http://www.armorofgodpjs.com/Oh, I’m not going to comment here. I’ll let you do it. Thanks Charlie
http://www.armorofgodpjs.com/Oh, I’m not going to comment here. I’ll let you do it. Thanks Charlie
Since 1963, AMERICAN ATHEISTS has been the premier organization laboring for the civil liberties of Atheists, and the total, absolute separation of government and religion.
Copyright 2012. All materials contained on this site, whether written, audible or visual are the exclusive property of American Atheists.
Hey JONBOY,
I checked out your attempt on “he lives”. I feel your pain.
What is beginning to concern me is the attempt theists are making to redefine ALL the terms of their discourse. The convolutions are staggering. (as seen above)
Spanders:
Re your blog: I’m in! I read your lengthy post on this thread and thought it was quite reasonable (for a Xian (hee hee)).
I don’t think all Christians are idiots or most of my interactions with my fellow citizens would be unpleasant. Of course, I do think theistic belief is irrational or I wouldn’t be looking at the American Atheist page! Luckily for the rest of us, most Christians seem to generally be able to differentiate between their beliefs and the real world and also seem to spend most of their time in reality. It’s real easy for us atheists to remember that sometimes because of all the freaks out there (like the “Crusader wear” lady).
“From what I’ve read, this woman most likely is dressing her kids in the costumes of guys who often were MASS MURDERS OF CIVILIANS AND CHILDREN.”
Kinda like Christopher Columbus.
When is Columbus Day?
did you ever read “Lies my teacher told me”? You might find it interesting. It has a not so nice account of columbus. A lot of other interesting stuff too… helen keller was a soc-ialist! Ah, I don’t want to ruin the ending for you
.
Spanders,
It’s time you underwent deprogamming.
And I do like you. You’re pretty smart. So here we go with some antiviral progams:
1. belief in god is based on faith. You cannot use faith to justify belief
Wrong. Faith cannot exist without a dogma and indoctrination, which is the definition of a belief system. A faulty one at that, which you freely admit.
2. I (and every other christian) cherry picks what we believe to adjust to our cultural context and I don’t think that’s a bad thing, it’s normal
And that is the evidence that, as time marches on, we know the bible is nothing more than propaganda to control society. The propaganda loses effect as we evolve mentally over time.
So, you believe Jesus was resurrected. Do you believe Frankenstein’s monster was real, too?
You believe in re-animation? In zombies?
Spanders,
More deprogramming.
3. I don’t believe in the inerrant bible. It was written by screwed up people in screwed up times and much of the dogma expressed today is a result of thousands of years of doctrines, canons and creeds borne out political battles
So, why don’t you think that the original intent of faith isn’t political control? You’ve heard of feudalism, have you not? Read up on Taoism, and you’ll see that a large part of the oppressive nature of feudalism was the use of religion, indoctirnation of dogma, and the fear of divine retribution on the great unwashed.
It’ the same reason plantation owners converted their slaves to xianity. They knew that the Jew used their religion a part of their justification to free themselves of oppresion, and they did not want african spirituality to be used by slaves as a rallying point to fight for their freedom.
Remember the Amistad?
4. I do believe in a literal Jesus, a literal crucifixion and a literal raising from the dead, but understand that it is; a) an idea borrowed from many other mythologies b) not something that I should expect others to believe as it’s irrational c) not based on years of trial and error in controlled experiments and careful observation, so shouldn’t be compared to science or worse, replace science.
And this is the paradox inside your brain right now. Face it; cience is replacing religion, just because it’s based on evidence. This is the reason the “Intelligent Design” bullshit exists. The politically savvy xians in the rightwingnut power structure know that the downfall of religion as a rational belief is inevitable, and they fear the loss of their power. They lose control over the minds of those they wish to recruit to their flock. And that means the tithe basket will not bring in a much revenue.
I won’t say a man named Jesus Chrit did not exist. But I will say the resurrection is total hocus-pocus, flim-flam, snake-oil, skullduggery.
If Jesus rose from the dead, then he would be considered a zombie. Now, do zombies exist? NO, and neither did the resurrection. Once a body loses the ability to convert fuel into energy, it stop functioning and dies. It doesn’t have the ability to restart without modern technology, and even then it’s really tough to accomplish.
So, you want me to believe a corpse in a cave, with no acces to modern science, just started breathing again and viited some friends?
In that case Frankenstein’s monster did exist, and re-animation is not just a theme in horror films.
Come join the forces of the enlightened and evolve with us.
The Atheists.
DRB:
Ummm…que? Taoism? Chuang Tzu, Lao Tzu, Mencius?
Taoism? Sure you’re not thinking of Confucianism?
Divine retribution? Que? The philosophy preaches effortlessness. Far as I know, the history’s been relatively benign.
I have the book of Tao (sp?). It’s been awhile since I cracked it out, but I distinctly remember it states in the first chapter that they used the religion to manipulate their indentured servant class to keep them in line.
That’s why they HAD indentured servants to begin with.
Serfdom? Hello?
The way I used divine retribution wasn’t neccessarily in line with the historical context of the phrase. It’s merely a methaphor for fear to me. The boogeyman under the the bed of an 8 year old.
DRB:
Er…ummm, the Tao Te Ching? Chuang Tzu? Which book?
Besides which, Taoism was never a major player.
Taoism is most certainly not based on fear.
Eastern mindset is completely different from the Western.
Again, the equivalency isn’t correct:
http://www.answers.com/topic/examples-of-feudalism
“The current prevailing consensus among Western historians is that using the term ‘feudal’ to describe Chinese history confuses more than it clarifies, as it assumes strong commonalities between Chinese and European history that may not exist.”
Da Rat Bastid,
sorry, haven’t checked this post in a couple of days. I’ve been asked this before; why do you engage in such paradox and yet maintain christian belief? I’ll try to go through it as clearly as possible, but it doesn’t mean it makes sense:
Paradox 1: inerrant belief (cherry picking) – If I don’t believe that the whole thing is 100% accurate, why bother and how do you decide what to believe? I think that there is an underlying spirituality in all of us. It forms a common motif through most mythology and is part of the way humanity has understood the world. While I think science does a good job of explaining the how, I think it struggles with the why. I do not believe that spirituality and science are in conflict with each other. They are very different endevours. I believe that christianity is the path I have chosen based on a number of factors (history, need, choice) and find that it feeds the more nebulous spiritual side of me.
Society changes, redefines itself and moves forward. To think that understanding of my belief should be stagnant (as I think inerrantists would like) would be a spiritual mistake. To think that a belief should be stagnant to make it viable is crazy to me. It’s much like when people say the constitution is a dead document and people who call themselves “originalists”. It think that is a mistaken interpretation of what these documents are meant to do (limit rights rather than expand them).
Paradox 2: Faith cannot exist without a dogma and indoctrination, which is the definition of a belief system. A faulty one at that, which you freely admit. I view dogma normally in the pejorative. I think this is where some people get into the argument about atheism having its own dogma, which is a point I think many of you would dispute as it’s based on scientific method. For me, the idea of christ coming to fulfill the law, is an idea of having been released from the strict dogma of the time. In its context what jesus was doing was allowing all people to become pure as opposed to the custom of the time, which made all the but the wealthy and those born to the levites impure on some level, with the abject poor being really impure (based on economics) and those with birth defects being the most impure. To those reading the accounts at the time (much of the new testament was written between 60 – 120 ad) they would understand what a release from dogma this actually was.
My point here is that religion, belief is what one makes it. You might say, well that’s nice and all, but without religion, we wouldn’t have to worry about that crap. This is why I like progressive christianity. Progressive christianity has a system of principles (dogma) that does the following:
- supports equality
- supports diversity and tolerance
- supports environmentalism
- supports spirituality
You can get the first three without religious belief. However, in some ways you are correct: it centralizes political power to do what I think it should do. It is a faulty system, but the best one I can work with at the moment.
belief in god is based on faith. You cannot use faith to justify belief
Wrong. Faith cannot exist without a dogma and indoctrination, which is the definition of a belief system. A faulty one at that, which you freely admit.
— It’s interesting to consider what faith is. I believe that faith can exist without dogma. I think it’s important to understand what each other means by dogma. I’m defining it as the rules set up by an organized church structure. If you use the example of some of my friends who believe in a form of spirituality, but not christianity or any organized church, I would say they have faith in the spiritual, but no real dogma. Make sense?
In the case of my example I was trying to say that christians shouldn’t come here and say believe there is a god because the bible says you should. I was really trying to convey that religious folk have made the choice to believe despite not being able to prove in any scientific way that zombies in caves exist (by the way, are you deadly doomham renamed?). MMMMMM….. BRAAAAAIIIIINSSSSS.
I enjoyed reading “whose freedom” by lackoff. As a cognative scientist he described shallow frames and deep frames. Frames are how we thing about things. In my case, believing in god is a very deep frame as it is for many people. It’s actually a very interesting book if you want to check it out. I think that many of our thoughts are in conflict with each other. I think as atheists, you want to see logic dictate the thought process, but it doesn’t seem to be the way the brain operates. Paradox, illogical thought and ideas about spirituality can all reside comfortably in my brain. A big paradox in my life is that symbolic gestures don’t mean that much (sybolic patriotism like flag waving), but I am a graphic designer creating symbols all day long.
I’m not sure that being an atheist is more enlightened than being a christian. I would say that the enlightened are well read, deep thinkers, active in their communities. I’m not sure that being enlightened is having come to a conclusion about god existing or not.
Also, think of the political pragmatics. What would you rather have? Another atheist that gets sidelined or a christian who is highly empathetic to atheists?
Sometimes I think that people confuse my empathy with being an atheist without wanting to admit it. Empathy is a great thing, but it really boils down to me having read much of what you list and more and still thinking that there is an underlying spirituality that was revealed to me in christianity.
Paradox 2: Faith cannot exist without a dogma and indoctrination, which is the definition of a belief system. A faulty one at that, which you freely admit. I view dogma normally in the pejorative. I think this is where some people get…
None of what you say is either verifiable or falsifiable. Your belief is arbitrary. If it “floats your boat,” then fine. As an atheist, I do not care.
It’s fairly arbitrary. As daratbastid says, it could be indoctrination at an early age creating a deep frame (as lakoff would use the term) or a simply arbitrary decision that I made based on personality, history and need. I don’t disagree about the arbitrary part. I usually try not get into preachy posts… I was just trying to respond to daratbastid. The part you might care about is how if affects political life here in the US. Understanding that christians are not all monolithic in thought and understanding what the christian may or may not believe may inform your conversation and perhaps allow you to convince people of any political ideas you might have (if you are talking to a progressive christian, chances are good that you could convince them that sep of church and state is a good thing).
Your religious beliefs are your “own business” and should not be a “litmus test” for political office, employment, etc. We can only hope for the day when politicians will keep their religious beliefs, if any, to themselves. As an atheist, I have no problem voting for a Christian as long as that individual is willing to uphold the Constitution and fulfill the duties of the office to which they are seeking to serve their constituents.
You are correct that belief is a personal matter. However, you can do more than hope for a day when politicians keep their beliefs to themselves. As a matter of realpolitik there is a battle for that day. I was simply suggesting that as a matter of pragmatism, you can potentially use some of what you may know about another person’s thought process to inform your discussion. I wasn’t suggesting that belief should be used as a litmus test and I am actually in agreement with you as I believe in a strong distinction between church and state as do many other progressive christians.
“did you ever read “Lies my teacher told me”?”
Yes
spanders:
“did you ever read “Lies my teacher told me”?”
Got it 4 xmas.
The Helen Keller thing is actually towards the beginning. I’m more teed off about being lied to about the warts than I am about the warts themselves.
DRB:
Got the Tao Te Ching in front of me (thanks for making me dig it out, ya rat bastid! Hehehehe). Been scanning. Not a word about servants.
Chapter 1 isn’t even a full page. 9 lines, tops.
Now I’ve seen everything. Do those come with matching underwear, and maybe socks, too ? How stupid.
Interesting how they resemble Knights Templar costumes, isn’t it ?
I see this as yet another of many violations of Matthew 6: 5-6, in that these people have to BE SEEN practicing their “faith” or whatever it is. In my eyes, it’s a fantasy.
Kids at one local church here have been buying AirSoft guns, and they have mock war games after the preaching services. I guess they too are preparing for some kind of apocalypse, like the Branch Davidians, perhaps ? It is to wonder. I draw the line when one has to go to “church” in order to learn how to shoot one another. And it’s a Baptist church, too.
WTH is up with all this war training anyways ? Are they that paranoid ?
BTW…great site, just joined.
Welcome Hause!
Check out this link. If you haven’t seen it already, I’m sure you’ll find it very interesting given your above post.
Enjoy.
http://www.apple.com/trailers/magnolia/jesuscamp/