I meet them all the time.

This is true. But what of it? You will die one day. Why spend your life dreading it? Do the best you can with the time you have, and be content with that. This is true no matter what you believe. Take joy where you find it.

I've often noticed that God refuses to do either.

So ... mystery could still be attributed to a supernatural creature? I'm not disagreeing, I'm just wondering why you'd want to hold on to that.

It's amazing how similar indifference is to non-participation.

I don't think you need atheism for this one. People have been known to develop bitterness over earthly matters like unrequited love more frequently.

Or you can think of it this way: your actions and life are every bit as permanent as the whole universe itself. And, as far as your consciousness is concerned, your life is 100% permanent, because you will never know a time when it is not. Imagine how it would feel to be a soul in Heaven and watch your children and/or grandchildren go to Hell. Which one is better? I'd like to be functionally immortal, just to see what other hijinks the human race finds itself in. But I'm content with being born in by far the coolest time on earth so far

Not holding on to the idea of the biblical god at all anymore, nor am I looking to any other way of thinking that involves putting faith in some old unverifiable text. Perhaps there is some supernatural thing, but now when I say supernatural I don't mean magical, as the supernatural only remains supernatural until we understand how it works.

Chris

It certainly is a discussion club, but what real issues did you want to tackle?

Perhaps you haven't seen enough of the damage that belief in imaginary beings actually cause in the world. Look at a history book or the news on any given day.

Or perhaps it's just accepting ideas from unknowing ancients to explain what they didn't understand and living your life for a dimension of reality that never existed. An actual manipulated deception of the masses to control them is not required, humans are fearful enough of dying that they will grasp at straws to explain shit.

Certainly we should, but it is but one aspect of the problems in the world. You of course can start your own web site to that end or even a thread here.

I can see how the imaginary holy spirit causes problems due to the belief in it and the actions people take as a result.

You might want to explain how market economics is imaginary and if so how it causes destruction if it does not exist. Or are you saying it too is a result of the belief in it and this belief results in economic catastrophic conditions?

The Taliban in Afghanistan are not advocating a religious agenda? Nor is there sectarian differences in Iraq over religion causing daily bombings over religious ideologies? And the conflicts in Palestine, Gaza and Israel have nothing rooted in religion? OK, I got to hear your explanation for this view.

Or we might not be too. Appealing to someone's better nature as you seem to be suggesting may not work out, they may not have one. Becoming an ally of someone that believes in invisible friends is just so hard to accept, it would need a lot of sugar to swallow.

It really is considerate of the believers to grasp that killing is wrong, though for the wrong reasons. They however all have countless strings that come along with their rules that just won't go away.

As being an atheist does not preclude one from having very divergent views on politics and economics with other atheists I don't see how one can use atheism to rally a cry for world wide economic reform as you seem to be suggesting, or have I misinterpreted your intent?

Here we go

I have seen the damage a hammer does to the head, never entered my mind to talk to the hammer about it. I have also seen a hammer help build a house. It just might be our responsibility to make sure the right hand is wielding it.

I can argue both, sure. I can also argue atheism introduces such an individualistic culture with so little to socialise about, that even weirdest theists kick our ass in lobbying business, not to mention Lockheed Martin. But I leave that out, because, if we are so rational, why not use the brain and organise people who know how to organise already, and can not be put out of business in a couple of years, like unions can. Thoce mofos will blow themselves up before they give in. We need them. And they are natural allies, look at the ten commandments! Is that like something you would protest? We just need to, you know, show that we are proud of them for keeping them up. Maybe they would do so more consistently.

That may be, but why not learn from Evangelical Christians? They want the Rapture to come about, so they support Israeli government in almost anything. Well, we should find the part of the theist population and support them. Only we ain' got no Rapture comming about, so we are gonna need those guys forever.

As to making my own website, maybe I am getting the reasoning and motivation here. And maybe the best way to gather people is a controversy like this and this might be the best place to write a bit of sense into both sides of the same side. Maybe you go on bickering, but having what I wrote in mind, plus some Desmond Tutu (yea, check that guy out, he is awesome. and a theist.), you might really make alliances outside of this forum. Or maybe even talk to theists without throwing a big piece of shit in their face every time, that would be progress too.

Really quickly, without repeating a lot of literature (Naomi Klein, Shock Doctrin. Published last year I think, read it. There are better ones too, but that's a start. If you don't like her, contact me for others.), there is no such thing as market economics. Every sane country is running a huge degree of protectionism, only countries that are forced develop "free markets". Free flow of capital + a friendly dictator/government introduces a free for all for whoever is running the show. A lot of cash is put in, insane rates introduced. As deficit increases, country is forced to "rationalise" (IMF + WB run this show): pension funds are reduced and then abolished, public services are reduced to pay the interest on the debt. That introduces hightened unemployement and ultimately results in riots, which then turn bloody (Sandonista government was a result of such a rebellion). Then a strongarmed dictator is introduced and rezistance drowned in blood. Very shortly it becomes inevitable that there is nothing more to get out of the population, and then the government is either forced or bribed to sell off everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, even aquaducts, fire department, police, everything is run by some financial institution or an investor from abroad (still IMF and WB running this, after all, the state in question owes money, they just collect). Prices for all those services hit all time high, deficit becomes unpayable, investors pull out all of their money (remember, free flow of capital) and let everything colapse. A special breed of men are on the ground to facilitate all this. Read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins.

Whatever you want to call this, I call it a part of the reality. And only a small part. The current economic crysis is described by some economits as "a nuclear explosion, compared to the 1930es thunderbolt", and "nothing the world has ever seen before, long time comming and completely man-made" (Mogens Møller, danish investor and businessman). Many more not only agree, but would go further. In those circumstances, anything "market economics" would mean, theory, practice, belief, anything at all - it's a mirage covering power interest. It is wrecking havoc on anyone not at the steering wheel and it emlpoyees professional priests as it goes (Pat Robertson).

I would go into this again, but it's usually hopeless to agree on stuff ongoing, almost as hard as on history. I will say that, left to themselves, middle east would sort that out in a second. The real ideology leading that "conflict" is power, Iraq and Afghanistan arent exporting radish. If ANY kind of democratic, nationalistic, religious, whatever interest that isn't directly controled by the western strong arm, was allowed to exist, it would eventually become a power on it's own. Can't let that happen.

Even if Lebanese population was more democratic and less religious than the population in US (actually, they are - roflmao), Israel would STILL be allowed to bomb them (economic reasons mainly, they know Hezbollah would get stronger after an attack, but before that, there will be NO infrastructure left alive in Lebanon).

Even if you could get Saddam out of office by democratic means (yep, strong democratic opposition in Iraq before the war), there can be no discussion about an independant state in a peacefull area with that much power. Must smash.

Even if Osama would have be extradited and Taleban was completely peaceful and talkable (they actually were towards US), this time around it is just too convenient - they are defenseless after all and 9/11 is too good a card to leave alone. Good opium business tradition can be restartdet, another favorite of "free trade" - the "specialisation of agroculture". Basically means you produce what we want and buy food from us. And if you don't, we will make it impossible for you to survive. Tobaco fields in Africa are prime example of that "market economy". It's explained as nations that make that which they can produce cheapest.. never mind what we do, they are the ones that are going to be great. They can import food from us, so that's no problem. No political leverage either, we can only make them go hungry any time.

I don't like posting websites, since people get derailed, so leave it as documentation for later, but DO go there. Going 13 years back, www.DemocracyNow.org has been doing news shows every working day for an hour, independant radio/TV. They should have an archive going back a long time, MP3 is downloadable. They disect the world situation a lot, ask all the wrong questions and are never invited by anyone who doesn't want to be investigated. I suggest do a search on their site for Howard Zinn (historian), sometimes they give him a whole hour, once a year maybe. But do check out the usual shows as well.

Also take a peak at www.pbs.org and do a search for Bill Moyers and NOW. Those are two separate and different news/cultural weekly releases. Moyers was press secretary during Johnson administrations and is very active in the media against consolidation movement.

Get to know South-African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, hear him talk, investigate what he is trying to do for people around the world, check his track reckord, then come back and tell me that isn't the guy you would love to work with on anything.

They do, but so do we. We say killing is wrong, but it's really conditional for us, isn't it? And if it's conditional, is it not concievable that someone might persuade you that the right conditions are met, although it's a complete lie? Like WMDs in Iraq, I knew it was a lie, because I listened to IAEA's president Mohamed ElBaradei and my own brain that said no sane person would put 55k troops on the south border between Iraq and Kuwait and keep them there for the 48 hour countdown, where they were sitting ducks for even a very short ranged WMD. And we went in. No WMDs? We must remove the dictator! Dictator dead? We must introduce democracy! No chance of democracy? We must.. fight them there so that we don't fight them here? Or something?

We can put so many excuses on the table, God has to go all-out to follow up. And we even invented him. A religious person has to go against God just invoking one of those. It is OUR responsibility to go out of our way to support them if they don't, ESPECIALLY when we disagree, because they might be trying to stop us from doing some very bad shit for no reason at all. And no, I am not buying that Bush is a Catholic. He's just a very smart atheist with very different goals than ours. And we are making it eazy.

Again, atheists are many and very different. What we have in common, however, is the inclanation for rational thinking. So, other than individual capacity for rational thought, what differs is motivations and goals. I have met many atheists who are humanists at the same time and it's this crowd I think should start the trend. Theists need a different brain than the mass media that is pulling them by the nose at the moment. Why not us?

About the "cry for world economic reform", yea, you misunderstood. A susstained cooperation sounds better, for whatever purpose. Ideas can come from both corners of the issue and we should not necessarily make concessions - the peasant part of their crowd need authority, remember? But not whining authority, asserive one. Don't count on attracting many, but potentially you might have Dr. King on your hands, and then - look out. He was a Dr., but he sure as shit was a preacher too. Make sure he can come to us, without having the enemy dig up scarecrows like Richard Dawkins, whose head actually turns red when interviewing religious people. Can a man with a red steaming face because of a simple discussion be a leader? Hardly. We should make a "sketch Dawkins" contest and show some largesse.

That's the idea, yes.

You're suggesting that advocating rational thought should be low on the priority list, and you're doing this on a site that advocates rational thought. I'd say it's obvious that we have a disagreement in priorities or in the seriousness of the effect of this website.

See, I don't really care if anyone gets "saved". There may be some people on here who do, but I don't. I like to debate and argue and shoot the shit. So your statement here reads to me like someone standing at the bottom of a ski hill screaming, "People, why are you skiing?? There are so many other important things that you could be doing!"

If you don't think it's useful, that's fine. I use the site for purely selfish reasons.

I'll agree that market economics is a load of crap (I'm a trader) but that's a research project, not a ghost.

Some of us know where it's coming from. It's coming from an aggressive American foreign policy, as endorsed by the people of the United States themselves. USA #1 and all that. 

We'll be able to switch that up if we need the water. The US needs the oil.

It's definitely normative, you just haven't defined the specific enemy. If we're talking about the "burning house", here, there are lots of worthy causes.

I'm not sure what you think is clear cut, though. I agree that there are lots of problems that face humanity. This site is tackling just the one. There are other sites that deal with others.

Humans make plenty of sense in the context of the natural world. It's when you apply arbitrary moral systems on them that they stop making sense.

By doing what, discussing? What if we like to discuss?

Aite, I will toss out the stuff we (nearly) agree on.

I was asked what I would rather have a site like this do, so I am answering. This just goes to show you aren't a candidate, that happens. I actually expect a very small number to respond, but that is fine. Organized few kick ass of individualistic many every day. Even better if those many don't care.

Normative moves a lot of things around every day, if you push the right buttons. The definite enemy really, I don't know. I am not a leader at the moment, it would be cool to be a facilitator and see what happens. Leaders find the right buttons to push. A general aim would be a more sensible world. Not more rational, rational can be as inhuman as you please.

Again, I was asked to define why I thought the site was not addressing any important issues and is probably detrimental to our own interests - I think I can make a case for that alienating theistic society will bring us further away from influence in society.

I don't think humans make sense in the context of natural world. I think you can only make sense with a defined goal - either what you are doing makes sense in the light of the goal, or it doesn't. Without a goal, how can you judge? If it's just survival, well, ok. I don't think that's enough. It isn't for me.

Arbitrary moral systems probably suck, I don't know, they are arbitrary. I don't think religious moral systems are all that arbitrary. They pertain to some absolutness, though, which I certainly don't believe they are, but the concept introduces some weird effects. It is impossible to excuse disobaying absolute moral law, while breaking the conditional moral law can be excused. This means two things:

1) any religious person who breaks one or more of the ten commandments and thinks he is right to do so, is basically an atheist using religion as a weapon (good candidate for enemy though)

2) anyone who is an atheist and is breaking some of the 10 commandments, will have his actions questioned by a proper theist.

The first one talls us what's what around here. The second one should make us not take our choices lightly, no matter what the belief of the theist is, since the ten commendments certainly aren't as arbitrary as all that.

No, by alienating theists. Like I said before, I don't think survival is enough. So I picked a goal that makes cooperation with proper theists a very good idea. And that makes looking down on them as if they had nothing to offer utterly ridicilous.

I can discuss with theists. I would be honest and tell them outright what I think they are helping me with and that I appreciate it. I can discuss religion with them as well, but that would probably not be the first thing we would grab on to. Besides, I can see how they can be of good use to atheists, so they wouldn't get a hard time from me, other then on philosophical questions. Of course, this only goes for theists. Atheists who pretend to be theists - not so much.

I can see how it can be confusing, the dude claims he's a methodist. Also, can see how weird that formulation is to read, if not following my train of thought. But I write only for people on LSD. I should put a disclamer in signature.

Hi, old man

I did sort of setup the criteria, didn't I? Build a house - ok, smash a head - not ok. Build a house to smash a head - not ok, since then the house becomes the hammer.

There is always a problem with what to do with people who smash heads, because surely it must be ok to smash their heads? But that is just a rhetorical diversion, sort of like "if you had a man in custody, and you knew he knows where the nuclear device in New York City is set to explode in 10 minutes, would you torture him?" That is the actual argument used in defending mass torture of populations under occupation, completely random abductions on grounds of not even bad intelligence, basically on no grounds at all. There is a perfectly sound and rational reason for mass torture, and it's acquirement of cross-referencing material. Nothing new, I do this kind of stuff in pattern recognition all the time. It really needs a lot of work to zero in on relevant parameters, but it's no problem if people's lives are worthless. Besides, there is the pleasant side-effect of terrorising the population, if your end goal is having them die or leave.

This is a house built to smash heads, plain and simple. If you are thinking - oh no, a desperate situation - no it isn't. Who do we know takes pride in doing the right thing, even under impossibly unpleasant conditions? The best of our pious friends. So there, we need the crazies for this one too.

Yea, ok, that was cold. But you just can't have a sustainedly running engine without a coolant. I know this introduces problems, but evidently nothing good is eazy. Not even cultivating our pious friends to help monitor the engine and keep it from being too cold or the driver from driving in wrong direction is eazy. And here we need them again. All checks and balances can be worked around, but not a good religious man's - his can be absolute.

As for the rest of it - I am not sure I understand what you mean. Lobby has always and will always exist, in one form or another, as long as there are leaders and followers. We have to deal with this reality and make sure we build houses, not smash heads.

Really? Desmond Tutu is the devil? Dr. King maybe?

Look, I am not saying we should compromise, I am saying we should get where we need to go with their help. This is not a static situation here, we could have been colonizing the solar system by now, if the drivers of our current engine didn't highjack our pious people.

Martyrdom is very well known in Christian culture too. But never mind that, just illustrating that their motivation is like ours, only it can be on afterburners and rarely needs a rational explanation or beneficial result. Our duty is to make sure it has grounds in rationality and that it's building houses, not smashing heads.

Late George Carlin was funny as shit and I appreciate his insight into the absurd. But he also said stuff like "the planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas" and "we go around asking stuff like why are we here? what is life all about? what is man's purpose? and the planet would go: plastic!"

I get the insight and appreciate the laugh, leave the pessimism alone. Same with the religious people - I get their ability to believe and act with faith without reason and leave all the crazy talk alone.

Well, ok, make my own reward. I need tools to make my own reward. Pious people can be an excellent tool, if you can get them to do what atheists can't. I will use pious people. For the win.

Pious people who rest in themselves have very much found a way to deal with reality. Isn't that sort of one of our atheistic theories? Religion is a way to deal with reality?

There you go. More power to that symbiotic relationship  I mean, it IS symbiotic, right? You do get friends out of it, so I assume it is.

Agreement is just basis for next level of discussion.

They know wtf was up. I remember the moment WTC collapsed, my first thought while I was watching those towers fall was - GODDAMNIT. My second thought was a Cheney quote from the Project for the New American Century involving a new Pearl Harbour.

Again, religion is a hammer.

About US involvement, here's some fun facts:

http://www.krysstal.com/democracy_whyusa03.html

Notice the number of times US and the Israel have opposed the whole world, including a resolution that calls all states to observe international law - how hilarious is that?

Well, I wasn't even born in that era, but I have studied the games played. Not different that those played today and the players are the same. Literally.