: his cousin was one of King Sisovath Monivong’s wives, his sister was a consort, and his brother Loth Suong made a career in the palace. Sar had a strict, sheltered childhood. In 1934 he joined his brother at the palace compound in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital, and spent a year in a royal monastery followed by six years in an elite Catholic school.”
207. JMIHU:
“Reason, logic, and rationality can lead to much ridiculousness.”
I had to tweet this one – it’s the funniest thing I read today
How about Mao? He is no deist!!!
http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/MODCHINA/MAO.HTM
“Mao was born of a peasant family that was more or less prosperous. He was converted to Marxism in 1918 when he served as a librarian in Beijing University. He then actively set about his revolutionary career by becoming a labor organizer. He was one of the twelve Chinese who attended the first meeting of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921 under the guidance of the Comintern, or Communist Internatiional, which in turn was directed by Soviet Russia. In 1925, he began to consider the potential of organizing the peasantry and concentrated all his efforts on rural China. This new tactic eventually split him off from mainstream Chinese communists but provided the seeds for his rise to power in the late 1930′s and 1940′s.”
BLAME IT ON MARXISM.
“Mao’s most important departure from mainstream communist thought was his belief in the peasantry and a peasant uprising. At the foundation of Marxist thought is the belief that the final class struggle will be between laborers and capitalists. Before this happens there must occur a bourgeois revolution in which landlordism is replaced by capitalism. Although the Marxist revolution in Russia was largely a peasant revolution, Russian Marxists still believed that a true communist revolution would originate from and concern workers rather than peasants. Mao, on the other hand, believed that the situation in China demanded a peasant revolution, and he aggressively sought peasant recruits and soldiers. His focus on the peasantry wasn’t simply practical; ideologically, he believed that the peasants should be the center of the revolution and the government built from that revolution.”
Haven’t seen athiests suppress Christians and Christian values? You are just people like any other. Like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. Many public schools baring students beliefs on campus, attempts to suppress any reference to Christians and “sanitize” Christians contribution to building this country.
Crusades, inqusitions, etc all political use and abuse for political purposes. I haven’t seen to many crusades in the last few CENTURIES.
I don’t accept credit/blame for Islam. I expect most of their horrors are all politicaly based.
To each according to his need, from each according to his ability. All means of production owned by the workers. (Which has failed miserably everywhere it has been attempted and leads to the most oppressive governments in world history)
204. Cichawoda:
I expect the atheists progrom whenever “till we get organized!!” happens. After all you all are just people with the same failings as those you demonize.
Hey Believers!!! Just on the news.
“An Oregon couple who relied on prayer instead of medical care were acquitted of manslaughter Thursday in the death of their 15-month-old daughter. Ava Worthington failed to flourish through most of her life because of a cyst on her neck that impeded her breathing and eating, contributing to her fatal pneumonia. She died on a Sunday evening after family and church members prayed over her and anointed her with olive oil.
The state medical examiner said she could easily have been saved with antibiotics.”
The Christian parents were acquitted of manslaughter. Should they have been? What if they were Muslims, Hindus, Shinto? What if they were non-believers and just employed wishful thinking with a bunch of friends?
213. Michael:
“After all you all are just people with the same failings as those you demonize.”
Nope – we are Atheists, we are better than you folk, we are the future
or at least that’s what the statistics say.
213. Michael:
“athiests suppress Christians” – do you have concrete examples? Remember that the seperation of church and state is in the constitution and often suits are filled by believers but not Christians. Don’t blame Atheists when believers fight with each other. Can you name an Atheist with political power in America today?
“I don’t accept credit/blame for Islam.” – it’s an Abrahamic faith just like your Christianity
“Which has failed miserably everywhere it has been attempted” – where has it been attempted? All “Marxist” governments where set up as dictatorships. The totalitarian government owned the means of production not the workers. Also read the post below.
212. JMIHU:
“Mao’s most important departure from mainstream communist thought was his belief in the peasantry and a peasant uprising.” – departure is the key word here. If when making ice cream you depart from the recipe and you don’t freeze it – is it still ice cream?
TO: Cichawoda
RE: Try….
….NOT to be totally ‘stupid’.
Please explain the close correlation between Rev 8:10-11 and Chernobyl. Or all of Rev 9 and Operations DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM. And how a guy in a cave almost 2000 years ago got so close to describing what happened…..from his First Century understanding of ‘runaway nuclear reactors’ at a place that translates to Wormwood and modern mechanized warfare, even naming the name of the city at the mouth of the river valley where it went on.
Go on….
….I defy you.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Prophecy fulfilled is the proof. -- CBPelto]
P.S. Fools choose to ignore evidence…….
209. Kim:
If you have studied CAPITALISM: A Treatise on Economics by George Reisman tell me what you think of his use of input-output tables that resemble those of Wassily Leontief (Nobel Prize, 1973) and the earlier Tableau conomique (1st ed., 1758) of the French Physiocrat Fransois Quesnay for his accounts but applying them to laissez-faire capitalism?
His only real problem with Marxism is the notion that profits necessarily decline over time. This is at variance with the facts. Also his postulates of: All this spending in the Gross National Revenue accounts depends on how much money there is, not upon how productive the economic system is and that profits, as well as interest rates, are determined, not by productivity, but by the proportion of investment to consumption, which is ultimately tied to the (time) preference for present goods to future goods. Have been put to bed by the recent failures of the economy – he was the Republicans pet economist. Personally I prefer the much more science based and accurate methodology of Krugman.
#47-OMG it might like like the country our Founding Fathers designed and put together, providing the most religious freedom of any country ever in existence. Don’t you flipping atheists who criticize Christians for wanting to establish a theocracy ever forget that!
“departure is the key word here. If when making ice cream you depart from the recipe and you don’t freeze it – is it still ice cream?”
I thought Atheism has no creed. You are stupid.
“Which has failed miserably everywhere it has been attempted” – where has it been attempted? All “Marxist” governments where set up as dictatorships. The totalitarian government owned the means of production not the workers.
Hmmm… Amazingly perceptive.
How do the workers ever have control in an ideal way? It doesn’t exist!!!
“The Christian parents were acquitted of manslaughter. Should they have been? What if they were Muslims, Hindus, Shinto? What if they were non-believers and just employed wishful thinking with a bunch of friends?”
What if they are Atheists who don’t believe in Vaccines like Bill Maher and the kids get infected?
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/10/is_bill_maher_really_that_ignorant_part.php
“I don’t believe in vaccination either. That’s a… well, that’s a… what? That’s another theory that I think is flawed, that we go by the Louis Pasteur theory, even though Louis Pasteur renounced it on his own deathbed and said that Beauchamp(s) was right: it’s not the invading germs, it’s the terrain. It’s not the mosquitoes, it’s the swamp that they are breeding in”
Bill Maher is an Apatheist. I supposed this is a bit different.
http://www.answers.com/topic/bill-maher
“Maher declared himself an apatheist instead of an agnostic”
That’s a bit odd since he has made a career of trashing religion.
http://www.answers.com/topic/apatheism
“Apatheism (a portmanteau of apathy and theism/atheism), also known as pragmatic or critically as practical atheism, is acting with apathy, disregard, or lack of interest towards belief, or lack of belief in a deity. Apatheism describes the manner of acting towards a belief or lack of a belief in a deity; so applies to both theism and atheism. An apatheist is also someone who is not interested in accepting or denying any claims that gods exist or do not exist. In other words, an apatheist is someone who considers the question of the existence of gods as neither meaningful nor relevant to his or her life.”
Back to vaccines. Kids have suffered without them.
False, once again.
You lie so effortlessly, and with very little compunction. I’m dying to know, just out of curiosity, what you do for a living?
In CAPITALISM: A Treatise on Economics, Reisman demonstrates that capital investments originate in the reduced consumption spending of capitalists, rather than by squeezing the life’s blood out of hapless employees, as Marx maintains. This obliterates the whole foundation of Marx’s labor exploitation theory.
222. JMIHU:
Bill Maher is above all a comedian and entertainer so I am not sure how this relates to the question. Did his children die from neglect?
220. JMIHU: – what?
217. Chuck Pelto:
8:10 And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;
8:11 And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.
you have got to be kiding? For starters the Ukrainian word chornobyl refers to mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) and not Wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) which to anybody who knows their botany would never be called ‘black grass’ or ‘black stalks’. Chorny means black in Russian and Slavic languages. The Russian word for Wormwood is Polyn as in most Slavic languages – hence the Polish name for Absinth is Piolunowka.
That is just a start – the rest is just too stupid to argue with this late at night.
I got a funny feeling we’re all going to have to wait until we die (or the Rapture comes) to find out who’s right.
Cichawoda: It’s funny how you absolutely nothing to say about an Atheist like Bill Maher who does not like proper and proven medical care, yet you call to attention Christians who do the same.
Bill Maher has a big microphone as a comedian. He has influence whether you like it or not. He would encourage people who have doubts about vaccines to not use it for themselves for their children.
Thankfully, Bill remains single and without children. At least he is consistent in Atheist rationality which favors population control and abortion.
225. Cichawoda: – what?
You’re an idiot. It’s amazing that you don’t understand your own statement.
““Mao’s most important departure from mainstream communist thought was his belief in the peasantry and a peasant uprising.” – departure is the key word here. If when making ice cream you depart from the recipe and you don’t freeze it – is it still ice cream?”
Does this mean you favor classic communism over Maoist communism? You already shown your love for Marxism. Your argument is completely irrelevant since Atheism has no inherent ideology, but it seems funny how Atheism goes in all directions and ends up with a tyrannical and genocidal government. Atheism is the genocidal killers of the 20th Century. Hundreds of Millions Dead!!!
shimauma “I got a funny feeling we’re all going to have to wait until we die (or the Rapture comes) to find out who’s right.”
If you let Atheists have their way, you’ll get there sooner.
It is specious to claim that atheism is incapable of intolerance
Pol Pot suppressed religion, beheaded monks, and destroyed temples and religious artifacts. People who were outwardly religious became targets of execution.
The Stalin regime turned monastaries into gulags, executed tens of thousands of monks and nuns, leveled churches, and persecuted the Russian Orthodox church to point of near extinction. Other religions in the Russian periphery did not escape, enduring the destruction of mosques, synagogues, and sacred buildings and the murders of their clerics.
Mao officially banned religion, destroyed most of the monasteries in Tibet, and sought to kill the Dalai Lama. Under his regime, houses of worship were forced to become secular buildings. Official policy was elimination of religion with the result that huge number of places of worship destroyed.
Religious people have committed hideous atrocities. But so have atheists in the name of atheism, and though they have had less time to prove their mettle in this area, they have proved it amply. If religious belief is not synonymous with good behavior, neither is absence of belief, to put it mildly
In order to say that atheism as such causes murder, you would need to demonstrate that there is something in the nature of atheism that causes murder. You haven’t done this.
If you peel back the layers of Marxist ideology, you find the philosophy of Hegel, then deeper still you come to Kant.
Kant’s duty-based ethical system served as the philosophical blueprint for mass murder in the 20th Century, he killed in the abstract, and he did it “to make the world safe for religion”.
Marxism is a secularized religion, where duty to Society takes the place of duty to God.
So while Marxism is nominally atheist, it is indeed deeply mystical, and therefore essentially religious.
Cichawoda;
You said “– we are Atheists, we are the future or at least that’s what the statistics say.”
Actually they don’t.
Statistically, the less religious and irreligious have fewer or no children. For all the tooting of Darwin’s horn that comes from the atheist camp, atheism is an evolutionary dead end. It will go the way of the Shakers.
http://www.physorg.com/news5877.html
(There’s some more searches you can do on childbearing trends and belief. It’s actually quite interesting)
Kim;
Holding religion responsible for the sins of non-religion is a cop-out. Your point deserves a better defense.
Yep, sure am seeing a lot of tolerance for atheists here.
“You’re all just a bunch of Pol Pots!”
Nice.
“In order to say that atheism as such causes murder, you would need to demonstrate that there is something in the nature of atheism that causes murder. You haven’t done this.”
Kim: This is bull. The tyrannical leaders are declared Atheists. Their political goals are to prop up Atheistic non-belief by suppressing other religions and other competing political philosophies.
It’s funny how you saying Marxism is semi-religious. Well, now. That certainly gets you off the hook, but IT DOESN’T. Marxism and other such philosophy fills the void from an Atheistic non-religion point of view and way of life.
Marxism certainly creates a mood of religion, thus a cult of personality. This is a statement of people’s unwillingness to be a blank slate. People are not mere non-believers. All people are irrational at some level like you and Cichawoda.
234. Abu Infidel,
The mysticism in Marxism can be found in Marx’s metaphysics and his epistemology. Take a look at his pronouncements about dialectical materialism, a batch of arbitrary notions about the nature of reality, ultimately established by nothing more than his revelations to the masses. Mysticism is the functional core of religion, and Marxism is built on it.
Kim: There is no Mysticism in Marxism. This was denied by Lenin himself.
http://materialismandempiriocriticism.blogspot.com/
“Here is a famous work of Lenin’s that outlines what Marxist philosophy is all about.”
“Actually, Berkeley is an objective idealist as he holds that the objects that we see existing in the world about us truly have an independent existence from human beings and the world would be just as it is even if there were no humans in existence. Lenin also believes this. What differentiates them is Berkeley has an extra entity which LENIN DOES NOT HAVE– IE., A SPIRITUAL BEING “GOD” IN WHOSE MIND EVERYTHING EXISTS. Except for this, Lenin and Berkeley have pretty much the same world view (MINUS DIALECTICS) when it comes to the “real” existence of the external world. Anyone who doubts this need only read “Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous” [1713]. In his desire to smash his contemporary philosophical opponents, Lenin has not given Berkeley his due. He is much more sophisticated than the people Lenin is opposing.”
frank j.big fan of IMAO,this article….meh,but you did generate an interesting debate.
JMIHU.thanks for the link.
There has been a lot of discussion on this thread where people have implicitly equated belief in god(s) with being religious, but the concept of religion is wider than theism.
For example, animism is the belief that everything in the world is conscious or somehow alive. Animism is a religion with no god, and dialectical materialism is in some ways an advanced type of animism, because properties of mind and matter are mixed up.
Just to clearify:
“Animism (from Latin anima (soul, life) is a philosophical, religious or spiritual idea that souls or spirits exist not only in humans and animals but also in plants, rocks, natural phenomena such as thunder, geographic features such as mountains or rivers, or other entities of the natural environment, a proposition also known as hylozoism in philosophy. Animism may further attribute souls to abstract concepts such as words, true names or metaphors in mythology. Religions which emphasize animism are mostly folk religions, such as the various forms of Shamanism, Shinto, or certain currents of Hinduism.”
“The Soul in many religions and parts of philosophy, the soul is the spiritual or immaterial part of a living being, often regarded as eternal. It is usually thought to consist of one’s consciousness and personality, and can be synonymous with the spirit, mind or self. In theology, the soul is often believed to live on after the person’s death, and some religions posit that God creates souls. In some cultures, non-human living things, and sometimes inanimate objects are said to have souls, a belief known as animism.”
We already established that Atheism is a rejection of supernatural beliefs – that would include Animism.
Dialectical materialism was formed by taking the dialectic of Hegel and joining it to the Materialism of Feuerbach.
Dialectics is a method of argument. Dialectic of Hegel is the science of the general and abstract laws of the development of nature, society, and thought.
Materialism is based in the conviction that all phenomena can be explained through natural means ie Science.
So – Dialectical materialism has nothing to do with Animism (a belief in a supernatural soul).
This thread has been ridiculous since Chichiwoda entered it. He is clearly a Marxist… and an “educated” one. They practice this stupid “dialectic”. Their beginning premises are always false, so it is a waste of time to argue with them.
They refuse to ever admit that their premises are always belied by empirical results. Marxism of every form always fails. Always. They are also always atheistic and proud of it. They are always anti-God, and so, it always lead to a slaughter of dissidents and to bondage. They always sound so intellectual, but it is always pseudo-intellectualism. You’re just arguing with a pig. You both get dirty… and the pig likes it!
As for liking Krugman, well, every time I turn around, he opposes things which turn out to work, and endorses things which don’t. He, too, is always disproven by events, but refuses to change his theories to fit the evidence. Such is the mark of the pseudo-intellectual, aka, ideologue.
“concept of religion is wider than theism”
Yes, and if it includes the word faith (Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence), then the scientific community can be in the same category, and by extention, atheists as well.
To extend it further, if you include another defintion of faith, “A set of principles or beliefs”, we can put Maxism-Leninism in the category of religion. Marxism-Leninism has put many people to death in the 20th Century by Atheist leaders, yet there is still FAITH that the discredited political principles will work in real life.
216. Cichawoda:
The Constitutional issue is Freedom of Religion and having no state religion. That is the sum total of what the constitution says. Freedom of Religion, not suppression. Look at schools, we shouldn’t have teacher lead prayer in class but we shouldn’t have prayer meetings led and participated in by students.
I don’t accept the guild by association. Islam has nothing to do with Christianity. The heart of Christianity is the New Testament.
Ready your Marx/Engel. It requires the dictatorship of the proletariat to start. The problem is that the dictatorship never goes away. People are still people and people that seek power very rarely give it up voluntarily. Even if it means millions must die.
Can you really believe that “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need” would really work? People are still people; they haven’t been and never will be doing this voluntarily. The vast number of people put themselves and their families ahead of anything else. Others will look to take all they can and produce nothing.
“Nope – we are Atheists, we are better than you folk, we are the future”, “we are better than you” means that the inferior are available for marginalization and suppression. People who think they are superior by definition have always been dangerous.
From somewhere above:
“… I’m just concerned that they will succeed in taking away Christians’ prerogatives to pass on their beliefs to their children. You have people like Richard Dawkins suggesting that raising one’s children to become Christians is child abuse, and should be a good reason to take their kids away. …”
Somebody call a Whaaaambulance. For that last whole bunch of years (as many as 2,000 depending on who you ask) the “Christians” have been oppressing those that disagree with them. And by oppressing I mean killing, torturing, name calling, sticks and stones, all of it and more.
Now, suddenly, the tables are turning and you christians are feeling some of that same oppression and its all “He’s a bad man, he should be stopped before it goes to far.”
Well, to all you religious people who think you know better than the rest of the world…. suck it.
When you wind up in the minority and have to withstand daily mental assaults on what you believe because ‘everyone else’ is telling you your ideas are wrong, and the occasional Athorist knocking on your door trying to ‘convert’ you, *then* I will show a bit sympathy for your cause.
“For that last whole bunch of years (as many as 2,000 depending on who you ask) the “Christians” have been oppressing those that disagree with them. And by oppressing I mean killing, torturing, name calling, sticks and stones, all of it and more.”
Except for the 50 or so years of Marxism/Communism/Socialism in the 20th Century, the killing, oppressing, torturning, name calling is still the sole responsibility of Christians. Wow!!! We need some perspective!!!
Atheism has killed many times more people than Christians ever did. That’s a fact!!!
“the occasional Athorist knocking on your door trying to ‘convert’ you, *then* I will show a bit sympathy for your cause.”
You need to go back in time in China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba, Soviet Union when this happened in an Atheist regime. Wait a minute, this is still happening in most of those countries.
Chip # 245:
Christ taught His followers to love all of our fellow human beings as we love ourselves and to forgive our enemies as he forgave those who tortured and crucified him. Anyone coming after Him who used the dominant culture to torture, maim, oppress, kill or harass their fellows, as humans are all too inclined to do, technically were not Christians or followers of Christ’s teachings, no matter what their pretenses were. Luther pointed that out as did Erasmus as did thousands of others who addressed the issue across the centuries. Were Christians tortured less by their enemies, particularly prior to 300 AD?
Well, the point is you have nothing to fear from true Christians and our days of being the dominant culture where the hypocrites in our midst could torture anyone are long gone in the West. Whether you are right that we have nothing to fear from the Atheists I can only cite you the bloodiest century in Human History where Atheists tortured and killed at least 500 Million People, and maybe more. It ran roughly from 1917 AD to 2000 AD and we call it the Twentieth Century (and I think we can include Hitler in that group of 20th Century Atheists though some might disagree).
Anyway, I am not sure what it means but the recently rampant murdering Atheists were not hyopocrites and imposters as were the murdering “Christians” from long ago.
Clarke what atheist murder plot are refering to?
When a Marxist tells he’s going to clarify something, you can be certain that his actual intent is to bury the truth even deeper. Marxists use ink the same way an octopus does, to obscure rather than to reveal.
It’s easy to show that dialectical materialism entails a belief in the supernatural:
Referencing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_materialism, consider the so-called “Law of Transformation”, and this quote:
So for example, if you start with one ounce of lead, and then add another ounce of lead, and another, and so on, that at some critical quantity, the whole works might turn into gold.
How? What is it in the nature of lead that allows you to expect to get gold, by simply counting lead units as being part of the same total sum?
Since we know that there is nothing in the nature of lead that could cause this, we have to conclude that Marxists believe in some universal, supernatural agency that can intervene to make this miraculous transformation occur.
This is just magical thinking camouflaged as science.
More generally, the animism in Marxism comes from attempting to reduce consciousness to matter. Since consciousness and existence are irreducible primaries, the attempt to reduce everything to material terms can’t succeed. Instead there is a confounding of mental and material concepts resulting in all sorts of mind-projection fallacies, including the “Law of Transformation”.
242. Marc Malone:
Thanks for the good advice. I now see what you mean about getting dirty… Marxism is toxic down to the root.
The brutality of Marxists isn’t due to being anti-God.
With all due respect, the God vs. Marxism choice is a false alternative between different forms of irrationality.
What separates us from lower animals isn’t our ability to kneel, it’s our ability to reason.
“The brutality of Marxists isn’t due to being anti-God.”
This was left without a response. Kim, what is it due to?
The brutality of Marxists isn’t due to being anti-God. It is due to….?
“What separates us from lower animals isn’t our ability to kneel, it’s our ability to reason.”
Maybe this is the answer. The Marxists’ ability to reason caused the brutality.
What a shame, I was hoping for some kind of actual discussion of the atheist viewpoint, as opposed to randomly poking fun at them. Nothing disproved, nothing proved, no thought into it at all. I guess that was too much to hope for… I am not an atheist, but I do believe in the scientific method… and since I am not a christian (or necessarily any religion y’all have heard of) I guess my viewpoint has no validity anyways, from your stand high above us mere mortals?
“Personally I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.”
The brutality of Marxists is due to being anti-reason, and because they reject that foundation of civilization, they descend from the rule of law to become like animals ruled by the law of the jungle. Being anti-God follows from being anti-everything: Marxism is nihilistic, a destroyer of all values.
Reason and logic are based on the Law of Identity, that a thing is what it is. Marxism negates the Law of Identity, and therefore systematically cuts off the mind’s ability to apprehend reality in conceptual, logical terms — they are left with the perceptual level awareness of an animal, and a hatred for the mind. When men are unable to settle their differences by reason, there is a natural reversion to using force and brutality.
253. Caestal:
“I am not an atheist, but I do believe in the scientific method…”
A belief in the supernatural, metaphysical is a denial of the value of the scientific method. What is the point of coming up with a hypothesis, doing all this research when a funky creature, some call a god, can at a moments notice change the value of say Pi to 18.4 – just for the hell of it? A supernatural, metaphysical world is by definition “magical” there for unknowable by empirical means. Anybody who pursues any endeavor that involves researching and making predictions about the material world (engineering, science, medicine etc) is to some degree an Atheist – they assume that at lease some aspects of life are material and come under the rules of nature and not of some imaginary being or force.
252. JMIHU:, 254. Kim: and others
– Atheism is not a rejection of just the Abrahamic hocus pocus but of all “magical”, supernatural, metaphysical belief systems that claim to explain the workings of the natural world. In a faith based world view all beliefs are of equal value even though any given believer may consider his/her belief to be “special”. Because by definition beliefs can’t be proven somebody’s belief that wearing a tin foil hat protects them from Alien thought rays is just as valid as a belief that eating a wafer and drinking some wine is equivalent to eating the flesh and drinking the blood of some mythical Jewish guy who died 2000 years ago and it will buy you time in an imaginary Sheol, Heaven, Elysium or Tian. The reason organized religions place such an emphasis on faith is because that is all they have. Many intelligent people in the hierarchies of the world’s religious organizations realise that in the long run ignorance is their only hope and so these organizations have always (with a few exceptions here and there) opposed the secular education of the masses.
Just to clarify
Some of you on this site have expressed the idea that simply because less educated, religious people are better breeders Atheism does not stand a chance – well – the stunning growth of Atheists and non-believers is mostly due to conversions. The more accepted, vocal and “out of the closet” Atheists are the quicker this society will grow out of the barbarism of superstition.
I can’t argue with your beliefs about Atheism being the cause of atrocities committed by “Marxists” in the 20th century and that it some how washes away the atrocities committed by Christians or other religious organizations or people in the name of their beliefs. It is pointless to argue when your opponent uses nonsensical, faith based, statements like “Being anti-God follows from being anti-everything”. It is equivalent to a Athenist saying that “Being anti-Athen follows from being anti-everything” or a Slavic pagan to say “Being anti-Svarog follows from being anti-everything”.
Being anti-superstition simply follows from being rational and logical – that’s all.
“Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.”
- Matthew 5:44.
The world changes, but the message stays the same.
Re: 255. Cichawoda
A word to the wise: be very careful not to be taken in by a Marxist’s use of the word “logical”.
Without qualification, what he means is dialectical logic, a dysfunctional set of mental operations that is radically opposed to common sense and the logic on which Western civilization is based, namely Aristotelian logic.
Cichawoda one question:do you think the US would have ever been founded and or succeeded without christianity?
TO: Chichawoda
RE: Evasions?
Not kidding.
And in First Century parlance and understanding of botany and classification…..close enough.
So….
….explain how John got the name right. And that’s just the first think.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[The Truth will out....]
P.S. I’m not ‘kidding’…..
P.P.S. I know a fellow from the Ukraine. He says that’s how the town got it’s name. ‘Wormwood’ is the most common plant found in the vicinity.
258. frank grimes:
“Cichawoda one question:do you think the US would have ever been founded and or succeeded without christianity”
It was founded and succeeded inspite of Christianity – and that is not a belief.
“I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies.” – Benjamin Franklin, in Toward The Mystery
“Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.” – Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814
“Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity” – Thomas Paine
“Indeed, Mr. Jefferson, what could be invented to debase the ancient Christianism which Greeks, Romans, Hebrews and Christian factions, above all the Catholics, have not fraudulently imposed upon the public? Miracles after miracles have rolled down in torrents.” – John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson
“religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprize.” – James Madison
“The founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels, and that of the presidents who had thus far been elected [Washington; Adams; Jefferson; Madison; Monroe; Adams; Jackson] not a one had professed a belief in Christianity….
…Among all our presidents from Washington downward, not one was a professor of religion, at least not of more than Unitarianism.” – The Reverend Doctor Bird Wilson, an Episcopal minister in Albany, New York, in a sermon preached in October, 1831.
“Judeo-Christian principles” is a recent lie to anybody who does even the least bit of independent investigation. For starters after 2000 years of persecution, hatered and attempts of extermination, suddendlly, in the last 20 years it’s JUDEO-christian – who are you trying to fool?
“In 1797 our government concluded a “Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli, or Barbary,” now known simply as the Treaty of Tripoli. Article 11 of the treaty contains these words:
“As the Government of the United States…is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion–as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity of Musselmen–and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”
This document was endorsed by Secretary of State Timothy Pickering and President John Adams. It was then sent to the Senate for ratification; the vote was unanimous. It is worth pointing out that although this was the 339th time a recorded vote had been required by the Senate, it was only the third unanimous vote in the Senate’s history. There is no record of debate or dissent. The text of the treaty was printed in full in the Philadelphia Gazette and in two New York papers, but there were no screams of outrage, as one might expect today.”
“Like Jefferson, every recent President has understood the necessity of at least paying lip service to the piety of most American voters. All of our leaders, Democrat and Republican, have attended church, and have made very sure they are seen to do so. But there is a difference between offering this gesture of respect for majority beliefs and manipulating and pandering to the bigotry, prejudice and millennial fantasies of Christian extremists.”
Brooke Allen
Cichawoda:i did not mean founded as a christian nation,but in regards to the organizing principles of the religion it’s self.if the original settlers had been athiests,the US would have still have been founded,formed and successful?
264. frank grimes:
“the organizing principles of the religion it’s self”
The Abrahamic religions are all organized around hierarchy, obedience and subservience. Showing obedience to God, King, Master is the overriding principle and not just in the Old Testament (first 5 books of the Torah).
“Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ.” (Ephesians 6:5 NLT)
If it wasn’t for the enlightened Deism and Atheism of the founding fathers the obedient loyalists would have won. America would still have formed and been successful as a British colony – how can you loose with such a rich land where most of the original inhabitants can’t put up a fight due to the power of the pox. If it wasn’t for the old world diseases America would have ended up more like the less eviscerated colonies.
Wouldn’t be too bad – at least we would have universal health care.
Cichawoda:
“how can you loose with such a rich land where most of the original inhabitants can’t put up a fight due to the power of the pox. If it wasn’t for the old world diseases America would have ended up more like the less eviscerated ”
the native peoples put up a spectaclar struggle,that is why we name some our finest killing instruments after them.pox aside,everyone would have still been butchered,it just would have taken more time.we were the strongest tribe,plain and simple,christianity(for good or bad) played a crucial role in that.
as far as “how can you lose”,i would be interested in knowing a historian who has come to a simular conclusion,zinn perhaps?america’s success has been about luck,timing and massive sacrifice….we just didn’t wander in here and let slaves build the place.
266. frank grimes:
“about luck, timing and massive sacrifice”
I think it was about luck, timing, the pox and more luck, oh, and gunpowder and the pox again. Same goes for all the colonial conquests where the indigenous peoples didn’t have a chance South America, Australia, North America. I don’t know about the “massive sacrifice” though. Sure you had to put up to move on but times where hard all over in those days. As long as you had the guts to kill a few sicklly Indians the USA was remarkably accommodating to European migration. Now the frontier mentality is a curse – in the old days if you didn’t like it where you where you could always go homestead someplace else now you have to co-exist – much harder.
As for the indigenous people – not that they didn’t try (all things considered they put up a great fight) but how can they win when over 80% died on contact from disease. Imagine if our troops encountered that kind of mortality in Iraq – you think we would stand a chance.
If independence never happened we could have ended up all split up – East coast and Canada – British, Southwest and California – Spanish and the Mid-West to the Great Lakes and possibly North west – French. In this scenario a lot more Indians would probably have survived and the Irish, Italians and East Europeans would have had to find other solutions to their overpopulation problem.
Cichawoda: “Being anti-superstition simply follows from being rational and logical – that’s all.”
That’s a laugh. You’re real good at comedy. Just because you don’t believe in God doesn’t mean you are really that smart. It makes your argument ridiculous that Atheists can claim to be better than anyone else.
You can be rational and logical while still believing in God. I know that’s hard for you to believe because you have worked it out in your head that you’re right!!!
You also completely missed my argument on Faith. Faith does not require a belief in God or superstition. It can be about Faith in Atheism and Faith in Marxism.
“I can’t argue with your beliefs about Atheism being the cause of atrocities committed by “Marxists” in the 20th century and that it some how washes away the atrocities committed by Christians or other religious organizations or people in the name of their beliefs.”
What do you mean exactly in this mess of an statement? I wasn’t attempting to excuse Christian atrocities. I was making the case that Atheist genocidal regimes have done worse and pretty recently as well. You can say your lack of concern about Atheist genocidal regimes is a faith in Marxism and Communism and that their next do-over will produce less murderous results. You also don’t take any responsibility for Atheism’s excesses.
The lack of concern for Atheism’s atrocious history will undoubtedly produce the same in the future.
TO: All
RE: I See….
…that Chichawoda is either (1) ignorant, (2) gutless or (3) scared….to discuss the concept of prophecy.
Not to be unexpected. Most atheists don’t have good arguments against prophecy. And the thought that God actually exists can scare the shiite out of them.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Atheist, n., One praying to God that He doesn't exist.]
P.S. If anyone’s interested….
….Revelation 9 describes Gulf War I (Operations DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM) to the ‘proverbial’ Tee….
Chichawoda “Anybody who pursues any endeavor that involves researching and making predictions about the material world (engineering, science, medicine etc) is to some degree an Atheist – they assume that at lease some aspects of life are material and come under the rules of nature and not of some imaginary being or force.”
You have extented the word Atheist beyond the broad definition given earlier. This new definition is blatantly false.
Many people who observe, study, and engineer about the natural world do not have the complete answers of why things are as they are. There is no way to study the world and know everything and how it is mechanically designed (yes, I used the word designed). The knowledge doesn’t preclude knowing if there is absolutely no God.
How will you know the rules of nature are not from some force or being (not using your imaginary word)? There’s no way of ruling anything out especially if you want to GAIN knowledge.
269. Chuck Pelto:
“…that Chichawoda is either (1) ignorant, (2) gutless or (3) scared”
I can see I’m making progress when you have to use enumerated epitaphs as argument.
“.Revelation 9 describes Gulf War I (Operations DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM) to the ‘proverbial’ Tee…”
So when other Christians in the past claimed the same for their set of circumstances they where lying or insane? You do realize that so called millennial nuts have been part of the Christian myth since day one:
“But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, ‘Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel’, till the Son of man be come.” – Matthew 10:23
“Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who shall not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom” – Matthew 16:28, Mark 9:1, Luke 9:27
So when Jesus of Nazareth said this he was thinking of DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM
268. JMIHU:
“rational and logical while still believing in God.”
No a belief in God, Gods, Supernatural, Occult, Paranormal etc requires a leap of faith so by definition it is not rational and logical.
“word Atheist beyond the broad definition given earlier”
No – the key statement is “some aspects of life are material”. You can not with any seriousness conduct empirical research without assuming at the start that what you are researching is rational and not magical.
If I want do design a spaceship and send it to the moon I have to assume that a huge chunk of the world around me behaves in a rational, predictable and empirically discoverable way. I can still go to church or an ashram or temple or a clearing in the woods and perform all kinds of silly rituals because I believe that another part of the world is irrational, empirically unknowable and magical. So I would be a believer by most accounts but to send a man to the moon I would have to be a partial Atheist.
You can prove me wrong by pointing to any engineering done by prayer. Also I have been curious – why is it that faith healers never tackle healing amputees?
269. Chuck Pelto:
“to discuss the concept of prophecy.”
You have heard prediction paradox and free will – right? If we are to have even a modicum of free will prediction (prophecy, knowing the future) has to be impossible. Any knowledge of the future is only probabilistic and breaks down into pure chaos after just a few iterations. Here are all the different ways prophecies or predictions fail – pick to one yours falls under:
“Vague
The prediction makes a non-specific claim. For example, it predicts a “disaster” of some kind but not what it is. Such a prediction can be massaged to fit any number of events. Likewise, a prediction that does not state dates or places, or allows itself a large window of possible dates can be made to fit many possibilities. A prophecy attributed to Saint Malachy (but widely regarded as a 16th century forgery) claims to predict the succession of Popes by describing each one briefly. However, each description is sufficiently vague that it can be massaged to fit after the fact.
Open ended
The prediction has a very long cut-off date or none at all and therefore runs indefinitely. Many of Nostradamus’ quatrains are open-ended and have been postdicted over the centuries to fit various contemporary events.
Recycled
The prediction is reused again and again in order to match the most recent event. Nostradamus’ quatrains have been recycled numerous times.
Catch-all
The prediction covers more than one possible outcome. For example, the Delphic Oracle’s answer as to whether Crœsus should attack the Persians: If you attack you will destroy a mighty empire. Crœsus attacked and thereby destroyed his own empire.
Shotgunning
The prediction is in fact many predictions, designed to cover a range of events and claim credit even if only one of them happens. For example, claiming that a particular date is “unlucky” and then citing a dozen or so things that might happen on it. See selective thinking.
Statistically likely
The prediction makes a claim for something that happens with enough frequency that a high hit rate is virtually assured. For example, predicting terrorism on any day of the year, or particularly around national holidays, anniversaries (or similar events), or religious festivals.
Unfalsifiable
The prediction makes a claim that is impossible to verify or falsify. For example, a belief arose amongst a few in 2003 that a “Planet X” would pass the Earth in May of that year. When it singularly failed to appear they claimed it was shrouded so that only an “educated eye” could see it and various other excuses, while discounting the most obvious reason — that Planet X does not exist at all in the form predicted.
Unavailable until after the fact
A prediction cannot be verified if there is no public record of when it was made. A famous example was the psychic Tamara Rand, who “predicted” that Ronald Reagan was in danger of someone with the initials “J.H.”. The video interview in which this prediction was made was shot the day after the assassination attempt.
Counting the hits and not the misses
The prediction may be part of a series, but is singled out because it can be favourably interpreted, even if the series itself follows the laws of probability. For example, the prediction might correctly state movement on the stock market when previous or subsequent predictions have been wrong.
Allegory
The postdiction resorts to tenuous allegorical explanations to turn literal misses into hits. For example the postdiction might explain that a famous person has suffered a “spiritual” death to explain why they are still walking around despite a prediction that says otherwise.
Moving the goalposts
The event must be “shoehorned” to fit the prediction because it differs in some significant way. For example, the prediction predicts an earthquake on one day when in fact it happens on a different day. Once again, Nostradamus supporters occasionally use this technique, as Nostradamus supposedly predicted the founding of the Institut Pasteur in 1888[citation needed] (it was actually a year later) and the September 11 terrorist attacks on the 45th parallel[1](actually significantly southwards).”
Imperical evidence of the existance of God?
I have 2 questions:
1. What evidence will be sufficient to satisfy all of your doubts? In other words, what miracle, sign, wonder, or manifestation of the Divine Will would be adequate to inspire you to say, “I’m convinced!”?
2. If such proof were provided (whatever it may be) what effect would the sure, unshakeable knowledge that God exists have on your life?
“You believe that there is one God, Good! Even the demons believe that – and shudder.”
(James 2:19)
TO: Chichawoda
RE: Not….
Enumeration just emphasizes your errors in a logical and concise manner.
More tomorrow, buckie.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Every morning (for you) is the dawn of a new error...]
TO: 4 of 7, et al.
RE: Indeed
He, and all of his ilk, are the sort that Christ told the parable about regarding the beggar Lazarus and the rich man.
If their own kin were to return from the dead to warn them, they still would not listen.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
P.S. But it is our responsibility to counsel them anyway. And it may be that not they, but someone else that reads these words will pay attention and learn and save themselves…..
P.P.S. I suspect that their rejection has something to do with ‘pride’.
No wonder it is known as one of the ‘mortal sins’…..
Cichawoda:”I don’t know about the “massive sacrifice” though.”
hmmm….i think we have reached a revisionism empasse.here is book on the subject i found fascinating:
http://www.amazon.com/Conquests-Cultures-International-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465014003/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248745530&sr=8-1
perhaps you could shoot me a link containing an historical record protraying early frontier life as “remarkably accommodating to European migration.”with nothing to worry about really but “a couple of sick indians.”
i was taught in school the settlers dropped like flies……DAMNED NEA!
BTW,interesting points on predictions.
4 of 7:
Imperical evidence of the existance of God?
I have 2 questions:
1. What evidence will be sufficient to satisfy all of your doubts?
In other words, what miracle, sign, wonder, or manifestation of
the Divine Will would be adequate to inspire you to say,
“I’m convinced!”?
Why, what do you have? So far no one has been able to point to anything other than some book written a bunch of years ago. And that book was really a collection of short stories anyway, so it really should be an anthology and not really a book.
2. If such proof were provided (whatever it may be) what effect
would the sure, unshakeable knowledge that God exists have
on your life?
I don’t deny the existence of God. I have never met a God, that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I have never met a Penguin either but I see them on TV all the time.
What I do deny is the “Almighty Omnipotence” of any particular God, Christian or otherwise. For every good you can point to, someone can point out a dozen bad things. Every bit of evidence can be explained by less than super-natural means. This does not make a compelling case for the Christian God. And really does not take into effect any of the Gods that were around before Christianity. Whatever happened to them anyway? Where is Ra these days? Or Anubis? Or Zeus? Odin? Loki?
274. 4 of 7:
“Imperical evidence of the existance of God?”
Empirical evidence – information gained by means of observation, experience, or experiment.
Take into consideration that people observe what they expect to observe, until shown otherwise; our beliefs will affect our observations. So results have to be repeatable for most observers.
Any form of “miraculous” would do as long as it is not just improbable but impossible. You know the hocus pocus stuff in the Old Testament or maybe somebody who can heal amputees.
Heck I would be even satisfied with a decent falsifiable hypotheses on the existence of the supernatural.
“that God exists have on your life”
Interesting question. First – you do realize that the notion of what is a God is in the eye of the beholder. Even if presented with a omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, omnibenevolent creator and overseer of the universe I still am under no obligation to worship it and so it would not be a God. I guess I would approach it like an alien being and try to get some answers from it about why the world is like it is and why this powerful being isn’t doing anything to fix things. I’m not talking about what humans do to each other but all the exploding and colliding galaxies and if we are so special why all that wasted real estate we can never get to.
Basically this creature would have some ‘splaining to do.
279. Chip:
“I don’t deny the existence of God.”
Just would like to point out that the idea of God is in the eye of the beholder. Thor is just an alien guy with hammer till you start to worship him. No worship = no Gods.
278. frank grimes:
“i was taught in school the settlers dropped like flies……DAMNED NEA!”
I will have to look into that book.
As for settlers dropping like flies maybe in the first settlements but by the late 1600 life expectancy here was comparable to that in Europe. Also my statement is relative to what settlers had to endure up North and down South. Our little swath of temperate and abundant land was relatively easy pickings. I bet most immigrants where better of here than in their homeland by the first generation.
chip:”Where is Ra these days? Or Anubis? Or Zeus? Odin? Loki?”
FALL TO YOUR KNEES MORTAL!!IT IS I,LOKI…..NOW DO AS YOUR LORD DOES AND GO HARRASS PEOPLE AND CAUSE TROUBLE.
cichawoda:” what settlers had to endure up North and down South. Our little swath of temperate and abundant land was relatively easy pickings.”
i would agree.of course that would be the whole point of going deep into debt,traveling by sail and risking your life.
“I’m not talking about what humans do to each other but all the exploding and colliding galaxies and if we are so special why all that wasted real estate we can never get to.
Basically this creature would have some ’splaining to do.”
good one,that is the best version i have heard so far.all the athiests i have ever conversed with always have the one caveat:”if god DOES exist and i meet him…..i’m gonna roshambo that sumbitch!”
with all the horror and pain in the world,it is a hard sell convincing people that god loves them.
i for one could care less,all the proof i require of a nurtering,humorous creator surrounds me:magnificence that boggles the mind,a chance at a meaningful life,platypuses ….and of course; HOT,luscious,babes!
all the misery and suffering is simply the natural order of things,we all live and we all die.indivdual results may very.
284. frank grimes:
I tried believing once but it put an unnecessary weight on the lightness and joy I get from just being alive. Without the supernatural the world is truly ours – well until we meet up with some aliens or something.
cichawoda.”lightness and joy I get from just being alive.”
ah….consensus?anyway,been good chatting with you cichawoda,and if you haven’t been to frank j’s blog,you should check it out…it is very funny:
http://www.imao.us/
Chip, Chikawoda, etal,
Emperical. Got it. Thanks.
“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” (Hebrews 4:12-13)
“The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge: if God should have a reasonable defence for being the god who permits war, poverty and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God’s acquittal. But the important thing is that Man is on the Bench and God in the Dock.”
(C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock.)
If I knew what proof was adequate to your condition, I would pray that you recieve it.
I don’t know, but God does. I’ll leave it to Him.
P.S. Chuck Pelto, Regards!
>In the beginning, there was nothing, the most logical state for the universe to be in.
No atheists actually think this. I had to stop reading your little story because it starts on a false-pretense. I can’t even think of a single cosmologist who thinks this. Where do you people get your information? It’s absurd.
“In the beginning, there was nothing”
That’s pretty funny considering most normal people understand the precursor to the big-bang was an infinately dense sigularity. To describe that for you, a singularity we understand from black-holes and, well, physics, it’s called “infinate” only because we don’t know how much energy it actually contained. This is because a) we can’t see outside of our visible universe, b) at the start point of the equations time=0.
Even the hoopy scientific theories about the origin of our universe make way more sense than “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. I mean, so, what was god.. And so there was nothing there before that? If nothing, then what did god live in, the nothingverse?
I don’t know but it makes some pretty bold claims without any backup.
Here is what I do know;
1. Logic and Reason is how all mammals survive the world. You can thank evolution for that brain of yours the next time you try and work out the closest MacDonalds.
2. The scientific method finds answers to questions. Always has, it’s got us all sorts of nice things like this computer, those internets, and a much much longer and happier life.
3. None of the world’s religions, cults, spritual or faith groups has done the same. Did praying discover x-rays or asprin, don’t think so, hard work and logic did. Did Reiki ever come up with a synthetic skin for burn vitims, nah. Did human sacrafice to the sun god help figure out the periodic table, thankfully no or we’d still be doing it.
Oh, and some questions for the Christian community at large;
1. Why do the ten commandments not include “Don’t rape kids”? Is it because Moses commands it in Numbers 31:16-18 ?
2. Why is it that so much of the bible is proved incorrect (sun earth thing, disease from germs, etc) yet people still cling to it as the word of god?
3. Why don’t religious people shop around for religions more, home come they always thing the one they were born into is the best?
peace, out.
This is great stuff, Frank! I love watching atheists squirm! Keep it up!
287. 4 of 7:
yes thanks for the poetry – nice but I prefer mine in the Joyce/Cortazar direction.
“what proof was adequate to your condition”
If you can tell me what would make your theory of the existence of God falsifiable we would be on the same page and we could start a true investigation that would lead both of us to the truth.
Let me give you an example: Special relativity is a theory of the structure of spacetime. One of the predictions it makes is that moving clocks are measured to tick more slowly than an observer’s “stationary” clock. If you could show by observation or experiment that this is not true – you would falsify the theory. It has been shown to be true as recently as the installation of the GPS system. The clocks on the GPS satellites have to be calibrated to accommodate relativity. (http://tinyurl.com/3yo9yt)
If you can not come up with a way to falsify your theory of God it will have to remain a belief. You can cling to it if it gives you comfort but remember that it has the same value as somebody else’s belief in Santa, the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy or Zeus. If you think their beliefs are absurd you have to assume that yours is as well.
TO: Chichawoda
RE: Christian Claims
Try, ‘hopefully ignorant’.
Not so much concerned about them as I am about observing facts and correlating them properly.
What’s YOUR problem?
RE: Citing that Old Book
And your point here is ‘what’?
RE: Again, Citing that Old Book
And, again, your point here is ‘what’?
RE: Are You REALLY….
….that ‘ignorant’?
Sure looks like it.
Or please show US where Jesus wrote Revelation.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
P.S. Sorry for the 24-hour delay, but Life does tend to interfere.
More to follow….
TO: All
RE: Chichwoda
We’re talking about a seriously delusional person here.
And he thinks those of us who know better are ‘delusional’.
I think it’s called, in professional circles, ‘projection’.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Jesus astonishes and overpowers sensual people. They cannot unite him to history, or reconcile him with themselves. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson]
Religion requires indoctrination. Atheism requires birth. One leads towards discovery. One prevents new knowledge. Science neither proves or disproves a creator. Regardless of the existence of god/s, science brings us closer to godliness. Question everything, even your own beleifs. Know well what brings you forward and what holds you back.
Truth is neither evil or good. Truth is only true.
“A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.” — Albert Einstein
292. Chuck Pelto:
At least according to the gospels Jesus prophesied his own quick return.
“Matthew 10:23″
They have not only gone over all of the cities of Israel, but have dispersed throughout all of the Earth and we are still waiting.
“Matthew 16:28, Mark 9:1, Luke 9:27″
Are there any of those who were standing there who are alive to this day?
“Or please show US where Jesus wrote Revelation”
So your interpretation is that he didn’t prophecy he own return? or is it that he couldn’t see the details?
Seems to me Chuck you should read the label before you swallow the crap they feed you.
Oh and don’t give me any of the standard apologetic mambo jumbo about God having a bigger watch or that he was waxing poetic about some other coming or going. If this isn’t what it appears to be than all of it is just another Dada poem:
darkness be God the separated
and Then light”; saw the
the the light”; And and
earth. 2 was and Spirit moving
was formless of darkness. there
the earth and and moving
And the the it so.
was and midst separate expanse
there the which expanse; and
so. made there separated waters.” 7
was was be of below
darkness And God and below .. and so on and so on can’t say what hey mean, don’t mean what they say.
294. Root:
Agree with everything – and well said but
“Regardless of the existence of god/s”
Godliness, like beauty, is only in the eyes of the beholder – no worship = no gods.
293. Chuck Pelto:
“And he thinks those of us who know better are ‘delusional’.”
Three main criteria for a belief to be considered delusional
* certainty (held with absolute conviction)
* incorrigibility (not changeable by compelling counterargument or proof to the contrary)
* impossibility or falsity of content (implausible, bizarre or patently untrue)
So what real world events would dull your certainty, change your conviction or falsify your beliefs?
“They cannot get out of the penumbra of Christian controversy. They cannot be Christians and they cannot leave off being Anti-Christians. Their whole atmosphere is the atmosphere of a reaction: sulks, perversity, petty criticism. They still live in the shadow of the faith and have lost the light of the faith.
…
I do not say there are not human excuses for their revolt; I do not say it is not in some ways sympathetic; what I say is that it is not in any way scientific. An iconoclast may be indignant; and iconoclast may be justly indignant; but an iconoclast is not impartial. And it is stark hypocrisy to pretend that nine-tenths of the higher critics and scientific evolutionists and professors of comparative religion are in the least impartial. Why should they be impartial, what is being impartial, when the whole world is at war about whether one thing is a devouring superstition or a divine hope? I do not pretend to be impartial in the sense that the final act of faith fixes a man’s mind because it satisfies his mind.”
(G.K. Chesterton, The Eternal Man)
“If we are faithless, he remains faithful -
for he cannot deny himself.
Remind them of this, and charge them before the Lord to avoid disputing about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers.”
(II Timothy 1:13-14)
299. 4 of 7:
“They are doomed to forever wallow in the musty darkness of comfortable superstition, warming themselves with the hateful armour of faith, afraid to open their eyes lest the light of knowledge and truth expose the ancient hypocrisies, lies about some great reward they were ordered to protect so long ago.” (Me 20:57-60)
TO: Chichawoda
RE: Prophecy
TO: All
RE: Apolgies….
….for all the barking italics text.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
P.S. To PJM….
….why don’t we have a ‘preview’ function?
TO: Root
RE: Say WHAT!
“Indoctrination”?
Yeah. Like studies in ‘history’ or ‘science’ require “indoctrination”. Or perhaps, showing someone that there is some truth to the matter.
Maybe, as we ‘teach’ children about ‘history’ and ‘science’, we should teach them about ‘religion’ as well. You know…..ALL religious beliefs….just to give them the proper ‘exposure’.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[The Truth will out.....no matter how hard some people struggle to suppress it.....]
TO: All
RE: ‘Delusional’ and ‘Projective’, to Boot
Talk about ‘atheists’….
’nuff said.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
P.S. Additionally….
Item #2 of his arg: Chich has yet to provide ‘compelling proof of ANYTHINK’.
Item #3 of his arg is interesting. However, likewise, he has yet to show the ‘impossibility’ that John could name the proper noun names of the places where (1) that runaway nuclear reactor occurred or (2) the accurate FIRST CENTURY MAN’s description of the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter or that they were in place in Saudi Arabia FIVE WEEKS before the shooting war broke out; let alone the description of the war itself AND the location thereof.
Chuck Pelto:
I’m going to try this one more time just because my friends and I are amused by your incoherent rantings.
The prophecy:
“And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.” Revelation 8:10-11
What you say about it:
“John makes rather SPECIFIC claims. Even to naming key cities and regions in Rev 8 and 9 where the events take place.”
So I must assume that:
“there fell a great star from heaven” is the same as a nuclear accident happening below ground? Also a nuclear reactor is fusion and not fission like the stars.
“third part of the rivers” – most people would think this refers to the rivers of the world since this whole shindig you guys are so eager for is to be a global event as I understand it. So you think he was talking about Kiev Oblast, Russia? Tell us since you think he is being uncanningly precise.
“many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.” but this is what really happened – “In the most affected areas of Ukraine, levels of radioactivity (particularly radioiodine: I-131, radiocaesium: Cs-137 and radiostrontium: Sr-90) in drinking water caused concern during the weeks and months after the accident. After this initial period however, radioactivity in rivers and reservoirs was generally below guideline limits for safe drinking water.”
Wormwood, Mugwort, Tarragon etc are all the same – I think that falls under vague. But you keep grabbing at this byllia so let me quote to you:
“The city is named after the Ukrainian word for mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris), which is “chornobyl”. The word is a combination of chornyi (чорний, black) and byllia (билля, grass blades or stalks), hence it literally means black grass or black stalks.
Sometimes chornobyl is erroneously translated as simply “wormwood” (which most commonly refers to Artemisia absinthium), with consequent apocalyptic associations, probably originating from a New York Times article by Serge Schmemann, Chernobyl Fallout: Apocalyptic Tale, July 25, 1986. The article quoted an unnamed “prominent Russian writer” as claiming the Ukrainian word for wormwood was chernobyl.
It fact, there are over 160 kinds of Artemisia, and the terminology is not generally accepted. Some sources refer to Artemisia vulgaris as “common wormwood”, while others claim that “common wormwood” is Artemisia absinthium.
Wormwood is a different (but related) plant, Artemisia absinthium, Полин (Polyn). “Polyn” has no English equivalent, but corresponds to the botanical genus Artemisia. Botanically, mugwort is “Common Polyn” ; while wormwood is “Bitter Polyn” .
The word “wormwood” is used in the English text of the Apocalypsis, whose usage as the name of a plant matches to that of the original Greek(Absinthe).”
Now for the Apache described as “LOCUSTS like horses prepared unto battle with the power of scorpions”
“And they had hair like the hair of women, and their teeth were like the teeth of lions.” so what parts of the chopper are these?
“And in those days men shall seek death, and shall NOT find it” – so when did this happen during the Gulf wars?
Here is another opinion on the subject from a believer:
“Suggestions that these locusts actually describe something such as the “helicopter gunships of the Antichrist” are interesting, but purely speculative, and don’t fit all the details.” you should checkout the site – even thou a believer at least he seems to have studied the books. http://www.enduringword.com/commentaries/6609.htm
Anyway I’m bored now – bye.
TO: Chichawoda
RE: Heh
I enjoy showing the rest of the rational world what sort of ‘fools’ and ‘idiots’ run around pretending to be ‘bright’.
More later….
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[The Truth will out....much to the dismay of certain 'people'.....]
‘”If scientists do not oppose antievolutionism,” remarked Eugenie Scott, the executive director of the National Center for Science Education, “it will reach more people with the mistaken idea that evolution is scientifically weak.” Scott’s understanding of “opposition” had nothing to do with reasoned discussion. It had nothing to do with reason at all. Discussing the issue was out of the question. Her advice to her colleagues was considerably more to the point: “Avoid debates.”
There is nothing surprising in any of this. I myself believe that the world would be suitably improved if those with whom I disagree were to lapse into silence.’
(David Berlinski, The Devil’s Delusion – Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions)
‘The LORD by wisdom founded the earth;
by understanding he established the heavens;
by his knowledge the deeps broke forth
and the clouds drop down the dew.
My son, keep sound wisdom and discretion;
let them not escape from your sight
and they will be life for your soul
and adornment for your neck.
Then you will walk on your way securely
and your foot will not stumble.
(Proverbs 3:19-23)
TO: Chichawoda
RE: Wrong
The prediction is what it is. And whether we can recognize it when it happens is up to the individual. Case in point, how the Jews still refuse to recognize Jesus as the fulfillment of the prophecies of Moses and the other prophets of old.
I suspect it’s a matter of ‘pride’ more than anything else.
RE: Yeah?
Explain the correlation of proper nouns with the events in Rev 8 and 9.
Actually….
….I’ve asked you that already and you still have no response, except for obfuscation.
RE: Maybe….
….you should take another look at Nostradamus. And that business about the year 1999 and the seventh month.
RE: Wrong Again
Unavailable until someone, somehow, has the insight.
For the rest of us, “after the fact”.
RE: What a Crock
When it was made is not germane. Rather, what the prediction is is important.
And as for that public record of said prediction exists.
What do you call the Bible? It’s the most published ‘public record’ on the face of the planet….much to your chagrin.
RE: Heh
One good hit is all it takes.
You seem to be the one counting the ‘misses’, and using them as some kind of ‘defense’.
RE:
So what? I’ve shown you a ‘series’. And they all work together.
Your point fails.
RE: As I Said….
Look at Chernobyl in Rev 8 and Gulf War I in Rev 9 and show me how, described from the perspective of a man of the First Century, these are ‘misses’. In detail.
Go ahead…..
RE: See…
….my comment immediately above.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[The Truth will out....but fools will try to ignore it.....]
“Ha!!! If transitional forms are a lie, they lie is coming from Evolution defenders who are still looking for them and failing spectacularly. The scientific consensus thinks transitional forms will arrive some day via fossil evidence. Heard of Ida?”
No. The scientific consensus is precisely what I stated – that all fossils are transitional forms. We are constantly seeking out new fossils to see the direction of evolution in the past – for instance, whether one feature evolved prior to another feature, or when a given feature arose.
“Question for atheists: Who, or what, undid the Law of Entropy, and designed the program in the distant past to form the first living cell? Science alone doesn’t have an answer for that.”
No one undid the laws of thermodynamics; people who claim that life violates the laws of thermodynamics understand neither. The laws of thermodynamics apply only to closed systems; the Earth is not a closed system, because we get an enormous amount of energy from the Sun, and to a lesser degree from chemosythentic processes and radiation. Its the same reason we can make more complicated molecules from simpler ones; we do not violate the laws of thermodynamics by creating sugars from carbohydrates, we simply are moving entropy around (and indeed, increasing the net entropy of the universe).
“The problem with Atheists is they assume religion is simplistic and only simpletons believe in it.”
Religion is a complicated set of behavioral patterns and self-deception, and it is not unfair for atheists to say that people who are religious are fooling themselves. Saying they are outright stupid is of course wrong, though on average they are less intelligent; as with any population, there is variation, and there are certainly atheists who are less intelligent than many highly educated religious folk. That said, the smarter you are, the more likely you are to be an atheist, and some atheists make the same mistake as everyone else and think this means that by being an atheist, you become smarter, or that because you are an atheist you are smarter than others. This is not so.
It is not unfair for them to state that religious folk are being willfully ignorant of the way things work, however, because that is indeed their stance on such matters and with good reason – every religion is wrong. The earth is billions of years old, the stars are other balls of fusing gas like our own Sun, life was not created ex nihlo but evolved, the landscape was formed by naturalistic processes, no miracle has ever been observed… the list goes on. Religions are wrong, and when people believe in whatever messed-up mythology, despite the fact that it contradicts with reality, there are real problems.
The idea that belief in God is at all logical, however, is false; we have all heard the arguments, and every single one of them has been demonstrated to be illogical or simply wrong. The reason people believe in religion is quite simple: it is because humans are designed to trust authority figures, and false beliefs are passed down from parent to child along with true ones (though other authority figures, and peers, also play a role, which is why children do not act TOO similarly to their parents and you can convert people). Some have likened religion to a mind virus – it has “copy me!” instructions and hitches a ride on beneficial things being passed downwards. To be entirely fair, there are other reasons it is successful as well (such as the “Kill/convert people who don’t believe in me!” message).
Some atheists do think that many people are in fact too stupid to be atheists; they are, in essence, too unintelligent to accept reality as it is, and must rely on a crutch in order to remain useful. I think that’s hogwash, and not giving people enough credit.
“Wrong assumption. Nobody lives in isolation. Those people came to Atheism after exposure to religion. Why is it so hard to understand that Atheism is the root of many political experiments that lead to genocide. You have to study the underlying philosophies of Stalism, Communisms, Marxism, and Hitler, to decide whether Atheism is at fault.”
Actually, atheism is never, ever at the root of genocide. Not a single genocide has ever occurred due to atheism. Indeed, it is you, and your mentality, which is at the root of such genocidal rampages. When you say “Atheism caused all this”, you’re the same as the ones who say “Jewry caused this!” You ARE of their stock.
Hitler’s genocide was the result of christianity. People who deny this do so out of willful ignorance. Antisemitism was a feature of Christianity until after World War II, and Christians in the US were the same way – they rejected Jewish refugees because they didn’t want to “pollute” the American populace with them. Hitler took advantage of that anti-semitism to build himself a power base, and persecuted many of the enemies of Christianity – Jews, homosexuals, and various other racial groups which were discrimated against for various other reasons (gypsies, for example); he also took advantage of this to get rid of people who opposed him or otherwise disliked him. Hitler himself was, ostensibly, a Christian, though really he was much more complicated than that. To be entirely fair, Hitler did not kill the Jews for religious reasons, but partially because he was somewhat insane, and partially because he felt himself to have been slighted/opposed by the Jews, but without Christianity and its hatred of Jews and homosexuals, he would never have been successful in his doings. Since WWII, many Christian groups (including the Catholic church) have renounced antisemitism and see them as being a closely allied group, and no longer claim that all Jews are responsible for killing Jesus. Some still are antisemetic though.
Marxism is not the result of atheism; the reason a Marxist must be an atheist is that a Marxist rejects the prior power structure. Religion is used, to some extent, to control the population – hence why George W. Bush spoke of a crusade against terrorism, how the Crusades were supported in the Middle Ages, why Hitler said “God is on our side”, and similar nonsense, as well as means of killing dissidents. Thus, the Marxists reject it as being a thing of the bourgoise.
Stalin’s purges likewise had nothing to do with atheism; many would assume it had to do with Marxism, but reality is it had to do with power. Stalin eliminated all threats to his own power, and organized religion was one of them; thus he (and other Soviet leadership) crushed it out, as they basically wanted people to more or less worship the state. This is why religious leaders often lead genocides of other religious groups, in order to destroy threats to their own power and take advantage of pre-existing racism.
Very few purges actually are directly caused by religion, but rather use religious-based hatred in order to gather power. Sometimes they are, but it is rare.
““But I do find something spooky about the people of Israel coming back to the Land of Israel.”
Indeed. If we need a “proof” for the hand of God in man’s affairs that one is a biggy.”
Not at all. You see, this is what is known as a “self-fulfilling prophecy”; the reason that the Xionists wanted to return to Israel was to FULFILL BIBLICAL PROPEPHECY. Ergo, no – it is completely meaningless. People who claim there’s something magical about this are being silly at best.
“I believe God gives us ways, be they signs, wonders, circumstances, creation, and yes, even the Bible and the Holy Spirit (I can see you rolling your eyes!) to point us to himself…and we can continually and deliberately dismiss and ignore those signs…until we no longer even notice them. And then…it is usually (not always though) too late! We are SO FAR down that road we wouldn’t even recognize God if he came up behind us and tapped us on the shoulder!”
This is all demonstrably false. Signs, wonders, circumstances, creation… none of these were the handiwork of any supernatural force. Signs are simply things your brain interprets as such, rather than actual reality, and in some cases are the result of schitzophrenia. Wonders are again natural things – the grand canyon, the Andromeda galaxy, the constellations are all natural, and in many cases only seem wonderous due to us putting things together, such as the Face on Mars, a great example of parelia. Circumstances are just that. Creation? God did not create humans, the Earth, the Sun, or any number of other things. Some people claim he created the Universe, but these are the same people who said he created humans, something he quite clearly did not. Its the God of the Gaps, and as the gaps shrink, so does your God. He does not really exist, he is simply a figment of your imagination, much like Santa Claus.
“Christian doctrine has very little political content”
Anyone who believes this has never read the Bible. Seriously, have you READ what Jesus had to say?
Jesus was a liberal, hippie pacifist who disliked organised religion and felt the corruption of the priests kept the people away from God. He also thought that what mattered was how good of a person you are, rather than the religion you keep – something people oftentimes forget. Remember the Good Samaritan? He was the godliest of them all. He also hated the rich and their material wealth.
He wasn’t a politician, tis true, unlike Mohammad, but it is not as if his teachings do not have political consequences. Indeed, he was very critical of the priests.
“But they have science, which is full of politics.”
Science actually has nothing to do with politics. Politics, however, often tries to interfere with science. See also: Christian creationists, the communists who rejected linguism, oil companies fighting global warming research, smoking companies disputing that smoking causes cancer, ect.
Scientific findings often influence politics, and scientists often engage in political goings-on (both internal and external), but science itself is as apolitical as mathematics – its simply a description of what is, it contains no value judgements, which are essential to politics – it is about truth value.
“I decided to take up the challenge. Pol Pot is an Atheist. You can’t say Pol Pot is religious in any form since Cambodian is largely a Buddist country that does not believe in any God. He went to school in both a monastery and a Catholic School.”
Only some Buddhists are atheists.
However, that is irrelevant, as typically in the west, when we refer to atheists, we are actually referring to the irreligious – that is to say, people who lack any sort of religion, as opposed to those who do not believe in any sort of deity. Typically speaking, Buddhists are considered a separate group than atheists, even though some buddhists (among other religions) lack belief in any sort of deity.
And in any event, it doesn’t matter. Why?
Because he didn’t kill people because he was an atheist, assuming he even was one (which I do not know). If you think he did, then you’d best kill yourself, because Christians are the most prolific killers in human history, and ergo the worst people of all.
But the reality is that mostly religion is an excuse or a cause of sectarianist divides which creates two groups, and then people use religion in order to kill the other group; however, typically speaking religion isn’t actually the driving factor for the leaders, while it may be for the followers. Typically for the leaders, they’re doing it for power reasons, and even many of the followers may well be doing it for other reasons – wealth, jealousy, ect. See also Nazi Germany; without the underlying antisemitism which was a result of Christianity, Hitler could never have instituted the Holocaust, but Hitler didn’t instute the Holocaust because he was a Christian but rather because he hated Jews for a wide variety of reasons (though Christianity may have played some role in it). It is undeniable that Christian antisemitism is what allowed the Holocaust to occur, but it wasn’t instituted because of that hatred – that hatred enabled it. Now, historically minor Jewish massacres DID occur for this reason, but it is also worth noting that Jews were often better off so some class warfare motives were also involved. “Those filthy rich Jews! Let’s kill them and take their stuff for killing Jesus!”
“Thankfully, Bill remains single and without children. At least he is consistent in Atheist rationality which favors population control and abortion.”
Being an atheist does not automatically make you intelligent. And he isn’t stupid so much as he is too ready to believe anything which supports him. Much like Christians in that regard.
“It is specious to claim that atheism is incapable of intolerance.”
You do not understand atheism if you make such statements. You suffer from a terrible, terrible delusion that atheism is some monolithic entity or a group like the Catholic Church. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Atheism is the lack of belief in deities and, in the West, is often used to refer to the irreligious. As they are not a group – they are defined, indeed, by NOT being in a group – there is no “atheism”.
Atheism is not “capable of intolerance” for the simple and obvious reason that it is not a group. It is like saying that baldness is capable of intolerance – being bald has nothing to do with being intolerant.
Its a completely nonsensical statement. Of course an atheist is capable of being intolerant, but as atheism is not a belief system, or indeed anything other than “irreligion” or “disbelief in deities”. Something like Christianity can teach hatred and intolerance, but atheism cannot because it isn’t an entity – it is something which is defined by the lack of one.
“Pol Pot suppressed religion, beheaded monks, and destroyed temples and religious artifacts. People who were outwardly religious became targets of execution.”
And he did this why? Not because he hated religion! He did it because he wanted to consolidate absolute power in himself. Religious groups, like intellectuals, could present a problem for that, so he killed them all – everyone who he thought might oppose him or organize resistance to him. Its very common in dictatorial societies.
“In order to say that atheism as such causes murder, you would need to demonstrate that there is something in the nature of atheism that causes murder. You haven’t done this.”
Indeed, see US prison statistics. Who are the LEAST likely group to be in prison? Atheists. Indeed, as of 10 years ago, they made up about 1% of the prison population. Considering that ~10% of the country, maybe more, was atheistic at that point in time, you’re seeing that atheists are about ten times less likely to commit crimes than religious folk.
“Kim: This is bull. The tyrannical leaders are declared Atheists. Their political goals are to prop up Atheistic non-belief by suppressing other religions and other competing political philosophies.”
I don’t think you quite grasp the nature of this. Many leaders, historically and currently, set themselves up as divine agents. However, the success of this has declined over time. As such, nowadays tyrants will oftentimes simply off everyone who has any sort of extant power base, including religious leaders. While yes, this defaults to atheism, this has nothing to do with the fact that they are atheists – they do it for purely political reasons. They don’t “prop up atheist non-belief”; their goal is to simply suppress any sort of dissension, which may have the result of atheism, but it isn’t their purpose.
“It’s funny how you saying Marxism is semi-religious. Well, now. That certainly gets you off the hook, but IT DOESN’T. Marxism and other such philosophy fills the void from an Atheistic non-religion point of view and way of life.”
There is no “void”. Clearly, you have no understanding of atheism. But that’s to be expected from someone who thinks that the purpose of killing all opposition is to promote atheism.
“They refuse to ever admit that their premises are always belied by empirical results. Marxism of every form always fails. Always. They are also always atheistic and proud of it. They are always anti-God, and so, it always lead to a slaughter of dissidents and to bondage. They always sound so intellectual, but it is always pseudo-intellectualism. You’re just arguing with a pig. You both get dirty… and the pig likes it!”
So Marc, you’re saying we shouldn’t argue with you? I also find it ironic that Marx and Jesus would have probably gotten along pretty well, and early christians lived in what we would today call communes.
The major flaw of Marx is that he assumed that, in reality, people were inherently selfless. This is contradicted by reality, where people are inherently selfish. It also suffers from the structural flaw that a centralized economy would be efficient, when in reality, it tends to be the opposite. This is apart from the fact that in the revolution, you’re going to end up with a dictatorship, probably with a cult of personality or a strong military behind him, which pretty much destroys any chance at communism.
“I don’t accept the guild by association. Islam has nothing to do with Christianity. The heart of Christianity is the New Testament.”
No. The heart of Christanity, as it is commonly practiced today, lies in the Old Testament. Jesus was a liberal, so if someone is conservative, you’re actually seeing someone who is disobeying the teachings of Christ. When people condemn homosexuals, they’re relying on the OT and OT ways, not the way of Jesus.
This is not to say that ALL Christians obey the OT primarily, but many, many do and the common perception of them is the OT Christian, rather than the NT Christian.
““Nope – we are Atheists, we are better than you folk, we are the future”, “we are better than you” means that the inferior are available for marginalization and suppression. People who think they are superior by definition have always been dangerous.”
Except that, in that very statement, you implied that we should get rid of YOU because YOU just implied you’re better than that.
Its a catch-22.
It is true that people who think they are better are dangerous – but that’s because they have ambition. People who don’t think they’re better than others almost invariably go nowhere, whereas those who DO think they are the best are much more likely to MAKE themselves the best. Only rarely does someone like Ghandi come along – almost all leaders are ambitious men who think they know best.
This is not a bad thing! Being better than other people is the core of capitalism and a meritocratic system, the most efficient one, and it is good. If you think you’re better than other people, you’ll work towards recognizing that. Sure, some people (particularly the religious, ironically) take this and try to oppress others, but most people are about pushing themselves up, not pulling others down.
“… I’m just concerned that they will succeed in taking away Christians’ prerogatives to pass on their beliefs to their children. You have people like Richard Dawkins suggesting that raising one’s children to become Christians is child abuse, and should be a good reason to take their kids away. …”
It is damaging to them. The question is, of course, how damaging it is relative to the damage of removing their children; usually, I’d tend to say that it is more damaging to remove the children than to leave them exposed to such an environment.
The proper approach is, rather than to take away the children, is to have a good public education system. That will render many of them atheistic, and the sooner they’re exposed to all the religions of the world, the more likely they are to come to the inevitable conclusion that they’re all the same, and, at worst, they’re likely to be much more tolerant of them all – which is fine by me, as reality is that it isn’t REALLY freedom if they can only make choices we agree with, and that forcing atheism down people’s throats is likely to be destructive. It is understanding which we must give the children, and it is understanding which will destroy the power of religion, if not religion itself.
Unlike many atheists, I don’t think that the world will be completely atheist unless there is some massive societal upheaval. I do think that over time the world will become increasingly secularized and religion will come to be seen as more of a strange quirk.
313. Titanium Dragon:
“will become increasingly secularized and religion will come to be seen as more of a strange quirk.”
I have no doubt that some day crossing yourself will be the equivalent of what knocking on wood or spiting over your shoulder is today. Religion seems to have a very long residual life – strong meme.
“we are better than you”- by Christian standards and according to statistics
“we are the future” – can anybody with an open mind and knowledge of history have any doubt. I have always wondered, since Christianity is an apocalyptic religion, if in the next 2000 year there is no apocalypse what will be the excuse? They always seem to think that it’s just around the corner. I wonder what age Chuck Pelto is but say in 40 years when his life is near the end and nothing is really going down – will his heart be broken? I hope not – it seems so sad.
TO: All
RE: Chiawoda Meets Monty Python
Those who cannot put up a good fight tend to do this sort of thing….denigrate the opposition then say they’re ‘bored’ and give up the ‘fight’.
Typical of people without the ability thing rationally. Even about the ‘irrational’.
I suppose it has something to do with short attention span suffered by the younger generations.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
P.S. Chickie! Baby!
I was jumping C130s before your father learned how to jump a prom date…..
P.P.S. Heh….
…if you knew what you were talking about in the first place, that MIGHT make some form of sense. But considering your stupidity, i.e., ‘ignorant and proud of it’, it’s more appropriate for the rest of US to feel ‘sad’ for YOU.
Hope that helps….but sad-to-day….I have SERIOUS doubts…..
P.P.P.S. I have to wonder how Cihawoda will react if something IS ‘going down’.
Probably like the other people who hate God depicted in that Left Behind series….howling for the blood of those who saw it all coming…..
TO: All
RE: [OT] Systems [Mis]Management
Maybe….just MAYBE….it would be a good idea if whomever is dinking around with this system would re-instate the REMEMBER ME functionality.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Consistency is the hobgoblin of good user interface.]
‘I have known only one person in my life who claimed to have seen a ghost. It was a woman; and the interesting thing is that she disbelieved in the immortality of the soul before seeing the ghost and still disbelieves after having seen it. She thinks it was a hallucination. In other words, seeing is not believing. This is the first thing to get clear in talking about miracles. Whatever experiences we may have, we shall not regard them as miraculous if we already hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural. Any event which is claimed as a miracle is, in the last resort, an experience received from the senses; and the senses are not infallible. We can always say we have been the victims of an illusion; if we disbelieve in the supernatural this is what we always shall say. Hence, whether miracles have really ceased or not, they would certainly appear to cease in Western Europe as materialism became the popular creed. For let us make no mistake. If the end of the world appeared in all the literal trappings of the Apocalypse, if the modern materialist saw with his own eyes the heavens rolled up and the great white throne appearing, if he had the sensation of being himself hurled into the Lake of Fire, he would continue forever, in that lake itself, to regard his experience as an illusion and to find the explanation of it in psycho-analysis, or cerebral pathology. Experience by itself proves nothing. If a man doubts whether he is dreaming or waking, no experiment can solve his doubt, since every experiment may itself be part of the dream. Experience proves this, or that, or nothing, according to the preconceptions we bring to it.
This fact, that the interpretation of experiences depends on preconceptions, is often used as an argument against miracles. It is said that our ancestors, taking the supernatural for granted and greedy of wonders, read the miraculous into events that were really not miracles. And in a sense I grant it. That is to say, I think that just as our preconceptions would prevent us from apprehending miracles if they really occurred, so their preconceptions would lead them to imagine miracles even if they did not occur. In the same way, the doting man will think his wife faithful when she is not and the suspicious man will not think her faithful when she is: the question of her actual fidelity remains, meanwhile, to be settled, if at all, on other grounds. But there is one thing often said about our ancestors which we must not say. We must not say ‘They believed in miracles because they did not know the Laws of Nature.’ This is nonsense. When St Joseph discovered that his bride was pregnant, he was ‘minded to put her away’. He knew enough biology for that. Otherwise, of course he would not have regarded pregnancy as a proof of infidelity. When he accepted the Christian explanation, he regarded it as a miracle precisely because he knew enough of the Laws of Nature to know that this was a suspension of them. When the disciples saw Christ walking on the water they were frightened: they would not have been frightened unless they had known the laws of Nature and known that this was an exception. If a man had no conception of a regular order in Nature, then of course he could not notice departures from that order; just as a dunce who does not understand the normal metre of a poem is also unconscious of the poet’s variations from it. Nothing is wonderful except the abnormal and nothing is abnormal until we have grasped the norm. Complete ignorance of the laws of Nature would preclude the perception of the miraculous just as rigidly as complete disbelief in the supernatural precludes it, perhaps even more so. For while the materialist would have at least to explain miracles away, the man wholly ignorant of Nature would simply not notice them.’
(C.S. Lewis, Miracles.)
‘And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed upon the ground, and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he knows not how. The earth produces of itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”‘
(Mark 4:26-29.)
Last one, I promise.
“Wherefore, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, but declared first to those at Damascus, then at Jerusalem and throughout all the country of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God and perform deeds worthy of their repentance. For this reason the Jews seized me in the temple and tried to kill me. To this day I have had the help that comes from God, and so I stand here testifying both to small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would come to pass: that the Christ must suffer, and that, by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light both to the people and to the Gentiles.”
And as he thus made his defense, Festus said with a loud voice, “Paul, you are mad; your great learning is turning you mad.” But Paul said, “I am not mad, most excellent Festus, but I am speaking the sober truth. For the king knows about these things, and to him I speak freely; for I am persuaded that none of these things has escaped his notice, for this was not done in a corner. King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know that you believe.” And Agrippa said to Paul, “In a short time you think to make me a Christian!” And Paul said, “Whether short or long, I would to God that not only you but also all who hear me this day might become such as I am – except for these chains.”
(Acts 26:19-29)
Crazy Christians: Speaking Truth to Power from Day 1!