London's buses go to hell

reply to post by noobfun


Understandable.

BTW, your posts have made this thread much more interesting and mind-expanding.

reply to post by budski


God i think this man is obsessed. He is so passionate about what he belives to be true (he provides good argument) he is now contradicting himself. I recently watched a programme where he was protesting to teachers who were teahing creationism as part of science. This I agreed with him on. Now he is doing the same - trying to push his message upon the public. Why??? I thought the whole point was for people to think for themselves and descide themselves what they belive to be true, Most i think hope there is something greater than us, some greater meaning. Hope gives us a feeling of purpose, a point to being here. They keep their minds open, the possibilties countless. Analyse all information from all sources, changing all the time, but seeking the truth what ever that may be. I think Mr Dawkins needs to accept he has his own beliefs and allow others to have the comfort of theirs.

reply to post by MCoG1980


have you been to the website from the christian bus campaigns that triggered this?

have you read the message of peace and love it was spreading?

Scripture says: … if you confess with your mouth, “JESUS is LORD”, and believe in your heart that GOD raised Him from the dead, you will be saved… whoever believes on Him will not be disappointed.

so this is the header ... what happens if im unsure or out riht dont beleive?

What are the consequences if you reject the answer?
God’s wrath includes the prospect of eternal punishment – it is appointed to men to die once and then comes the judgment (Hebrews 9:27). You will rise from the dead and will face the Judge and know that you rejected His kind and merciful answer. You will be condemned to everlasting separation from God and then you spend all eternity in torment in hell. Jesus spoke about this as a lake of fire which was prepared for the devil and all his angels (demonic spirits) (Matthew 25: 41).

jesus loves you if you do what we say else your srewed have a nice day

www.jesussaid.org...

so a kid see's the message on a bus goes home and has a look .... would you want your kid having this shoved in thier face? might scare them a bit wouldnt you think?

and dawkins didnt organise this he came in mid point, it was first thought of by a guardain columist it sparked a mini wave of attention so they decied to go with it and see what could be achieved .. its this point when Dawkins heard about it and offered his help

reply to post by noobfun


I must admit it's a very certain message they're giving out, isn't it?

One point here is that Dawkins' message is to read "there probably isn't a God." Probably? That's not very convincing atheism, is it??

LW

reply to post by LoneWeasel

theres a few reasons for that

any religeon will tell you THERE IS a god, without any dought or proof there is a god

the fact there are so many religeons and so many gods have nothing to do with it there is a god or gods

atheists say theres no proof of god so almost no chance there is one, but hey you find proof come talk to us and we will see where it leads

so to say there is no god would need faith (lack of proof is not proof of lack)

so the phrase was going to be 'almost certainly no god', as taken from 'the god delusion'

but its a)doesnt roll off the tounge and b) using probabily has legal implications

becasue it uses the word probabily its almost impossible to complain about the advert or take legal action

hence why carlsberg has been probabily the best lager in the world for years without law suits

so there it is

legal reasons and the fact religeon says deffinatley without proof so we shall just say probabily and take the moral high ground ^_^

p.s.

glad to see you didnt run after the last batch of metaphors calling me a crazy guy, i dont really like comparing people to nazi's becasue they are what one would describe an evil entity incarnate and most christians simply arnt evil or mean spirited or even mildly bigoted but its the only organisation that i can think of that came with a good message hiding the bad message underneath and was all inclusive .. until it got its way

[edit on 26/10/08 by noobfun]

Originally posted by noobfun

glad to see you didnt run after the last batch of metaphors calling me a crazy guy, i dont really like comparing people to nazi's becasue they are what one would describe an evil entity incarnate and most christians simply arnt evil or mean spirited or even mildly bigoted but its the only organisation that i can think of that came with a good message hiding the bad message underneath and was all inclusive .. until it got its way

[edit on 26/10/08 by noobfun]

Like I said, I take your point. I don't think the analogy works in terms of the organisations themselves, simply because they are worlds apart in terms of what they were trying to achieve and how.

New Labour might be a better analogy than Nazism - as soon as you mentioned a "good message hiding the bad message underneath" all I could think of was Tony Blair!

To get back to the point - my problem is that I want answers. It seems to me to be ludicrous to suggest that the entire universe exists for no reason. The only logical conclusion (in my mind) is that something created it. Whether that something is benign, watching us or even intelligent I cannot prove. But it seems far less likely to me that the universe came into existence from nothing than that something caused it to happen.

Furthermore, logically, I cannot conceive of the idea that science will ever have all the answers, that there won't be one more question beyond that it can't answer. For that reason I believe in God.

I believe in the nice bits of the New Testament, in the sense that I believe the teachings within the New Testament are good ideas. That's where I suppose myself to be a Christian. So it follows I wouldn't have a problem with someone paying for an advert that read "The Bible says, Love your neighbour and be nice to beggars", because that to me holds no offence and seems to be a reasonable proposition.

Now, I know that's not what they said, and I take your point about the harm such dogma can have on impressionable people. So perhaps the ideal option would be agnostic advertising - that just said "we've no idea whether there's a God or not, and we wouldn't presume to attempt to lead you either way." I could deal with that...

LW

reply to post by LoneWeasel


hahahahaha New labour and Tony Blair

they have condemned us to many things but even he didnt manage eternal damantion sooner or later we might be able to undo the mess

think of the ultimate goals of science as becoming a religeon, sounds wierd i know but the ukltimate goal of science is to understand everything to know everything and if it ever did meet that goal it would become a religeon of sorts

it would hold all the answers and would never change alter or search beyond its self it would be all encompasing and all knowing it would become omnipotent as the many invisible men in clouds are supposed to be

a religeon works from the other way starting at the point of all encompasing all knowing and never changing(as the bible tells us christianity should be)

if you hold all the answers by ignoring all the questions its just a way to stop growth the invisible cloud man did it is just unacceptable to me as a blanket one size fits all for everything answer

the humanistic aspects of religeon no one can really deny as good, its the negative side all religeons carry that cause the problems

if religeon stepped away from the negative sides as i say you would pretty much scrap the entire old testament, and save some of the new testament(including the buddist bits that got stolen)

youd then need to drop the eternal salvation for the few as well and it would become a jesus inspired philosophy

maybe that is where reliegon will eventually evolve, too a purely posative philosophy based on how to treat all people regardless of race or reliegon within this life. but while fundamentalism is on the increase in all all sides of the religeous world its heading the wrong way

that there won't be one more question beyond that it can't answer. For that reason I believe in God

there will always be one more perosn to help,one more person to care about beyond what we are capable of should we just believe god will do it for us?





[edit on 26/10/08 by noobfun]

Originally posted by noobfun

that there won't be one more question beyond that it can't answer. For that reason I believe in God

there will always be one more perosn to help,one more person to care about beyond what we are capable of should we just believe god will do it for us?

[edit on 26/10/08 by noobfun]

Aha! Clever! But that doesn't follow, I'm afraid. Actually that's where the distinction appears between what we might call my logical faith (my reasoned belief that, in the absence of a better explanation, it seems likely that something created the universe purposefully) and my Christian faith (based on my acceptance and following of the central tenets of New Testament teaching).

Put very broadly, it's clear that Christians and I believe in very much the same concept - God. Consider the Old or New Testament as a whole. There's actually very little discussion of the actual nature of God. No discussion of where God came from, what drove him to create the Universe, and so on. There's the idea that we were formed in his image, but that's actually only very briefly touched on at the beginning. Not much by way of a clue, there.

Thereafter we witness his wrath, indignation, mercy and compassion without ever finding out why he cares in the first place. As far as the Bible is concerned, therefore, God is simply there, he exists and is the starting point for what follows. Just as, to me, God simply represents what just is. God is the answer to the question "why"? To some that answer is unsatisfactory, to my humble mind it's enough simply to have an answer at all. Especially when no one has got a better one.

And in fact there's room for some agreement between us as to the nature of God. Earlier in the thread I suggested that science might well at some stage us lead us to greater certainty in the existence of God, not less - and you echo that to some extent with your suggestion that religion may well one day simply become a benevolent philosophy rather than what I condede can be fairly selective, you're-in-or-you're-out dogma now.

There's no question that religion struggles to keep pace with scientific change. It's in its very nature that such should be the case. It's equally natural that science should sometimes get ahead of itself. I still maintain we need a balance, and I still think there are few counterweights to scientific progress (and I know that one man's counterweight is another man's obstruction) more effective than religious reason.

So, I follow Christian teaching because I believe it to be fundamentally sound in terms of what kind of society it holds up as its ideal. I follow specifically Church of England teaching because I find it nice and mild, like the chicken korma to Catholicism's hot vindaloo. Although I like a vindaloo now and again, especially when I've got a cold. I'm digressing, but I think you get my point, which is that Christianity provides the method but not the conclusion. My conclusion is that God exists because that's the only logical answer to the "why" question.

I'd almost rather Dawkins put "Christianity probably doesn't exist" than "God probably doesn't exist." But actually what I'd prefer is that he was half as pompous and half as sure of himself in the face of the most pressing uncertainty that faces human existence.

LW

Oh Dawkins, well all love you. I'm an atheist and I think this is going too far though. I've never been to the UK however. I live in Canada and theres no religious advertisments on our buses, if there are in the UK then go ahead put "there probably is no god" or whatever on the buses. But religion is a hot topic right now, I was even suprised when I saw a religulous commercial on Teletoon (childrens cartoon channel (yes I watch childrens cartoons))

Originally posted by Bean328
When chilfren come of age they choose for themselves wat religion they see fit. Yea the parents have influence on their decision but everyone has a choice. When I was in high school I made my choice and I'm a non-denominational christian.

If you think christian children are brainwashed into believing in God or watever you think then the same goes for athiest kids. You probly are going to try to persuade them to stay atheist when they get older.

What would some of you think if your child decided they didn't wanna be atheist anymore and wanted to be a christian.

The story goes both ways. If this guy wants to put signs up that speak his opinion then he made the choice to but don't critsize christians for doing the same thing before him.

Well isn't it a huge coincidence then that so many kids with Muslim parents turn out to be Muslim and so many kids with Roman Catholic parents turn out to be Roman Catholic etc. They have been brainwashed from an early age because children have evolved to believe what their parents tell them. Dawkins outlines this eloquently in his book. I've read the bible and it's a sh*t read. Why dont you read Dawkins and provide some feedback, preferably more articulate than my own.

As for me, my parents never made me go to church or stopped me going but my mother taught me about god. I just had the sense when I stopped believing in fairies and father christmas to also stop believing in God.

You ask "What would some of you think if your child decided they didn't wanna be atheist anymore and wanted to be a christian." What kind of question is that, unlike some lunatics us Atheists dont have honour killings for the smallest religious transgression.

The difference here is that the guy's sign is true, "there probably is no God." Christian signs state or have the underlying message that there is defintely a God. They dont have the decency or sanity to say, we believe there is a God so there may well be one, so join us and fingers crossed we're right and the other 5 billion people are wrong.

This whole thing is not about Christians anyway, there are lots of other religions beside your own you arrogant mooncalf.

for all you card carrying members of the Richard Dawkins fan club,instead of blindly taking what he says as factual and accurate,please take a leaf out of your own books and engage in a little "free thinking" which you invite others of belief to try.

Dawkins book is riddled with factual innacuracies,misrepresentations and whatever term for plain mistakes you care to mention.All this from a man who calls himself, quote " a cultural Christian" who likes nothing more than going to a church at Christmas time to sing carols......

His arguments make completely incorrect assumptions and take doctrinally mistaken positions from which he launches his badly aimed tirades against mainly,but not exclusively,Christianity.The man clearly has no grasp of what it is he seeks to criticise.

Look for a book called "have you been deluded by Dawkins" as a handy and easy to use kick off.The pertinent errors are highlighted and dealt with in a easy to understand and surprisingly straightforward way

regarding those who repeatedly refer to "contradictions" in scripture,these have been fully dealt with by a number of sources,but the same "contradictions" keep coming up again and again.I'm assuming that all the "higher critics" of scripture are honours degree students in Old Testament Hebrew and New Testament Greek.......I am not,but defer to those scholars and Bible experts who are.

Free will is also a phrase used in connection with this whole situation.Has a man free will?This is best addressed by the 2 main approaches to the issue of salvation...ie arminianism v the Doctrines of Grace or "Calvinism" as it is often referred to.

In basic form,the positions are these.

Arminianism teaches: "Make your decision for Christ.:----
THE BIBLE TEACHES: ‘All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.’ (Matt. 11:27)

Arminianism teaches: "I accepted Jesus as my personal saviour."
THE BIBLE TEACHES: ‘Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you (John 15:16). Also: But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me.’ (Paul’s testimony in Galatians 1:15,16)

Arminianism teaches: "God wants everyone to be saved."
THE BIBLE TEACHES: ‘And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables: That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand...’(Mark 4:11,12).


Arminianism teaches: "God can’t save you unless you let him, it is your choice."
THE BIBLE TEACHES: ‘So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy...Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.’ (Romans 9:16, 18).

Martin Luther, in that strong assertion of his,said, ‘If any man doth ascribe of salvation, even the very least, to the free will of man, he knoweth nothing of grace, and he hath not learnt Jesus Christ aright.’

"It may seem a harsh sentiment; but he who in his soul believes that man does of his own free will turn to God, cannot have been taught of God, for that is one of the first principles taught us when God begins with us, that we have neither will nor power, but that He gives both; that He is ‘Alpha and Omega’ in the salvation of men." (Charles H. Spurgeon from the sermon ‘Free Will A Slave’ (1855)

Scripture also makes clear that mankind has been blinded by the god of this world...ie satan,so that they are unable to see the Gospel truth for what it actually is.

As for warning people about a lost eternity,Jesus spoke far more about Hell than He did about heaven.

although I'm aware that most readers will take a 100% contrary position,thank you anyway......

reply to post by 4N6310


I like your take on it....and the uncertainty shows he is not totally ignorant...because who is to say what I define GOD to be.
However it’s hard for me to think Dawkins would put out such a wishy-washy antidote as a response…being the most prominent atheist at the”NO GOD” helm today. Because to speak in such shaky “counter to religious advertisements” terms…does that not bump him down to the even more uncertain view of an agnostic? But then again someone once said, “I rather believe GOD exists and maybe find out at death that GOD doesn’t, rather than not believe only to find out at death that GOD does.” Maybe that’s his secret motto…though I doubt it.

reply to post by Clearskies


Your argument fails when you try to base anything on creationwiki.org.

You may as well have used the Bible to "prove" your points.

Originally posted by scottyb
I've read the bible and it's a sh*t read.

Oh come on! Deuteronomy? The Conquest of Canaan? That's some spectacular historical fiction right there! And the sacrifices? Spraying blood of the sacrificed animal against all four corners of the altar? Pretty pagan, if you ask me! God's merciless destruction of the Israelites, and Satan's "don't worship him, he's a dick!" response? Or perhaps Revelation of John, where the four animals sit around God's throne saying "holy is the LORD!" all day (wtf kind of insecure god needs that?), with eyes, the terrible eyes covering every inch of their bodies, even up under their wings, THE EYES! STARING AT YOU!

Come on, there's some great stuff in the Bible. Just not the sort of thing I'd make a religion out of.

Originally posted by C.C.Benjamin
reply to post by Clearskies

 

Your argument fails when you try to base anything on creationwiki.org.

You may as well have used the Bible to "prove" your points.

Same as when you would use TalkOrigins.com!
See, ya'll don't get past titles!

Originally posted by Clearskies

Originally posted by C.C.Benjamin
reply to post by Clearskies

 

Your argument fails when you try to base anything on creationwiki.org.

You may as well have used the Bible to "prove" your points.

Same as when you would use TalkOrigins.com!
See, ya'll don't get past titles!

No...you don't seem to understand. There is no such thing as "creation science". Creationwiki.org states it is "the encyclopedia of creation science". It is therefore the encyclopedia of nothing much. Hence it is of no value as a source.

All you have are a bunch of ancient fairytales handed down by some desert mad-man, that are contrary to the real world. All we have is empirical, testable, observable evidence that shows the same result every time.

You're the USS Destroyer, we're a lighthouse, and you're coming right at us. We can't move out of the way. Your call.

clearskies it still makes me laugh when you tried t prove darwin an evil racist by using a book some racist guy wrote in the 90's and tried to claim his words were Darwins

it got even funnier when we ran rings around you and proved even the views the guy was expressing on those 2 pages wernt even racist

how do you manage to pick the 2 least racist pages n a very racist book as proof of racism?




[edit on 27/10/08 by noobfun]

Perhaps we should ask the Amelakites what they think of racism and genocide?