Answers for Atheists

a reply to: mOjOm

So true. They actually thought deeply about things. No Twitter and Facebook to distract you. Twain has a million great phrases too.

I like Sam Harris alot but I don't think he has the refinement of the old masters. He does seem to know them all at least.

a reply to: mOjOm

Man I could geek out with you for days on Kant.

Spinoza was kind of an outcast because he wasn't a theist. He was hermetic and lived a very simple life wrote volumes of wisdom and lived it. Kinda like a rumi of philosophy. Check him out if you have the time.

He said stuff like

"I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion."

'Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd."

There are many you probably just didn't know were his.

Is anyone else chuckling at the irony that an "Answers for Atheists" thread started with scripture & ended with philosophy?

& fittingly so, I might add.

a reply to: Esoterotica

My bad. I tend to do that. Theology and philosophy seem like brothers that don't get along and try to murder each other for their inheritance.

a reply to: Klassified

More than anything I despise global genocide and the erasing and rewriting of history to support something which never existed at all.

I could care less about God or not God. It can't be proven either way, now or in the future.

"God" has never been a problem.

It's the followers who have turned Earth into hell.

Kev

a reply to: luthier

I will for sure. Another good one IMO is Bertrand Russell although he can be somewhat dry and technical with language that it gets difficult following through a complete idea. But that's also his way of breaking through the problems with language itself within philosophy.

But Twain I think was the absolute master artist of using language. Especially when he writes about a subject that he doesn't respect a whole lot but is not something you're supposed to talk bad about. Because he'll talk some sh*t but in such a cool way that even if you didn't like what he was saying you'd have to respect him in how he said it. He'd be the kind of guy who could whip out some clever remark to your face and walk off as you'd be standing there still figuring out how many different ways he just insulted you both overtly and covertly. Plus he's absolutely hilarious.

a reply to: mOjOm

I never let my schooling get in the way of my education.


I like Russel sometimes too. The man was brilliant. But yeah dry and sometimes a bit over the top arrogant. Thats what you get from a math and systems genius.

a reply to: JackReyes

Hey, Jack?

Read this:

Not only have you been lucky enough to be attached since time immemorial to a favored evolutionary line, but you have also been extremely-make that miraculously-fortunate in your personal ancestry.

Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so.

Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result-eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly-in you.

From the introduction to A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson.
Here's the very beginning....

Welcome. And congratulations. I am delighted that you could make it. Getting here wasn't easy, I know. In fact, I suspect it was a little tougher than you realize.

To begin with, for you to be here now trillions of drifting atoms had somehow to assemble in an intricate and intriguingly obliging manner to create you. It's an arrangement so specialized and particular that it has never been tried before and will only exist this once.

For the next many years (we hope) these tiny particles will uncomplainingly engage in all the billions of deft, cooperative efforts necessary to keep you intact and let you experience the supremely agreeable but generally underappreciated state known as existence.

a reply to: BuzzyWigs

Geez. When you put it like that it makes you feel sorta special. Or at least gives good reason not to be so hard on yourself or others.

originally posted by: randyvs

Jeez. Here we go again. Another Randyvs "god" thread again... Let me guess: zero substance, but full of self-proclaimed knowledge and evidence...

I thought a while before posting this and I went ahead with only one real interest." I hope this helps ". People need to see thru the atheist agenda.

And so it begins -- what agenda is that? Define it please.

We come from from an intelligent thinking God!
God is our origin.

Show me some evidence of your claim please. No no - don't give me a random youtube video -- show me exactly where and how we come from God.

I read this morning a sheriffs deputy was shot and killed in
a town called Bailey I believe. And I imagined something
Sam Harris might say. Why didn't God come down and stop
the bullets? Why didn't he do something to save this good
mans life? Why does God allow evil things to happen to good
people?

Because he doesn't exist and there's nothing else to it. Bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people. Life ISNT fair and nothing suggests otherwise.

In short my answer to that goes like this....(snip)

Your argument was not an argument. It was just your internal ramblings in an incoherent set of sentences. It made no sense and provided no support to your claims.

Atheists aren't left with questions there left with answers.

No we aren't -- we ARE left with questions.

If faith is the only thing needed for "evidence" of God - then what if I truly believe that you, Randyvs, are a murderer. Is it enough for me to have you arrested, taken to court and prosecuted for murder? Because I *believe* it? Or, would you, the accused, demand some form of evidence? I seriously hope the latter.

And if that's the case, why is evidence needed to prove someone's guilt (or innocence) but faith alone proves God?

Answer me that, Randyvs.

a reply to: JackReyes

Sometimes, even if you prove something to someone, they will still refuse it and reject it. I've seen it happen in both people who claim to serve God, and agnostics, and atheists alike. There seems to be some type of, I don't know what to call it, something, that makes people of all sorts tick like that. Make them blind to the truth around them.

Come on Jack for reals? Out of all the posts I've read up to yours.
Yours is the closest to disappointing. I mean I realise what you're
saying and can't say you're wrong but. Is there truly no hope in you
for even one to at least begin to understand what it is that does
propel our, or at least my persistence? I don't know what anyone
else is doing any where, or even why. But I persist because I truly
want to follow Christ. And by that, love is why I must persist.
At least in this venue I only have words to contend with.
No sticks or stones my good man.

originally posted by: JackReyes
(Hebrews 3:4) . . .Of course, every house is constructed by someone, but the one who constructed all things is God.

Is that not a rational statement? And a rational deduction from reasoning?

Nope. I'm afraid you don't really understand the scientific method. If I take your quote and replace God with a sentient block of sharp cheddar cheese, then have you proven through deductive reasoning that a block of cheese constructed all things? Is that true. Of course not.

You might respond, "The bible doesn't say anything about all-powerful cheese creating Earth." In response, I would say, "Why are you treating the Bible likes it lays out tested, peer-reviewed and irrefutable scientific principles." If everything you read in book is real, then why can't I go to school at Hogwarts and fly around on a broom? Because these things are words on a piece of paper just like stories in the Bible.

There is just as much evidence that a sentient block of cheese created the universe as a God. The first step in the scientific method is forming a hypothesis based upon evidence. You've skipped both that stage and the testing phase that comes thereafter. You've skipped right to a conclusion without evidence or experimentation. You didn't even make an attempt to disprove your hypothesis before adopting it as fact.

a reply to: noonebutme

Jeez. Here we go again. Another Randyvs "god" thread again... Let me guess: zero substance, but full of self-proclaimed knowledge and evidence...

Yeah I know, Isn't it just horrible?

The problem with all religious or non-religious beliefs is that they are just that...BELIEFS, based on a feeling, or something we read, or were told. Every thread in this forum, and every discussion that occurs daily on this planet about religion, are simply humans saying what we BELIEVE. Nothing more...nothing less.

Frank Turek is at best dishonest. i couldnt imagine he'd still be speaking after Hitch completely demolished him twice. id take no answers instead of bad answers.

free will that is given is not free will, because free will that is granted can be taken away. if there is a god that can give or take free will is not a god worth worshiping, because he could have potentially created a universe without free will and no sin. there is no escaping the problem of evil. either god doesn't care, or it doesn't exist.

its very true that religion poisons us then offers us the remedy.

a reply to: vjr1113

its very true that religion poisons us then offers us the remedy.

Why does religion have to have anything to do
with what you do or don't rationalize/believe?

originally posted by: randyvs
I thought a while before posting this

You may be setting yourself up for a fall there

We come from from an intelligent thinking God!
God is our origin.
Not unintelligent non thinking matter or happen stance.

As weak as that is, I sense the arguments for gods arnt going to get any stronger...

Because in the same way you have the right to sit around and
ask condescending questions, in judgement of God! Or not!
The man who shot the deputy in Bailey had the right to pull the
trigger.

No Ranyvs the man didn't have the right to shoot the deputy, and it's not surprising to see you comparing the shooting of a person to someone mocking your imaginary friend.

Very sinister.

Religion is a natural fact of human beings. If they're not religious about one thing, they'll be religious about another. With the state of the world, perhaps we should sanctify it and make it holy, instead of what we've made holy hitherto.

originally posted by: carewemust
The problem with all religious or non-religious beliefs is that they are just that...BELIEFS, based on a feeling, or something we read, or were told. Every thread in this forum, and every discussion that occurs daily on this planet about religion, are simply humans saying what we BELIEVE. Nothing more...nothing less.

I would disagree with the "non-religious" beliefs statement.

I don't believe that 1 + 1 = 2. I don't believe that the speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792,458 m/s. I know these are true because I can perform multiple experiments to PROVE them to be fact. I can prove gravity exists. Or that water boils when it reaches 100 degrees C. Or freezes at 0 degrees C. These are not my beliefs -- these are provable facts.

Religion - no. Nothing scientific or provable about it. Along that same line...

I may "believe" in aliens. And while it seems logical, makes sense and is a "must be", given the size of the universe, I cannot state it as fact as I have no evidence to back it. No matter how much I truly want aliens to be real, that is only "my belief".

Scientific facts and evidence are not "beliefs".

a reply to: Prezbo369

You may be setting yourself up for a fall there

Absolutely, but should that scare me Prez?

Very sinister.

Horrible intentions for sure right?