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Getbig Main Boards => Gossip & Opinions => Topic started by: big L dawg on February 22, 2011, 10:33:15 PM
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An Atheist Manifesto
A Dig led by Sam Harris
Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind is not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of 6 billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl s parents believe at this very moment that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this?
No.
The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle. The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job. It carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity. It is, moreover, a job that the atheist does not want.
It is worth noting that no one ever needs to identify himself as a guy or a non-alchemist. Consequently, we do not have words for people who deny the validity of these pseudo-disciplines. Likewise, atheism is a term that should not even exist. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma. The atheist is merely a person who believes that the 260 million Americans (87% of the population) who claim to never doubt the existence of God should be obliged to present evidence for his existence and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day. Only the atheist appreciates just how uncanny our situation is: Most of us believe in a God that is every bit as specious as the gods of Mount Olympus; no person, whatever his or her qualifications, can seek public office in the United States without pretending to be certain that such a God exists; and much of what passes for public policy in our country conforms to religious taboos and superstitions appropriate to a medieval theocracy. Our circumstance is abject, indefensible and terrifying. It would be hilarious if the stakes were not so high.
We live in a world where all things, good and bad, are finally destroyed by change. Parents lose their children and children their parents. Husbands and wives are separated in an instant, never to meet again. Friends part company in haste, without knowing that it will be for the last time. This life, when surveyed with a broad glance, presents little more than a vast spectacle of loss. Most people in this world, however, imagine that there is a cure for this. If we live rightly—not necessarily ethically, but within the framework of certain ancient beliefs and stereotyped behaviors—we will get everything we want after we die. When our bodies finally fail us, we just shed our corporeal ballast and travel to a land where we are reunited with everyone we loved while alive. Of course, overly rational people and other rabble will be kept out of this happy place, and those who suspended their disbelief while alive will be free to enjoy themselves for all eternity.
We live in a world of unimaginable surprises—from the fusion energy that lights the sun to the genetic and evolutionary consequences of this lights dancing for eons upon the Earth—and yet Paradise conforms to our most superficial concerns with all the fidelity of a Caribbean cruise. This is wondrously strange. If one didn’t know better, one would think that man, in his fear of losing all that he loves, had created heaven, along with its gatekeeper God, in his own image.
Consider the destruction that Hurricane Katrina leveled on New Orleans. More than a thousand people died, tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions, and nearly a million were displaced. It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Katrina struck believed in an omnipotent, omniscient and compassionate God. But what was God doing while a hurricane laid waste to their city? Surely he heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. These were people of faith. These were good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. Only the atheist has the courage to admit the obvious: These poor people died talking to an imaginary friend.
Of course, there had been ample warning that a storm of biblical proportions would strike New Orleans, and the human response to the ensuing disaster was tragically inept. But it was inept only by the light of science. Advance warning of Katrina’s path was wrested from mute Nature by meteorological calculations and satellite imagery. God told no one of his plans. Had the residents of New Orleans been content to rely on the beneficence of the Lord, they wouldn’t have known that a killer hurricane was bearing down upon them until they felt the first gusts of wind on their faces. Nevertheless, a poll conducted by The Washington Post found that 80% of Katrina’s survivors claim that the event has only strengthened their faith in God.
As Hurricane Katrina was devouring New Orleans, nearly a thousand Shiite pilgrims were trampled to death on a bridge in Iraq. There can be no doubt that these pilgrims believed mightily in the God of the Koran: Their lives were organized around the indisputable fact of his existence; their women walked veiled before him; their men regularly murdered one another over rival interpretations of his word. It would be remarkable if a single survivor of this tragedy lost his faith. More likely, the survivors imagine that they were spared through God’s grace.
Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God while this same God drowned infants in their cribs. Because he refuses to cloak the reality of the world’s suffering in a cloying fantasy of eternal life, the atheist feels in his bones just how precious life is—and, indeed, how unfortunate it is that millions of human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgements of their happiness for no good reason at all.
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Make me happy, make my life worth, make me healthy, make me a millionaire and I will believe in an omnipotent, omniscient and compassionate God. You're a nothing to make deals with God. I spit on your weak philosophy.
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The smartest people are the ones who pretend to believe in religion, mix with religious people, then rip them off for all they are worth.
They are called the clergy.
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One wonders just how vast and gratuitous a catastrophe would have to be to shake the world’s faith. The Holocaust did not do it. Neither did the genocide in Rwanda, even with machete-wielding priests among the perpetrators. Five hundred million people died of smallpox in the 20th Century, many of them infants. God’s ways are, indeed, inscrutable. It seems that any fact, no matter how infelicitous, can be rendered compatible with religious faith. In matters of faith, we have kicked ourselves loose of the Earth.
Of course, people of faith regularly assure one another that God is not responsible for human suffering. But how else can we understand the claim that God is both omniscient and omnipotent? There is no other way, and it is time for sane human beings to own up to this. This is the age-old problem of theodicy, of course, and we should consider it solved. If God exists, either he can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities or he does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil. Pious readers will now execute the following pirouette: God cannot be judged by merely human standards of morality. But, of course, human standards of morality are precisely what the faithful use to establish God’s goodness in the first place. And any God who could concern himself with something as trivial as gay marriage, or the name by which he is addressed in prayer, is not as inscrutable as all that. If he exists, the God of Abraham is not merely unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man.
There is another possibility, of course, and it is both the most reasonable and least odious: The biblical God is a fiction. As Richard Dawkins has observed, we are all atheists with respect to Zeus and Thor. Only the atheist has realized that the biblical god is no different. Consequently, only the atheist is compassionate enough to take the profundity of the world’s suffering at face value. It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion—to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions and religious diversions of scarce resources—is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity. It is a necessity, however, that places the atheist at the margins of society. The atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors.
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One wonders just how vast and gratuitous a catastrophe would have to be to shake the world’s faith. The Holocaust did not do it. Neither did the genocide in Rwanda, even with machete-wielding priests among the perpetrators. Five hundred million people died of smallpox in the 20th Century, many of them infants. God’s ways are, indeed, inscrutable. It seems that any fact, no matter how infelicitous, can be rendered compatible with religious faith. In matters of faith, we have kicked ourselves loose of the Earth.
Of course, people of faith regularly assure one another that God is not responsible for human suffering. But how else can we understand the claim that God is both omniscient and omnipotent? There is no other way, and it is time for sane human beings to own up to this. This is the age-old problem of theodicy, of course, and we should consider it solved. If God exists, either he can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities or he does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil. Pious readers will now execute the following pirouette: God cannot be judged by merely human standards of morality. But, of course, human standards of morality are precisely what the faithful use to establish God’s goodness in the first place. And any God who could concern himself with something as trivial as gay marriage, or the name by which he is addressed in prayer, is not as inscrutable as all that. If he exists, the God of Abraham is not merely unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man.
There is another possibility, of course, and it is both the most reasonable and least odious: The biblical God is a fiction. As Richard Dawkins has observed, we are all atheists with respect to Zeus and Thor. Only the atheist has realized that the biblical god is no different. Consequently, only the atheist is compassionate enough to take the profundity of the world’s suffering at face value. It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion—to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions and religious diversions of scarce resources—is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity. It is a necessity, however, that places the atheist at the margins of society. The atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors.
(http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/images/news/photos/2008/08/07/doomsday-collider-cp-510590.jpg)
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(http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/images/news/photos/2008/08/07/doomsday-collider-cp-510590.jpg)
Collider is not able to show the image of God's balls you are so eager to see or is able? A sudden lights out and who knows? :-\
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And yet the Bible states that life is "like the wink of an eye" to God...
and also that he will "come like a thief in the night"
Both are analogies, and both are fitting. Humans have absolutely no comprehension of a word like "omnipotent" or "omniscient"- humans have no concept of "infinity"
So, to try and reason with some type of logic in all that surrounds you is nothing more than a slight effort in futility. Accept the fact that you have no comprehension and realize that your salvation is dependent upon many things; one of which is "faith"- another is "hope"
"You will never find an atheist in a foxhole"
Everyone aspires to a supreme being at some point in life. How you choose, and more importantly "how you are chosen" is key.
Atheism, regardless of whether or not it is a religion, philosophy or some form of fundamental theory of existence, is nothing more than an irrational belief in absolutely nothing. Atheism creates no hope. Atheism is constantly waiting to be denounced.
Notable atheists have converted to Christianity. The reverse never happens.
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If I weren't already an atheist, i'd think that Sam Harris was the antichrist.
Cool guy
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Every atheist is eagerly wants to see God's balls. But an atheist hasn't got no balls nor heart to confess in it
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The Nature of Belief
According to several recent polls, 22% of Americans are certain that Jesus will return to Earth sometime in the next 50 years. Another 22% believe that he will probably do so. This is likely the same 44% who go to church once a week or more, who believe that God literally promised the land of Israel to the Jews and who want to stop teaching our children about the biological fact of evolution. As President Bush is well aware, believers of this sort constitute the most cohesive and motivated segment of the American electorate. Consequently, their views and prejudices now influence almost every decision of national importance. Political liberals seem to have drawn the wrong lesson from these developments and are now thumbing Scripture, wondering how best to ingratiate themselves to the legions of men and women in our country who vote largely on the basis of religious dogma. More than 50% of Americans have a “negative” or “highly negative” view of people who do not believe in God; 70% think it important for presidential candidates to be “strongly religious.” Unreason is now ascendant in the United States—in our schools, in our courts and in each branch of the federal government. Only 28% of Americans believe in evolution; 68% believe in Satan. Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world.
Although it is easy enough for smart people to criticize religious fundamentalism, something called “religious moderation” still enjoys immense prestige in our society, even in the ivory tower. This is ironic, as fundamentalists tend to make a more principled use of their brains than “moderates” do. While fundamentalists justify their religious beliefs with extraordinarily poor evidence and arguments, at least they make an attempt at rational justification. Moderates, on the other hand, generally do nothing more than cite the good consequences of religious belief. Rather than say that they believe in God because certain biblical prophecies have come true, moderates will say that they believe in God because this belief “gives their lives meaning.” When a tsunami killed a few hundred thousand people on the day after Christmas, fundamentalists readily interpreted this cataclysm as evidence of God’s wrath. As it turns out, God was sending humanity another oblique message about the evils of abortion, idolatry and homosexuality. While morally obscene, this interpretation of events is actually reasonable, given certain (ludicrous) assumptions. Moderates, on the other hand, refuse to draw any conclusions whatsoever about God from his works. God remains a perfect mystery, a mere source of consolation that is compatible with the most desolating evil. In the face of disasters like the Asian tsunami, liberal piety is apt to produce the most unctuous and stupefying nonsense imaginable. And yet, men and women of goodwill naturally prefer such vacuities to the odious moralizing and prophesizing of true believers. Between catastrophes, it is surely a virtue of liberal theology that it emphasizes mercy over wrath. It is worth noting, however, that it is human mercy on display—not God’s—when the bloated bodies of the dead are pulled from the sea. On days when thousands of children are simultaneously torn from their mothers’ arms and casually drowned, liberal theology must stand revealed for what it is—the sheerest of mortal pretenses. Even the theology of wrath has more intellectual merit. If God exists, his will is not inscrutable. The only thing inscrutable in these terrible events is that so many neurologically healthy men and women can believe the unbelievable and think this the height of moral wisdom.
It is perfectly absurd for religious moderates to suggest that a rational human being can believe in God simply because this belief makes him happy, relieves his fear of death or gives his life meaning. The absurdity becomes obvious the moment we swap the notion of God for some other consoling proposition: Imagine, for instance, that a man wants to believe that there is a diamond buried somewhere in his yard that is the size of a refrigerator. No doubt it would feel uncommonly good to believe this. Just imagine what would happen if he then followed the example of religious moderates and maintained this belief along pragmatic lines: When asked why he thinks that there is a diamond in his yard that is thousands of times larger than any yet discovered, he says things like, “This belief gives my life meaning,” or “My family and I enjoy digging for it on Sundays,” or “I wouldn’t want to live in a universe where there wasn’t a diamond buried in my backyard that is the size of a refrigerator.” Clearly these responses are inadequate. But they are worse than that. They are the responses of a madman or an idiot.
Here we can see why Pascal’s wager, Kierkegaard’s leap of faith and other epistemological Ponzi schemes won’t do. To believe that God exists is to believe that one stands in some relation to his existence such that his existence is itself the reason for one’s belief. There must be some causal connection, or an appearance thereof, between the fact in question and a person’s acceptance of it. In this way, we can see that religious beliefs, to be beliefs about the way the world is, must be as evidentiary in spirit as any other. For all their sins against reason, religious fundamentalists understand this; moderates—almost by definition—do not.
The incompatibility of reason and faith has been a self-evident feature of human cognition and public discourse for centuries. Either a person has good reasons for what he strongly believes or he does not. People of all creeds naturally recognize the primacy of reasons and resort to reasoning and evidence wherever they possibly can. When rational inquiry supports the creed it is always championed; when it poses a threat, it is derided; sometimes in the same sentence. Only when the evidence for a religious doctrine is thin or nonexistent, or there is compelling evidence against it, do its adherents invoke “faith.” Otherwise, they simply cite the reasons for their beliefs (e.g. “the New Testament confirms Old Testament prophecy,” “I saw the face of Jesus in a window,” “We prayed, and our daughter’s cancer went into remission”). Such reasons are generally inadequate, but they are better than no reasons at all. Faith is nothing more than the license religious people give themselves to keep believing when reasons fail. In a world that has been shattered by mutually incompatible religious beliefs, in a nation that is growing increasingly beholden to Iron Age conceptions of God, the end of history and the immortality of the soul, this lazy partitioning of our discourse into matters of reason and matters of faith is now unconscionable.
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its usually proper to quote the source and credit the author!!!
like the writing, but without the reference its pretty arrogant...
im an atheist btw and i pick up the quote "youll never find an atheist in a fox hole"...is BS.
you might "wish" for help... but you know god aint coming to save ya...its up to lady luck...are you saying that lady luck is a manifestation of god?!
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its usually proper to quote the source and credit the author!!!
like the writing, but without the reference its pretty arrogant...
im an atheist btw and i pick up the quote "youll never find an atheist in a fox hole"...is BS.
you might "wish" for help... but you know god aint coming to save ya...its up to lady luck...are you saying that lady luck is a manifestation of god?!
obviously you didnt read the 1st 2 lines of the 1st post of this thead
"An Atheist Manifesto
A Dig led by Sam Harris"
(its very long and cant be put into one post fyi)
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christians call pagans anyone who doesn't believe in Yahew ::), doesn't matter are they religious, they are pagans if they don't SWOOOORE an oath in the name OF JESUS!!!!!
there's many religious people on these boards, they just don't give a crap about jesus or yahew... even íf they are true ;P
:D
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Wtf does that black guy copy and paste? Can he summarize that in one quote something like - God doesn't exist, proved scientifically!
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Every atheist is eagerly wants to see God's balls. But an atheist hasn't got no balls nor heart to confess in it
The atheist just basically spends his life "pretending" there is no God, until it is convenient to change his mind. A life of misery, but more of an insidious misery, not one they can openly admit.
Atheists question why evil exists since God is good, but don't ask why good exists if God isn't real.
Everything in the universe shows obvious and undeniable signs that it was created by a mind far superior to our own.
I would like to witness the "foxhole" analogy- from one who denies that when death is inevitable, he sticks to his non-believing guns.
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those videos I posted describes extremely well the double standard in 99% of christians and muslims fate.
You try to be proud and grate with this thread.. but if you want to be the follower of god, just be one.
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What is a person you can't reason with? Mad? Utterly insane? This is how religion fucks with the mind.
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TJING
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And yet the Bible states that life is "like the wink of an eye" to God...
and also that he will "come like a thief in the night"
Both are analogies, and both are fitting. Humans have absolutely no comprehension of a word like "omnipotent" or "omniscient"- humans have no concept of "infinity"
So, to try and reason with some type of logic in all that surrounds you is nothing more than a slight effort in futility. Accept the fact that you have no comprehension and realize that your salvation is dependent upon many things; one of which is "faith"- another is "hope"
"You will never find an atheist in a foxhole"
Everyone aspires to a supreme being at some point in life. How you choose, and more importantly "how you are chosen" is key.
Atheism, regardless of whether or not it is a religion, philosophy or some form of fundamental theory of existence, is nothing more than an irrational belief in absolutely nothing. Atheism creates no hope. Atheism is constantly waiting to be denounced.
Notable atheists have converted to Christianity. The reverse never happens.
Wrong.
Charles Darwin became an atheist after being religious all his life.
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The atheist just basically spends his life "pretending" there is no God, until it is convenient to change his mind. A life of misery, but more of an insidious misery, not one they can openly admit.
Atheists question why evil exists since God is good, but don't ask why good exists if God isn't real.
Everything in the universe shows obvious and undeniable signs that it was created by a mind far superior to our own.
I would like to witness the "foxhole" analogy- from one who denies that when death is inevitable, he sticks to his non-believing guns.
Wrong.
Carl Sagan stuck to his atheist guns right till the end.
Btw, you have been trained well to spin your shit i'm sure some of it sticks.
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PWNED!
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Atheism, regardless of whether or not it is a religion, philosophy or some form of fundamental theory of existence, is nothing more than an irrational belief in absolutely nothing. Atheism creates no hope. Atheism is constantly waiting to be denounced.
Notable atheists have converted to Christianity. The reverse never happens.
You're seriously misinformed.
Atheism is lack of belief, not a belief in nothing. Big difference.
The reverse never happens? Seriously now. It's happening in droves.
The odds are Atheism is the true nature of the Universe. One can hope otherwise, but it just doesn't appear so. Virtually all science points to no creator.
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That about sums it up.
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You're seriously misinformed.
Atheism is lack of belief, not a belief in nothing.
Atheism is inability to accept God, one believes in Santa Claus when young...
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The atheist just basically spends his life "pretending" there is no God, until it is convenient to change his mind.
Good said :P
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Mahg knows the truth.
The truth is none of us knows the truth and we're all making up theories and suppositions.
Atheists pretend they know there is no God, religious people pretend they know there is a God.
We just dont know. It's that simple.
SO ENOUGH OF THE BULLSHIT THEORIES ABOUT ATHEISM OR RELIGIONISM. ITS ALL BS. >:(
Of course when good things happen or when I want something I pray to an imaginary God, but when bad things happen I say God doesnt exist. The truth is I dont know. Whatever is convenient at the time. What usually ends up happening is 50-50, half the time I get what I want, half the time I dont.
So its unprovable EITHER way if God or a supreme being exists or if we were just some amoeba that created itself and mutated and evolved into everything that is.
Its that simple kids. ;)
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It's like if a girl tells a police officer that you slapped her ass.
There's no evidence that you slapped her ass.
It's basically her word against yours.
So what's the truth?
The truth is the police officer doesnt know.
It couldve happened. Or not.
Same analogy. Except in this case, the ass slap is God, the girl is the clergy, and you are the police officer.
Its so simple u silly fuks. 8)
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Mahg knows the truth.
The truth is none of us knows the truth and we're all making up theories and suppositions.
Atheists pretend they know there is no God, religious people pretend they know there is a God.
We just dont know. It's that simple.
SO ENOUGH OF THE BULLSHIT THEORIES ABOUT ATHEISM OR RELIGIONISM. ITS ALL BS. >:(
Of course when good things happen or when I want something I pray to an imaginary God, but when bad things happen I say God doesnt exist. The truth is I dont know. Whatever is convenient at the time. What usually ends up happening is 50-50, half the time I get what I want, half the time I dont.
So its unprovable EITHER way if God or a supreme being exists or if we were just some amoeba that created itself and mutated and evolved into everything that is.
Its that simple kids. ;)
You don't know and say that no body knows! What's the use of you if you don't know??? If god didn't exist you wouldn't have been talking about him. Words used not for nothing...
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It's like if a girl tells a police officer that you slapped her ass.
There's no evidence that you slapped her ass.
It's basically her word against yours.
So what's the truth?
The truth is the police officer doesnt know.
It couldve happened. Or not.
Same analogy. Except in this case, the ass slap is God, the girl is the clergy, and you are the police officer.
Its so simple u silly fuks. 8)
If you say there is no God, there is no evidence you have sold your soul to the devil... The more you talk the more you get twisted and winded
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If you create something, like a painting, you have thought about it first. Then who created the universe? I don't believe it's just a coincidence.
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If you create something, like a painting, you have thought about it first. Then who created the universe? I don't believe it's just a coincidence.
Millions or billions the other universes as well as the modern science says! ::)
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Millions or billions the other universes as well as the modern science says! ::)
Modern science is not always based on facts.
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You don't know and say that no body knows! What's the use of you if you don't know??? If god didn't exist you wouldn't have been talking about him. Words used not for nothing...
Thats because it was made up by someone. If what you say is true, if I told u I saw a chick and she mutated into a horse after fucking a dog, and you tell everyone there's some crazy bitch who fucked a dog and became a horse, does it make it true? After all words are used not for nothing right? Analogise, and you will see how ridiculous u sound.
Religion was made up for money control power, and for oppressed masses to stay happy and content in their misery without revolting believing something better is out there for them and they should be happy little fools with their peanut dinner while the kings ate some prime ribs and good pussy.
Atheism was made up by people who think they know better, atheists are probably somewhat more intelligent than religionists, and they use life experiences to "prove" there is no God, even though they really dont know the REAL truth and are just making up theories and suppositions.
The truth is Agnosticism. The truth is unprovable. 8)
Am I somewhat scared that I dont know where I'm going when I die? Yes. But I take a little bit of comfort knowing we're all going to go thru the same thing so it cant be that bad?? :-\
But who knows really. What I do know is none of us really knows.
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energy is neither created nor destroyed
what is a 'spirit'? energy? then we go somewhere
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Religion was made up for money control power, and for oppressed masses to stay happy and content in their misery
Could have picked up different phrases from the post of yours to question you, that's random! Who exactly did create a religion? Name? Place?
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energy is neither created nor destroyed
what is a 'spirit'? energy? then we go somewhere
We don't know that for a fact either. What is a spirit? Does it even exist? A "soul"? We can't see it in any human invented machine as yet, so we cant know for certain it exists. We just dont know anything and its scary as fuk. I guess religion makes people feel better inside thinking they have the answers and all will be well, but my brain is just too smart to just accept the bullshit that the sheep do. Sometimes I really wish I could just accept this guy named God and his son Mr J. Christ, but my mind keeps resisting cuz its far more powerful than most idiots.
Oh, intelligence can be a curse sometimes. :-\
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The smartest people are the ones who pretend to believe in religion, mix with religious people, then rip them off for all they are worth.
They are called the clergy.
lol, but sad!
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We don't know that for a fact either. What is a spirit? Does it even exist? A "soul"? We can't see it in any human invented machine as yet, so we cant know for certain it exists. We just dont know anything and its scary as fuk. I guess religion makes people feel better inside thinking they have the answers and all will be well, but my brain is just too smart to just accept the bullshit that the sheep do. Sometimes I really wish I could just accept this guy named God and his son Mr J. Christ, but my mind keeps resisting cuz its far more powerful than most idiots.
Oh, intelligence can be a curse sometimes. :-\
I quite contend with you that we don't know nothing but it's a lack of spirit to say such. It's only the scientists say they know something for public approval or something 8)
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Could have picked up different phrases from the post of yours to question you, that's random! Who exactly did create a religion? Name? Place?
I wasnt born 2011 years ago. How would I know? They all died off and probably 40 generations since, assuming average life expectancy of 50 the past 2,000 years. Besides, the moment words get passed down it all changes due to different interpretations.
All I know is theres only 1 truth. Like the sky is BLUE, the sun is YELLOW and my balls are BROWN. So if there is a God how come some call him Senior J. Christ, husband of the beautiful Virgin Maria or Mary for short, some call him Allah or Big Al but those were his good friends who knew him on first name basis, and there's 20 other variations. Whats his name? And why is it a guy? Why cant God be a girl? Half of the world is woman. Is he a hermaphrodite and made man and woman in his own image? I mean I'm not trying to be rude, so God if u do exist please dont take it personally and punish me, I'm just a curious boy. :-\
Sure hope the hermaphrodite if he/she/it exists has a good sense of humor, and understands I'm just messing with him/her/it in good nature or I'm in trouble. :'(
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I wasnt born 2011 years ago. How would I know? They all died off and probably 40 generations since, assuming average life expectancy of 50 the past 2,000 years. Besides, the moment words get passed down it all changes due to different interpretations.
All I know is theres only 1 truth. Like the sky is BLUE, the sun is YELLOW and my balls are BROWN. So if there is a God how come some call him Senior J. Christ, husband of the beautiful Virgin Maria or Mary for short, some call him Allah or Big Al but those were his good friends who knew him on first name basis, and there's 20 other variations. Whats his name? And why is it a guy? Why cant God be a girl? Half of the world is woman. Is he a hermaphrodite and made man and woman in his own image? I mean I'm not trying to be rude, so God if u do exist please dont take it personally and punish me, I'm just a curious boy. :-\
Sure hope the hermaphrodite if he/she/it exists has a good sense of humor, or I'm in trouble. :'(
I'm not sure as am drunk but the guy who lived 2011 years ago didn't create anything but was a perfect example! The human beings or humanity didn't ever create anything that would out value the image of Jesus! Right?
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If you create something, like a painting, you have thought about it first. Then who created the universe? I don't believe it's just a coincidence.
Allah MUST HAVE created the universe. Or was it Thor. No, it was the Incredible Hulk...
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I'm not sure as am drunk but the guy who lived 2011 years ago didn't create anything but was a perfect example! The human beings or humanity didn't ever create anything that would out value the image of Jesus! Right?
Well, it all depends on who u talk to. To Muslims the image of Mohammad and Allah outvalue Jesus. To Hindus of which I'm a product of, the images of the 100 Gods outvalue Jesus. My grandmother who raised me is an extremely religious person, prays for hours a day, but in her later years when her husband passed away her asshole sons, 1 a bigger loser than the next, stole all her money and jewelry those pieces of shit and shes pretty miserable now. I'm sure theres similar stories of Christians and Muslims. Why didnt God protect her? And then u have an asshole like me calling God a hermaphrodite and all seems well other than all I get are fat chicks, maybe he's keeping the hot ones away until I repent. :(
Another point of contention is the staunch Christian in America, if he was born in the Middle East, he'd probably be a staunch Muslim. Cuz he would've been taught that by his parents and place of worship. So u say he was taught wrong. He'll say ur taught wrong. So who's right? Neither of u r. The atheist is wrong also, he doesnt know anything either, he just uses his experiences to claim theres no God. Maybe there isnt. Or maybe God is testing him, which is what the religionist would say. And whos the God? 1 will say he's the father of Mr Christ, another calls him Allan or MOhammad's father??, yet another has 100 Gods all with different names. None of it makes any sense, we don't know jack shit.
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I made a few posts. Got called "well-trained" (or something)--
Why are those for "atheism" trying so hard to justify and defend it? Spending countless years trying to believe it?
If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice. I guess you better "Stick" to it then.
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Modern science is not always based on facts.
Curious what it is then that an "atheist" wants to find in science to denounce Christianity?
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Well, it all depends on who u talk to. To Muslims the image of Mohammad and Allah outvalue Jesus. To Hindus of which I'm a product of, the images of the 100 Gods outvalue Jesus. My grandmother who raised me is an extremely religious person, prays for hours a day, but in her later years when her husband passed away her asshole sons, 1 a bigger loser than the next, stole all her money and jewelry those pieces of shit and shes pretty miserable now. I'm sure theres similar stories of Christians and Muslims. Why didnt God protect her? And then u have an asshole like me calling God a hermaphrodite and all seems well other than all I get are fat chicks, maybe he's keeping the hot ones away until I repent. :(
Another point of contention is the staunch Christian in America, if he was born in the Middle East, he'd probably be a staunch Muslim. Cuz he would've been taught that by his parents and place of worship. So u say he was taught wrong. He'll say ur taught wrong. So who's right? Neither of u r. The atheist is wrong also, he doesnt know anything either, he just uses his experiences to claim theres no God. Maybe there isnt. Or maybe God is testing him, which is what the religionist would say. And whos the God? 1 will say he's the father of Mr Christ, another calls him Allan or MOhammad's father??, yet another has 100 Gods all with different names. None of it makes any sense, we don't know jack shit.
Your post have put me in stupor at 1'st as you put forward a lot of issues but then I realized that I can go for each of them. A bit later man :P
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I made a few posts. Got called "well-trained" (or something)--
Why are those for "atheism" trying so hard to justify and defend it? Spending countless years trying to believe it?
If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice. I guess you better "Stick" to it then.
Choosing to be godless is the bravest choice one can make... We should be respected for making that choice.
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...Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God while this same God drowned infants in their cribs. Because he refuses to cloak the reality of the world’s suffering in a cloying fantasy of eternal life, the atheist feels in his bones just how precious life is—and, indeed, how unfortunate it is that millions of human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgements of their happiness for no good reason at all.
..
QFT, good post!
NN
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An Atheist Manifesto
A Dig led by Sam Harris
Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind is not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of 6 billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl s parents believe at this very moment that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this?
No.
The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle. The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job. It carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity. It is, moreover, a job that the atheist does not want.
It is worth noting that no one ever needs to identify himself as a guy or a non-alchemist. Consequently, we do not have words for people who deny the validity of these pseudo-disciplines. Likewise, atheism is a term that should not even exist. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma. The atheist is merely a person who believes that the 260 million Americans (87% of the population) who claim to never doubt the existence of God should be obliged to present evidence for his existence and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day. Only the atheist appreciates just how uncanny our situation is: Most of us believe in a God that is every bit as specious as the gods of Mount Olympus; no person, whatever his or her qualifications, can seek public office in the United States without pretending to be certain that such a God exists; and much of what passes for public policy in our country conforms to religious taboos and superstitions appropriate to a medieval theocracy. Our circumstance is abject, indefensible and terrifying. It would be hilarious if the stakes were not so high.
We live in a world where all things, good and bad, are finally destroyed by change. Parents lose their children and children their parents. Husbands and wives are separated in an instant, never to meet again. Friends part company in haste, without knowing that it will be for the last time. This life, when surveyed with a broad glance, presents little more than a vast spectacle of loss. Most people in this world, however, imagine that there is a cure for this. If we live rightly—not necessarily ethically, but within the framework of certain ancient beliefs and stereotyped behaviors—we will get everything we want after we die. When our bodies finally fail us, we just shed our corporeal ballast and travel to a land where we are reunited with everyone we loved while alive. Of course, overly rational people and other rabble will be kept out of this happy place, and those who suspended their disbelief while alive will be free to enjoy themselves for all eternity.
We live in a world of unimaginable surprises—from the fusion energy that lights the sun to the genetic and evolutionary consequences of this lights dancing for eons upon the Earth—and yet Paradise conforms to our most superficial concerns with all the fidelity of a Caribbean cruise. This is wondrously strange. If one didn’t know better, one would think that man, in his fear of losing all that he loves, had created heaven, along with its gatekeeper God, in his own image.
Consider the destruction that Hurricane Katrina leveled on New Orleans. More than a thousand people died, tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions, and nearly a million were displaced. It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Katrina struck believed in an omnipotent, omniscient and compassionate God. But what was God doing while a hurricane laid waste to their city? Surely he heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. These were people of faith. These were good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. Only the atheist has the courage to admit the obvious: These poor people died talking to an imaginary friend.
Of course, there had been ample warning that a storm of biblical proportions would strike New Orleans, and the human response to the ensuing disaster was tragically inept. But it was inept only by the light of science. Advance warning of Katrina’s path was wrested from mute Nature by meteorological calculations and satellite imagery. God told no one of his plans. Had the residents of New Orleans been content to rely on the beneficence of the Lord, they wouldn’t have known that a killer hurricane was bearing down upon them until they felt the first gusts of wind on their faces. Nevertheless, a poll conducted by The Washington Post found that 80% of Katrina’s survivors claim that the event has only strengthened their faith in God.
As Hurricane Katrina was devouring New Orleans, nearly a thousand Shiite pilgrims were trampled to death on a bridge in Iraq. There can be no doubt that these pilgrims believed mightily in the God of the Koran: Their lives were organized around the indisputable fact of his existence; their women walked veiled before him; their men regularly murdered one another over rival interpretations of his word. It would be remarkable if a single survivor of this tragedy lost his faith. More likely, the survivors imagine that they were spared through God’s grace.
Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God while this same God drowned infants in their cribs. Because he refuses to cloak the reality of the world’s suffering in a cloying fantasy of eternal life, the atheist feels in his bones just how precious life is—and, indeed, how unfortunate it is that millions of human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgements of their happiness for no good reason at all.
And this is the world we created for ourselves we must live in our own filth until the time comes to go to heaven...All you can do is try and be a good and compassionate person take care of yourself and your family. Help those when you can and dont turn your back when you see something that is wrong,... we as a race turn our backs many years ago on faith so we have to live on a earth we created in our image not gods..
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It's like if a girl tells a police officer that you slapped her ass.
There's no evidence that you slapped her ass.
It's basically her word against yours.
So what's the truth?
The truth is the police officer doesnt know.
It couldve happened. Or not.
Same analogy. Except in this case, the ass slap is God, the girl is the clergy, and you are the police officer.
Its so simple u silly fuks. 8)
mmmmmmmm and its funny how in this infinite universe so infinite there is no end to space, humans appeared.so i guess there is no other life out there only us how ''vain''
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mmmmmmmm and its funny how in this infinite universe so infinite there is no end to space, humans appeared.so i guess there is no other life out there only us how ''vain''
Did I say that? I never said we are the only life in the universe. ???
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All I know is theres only 1 truth. Like the sky is BLUE, the sun is YELLOW and my balls are BROWN.
Youre not going to start in with Ayn Rand and her ignorant theories of objectivism are you Mr. Mentzer?
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Did I say that? I never said we are the only life in the universe. ???
no just making a point we as humans didn't come from apes if we were why are there still apes ??? we had a creator some be live we were decedents of an alien race more advanced than ourselves some of course believe in god.
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:)
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:)
Never trust people with bad teeth.
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:)
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:)
yes so true god helps those who help themselves he cannot fix all problems hes not a genie but he will help guide us and protect us in our quest for what we need.
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yes so true god helps those who help themselves he cannot fix all problems hes not a genie but he will help guide us and protect us in our quest for what we need.
sweet thought...now back to reality...
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Faith and the Good Society
People of faith regularly claim that atheism is responsible for some of the most appalling crimes of the 20th century. Although it is true that the regimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were irreligious to varying degrees, they were not especially rational. In fact, their public pronouncements were little more than litanies of delusion—delusions about race, economics, national identity, the march of history or the moral dangers of intellectualism. In many respects, religion was directly culpable even here. Consider the Holocaust: The anti-Semitism that built the Nazi crematoria brick by brick was a direct inheritance from medieval Christianity. For centuries, religious Germans had viewed the Jews as the worst species of heretics and attributed every societal ill to their continued presence among the faithful. While the hatred of Jews in Germany expressed itself in a predominately secular way, the religious demonization of the Jews of Europe continued. (The Vatican itself perpetuated the blood libel in its newspapers as late as 1914.)
Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields are not examples of what happens when people become too critical of unjustified beliefs; to the contrary, these horrors testify to the dangers of not thinking critically enough about specific secular ideologies. Needless to say, a rational argument against religious faith is not an argument for the blind embrace of atheism as a dogma. The problem that the atheist exposes is none other than the problem of dogma itself—of which every religion has more than its fair share. There is no society in recorded history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.
While most Americans believe that getting rid of religion is an impossible goal, much of the developed world has already accomplished it. Any account of a “god gene” that causes the majority of Americans to helplessly organize their lives around ancient works of religious fiction must explain why so many inhabitants of other First World societies apparently lack such a gene. The level of atheism throughout the rest of the developed world refutes any argument that religion is somehow a moral necessity. Countries like Norway, Iceland, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark and the United Kingdom are among the least religious societies on Earth. According to the United Nations’ Human Development Report (2005) they are also the healthiest, as indicated by measures of life expectancy, adult literacy, per capita income, educational attainment, gender equality, homicide rate and infant mortality. Conversely, the 50 nations now ranked lowest in terms of human development are unwaveringly religious. Other analyses paint the same picture: The United States is unique among wealthy democracies in its level of religious literalism and opposition to evolutionary theory; it is also uniquely beleaguered by high rates of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy, STD infection and infant mortality. The same comparison holds true within the United States itself: Southern and Midwestern states, characterized by the highest levels of religious superstition and hostility to evolutionary theory, are especially plagued by the above indicators of societal dysfunction, while the comparatively secular states of the Northeast conform to European norms. Of course, correlational data of this sort do not resolve questions of causality—belief in God may lead to societal dysfunction; societal dysfunction may foster a belief in God; each factor may enable the other; or both may spring from some deeper source of mischief. Leaving aside the issue of cause and effect, these facts prove that atheism is perfectly compatible with the basic aspirations of a civil society; they also prove, conclusively, that religious faith does nothing to ensure a society’s health.
Countries with high levels of atheism also are the most charitable in terms of giving foreign aid to the developing world. The dubious link between Christian literalism and Christian values is also belied by other indices of charity. Consider the ratio in salaries between top-tier CEOs and their average employee: in Britain it is 24 to 1; France 15 to 1; Sweden 13 to 1; in the United States, where 83% of the population believes that Jesus literally rose from the dead, it is 475 to 1. Many a camel, it would seem, expects to squeeze easily through the eye of a needle.
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Inner Peace is all I want. That's it.