The Folly of Atheism

[Catholicus]

yes, and yes.



Certainly not indoctrinated into a Giant Pack Of Lies. And certainly you have failed to show otherwise...

So. How about YOU?


Yes, and liar-- christianity FOUGHT TO KEEP slaves, in the South. Literally.

They used the PRO-SLAVE bible too! Any book that describes how to CARE FOR SLAVES-- and does not Explicitly FORBID HAVING SLAVES?

IS ENTIRELY IMMORAL.

Other Christians FOUGHT to ABOLISH slavery. Literally.

Who were the genuine Christians ?

Those who had the honesty to see that the biblical command "Love your neighbour as yourself" is an explicit forbidding of slavery.

 

[Catholicus]

Yep. I listed like 10 links to articles discussing the issue.



It's as if there was NO GOD TO CURB THESE GODLY MEN. Isn't it?

Either your god is just FINE with this corruption?

Or your god CANNOT DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT? (incompetent)

Or simply isn't there in the first place...


LMAO! Oh. My. Move to Saudi Arabia, then-- you'd LOVE it there! Atheists are imprisoned and killed out of hand.

JUST your sort of People-- everyone is a Theist-- or else.

Saudi Arabia forbids Christianity - no one can take a bible there.

God doesn't send thunderbolts to kill bad people - because if He did so, we'd all have to be Good Puppets.

 

[Catholicus]

Wrong. The first few links from "religion on the decline worldwide" google.

THE ONLY NAY-SAYERS ARE PURE RELIGIOUS PROPAGANDA SOURCES. Interesting.

Religion declining in importance for many Americans, especially for Millennials - Religion News Service

'Christianity as default is gone': the rise of a non-Christian Europe

Religion Declining, Secularism Surging | HuffPost

https://www.quora.com/Is-belief-in-God-on-the-decline-worldwide-and-occurring-in-all-religions

Protestants decline, more have no religion in a sharply shifting religious landscape

The decline of religion in the West

Catholics' Church Attendance Resumes Downward Slide

The Real Reason Religion Is Declining In America

The World's Newest Major Religion: No Religion

https://thehumanist.com/news/hnn/the-state-of-religion-declining-belief-in-god-worldwide

Decline of religion in the West ? - yes, that's good news for religion, as the West is declining (indeed dying).

And its low birth-rate populations are being replaced by fertile (and religious) migrants.

 

[Catholicus]

Religion in the West = Christianity...

You are right Bob, Christianity is declining, but Islam and the Baha'i Faith are growing.

Besides that, the West is not the whole world, it is just the Western world, mostly Christian.

Christianity is a growing religion globally.

The West has ceased to be Christian over this last 300 years .

 

[Catholicus]

No, same judgment there as for any mythological tale.

In Luke 1, a priest goes into the temple and an angel shows up next to the altar who says he's going to have a son. When he questions this because he and his wife are old, the angel magically curses him with muteness. He remains mute until the end of the chapter, when his son is 8 days old and they take him to be circumcised and he agrees with his wife that the boy should be named John, when he miraculously can talk again.

Meanwhile, the same angel stops over to talk to Mary and also tell her she's going to be pregnant with a son too - even though she's a virgin. How? Oh, God is going to magically impregnate her, of course.

Then there's the fact that the whole narrative here is crafted to echo the story of Abraham and Sarai in Genesis. I'll let you do some research on the obvious parallels without going off on too much of a tangent.

This stuff is not history. It is literature, myth.



LOL. I already exposed two examples of black and white thinking on your part. Please stop projecting.



No, it isn't. You're just ignoring what I said. Isn't is possible the Apostles were honestly mistaken?



A silly strategy. I already explained that arguing for secularism/liberalism kills two birds with one stone.



I dont think it's guaranteed by any means. That doesn't mean we need to treat Christianity with kid gloves. We can walk and chew gum.

1) You are blissfully, or perhaps wilfully, ignorant of your own projecting onto others.

2) No, the Apostles couldn't have been "honestly mistaken" about Jesus' physical resurrection.

3) The story of Abraham and Sara foreshadows - by God's providence and design - the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth.

4) Luke's Gospel is "literature, myth" ? Well, IYO. In the opinion of the world's Christians, it's factual history. You have no grounds for saying otherwise, other than your wish to believe otherwise.

But you really do want to keep working on behalf of Islam !

 

[Altfish]

They often are considered.

They need counselling and kindness; not abortion.

Abortion can be the kindest outcome.

 

[Catholicus]

Yes-- but none of the bible stories are. Ain't that a peach? Your Highest Holy Book has not a single true tale within it's covers.

We know that, because we have actual History -- from artifacts and the detritus of civilization.

And none of the Major Stories in the bible? Ever took place-- not a one.

Hmmmmm......

IYO.

 

[Catholicus]

Abortion can be the kindest outcome.

Not for the dead baby.

 

[Altfish]

Your universe is an impossibility.

No it's not because it exists.
Just be cause you (and I) don't understand it doesn't make it impossible.

 

[Altfish]

No - we haven't invented God.

God has invented us - we wouldn't exist otherwise.

We'll have to agree to differ here.
I believe God is a man made invention used to explain the unknown; but as science has advanced god's usefulness has diminished.

 

[columbus]

No one indulges in Magical Non-think more than Atheists. Their belief in a magical, self-created universe is the best thing in that line.

Everyone knows that God exists - it's just that some people pretend otherwise.

May I quote this post in another thread? RF rules prevent me from doing so without permission.
They're two of the common assertions by theists that irk me the most.
Tom

 

[Altfish]

Not for the dead baby.

As long as it is an early abortion, it is not a baby.
Most abortions/miscarriages happen 'naturally' - why does your god allow so many miscarriages, why does he (to use your phrase) kill babies?

 

[ArtieE]

We'll have to agree to differ here.
I believe God is a man made invention used to explain the unknown; but as science has advanced god's usefulness has diminished.

It's not a belief we know how he was made.

 

[Altfish]

It's not a belief we know how he was made.

Do you really think that I've not seen these sorts of video.
To be an atheist is not a decision made on the whim; it has evolved over years since my initial indoctrination by school and church.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

some projected nefarious agenda

You're here to malign atheists. That's your agenda. That's why you started a thread demeaning atheism and atheists

It just seems to me, that lashing out with hostility toward strangers on an internet forum reveals some issues with God

Nobody is lashing out in hostility here except you atheophobes. As I said, it's why you started this thread - to tell atheists how stupid they are for being atheists.

I look forward to you correcting the bias from the many militant, intolerant atheists, here.

Militant Christians are starting these atheophobic hate-fest threads. And no, we don't have to tolerate the filth Christianity is spreading about atheists.

can dish it out, but can't take any return fire?

I can see that. Your church has been dishing it out for millennia, and suddenly, when atheists get a voice and a platform and begin telling you what they think of that religion of hatred, you cry about it and play the persecution card. Your church is the aggressor. It is immoral. It teaches hatred.

It would be more accurate to say "If you have proof, then you aren't believing by faith." Evidence is not proof.

I disagree. My beliefs are usually based on evidence that often fails to rise to the level of proof. One's degree of belief should be commensurate with a competent assessment of the quantity and quality of the relevant evidence available, and be adjusted up or down as new evidence surfaces making the belief more or less likely to be correct. Any other level of belief, whether greater or less, is unjustified belief, or faith.

God will never force himself on anyone.

Neither will Santa, and for the same reason.

but what if it's true?

What? That the god you worship doesn't exist, and that if there is an afterlife in which we are judged, that it won't be by the judge you were expecting or according to your religious beliefs? I'd say that you have a problem if that's the case. What if you were expected to use your reasoning faculty and conscience to decide what is true and what is good, but instead, went to a flawed book for those answers, answers that you could have seen through if you had exercised a little reason. What if you offend your judge and are punished for making that choice? That's the quality of the argument you are offering - believe something because it might be true.

Blind Freddy can see that this life is nothing but a constant string of disappointments and problems...tragedies and injustice....mostly brought about by our own ill-considered decisions or as a result of the selfish decisions of others.

Freddy sounds like a Jehovah's Witness. That's what is taught in their Kingdom Halls, an extremely dark, pessimistic, nihilistic view of the world and humanity.

Freddy pays a price for accepting that description of reality. If only he could share in the humanists' optimism about life and its possibilities. It's the same world, but it doesn't look so horrible.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Abortion is murderous, homosexual behaviour is self-destructive. These are verifiable facts - not merely "beliefs."

Your use of the word fact is consistent with faith-based thought. A fact is whatever you choose to believe is a fact. You're wrong on both counts. If you used to evidence to decide what is true about the world instead of an ancient book and the words of clergy that drink from that same cup, you'd understand that murder is illegal homicide, and many homosexuals lead satisfying lives except when then encounter the bigotry of small-minded religions.

The burden of proof of that statement is on them

The atheist has no burden of proof. Atheism is merely the no answer to the question of whether one believes in a god or gods, and I don't care if you believe my claim that I don't.

Also, there is never a burden of proof when dealing with a faith-based thinker. They don't use reason applied to evidence to decide what is true, so how are you going to get through to them if they don't allow it?

Truth never impresses atheists.

What would you know about truth? You believe a fantasy and call it truth. If you cared about the truth, you'd use a method capable of determining truth rather than faith and revelation.

the murder of unwanted babies is fascist in the highest degree

Thinking that you have the right to impose your religious beliefs and make that decision for a woman with an unwanted pregnancy is fascist. You would have her be an incubator for the state enforcing the beliefs of one religion. It's a little too Handmaid's Tale for my taste, but that's the authoritarian nature of Christianity - everybody commanded to submit to everybody else, man to God, subject to king, slave to master, and wife to husband.

The theory of evolution has nothing whatever to say about religion. No scientific theory does

The evidence supporting the theory of evolution has already ruled out the possibility of a god like the one described in the Christian Bible for the reasons given. You concede that point when you fail to rebut the specifics of the argument and dismiss it away with the wave of a hand as you just did.

Furthermore, I didn't say that science commented on religion. I said that it has ruled out a particular class of gods.

Epicurus chose to overlook reality - that God has delegated freewill to His angelic and human creations, thus (temporarily) surrendering part of His omnipotence.

Or, there is no god.

Perhaps you haven't noticed that every choice Christians say that their god makes is what we would see in a godless universe. In a universe run by a god, we might or might not have regular physical laws, but in a godless universe capable of supporting intelligent life, we would require order. In a universe run by a god, we might have a holy book so impressive that no human being could have written it or just flawed human attempts at the same, but in a godless universe, only the latter would be expected. And on it goes, always the choice we would find in a godless universe.

science and religion aren't in conflict, because they aren't in competition

Science is closing the gaps on all gods. They are not included in any scientific theories, and wouldn't make them more predictive or explanatory if gods were inserted ad hoc. Stick a god into any scientific theory you like and see if you can improve it. Newton did in his celestial mechanics when he hit a problem he couldn't solve. His mathematics told him that the solar system ought to be unstable, with planets like the earth being thrown into the sun or into interstellar space by the gravitational tugging from Jupiter and Saturn, and so he posited divine intervention to keep the solar system intact. But Laplace came along 130 years later, solved the three-body gravitational problem with new mathematics, and Newton's god was removed from the theory.

Science has shown much of the Bible to be in error. There was no global flood, which was likely posited due to another error - interpreting marine fossils on mountain tops as evidence for global submersion, a more reasonable explanation for how those fossils got to those elevations than the idea that the mountains were once sea floors. That set off a lot speculation about why the local tribal god flooded the world, and a story of punishment was concocted, albeit a rather juvenile one. You don't need omniscience to realize that if you consider the human race systemically defective, killing most of it and starting over using the same breeding stock is doomed to failure.

Religion crept into the ID researchers' science and rendered it sterile and impotent.

And I've already mentioned how the evidence supporting evolutionary theory has already ruled out the god of the Christian, which you dismissed without rebuttal. The argument is sound and stands rejected, but unchallenged. Whatever happened in the history of the universe, the earth, and the life on it, was either biological evolution or a super-human effort to deceive man into thinking otherwise. If the theory were ever falsified, it's too late to return to the idea that a god that wants to be known, loved, obeyed, believed, and worshiped is the explanation.

And why hate Catholics ? It's bigots - unbelievers, mainly - who hate.

Seriously? Your religion is all about bigotry. It generates atheophobic and homophobic bigots by the tens or hundreds of millions. Do I need to wheel out the scriptures that teach the hatred again?

Incidentally, I notice that nobody rebutted that argument, either. How could you? The words are clearly bigoted hate speech.

And who expresses hatred of Catholics apart from Protestants? I like most Catholics I encounter, but not the bigots. And I don't dislike those people for being Catholic or Christian. I dislike them because they are bigots spreading hate speech from their Bibles

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

He isn't unbiased.

Why shouldn't he (Richard Carrier) be biased. He's an educated and probably decent man. He's probably biased against drunk driving, faith-based thought, and crossing the street without looking both ways. Biases are what we accumulate over a lifetime of learning. We have a bias for one restaurant and against another based on prior experience. It's an essential part of learning, and very helpful if the biases are rational.

Incidentally, by your argument, you should be disregarded also because of you apparent biases. Is that how you feel?

I have the same opinion of militant / activist Atheists as I have of Nazi propagandists.

Who's being militant here? This is a thread created to attack atheists. Were you hoping that we wouldn't notice?

And more of your hatreds and bigotry.

Here's another comment that all of you routinely ignore, but that's fine. It's a rhetorical question needing no answer. How should atheists feel about a religion that actively and systematically demeans them? I guess I'm asking the other atheists, and suggesting an answer.

So, no - I won't "address" his (Carrier's) content.

Carrier made the last feasible and unrebutted argument, meaning that he prevailed in your disagreement. That's how it works, same as in a courtroom. The last attorney to make an argument that is consistent with the evidence and which can't be or hasn't successfully rebutted will get the verdict he seeks if the jury is competent.

Bottom line is these groups of people cannot accept that non believers are honestly non believing. So in life they seek to make life hard, if not impossible for the non believer.

Worse, they are indoctrinated to see atheists as immoral. Look at the contempt for atheists on this thread. I'd call doing that immoral. And I'd like every atheist tp recognize that this religion is their enemy.

• "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God."- American President George H. W. Bush

This is what Christianity is teaching those willing to accept its bigoted depiction of atheists. Why should atheists be treated that way? Because they can live without religion and god beliefs? This religion should be revealed for what it is - an ideology of hatred, especially for atheists and the LGBTQ+ community, both of which it systematically scapegoats, marginalized, and demonizes. Come on, you atheist-hating Christians. Show us what they are teaching you.

You are ASSUMING A PRIORI that God is make-believe ! But that assumption can't be made.

The god of the Christian Bible has been ruled out for those who use reason applied to evidence to decide what is true.

Only the stupider sort of atheist imagines belief in God's existence to be nonsensical.

How stupid do you have to be to believe in a god that has been ruled out multiple ways?

someone who is an atheist in his or her heart, is evil,

You are a bigot, and the product of a hateful ideology.

Surely even an atheist can see the difference between the ideas - the concepts - of (1) God and (2) of pixies (magical or not, flatulent or not) ?

I don't see a difference. Gods, pixies, brownies, elves, sprites, fairies, nymphs, satyrs, fawns, changelings, ghosts, goblins, spirits, giants, doppelgangers, demons, devils, angels, demigods, djinns, succubi, incubi, zombies, mummies, werewolves, banshees, gnomes, trolls, imps, gorgons, gargoyles, dragons, mermaids, unicorns, sea serpents, furies, harpies, fates, muses, graces, minotaurs, medusae, gremlins, warlocks, sirens, phantasms, poltergeists, specters, zombies, djinns, spooks, demons, wraiths, revenants, phantoms, ghouls, apparitions, or eidolons. They're all on the same shelf with the cyclops, the White Walkers, and the Kraken, and we’re free to ignorre them all without counterargument..

"We're not two sides of the same coin, and you don't get to put your unreason up on the same shelf with my reason. Your stuff has to go over there, on the shelf with Zeus and Thor and the Kraken, with the stuff that is not evidence-based, stuff that religious people never change their mind about, no matter what happens ... I'm open to anything for which there's evidence. Show me a god, and I will believe in him. If Jesus Christ comes down from the sky during the halftime show of this Sunday's Super Bowl and turns all the nachos into loaves and fishes, well, I'll think ... "Oh, look at that. I was wrong. There he is. My bad. Praise the Lord." - Bill Maher

But - with WMD's and climate change - we're so much wiser and CLEVERER than those benighted religious people of the past !

I blame faith-based thought for climate denial, and who better to go to if you need that than Christians, These are your people, not mine:

• "We don't have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand" - James Watt, Secretary of the Interior under Reagan (note his position and responsibilities)

• "My point is, God's still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous." - Sen. Inhofe, R-Okla

• "The Earth will end only when God declares it's time to be over. Man will not destroy this Earth. This Earth will not be destroyed by a flood. . . . I do believe God's word is infallible, unchanging, perfect." - Rep John Shimkus, R-Ill.

 

[Subduction Zone]

You are using humbugging jargon - and using it incorrectly.

Nice try. but wrong again. Do you want a serious discussion or are you too hung up on your myths?

The fact is that when critically investigated the tales of early martyrs fall apart even worse than George Washington's cherry tree. The stories become more like Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.

 

[Subduction Zone]

You need to provide a citation; disprove it !

Jesus was fully Divine and fully human.

In His human nature, He was mortal and suffered appalling agony.

You really do lack a knowledge of Christianity.

No, the person making the rather crazy claim has to prove that.

 

[wandering peacefully]

As I do not see myself as a "fundamentalist" of the same ilk as those who dogmatically insist that everyone who is not a believer has to go to an eternal punishment in a fiery hell.....

British & World English fundamentalism


Definition of fundamentalism in English:
fundamentalism
NOUN
mass noun

• 1A form of a religion, especially Islam or Protestant Christianity, that upholds belief in the strict, literal interpretation of scripture.
  
  ‘there was religious pluralism there at a time when the rest of Europe was torn by fundamentalism’
  1. 1.1Strict adherence to the basic principles of any subject or discipline.
     
     ‘free-market fundamentalism’

fundamentalism | Definition of fundamentalism in English by Lexico Dictionaries

..I see Jesus as the role model. He offered a message that would result in altering people's perceptions of the way things are.

Why not leave it at Jesus has a lot of wisdom worthy of consideration just like a lot of spiritual teachers such as Buddha, Chief Joseph and others? Why look for more meaning than what is presented? Or look to other great people who have messages which actually could benefit all of humanity and all of life on this one little rock we live on together? Because this is reality. People may dream, believe, swear to, die for, kill for, some other godly universe or space different than the one we actually do live in, but that is not reality. None of us can know what the reality is so why create billions of different stories to tell each other instead of dealing with the tree in the forest which does make a noise when it falls?

Why can't people just hear the falling tree?