Atheists and religious boards

[Anguille]

I think after foggedin reads all these posts, I may have to minister to your wounds.

Do what you Cain.

 

[random3434]

Do what you Cain.

Only if I'm Able to

 

[tigerbob]

You're barking up the wrong tree mister.

Don't try and palm me off with that old chestnut. It walnut work. Oak-ay?

 

[Gem]

For the same reason that conservatives post at Democratic Underground and liberals search out conservative message boards.

You harder to argue with people who agree with you.

 

[tigerbob]

Phew - we're back on topic. I was running out of trees.

 

[KittenKoder]

Phew - we're back on topic. I was running out of trees.

Willow you stop the punny yolks already! My gut hurts from laughing.

 

[tigerbob]

Willow you stop the punny yolks already! My gut hurts from laughing.

 

[Diuretic]

Why do atheists spend so much time on religious boards?

Dunno. But why do people on forums insist on making a statement but dress it up as a question?

 

[editec]

Why do atheists spend so much time on religious boards?

Laughs?

 

[xsited1]

Why do atheists spend so much time on religious boards?

According to some, it is a religion.

Court rules atheism a religion

Court rules atheism a religion
Decides 1st Amendment protects prison inmate's right to start study group

A federal court of appeals ruled yesterday Wisconsin prison officials violated an inmate's rights because they did not treat atheism as a religion.
"Atheism is [the inmate's] religion, and the group that he wanted to start was religious in nature even though it expressly rejects a belief in a supreme being," the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals said.

The court decided the inmate's First Amendment rights were violated because the prison refused to allow him to create a study group for atheists.

Brian Fahling, senior trial attorney for the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, called the court's ruling "a sort of Alice in Wonderland jurisprudence."

"Up is down, and atheism, the antithesis of religion, is religion," said Fahling.

The Supreme Court has said a religion need not be based on a belief in the existence of a supreme being. In the 1961 case of Torcaso v. Watkins, the court described "secular humanism" as a religion.

Fahling said today's ruling was "further evidence of the incoherence of Establishment Clause jurisprudence."

"It is difficult not to be somewhat jaundiced about our courts when they take clauses especially designed to protect religion from the state and turn them on their head by giving protective cover to a belief system, that, by every known definition other than the courts' is not a religion, while simultaneously declaring public expressions of true religious faith to be prohibited," Fahling said.

 

[RodISHI]

How does one study atheism?

 

[Diuretic]

According to some, it is a religion.

Court rules atheism a religion

Court rules atheism a religion
Decides 1st Amendment protects prison inmate's right to start study group

A federal court of appeals ruled yesterday Wisconsin prison officials violated an inmate's rights because they did not treat atheism as a religion.
"Atheism is [the inmate's] religion, and the group that he wanted to start was religious in nature even though it expressly rejects a belief in a supreme being," the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals said.

The court decided the inmate's First Amendment rights were violated because the prison refused to allow him to create a study group for atheists.

Brian Fahling, senior trial attorney for the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, called the court's ruling "a sort of Alice in Wonderland jurisprudence."

"Up is down, and atheism, the antithesis of religion, is religion," said Fahling.

The Supreme Court has said a religion need not be based on a belief in the existence of a supreme being. In the 1961 case of Torcaso v. Watkins, the court described "secular humanism" as a religion.

Fahling said today's ruling was "further evidence of the incoherence of Establishment Clause jurisprudence."

"It is difficult not to be somewhat jaundiced about our courts when they take clauses especially designed to protect religion from the state and turn them on their head by giving protective cover to a belief system, that, by every known definition other than the courts' is not a religion, while simultaneously declaring public expressions of true religious faith to be prohibited," Fahling said.

Yes. it's part of the Church of the Not-Holy-Something-or-Other. "The law is a ass" at times, those cases are proof.

 

[catzmeow]

I find that pastafarians are simply more interested in religion than many other pactitioners of faith.

 

[Diuretic]

Think of sauces as being analogous to denominations and you might be right.

I can see it now, the splitters of the Church of the Carbonara will be agitating first.

 

[editec]

How does one study atheism?

Ironically, the only way to be an effective atheist is to study religion.

Seems like a forking waste of a thinking atheist's time to me.

All I know is that the more I read about the advances in theoretical physics and advanced math like chaos theory (as a layman, I mean) the more convinced I am that there's so much more going on that science and advanced math will ever understand.

The closer they get to understanding the mechanics of energy and matter, the grander the mystery seems to get.

Existence itself (not my existence or yours, but being itself) is what makes a believer of me.

My belief is more a sense of wonder than any codified system of religious thought.

I was actually an recovering Lutheran, and a professed atheist for many years until I started reading about cosmological theories.

If the BIG BANG (which I believe probably happened, incidently) doesn't make you stop and wonder, and take a leap of faith that you cannot understand "BEING" then you're missing the obvious.

There is absolutely no qualitiative differnece between "And then God said let there be light" and the big bang theory.

They are both saying essantially the exact same thing.

And what are they saying?

That there is something that looks like a beginning, but if there is something that is causal for that beginning it is beyond our ability to meaningfully discuss it.

Now if that isn't a restatement of the whole "God works in mysterious ways" don't know what is.

Science can tell us a LOT of really cool stuff about the universe as it is, and probably even as the universe was from the point of the big bang.

But what science cannot tell us is WHY the universe is

And THAT is the primary question from which all knowledge really flows.

It doesn't take any real leap of faith to know that existence itself is magic, folks.

Strip the whole question of God or no God down to that central mystery of EXISTENCE and you realize that science will never be able to answer that question.

Neither incidently will religion.

Let's suppose that there really is a GOD and you are standing before him or her.

Ask him where he came from.

He cannot answer it exept with a riddle.

I am now and always was.

That's not magic?

What is the "singularity"?

Its a theory of being before the universe as we know it today, existed.

That's not magic?

See my point?

Science can teach us how the plumbing works, but it cannot tell us WHY the plumbing exists to begin with.

 

[RodISHI]

Ironically, the only way to be an effective atheist is to study religion.

Seems like a forking waste of a thinking atheist's time to me.

All I know is that the more I read about the advances in theoretical physics and advanced math like chaos theory (as a layman, I mean) the more convinced I am that there's so much more going on that science and advanced math will ever understand.

The closer they get to understanding the mechanics of energy and matter, the grander the mystery seems to get.

Existence itself (not my existence or yours, but being itself) is what makes a believer of me.

My belief is more a sense of wonder than any codified system of religious thought.

I was actually an recovering Lutheran, and a professed atheist for many years until I started reading about cosmological theories.

If the BIG BANG (which I believe probably happened, incidently) doesn't make you stop and wonder, and take a leap of faith that you cannot understand "BEING" then you're missing the obvious.

There is absolutely no qualitiative differnece between "And then God said let there be light" and the big bang theory.

They are both saying essantially the exact same thing.

And what are they saying?

That there is something that looks like a beginning, but if there is something that is causal for that beginning it is beyond our ability to meaningfully discuss it.

Now if that isn't a restatement of the whole "God works in mysterious ways" don't know what is.

Science can tell us a LOT of really cool stuff about the universe as it is, and probably even as the universe was from the point of the big bang.

But what science cannot tell us is WHY the universe is

And THAT is the primary question from which all knowledge really flows.

It doesn't take any real leap of faith to know that existence itself is magic, folks.

Strip the whole question of God or no God down to that central mystery of EXISTENCE and you realize that science will never be able to answer that question.

Neither incidently will religion.

Let's suppose that there really is a GOD and you are standing before him or her.

Ask him where he came from.

He cannot answer it exept with a riddle.

I am now and always was.

That's not magic?

What is the "singularity"?

Its a theory of being before the universe as we know it today, existed.

That's not magic?

See my point?

Science can teach us how the plumbing works, but it cannot tell us WHY the plumbing exists to begin with.

Thank you I have a hard time at times understanding how anyone can deny a creation that created us all. science i think can only come up with theory as science cannot fully define what is a spirit. They can guess. Yet I think that is all they can really do.

We were down in Florida one winter and our phone line had gotten miscomobbled outside of the travel trailer, rendering the phone useless. Yet we did not find the line was broken for about a week. I was sleeping when I heard my son yelling, "Mom where are you? mom answer me!"
when we finally discovered the phone line was damage and fixed the phone I recieved a call from our daughter shortly thereafter. She says, "Mom we have been trying to call you all week. why weren't you answering the phone?" She let me know how panicked son was.

These type things are beyond what a worldly science can explain.

 

[editec]

One doesn't have to believe in GOD or heaven to understand that the BEING is that magic which "surpasseth all understanding".

I have about as much respect for most religions as I have for second rate magicians who pull rabbits out of a hat, folks.

I have exactly the same amount of respect for radical atheists as I have for the dumbest most radical Bible or Koran thumpers you can find.

They're BOTH missing the point, in my never humble opinion.

 

[RodISHI]

One doesn't have to believe in GOD or heaven to understand that the BEING is that magic which "surpasseth all understanding".

I have about as much respect for most religions as I have for second rate magicians who pull rabbits out of a hat, folks.

I have exactly the same amount of respect for radical atheists as I have for the dumbest most radical Bible or Koran thumpers you can find.

They're BOTH missing the point, in my never humble opinion.

Does this mean the affair is over before I give you the sermon?

 

[KittenKoder]

Actually, for those who didn't catch it, the only reason atheism was being called a religion was to get the same rights in the prison offered to those who are religious. Fallout from when the pagans had to push so hard to get their rights in prison as well (honestly I don't think any religion should be allowed in prison and prisoners deserve very few rights). It was just the easiest way to do it.

 

[sky dancer]

Thank you I have a hard time at times understanding how anyone can deny a creation that created us all. science i think can only come up with theory as science cannot fully define what is a spirit. They can guess. Yet I think that is all they can really do.

We were down in Florida one winter and our phone line had gotten miscomobbled outside of the travel trailer, rendering the phone useless. Yet we did not find the line was broken for about a week. I was sleeping when I heard my son yelling, "Mom where are you? mom answer me!"
when we finally discovered the phone line was damage and fixed the phone I recieved a call from our daughter shortly thereafter. She says, "Mom we have been trying to call you all week. why weren't you answering the phone?" She let me know how panicked son was.

These type things are beyond what a worldly science can explain.

How can anyone deny a creation that created us all?

Ask a Buddhist.