Atheists who attack Christianity

Shut up ceremonial dagger wielding, naked summer's eve dancing vermin.

You should be shot.

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Human beings do, in fact in a very real sense, exist.

Protons, neutrons, electrons, hadrons, muons, gluons, quarks etcetera /also/ do, in a very real sense, exist.

/Certain of their attributes/ are only /knowable/ with a certain degree of probability - attributes such as their position in space if we measure their velocity, or their velocity if we measure their position in space. We cannot know /both/ with certainty because the act of /measuring/ one attribute inherently changes the quanta and we are unable to disentangle how /measuring/ affected the other attribute from how it was /before being measured/.

That we have difficulty /measuring/ these attributes or quanta or sub-quantum features does not necessitate that they do not exist. That's like saying "Because I am not looking at the car in the parking lot, it does not exist". Observers do not define the universe, only their own knowledge of it.

Quantum Mechanics is a /model/ of the universe - it is not a perfect description, and it describes what we can know as much as it describes what we have difficulty knowing given our current model and methods.

Einstein's Theories State that you would begin travelling backwards in time if you exceeded the speed of light.

I think we're talking about the same thing, but from different philosophies. You can say the quanta really exists prior to observation, and I could say that it is only a probability, and we would both be right.

And as far as the car goes, what I mean is not that the car does not exist, but that if no perception of it by any viewpoint anywhere or anywhen in the history of the universe took place, it would not exist. This returns to the issue of whether an awareness is necessarily complex, and thus must have arisen late in the game, or whether it is simple and could have existed right from the beginning. If as seems to be the case, a viewpoint keeps showing up as a component in the basic interactions of the universe, wouldn't it make sense to drop the arbitrary of complexity and see if a simple viewpoint (or many) present from the beginning of creation solves a few things?

Considering something is, or isn't, works in localized cases, with subjective perception. You can create things in the space around you, and move them around and practice perfect duplication and all the rest. You can attempt perfect duplication on things like walls and cars and so on until they no longer exist for you. This is also called disagreeing. There is the added complication that it's hard to get your body to also disagree. But it's fascinating to do that and actually look straight through the space the object occupied.

What do you run up against if you're trying to do this with objective (i.e. agreed-upon, shared) reality? Well, essentially you decided that the car doesn't exist but no one else in the universe decided that. One thing I've wanted to try but never did, is to see what happens if you get a whole group of people considering that something exists that wasn't there before. Would that work? Is there a point at which something could become real in general? I don't know, but given the subjective experiences it no longer seems impossible.

You mean..... like if billions of people believe in a God and afterlife, it may actually come true even if it wasn't a reality before the people "created" it by believing it?

Sure if you want.

I'm more inclined to think the opposite situation is what has happened up until now. One of the ways of getting a creation to persist is to immediately assign responsibility for its creation to someone else. So if you've got an infinite number of people busy making their part of the universe and then they say, "No way, wasn't me. It was God," you'd get a universe that is very persistent in existing and very resistant to further whole-cloth creation.

So on the one hand if everyone purposely agreed to create God and heaven, maybe you'd really get them. But if everyone's saying, "It's God that is responsible for all of creation, I'm just a little guy," you're more and more stuck with the universe as we have it - supremacy of mechanics, entropy and all.

See, it doesn't work that way.

Humans do not simply wish things into existence. It requires hard work and technology.

Are we still arguing this?

Define attacks.

Ah, no.

Atheism is not simple. We have no Jesus or god to forgive our sins, so we have to learn not to sin. Beyond the basic not killing, not stealing stuff that's been included in every religious doctrine ever held, we have to map out our own moralities.

We are not attacking Xmas or any other religious holiday. Xmas is a very important holiday for those who live in norther climes because the days are short and lighting a whole bunch of lights during the longest coldest nights cheers everybody up which is why despite the fact that Jesus, if he existed, was born in the spring now has his birthday on the same day as Mithra.

Which atheists are trying to remove the pledge of allegience?

I know some are trying to restore the pledge and our money to the pre-McCarthy version. Why not?




I have no problem with people practicing their religion. If they want to have prayer meetings and bible study in public parks, that's fine and dandy as long as they follow all the laws that apply to every citizen. They can erect plaques of the ten commandments in their front lawns and even highlight them at night with little spotlights if they want to. It's their property and they have the right to put anything there that doesn't interfere with their neighbors' enjoyment of their own property which means aim those spots carefully away from neighbors' windows. Heck, even go door to door and spread the word, I don't mind.

I just don't want to pay for it with my tax dollars. Isn't one of the ten commandments, "thou shalt not steal"? When you are demanding my tax money to support your religion, you are attempting to steal from me. I'm just asking you to follow your own scripture. Is that really oppression? That you follow your own scripture?

Actually Jews only believe in one god. Christians believe in the three in one godhead common to many pagan religions.

What is really ironic is that in Israel, they will let you become a citizen if you have a Jewish mother but you are an atheist and you don't follow any of the laws and customs. However if you are a Jew for Jesus, you've broken the first commandment and are no longer considered Jewish even if you follow all the laws.

The reasoning behind it is that atheists don't break the first commandment of worshipping other gods. It's okay to not believe in god, just don't worship anybody else (like Jesus/Mithra).

Originally Posted by Elinea Richard
And why you wrap your brain around this take a gamble for once since Im willing to bet you have no moral qualms against it. The odds are in your favor if your a Christian: If Christianity is correct (Which I have made quite clear that I believe it is) then if you die and you are a Christian you get to go to Heaven and meet exciting people, like Teddy Roosevelt and Jesus! If you are not a Christian you go to hell which sucks. Now lets flip it around and just for kicks say that Christianity is wrong. Ok so then no matter what you do in life, when you die thats it. So lets recap. If you are a Christian than the worst that can happen to you when you die is nothing. So care to wager?


Jeez, so many posts to catch up to.


Pascal's Wager, gotta love it.

How do you know that there isn't a god that hasn't revealed itself yet? And when it does, everybody following Jesus/Mithra, Jehovah, Allah, et is going to get thrown into a pit worse than any xian hell for eternity. While atheists have the instant answer, "well, I knew all those other guys were fakes all along and now that you're here, I'm willing to worship you."

In that case, atheism is your best bet because you can always switch to the god who actually appears.

Christians are the ones being hurt by public prayers. It's true! Every time a Christian prays in public, he defies Jesus. Kevn, as a good Christian man, you should be stopping people from defying Jesus and risking their immortal souls to hellfire and damnation with their public prayers.


Jesus doesn't want you to pray in public.

Matthew

6:5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

6:6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

And before you start in with verses written by Paul, who is more important: Paul or your lord and savior? Remember that man cannot serve two masters. Either you are with Jesus or against him, so drop Paul and do what Jesus tells you to.

They have proof of Jesus' existance!


Where?

Doesn't the Talmud have Jesus escaping execution and running off with a woman and leaving his followers to face the lions alone?

In the Koran, Jesus has no divinity, he's just a bastard child with a knack for preaching.

The three religions don't really agree on Jesus. And why isn't there references to Jesus in the far east? India? No Mayan references to Jesus? No Aztech references?

The earthly avatar of a triple godhead is born and only a teeny, tiny portion of the world knows about it? You would think that Jehovah would send some birth announcements out.

Hard work and technology are much, much easier ways of going about getting what you want in this universe, as they simply mix around all the existing stuff instead of trying to create new.



There are further implications to this you may not like, looking back over the history of the Middle East and then Europe. What happens if you bring in an authoritarian, monetheistic religion over the lives of people who were previously used to doing their own thing? The worldview of the pagans was chaotic - people and minor deities all over the place performing miracles and magic as a part of daily life, strange creatures like fairies and talking trees, etc.

Then the monotheists come along insisting that ordinary people don't create their world, but only God does. Furthermore, there is no God but God. To make this point perfectly clear they slaughter or burn at the stake anyone with the temerity to perform their own miracles or even to believe differently. How long do you think the habit of creating your own realities is going to survive in that sort of atmosphere?

So monotheism contains the seeds of its own destruction. It eliminates people's ability to create and responsibility for their own creation. It leaves in its wake a people who can only see and work with the preexisting physical, mechanical reality. And from there it is really only a small step to include God among all the other spiritual things you've eliminated. After that you get, if you're lucky, an Age of Reason and mechanics become paramount over consideration.

Damn them... damn them all to the hell they don't believe in!

Its at that point I stopped taking what was said by Kevn seriously.

Holy smokes, it took you long enough.

Quetzalcoatl

Actually there are some who believe that the Mayans, Incans, and such DO refer to Jesus. They just had other names for him including Quetzacoatl, and Kukulcan.

Well, I'm glad you stepped out of the discussion long enough for there to be some interesting debate. Feel free to flame on now.

Really!

So when Jesus hit South America, he started expecting human sacrifices? That's a switch from the New Testament!

And I spent all evening trying to wish a bag of sugar-free dark chocolate into existance.