Rick O'Shez
Irishman bouncing off walls
The familiar but incorrect theist assumption that spirituality and religion have to involve "God".
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*[I believe] Atheism is an absurd worldview
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The familiar but incorrect theist assumption that spirituality and religion have to involve "God".
Atheists have different worldviews. Buddhists and secular Jews and Raelians are all deitiless and you can hardly say they have the same worldview.
And why are things in the Middle East going so bad with all those theists running around?
OutOfTheDarkness
Member
It's an honest question... a personal question.
If society cannot function without a moral code from God, as you preached, then what horrible things is God keeping you personally from doing? This is your theory, not mine, so please share your inner demons that God's moral code keeps at bay.
OutOfTheDarkness
Member
It's an honest question that he/she is obligated to answer, given their statement. Let him/her answer.
OutOfTheDarkness
Member
There is an old saying that, "One uses quotes and sayings in debates when they themselves have nothing worth quoting, and nothing relevant to say."
Who cares what one pagan said?
OutOfTheDarkness
Member
Having an imaginary friend tell you what to do is not a higher purpose.
I second that. I would love to hear what he/she would be capable of doing with no divine moral code stopping him/her.
OutOfTheDarkness
Member
lol.
Perhaps you were hearing voices. No one put forward the argument you are responding to.
OutOfTheDarkness
Member
Please, let's not start a debate amongst the intellectuals over the definition of "spirituality".
OutOfTheDarkness
Member
I find your pontificating nothing more than copy/paste rhetoric.
Please demonstrate you can connect human to human... and explain how your statement about humans not being able to live moral lives without God's moral code is proven in your life... and how you cannot choose to act morally on your own.
Please discuss your thought processes when confronted with a moral dilemma.
OutOfTheDarkness
Member
Yes they can. No they can't. Yes they can. No they can't.
There. End of that discussion.
OutOfTheDarkness
Member
Please let those that make the claims, answer to their claims.
Answer please.
Answer please.
OutOfTheDarkness
Member
To cling so tightly to one book's definition of "meaningless", is just as absurd as clinging to another book's definition of what human life is supposed to be... according to some guy who wrote it over 1000 years ago.
Look up Merriam-Webster's definition of "Gay"... using your logic, if you are happy and jovial in the service of your Lord, you are gay, and therefore lead a homosexual existence.
Your logic is juvenile at best, and at worst, hateful rhetoric directed toward a group of people who disagree with your religion... which is nothing new when it comes to religion in general.
You do have a point. Can you just imagine what al-Qaida, IS and Muslim terrorist suicide bombers would be capable of if they had been atheists instead of theists?
My worldview is much more than disbelief in deities.
The same would be true for other heathens too.
Disbelief is only a shared trait....we'd each have other non-shared ones.
I think I begin to understand you.
You don't mean "shallow" with the usual negative connotation of inadequacy.
Rather, it's about there being very little to it philosophically.
Similarly, being a deist is shallow because deism only the belief in a deity/deities,
& says nothing about one's philosophy.
Do I have it right?
For the theist.
allfoak
Alchemist
I met a guy in a homeless shelter once who i called Frankie.
His only purpose in life was to be able to collect disability insurance so that he could sit in his new easy chair, in his new apartment and watch his new big screen TV.
I never talked to Frankie about god cause it would have just messed up his happy life.
His only purpose in life was to be able to collect disability insurance so that he could sit in his new easy chair, in his new apartment and watch his new big screen TV.
I never talked to Frankie about god cause it would have just messed up his happy life.
Reflex
Active Member
From The Varieties of Religious Experience:
Is this an example of a consistent and happy-minded atheist? Or a contented cow? I suspect that the “new atheism” is indicative of cows rebelling against the growing realization that reality is much larger than what their physical senses are telling them.
Q. What does Religion mean to you?
A. It means nothing; and it seems, so far as I can observe, useless to others. I am sixty-seven years
of age and have resided in X. fifty years, and have been in business forty-five, consequently I have
some little experience of life and men, and some women too, and I find that the most religious and
pious people are as a rule those most lacking in uprightness and morality. The men who do not go
to church or have any religious convictions are the best. Praying, singing of hymns, and
sermonizing are pernicious — they teach us to rely on some supernatural power, when we ought to
rely on ourselves. I teetotally disbelieve in a God. The God-idea was begotten in ignorance, fear,
and a general lack of any knowledge of Nature. If I were to die now, being in a healthy condition
for my age, both mentally and physically, I would just as lief, yes, rather, die with a hearty
enjoyment of music, sport, or any other rational pastime. As a timepiece stops, we die — there
being no immortality in either case.
Q. What comes before your mind corresponding to the words God, Heaven, Angels, etc.?
A. Nothing whatever. I am a man without a religion. These words mean so much mythic bosh.
Q. Have you had any experience which appeared providential?
A. None whatever. There is no agency of the superintending kind. A little judicious observation as
well as knowledge of scientific law will convince any one of this fact.
Q. What things work most strongly on your emotions?
A. Lively songs and music; Pinafore instead of an Oratorio. I like Scott, Burns, Byron,
Longfellow, especially Shakespeare, etc., etc. Of songs, the Star-spangled Banner, America,
Marseillaise, and all moral and soul-stirring songs, but wishy-washy hymns are my detestation. I
greatly enjoy nature, especially fine weather, and until within a few years used to walk Sundays
into the country, twelve miles often, with no fatigue, and bicycle forty or fifty. I have dropped the
bicycle. I never go to church, but attend lectures when there are any good ones. All of my thoughts
and cogitations have been of a healthy and cheerful kind, for instead of doubts and fears I see
things as they are, for I endeavor to adjust myself to my environment. This I regard as the deepest
law. Mankind is a progressive animal. I am satisfied he will have made a great advance over his
present status a thousand years hence.
Q. What is your notion of sin?
A. It seems to me that sin is a condition, a disease, incidental to man’s development not being yet
advanced enough. Morbidness over it increases the disease. We should think that a million of years
hence equity, justice, and mental and physical good order will be so fixed and organized that no one
will have any idea of evil or sin.
Q. What is your temperament?
A. Nervous, active, wide-awake, mentally and physically. Sorry that Nature compels us to sleep at
all.
If we are in search of a broken and a contrite heart, clearly we need not look to this
brother. His contentment with the finite incases him like a lobster-shell and shields him
from all morbid repining at his distance from the Infinite. We have in him an excellent
example of the optimism which may be encouraged by popular science.
A. It means nothing; and it seems, so far as I can observe, useless to others. I am sixty-seven years
of age and have resided in X. fifty years, and have been in business forty-five, consequently I have
some little experience of life and men, and some women too, and I find that the most religious and
pious people are as a rule those most lacking in uprightness and morality. The men who do not go
to church or have any religious convictions are the best. Praying, singing of hymns, and
sermonizing are pernicious — they teach us to rely on some supernatural power, when we ought to
rely on ourselves. I teetotally disbelieve in a God. The God-idea was begotten in ignorance, fear,
and a general lack of any knowledge of Nature. If I were to die now, being in a healthy condition
for my age, both mentally and physically, I would just as lief, yes, rather, die with a hearty
enjoyment of music, sport, or any other rational pastime. As a timepiece stops, we die — there
being no immortality in either case.
Q. What comes before your mind corresponding to the words God, Heaven, Angels, etc.?
A. Nothing whatever. I am a man without a religion. These words mean so much mythic bosh.
Q. Have you had any experience which appeared providential?
A. None whatever. There is no agency of the superintending kind. A little judicious observation as
well as knowledge of scientific law will convince any one of this fact.
Q. What things work most strongly on your emotions?
A. Lively songs and music; Pinafore instead of an Oratorio. I like Scott, Burns, Byron,
Longfellow, especially Shakespeare, etc., etc. Of songs, the Star-spangled Banner, America,
Marseillaise, and all moral and soul-stirring songs, but wishy-washy hymns are my detestation. I
greatly enjoy nature, especially fine weather, and until within a few years used to walk Sundays
into the country, twelve miles often, with no fatigue, and bicycle forty or fifty. I have dropped the
bicycle. I never go to church, but attend lectures when there are any good ones. All of my thoughts
and cogitations have been of a healthy and cheerful kind, for instead of doubts and fears I see
things as they are, for I endeavor to adjust myself to my environment. This I regard as the deepest
law. Mankind is a progressive animal. I am satisfied he will have made a great advance over his
present status a thousand years hence.
Q. What is your notion of sin?
A. It seems to me that sin is a condition, a disease, incidental to man’s development not being yet
advanced enough. Morbidness over it increases the disease. We should think that a million of years
hence equity, justice, and mental and physical good order will be so fixed and organized that no one
will have any idea of evil or sin.
Q. What is your temperament?
A. Nervous, active, wide-awake, mentally and physically. Sorry that Nature compels us to sleep at
all.
If we are in search of a broken and a contrite heart, clearly we need not look to this
brother. His contentment with the finite incases him like a lobster-shell and shields him
from all morbid repining at his distance from the Infinite. We have in him an excellent
example of the optimism which may be encouraged by popular science.
Is this an example of a consistent and happy-minded atheist? Or a contented cow? I suspect that the “new atheism” is indicative of cows rebelling against the growing realization that reality is much larger than what their physical senses are telling them.
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