Hi, I just hope I've opened that topic on the right place, and that there isn't already a same topic opened anywhere. But I couldn't find the search button... Maybe you don't have it, maybe I'm just blind... But ok, let's go to what I so long to comment about that video that I saw on youtube.

Well there were actually 2 things that were un-answeared in that debate.

1.- Brian (I hope I've got the name right... If not, please correct me, as I didn't know about yor existence untill just recently) noted there that we all are transitional forms, and the moderator and the 2 dumb (sorry but I had to say that...) oponents didn't understand what of are we transitional forms... Well I think that I got it whyt you meant:

We all are the transitional forms from our parents and our children, and it's just as easy as that, we look pretty much like our parents, and our children look pretty much like us (I personly don't have children yet, but I hope they'll look a bit like I do , to be sure they're mine  ... Joke). So we're the transitional forms between those 2 generations...

And I think it was really a stupid question from Kirk to ask you to name some transitional forms, and then as you told a pretty good answear, he dared to ask again: "Transitional forms of what?"

Nobody has ever been able to show that it is possible for God to exist, so the only rational thing to do is to presume that he cannot possibly exist.

For example, it is not considered possible for an ordinary ceramic coffee cup to become conscious and start talking to me. If I want to argue that my coffee cup could become conscious and start talking, then I would have to explain how that could be possible. How could my coffee cup remember things, how could it think, how could it be aware of its surroundings, how could ceramic move to speak, how could the sound of speech be produced by a ceramic coffee cup?

In exactly the same way, it is impossible for God to exist or to be conscious or to interact with the universe. If you want to rationally argue that it is possible for God to exist or be conscious or interact with the universe, then you need to explain how it could be possible. Why don't you start by explaining how God's mind operates - how can he think without a brain, or remember anything without a memory, or know anything without senses?

I do not need to know how an IC (internal combustion) engine operates to know that it’s possible for one to operate a car because you can show me one that is operating a car. However, if you claim that it is possible to produce a fusion power electrical generator from fruit salad to operate a car, then I am not going to believe that such a thing is possible, unless you either show it to me or you explain how it is possible.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is immediately important in contemporary times for two primary reasons:

1) It is the conflict that Osama Bin Laden cut his teeth on as the leader of a loose military organization

2) It is the most often-cited example used by muslim terrorist apologists (See: Noam Chomsky) of how the modern muslim terrorist movements are motivated by political climate rather than religious fervor, and that - as a result - we wouldn't have the problems with Hamas and Al Qaeda that we do today if only we'd live and let live.

The curious and half-informed observer might then ask, however:

Why on Earth would the 1980s Soviet Union want to invade a barren desert?

Answer:

The were attempting to uphold the current Afghanistan government, the Marxist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), established in 1978 after a small series of coups (resulting from the downfall of the previous monarchy). It was threatened after it attempted to modernize muslim culture and remove the burkas from womens' faces.

 Check out this blog post recounting Nate Phelps' (Fred Phelps' son) account of the love of Jesus as practiced in the Phelps household.  I can't think of any reason to add anything to it.  It speaks for itself.

Read the full article here:

http://www.ubyssey.ca/?p=5624

Another thing, you have it so that this part of the form is called freethinking anonymous and yet you would block and kick etc any thoughts on existence. I'll be honest, me personally, I believe in mysticism, which is to say, I believe that there is a god, and I believe in christ, but I do NOT believe in christianity as it contradicts all of christ's teachings, and the christians themselves do this too. It's one big hippocritical joke in my oppinion...anyway, I digress.

I came here to ask what the atheist perspective is on how humans came to exist. I will not shoot you down, I will not tell you my way is right. All I want are oppinions so that I may better understand my own existence. Thanks for your freethinking. =]

{MOD EDIT: The rules are so simple, and yet...}

The grammarian and the boatman

A GRAMMARIAN once embarked in a boat. Turning to the boatman with a self-satisfied air he asked him:

            ‘Have you ever studied grammar?’

            ‘No,’ replied the boatman.

            ‘Then half your life has gone to waste,’ the grammarian said.

The boatman thereupon felt very depressed, but he answered him nothing for the moment. Presently the wind tossed the boat into a whirlpool. The boatman shouted to the grammarian:

            ‘Do you know how to swim?’

Normal 0

Brainwashing is unethical influence to adapt political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes.

The basis of brainwashing are the basic beliefs that:

1) you do not need evidence to believe things; and

2) you should not question you beliefs.

Why is it always one or the other? I've searched your forums and found very little open minded conjecture regarding the possiblity that there may be correlations between things.

Why do Christians (especially Christians) argue against evolution? Why do atheists so often argue against creation? The fact of the matter, the only thing that we DO know - is that we don't know. None of us. We all believe. What we choose to believe in hits a point of departure at some linear mark as if it could be measured quantitatively rather than in it's true qualitative nature.

Science, for all of it's logic and glory, has yet to prove a single thing anywhere in the known universe. Hell, even me saying "the only thing we know" is less than accurate. Not only do I not know everyone on earth, but I don't know whether or not there are other intelligent, aware beings either here or on other planets or in other dimensions.

Christianity, is a sad, sad deprature from a way of living that used to unify people when they were still jews. Yeah, I said it. Christians are lazy Jews. Jews... 613 rules. Christians, 10. Lazy, lazy bastards.

The point of this post, however, after my ranting, is that it doesn't ALWAYS have to be a "vs" issue with one right and one wrong. Everything being equal, interpretation is the key.

God scoops up some dust. POOF Adam. Can't that for one momnent be interpreted as :

God scoops up some elements on a beach in a perfect environment that is conducive to sustainable life.

I ran across this letter to the editor in an Iowa paper today:

... columnist Rekha Basu describes the Freedom From Religion Foundation as an "...association of 'freethinkers' (atheists and agnostics)." If this is Basu's definition of a freethinker, it's a forgivable shortcut. But if atheists are describing themselves as freethinkers, they are on shaky historical ground, as the original freethinkers of the Enlightenment were mostly deists and unitarians.

They are also indulging in an ironic conceit. If everything transcendent is mere superstition, then your every thought is determined in minutest detail by a chain of natural cause and effect stretching back to (and beyond) the Big Bang. You can't be an atheist and call yourself a freethinker.

You are obliged to believe that you are nothing more than a machine, freewill is illusion, and your mind is a mere epiphenomenon, a dead-end byproduct of the chain of cause and effect.  (emphasis added)

I've been seeing this argument a lot recently - Frank Turek also used a similar argument against Hitchens in the VCU debate.   At that time I thought he was confusing atheism with determinism.  Sometimes I've seen it phrased in ways that pull off of our lack of free will, as well.  While there are tons of ways to phrase it, I simply picked the letter above because it was already typed up for me... anyway, I'm interested in your thoughts. 

My questions are these-  Are the Bible's messages mainly being cherry picked from sermons, from popular quotes, or from media? How many Christains have actually read the Bible? Is religion now more than ever being passed on by word of mouth than the actual reading of the "holy" book?

Do you think this is partly the reason that we cannot pin them on any of the black spots in the Bible, like say stoning homosexuals? In the end they don't ever hear about these particular passages in sermons, or the media, so they blank it out, like it was never written in there in the first place, only concentrating on the good of the book.

I think that to know the answers to these questions would prove to be interesting.