CNN does a piece on atheists

[Mechagodzilla]

That doesn't make sense, in christian terms.
Christ cannot be a liar.
He is The Truth, the Son and the word of God almighty.

 

[Faizu]

That doesn't make sense, in christian terms.
Christ cannot be a liar.
He is The Truth, the Son and the word of God almighty.

I agree, I think Paul could have been mistaken, because Paul's teachings and Jesus Christ teachings were totally different. And it was Paul who added new moral value and rules though.

 

[Walter]

A. interesting question, really. A lot more meaningful than just about your relations to neighbours. Got to think about it, maybe we can find the final answer to that.

 

[Mechagodzilla]

Make sure that you send me that answer if you find it.

Really though, isn't Christ's word final enough?

 

[Walter]

http://www.wcg.org/lit/bible/gospels/matt517.htm - Found a link to something here, but didn't finish reading it yet.

Edit: Sorry Kitty, i'll have to pause my replying for a few days, busy student you see.

 

[Mechagodzilla]

Don't read links. Read the bible.
Truth comes from Jesus, not Google.

If your link is correct, then the Parable of Talents is not, and neither is Exodus, nor Jeremiah, nor a whole slew of other points.
Your link basically attempts to disprove Jesus and support Paul.

However, the link isn't correct. It just re-states the obvious point that the coventant is "new" and then goes vague on the rules.

I'll go in detail later, but really, don't get all your knowledge from Google.

 

[Absinthe]

Hmm...Bill Gates here is right at some point. But still, what does persecution of atheists got to do with Jesus? I keep saying, people shouldn't take one sentence out of the whole context. The problem is, many here look for reasons why not to believe in Christ, not the other way around. They don't want to search for the truth that in most cases has nothing to do with salvation, they instead put it all on my back.
Furthermore, reasons for their deconverting is most crazy. If a follower of Christ never opened the Bible (word of God) then he has never checked if the teacher he was learning from says the truth.

Shut. Up.

You just assume that nobody has ever tried to find God. It's never occurred to you that all such attempts in the world of rationality have yielded naught.

If I'm supposed to find Christ, then you need to divulge some reasons for doing so, or at the least make the fruits of such an endeavor seem plausible. You have done absolutely no such thing. We're not putting everything on your back. We are asking you to explain the very "truth" that you claim to already know. Surely if this kind of knowledge is fully within your grasp, you can talk about it? Oh wait, I forgot. Apparently thinking is too great a burden on you. Your religion seems to be based less off the word of Christ and more on internet search engines.

I can't speak for others, but I never explained why I "deconverted" to you. You're in no position to call my loss of faith crazy. Again, you just assume I never opened up the Bible. I assure you that I did. Along with a severe emotional disconnect from faith, I found many parts to be implausible and downright immoral. This was years before I ever came to care two licks about logic.

 

[Walter]

Again, you just assume I never opened up the Bible.

I never claimed that.

Shut. Up.

And they say i'm the one that flames. A lot of your posts are too aggressive.

 

[Walter]

Don't read links. Read the bible.
Truth comes from Jesus, not Google.

If your link is correct, then the Parable of Talents is not, and neither is Exodus, nor Jeremiah, nor a whole slew of other points.
Your link basically attempts to disprove Jesus and support Paul.

However, the link isn't correct. It just re-states the obvious point that the coventant is "new" and then goes vague on the rules.

I'll go in detail later, but really, don't get all your knowledge from Google.

I knew it was a good post ! pity had no time to end reading it. How does it disprove Jesus though?

P.S. Indeed from Jesus, but Google is just a tool where i find that truth, though i don't always base my arguments on that if i do.

 

[dream431ca]

I'm moving to Mars, where there is NO discrimination of any kind because nobody lives there. Anyone wanna come??

The world would be a better place if you kept your beliefs to yourself. Shoving beliefs in other people's faces, is only going to make matters much worse.

 

[Mechagodzilla]

Antagonizing him ain't going to get nowhere, Absinthe, as irritating as his baseless generalizations may be.
The only hope we've got is to try reason, even if it fails. And should he fail to accept the natural tenets of reason, at least we may deconstruct the bible on its own terms.
Try as one may with poor "interpretations", the truth will win out; the truth isn't weak and pliable, and it will stand the test of time. Paul did not adequately cover his tracks.
Speaking of convolution, let's look at the website Walter posted, which seeks to prove that Jesus did not actually say he wanted religious violence to occur in his name.


Alright, so I'm back from class.

The link posted uses extremely loose interpretation of the text "what if Jesus ment this or that. And what if 'fulfill' means 'cancel'?"
The problem is that, in the context, "fulfill" only means "fully preach".
The original greek word for "to fulfill" (pleroo) has two meanings: "to end" and "to fully preach".
If you interpret this as " to end", this causes massive conflicts with the rest of the bible:

He that turneth away his ear from hearing the Torah, even his prayer [shall be] abomination,
Proverbs 28:9

But we know that the Torah is good, if a man use it lawfully;
1Timothy 1:8

But heaven and earth will come to an end before the smallest tittle of the Torah may be dropped out.
Luke 16:17.

Do we then make void the Torah through faith? By no means: but we establish the Torah,
Romans 3:31.

"Establish", in the original Greek, means "uphold". You cannot uphold and end the law simultaneously. That's not possible.
It's also nonsensical to permanently abolish the law and yet keep teaching the texts.
Jeremiah says, sensibly, that the laws should only be abolished once there is no-one left to learn them.

Also, we have Christ's conclusion to the Parable of Talents, God's promise of a permanent law in Exodus, Jeremiah's prophecy that Jesus will only change the law after all men are christians, etc.
Huge chunks of the bible are directly contradicted by this incorrect translation, while the correct translation makes no contradiction anywhere, except with Paul.


Speaking of Paul, he word "fulfill" (pleroo) shows up in Romans too, and is translated as follows:

"Through mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God; so that from Jerusalem, and round about unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ."
Romans 15:19

Do you think paul meant that he had abolished the gospel of christ? Obviously not.


Further contradictions arise from the "to end" interpretation:

For example, Jesus confirms that you must kill disobedient children.
When the Pharisees criticize his table manners, Jesus says:

"Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?
For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death."
Matthew 15:3-4

He goes on to elaborate that teaching the bible without following God's laws is worse than eating with unwashed hands.
He calls failure to follow the law an evil hypocracy that devalues the entire scripture.
There are dozens of similar passages.
The incorrect interpretation contradicts them all.

There is a word that means "end permanently" in greek, and it has no other definition. This word is "teleo".
If Jesus wanted to absolutely end the laws, that is the word that would be used.
That is not the word that was used.

 

[mastapenguin]

Clarification please,

Aetheism, as Absinthe puts it, is an absence of belief in any higher power or deity. Does this mean you believe or are certain they Don't exist, or that, should someone come up with decent proof, you are prepared to accept their existence?

Because I normally call the latter agnostics.

Don't misunderstand my Science comment. I do not mean to suggest the rationale of "a scientist said it, therefore it is true." I felt that scientists, in general, hoped or believed that the universe is governed by rational laws, and that it was possible for a Theory of Everything to exist. It is, without a doubt, a long process of self-correction and error, but eventually some sort of end point may be acheived.

I guess I should apologize for the slight misconception about Aethism. I perhaps should have restated it as the following:

Aethism: Our material lives are governed by our own actions. Our future may be assured through Rational thought on everyone's part.

Or perhaps, in deference to the prevailing cynical trend here,

Aethism: We're f***ed.

 

[Absinthe]

I never claimed that.

"If a follower of Christ never opened the Bible (word of God) then he has never checked if the teacher he was learning from says the truth."

The implication is certainly there. If such was not your intent, then I'm struggling to find the relevance of this comment amidst everything that has been discussed so far.

And they say i'm the one that flames. A lot of your posts are too aggressive.

I won't defend myself from that accusation. I fully admit that I flame people for posting stupid shit. That said, I will lessen my hostility. But much of that rests on whether or not you're actually going to put a modicum of effort into your arguments. As a reminder: This means arguing in your own words without copping out to dubious figures of expertise (ie. priests) and integrating your sources into such an argument instead of letting them do all the work for you.

You don't even need to do this for me. Mecha has, for the moment, been willing to indulge you on a purely scriptural basis and still all you do is post URL links and say "Oh, I'm not smart enough to argue on my own lol".

 

[DaMaN]

I'm moving to Mars, where there is NO discrimination of any kind because nobody lives there. Anyone wanna come??

Dude, I am so comming with you.

 

[Mechagodzilla]

Clarification please,

Aetheism, as Absinthe puts it, is an absence of belief in any higher power or deity. Does this mean you believe or are certain they Don't exist, or that, should someone come up with decent proof, you are prepared to accept their existence?

An atheist is simply a person who does not believe in any god.
The end.

I personally go deeper into atheism, based on the fact that the existence of a god who cares about Earth is near-infinitely unlikely.
I can safely say there is no god to the same extent that I can safely say I will not win every single lottery on Earth tomorrow.
I could win every single lottery on Earth tomorrow - even if I didn't sign up, it's still technically possible that every lotto company will simultaneously and spontaneously change their rules - but you and I both know that I simply won't.

If there were decent proof, God would be a scientific fact and faith would die.

Without proof, there is absolutely no reason to begin believing in the first place. Books like the bible can't even provide a consistent moral philosophy, because they lack quantifiabilty.
The rules of the bible are arbitrary. Most of them don't make the slightest sense outside the context of "do them or I will torture you."
If the rules don't make sense without god, then the rules do not apply to reality.

That is the basis of atheism: it is the only stance on religion that has a basis.
My more realistic stance is only the limit of how far atheism can potentially go. It is not the only type.

I normally call the latter agnostics.

Agnosticism is a branch of atheism, and in fact is effectively synonymous. Hence the confusion.
Explanation below:

It is, without a doubt, a long process of self-correction and error, but eventually some sort of end point may be acheived.

That's not the goal at all. Science is far more concerned with immediacy and practicality.
Although the more therohetical aspects about the workings of the universe are popular, they're a small minority compared to the scientists who design better cars and fight cancers.

No end-point is implicit in this research, nor is really possible. It is in fact physically impossible to know everything. To do so would require a storage system larger than the universe itself.

That is why scientists don't waste time on absolutes. They see what works and then they do it. There is not faith inherent to this, and there is no need for one. It is ultimately obtrusive to the practice, because faith will often lead to quantifiable error and bias.

If you have faith that something will work, yet it doesn't in practice (like Walter's belief in Paul), then you ultimately cause more harm than good.
Confirmation is the only route to truth, so agnostics (and all other atheists) won't bother with your god until you prove him.

Aethism: Our material lives are governed by our own actions. Our future may be assured through Rational thought on everyone's part.

Or perhaps, in deference to the prevailing cynical trend here,

Aethism: We're f***ed.

The future is by no means assured. Saying so is deceptive, because you're just assuming.
However, there is no reason to think that those things that do work will fail.
There is no reason to think that gravity will fail us, and no reason to think that heat will reverse itself so that stoves burn cold.
Only logical thought can seperate the valid fears from the non-valid. And if logical thought can't quantify it, then the system is outside the scope of your control anyways, so you would waste your time to worry.

What if the easter bunny is real and gets rabies?
Logic tells us that the chances of that happening are lower than can be imagined, so we don't worry about it.
Every human on Earth who isn't insane follows this logic.
Yet the idea of god's wrath is equally not-real, and thus equally non-frightening - but it terrifies billions.
Both events are equally fictional, but only one is believed for no reason but for the fact of hallucinations (like Paul's) and because that's how children are taught to consider hallucinations as proof.

Logical thoughts, and not dreams, are the only way to detect error, and you must detect an error before you can correct it.
When logic is abandonned, you invariably fall into error.
Again: Walter.

 

[Walter]

Mecha, you're one of the few people here i give respect for. Perhaps i will try making that debate afterall, though not in the near future i'm afraid. And we've got a lot to talk about as it seems.

P.S. Not gonna be around for a few days as i've mentioned, hope you won't miss me much :naughty:

 

[theotherguy]

Sooo...dawkins tonight, yes?

 

[GhostBoi]

Clarification please,

Aetheism, as Absinthe puts it, is an absence of belief in any higher power or deity. Does this mean you believe or are certain they Don't exist, or that, should someone come up with decent proof, you are prepared to accept their existence?

Because I normally call the latter agnostics.

Don't misunderstand my Science comment. I do not mean to suggest the rationale of "a scientist said it, therefore it is true." I felt that scientists, in general, hoped or believed that the universe is governed by rational laws, and that it was possible for a Theory of Everything to exist. It is, without a doubt, a long process of self-correction and error, but eventually some sort of end point may be acheived.

I guess I should apologize for the slight misconception about Aethism. I perhaps should have restated it as the following:

Aethism: Our material lives are governed by our own actions. Our future may be assured through Rational thought on everyone's part.

Or perhaps, in deference to the prevailing cynical trend here,

Aethism: We're f***ed.

Theism: Belief in a god.

The prefix a- meaning without.

Combine the two into atheism, you get: without belief in god. THAT IS IT. It is not the belief that no god exists.

Gnosticism has to do with having knowledge on a subject. Therefore Agnosticism has to do with not knowing something, and since there is no way to "know" god in the first place, it is really a nonsensical stance.

Russell's Teapot is a great way to demonstrate it:

"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."

Most intelligent people would not believe that there is such a teapot and would therefore be teapot-athiests. But in reality, none of us would know and would be agnostics in the sense of the word.

 

[DaMaN]

Moreover, as Richard Dawkins says in A Devil's Chaplain:

"The reason organized religion merits outright hostility is that, unlike belief in Russell's teapot, religion is powerful, influential, tax-exempt and systematically passed on to children too young to defend themselves. Children are not compelled to spend their formative years memorizing loony books about teapots. Government-subsidized schools don't exclude children whose parents prefer the wrong shape of teapot. Teapot-believers don't stone teapot-unbelievers, teapot-apostates, teapot-heretics and teapot-blasphemers to death. Mothers don't warn their sons off marrying teapot-shiksas whose parents believe in three teapots rather than one. People who put the milk in first don't kneecap those who put the tea in first."

 

[Absinthe]

As for Dawkins, apparently his 20-minute interview has been edited to approximately 4 minutes. Wooo. Christopher Hitchens will join the good fight though.

EDIT: Misread something, ignore.

 

[Ennui]

That's on CNN at 8 PM EST tonight, right?

I don't want to miss it.

 

[Absinthe]

Damn, I missed Dawkins. Came in late and just saw two women and a reverend. Definitely a far more sane affair than the debacle with Karen Hunter and Debbie Schlussel. The reverend pulled out the usual crap like "The USA was founded as a Christian nation" and "Morality comes from the Bible". He even threw out the insane accusation that homosexuals were pushing an imposing agenda. The two women (one an atheist, and I presume the other as well) highlighted the importance of constitutionally-based secularism and overall responded very intelligently. Basically, it seems that atheist activists are the only ones trying to hold up the law.

It's just a shame that such a discussion is reduced to sound bites of people talking over each other, trying to beat the time limit.

 

[Slacker]

Is any of this on youtube by any chance?

 

[Ennui]

I saw Dawkins - it was only a few minutes, and it looked like they cut it up a lot, as he sounded a lot tamer than usual (I guess they excluded the whole "religion is a danger to society" spiel of his, if he even spoke about that). What he said was pretty straightforward, and he did a good job because there was no indignant self-righteous religious type to bristle and try to speak over him.

The panel with the two women and the reverend went... interestingly. The blonde woman (president of the American Atheists, or something like that) was kind of annoying and didn't argue as well as I would have liked, despite that I agreed with her. The other woman was very intelligent and made a very good point, though the black guy started yelling over her so she couldn't finish. The reverend mostly just didn't say anything intelligent at all, more of the fare we're used to seeing. His statement along the lines of "atheists are doing now what homosexuals did before, trying to impose their lifestyle on America," was certainly ridiculous.

I wish we could get an intelligent theist on a panel where the debate can be calm, fair, and intellectual.

Slacker, it will be soon, I'm sure.

 

[Absinthe]

Well, to be fair, Stephen Smith in the first atheism-based discussion on the show deserved applause and he was a theist. Of the entire trio, he was the only one to express a sane and fair view on the matter and sympathized with atheists. Even though he downplayed the matter of discrimination, he deserves kudos for his words, especially when faced with the raving lunacy of Hunter and Schlussel.

"Calm, fair, and intellectual" debates are something I've rarely - if ever - seen on US news networks. BBC is the only one I've seen attempt such things with success. And usually the host bites back when bullshit creeps its way into the conversation.