Four Atheist Quotes That Hit Home.

I do not know how to respond to someone who's counter-point is always a bible passage. It is very frustrating to have a religious book be compared to the scientific method without applying the scientific method to that religious book.

Basically your argument for not applying Science to Consciousness is that it cannot be done. You say it cannot be done so you refuse to do it.

Very limited thinking.

If you asked the right questions about a "soul" or "spirit" or "consciousness" you will get farther than "I am not going to try".

Originally posted by Conclusion
reply to post by XXXN3O

 

It is my opinion that the advancement of a society is controlled by the one(s) who have conquered it.

I agree with that in short.

I might disagree on what is advancement though.

Anything including religion can be used as a tool to supress others. But that is not the science, bible, laws, theories or logic that has done so. It is the ones as you say.

But that does raise the question, who are the ones?

My answer to that and the explanation given would never satisfy everyone. Therefore it is just as above in anyone elses perception, even if I know it is true.



[edit on 12-7-2009 by XXXN3O]

Atheism is the only healthy & logical way to live life in my opinion.

s&f

I think science has not achieved a state that it can be done for now. Maybe a few more years taking spirituality serious enough to actually try to investigate it would help.

reply to post by Alaskan Man


While I wouldnt really consider myself an atheist, nor any other name that can be associated with religion, those first two quotes and the "wise man" one you delivered a few posts later were my favorite. I really liked them.

The other two were good, but not like the first ones.

Thanks though, I love a good quote!

reply to post by XXXN3O


What is meant by that is this. Whether it advances at all or stops completely. Whether the people are suppressed or totally free. It is always the Ruler(s) who control it.

If the people rise up and overthrow their conquerors then they become the conquerors and thus repeating the process.

[edit on 12-7-2009 by Conclusion]

Originally posted by Miraj
I've never heard any of these quotes, however they well describe the reason that I am agnostic.

Agnostic I can respect. It's a very honest and humbled opinion/realization. It doesn't make the assumption anything beyond our perception/understanding is false.

Good for you for not being close minded. As you are being honest, you will someday start to wonder more and then you will start to seek. And that is exactly what is needed.

Same path I took. Didn't believe Christians/Theologians, thought atheist was a bit close minded, so I took the honest approach and said - well I simply do not know. I eventually started to put weight more towards there is likely some higher power and would say I was then a "deist" like Jefferson. And now I would be "gnostic", meaning I have direct knowledge as a result of experience and seeking.

Makes me smile to see such honesty.

For those of us that can't agree I offer the following quote

Death is the solution to all problems. No man - no problem.
~Joseph Stalin

Just kidding, I don't want to hear about any gun toting weirdos solving their problems.

"If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world." --Christopher Hitchens


"That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence." — Christopher Hitchens


I enjoy Christopher Hitchens lectures , he has an incredible command of the English language . A bit caustic for some ..... perhaps .

reply to post by Histopherness


Lol. I think i need to rethink the looney bin...just kidding.

reply to post by Alaskan Man


To echo the first responder to your post, not only was Jefferson not an antheist, he authored the Jeffersonian Bible which was a compendium of the teachings of Jesus Christ removing what Jefferson considered to be supernatural and extraneous to the life of Christ.

After seeing all this, i'm guessing you guys are going to hate the one I put out.

Although, every angle has very good quotes to it!

I should even go on to confucious says threads!

Originally posted by UmbraSumus


"If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world." --Christopher Hitchens


"That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence." — Christopher Hitchens


I enjoy Christopher Hitchens lectures , he has an incredible command of the English language . A bit caustic for some ..... perhaps .

"Lest you humble yourself as a small child you will in no wise enter the kingdom of God."--Jesus Christ

If a child is about to touch an open flame, will you not stop him? We teach our children from a very young age to read and write. We teach them math and science. If we do not teach them spirituality at a young age, when it is import, then we do them a great disservice. People look at it like it is hard or they don't want anyone even God telling them what to do. That is because we are truely free to choose. We are free to choose, but as we have learned in this life our choices effect our future. If we make wrong choices that equals bad futures and so on and so forth. Which leads to this, The younger we learn to accept the truth, whatever you believe it is, the more you will embrace it and learn of it.

Originally posted by Conclusion
Whether the people are suppressed or totally free. It is always the Ruler(s) who control it.

...thats an odd perception of being totally free... imo, people who are truly free dont have a ruler, except for the measuring kind... maybe what you meant is that the conquerors write the history books and control society via propaganda pushed as absolute truth...

On the same note as OP I read this a while ago so I thought I'd share it.

webspace.ship.edu...

Good read


Control is an illusion that our generally closed minds fail to see as an illusion. No one controls you, you follow them. You can deny that illusion and be free spirited and let the people who follow the "leader" go on with their lives... I think I'm going to go to the beach now.. cya good sunset tonight

[edit on 7/12/09 by MoothyKnight]

Originally posted by TurkeyBurgers
I do not know how to respond to someone who's counter-point is always a bible passage. It is very frustrating to have a religious book be compared to the scientific method without applying the scientific method to that religious book.

Basically your argument for not applying Science to Consciousness is that it cannot be done. You say it cannot be done so you refuse to do it.

Very limited thinking.

If you asked the right questions about a "soul" or "spirit" or "consciousness" you will get farther than "I am not going to try".

No, I came to these understandings after years of work, thought and study. And now you are expecting and asking me to put that understanding into a spoonful sized paragraph that you can accept and eat.

I can't do it like that. In order to understand, it will mean you will have to take a very deep personal journey to understanding many things that I have come to learn. It's not just a single argument that can be made, it's an understanding.

You don't just start out teaching a 5 year old college level quantum physics. That child will have to learn many basic things before he can come to grasp and understand quantum physics. But yet, this is exactly what you ask me to do, you ask me to tell you about matters of consciousness and how logic itself works.

I make my entire living based on my ability to create logic. It's what I do day after day after day. And I am taken care of very nicely because of that ability. I spent years working on these problems, and had mapped out just about everything in purpose logically for the universe in relation to how understanding and intelligence is achieved. However, there is 1 barrier you can not get beyond, and that is that the program itself will never have free will, choice or consciousness. Because the program is 100% from this universe and how this universe works.

Meanwhile, if you take a look at science, it completely ignores choice, free will and consciousness. Physics does not include consciousness. Why not? Because choice means something is not repeatable over and over, and the scientific method itself breaks down as a result.

A rocket is all of this universe. It has no free will. Because of that, we can introduce the correct actions in order to get the reactions we want. Because of this, it gives us control/power. If that rocket had a choice in the matter, guess what? You have no idea where it is going to go, because you have lost control.

You can add logic to that, and have it follow that logic and adjust for things, no problem. But it will always do so because the programmers logic told it too, it never makes a choice.

And this stuff is expressed in the bible even. I didn't find these things out from the bible, I found them out from experience and working on such things. But I'm sorry, I can't put over 10 years of work experience and understandings gained from logic, it's limits and so forth in a small paragraph, anymore than you can tell someone a physics equation and they will actually understand things.

I've tried to show you things. Such as the fact you can not generate a random number with logic. That's a fact, widely known and scientifically accepted/proven. And yet, at the same time the only way we can even simulate and give the illusion of choice is to use a random number. We can generate random numbers that people don't know, we call them pseudo-random numbers and they serve the purpose fine. But they are a well known illusion.

Take step 1, ask the questions. Then, come to understand the answers, rather than accepting what others say. Then maybe you can hear me.

If you will eat it, then it will be feed to you. As long as you are asking for people to feed you, that is what you are going to get. If you actually want to understand, then you will have to seek and feed yourself. The door can be opened for you, you can be directed to it, but at some point you've got to get up and actually walk through it if you want to see whats on the other side of it.

The best I can really do for you is to point out the problems in what is said, in hopes it will plant a question(seed) in your head, which may one day grow into an understanding for you. Can't remove one from a box if you don't first tear down that box.

So, when you or anyone else can come up with the logic to generate a truly random number which is not predictable, which would be a demonstration of choice then give me a call and tell me I was wrong.

Random.org

RANDOM.ORG offers true random numbers to anyone on the Internet. The randomness comes from atmospheric noise, which for many purposes is better than the pseudo-random number algorithms typically used in computer programs. People use RANDOM.ORG for holding drawings, lotteries and sweepstakes, to drive games and gambling sites, for scientific applications and for art and music. The service has existed since 1998 and was built and is being operated by Mads Haahr of the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin in Ireland.

There are services which are needed in order to provide unknown factors to put into the equation to generate random numbers that another computer can't predict.

What are you?




[edit on 7/12/2009 by badmedia]

Here is one of my favorite quotes.

"I must be God because every time I pray I find I'm talking to myself".

-P3-

reply to post by badmedia


You seem to be a teacher.

Originally posted by ProjectPhyrePhly
Here is one of my favorite quotes.

"I must be God because every time I pray I find I'm talking to myself".

-P3-

Closer to the truth than the sky fairy claims.

Know thyself.

reply to post by Wyn Hawks


Very few people are totally free. We think we are but we are not. I believe that we all have absolute freedom. We can do whatever we want. "You can't just kill people" I hear all the time. Bull; watch the news happens all the time. Oh sure maybe we can't fly, but we can climb to the top of a building, we can leap off, and we can imagine that we are flying until the squish at the end.

I have no boss. I work at a nursing home, but work for no one. I agreed to do a job for a certain amount per hour. No one gets to tell me what to do or how to do it, I do the job as I understand that it needs to be done. The closest thing I might have to a boss is the residents because I do my job on behalf of them. They can not do these things themselves.

Few people can claim the freedom I have and so; often time, the Rulers do in fact control the free.