Religeous Two Week Fire Gap

Bang on. There cant possibly be anything here at all, and nor can you possibly exist. Yet look, here you are.

This paradox is at the root of everything. Dont hide it in a pretty box and try to pretend it is something else, something more complicated or something more reassuring. Be brave. Look it STRAIGHT IN THE EYE.

If it frightens you, don't worry, we are all here to help and support you. We're all in the same boat. And haven't we made it PRETTY, wouldn't you agree? Horrible too, but thats the problem with being nothing, and everything. Difficult to get rid of the garbage

Buck up, now, Kevn!

It's okay.

God exists, remember? I know you'd prefer a lot of scientific backing for that statement, because you don't seem to have the faith you'd really like, but don't sweat it. You can rest assured I'm right on this one:

God exists.

You're not "simply an animal."

No, Kevn, you are the result of some Creator's effort. You --- all of us --- are part of an infinite universe, but we're better than all the other animals in it because God created us as better, as more important, and He has imbued our lives with ineffable meaning.

There, now: it's settled, okay? You're gonna be alright. No, no --- put down that spectroscope, hon, you don't need that anymore.

C'mon, everybody, now let's give Kevn a big hug.

Ellie, you go first.

ok stop stirring the pot one forum post isnot enough to make either side change both sides are reading with biasies in place with some bush whackers thrown in the mix. bush will be out of office soon will just elect the next fad that comes along if you jeep stirring the pot you bean will soon be mush and every thing blends at that point.

s,haj;.vr t4 hkl'f'dslnr'ipg'glkjfslkjdsfklj[oirgijglkmgb'pm

(that was just so you can see the difference between mashing and non-mashing)

for the record:

- I dont see any "christian bashing" on the forums lately
- The arrogance displayed in your posts is a large part of the real problem
- Your purported "live and let live" motto is not expressed by your actions (at all!)
- If you behaved more "Christian" there would be much less of a problem

examples:

- telling people what they can or cannot discuss or when they should start/stop discussing it, unchristian and none of your business.
- personal attacks like above about the mashing (you are aware that I could not have been doing that.) unchristian and cheap
- posting insults and attacks in private forums (the Nburg thing). rude at best

In short you are not any kind of "Christian" in my book, no matter how many bibles you read.

Perhaps you should widen your horizons a bit. For instance just because someone is an atheist, does not mean that they were not once a Christian or a Muslim. You seem to assume that everyone that is against you is some kind of heathen or pagan. In reality lots of us Atheists know tons and tons about religion and have read the bible as much as, or more than, you have.

Hmm.. don't think so. I was referring to the notion that I can say that the invisible dragon in Ulrica's room doesn't exist. The dragon is the "he".



First of all, please try to understand that I'm not arguing for "my" position. You seem to really want to drag this into a discussion where people somehow have some personal and vested interest in a give position.

But yes, there are varying degrees of certainty that you can have when "knowing" anything. In reality, you can't truly know anything with 100% certainty. However, there is a threshold where you can "know" something well enough that your belief is rational.

For instance, with the little dragon example. I can look around my room, and I see no evidence of a dragon. None at all. For this reason, I can draw a reasonably sure conclusion that there is not in fact a dragon in my room.

However, I can't say that there is not a dragon ANYWHERE in the universe. The size of the universe, and the amazing variance in stuff in our own tiny little piece of it, makes saying that something doesn't exist ANYWHERE in the universe, an irrational statement. Because you know for a fact that your knowledge of the universe is so supremely limited, it's silly to suggest that you know about its entirety to the extent where you can rule out the existence of things within it.

The best post in this thread. Bears repeating.

coco

just reading it dont make you one any way i know a atheiest that know it better than some christans and still no one going to call him one unless he chooses to join the faith.

Personally, I think I am beautifully delusional and you are all apparitions of my troubled condition.

Which is a fine definition of both God and a virtual world designer/entrepreneur.

Ulrika clearly stated it was an invisable Dragon

Why do I not call myself something other than an atheist? Because I am an atheist, as is every person who is not a theist. Because it's offensive to have to purposely misuse language and mislabel myself for the sake of other people's problems with reading and language comprehension. Because I refuse to bow to the bigotry that causes so many atheists to say they're agnostic instead, as if that's somehow more reasonable than atheism (when it in fact IS atheism), and believe that those who do are dishonest cowards. When you assume that someone who claims to be an atheist is automatically a gnostic atheist (strong atheist) you're being a bigot, and an ignorant one at that, since the vast majority of atheists are agnostic atheists (weak atheist). There's absolutely no more sense to that assumption than if you were to assume that all Christians are Evangelicals. In my lifetime I have only met one gnostic atheist. I have met hundreds of agnostic atheists. My definition of atheism is not lacking. Other people's ability to use simple logic is.

Could you please imagine me on a beach in Hawaii?


kthxbye

My bad. Sorry.

::Kendra stands up::::


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LOL.. Sure thing Chip. When the vast majority of people believe that a word means something, it in fact means something else.

The purpose of language is to communicate. If you use a defininition that hinders your communication with most people, then that definition is poor.

But... who cares. Call yourself whatever you like. It really doesn't matter.

It's an issue of totally trivial semantics. The important aspect is the meaning underlying whatever word you choose to describe your beliefs.

Well, We can go around and around, it all comes down to personal opinions of what is rationl. To those who see a creator within creation, only solid evidence against the notion of a creator would change that view.

As far as mathmatics go, it can't prove we even exist. My algabra profressor actually proved mathmatically we don't exist. Funny that. So at this point it can't help us understand greater existences. It can tell us some things, but nothing about existence at this point.

When one sees a very complex system that is inter-related, Each part requiring other parts to act in a certain way in order to exist, we must assume there was design until we can offer sufficient evidence to suggest it wasn't an act of intelligence. This is the cornerstone of logic.

For fuck's sake.

Atheism means nothing more than not being a theist. That's it. That is the correct use of the term. It literally means "not theist" and applies to everyone who is not a theist, which includes all agnostics, no matter how much they pretend otherwise. The vast majority of people are simply ignorant.

I guarantee you that your professor did not in fact make such a proof. I suspect that you simply didn't notice where he made the unjustified leap.




That is absolutely NOT logical. There is no logical basis for that statement at all.

Was he as good a teacher as your english "profressor"?

As I said above, I don't really care about the trivial semantics of this any more. If you want to be unclear about your beliefs, so be it.

You are essentially choosing to define yourself with a negative, instead of a positive. This is less precise, and perhaps that's what you're going for.. but you should realize that it will undoubtedly continue to lead to people misunderstanding you, or at the very LEAST requiring more clarification about exactly what kind of atheist you are.

It seems very silly to cling to trivial semantics, when it gains you nothing and just wastes time.

But, like I said.. whatever. It's the underlying belief structure that's more important than the word.

I agree with the above 1000%! So many things, so many ways, this truth - whatever it is - has been given away to the human race.

I can posit without any problem that "There is a God." That is because for me, there IS. Because I have experienced God, in ways that scientifically prove, to me, that He is real. With hard evidence that can't rationally be explained any other way.

Exactly WHAT God is, is an entirely different matter.

coco

Your ability to make snide comments is beyond comprehension.

But you are one of God's children. Love ya, sis

Beautiful, Coco. I kiss you. That's The Meeting. Gotta see it to believe it. Made me cry, AGAIN.

And I can posit without any problem that there is no god, that religion is a crutch for the mentally ill and/or feeble, and that any point in trying to explain/convince this to somebody who does believe in religion is very much like trying to tell a banana how to pilot a tugboat.

So can we move on with our lives at this point and get to an interesting topic?

The reason so much confusion persists about this is not because the language is lacking. It's because there is a long history of it being misused by theists who always characterize atheists in the most negative light possible, and by atheists trying to appear more acceptable to theists. They are both equally dishonest. I use the terms I use because they are correct, because I am an atheist, and because I flatly refuse to bow down to the bullshit that caused all this confusion in the first place... namely, theist persecution of atheists, many of whom are now their accomplices.

Well, to give Kevn a little credit, he's talking about the gravimetric bending of light and most other wave content-carriers around mass-sinks like black holes - so that conventional information is lost from our perspective. Is this relevant? Well, maybe just a little bit - but Kevn did not develop the idea enough to really tell.



Well... this isn't necessarily true - as I'm sure you know. The one way that you can achieve a reasonable amount of omniscience is if you "stand outside" of a closed system as its designer and creator. Since in that circumstance you are, by definition, "causality", you violate no rules of causality - as the rules are your own.

Now someone might object that this is "irrelevant" or "cheating", but it's actually not. As human beings, we create quasi-closed systems over which we define and control causality - Second Life is one such system. But any question about whether some sort of entity exercises causal definition and control over the universe much be answered partly by determining whether the universe is a closed system, and by determining the physical character of the entity - "physical character" in this instance meaning purposes, parameters, and limitations.

Scriptural references just ain't gonna do it.