I also think it's so futile arguing with the irrelgious - I couldn't give the slightest fuck about our minor differences, but I hate that some love focussing on atheists, when they've got fundies in the whitehouse and Huckabee thinking it doesn't matter if the President of the most important country in the world is scientifically retarded

At 12/16/07 04:55 PM, Zoraxe7 wrote:

At 12/16/07 04:54 PM, Brick-top wrote: Is that a fucking problem!?

No, not at all.

Then shut the fuck up about what I post.

Any irreligious people who argue against atheists are, imo, conformist pussies who would hate to challenge the majority.

Religion has never been harmless, and it's never been more unnecessary.

At 12/16/07 05:00 PM, Earfetish wrote:

At 12/16/07 04:27 PM, Zoraxe7 wrote:

I'm sure we'd still find a way, just fewer of us would find a way, and we'd be less fervent with it.

Why not be fervent, do atheists give only a half-ass about what they believe?

well then why are you consistently challenging atheists

Im bored and challenging atheists is interesting.

It was harder to kill people before gunpowder (duh). Just like it's harder to create sectarian divides without religion.

I dont know, the Rwanda genocide was done mostly by Machete but worked faster than nazi death camps.

you seem to have missed the point; sure there'd be nationalism and racism, but there wouldn't be religious sectarianism on top

But the religious sectarianism has motives behind it that would still be there without religion.
Thus you think too simply.

maybe we should get rid of all the evidence-less dogmas then

And lets get rid of all the mexicans so there would be no illegal mexican imergrants in the US.

I never said there'd be no wars, that's the most popular straw-man against atheists. I just said there'd be fewer.

You missed my point, I was meaning that the early church is similar to atheism today in regards that they cant forsee their own group much later doing things you are against today.

Its just group bias, the cause of every war that ever happened.

Unless one uses their religion by discarding all the rules, all the dogma, and all the 'truths' revealed in the Holy Book, and adopts a humanist approach to life and morality, and doesn't call themselves Christian, then religion is not acting in a negative way. If someone lives their life as if there isn't a Big Daddy in the sky, doesn't pray, wears, acts, dresses, eats and behaves how they view as appropriate, if they think the most important thing in the universe is Mankind instead of God, then religion isn't acting in a negative way. If someone acts morally and then feels good afterwards, instead of telling themselves they did it because of fear of God, then religion is not acting in a negative way. It's not just shooting infidels and hating gays where religion makes good, principled people go a bit screwy.

You'll notice, however, that in all these instances, religion isn't acting at all.

Religion acts in a positive way if Muslims and Christians wouldn't give money to charity, or act morally, without it. And I think they would. I also think they might be a bit less selective in the charities they choose. Also maybe it's acting in a positive way with like John Wayne Gacy becoming a Christian in jail, but he'd probably still be a perverted murderer if we let him out, even if the Light of God is in his heart. And if it makes people feel happy, although I don't think it makes you happier than atheism; indeed, some people are very upset by their religion, especially if they've got a fire-and-brimstone preacher. And I think most religions makes the average person less moral.

Morals and sin are diferent, a sin is against the soul of the self and morals are ways of acting towards each other.

Then there are no difference in morals from a guy that kills sombody and doesnt get punished and a guy that doesnt kill anyone. A sin is a religious concept, without it Stalin was just as inocent as your grandma because his morals were not against having somebody killed. Do you get my point.

Whos morals are right? Yours? mine? Georg Bush? In the end what you are talking about is not morality because by now it has lost its meaning.

If you're Catholic, then you're giving more power to the Pope; if you weren't a Catholic we'd all care about what he had to say a billionth less; there is an African-HIV victim's blood on the hands of every Catholic, even if they totally disagree with the Pope. (and then why would they be Catholic?)

Condoms are not the cure for aids, I think you overestimate the churchs influence here.

Also fucking Hare Krishnas mooching for money in city centres - although I don't like Amnesty International charity muggers either, at least they're clearly labelled. Even a religion where God is explicitly love can still act negatively, even by stifling freethought and encouraging herd mentality.

Why are you so pissed off at them? Dude just shut up.

I guess my main issue with religion is, it's controlling. It's some old books that have got way too much power than they deserve, and it's really hard to get them to give an inch.

Religion is an Idea, it doesnt controll people, people control people. So any religious or atheist orgization could do the same. Which would makes you a hypocrit when it happens.

At 12/16/07 05:56 PM, Zoraxe7 wrote: At 12/16/07 05:00 PM, Earfetish wrote

It was harder to kill people before gunpowder (duh). Just like it's harder to create sectarian divides without religion.

I dont know, the Rwanda genocide was done mostly by Machete but worked faster than nazi death camps.

Well considering that Christianity played a major part in the Rwanda genocide, I'm not sure that it's the best example to use.

you seem to have missed the point; sure there'd be nationalism and racism, but there wouldn't be religious sectarianism on top

But the religious sectarianism has motives behind it that would still be there without religion.

The ideas in themselves may be secular, but only with the motivation of religion are they a problem.

maybe we should get rid of all the evidence-less dogmas then

And lets get rid of all the mexicans so there would be no illegal mexican imergrants in the US.

Just, no. You are either too stupid to understand his point, or are you much of a Christfag to want to understand.

I never said there'd be no wars, that's the most popular straw-man against atheists. I just said there'd be fewer.

You missed my point, I was meaning that the early church is similar to atheism today in regards that they cant forsee their own group much later doing things you are against today.

Atheism is so different to religion, and I wish you would get that already. Atheism doesn't promise anything amazing when you die, so there it lacks the motivation given by religion to go ape-shit.

Its just group bias, the cause of every war that ever happened.

Okay, yeah, just keep telling yourself that.

Unless one uses their religion by discarding all the rules, all the dogma, and all the 'truths' revealed in the Holy Book, and adopts a humanist approach to life and morality, and doesn't call themselves Christian, then religion is not acting in a negative way. If someone lives their life as if there isn't a Big Daddy in the sky, doesn't pray, wears, acts, dresses, eats and behaves how they view as appropriate, if they think the most important thing in the universe is Mankind instead of God, then religion isn't acting in a negative way. If someone acts morally and then feels good afterwards, instead of telling themselves they did it because of fear of God, then religion is not acting in a negative way.

Morals and sin are diferent, a sin is against the soul of the self and morals are ways of acting towards each other.

Well without a god, the idea of 'sin' is pointless.

Then there are no difference in morals from a guy that kills sombody and doesnt get punished and a guy that doesnt kill anyone. A sin is a religious concept, without it Stalin was just as inocent as your grandma because his morals were not against having somebody killed. Do you get my point.

No really, you're a fucking douchetard. You make no sense whatsoever.

Whos morals are right? Yours? mine? Georg Bush? In the end what you are talking about is not morality because by now it has lost its meaning.

The Bible in no way, shape or form is a (good) guide to morality, and anyone who considers it so is fucking screwed in the head.

If you're Catholic, then you're giving more power to the Pope; if you weren't a Catholic we'd all care about what he had to say a billionth less; there is an African-HIV victim's blood on the hands of every Catholic, even if they totally disagree with the Pope. (and then why would they be Catholic?)

Condoms are not the cure for aids, I think you overestimate the churchs influence here.

I think you underestimate it.
The US used to be the largest and most effective donor and distributor of contraception, primarily condoms, to African nations, which saw greatly reduced cases of, among a variety of STI's, AIDS, as well as keeping population growth in check.
However, because of influence by the Catholic church, the US has since stopped this, and now send over missionaries to teach bullshit abstinence programs that are infinitely less effective.

Religion is an Idea, it doesnt controll people, people control people.

With the use of religion.

So any religious or atheist orgization could do the same.

Atheists can't control people in the same manner in which religion does. We don't have promises of eternal bliss threats of eternal punishment for not believing what we say.

At 12/16/07 05:08 PM, Earfetish wrote: Any irreligious people who argue against atheists are, imo, conformist pussies who would hate to challenge the majority.

I respect people's beliefs because they give them hope.

Oh wait, disregard that.

I found a cute little parody clip. Gave me giggles because you think he's being serous at the start.

At 12/16/07 05:56 PM, Zoraxe7 wrote: Why not be fervent, do atheists give only a half-ass about what they believe?

Atheists give none of their ass about what they believe. I would never die for the statement 'there is no God'. I said people would be less fervent in war without religion, anyway, don't take me out of context.

I dont know, the Rwanda genocide was done mostly by Machete but worked faster than nazi death camps.

So machetes are as efficient a killing machine as guns. No. Anyway, that's not refuting my point at all - if there were no guns, there'd be no gun crime.

But the religious sectarianism has motives behind it that would still be there without religion.
Thus you think too simply.

Whatever the motives to the initial conflict were, sectarianism gets ingrained afterwards. Like when Jews and Muslims fight in Manchester when shit flares up in Israel.

And lets get rid of all the mexicans so there would be no illegal mexican imergrants in the US.

I don't think you get my point. Countless religions, plus billions of people, religions structure and defining belief systems, religious labelling, it's inevitable that it would cause conflict.

Picture this; a country has a problem; Britain invaded and pillaged, and then eventually retreated to a small corner. The Brits were Protestant, and the natives were Catholic.

A new generation is born. The Catholics were raised to hate Protestants, and the Protestants were raised to hate Catholics, and every side was told exactly where their opinion lies in the matter, because that was the defining difference between the two groups of people. This becomes ingrained, and a conflict that could have been easily resolved, and would not cause neighbourhood rivalry if there was no religion.

Even if you'd say 'the rivalry would happen with just national heritage', it would sure as fuck be less ingrained and the Brits would probably have started calling themselves by their fellow countrymen's names by now.

Just as an example.

Defend.

I never said there'd be no wars, that's the most popular straw-man against atheists. I just said there'd be fewer.

You missed my point, I was meaning that the early church is similar to atheism today in regards that they cant forsee their own group much later doing things you are against today.

So what, religion started off well when it was just a couple of hundred people. That proves nothing.

Its just group bias, the cause of every war that ever happened.

And introducing more segregation isn't making the situation worse how?

Morals and sin are diferent, a sin is against the soul of the self and morals are ways of acting towards each other.

So all religion does is introduce the idea of sin, it actually doesn't give any further decent moral guidelines that couldn't be summed up in one sentence?

Might have a couple of parables that are somewhat useful, but (I hate that I keep using the same point) so did Aesop. Or many authors. I might choose Roald Dahl.

Then there are no difference in morals from a guy that kills sombody and doesnt get punished and a guy that doesnt kill anyone. A sin is a religious concept, without it Stalin was just as inocent as your grandma because his morals were not against having somebody killed. Do you get my point.

No. There are moral absolutes. God doesn't make moral absolutes, they just exist. There is plenty of evolutionary reasons why they would, too.

Whos morals are right? Yours? mine? Georg Bush? In the end what you are talking about is not morality because by now it has lost its meaning.

My morals are right, and yours are probably pretty close to right too. When it comes to complicated issues like going to war with a sovereign country that happened to be ruled by a bit of a cock and was in a place where military bases would be useful and where everyone hates us, then maybe we need some debate on the issue, and maybe immoral shit will happen, but a truly objective observer would know it was immoral.

Just because morality isn't black and white, and you can't tell what's morally right all the time, especially on a global scale, doesn't mean that there aren't a few decent rules to go by, and it's not like the fucking Bible would've helped us decide whether to invade Iraq or not, so your point is actually mute.

The Bible has no moral codes, and most humans know how to act morally. And maybe Saddam Hussein doesn't, and Sharia Law isn't, and John Wayne Gacy isn't, and maybe we can call these people out. And I really don't understand why you wouldn't want to. We all know morals.

Condoms are not the cure for aids, I think you overestimate the churchs influence here.

Whatever. If ONE person has not used a condom because of the church, and got AIDS that they wouldn't have got, and then fucked some other people and spread the AIDS around... well, I don't know at what point you stop saying the Church is responsible for the death, really.

Religion is an Idea, it doesnt controll people, people control people. So any religious or atheist orgization could do the same. Which would makes you a hypocrit when it happens.

So some books with some rules telling you how to behave, isn't controlling people. And Hasidic Jews and Muslims, and everyone who dresses accordingly, isn't a very clear visual representation of this.

Bullshit.

If religion is not controlling people, then why does anyone wear a headscarf? Middle Eastern fashion trends?

And to say any atheist organisation could, or would want to, control the populace as much as a religious one, that's nonsense. 'Atheist' and 'Libertarian' seem closely linked.

Um, win, maybe?

At 12/16/07 08:55 PM, SadisticMonkey wrote: Um, win, maybe?

ooooh this looks good

was very good

Did Jesus exist? A non-biased look:

http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jc no.htm

"Documents written during his lifetime which mention Jesus: There are none that date from the period 7 BCE to 33 CE."

Fucking Hell, the amount of times Christians have lied to me about this

Website looks pretty good for rational, neutral invetigation into religion.

And anyway, in regards to Jesus' existence, there is certainly no evidence that Jesus was anything more than a liberal Jew.

Triple post

This is very interesting; my aunt has started to get epilepsy and was saying she thought they were great, and had amazing revelations on them (like magic mushrooms) so I showed her this documentary about the neurology of religion and epilepsy and potential links, it's very good

http://www14.alluc.org/alluc/showmovie.h tml?uid=252541

Horizon (search for it on alluc.org) have done loads of interesting shows about religion. Although they never go 'all out'.

And cutting-edge science, too. I watched the one on String Theory and it was kinda vague, but usually they're concise

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Condell

Lol, he's got a wiki page now....

At 12/17/07 07:08 AM, Rarusu wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Condell

Lol, he's got a wiki page now....

Ha ha ha.

I can't believe nearly 40,000 people have donated to wiki.

Ive found something much more entertaining.
(atheists, pay attention to 6:23-7:16)

At 12/17/07 07:08 AM, Rarusu wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Condell

Lol, he's got a wiki page now....

That dude is fantastic!

At 12/17/07 04:57 PM, Zoraxe7 wrote: Ive found something much more entertaining.
(atheists, pay attention to 6:23-7:16)

I see me and earfethish eRaped you with our superior logic so much that you decided to ignore our replies to your post.

are there any who follow fsms noodly appendage visit ng church of pasta

At 12/17/07 04:57 PM, Zoraxe7 wrote: Ive found something much more entertaining.
(atheists, pay attention to 6:23-7:16)

Ha ha, the little Agnostic / Atheist battle made me laugh.

But I can't see Atheists having a Church. Maybe social gatherings at a friends house but not a Church.

At 12/17/07 09:10 PM, chris-092 wrote: are there any who follow fsms noodly appendage visit ng church of pasta

haha locked

At 12/17/07 08:01 PM, SadisticMonkey wrote: I see me and earfethish eRaped you with our superior logic so much that you decided to ignore our replies to your post.

I did think, "I'm sure I've made some of these points before and Zorax has not answered them". I'll imagine he'll ignore it all completely and then come back in two pages and post the exact same 'religion is harmless and why do you care' post.

Everyone got their votes in for the NG awards?

At 12/18/07 01:29 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote: Everyone got their votes in for the NG awards?

Indeed I have.

Out of curiosity guys, how do you all define the 'God' that you definitely don't believe in? Might have already asked this...

At 12/18/07 03:35 AM, Earfetish wrote:
Out of curiosity guys, how do you all define the 'God' that you definitely don't believe in? Might have already asked this...

Any concept of god whatsoever.

People can believe what they want.
I just cameeee.
I still think they are idiots for it though.

At 12/18/07 05:30 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote: Any concept of god whatsoever.

Well the thing is, I deny categorically an irreducibly complex God. If someone was to say 'the universe started by a being in another dimension, that evolved, became very smart, and figured out how to make a universe', then, despite how unlikely I view that proposal, I would say I was agnostic towards it, or definitely more so than an irreducible God. But I wouldn't call it 'God' either.

There are plenty of other things that I think are impossible that are qualities of God, too

At 12/18/07 01:29 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote: Everyone got their votes in for the NG awards?

Not yet. I'm finding it difficult to decide. I'm thinking about why I picked this person and is it the right decision.

I'm putting way too much thought into it.

Did you see Dobio's attitude? What a tempered little cunt. Someone should brake his legs.

At 12/18/07 07:30 AM, PROXYSERVER wrote: He killed every first born to brake the pharo, he was consumed by sin, so God had to do it to shw pharo who is really in control, if he didn't do that moses wouldn't have gotten the people out of eygpt and we wouldn't exist

1 - there is no contemporary evidence, archaeological or otherwise, that connects the Israelites to Egypt, or states that they were slaves in Egypt.

2 - God is all-powerful. He could have just changed the guy's mind.

3 - God has a divine plan. He doesn't need to interfere.