After years of planning and discussion FreeThoughtAction is finally in action. As of this morning, our first billboard is up on the New Jersey Turnpike just outside of NYC. (For those in the area who are interested, it?s facing southbound traffic just north of exit 18 near the Meadowlands.) It carries the following simple, positive and provocative message: “Don?t believe in God? You are not alone.” More billboards and other advertising are coming soon. 
Spanders! Hi there bub. Missed you. I won’t jump up and down and snark at your journey. More power to you. I really liked that part you quoted
“If you understand that faith is a matter of mind as well as heart, and that taking the Bible seriously means it cannot always be taken literally…”
Exactly. This is what differentiates you from fundamentalists who are the real bunch that get our panties in a knot. Maybe your church should go by the moniker ‘Jesusians’ instead of Christians due to all the insane baggage of that word.
KnowledgeIsPower:
Yes, because that?s exactly how my ?faith? in evolution was destroyed.
How do you define faith?
Zac Hunter:
Documented accounts of vivid memories formed during NDEs when no brain activity was detected.
Can?t at this time?how do you defend the obvious Cartesian tangles of the number i?
Atheism does not require the theory of evolution, nor does accepting evolution require atheism.
I don’t know why you want to try and make it seem as though we put “faith” into either atheism or evolution. Faith is required for things that have no evidence or abstract concepts.
You have faith in god.
You have faith in humanity.
You have faith in your spouse.
That is appropriate use of the word.
I have faith in math.
I have faith it rained today.
I have faith my shoes are on.
See the difference.
That’s a discussion for another time. I find it interesting you place the word ‘faith’ in quotations.
The same way everyone else does. Faith is believing in the absence of evidence. Its in the dictionary. Either we adhere to semantics or nothing of worth is communicated. If you believe there is evidence for the validity of your beliefs, you do not have faith, you have reasonable confidence.
Obviously the last three examples were the inappropriate uses of the word faith.
I hope you can manage to comprehend in what context the word “faith” is to be used. I doubt it since I even posted the definition earlier and yet here you are again misusing it.
Barbiebrains
Don?t know. Lots of weird things can happen at the quantum level that make no sense at the Newtonian level though?like how an electron can ?jump? from one lobe of a shell to another non-contiguous lobe apparently without traveling through the nucleus?
Ditto for me about atheists?like why so many buy ?String? theory hook, line and sinker despite there being a single hint of evidence for it.
When there is evidence faith is not required. If you claim you have evidence god exists then you wouldn’t need faith.
The problem of i disappears depending on how you define postives and negatives.
Here’s some string theory EVIDENCE:
http://physorg.com/news10295.html
It’s almost like you don’t understand the time it takes for scientists to do research and studies to build up a body of evidence.
LOL
It’s like jcc is sitting there with cliff notes on scientific terms to use with us.
I guess in jcc’s mind anything yet to be proven by science will never be proved. And anything that has already been proven he rejects.
You mean the bright light they claim to see? You think a bright light means god?
You assume a person’s perception of time isn’t altered.
Here’s the scientific explanation for NDEs:
I’ve had some out of body experiences myself back in college
Psychedelic drugs work by causing chemical changes in the brain which cause…hallucinations. Those chemicals are already in the brain the drugs just release them in high doses.
Just like a body releases adrenaline during stress and pain it would also release chemicals during death.
Maybe even “dump” all chemicals in the brain seeing how your body died for a split second. This chemical dump would make you trip big time.
But hey jcc I am sure it’s just as likely they were floating to heaven…
JCC…
You are not you without your body…you don’t even have to bring in science to think this one through. There is ONLY the body which has been devalued in xianity…particularly the female body.
No body = no brain
No brain = no you
No data, no memories, no feelings, no senses.
NOTHING.
jcc,
Here kitty kitty kitty
KnowledgeIsPower
I quoted it to indicate that I had put my faith in something that I later believed to no longer be true despite evidences that continue to convince others.
So how would you describe my predicament of believing in God, but not being able to produce His presence before you??I have faith that he exists (because of historic events?and I?m willing to act on that faith?to take risks for it), but I?m not at all ?reasonably confident? that I can convince Him to appear before you. In that case, isn?t my claim that He exists alone sufficient to satisfy the dictionary definition of faith?
I’d also like to point out that there are heaps of evidence that indicate the brain retro-actively creates memories, especially in the event of a traumatic experience.
You’re confused jcc. We’re not talking about me, here. We’re talking about you’re insistence that you have faith in God’s existence, something we can both agree upon, and that you simultaneously have proof/evidence that he exists. I’m not arguing one way or another that your evidence is convincing or not. That’s beside the point. That you feel there is evidence of his existence, I’m getting the impression that the personal experiences are the most convincing for you, would semantically mean that you do not have faith in his existence, but reasonable confidence. Again, this is simply semantics. I’m a strong believer (pun intended) in semantics.
KnowledgeIsPower
No, I take as evidence that all detectable electrical and biological activity in the brain has ceased thereby rendering the brain incapable of creating new neural pathways despite the fact that vivid memories were formed during that time.
‘During that time’ is the key phrase in your assertion. Perception of time being relative to the individual, saying that the memories were formed ‘during’ the cessation of thought is erroneous. All evidence indicates that human perception of time is not contiguous to any concrete standard.
jcc,
You present here a “fact”, so lets see what you’ve got.
jcc,
I don’t think you understand what you are describing, can you prove me wrong?
Note the “…”, what do you intend to communicate with that?
I’d have to agree with you rna. There are very practical reasons for using the quantum model of particle physics.
Jcc, I suppose you could simply say that the ‘without evidence’ aspect of faith doesn’t apply to your particular situation, but when the majority of people use the word ‘faith’ that is exactly what they mean. I’m not sure of your reasons for not adhereing to the common usage of the word, but it is very confusing when what you refer to as faith isn’t what I refer to as faith.