TheMaker

Ecch, I couldn't stay away. And I told myself I wasn't going to eat near or in front of the PC anymore! That's right, yes. Religion obviously isn't a prerequisite for morality, nor does morality always follow from religion. Pol Pot was blatantly antitheistic, for example, and he was a monster. Hitler was a Christian of convenience, and he is history's greatest monster. These men were amoral independent of the conditions which led them to believe or disbelieve various hypotheses. What interests me, and what I truthfully was hoping to bait believers with, is the oft-repeated fallacy that

Of course. I know that it's stupid and intellectually dishonest to believe in a god of any kind based on the evidence that is readily available to each and every one of us. I believe that even the most devout Christian knows deep down that his religion is total fucking bullshit that only a child could invest anything in. And with that' date=' I'm off. I'm not running away from the conversation (rather, it's the comfort of home and warm food I'm running [i']towards[/i]), and if it's grown a few pages by tomorrow, expect to see me back for more. Suggested sub-topic for the next few pages:

Also, I'm assuming your post was directed at me, yes? I've never been elliptical or evasive in the course of this discussion, unlike some hit-and-run posters. I've dealt with criticism and refutation head-on, I've allowed for digression and disagreement, and furthermore, I don't think I've ever complained about the faithful being closed-minded or judgmental. I have railed against religion for being stupid and illogical, however, which is a different beast entirely. Religion judges; it's part of what it exists to do. Atheism is... oh, fuck it. You're a big boy. You probably caught the definitio

Yeah, well, stupid cult bullshit is hard to tolerate, especially when the faithful are ignoring the pertinent parts of your argument. What's a boy to do? Seriously, though, I would love it if somebody - anybody? - could produce a better defense for faith than "maybe it's illogical, but it's all I've got." Because I've still got fuckloads of ammo in the cannon. I don't know about the religious posters, though.

DAMMIT THEY AREN'T DOING ANYTHING WHEN I CLICK ON THEM

You've crossed the bridge, bjorn! This is when the conversation at last becomes interesting, once we begin to use the same leaps in logic to explain human consciousness and belief in god. Unfortunately, "there is no rational answer that I can comprehend" is not sufficient to take the place of proof, regardless of the topic at hand. And if you admit that your belief in Jesus is "irrational," then I'm afraid you are doing nothing more or less than advertising your ability to believe absolutely anything.

Yeah, but there's no reason for you to think that Hell exists, fortunately. "Some dudes wrote about it this one time and theologians like to talk about it as if it were real" isn't any kind of evidence, I don't think. And that's important. Pascal's Wager is pretty dumb, in my opinion, not to mention cowardly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager

I guess this is why you're closer to the agnostic line than the atheist one. So what? So the truth matters to me, that's what. I resent having to share the planet with billions of people who believe fallacies that only somebody who is stupid, desperate, or inculcated from birth could believe. A lot of religious organizations do good, it's true (this just in: BABIES LIKE PABULUM), but I don't think anybody in this thread has tried to argue that faith is always an obstacle to happiness or productivity. These states are not, however, byproducts that are exclusive to the domain of faith. Again, wh

Again, total waste of resources. Even that sort of thing seems like a tragedy to me.

Well, that's where you and I differ. We all lose people at some point, Moe. We all have health problems or money problems at some point. But false comfort really is no comfort at all. And if someone lacking direction needs a "higher purpose," what could be higher than something like charity, or exploration of the cosmos? Rather than pouring ourselves into an emotional and intellectual abyss, why not do something productive with our sorrows and frustrations? Why not sink them into something tangible and good, rather than something abstract and elusive? FUCK, y'know? Just FUCK! I don't underst

Well, that explains why "quote" and "reply" are options following every post in a thread...

Heh. Pretty sure you're just being a smart-arse, but there sure are degrees of stupidity and brutishness inherent in different religions. I'm particularly fond of the comparison made by Sam Harris between Islam and Jainism in one of his books. He basically argues that if you're looking for a holy text, or set of holy texts, to inspire you to commit violent acts, you really couldn't ask for a more tacit endorsement than the writings of the Koran. Jainism, on the other hand, is basically a hippie religion that doesn't encourage any kind of violence whatsoever. Christianity, like Islam, is fuckin

Actually, I can't imagine why I would ever attempt such a thing, since all faiths have done a bang-up job of defining themselves. Faiths exist to posit answers to unanswerable questions. Based on a lack of corroborating evidence, we can readily conclude that they all, without exception, manufacture explanations pertaining to the origins of man and the universe. There are common threads connecting many faiths, largely because most of them are based on other, older faiths, but one thing they all share in common is the fact that they are utter nonsense. Would you disagree with this? (Feel free to

It's not currently equipped to do so, no. But for heck's sake, did you not read what I wrote about LaPlace and the orbits a while ago? Science evolves, whereas religion is stagnant. Scientific knowledge continues to grow past religious projections as humanity grows past its earliest ambitions. The best religion can do is apologize and self-censor for being too shortsighted to address everything from shifting morality to motherfucking dinosaurs.

Now we're just repeating ourselves. You want atheism to answer this question; atheism does not deign to answer it. Uh, sorry, I guess...? Heh.

I'd argue that in many cases, though, it does. That's all I really want to get across. Atheists who are blazing trails in the 21st Century aren't trying to sway people from believing in their God to suddenly believing in our No-God God. Atheism isn't just another pacifier, and borrowing from the religious lexicon can only hope to muddy public perception of what atheism really is. There's more than enough confusion in that regard already, in my opinion.

Dogg, it's tied to the gospels. I ain't cool with it. Yeah, I've seen it used to describe atheists outside of this thread, but it strikes me as unnecessarily combative. Going back to what I wrote earlier, we aren't the ones telling people what to think; we're trying to tell them how to think (i.e., critically).

Yep. My predictions, however, remain dire for this fall. Conservative majority in Canada, McCain/Palin in the U.S. I don't want to see it, but we'd all better get used to the idea. P.S., Please, for the love of fuck, vote Liberal, guys, no matter what riding you're in. It's really our only chance.

And I'll refer you to the first four definitions in your link, which are why I have a big problem with people who don't believe in that sort of nonsense using it to further their reasoning. It doesn't fit, so we should summarily discard it.

If I were the sort of person to worship anybody, it'd probably be Van, yeah. He's real (real gone), at least.

One of the great things about atheism that sets it apart from religion (and again, the two share absolutely nothing in common, which makes this is a very long list) is that there are no degrees of belief; there lacks a continuum which sees some atheists willing to fly planes into buildings to put an end to heresy, while other, more peaceable atheists sit around trying to reconcile their beliefs with modern notions of tolerance and diversity. Put simply, a continuum does not become the truth. When you're going after truth - and I think we can at least agree that there is a set-in-stone defini

First of all, I never claimed to be a scientist. I'm not looking into anything personally, although a lot of folks out there are looking into a lot of different things, including (but not strictly limited to) string theory, quantum gravity, the BEH mechanism, rotational speeds of galaxies, orbital velocities of clustered galaxies, galaxy evolution, and so forth. Atheism and science are not synonymous, but they flatter each other wonderfully, in my opinion. After all, it is a lack of belief that results in the kind of questing mind that is unafraid to seek verifiable answers to "the big questio

Just for the record, I don't agree with Moe, either. He's an agnostic wearing his atheist costume. Halloween's next month, bro.

I'm not going to present a history of the word atheism. Its roots are fairly obvious, and we've gone over what it means to the tune of something like four consecutive sentences in my last post. Evangelicals, on the other hand, are committed to a Christian church believing in the sole authority and inerrancy of the Bible, in salvation through regeneration, and in a spiritually transformed personal life. Evangelicalism is rooted in the untestable and superstitious, whereas atheism is a word stemming from a life lived only in accordance with the observable natural world. There is no corollary her