Creationists

[UltimateReality]

Did I mention I went to Chik Fil A yesterday??? There were about 10 protestors there along with over 350 cusomters waiting in line at 5 pm. What always strikes me about homosexual activism is their need to force me to accept their behavior. They aren't just good with living their life out with their same sex partner. They are intent, by law or social convention (PC movement), to force me at least in action, to accept their behavior. I will tell you one thing I have realized in all my years, that is, people that are TRULY good with their life choices don't feel the need to force strangers to accept them.

So why do fundie christians exhibit precisely the behavior you claim to reject: attempting to force your beliefs on others?

Please give me an example.

 

[Hollie]

This is by far the scariest post you have made to date. In your skewed perception of reality, you ACTUALLY believe the world will be better off without religion. Well stand by my dear, because the effects of a Godless nation and a Godless world are playing out right before your eyes. Unbridled greed and worship of things is growing like mad. People are living more and more for themselves everyday. And don't you always find it odd that the same folks that are atheists are also the leftists that worship the environment over humans, scream for protection of animals but demand the right to kill unborn babies, and hate Capitalism, the one form of government that has produced the most wealth any nation in the world has ever seen, so much so that even the poorest poor are totally obese, and live comfortably in climate controlled bliss, cell phone in hand?? Sadly, you mistakenly believe that a world filled with atheists would be a better place. What you are dead wrong about is the nightmarish hell that would look like. Can you imagine everyone denying God and embracing themselves, free to live out every selfish desire that pops into their mind, like raping a child, or any other sick fantasy their depraved minds could imagine? That is not the world or a nation I want to live in. You're a fool if you think a world without religion is Utopia. Not just a fool, but dangerous. Your presence here tells me you aren't content to live out your beliefs in peace. You are on a mission of hate, to force everyone else to believe like you. You are no better than the Taliban.

John Adams in a speech to the military in 1798 warned his fellow countrymen stating, "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion . . . Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

Wow. There’s nothing creepier than being preached to by a virulently hateful religious zealot.

You should take the time to read the bible, cover to cover as I have. Not just selective passages, which most fundies do (if they even bother to read it at all). I have even read the endless "begats". If anything on earth convinced me that god (if he existed) had nothing at all to do with the Bible, it was reading the Bible itself. It is interesting mythology, and it has the greatest, most evil villain of all time in it. His name is Jehovah.

Let’s review for a moment some of yours gods behaviors as it seems to apply to your behaviors as well.

look at the world around you and you will see the result of the belief in mystical gods. You name a war, and I'll show you how religion was deeply a part of it. You tell me where the intolerance is today-- is it in the rational world, like with scientists? Who hates gays the most -- even now when homosexuality is considered to be as "abnormal" as being left-handed? Who keeps claiming they are the ones with the Truth, and all others are wrong? Who keeps alive the myths of Hell, where people will burn in torment for eternity? The churches, the religious, believers. Something makes them believe in this way, and they all turn to their respective books and consider it truth, whereas all the other books are not. Consider the quotes from Leviticus 18:22
22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.

and Lev 20:13
13 If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

By the way, in Lev 11:10 it says this:
10 And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you.

Now if homosexuality is decreed as a sin, why isn't eating lobster or clams casino equally a sin?

In your own cultural background, the churches never stood up against slavery or for civil rights. They defended their hatred and intolerance and bigotry by saying this was the way god wants things. You can create a seething cauldron of hell on earth and if enough people believe "this is the way god (insert name of any god here) wants it" then it will become acceptable. "I am on a mission from God!" cried Hitler publically and loudly in 1934. I agree. Given what believers of god have done to humanity, he sure was.

According to the bible, god wiped the planet of humanity (except for Noah and his family… and apparently more animals than the Titanic could have carried), because humanity was a disappointment to him. He promised never to destroy the world again by water, so next time (the Armageddon) he plans to use fire. God slaughters thousands and thousands by what the bible says, and he plans to slaughter billions more. Never has there been so evil a villain in all literature than Yahweh-- he kills relentlessly (Read the book of Joshua and try to imagine all those "rotten apple" kids and women-- all except those virgins, who were allowed to be taken away and raped by god's soldiers, the Hebrews)

Actually, man's ethics and morality beats out god by light-years. God tacitly and obviously approves of slavery (Jesus speaks of servants to a Master and never thinks to condemn the injustice of one man owning another)-- man finds it repulsive. God not only approves of war, he ignites them left and right -- man creates a United Nations in an attempt to stop war. God commits genocide without blinking an eye -- man imprisons mass murderers and is repulsed by wanton slaughter. God not only approves of raping young women, he specifically rewards his soldiers with them:

Numbers 31:17-18
17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. 18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

Man finds this an abomination (that's some great god you believe in, by the way!) This list goes on and on. God is not fair, in the bible he's a mass murderer and makes a sane, loving person want to recoil in disgust just reading about his atrocities (don't forget -- I don't believe any of this is god, I know this is all legend-- these things may have happened, but they were man being cruel to other men and in spite of god's viciousness, we've slowly overcome it.

Why? Because we use our reason to recognize such behavior is ultimately harmful to all of us.)

You can be a good person without giving two hoots about Jesus, as billions of non-Christians prove every day. Christians think this world was nothing but barbarians before Jesus-- when in actuality true barbarism sprung up rampantly after Jesus and his devoted fanatics started hacking at anyone who slightly disagreed with them (even the atrocities of the old testament as recounted above pale in comparison to the holocausts, pogrom, wars and genocides that the teachings of Jesus has inspired). You think the Greeks burned old women because they were witches? The greatest library of all time-- the Library at Alexandria --was created by the Greek Ionians-- men who believed in Zeus. It took a Christian to destroy their works and literally set us back 2,000 years. For god. Who, according to the bible, hates knowledge so much he made it the one thing forbidden in Eden-- "ye shall eat of all things but not of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge -- for on that day, ye shall die" (they didn't die, as the serpent pointed out, they lived; God lied, Satan told the truth-- how ironic)

John Adams

"The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?"
-- John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, June 20, 1815

Regarding Government Meddling With Religion

"We should begin by setting conscience free. When all men of all religions ... shall enjoy equal liberty, property, and an equal chance for honors and power ... we may expect that improvements will be made in the human character and the state of society."
-- John Adams, letter to Dr. Price, April 8, 1785

"I shall have liberty to think for myself without molesting others or being molested myself".
-- John Adams, letter to his brother-in-law, Richard Cranch, August 29, 1756


Regarding Religion Meddling with Government

"We think ourselves possessed, or, at least, we boast that we are so, of liberty of conscience on all subjects, and of the right of free inquiry and private judgment in all cases, and yet how far are we from these exalted privileges in fact! There exists, I believe, throughout the whole Christian world, a law which makes it blasphemy to deny or doubt the divine inspiration of all the books of the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Revelations. In most countries of Europe it is punished by fire at the stake, or the rack, or the wheel. In England itself it is punished by boring through the tongue with a red-hot poker. In America it is not better; even in our own Massachusetts, which I believe, upon the whole, is as temperate and moderate in religious zeal as most of the States, a law was made in the latter end of the last century, repealing the cruel punishments of the former laws, but substituting fine and imprisonment upon all those blasphemers upon any book of the Old Testament or New. Now, what free inquiry, when a writer must surely encounter the risk of fine or imprisonment for adducing any argument for investigating into the divine authority of those books? Who would run the risk of translating Dupuis? But I cannot enlarge upon this subject, though I have it much at heart. I think such laws a great embarrassment, great obstructions to the improvement of the human mind. Books that cannot bear examination, certainly ought not to be established as divine inspiration by penal laws. It is true, few persons appear desirous to put such laws in execution, and it is also true that some few persons are hardy enough to venture to depart from them. But as long as they continue in force as laws, the human mind must make an awkward and clumsy progress in its investigations. I wish they were repealed. The substance and essence of Christianity, as I understand it, is eternal and unchangeable, and will bear examination forever, but it has been mixed with extraneous ingredients, which I think will not bear examination, and they ought to be separated. Adieu."
-- John Adams, one of his last letters to Thomas Jefferson, January 23, 1825. Adams was 90, Jefferson 81 at the time; both died on July 4th of the following year, on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

"Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind."
-- John Adams, "A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America"

Prophetic Statements Based on History

"The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning.... And, even since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your legs and hands, and fly into your face and eyes."
-- John Adams, letter to John Taylor, 1814

But Hey, Don't Hold Back, John

"Numberless have been the systems of iniquity The most refined, sublime, extensive, and astonishing constitution of policy that ever was conceived by the mind of man was framed by the Romish clergy for the aggrandizement of their own Order They even persuaded mankind to believe, faithfully and undoubtingly, that God Almighty had entrusted them with the keys of heaven, whose gates they might open and close at pleasure ... with authority to license all sorts of sins and Crimes ... or withholding the rain of heaven and the beams of the sun; with the management of earthquakes, pestilence, and famine; nay, with the mysterious, awful, incomprehensible power of creating out of bread and wine the flesh and blood of God himself. All these opinions they were enabled to spread and rivet among the people by reducing their minds to a state of sordid ignorance and staring timidity, and by infusing into them a religious horror of letters and knowledge. Thus was human nature chained fast for ages in a cruel, shameful, and deplorable servitude....

Of all the nonsense and delusion which had ever passed through the mind of man, none had ever been more extravagant than the notions of absolutions, indelible characters, uninterrupted successions, and the rest of those fantastical ideas, derived from the canon law, which had thrown such a glare of mystery, sanctity, reverence, and right reverend eminence and holiness around the idea of a priest as no mortal could deserve ... the ridiculous fancies of sanctified effluvia from episcopal fingers."
-- John Adams, "A Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law," printed in the Boston Gazette, August 1765

"The Church of Rome has made it an article of faith that no man can be saved out of their church, and all other religious sects approach this dreadful opinion in proportion to their ignorance, and the influence of ignorant or wicked priests."
-- John Adams, Diary and Autobiography

Positive Atheism's Big List of John Adams Quotations

I got through about the first three sentences of your post until I realized you were saying the exact same thing as before, which shows a total complete lack of understand of the Christian story, so I didn't bother to read the rest. I explained it to you before so I won't waste my time again.

So it does beg the question though Holly, when was the last time a bunch Christians got together and stoned a homosexual??? This is not a rhetorical question.

I certainly did expect that you would buggar off from even attempting a response. I've learned that when confronted with the history of their religions and the damage to humanity that their belief systems have caused, the believers tend to stutter and mumble.

 

[Youwerecreated]

Wow. There’s nothing creepier than being preached to by a virulently hateful religious zealot.

You should take the time to read the bible, cover to cover as I have. Not just selective passages, which most fundies do (if they even bother to read it at all). I have even read the endless "begats". If anything on earth convinced me that god (if he existed) had nothing at all to do with the Bible, it was reading the Bible itself. It is interesting mythology, and it has the greatest, most evil villain of all time in it. His name is Jehovah.

Let’s review for a moment some of yours gods behaviors as it seems to apply to your behaviors as well.

look at the world around you and you will see the result of the belief in mystical gods. You name a war, and I'll show you how religion was deeply a part of it. You tell me where the intolerance is today-- is it in the rational world, like with scientists? Who hates gays the most -- even now when homosexuality is considered to be as "abnormal" as being left-handed? Who keeps claiming they are the ones with the Truth, and all others are wrong? Who keeps alive the myths of Hell, where people will burn in torment for eternity? The churches, the religious, believers. Something makes them believe in this way, and they all turn to their respective books and consider it truth, whereas all the other books are not. Consider the quotes from Leviticus 18:22
22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.

and Lev 20:13
13 If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

By the way, in Lev 11:10 it says this:
10 And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you.

Now if homosexuality is decreed as a sin, why isn't eating lobster or clams casino equally a sin?

In your own cultural background, the churches never stood up against slavery or for civil rights. They defended their hatred and intolerance and bigotry by saying this was the way god wants things. You can create a seething cauldron of hell on earth and if enough people believe "this is the way god (insert name of any god here) wants it" then it will become acceptable. "I am on a mission from God!" cried Hitler publically and loudly in 1934. I agree. Given what believers of god have done to humanity, he sure was.

According to the bible, god wiped the planet of humanity (except for Noah and his family… and apparently more animals than the Titanic could have carried), because humanity was a disappointment to him. He promised never to destroy the world again by water, so next time (the Armageddon) he plans to use fire. God slaughters thousands and thousands by what the bible says, and he plans to slaughter billions more. Never has there been so evil a villain in all literature than Yahweh-- he kills relentlessly (Read the book of Joshua and try to imagine all those "rotten apple" kids and women-- all except those virgins, who were allowed to be taken away and raped by god's soldiers, the Hebrews)

Actually, man's ethics and morality beats out god by light-years. God tacitly and obviously approves of slavery (Jesus speaks of servants to a Master and never thinks to condemn the injustice of one man owning another)-- man finds it repulsive. God not only approves of war, he ignites them left and right -- man creates a United Nations in an attempt to stop war. God commits genocide without blinking an eye -- man imprisons mass murderers and is repulsed by wanton slaughter. God not only approves of raping young women, he specifically rewards his soldiers with them:

Numbers 31:17-18
17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. 18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

Man finds this an abomination (that's some great god you believe in, by the way!) This list goes on and on. God is not fair, in the bible he's a mass murderer and makes a sane, loving person want to recoil in disgust just reading about his atrocities (don't forget -- I don't believe any of this is god, I know this is all legend-- these things may have happened, but they were man being cruel to other men and in spite of god's viciousness, we've slowly overcome it.

Why? Because we use our reason to recognize such behavior is ultimately harmful to all of us.)

You can be a good person without giving two hoots about Jesus, as billions of non-Christians prove every day. Christians think this world was nothing but barbarians before Jesus-- when in actuality true barbarism sprung up rampantly after Jesus and his devoted fanatics started hacking at anyone who slightly disagreed with them (even the atrocities of the old testament as recounted above pale in comparison to the holocausts, pogrom, wars and genocides that the teachings of Jesus has inspired). You think the Greeks burned old women because they were witches? The greatest library of all time-- the Library at Alexandria --was created by the Greek Ionians-- men who believed in Zeus. It took a Christian to destroy their works and literally set us back 2,000 years. For god. Who, according to the bible, hates knowledge so much he made it the one thing forbidden in Eden-- "ye shall eat of all things but not of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge -- for on that day, ye shall die" (they didn't die, as the serpent pointed out, they lived; God lied, Satan told the truth-- how ironic)

John Adams

"The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?"
-- John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, June 20, 1815

Regarding Government Meddling With Religion

"We should begin by setting conscience free. When all men of all religions ... shall enjoy equal liberty, property, and an equal chance for honors and power ... we may expect that improvements will be made in the human character and the state of society."
-- John Adams, letter to Dr. Price, April 8, 1785

"I shall have liberty to think for myself without molesting others or being molested myself".
-- John Adams, letter to his brother-in-law, Richard Cranch, August 29, 1756


Regarding Religion Meddling with Government

"We think ourselves possessed, or, at least, we boast that we are so, of liberty of conscience on all subjects, and of the right of free inquiry and private judgment in all cases, and yet how far are we from these exalted privileges in fact! There exists, I believe, throughout the whole Christian world, a law which makes it blasphemy to deny or doubt the divine inspiration of all the books of the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Revelations. In most countries of Europe it is punished by fire at the stake, or the rack, or the wheel. In England itself it is punished by boring through the tongue with a red-hot poker. In America it is not better; even in our own Massachusetts, which I believe, upon the whole, is as temperate and moderate in religious zeal as most of the States, a law was made in the latter end of the last century, repealing the cruel punishments of the former laws, but substituting fine and imprisonment upon all those blasphemers upon any book of the Old Testament or New. Now, what free inquiry, when a writer must surely encounter the risk of fine or imprisonment for adducing any argument for investigating into the divine authority of those books? Who would run the risk of translating Dupuis? But I cannot enlarge upon this subject, though I have it much at heart. I think such laws a great embarrassment, great obstructions to the improvement of the human mind. Books that cannot bear examination, certainly ought not to be established as divine inspiration by penal laws. It is true, few persons appear desirous to put such laws in execution, and it is also true that some few persons are hardy enough to venture to depart from them. But as long as they continue in force as laws, the human mind must make an awkward and clumsy progress in its investigations. I wish they were repealed. The substance and essence of Christianity, as I understand it, is eternal and unchangeable, and will bear examination forever, but it has been mixed with extraneous ingredients, which I think will not bear examination, and they ought to be separated. Adieu."
-- John Adams, one of his last letters to Thomas Jefferson, January 23, 1825. Adams was 90, Jefferson 81 at the time; both died on July 4th of the following year, on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

"Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind."
-- John Adams, "A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America"

Prophetic Statements Based on History

"The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning.... And, even since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your legs and hands, and fly into your face and eyes."
-- John Adams, letter to John Taylor, 1814

But Hey, Don't Hold Back, John

"Numberless have been the systems of iniquity The most refined, sublime, extensive, and astonishing constitution of policy that ever was conceived by the mind of man was framed by the Romish clergy for the aggrandizement of their own Order They even persuaded mankind to believe, faithfully and undoubtingly, that God Almighty had entrusted them with the keys of heaven, whose gates they might open and close at pleasure ... with authority to license all sorts of sins and Crimes ... or withholding the rain of heaven and the beams of the sun; with the management of earthquakes, pestilence, and famine; nay, with the mysterious, awful, incomprehensible power of creating out of bread and wine the flesh and blood of God himself. All these opinions they were enabled to spread and rivet among the people by reducing their minds to a state of sordid ignorance and staring timidity, and by infusing into them a religious horror of letters and knowledge. Thus was human nature chained fast for ages in a cruel, shameful, and deplorable servitude....

Of all the nonsense and delusion which had ever passed through the mind of man, none had ever been more extravagant than the notions of absolutions, indelible characters, uninterrupted successions, and the rest of those fantastical ideas, derived from the canon law, which had thrown such a glare of mystery, sanctity, reverence, and right reverend eminence and holiness around the idea of a priest as no mortal could deserve ... the ridiculous fancies of sanctified effluvia from episcopal fingers."
-- John Adams, "A Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law," printed in the Boston Gazette, August 1765

"The Church of Rome has made it an article of faith that no man can be saved out of their church, and all other religious sects approach this dreadful opinion in proportion to their ignorance, and the influence of ignorant or wicked priests."
-- John Adams, Diary and Autobiography

Positive Atheism's Big List of John Adams Quotations

I got through about the first three sentences of your post until I realized you were saying the exact same thing as before, which shows a total complete lack of understand of the Christian story, so I didn't bother to read the rest. I explained it to you before so I won't waste my time again.

So it does beg the question though Holly, when was the last time a bunch Christians got together and stoned a homosexual??? This is not a rhetorical question.

I certainly did expect that you would buggar off from even attempting a response. I've learned that when confronted with the history of their religions and the damage to humanity that their belief systems have caused, the believers tend to stutter and mumble.

Not all professing Christians are representing God in the manner God intended and God will deal with all those he calls hypocrites, and vipers, coming in sheeps clothing but inside are ravenous wolves.

 

[Hollie]

I got through about the first three sentences of your post until I realized you were saying the exact same thing as before, which shows a total complete lack of understand of the Christian story, so I didn't bother to read the rest. I explained it to you before so I won't waste my time again.

So it does beg the question though Holly, when was the last time a bunch Christians got together and stoned a homosexual??? This is not a rhetorical question.

I certainly did expect that you would buggar off from even attempting a response. I've learned that when confronted with the history of their religions and the damage to humanity that their belief systems have caused, the believers tend to stutter and mumble.

Not all professing Christians are representing God in the manner God intended and God will deal with all those he calls hypocrites, and vipers, coming in sheeps clothing but inside are ravenous wolves.

Ah. Threats of eternal torture in exchange for behavior appropriate to an approving authority.

It's really nothing more than an extension of the human based conception of the parent - child relationship taken to an absurd level.

 

[UltimateReality]

So why do fundie christians exhibit precisely the behavior you claim to reject: attempting to force your beliefs on others?

Dicussing God or our beliefs, how is that forcing our beliefs on you ? You have a choice to believe or not but our God expects us to share the gospels with others his sheep will know his voice and will follow.

Much like homosexual activists share their beliefs. The sheep will know their words and follow.

This country was established with Christian principles. Those traditions have been in place for 200 years. It is part of our culture. It is the homosexual activism that is trying to force change on everyone, and force acceptance of an immoral behavior. And while we are on the topic, that is all it is... a behavior. Claims that folks can't help it are only founded in the pseudoscience, much like evolution, that is clammering and grasping for a reason to change the morals of a nation. And so here we arrive at the real danger of evolutionary philosophy and how it relates to homosexuality. If I am just a product of my genes, then I really can't help the way I act. Soon we will live in a world where Jeffrey Dahmer would not be responsible for his actions since he just can't help that he likes to rape men and then eat their body parts. Basically, his genes made him do it. It is a slippery slope to start down.

The greatest lie foisted on people struggling with homosexuality is that they don't have a choice!!

Determinism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Main article: Free will
A table showing the different positions related to free will and determinism

Philosophers have argued that either Determinism is true or Indeterminism is true, but also that Free Will either exists or it does not. This creates four possible positions. Compatibilism refers to the view that free will is, in some sense, compatible with Determinism. The three Incompatibilist positions, on the other hand, deny this possibility. They instead suggest there is a dichotomy between determinism and free will (only one can be true).

To the Incompatibilists, one must choose either free will or Determinism, and maybe even reject both. The result is one of three positions:

Metaphysical Libertarianism (free will, and no determinism) a position not to be confused with the more commonly cited Political Libertarianism.
Hard Determinism (Determinism, and no free will).
Hard Indeterminism (No Determinism, and no free will either).

Thus, although many Determinists are Compatibilists, calling someone a 'Determinist' is often done to denote the 'Hard Determinist' position.

The Standard argument against free will, according to philosopher J. J. C. Smart focuses on the implications of Determinism for 'free will'.[10] He suggests that, if determinism is true, all our actions are predicted and we are not free; if determinism is false, our actions are random and still we do not seem free.

In his book, The Moral Landscape, author and neuroscientist Sam Harris mentions some ways that determinism and modern scientific understanding might challenge the idea of a contra-causal free will. He offers one thought experiment where a mad scientist represents determinism. In Harris' example, the mad scientist uses a machine to control all the desires, and thus all the behaviour, of a particular human. Harris believes that it is no longer as tempting, in this case, to say the victim has "free will". Harris says nothing changes if the machine controls desires at random - the victim still seems to lack free will. Harris then argues that we are also the victims of such unpredictable desires (but due to the unconscious machinations of our brain, rather than those of a mad scientist). This implicitly assumes a philosophy of materialism, which could be disputed along with Harris's hard determinism. Based on this introspection, he writes "This discloses the real mystery of free will: if our experience is compatible with its utter absence, how can we say that we see any evidence for it in the first place?"[11] adding that "Whether they are predictable or not, we do not cause our causes."[12] That is, he believes there is compelling evidence of absence of free will.

Research has found that reducing a person's belief in free will can make them less helpful and more aggressive.[13] This could occur because the individual's sense of Self-efficacy suffers.

 

[UltimateReality]

Much like homosexual activists share their beliefs. The sheep will know their words and follow.

Believe as you wish,most Christians are not gay and don't agree with the gay lifestyle. All we can do is share the gospel and the rest is up to the person you shared it with. Man is not capable of knowing ones heart. God though has that ability and it is up to him to judge us all.

First, I suppose I should remind you that there is no evidence of gods; any gods. By necessity, I must include your gods among all of the other alleged gods which have all dissipated into obscurity. Every one of the past and present configurations of gods has come from the imagination of mankind. Many of these configurations finding their way into various books written by mankind. It's just so convenient (and predictable), that all of the gods display attributes of human nature within these texts. That's not surprising as we know the texts were written by humans.

Mankind has a long history of inventing gods and supernatural agents to explain completely natural phenomenon. That broadly defines the entire history of invented gods, demons, saviors, etc. When humankind looks to gods and supernaturalism for answers to existence, we get a deafening silence, but when science looks to existence we see the radioactive background noise that supports a big bang, we see immense distances across the cosmos that defines an immensely old universe (not one that is 6,000 years old), we see clues from past life on earth that tells us of an ancient earth. It is science that is exploring and discovering, not the religious entities.

I am a product of evolution. I believe in God. So evolution caused my belief in God. We know that matter is the only reality so there can be no other cause for my belief but evolution. Since the number of people worldwide that believe in a god or gods far outnumber the atheists, then there is overwhelming evidence the God belief mutation is the one being Naturally Selected. Sorry Holly, but your species won't last.

 

[UltimateReality]

Substitute the Easter Bunny for the gods in your comment above.

It makes just as much sense.

OK, but I don't think the easter bunny could have created all we see. Rabbits don't show much intelligence do they ?

We have no reason to conclude that your gods created anything. There is nothing in the natural world that would need a creator. The natural world has no need of supernaturalism.

But we just learned there is absolutely no naturalistic explanation for the origins of life and there can't be a naturalistic cause for the big bang. So I am not so sure what you are basing your stance on.

 

[UltimateReality]

Wow. There’s nothing creepier than being preached to by a virulently hateful religious zealot.

You should take the time to read the bible, cover to cover as I have. Not just selective passages, which most fundies do (if they even bother to read it at all). I have even read the endless "begats". If anything on earth convinced me that god (if he existed) had nothing at all to do with the Bible, it was reading the Bible itself. It is interesting mythology, and it has the greatest, most evil villain of all time in it. His name is Jehovah.

Let’s review for a moment some of yours gods behaviors as it seems to apply to your behaviors as well.

look at the world around you and you will see the result of the belief in mystical gods. You name a war, and I'll show you how religion was deeply a part of it. You tell me where the intolerance is today-- is it in the rational world, like with scientists? Who hates gays the most -- even now when homosexuality is considered to be as "abnormal" as being left-handed? Who keeps claiming they are the ones with the Truth, and all others are wrong? Who keeps alive the myths of Hell, where people will burn in torment for eternity? The churches, the religious, believers. Something makes them believe in this way, and they all turn to their respective books and consider it truth, whereas all the other books are not. Consider the quotes from Leviticus 18:22
22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.

and Lev 20:13
13 If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

By the way, in Lev 11:10 it says this:
10 And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you.

Now if homosexuality is decreed as a sin, why isn't eating lobster or clams casino equally a sin?

In your own cultural background, the churches never stood up against slavery or for civil rights. They defended their hatred and intolerance and bigotry by saying this was the way god wants things. You can create a seething cauldron of hell on earth and if enough people believe "this is the way god (insert name of any god here) wants it" then it will become acceptable. "I am on a mission from God!" cried Hitler publically and loudly in 1934. I agree. Given what believers of god have done to humanity, he sure was.

According to the bible, god wiped the planet of humanity (except for Noah and his family… and apparently more animals than the Titanic could have carried), because humanity was a disappointment to him. He promised never to destroy the world again by water, so next time (the Armageddon) he plans to use fire. God slaughters thousands and thousands by what the bible says, and he plans to slaughter billions more. Never has there been so evil a villain in all literature than Yahweh-- he kills relentlessly (Read the book of Joshua and try to imagine all those "rotten apple" kids and women-- all except those virgins, who were allowed to be taken away and raped by god's soldiers, the Hebrews)

Actually, man's ethics and morality beats out god by light-years. God tacitly and obviously approves of slavery (Jesus speaks of servants to a Master and never thinks to condemn the injustice of one man owning another)-- man finds it repulsive. God not only approves of war, he ignites them left and right -- man creates a United Nations in an attempt to stop war. God commits genocide without blinking an eye -- man imprisons mass murderers and is repulsed by wanton slaughter. God not only approves of raping young women, he specifically rewards his soldiers with them:

Numbers 31:17-18
17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. 18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

Man finds this an abomination (that's some great god you believe in, by the way!) This list goes on and on. God is not fair, in the bible he's a mass murderer and makes a sane, loving person want to recoil in disgust just reading about his atrocities (don't forget -- I don't believe any of this is god, I know this is all legend-- these things may have happened, but they were man being cruel to other men and in spite of god's viciousness, we've slowly overcome it.

Why? Because we use our reason to recognize such behavior is ultimately harmful to all of us.)

You can be a good person without giving two hoots about Jesus, as billions of non-Christians prove every day. Christians think this world was nothing but barbarians before Jesus-- when in actuality true barbarism sprung up rampantly after Jesus and his devoted fanatics started hacking at anyone who slightly disagreed with them (even the atrocities of the old testament as recounted above pale in comparison to the holocausts, pogrom, wars and genocides that the teachings of Jesus has inspired). You think the Greeks burned old women because they were witches? The greatest library of all time-- the Library at Alexandria --was created by the Greek Ionians-- men who believed in Zeus. It took a Christian to destroy their works and literally set us back 2,000 years. For god. Who, according to the bible, hates knowledge so much he made it the one thing forbidden in Eden-- "ye shall eat of all things but not of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge -- for on that day, ye shall die" (they didn't die, as the serpent pointed out, they lived; God lied, Satan told the truth-- how ironic)

John Adams

"The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?"
-- John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, June 20, 1815

Regarding Government Meddling With Religion

"We should begin by setting conscience free. When all men of all religions ... shall enjoy equal liberty, property, and an equal chance for honors and power ... we may expect that improvements will be made in the human character and the state of society."
-- John Adams, letter to Dr. Price, April 8, 1785

"I shall have liberty to think for myself without molesting others or being molested myself".
-- John Adams, letter to his brother-in-law, Richard Cranch, August 29, 1756


Regarding Religion Meddling with Government

"We think ourselves possessed, or, at least, we boast that we are so, of liberty of conscience on all subjects, and of the right of free inquiry and private judgment in all cases, and yet how far are we from these exalted privileges in fact! There exists, I believe, throughout the whole Christian world, a law which makes it blasphemy to deny or doubt the divine inspiration of all the books of the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Revelations. In most countries of Europe it is punished by fire at the stake, or the rack, or the wheel. In England itself it is punished by boring through the tongue with a red-hot poker. In America it is not better; even in our own Massachusetts, which I believe, upon the whole, is as temperate and moderate in religious zeal as most of the States, a law was made in the latter end of the last century, repealing the cruel punishments of the former laws, but substituting fine and imprisonment upon all those blasphemers upon any book of the Old Testament or New. Now, what free inquiry, when a writer must surely encounter the risk of fine or imprisonment for adducing any argument for investigating into the divine authority of those books? Who would run the risk of translating Dupuis? But I cannot enlarge upon this subject, though I have it much at heart. I think such laws a great embarrassment, great obstructions to the improvement of the human mind. Books that cannot bear examination, certainly ought not to be established as divine inspiration by penal laws. It is true, few persons appear desirous to put such laws in execution, and it is also true that some few persons are hardy enough to venture to depart from them. But as long as they continue in force as laws, the human mind must make an awkward and clumsy progress in its investigations. I wish they were repealed. The substance and essence of Christianity, as I understand it, is eternal and unchangeable, and will bear examination forever, but it has been mixed with extraneous ingredients, which I think will not bear examination, and they ought to be separated. Adieu."
-- John Adams, one of his last letters to Thomas Jefferson, January 23, 1825. Adams was 90, Jefferson 81 at the time; both died on July 4th of the following year, on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

"Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind."
-- John Adams, "A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America"

Prophetic Statements Based on History

"The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning.... And, even since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your legs and hands, and fly into your face and eyes."
-- John Adams, letter to John Taylor, 1814

But Hey, Don't Hold Back, John

"Numberless have been the systems of iniquity The most refined, sublime, extensive, and astonishing constitution of policy that ever was conceived by the mind of man was framed by the Romish clergy for the aggrandizement of their own Order They even persuaded mankind to believe, faithfully and undoubtingly, that God Almighty had entrusted them with the keys of heaven, whose gates they might open and close at pleasure ... with authority to license all sorts of sins and Crimes ... or withholding the rain of heaven and the beams of the sun; with the management of earthquakes, pestilence, and famine; nay, with the mysterious, awful, incomprehensible power of creating out of bread and wine the flesh and blood of God himself. All these opinions they were enabled to spread and rivet among the people by reducing their minds to a state of sordid ignorance and staring timidity, and by infusing into them a religious horror of letters and knowledge. Thus was human nature chained fast for ages in a cruel, shameful, and deplorable servitude....

Of all the nonsense and delusion which had ever passed through the mind of man, none had ever been more extravagant than the notions of absolutions, indelible characters, uninterrupted successions, and the rest of those fantastical ideas, derived from the canon law, which had thrown such a glare of mystery, sanctity, reverence, and right reverend eminence and holiness around the idea of a priest as no mortal could deserve ... the ridiculous fancies of sanctified effluvia from episcopal fingers."
-- John Adams, "A Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law," printed in the Boston Gazette, August 1765

"The Church of Rome has made it an article of faith that no man can be saved out of their church, and all other religious sects approach this dreadful opinion in proportion to their ignorance, and the influence of ignorant or wicked priests."
-- John Adams, Diary and Autobiography

Positive Atheism's Big List of John Adams Quotations

I got through about the first three sentences of your post until I realized you were saying the exact same thing as before, which shows a total complete lack of understand of the Christian story, so I didn't bother to read the rest. I explained it to you before so I won't waste my time again.

So it does beg the question though Holly, when was the last time a bunch Christians got together and stoned a homosexual??? This is not a rhetorical question.

I certainly did expect that you would buggar off from even attempting a response. I've learned that when confronted with the history of their religions and the damage to humanity that their belief systems have caused, the believers tend to stutter and mumble.

Yeah, just like you just did by not answering the question posed to you.

 

[Hollie]

This country was established with Christian principles.

Completely false.

The Founding Fathers explicitly excluded references to christianity in the writing of the constitution.

 

[Hollie]

I got through about the first three sentences of your post until I realized you were saying the exact same thing as before, which shows a total complete lack of understand of the Christian story, so I didn't bother to read the rest. I explained it to you before so I won't waste my time again.

So it does beg the question though Holly, when was the last time a bunch Christians got together and stoned a homosexual??? This is not a rhetorical question.

I certainly did expect that you would buggar off from even attempting a response. I've learned that when confronted with the history of their religions and the damage to humanity that their belief systems have caused, the believers tend to stutter and mumble.

Yeah, just like you just did by not answering the question posed to you.

Yet more stuttering and mumbling.

 

[UltimateReality]

William Provine:

"Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear -- and these are basically Darwin's views. There are no gods, no purposes, and no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That's the end of me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans, either. Darwinism: Science or Naturalistic Philosophy April 30 1994

Evolution is the greatest engine of atheism ever invented.

Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent. "Evolution: Free will and punishment and meaning in life” 1998 Darwin Day Keynote Address 1 2 †

As the creationists claim, belief in modern evolution makes atheists of people. One can have a religious view that is compatible with evolution only if the religious view is indistinguishable from atheism."

Evolution Quotes

 

[UltimateReality]

This country was established with Christian principles.

Completely false.

The Founding Fathers explicitly excluded references to christianity in the writing of the constitution.

The principles still abide, no matter how hard you militantly engage in historical revisionism.

 

[UltimateReality]

I certainly did expect that you would buggar off from even attempting a response. I've learned that when confronted with the history of their religions and the damage to humanity that their belief systems have caused, the believers tend to stutter and mumble.

Yeah, just like you just did by not answering the question posed to you.

Yet more stuttering and mumbling.

And still no answer. The people on the Islam forum got aggravated by your circular reasoning and tricks as well. Funny how they realized too you never actually say anything. You haven't presented a single, logical argument since you have been frequenting here.

 

[Youwerecreated]

I certainly did expect that you would buggar off from even attempting a response. I've learned that when confronted with the history of their religions and the damage to humanity that their belief systems have caused, the believers tend to stutter and mumble.

Not all professing Christians are representing God in the manner God intended and God will deal with all those he calls hypocrites, and vipers, coming in sheeps clothing but inside are ravenous wolves.

Ah. Threats of eternal torture in exchange for behavior appropriate to an approving authority.

It's really nothing more than an extension of the human based conception of the parent - child relationship taken to an absurd level.

There is no such thing as eternal torture with God, with a careful study of the scriptures you can see the punishment is everlasting death death. Not a threat,that is what will take place on judgment day. Some will go to everlasting death and some to everlasting life.

 

[Youwerecreated]

This country was established with Christian principles.

Completely false.

The Founding Fathers explicitly excluded references to christianity in the writing of the constitution.

Have you read the declaration of independence ?

 

[Hollie]

This country was established with Christian principles.

Completely false.

The Founding Fathers explicitly excluded references to christianity in the writing of the constitution.

The principles still abide, no matter how hard you militantly engage in historical revisionism.

Melodrama is not working. Proceed with using gargantuan fonts.

In the meantime, show us a single reference to Christian principles noted in the constitution.

 

[UltimateReality]

Completely false.

The Founding Fathers explicitly excluded references to christianity in the writing of the constitution.

The principles still abide, no matter how hard you militantly engage in historical revisionism.

Melodrama is not working. Proceed with using gargantuan fonts.

In the meantime, show us a single reference to Christian principles noted in the constitution.

Right after you answer the question about stonings of homosexuals by Christians. In fact, please find even one example in the last 2000 years.

 

[Hollie]

The principles still abide, no matter how hard you militantly engage in historical revisionism.

Melodrama is not working. Proceed with using gargantuan fonts.

In the meantime, show us a single reference to Christian principles noted in the constitution.

Right after you answer the question about stonings of homosexuals by Christians. In fact, please find even one example in the last 2000 years.

I think you will find that secular laws are far more fair than the laws of the Christian gods.

No need to whine like a petulant child. There are no references to Christian principles in the constitution.

 

[The Irish Ram]

Hollie, your conviction on Christianity comes through loud and clear in your writings.
Our founding father's convictions were also loud and clear:

Samuel Adams
Signer of the Declaration of Independence and Father of the American Revolution

"And as it is our duty to extend our wishes to the happiness of the great family of man, I conceive that we cannot better express ourselves than by humbly supplicating the Supreme Ruler of the world that the rod of tyrants may be broken to pieces, and the oppressed made free again; that wars may cease in all the earth, and that the confusions that are and have been among nations may be overruled by promoting and speedily bringing on that holy and happy period when the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ may be everywhere established, and all people everywhere willingly bow to the scepter of Him who is Prince of Peace."
--As Governor of Massachusetts, Proclamation of a Day of Fast, March 20, 1797.

James Madison
4th U.S. President

"Cursed be all that learning that is contrary to the cross of Christ."

Please analyze these 2 statements and and see if their convictions agree with yours, or are diametrically the opposite of what you believe.
The men that shaped this country did so with their belief in Almighty God steadfast. You won't find Madison's quote in the constitution, but you will find it in the hands that penned the criteria for this nation to thrive on.

We were a blessed nation until we asked God to depart from us.
So, how's it goin?

 

[UltimateReality]

Melodrama is not working. Proceed with using gargantuan fonts.

In the meantime, show us a single reference to Christian principles noted in the constitution.

Right after you answer the question about stonings of homosexuals by Christians. In fact, please find even one example in the last 2000 years.

I think you will find that secular laws are far more fair than the laws of the Christian gods.

No need to whine like a petulant child. There are no references to Christian principles in the constitution.

No surprise. Your behavior remains unchanged in the 5 years since the Islam. forums.

You STILL dodged the question and even a 3rd grader reading this could see why. Because there are no incidences that you can find. Your references to Old Testament teachings regarding the Law of Moses don't jive with AD reality. Nice try though. We don't really need for you to answer because your silence reveals your trickery.