BS: The God Delusion 2010

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: olddude
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 12:27 PM

Then what you are trying to describe is shoving your belief system down the throats of others that do believe. Are you not .. if you go about ridiculing others thought process you are no different than any of the door knockers who want to toss a pamphlet in your face of the guys at the airport .. no different at all ... so rock on, hate mongers come in all sizes and shapes creeds and non creeds .. from the guy on TV saying all Jews are going to hell to the guys who sit behind a website telling Christians how stupid they are. The last time I looked you had no clue of life anymore than anyone else but so sure of your convictions that you can go about ridiculing others .. not worth my time for sure . Got far better things to do are far better people to discuss it with

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Bill D
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 12:28 PM

Yes, Steve...it does sorta "stop us from looking", but be mindful of how much work "looking" is! "Looking"...that is, serious exploration of all the alternatives, requires a LOT of time and energy and education to even comprehend what "looking" means.
Most of humanity has neither the time nor the background to do more than perfunctory looking...and they grow up with ready-made 'answers' handed to them. It is so much easier to just nod wisely when one's priest, Imam, preacher, cleric, father, teacher...etc. says: "We have already 'looked' and studied it, and here are the ancient books and temples and images that have been determined to be the 'answers'...oh, and by the way, there are serious penalties for doubting!"

Who has time...or stamina... to go "looking" elsewhere, when thousand year old answers are handed to you? And a lot of those answers come with fascinating, inspirational stories...along with ceremonies that create a fellowship with others and communities which provide support and 'meaning'. It is work to doubt & "look".

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Bill D
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 12:34 PM

(I will tell everyone also that it is a LOT of work to walk this line in the middle like I try to do....agreeing that there is lots of 'doubt' about religion, while suggesting that we can't just condemn it out-of-hand. ....and we can't DISprove it any more than they can prove it. We MUST learn to have useful conversations about how to co-exist.)

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 12:45 PM

Joe offers the opinion that Dawkin is a born again aethiest.   I would agree that some people who fall under this banner are every bit as fundamental and whacky as similar fundamentalists who happen to have an imaginary friend.

However, it is interesting that Richard Dawkin is often lambasted in this way. Why?   I didn't see the program Richard Bridge refers to, but I have read the book, indeed many of his books. His angle is not a born again anything, it is as a scientist who is fed up of his work being belittled by people, some of whom should know better. He is a geneticist, and as a theoretical one, perhaps at the top of his profession. He has taken the observed conclusions of Darwin and applied them at the genetic level.

Now... this is concerning to people who wish to sustain religion as more than a personal moral compass. Why? because he has explained rather plausibly the reasons for altruism and community cohesion. And guess what? it isn't a benevolent gift bestowed on humans. It would appear that it is possibly an efficient means for genes to use larger organisms (fauna and flora) to their ends. Try reading his "Selfish Gene" and I guarantee it will leave you thinking.

The vitriol and accusations based on myth that are poured onto this amazing person defy logic. His mistake I suppose is to play up to his reputation. He set out to say that God is a way of describing that which we do not yet understand, but scientific advance chisels away at the God mists of understanding. Too many people profit from God getting bigger rather than smaller, so he makes powerful enemies.

If my PhD dissertation was ridiculed because my equations aren't substantiated in the Bible or Q'ran, I reckon I would be a bit frustrated too....

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 12:51 PM

That hard work of doubting and looking is called science. All Dawkins asks you to do is to insist on evidence (which means a bit more than witness) for anything anyone presents to you as fact/truth. Yes, the stories and the customs and the fellowship are all nice - as long as you're in, of course. But don't try to oppose anyone else's customs and stories, etc., whatever you do!

Was that aimed at me, olddude? I don't think I know you, do I? I have no belief system, by the way. Believers like to characterise atheism as a belief system, which it patently isn't. I've never really worked out the motive for that. Don't forget, had religion never arisen, atheists wouldn't exist either! Would there still be an atheist belief system then, do you think?

"Shoving down throats:"

Group A: enforced signing-up to the club (christenings of tiny babies for example); severe threats of penalties for demurring (hell fire, social exclusion, etc); enforced participation in ceremonies; enforced indoctrination of children; mistreatment of women as second-class members of the faith; moralising standpoints about private matters such as abortion and contraception that precipitate thousands of people into misery; public showing-off of religious icons and symbolism irrespective of the faith, or not, of the captive bystander.

Group B: publishing of books that you don't have to buy and which don't get on school reading lists; an advert on the side of a bus that had the timid word "probably" in it; a few programmes on the telly (though nowhere near as many as Songs of Praise, etc.) that you don't have to watch (have I missed anything?)

Who exactly is ~really~ shoving things down whose throats?

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 12:53 PM

I've nothing to add except everyone should see The Invention of Lying.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Stu
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 01:00 PM

" The thought that a cell (where did it come from in the first instance) decided to split into two and so everything living begun does not compute within my brain."

But it does compute in lots of people's brains, and those who dedicate their lives to finding out how and why these things have occurred and continue to occur can and do tell us. The whole thing is marvellously complicated, but the awe felt when contemplating the natural world and the universe we live in isn't the result of some deep intuitive revelation it's from the mind of a divine creator, it's the deeper understanding that we are the universe contemplating itself and understanding itself. Stop and think about that; we're made of the same stuff as supernovae and planets, interstellar gas clouds and comets - we are those things and we can recognise our own consciousness, contemplate the fact we are a product of a set of rules we are beginning to understand. A concept far more profound and beautiful any religion on earth has yet to get close to; all we have to do is recognise it ourselves and we can develop moral codes that recognise the sanctity and preciousness of all life (even that we don't even recognise at the moment) and the entire physical universe.

We're only scratching the surface at the moment with our infant sciences; it's going to be a whole lot more incredible in years to come. I can't wait.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Smokey.
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 01:03 PM

Believers like to characterise atheism as a belief system, which it patently isn't. I've never really worked out the motive for that.

Because they can't discredit it on their own terms otherwise, and some feel a need to discredit it to lessen the insecurity of their own beliefs which are based on no more than faith.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Bill D
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 01:06 PM

"All Dawkins asks you to do is to insist on evidence ..."

*smile*...yes...a fine idea! I'm convinced.... Please tell Dawkins he gets to explain that to these folks

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 01:08 PM

Exactly, Smokey. Militant believers are extremely uncomfortable taking on us, er, non-believers, or a-theists (you see? I have to define myself in their terms!) unless it's on their own ground. These days, if anyone asks me if I believe in God, I tell 'em they're asking the wrong question.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Smokey.
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 01:23 PM

I just can't do faith, my head won't let me. In the words of Gerald Bostock, "God is an overwhelming responsibility."

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Will Fly
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 01:26 PM

Georgiansilver:
What I can't get my head round in that context is the way things are.... The intricate make up of the human body... the make up of a tree from its roots to the tiny veins in every leaf.... to the diversity of different flora and fauna.. the aqua dwelling life...

Then why not read about it? There are perfectly good, straightforward scientific explanations for of these things. The real no-brainer for most people is that the immense time scale over which genetic diversity takes place is almost impossible to imagine. A lot longer than the 6,000 years which some otherwise rational people would have you believe is the age of the earth.

mousethief:
the idea that there is ANYBODY in the WORLD who only believes things based on reason, logic, science, and math is a moron. Complete, total, utter, mouth-breathing, knee-walking, nanocephalic wanker.

Which says more about you than anyone else, I'm afraid.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 01:29 PM

Hark! I hear the sounds of the perpetual motion machine cranking on its endless round yet again. CREAK! CREAK! CREAK!

It can drive you crazy, that thing. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Will Fly
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 01:33 PM

Yup - time to jump off...

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 01:41 PM

The idea, however, that evidence can be dismissed on grounds of faith is surely not rationally defensible.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Smokey.
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 01:42 PM

...is a moron. Complete, total, utter, mouth-breathing, knee-walking, nanocephalic wanker.

The cockles of my heart are truly warmed by such a display of charitable Christian tolerance. I must away to God's house and give thanks immediately, for I am divinely inspired.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 01:44 PM

Someone wrote a few posts back that a good reason not to ridicule religion, even if one thinks it a ridiculous concept, is that it would not be 'polite' to do so. Can none of you lot recognise that as the con-trick that it is?: if we question your tenets you come over all wounded, as if we had said we think your wife is ugly and your children boorish and stupid; we are made to feel we have committed an error of taste and etiquette. That is not fair dealing.

Why, please, has "God" got so many things manifestly wrong? Take that concept you all came up a few years ago of "Intelligent Design", which was supposed to be another name for God but one that wouldn't offend us. When I pointed out that the phenomenon of childbirth in its present form [which thank providence I shall never have to undergo], or the necessity for all of us creatures of whatever degree of sentience or development to piss and shit regularly, however disagreeable, inconvenient, or worse, the circumstances, all point rather to Unintelligent Design, I would generally get looked at, and the subject would change, or my interlocutors would go away.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 01:46 PM

"Religion and science are not mutually exclusive."

I have a strong feeling that they might be. You see religious people advance the hypothesis: 'there is a God' and a scientist is entitled to ask them to prove the hypothesis (probably not a wise thing to do - but there you go!). The scientist cannot prove that there is no God because you can't prove a negative (absence of evidence is not evidence of absence). Hence a true scientist, who must follow the laws of logic, can only be an agnostic - not an atheist. Note that, in a scientific context, the burden of proof lies with the religious person (it is he/she who has advanced, and who 'owns', the God hypothesis).

On the other hand religious people tend to assert that they don't need 'proof' of the existence of God because they have 'faith' in His existence. To my mind this assertion of faith negates any possibility of dialogue between the religious person and the scientist.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 01:50 PM

If an atheist believes there is no god, even though he cannot prove it, he is in the mirror position of a believer. He may still be a scientist but his belief is not susceptible of scientific proof.

And to return to the irrationality of religious groups -

http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=801

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 01:54 PM

CREAK! CREAK! CREAK!

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 01:58 PM

I do find the idea of blasphemy or indeed taking offense at another's ridicule or dismissal of ones umm 'preferences' really daft. Eg: I like Modern Art but most people shout about it being total shit. Rather than being offended however I can retreat into my smugly self-satisfied awareness that I am right and they are just dumb. Christians of course have something even more brilliant to console themselves with, and that is the fact that they know everyone who disses them and their liking for god will burn forever in boiling blood and hell-fire...

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Joe Offer
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 02:30 PM

It's interesting to see how quickly the usual pattern develops. The religion-haters make their foray, and those with religion make a response (which I consider to be a rational response).
Then the religion-haters make their counterattack - but notice that by this point, they have redefined all religious people as ludicrous fundamentalists.

As usual, the primary argument against religious people has to do with religion's rejection of the idea of evolution, and with the contention that religion is some kind of control mechanism designed to rule the lives of mindless people. But the fact of the matter is that there are few, if any, religious Mudcatters who reject evolution or who accept any sort of religious control over their lives.

Steamin' Willie says this about Mr. Dawkins:

His angle is not a born again anything, it is as a scientist who is fed up of his work being belittled by people, some of whom should know better. He is a geneticist, and as a theoretical one, perhaps at the top of his profession. He has taken the observed conclusions of Darwin and applied them at the genetic level.

Well, if that's the case, Mr. Dawkins needs to learn that a vast number of religious people have no argument with the conclusions of Darwin, or with modern work in genetics.

We have a few new elements in this thread, like annoyance at being forced to see crosses (on church property) or hear church bells. Can't say I have any answer to that, other than to say, "Get over it."

But except for the addition of the complaint against the bell-hearings and cross-sightings, it's the usual argumentum ad absurdum - redefine all religion as fundamentalism so it's a sitting duck, and then shoot it down.

For shame.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 02:43 PM

"the complaint against the bell-hearings and cross-sightings" yeah, that's daft too. I might as well complain about the vast amount of bedding plants there are to be seen around my village.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Joe Offer
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 03:17 PM

Oh - I almost forgot to point out the silly contention that christening is somehow harmful to an infant. I suppose it's also wrong for parents to even discuss religious ideas in front of their children, for fear their little minds may be perverted.

That's what I'm talking about - the idea that people on both extremes seek the same thing: to suppress and control what people say and do.

There has rarely been any attempt at Mudcat to discussion religion as it is for the vast majority of people who take the middle road. Here at Mudcat, religion is almost always defined according to the actions of the extreme, fundamentalist minority.

Get this straight: most religious people are plagued by fundamentalists, too. In fact, they have a far greater effect on us, and we may dislike them even more than you do.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 03:27 PM

Hello? Religion depends on faith and authority. Those are not evidence. Believe what you like. Do not impose irrationality or your faith-based rules on others. Christening (or the equivalent if any in other religions) is trivial (although I'm not so sure about a briss) - but religious parents go much further than that when they sign their children up for indoctrination disguised as education.

Joe, it is you who is misrepresenting what critics of religion say.

I should, however, like to see more evidence of religious moderates disliking or disapproving of religious extremists.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: GUEST,Wesley S
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 03:36 PM

"Someone wrote a few posts back that a good reason not to ridicule religion, even if one thinks it a ridiculous concept, is that it would not be 'polite' to do so. Can none of you lot recognise that as the con-trick that it is?: if we question your tenets you come over all wounded, as if we had said we think your wife is ugly and your children boorish and stupid; we are made to feel we have committed an error of taste and etiquette. That is not fair dealing."


MtheGM - That was me a few posts back. My name is Wesley. I'm sorry that you feel that asking for polite behavior is a con of some sort. And - yes - I would feel all wounded if you were to say that my wife was ugly and my child was boorish and stupid. Even if it were true. Wouldn't you?

Why is it out of the question to ask that you respect my beliefs - whatever they are? It's not that I mind your disbelief. It's the ridicule that goes along with it. I can understand why someone would chose to be an athiest. It's a very logical choice to make. What I don't understand is why a few of the athiests here find that it's necessary to go out of their way to poke fun at others.

I don't like Swedish fiddle music. I've never felt the need to start a thread to say so.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Joe Offer
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 03:41 PM

Give me a break, Richard. If you want to condemn religious fundamentalists, you'll get no disagreement from me. But if you want to continue paint your condemnations with the wide brush of condemning all religion, then all I can say is that you're as blind as the fundamentalists are.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 03:41 PM

indoctrination disguised as education.

The curious thing is that a big problem for such schools in England tends to be parents with no religious beliefs faking it so as to get their children in, because the educational results seem so much better than schools with no religious connection...

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 03:45 PM

Well, as the chap who brought the ubiquitous bell-ringing and crucifixes into it ("I can't go into my town without being regaled with large crosses, clanging church bells and wayside pulpits everywhere I go" quoth I), let me just say that these things don't actually annoy me at all. In fact, I listen to "Bells On Sunday" on BBC Radio 4 every Sunday. I didn't say they annoyed me or that I was complaining about them per se. I was simply pointing out that we are expected to experience these things as part of the assumed default position of religion (even in our secular nation, in which fewer than one person in fifteen ever attends a regular church service). Whenever I get the chance to visit cities I never miss the opportunity to visit great cathedrals, and Bach's Mass in B minor is one of my desert island discs (conducted by Giulini, please). I wonder what the average believer would think of atheistic posters on billboards around every corner (one poster per church crucifix would be about fair). It's the sheer arrogance of believers in assuming that the rest of the planet should put up with this not-so-subliminal proselytising that's so amusing ("Get over it": - sorry, Joe, but you said it!)

As for christening being harmful to infants, pray tell me what would be so wrong with waiting until the child is old enough, and informed enough about all the alternatives, to make their own mind up. That would be a far more moral approach. I'm not allowed to join the Campaign For Real Ale until I'm old enough (legally) to understand beer. I suppose I know the answer really. Religions are scared stiff of doing that because they know that very few people would ever sign up!

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 03:51 PM

There was nothing offensive or oppressive in the original post. The fact remains horrible things have been and are still being done in the name of religion (pick one).

I neither like nor approve of Dawkins' style but I agree that religion can often be and is dangerous. And not just the acts of war and personal physical violence but the psychological damage it does to its own followers and non believers.

Any system that promotes intolerance, exclusivism, misogyny, to name a few, is unacceptable to my mind and makes no valuable contribution to society.

Not saying I DO or DO NOT believe in a supreme thinking creative energy (god if you like). I just do not and will not follow a religion.

I never felt more isolated, terrified and excluded than when I was a praying, bible reading, church going "believer."

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 03:54 PM

As someone who holds to a very minority style spiritual belief system (Gnosticism) I find it impossible to be offended by atheists who scorn what I believe in. I'm more often offended by the BIG religions telling me I'm wrong or will burn in hell-fire of I don't convert, especially as historically they didn't bother waiting for spiritual fires but instead literally did burn people in the flesh and en masse who believed as I do!

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 04:01 PM

Even tough-guy soldiers are not immune!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-rodda/us-soldiers-punished-for-_b_687051.html

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 04:03 PM

atheistic posters on billboards around every corner

Have you ever looked at the posters that are up on virtually every billboard? They might not be formally atheistic, but they certainly propagate a pretty hostile set of values.

As for children, the analogy with drink isn't bad, but I suggest it points the other way. Growing up in a family where drinking in moderation is part of the way of life is a better preparation for handling it in adult life then keeping it at arms length until you are suddenly exposed to it, and get overwhelmed by it.

The same can be true with religion.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 04:27 PM

Good point. But you don't introduce drink to tiny babies! I'm not saying that children should be kept ignorant about religion until they reach the age of majority. Religion has been part and parcel of world history and no school education would be complete without an objective consideration of it. I am saying that I think it's wrong to give children a set of beliefs, presented to them as truth, without telling them that this is simply one set of beliefs that one body of people hold to be true, and here are some others that you may consider to be equally valid (or equally invalid even). And they should be listening to their science teachers telling them to accept nothing as fact/truth until they have been presented with evidence. Real evidence, not witness or hearsay. The Bible contains very little evidence.

I'm not sure I accept your juxtaposition of hostile values with informal atheism...

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 04:42 PM

The equation is simple enough - it runs: They can't all be right, but they can all be wrong ergo, if one is wrong, they're all wrong. Truth on the other hand is that which is common to all and entirely falsifiable - the rest is just funny hats & hoo-hah; folklore, superstition, myth, mumbo-jumbo and other such cosmic debris that we could really do without taking too seriously.

Personally, I am an Athiest because I can't conceive of a greater divinity than Duke Ellington.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Smokey.
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 04:52 PM

Pah. Chuck Berry.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 04:58 PM

How would you set about "proving" that Duke Ellington (or Chuck Berry) is good? You believe he is, and so do lots of other people, but that's a matter of "faith"...

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Smokey.
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 05:03 PM

"They can't all be right, but they can all be wrong ergo, if one is wrong, they're all wrong."

That seems to be a bit flawed, Sweeney.. One of them could be right. But I doubt it :-)

They could all be a bit right, though.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Smokey.
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 05:05 PM

McGrath, this is my universe, and I say so.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Art Thieme
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 05:14 PM

I'm a completely secular Jewish atheist who has been married to a Jehovah's Witness for nearly 44 uniquely great years.

Now, at age 69, I am finally able to see that I got married for the friction!

The friction is what informs my life--and myself. I've learned so much.

The mutual loving friction makes for incandescent orgasms.

Art

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 05:20 PM

Wesley S ~ Your post of 3.36 missed my point by so huge a distance that I hardly know where to begin to reply.

Of course I think one should be civil. I would regard it as very rude to insult anyone's wife or children, and would never dream of doing so.

BUT I regard the questioning of metaphysical concepts which I find absurd to be a different order of communication altogether; & I think it is cheating for a religious person, when his faith is treated with less than unquestioning respect, because 'religions must be regarded as sacrosanct, & it is unseemly to question them', to come on as if one had done something equivalent to being less than civil to his family. You made my point in asserting that you think it would be 'not polite' for anyone to question the truth of your beliefs. I consider the appeal to the concept of 'politeness' a feeble evasion, a pusillanimous cop-out, in this context: but one which the religious are only too prone to resort to. THAT was my point.

Can you really not see this distinction?

~Michael~

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 05:31 PM

Chuck Berry? In what way is My Ding-a-Ling a manifestation of the divine?

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Smokey.
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 05:56 PM

He moves in mysterious ways.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 06:10 PM

Tommy Cooper:

Two blokes knocked on my door last Sunday morning. They only wanted to talk about vacuum cleaners.



That's all I need, I thought. Bloody Jehoover's Witnesses.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 06:44 PM

Dear Guest, Suibhne Astray - If you understand the nature of a hologram, each tiniest part of it contains the essential structure and nature of the entire hologram. If the hologram sprang out of something deemed "divine" then every least part of it is likewise deemed divine. This would include the song "My Ding-a-Ling". You are now free to debate about what the word "divine" means, and I happily leave you to it, not particularly caring one way or the other whether your view of it resembles mine... ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Smokey.
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 07:03 PM

If you play it backwards at 16rpm, you get to hear the subliminal messages.. And I wouldn't tell that to just anyone..

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: John P
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 07:17 PM

I wish there were better words than "atheist" or "agnostic", since both of these carry lots of connotations that don't apply to me. What's the word for "I've never been given any reason to even consider it" or "it really doesn't make any sense to me"?

I suppose I would consider myself an atheist if I could get away from the "atheism is a belief" bullshit. The fact is that I pay more attention to my little toe than I do to my lack of belief in god, in that I wash and clothe my toes.

I do think it's odd for Christians in the USA to complain about being discriminated against or insulted. This country, and its laws, are overwhelmingly slanted toward Christianity. As a non-Christian, I have often felt strong prejudice against me. I gave up any hopes of a political career long ago -- no non-religious person will be elected to high office any time soon. That IS political discrimination, and one that is supported by many otherwise "good" Christians.

I like my Christian friends, all of whom are good, moral, honest people. I do think they are irrational to some degree, in that they are willing to believe something for which there is no evidence. But I suppose most of us have our own irrational quirks . . .

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 07:18 PM

'Turn me Tender' - Martyn Joseph

"Turn me tender again, fold me into You...Turn me tender again, through Union with You...."

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: olddude
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 07:37 PM

Lets see, all blacks are lazy right and all polish are stupid
and all Irish are drunks and all Christians are Jerry Falwell

ya know you are no better than those you preach against with your anti faith constant bashing .. absolute generalizations no better then those who make such comments as above .. what a sham ... the great athiest non god came down and told you exactly what life was all about and how it all worked and now it is your mission to preach to the rest of us or enlighten the rest of us on the folly of our faith ...

exactly the same thing as the door knockers .. maybe worse what a sham.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Wesley S
Date: 26 Aug 10 - 07:39 PM

"You made my point in asserting that you think it would be 'not polite' for anyone to question the truth of your beliefs."

And you're missing my point. I have no objection at all that you question the truth of my beliefs. You are of course welcome to your views.In my memory I've not seen a thread where people of faith tried to convert those of you who are happy in your athiesm. What I find interesting is that so many non-believers here feel it's their duty to start threads and get in the face of those people who belive in a higher power of some sort - just to tell them how wrong they are. IF people of faith were to take ACTIONS against you for your beliefs that would be wrong. But it seems to me that many of the athiests here find THOUGHTS objectionable. And I've been told that before - that my thoughts are offensive to another Mudcatter even though we've never met - and I've taken no actions against them. It appears that some of the athiests here would love to become the thought police.

It's the difference of thoughts vs actions.

Can you see the difference?