Faith is Born from Fear

[AtheistBuddah]

It has been said by many Christians that one of the primary reasons for someone being an atheist and saying that they don't believe is because they don't want to believe. They don't want to ask the hard question "What if I'm wrong?" because they can't accept the implications of that questioning. They claim that we as atheists take the easy way out but I argue that it is just the opposite. Christians downright refuse to humor any kind of questioning when it comes to their belief. They refuse to look inside themselves and ask "What if there is no God?" because they are terrified of the implications of that question. They claim we are afraid of hell but in fact it is they who are afraid of oblivion. Of nonexistence. Understandably so. The idea of ceasing to exist is unpleasant to say the least. That is why being an atheist is far from the easy way out.

As an atheist you look that unpleasant reality in the face, swallow your fear and accept it and live your life to its fullest. Being a Christian is a way of ignoring the fact that the world is an unpleasant and often unjust place where some people live their whole lives in despair before their flame of consciousness goes out forever. This world can be cruel and unfair but as atheists we accept that it's the only one we are ever going to get and that motivates us to fight our hardest to make it a better and brighter one. For our sake and for the sake of our children. We don't turn away from reality and turn a wishful eye to an afterlife that isn't going to happen.

I think it is rather ignorant to presume you know exactly what a Christian thinks. When you don't have faith, it's like being a blind person who cannot understand the concept of colors when you are trying to have someone explain faith.

To me it comes down to whether someone believes in only the physical world of atoms and molecules and that's all we are, nothing at all really matters -- like murder or war because what difference does it make to atoms or molecules if they get rearranged?

Faith is something some people feel more than anything. Or they can just believe that there is something beyond the merely physical world of atoms and molecules, that we are more than just that.

I was a Christian and someone of faith for a very long time and I have known and still know people of faith quite intimately and I also study the psychology behind the religious mind. I never just make posts by talking out of my ass. I only post when I really have something to say.

I find it kind of condescending that you and a lot of others think atheists look at the world that way. Things do matter to us. We care about others and about the good of society. Just because we have no God doesn't me we have no conscience. We're human beings too and it rather hurts to have people assume otherwise because I'm an atheist.

That's a nice belief it is, and though I don't agree with it, I would quite literally die defending their right to hold it. I'm in the military and I've been deployed before and I take my oath to defend the Constitution very seriously. Though I will say that holding that belief doesn't automatically make them a nice person any more than my lack of belief makes me a bad one.

 

[AtheistBuddah]

You ever hear of protesting too much? That's the op.

On the contrary, Christians DON'T have to live in fear because Christ died for their sins and paid the price.

John 3:16 King James Version
16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

The op is protesting too much he doesn't have fear and making it clear, he's living in denial.

I made no form of protest. I stated facts. Also I just have to point out that the irony of your closing statement is pretty funny.

No, sorry you did not post facts, you posted YOUR OPINION. And in it, you protested way too much.

Your protesting too much, betrays fear. Your anger betrays fear.

If you were so darn secure, you wouldn't need to be declaring why you think atheism is better than Christianity. Obviously, Christianity worries you. You can read it all over the op. Maybe you don't see it, but everyone else does.

BTW, I don't fear hell. I don't have to, I'm covered by the blood of Jesus.

But you? What is the old saying? If a Christian is wrong then, he's wrong. He'll die and never know he was wrong.

But if YOU are wrong, then what? Better think about that.

A true atheist wouldn't care if some sets of molecules believed in God. To a true atheist it's all just the laws of physics and thoughts are just electrical impulses and chemical reactions that occur in the brain. To a true atheist, we determine nothing, it's all determined by how our molecules are arranged and the laws of physics.

Firstly, I'm surprised to see an atheist using the "No True Scotsman Fallacy" I would've thought that we all knew better. And I only assume that you are an atheist because you say "we" when referring to atheists.

Second, I and many other atheists are also very much concerned with the laws of this land and the instances in which Christians break or otherwise overstep those laws because they think they should have a place of privilege in our society.

 

[Hollie]

What I find interesting is that my challenge to your pointless and useless enlistment of philosophy and theology vs. the methods of science to advance knowledge leaves you stuttering and mumbling with duck jokes.

As usual, your utter inability to defend the theistic worldview, wherein you live in trembling fear of angry gawds and fantastical claims of an inversion of a reality based existence is actually pretty nihilistic and child-like. You revile science because it strips away the fears and superstitions you require to maintain your religious dogma. You require that there remain questions about the natural world that mankind can never hope to attain true knowledge about, and that means our place in the universe is hopelessly obscured. This is a sweepingly nihilistic and child-like point of view, and you fundie zealots don't connect the dots to this inescapable conclusion. The cul de sac remains forever in place-- "Gawds did it, and that's that."

How this suffices as an answer to anything is beyond any reasoning I can come up with. I understand that those three words, "Gawds did it" are enough for a lot of people, but people of careful thought should be deeply dissatisfied with it. That they are not smacks more of a desire to keep a comforting myth as opposed to facing a sometimes cold-- but understandable-- reality.

A man walks into a bar and ducks.

It's an exercise in futility dealing with self created victims of ignorance.

Gag a zealot. Shake a shiny object before his crazed eyes to get his attention. Calmly delineate in simple declarative sentences of user-friendly monosyllables a logical progression of facts, science and demonstration. Nod reassuringly. Slowly remove the gag. It is inevitable that the zealot will defiantly screech and sputter some pointlessness about ducks.

 

[Hollie]

Put your trust in Mohammed. He perfected your religion.

Exactly my point. Don't put your belief in mankind.

So much for trusting in the jeebus.

 

[Hollie]

I forget the name of this theory... but I agree- If atheists are wrong about their being a God (the Christian God) they lose everything forever in the next life (eternal). If Christians are wrong, they lose nothing in eternity. Both tend to do or at least want to do good to each other here.

To think/believe/feel that there is nothing after this short life and nothing matters as far as eternity is imho the most ILLOGICAL thing their is.

And yet, your conception of supernatural realms replete with flying winged men in nightgowns, fat naked babies playing harps, chariots of fire cruising through the clouds, a bunch of unemployed gawds that were "real" prior to the invention of your gawds... all the now thoroughly discredited excuses to commit our logic and reason to be discarded in favor of: "but... but... but... but my gawds are true. It's all those other gawds which are false".

 

[Mad Scientist]

Atheism is borne from:

1. Arrogance
2. Selfishness
3. Self Centeredness

 

[JimBowie1958]

It has been said by many Christians that one of the primary reasons for someone being an atheist and saying that they don't believe is because they don't want to believe. They don't want to ask the hard question "What if I'm wrong?" because they can't accept the implications of that questioning. They claim that we as atheists take the easy way out but I argue that it is just the opposite. Christians downright refuse to humor any kind of questioning when it comes to their belief. They refuse to look inside themselves and ask "What if there is no God?" because they are terrified of the implications of that question. They claim we are afraid of hell but in fact it is they who are afraid of oblivion. Of nonexistence. Understandably so. The idea of ceasing to exist is unpleasant to say the least. That is why being an atheist is far from the easy way out.

As an atheist you look that unpleasant reality in the face, swallow your fear and accept it and live your life to its fullest. Being a Christian is a way of ignoring the fact that the world is an unpleasant and often unjust place where some people live their whole lives in despair before their flame of consciousness goes out forever. This world can be cruel and unfair but as atheists we accept that it's the only one we are ever going to get and that motivates us to fight our hardest to make it a better and brighter one. For our sake and for the sake of our children. We don't turn away from reality and turn a wishful eye to an afterlife that isn't going to happen.

Lol, bullshit.

Atheism is a fringe cult where people simply want to avoid objective moral values systems that crimp their 'life style', whatever that may be from dope smoking law breakers to gays to commie fucktards.

If Christians are wrong, then there is only oblivion, and no one to suffer at all for any reason. Just *poof* and nothing matters any more. Hardly the stuff that requires courage.

What requires courage is to believe that a Creator has set some tough standards for your life and how you live and you will answer for how you live.

Atheism has all the 'courage' of the child that never has to mind or obey their parents because there is no plausible punishment that they might get for behaving badly.

AKA a Big Brat.

Your post only reveals your ignorance and the fact that you don't know anything beyond the one viewpoint you've likely been raised to hold because you are arrogant enough to think that it is automatically the best because it's held by you and yours.

Right, because we just kill our children, oh no wait, that's a Christian I'm thinking of: Andrea Yates
Or send our children across foreign borders illegally to be re-educated, shit no that's Christians too: Kidnapped for Christ.
Or maybe we go commit murder because some prominent figure, related to our "fringe cult" told us too. Oh no wait, that's also Christians. I'm all mixed up right now aren't I?: Christian cult members on trial for murder Christian News on Christian Today

Sure because, none of the other religions exist right? They don't factor into the equation at all do they?

Of course, because there's nothing called the justice system and the penal system that will make sure they spend the only life they think they'll ever get behind bars trying not to get rapped or anything like that.

My advice to you. Quit now.

You try to use fringe Christian protestant sects to represent Christianity when catholics are 80% of the faith and simply ignore us unless you want to bring up the Inquisition which it is known fact killed less than 5000 people in its entire history.

But what I am describing about atheist behavior and influence on government is the MAIN STREAM of atheists globally. When atheists are in power people lose freedom and have horrid loss of civil rights and they get slaughtered like animals, because that is all humanity is to atheists - animals.

So you can keep brining up weird cults living in caves in Utah and say that they represent typical Christians if you want, but a quick glance at your subject makes it clear that you are comparing apples to hand grenades.

But with the vast majority of atheists living in China, some 500 million of you, it is the atheistic Chicom regime that typifies atheism and my presentation completely fair. And if atheists had totally control in the USA they would set up re-education camps and triple the number of incarcerated in all forms within the first five years.

 

[JimBowie1958]

I forget the name of this theory... but I agree- If atheists are wrong about their being a God (the Christian God) they lose everything forever in the next life (eternal). If Christians are wrong, they lose nothing in eternity. Both tend to do or at least want to do good to each other here.

To think/believe/feel that there is nothing after this short life and nothing matters as far as eternity is imho the most ILLOGICAL thing their is.

And yet, your conception of supernatural realms replete with flying winged men in nightgowns, fat naked babies playing harps, chariots of fire cruising through the clouds, a bunch of unemployed gawds that were "real" prior to the invention of your gawds... all the now thoroughly discredited excuses to commit our logic and reason to be discarded in favor of: "but... but... but... but my gawds are true. It's all those other gawds which are false".

No, that is not the serious scholarly Christian description of Heaven, it is only the popular culture's spin on the topic.

But expecting you atheists to get your facts straight is really hoping for a miracle.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Atheism is borne from:

1. Arrogance
2. Selfishness
3. Self Centeredness

And based on the replies here '4) Ignorance on what God is'.

They keep talking about God as though He were some polytheistic deity and build straw man arguments from there.

Hell no one believes that crap

 

[JimBowie1958]

[me: Oh, sure. Science sits on their self-acclaimed throne, but when so often confronted with the possibility their confounding findings point to a supreme being or intelligence --- all too often they back off and say "that is not our area of study."

Then what good are they? They are a notch or two above other sources trying to entertain us for a time.

Jonathan Swift (17th century English satirist) speaking of the achievements of science and its reflection upon its own laurels. ---- "And he, whose fortunes and dispositions have placed him in a convenient station to enjoy the fruits of this noble art; he that can with Epicurus content his ideas with the films and images that fly-off upon his senses from the superficies of things; such a man truly wise, creams off nature, leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up. This is the sublime and refined point of felicity, called, the possession of being well deceived; the serene peaceful state of being a fool among knaves."}

You quoted so much to come back with so little. Science does much more than simply entertain us. It has taken us leaps and bounds beyond what we were only a hundred years ago. Imagine where it will take us in the next thousand.

The quote sufficed. Did you miss or ignore the point on purpose?

If science is want to render an opinion on the evidence for an intelligent designer, then they deal only with mammon. It causes devotees more harm than good if they use it to ignore the Creator.

So doubling our lifespan, finding cures to countless diseases, giving us ways to vastly increase food production and dauntlessly working towards abundant clean energy does more harm than good to society does it?

Do not equate science with atheism, dolt.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

What I find interesting is that my challenge to your pointless and useless enlistment of philosophy and theology vs. the methods of science to advance knowledge leaves you stuttering and mumbling with duck jokes.

As usual, your utter inability to defend the theistic worldview, wherein you live in trembling fear of angry gawds and fantastical claims of an inversion of a reality based existence is actually pretty nihilistic and child-like. You revile science because it strips away the fears and superstitions you require to maintain your religious dogma. You require that there remain questions about the natural world that mankind can never hope to attain true knowledge about, and that means our place in the universe is hopelessly obscured. This is a sweepingly nihilistic and child-like point of view, and you fundie zealots don't connect the dots to this inescapable conclusion. The cul de sac remains forever in place-- "Gawds did it, and that's that."

How this suffices as an answer to anything is beyond any reasoning I can come up with. I understand that those three words, "Gawds did it" are enough for a lot of people, but people of careful thought should be deeply dissatisfied with it. That they are not smacks more of a desire to keep a comforting myth as opposed to facing a sometimes cold-- but understandable-- reality.

A man walks into a bar and ducks.

I get the bar part, but why walk into ducks?

The gist of that goes back to this post: http://www.usmessageboard.com/posts/9721287/.

The point is that the new atheists never get to the science on these forums. All they ever do is philosophize . . . badly, as they stupidly imagine themselves not to be philosophizing. LOL!

For example, in response to the new atheism's God in the gaps myth I wrote the following, which alludes to the only pertinent philosophical concerns regarding the logic of theism in bold:

In addition to (1) the readily apparent facts of human consciousness, the absolute rational forms and logical categories thereof, (2) the axioms regarding ontological origination and (3) the marvelously rational nature of existence in general: it was the nature of the things they [for example, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton. . . .] did grasp, not the unknown, that underscored their absolute certainty that God is. That's the icing on the cake, the coup de grâce. The unknown, the yet to be discovered or deciphered, for them or for any other sensible person, had absolutely nothing to do with the price beans in heaven.​

See posts #367, #369, #372 and #375.

In these posts, on every point, the new atheism is routed.

Earlier on this thread and elsewhere on this forum, I've discussed precisely what the only pertinent philosophical concerns regarding the logic of theism are, beginning with the implications of the absolute rational forms and logical categories of human consciousness and the problem of the infinite regression of origin, including it's ontological alternatives and the ramifications thereof. I've even explained to our amateurish new atheists why Hawking's baby talk about how the cosmos would have necessarily arisen due to the fact of the principles of gravity is inherently contradictory and self-negating. Right. Hawking resolved the problem of infinite regression of origin, as if the quantum vacuum were a metaphysical nothingness or must have always existed prior to the cosmos.

"Oh? Why would that necessarily be?" the centuries-old cannon of the greatest minds of philosophical and theological thought asks.

The philosophizing Hawking, who obviously has not resolved the problem and doesn't even appear to understand the question, obtusely responds: "Philosophy is dead."

LOL!

Hawking isn't talking science. He's talking metaphysics. But even more to the point: the quantum vacuum arguably resembles the very essence of divinity itself or the essence of its methodology behind the veil of the space-time continuum for all that he or anybody knows.

What atheist on this forum has ever directly addressed my observations regarding the logic of theism, which is, in fact, objectively and universally apparent to all . . . whether one subsequently decides to embrace God's existence as a fact based on that logic or not.

Answer: Never!

Ironically, AtheistBuddah is the only one I've encountered on this forum who has ever come close. Hollie is an utter waste of time with regard to both the philosophical and the scientific concerns: a man walks into a bar and ducks.

Aside from those whose minds are as closed as a slammed-shut door, anybody with an IQ above that of a gnat grasps the fact that theism is not based on faith, but reason. Moreover, the notion that theism is based on fear is redundantly stupid, while the notion that faith is based on fear is exponentially stupid, as both an atheist and a number of theists have irrefutably shown on this thread.

Faith doesn't even factor into the equation until one gets to theology, and theological faith that is not backed by the known facts and reason is useless.

And now we come to the clincher. It has been suggested that science, which necessarily rests on one metaphysical apriority or another, a fact that flies right over the new atheist's head, as if empirical data interpreted themselves, as if the methodology of science established itself, as if the entire enterprise of science were not necessarily contingent to the philosophy of science, is the cat's only meow. In other words, the new atheist imagines that the limitations of scientific inquiry constitute the limits of reliable human knowledge, it not the limits of reality itself.

Thusly, the obtuse new atheist thinks to philosophize the universally apparent facts of theism's rational and ontological justifications out of existence, rather than honestly engage them. The new atheist never addresses the real issues. Instead, he goes on and on about what are in fact the meanderings of teleological, anthropological and psychological irrelevancies . . . that is, when he's not mangling the pertinent metaphysics.

Straw-man argumentation is the new atheists' forte.

Fine.

Let's move onto the science then, to the facts of abiogenetic research. Let's move on to the hypothesis that must necessarily be true in order for the atheist to be right, though even that wouldn't necessarily prove that God is not.

But, no, wait a minute! Let's not move on to the science . . . not with the likes of Hollie, as the likes of Hollie never do move on to the science.

I've only encountered one atheist on this forum who ever did, and once this authority on the science of abiogenetic research got done with his amateurish prattle. . . . Well, we haven't heard from him on this forum since.

The atheists' "science"?

Anytime you're ready, children, let me know.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

I forget the name of this theory... but I agree- If atheists are wrong about their being a God (the Christian God) they lose everything forever in the next life (eternal). If Christians are wrong, they lose nothing in eternity. Both tend to do or at least want to do good to each other here.

To think/believe/feel that there is nothing after this short life and nothing matters as far as eternity is imho the most ILLOGICAL thing their is.

Pascal's wager.

 

[JimBowie1958]

What I find interesting is that my challenge to your pointless and useless enlistment of philosophy and theology vs. the methods of science to advance knowledge leaves you stuttering and mumbling with duck jokes.

As usual, your utter inability to defend the theistic worldview, wherein you live in trembling fear of angry gawds and fantastical claims of an inversion of a reality based existence is actually pretty nihilistic and child-like. You revile science because it strips away the fears and superstitions you require to maintain your religious dogma. You require that there remain questions about the natural world that mankind can never hope to attain true knowledge about, and that means our place in the universe is hopelessly obscured. This is a sweepingly nihilistic and child-like point of view, and you fundie zealots don't connect the dots to this inescapable conclusion. The cul de sac remains forever in place-- "Gawds did it, and that's that."

How this suffices as an answer to anything is beyond any reasoning I can come up with. I understand that those three words, "Gawds did it" are enough for a lot of people, but people of careful thought should be deeply dissatisfied with it. That they are not smacks more of a desire to keep a comforting myth as opposed to facing a sometimes cold-- but understandable-- reality.

A man walks into a bar and ducks.

I get the bar part, but why walk into ducks?

The gist of that goes back to this post: http://www.usmessageboard.com/posts/9721287/.

The point is that the new atheists never get to the science on these forums. All they ever do is philosophize . . . badly, as they stupidly imagine themselves not to be philosophizing. LOL!

For example, in response to the new atheism's God in the gaps myth I wrote the following, which alludes to the only pertinent philosophical concerns regarding the logic of theism in bold:

In addition to (1) the readily apparent facts of human consciousness, the absolute rational forms and logical categories thereof, (2) the axioms regarding ontological origination and (3) the marvelously rational nature of existence in general: it was the nature of the things they [for example, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton. . . .] did grasp, not the unknown, that underscored their absolute certainty that God is. That's the icing on the cake, the coup de grâce. The unknown, the yet to be discovered or deciphered, for them or for any other sensible person, had absolutely nothing to do with the price beans in heaven.​

See posts #367, #369, #372 and #375.

In these posts, on every point, the new atheism is routed.

Earlier on this thread and elsewhere on this forum, I've discussed precisely what the only pertinent philosophical concerns regarding the logic of theism are, beginning with the implications of the absolute rational forms and logical categories of human consciousness and the problem of the infinite regression of origin, including it's ontological alternatives and the ramifications thereof. I've even explained to our amateurish new atheists why Hawking's baby talk about how the cosmos would have necessarily arisen due to the fact of the principles of gravity is inherently contradictory and self-negating. Right. Hawking resolved the problem of infinite regression of origin, as if the quantum vacuum were a metaphysical nothingness or must have always existed prior to the cosmos.

"Oh? Why would that necessarily be?" the centuries-old cannon of the greatest minds of philosophical and theological thought asks.

The philosophizing Hawking, who obviously has not resolved the problem and doesn't even appear to understand the question, obtusely responds: "Philosophy is dead."

LOL!

Hawking isn't talking science. He's talking metaphysics. But even more to the point: the quantum vacuum arguably resembles the very essence of divinity itself or the essence of its methodology behind the veil of the space-time continuum for all that he or anybody knows.

What atheist on this forum has ever directly addressed my observations regarding the logic of theism, which is, in fact, objectively and universally apparent to all . . . whether one subsequently decides to embrace God's existence as a fact based on that logic or not.

Answer: Never!

Ironically, AtheistBuddah is the only one I've encountered on this forum who has ever come close. Hollie is an utter waste of time with regard to both the philosophical and the scientific concerns: a man walks into a bar and ducks.

Aside from those whose minds are as closed as a slammed-shut door, anybody with an IQ above that of a gnat grasps the fact that theism is not based on faith, but reason. Moreover, the notion that theism is based on fear is redundantly stupid, while the notion that faith is based on fear is exponentially stupid, as both an atheist and a number of theists have irrefutably shown on this thread.

Faith doesn't even factor into the equation until one gets to theology, and theological faith that is not backed by the known facts and reason is useless.

And now we come to the clincher. It has been suggested that science, which necessarily rests on one metaphysical apriority or another, a fact that flies right over the new atheist's head, as if empirical data interpreted themselves, as if the methodology of science established itself, as if the entire enterprise of science were not necessarily contingent to the philosophy of science, is the cat's only meow.

Thusly, the obtuse new atheist thinks to philosophize the universally apparent facts of theism's rational and ontological justifications out of existence, rather than honestly engage them. The new atheist never addresses the real issues. Instead, he goes on and on about what are in fact the meanderings of teleological, anthropological and psychological irrelevancies . . . that is, when he's not mangling the pertinent metaphysics.

Straw-man argumentation is the new atheists' forte.

Fine.

Let's move onto the science then, to the facts of abiogenetic research. Let's move on to the hypothesis that must necessarily be true in order for the atheist to be right, though even that wouldn't necessarily prove that God is not.

But, no, wait a minute! Let's not move on to the science . . . not with the likes of Hollie, as the likes of Hollie never do move on to the science.

I've only encountered one atheist on this forum who ever did, and once this authority on the science of abiogenetic research got done with his amateurish prattle. . . . Well, we haven't heard from him on this forum since.

The atheists' "science"?

Anytime you're ready, children, let me know.

Great post.

I do think that faith alone is sufficient and reason is an extra if you want it and being able to argue the topic is not standard duty of all Christians.

 

[Hollie]

It has been said by many Christians that one of the primary reasons for someone being an atheist and saying that they don't believe is because they don't want to believe. They don't want to ask the hard question "What if I'm wrong?" because they can't accept the implications of that questioning. They claim that we as atheists take the easy way out but I argue that it is just the opposite. Christians downright refuse to humor any kind of questioning when it comes to their belief. They refuse to look inside themselves and ask "What if there is no God?" because they are terrified of the implications of that question. They claim we are afraid of hell but in fact it is they who are afraid of oblivion. Of nonexistence. Understandably so. The idea of ceasing to exist is unpleasant to say the least. That is why being an atheist is far from the easy way out.

As an atheist you look that unpleasant reality in the face, swallow your fear and accept it and live your life to its fullest. Being a Christian is a way of ignoring the fact that the world is an unpleasant and often unjust place where some people live their whole lives in despair before their flame of consciousness goes out forever. This world can be cruel and unfair but as atheists we accept that it's the only one we are ever going to get and that motivates us to fight our hardest to make it a better and brighter one. For our sake and for the sake of our children. We don't turn away from reality and turn a wishful eye to an afterlife that isn't going to happen.

Lol, bullshit.

Atheism is a fringe cult where people simply want to avoid objective moral values systems that crimp their 'life style', whatever that may be from dope smoking law breakers to gays to commie fucktards.

If Christians are wrong, then there is only oblivion, and no one to suffer at all for any reason. Just *poof* and nothing matters any more. Hardly the stuff that requires courage.

What requires courage is to believe that a Creator has set some tough standards for your life and how you live and you will answer for how you live.

Atheism has all the 'courage' of the child that never has to mind or obey their parents because there is no plausible punishment that they might get for behaving badly.

AKA a Big Brat.

You Flat Earth'ers are among the more excitable of the fundies.

 

[Derideo_Te]

What I find interesting is that my challenge to your pointless and useless enlistment of philosophy and theology vs. the methods of science to advance knowledge leaves you stuttering and mumbling with duck jokes.

As usual, your utter inability to defend the theistic worldview, wherein you live in trembling fear of angry gawds and fantastical claims of an inversion of a reality based existence is actually pretty nihilistic and child-like. You revile science because it strips away the fears and superstitions you require to maintain your religious dogma. You require that there remain questions about the natural world that mankind can never hope to attain true knowledge about, and that means our place in the universe is hopelessly obscured. This is a sweepingly nihilistic and child-like point of view, and you fundie zealots don't connect the dots to this inescapable conclusion. The cul de sac remains forever in place-- "Gawds did it, and that's that."

How this suffices as an answer to anything is beyond any reasoning I can come up with. I understand that those three words, "Gawds did it" are enough for a lot of people, but people of careful thought should be deeply dissatisfied with it. That they are not smacks more of a desire to keep a comforting myth as opposed to facing a sometimes cold-- but understandable-- reality.

A man walks into a bar and ducks.

It's an exercise in futility dealing with self created victims of ignorance.

Gag a zealot. Shake a shiny object before his crazed eyes to get his attention. Calmly delineate in simple declarative sentences of user-friendly monosyllables a logical progression of facts, science and demonstration. Nod reassuringly. Slowly remove the gag. It is inevitable that the zealot will defiantly screech and sputter some pointlessness about ducks.

Once someone has convinced themselves of a a fallacy it is all but impossible to get them to understand that they are wrong. Those that believed that there were WMD's in Iraq still believe it even after it was proven that they weren't there.

For theists to engage in rational logical thought and reach a reasoned conclusion that their religion is based upon their own fears means that they would have to admit that they have been lied to by those who taught them that religion and that they have lied to those they have taught in turn.

None of them are willing to face that truth about themselves and others. So instead they stubbornly continue to believe their myths and hate those who are not living the same lie that they are on a daily basis.

 

[Hollie]

It seems you do at least consider a classical religious idea, if not one typically considered in the west. Taking it one step higher, if we are but parts of a greater whole then it really isn't hostile to life at all. A rain drop falling into the ocean loses nothing except being a drop, and gains much by becoming an ocean.

While I recognize some sort of eastern philosophy my thing's actually from the pov of physics. At the atomic level, there's no appreciable separation from one atom to another atom. Where the atoms which make up my feet meet the atoms which make up the ground is neglible. Extended out to the whole of the universe, since even space is made up of something (dark matter et al.) then where the atoms which make up my foot touch the earth, the arth touches the atoms of the atmosphere which touch the atoms of space...Thus we're in a literal, empirical sense, one thing.

The more you study the physical world, the more you see it's not what it appears. More and more the idea of "mass" has become outdated. Before the atom was thought to be comprised of an energy particle and a mass particle but more and more, even the mass is just energy.

There is a sameness to atoms, they're neutrons, protons, and electrons. If that's all there is, then nothing matters. Death isn't sad, the physical laws tell us nothing is destroyed, only converted to another form. Violence doesn't matter. There is no choice, no love, everything is just some chemical reaction and following laws of physics. Nothing is right or wrong.

"The more you study the physical world, the more you see it's not what it appears."

Another "grad'uate" of the Jimmy Swaggert School of the Silly

 

[Hollie]

What I find interesting is that my challenge to your pointless and useless enlistment of philosophy and theology vs. the methods of science to advance knowledge leaves you stuttering and mumbling with duck jokes.

As usual, your utter inability to defend the theistic worldview, wherein you live in trembling fear of angry gawds and fantastical claims of an inversion of a reality based existence is actually pretty nihilistic and child-like. You revile science because it strips away the fears and superstitions you require to maintain your religious dogma. You require that there remain questions about the natural world that mankind can never hope to attain true knowledge about, and that means our place in the universe is hopelessly obscured. This is a sweepingly nihilistic and child-like point of view, and you fundie zealots don't connect the dots to this inescapable conclusion. The cul de sac remains forever in place-- "Gawds did it, and that's that."

How this suffices as an answer to anything is beyond any reasoning I can come up with. I understand that those three words, "Gawds did it" are enough for a lot of people, but people of careful thought should be deeply dissatisfied with it. That they are not smacks more of a desire to keep a comforting myth as opposed to facing a sometimes cold-- but understandable-- reality.

A man walks into a bar and ducks.

I get the bar part, but why walk into ducks?

Because he has no viable argument that doesn't rely on appeals to fear and superstition. Hence, he has no choice but to spam the thread with pointless babble.

 

[Derideo_Te]

Atheism is borne from:

1. Arrogance
2. Selfishness
3. Self Centeredness

Ironic coming from those who are arrogant enough to believe that they aren't going to die and that everyone else is going to spend eternity in hell.

Yes, your belief is self centered too because you are "saving your soul" for your own selfish purposes. Someone who would sacrifice their own soul for the sake of others would be a true Christian but I have heard of one that was willing to do that for others.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

What I find interesting is that my challenge to your pointless and useless enlistment of philosophy and theology vs. the methods of science to advance knowledge leaves you stuttering and mumbling with duck jokes.

As usual, your utter inability to defend the theistic worldview, wherein you live in trembling fear of angry gawds and fantastical claims of an inversion of a reality based existence is actually pretty nihilistic and child-like. You revile science because it strips away the fears and superstitions you require to maintain your religious dogma. You require that there remain questions about the natural world that mankind can never hope to attain true knowledge about, and that means our place in the universe is hopelessly obscured. This is a sweepingly nihilistic and child-like point of view, and you fundie zealots don't connect the dots to this inescapable conclusion. The cul de sac remains forever in place-- "Gawds did it, and that's that."

How this suffices as an answer to anything is beyond any reasoning I can come up with. I understand that those three words, "Gawds did it" are enough for a lot of people, but people of careful thought should be deeply dissatisfied with it. That they are not smacks more of a desire to keep a comforting myth as opposed to facing a sometimes cold-- but understandable-- reality.

A man walks into a bar and ducks.

I get the bar part, but why walk into ducks?

The gist of that goes back to this post: http://www.usmessageboard.com/posts/9721287/.

The point is that the new atheists never get to the science on these forums. All they ever do is philosophize . . . badly, as they stupidly imagine themselves not to be philosophizing. LOL!

For example, in response to the new atheism's God in the gaps myth I wrote the following, which alludes to the only pertinent philosophical concerns regarding the logic of theism in bold:

In addition to (1) the readily apparent facts of human consciousness, the absolute rational forms and logical categories thereof, (2) the axioms regarding ontological origination and (3) the marvelously rational nature of existence in general: it was the nature of the things they [for example, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton. . . .] did grasp, not the unknown, that underscored their absolute certainty that God is. That's the icing on the cake, the coup de grâce. The unknown, the yet to be discovered or deciphered, for them or for any other sensible person, had absolutely nothing to do with the price beans in heaven.​

See posts #367, #369, #372 and #375.

In these posts, on every point, the new atheism is routed.

Earlier on this thread and elsewhere on this forum, I've discussed precisely what the only pertinent philosophical concerns regarding the logic of theism are, beginning with the implications of the absolute rational forms and logical categories of human consciousness and the problem of the infinite regression of origin, including it's ontological alternatives and the ramifications thereof. I've even explained to our amateurish new atheists why Hawking's baby talk about how the cosmos would have necessarily arisen due to the fact of the principles of gravity is inherently contradictory and self-negating. Right. Hawking resolved the problem of infinite regression of origin, as if the quantum vacuum were a metaphysical nothingness or must have always existed prior to the cosmos.

"Oh? Why would that necessarily be?" the centuries-old cannon of the greatest minds of philosophical and theological thought asks.

The philosophizing Hawking, who obviously has not resolved the problem and doesn't even appear to understand the question, obtusely responds: "Philosophy is dead."

LOL!

Hawking isn't talking science. He's talking metaphysics. But even more to the point: the quantum vacuum arguably resembles the very essence of divinity itself or the essence of its methodology behind the veil of the space-time continuum for all that he or anybody knows.

What atheist on this forum has ever directly addressed my observations regarding the logic of theism, which is, in fact, objectively and universally apparent to all . . . whether one subsequently decides to embrace God's existence as a fact based on that logic or not.

Answer: Never!

Ironically, AtheistBuddah is the only one I've encountered on this forum who has ever come close. Hollie is an utter waste of time with regard to both the philosophical and the scientific concerns: a man walks into a bar and ducks.

Aside from those whose minds are as closed as a slammed-shut door, anybody with an IQ above that of a gnat grasps the fact that theism is not based on faith, but reason. Moreover, the notion that theism is based on fear is redundantly stupid, while the notion that faith is based on fear is exponentially stupid, as both an atheist and a number of theists have irrefutably shown on this thread.

Faith doesn't even factor into the equation until one gets to theology, and theological faith that is not backed by the known facts and reason is useless.

And now we come to the clincher. It has been suggested that science, which necessarily rests on one metaphysical apriority or another, a fact that flies right over the new atheist's head, as if empirical data interpreted themselves, as if the methodology of science established itself, as if the entire enterprise of science were not necessarily contingent to the philosophy of science, is the cat's only meow.

Thusly, the obtuse new atheist thinks to philosophize the universally apparent facts of theism's rational and ontological justifications out of existence, rather than honestly engage them. The new atheist never addresses the real issues. Instead, he goes on and on about what are in fact the meanderings of teleological, anthropological and psychological irrelevancies . . . that is, when he's not mangling the pertinent metaphysics.

Straw-man argumentation is the new atheists' forte.

Fine.

Let's move onto the science then, to the facts of abiogenetic research. Let's move on to the hypothesis that must necessarily be true in order for the atheist to be right, though even that wouldn't necessarily prove that God is not.

But, no, wait a minute! Let's not move on to the science . . . not with the likes of Hollie, as the likes of Hollie never do move on to the science.

I've only encountered one atheist on this forum who ever did, and once this authority on the science of abiogenetic research got done with his amateurish prattle. . . . Well, we haven't heard from him on this forum since.

The atheists' "science"?

Anytime you're ready, children, let me know.

Great post.

I do think that faith alone is sufficient and reason is an extra if you want it and being able to argue the topic is not standard duty of all Christians.

I wouldn't necessarily dispute that, but I do believe that Christianity is backed by the facts and by reason.

By the way, in the above you made a very important observation. The new atheist does, essentially, equate science with atheism, doesn't he?

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

What I find interesting is that my challenge to your pointless and useless enlistment of philosophy and theology vs. the methods of science to advance knowledge leaves you stuttering and mumbling with duck jokes.

As usual, your utter inability to defend the theistic worldview, wherein you live in trembling fear of angry gawds and fantastical claims of an inversion of a reality based existence is actually pretty nihilistic and child-like. You revile science because it strips away the fears and superstitions you require to maintain your religious dogma. You require that there remain questions about the natural world that mankind can never hope to attain true knowledge about, and that means our place in the universe is hopelessly obscured. This is a sweepingly nihilistic and child-like point of view, and you fundie zealots don't connect the dots to this inescapable conclusion. The cul de sac remains forever in place-- "Gawds did it, and that's that."

How this suffices as an answer to anything is beyond any reasoning I can come up with. I understand that those three words, "Gawds did it" are enough for a lot of people, but people of careful thought should be deeply dissatisfied with it. That they are not smacks more of a desire to keep a comforting myth as opposed to facing a sometimes cold-- but understandable-- reality.

A man walks into a bar and ducks.

I get the bar part, but why walk into ducks?

Because he has no viable argument that doesn't rely on appeals to fear and superstition. Hence, he has no choice but to spam the thread with pointless babble.

Uh-huh. Right. Post #431.

Hollie walks into a bar and ducks. LOL!