Atheism/Theism thread

[Xx{Midnight}xX]

Originally Posted by adlp

seems there is a lot of things that you don't understand

There's a lot of things no one understands

[goose_goldwing]

Originally Posted by JJTrixX

Dawkins says he want a morality that can be discussed reasoned and so on based on "itelligent design". Yea that sounds good to a viewing audience being mindful and respectful to his response and so they clap as a reaction to the very first bias atheist who initiates the clap with intent of social support, but by who? Who will be this group of deciders who reason and discuss what the new form of morality will be? Who will be this new spokesperson for this so called 'intelligent design'? No man will be more perfect nor lacking of sin nor more loving then he who is Jesus Christ, the son of God.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly equipped to perform every good work.

Thread # 136 bro.

[Nullifidian]

It was fun while it lasted

[Reincarnate]

Originally Posted by JJTrixX

Dawkins says he want a morality that can be discussed reasoned and so on based on "itelligent design". Yea that sounds good to a viewing audience being mindful and respectful to his response and so they clap as a reaction to the very first bias atheist who initiates the clap with intent of social support, but by who? Who will be this group of deciders who reason and discuss what the new form of morality will be? Who will be this new spokesperson for this so called 'intelligent design'? No man will be more perfect nor lacking of sin nor more loving then he who is Jesus Christ, the son of God.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly equipped to perform every good work.

It's pretty obvious you didn't really take in anything that's been said to you / the point of those videos.

Bah someone else can pick this up, I don't have the time/patience for this anymore, lol. Peace

[Choofers]

Lol I'm not picking this up either, I got a sandwich to eat and a ton of family members to blow off because of my lack of morals

[Reincarnate]

brb going to find/kill choofers for his sandwich because i'm a godless bloodluster

[Choofers]

this sandwich will be eaten before you get here, hohohohoh !!

[Nullifidian]

Then he'll just kill you for the hell of it cause fuck morals

[Dynam0]

Basically in order to be theistic, you need to have faith in the divine. Thus, there needs to be a belief of the supernatural in order for divine intervention to occur. Look up James Randi or any other expert who deals with the supernatural (from a logical and evidence-based approach) and you'll find that there is no substantiated evidence to suggest any supernatural phenomenon.

That being the case, every damned word written in the Bible or any religious texts for that matter came from a HUMAN BEING. Thus all moral philosophies, whether you're Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Peanut Butterist, come from human and only human origins.

/thread

[JJTrixX]

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

It's pretty obvious you didn't really take in anything that's been said to you / the point of those videos.

Bah someone else can pick this up, I don't have the time/patience for this anymore, lol. Peace

I listened to what has been said and I watched a few of those videos, i just don't agree with everything those atheists have said. It's all good though, it's always fun for me to partake in these discussions but it's not like you're gonna disprove my beleif in God to me just like im not gonna convince you of my faith.

I am glad to see these discussions can be held up with some form of decency rather then have it escalade to an aggressive hate/troll thread. I still find the world to be a much better place so long as your faith is in something good rather then excercising your religion as an excuse or a scapegoat to do something horrible. Most atheists seem to group true believers with those who falsely claim their faith.

peace n love

[Ohaider]

Originally Posted by adlp

oh Shit did i just get Called Out

i nostalgiad all over the place when i saw you avi

jesus christ

[gnr61]

i've always been kind of baffled by the idea that atheists inherently lack a moral backbone. if the only reason for your morals existing is that they're written out for you from on high, then they must be intrinsically totally arbitrary. or else they must have some kind of extradivine rationality to them, in which case they can be realized and followed independently of whether someone ascribes to that theology. morality is a moot point in arguing for the existence of god

[book]

[rushyrulz]

Originally Posted by JJTrixX

faith and other words

I basically condensed and compiled some walls of text from other threads on this topic mainly from cry4eternity and rubix, here ya have it:

I'm Gonna talk a bit about faith as a concept. The dictionary definition of faith is “belief that is not based on proof.” Personally, when dealing with topics such as these I prefer to replace the word "proof" with "evidence," simply because somebody always pulls the "100% certainty" argument. For the purposes of this post, let's not assert anything with 100% certainty. Proof, or evidence, in this case would be anything that elevates the status of a claim so that it is not immediately dismissible.

Belief in a claim that has no support is faith, regardless of your reasons. Belief in a claim that has evidentiary support can also be faith, but then it depends on your reasoning. If you believe this claim simply because of the authority of who tells you, or some other similar fallacy, then you also have some degree of faith, depending on the trustworthiness of your source. However, if you decide to do a little research and evaluate the evidence firsthand, then your belief is not faith-based. Also keep in mind that the basis of your belief has absolutely nothing to do with its validity. That being said, here's what I want to say.

I don’t think a faith-based belief in anything is ever justified. Why do so many people feel that it is somehow innately "good" to have a faith-based belief? I see a faith based belief as simply "believing for the sake of believing." If this belief also happens to be correct, then it is simply a coincidence. The claim may have been made with the intent of figuring out the truth, but the belief is not. If at any point the belief does become supported by evidence, it is no longer faith by the definition I stated before.

"It's called faith because it's not knowledge." - Christopher Hitchens

Based on the above definition, this seems to follow logically. To me, this "argument" is similar to beating a dead horse that everybody claims is still alive. I’m just trying to gain insight on why so many people still disagree with me.



Any belief that isn't somehow ground in evidence is wholly arbitrary and has no bearing on whether something is actually true or false. Some people are OK with believing possible delusions if it means having a happier life. I don't see any problem with that unless they start forcing their views on others in some form.

Personally, I find the truth liberating. Knowing and understanding that there might not be an afterlife makes me realize how precious my time here is. It's pretty amazing; the parts that compose your body have basically been floating around for billions of years, and only now, for this short sliver of time, have they come together to make YOU. It's a pretty long time to wait for such an opportunity.

But for some people, that idea is scary. To those people, believing in an afterlife or a God or something faith-based is the only way to remain sane. That's fine. I think faith-based beliefs are completely OK as long as you aren't doing yourself or others a disservice. Some lies are harmless. Others aren't.

[codcrille]

Never got why some people have to make not being religious such a big deal, if anything atheists who constantly brag about their intelligence and flashes The God Delusion around as their Bible are just as annoying as door knocking cult recruiters. Long ago I used to count myself an atheist, but I've realized I'm not, I simply don't care.

I hate it when people feel the need to bash passively religious people for their beliefs in the same way it annoys the shit out of me every time someone starts the "Why the fuck don't you eat meat, it's so stupid" every time a vegetarian is present at a dinner table.

[0]

the flying spaghetti monster will smite you all

[Cavernio]

"Also saying there are plenty of bad things that came with religion, implying that religion is more "bad" than "good" is a somewhat simple position to hold. I guess you think the "bad" you consider that emanated from religion had nothing to see with the ignorance of some people or merely the social context around it and all ; most of historical facts have a STRONG historical context to it and I don't think things would have been less... "bloody" if people didn't believed in a supreme being, they believed the beliefs at the time because they had no other way around. All that was about having beliefs about how the world was functioning ;
Then people used religion to legitimate wars and genocides and some shit like that, it doesn't mean religion was essentially bad but that religion was usually used as a tool to serve the interest of the power that led a said country, region, etc."

I used to argue that people are people, and if it weren't religion that causes wars, it would be something else, since the social context would bring it about anyways. I'm not so sure about that anymore, but I do think that that still might be the case, the zeitgeist and all, and I'm going to try and argue for that.
Simply because there have been religious wars doesn't mean that removing the religion would remove the war. I mean, we still fight over ideas of morality and ways of life, and people in one geographical location have different values than another. Eg: Muslim extremists who pronounce their lives as becoming too "western". They aren't out to fight christians or even non-believers (seeing as they will kill and persecute other less extreme muslims.) They're out to get people who don't believe what they believe, period, Allah and Koran or no. It's hard to blame the religion for war when we easily see that within a religion there is one part that is harmless and one side that's full of self-righteous lunatics, even though it's very much a religious fight.
I've heard it said that well yeah, but without the religion or belief in a supreme being who you can always bring out and say, but God says so so I'm right. That is true. But the same sort of people who will believe that God exists and is all that's good even if God's speaking to them in their dreams telling them to burn down their city, is the same sort of person who, because they were raised with 'traditional' values, won't be logical enough to see that, for example, homosexuality is not immoral.

tl;dr It's not the religion that causes bad things, it's people, religious or not.

On a completely personal level, I was a better person when I was christian. I was nicer. It's probably made me a better person now too, but I'm not as nice as I once was and I don't fall asleep feeling happy and close to God because I do good things.
I have yet to really feel that connection to the world within myself since becoming atheist. I believe that touches one of jjtrixx's points that was sort of glossed over. Of course I'm hardly representative of all atheists.

No one will say that it's stupid to find inner peace or love or whatever you want to call it, and religion offers that to millions of people. And I can't fully frown upon religion or beliefs (even if they're obviously not true) if I don't see religion as the cause for all the horrible wars/fighting that has happened.

[rushyrulz]

You're basically saying "guns don't kill people, people kill people." But a gun is the weapon that is used to kill the other person. The same can be said about religion. It's true that people do bad things sometimes without any religious motive, but there also exists people that do bad things because their religious doctrine commands them to do so. This is definitely a problem. A gun itself won't do any harm, but depending on how it's used it can be used for good purposes (protection/hunting etc), bad purposes (murder), and even self-detriment (suicide). I feel this is a very close metaphor to religion. Villains that commit gun crimes need to be stopped as do religious extremists who use their religion as an excuse to harm others.

[Syhto]

This is painful to my eyes.

[Cavernio]

Originally Posted by rushyrulz

You're basically saying "guns don't kill people, people kill people." But a gun is the weapon that is used to kill the other person.

A gun makes it stupidly easy to kill someone and innocent people, and the only purpose of owning a handgun is to intimidate (even for your own protection it works via intimidation, a negative thing) or kill others. Religion gives no boost to killing people, nor is its sole purpose negative. I think a better analogy would be saying knives kill people, not that I think either is very good. Knives are tools used everyday, but can be used to stab someone. Religion is a tool to make people happy and, generally, only inspires people to do good. That the opposite can happen in a religion doesn't make it all bad, and does not mean that religion is like guns.
One flaw of either analogy is because most religions that I know of, at least all major religions, have a built-in safety measure of putting love first. Anyone who's a christian who says such things like homosexuality is wrong and who hounds people about it or treats them as outcasts, I would say aren't really being christian. The enemy is not religion, but ignorance and failure to be objective and putting your own ideas above someone else so much that you feel you need to persecute them.

A think pretty strong argument to what I've been saying I think would be that religion breeds ignorance and might cause people to be less empirical about ALL things, to start to place faith in things that are outside the scope of their faith. I could see that quite obviously causing serious lag in scientific advancement, which in a grand sense -and I think most people would agree- ends up causing a lot more strife. In the short term I think it's debateable what would cause the most hurt.

However, the ideas of us versus them, protecting your sense of belonging, thrusting your ideals onto someone else in a small sense or a massive scale, and taking these things so far as to cause war, doesn't stem from religion and never has. Yet these are the things that so many atheists site as to why religion is bad and wrong. Religion helps cause wars as much as any culture causes wars.
I'm not sure I see much of a difference in saying religion causes wars to saying (most) religion prevents wars by virtue of the harmonious values they all teach, in terms of misrepresenting the impact religion itself has on the world.
I think that if you could magically remove, and keep removed, all religion you'd have more peace for about a generation before the world would settle down and create new, non-religious groups to become strongly associated with because that's what people do, and shit would hit the fan.