On another thread, Caposkia indicated he would be willing to discuss this book with me. I did not want to make this a one on one discussion as I feel it might be interesting to have input from other people. I do request that we don't all gang up on Caposkia, however. Give him a break to participate in other threads, and I am certain he has a life elsewhere.

My thought is to go through Guy Harrison's book and discuss his responses to the 50 reasons in as much detail as we (Caposkia and I) feel is necessary. Some of the chapters we may have more in common with each other and Mr. Harrison, so the discussion may be very short. Other chapters we may have a lot to say to each other.

In order to respect copyright laws, I am not going to copy the entire text of any of the chapters here. Copies are available in print and electronic format for about $10 US. Please consider purchasing a copy - not pirating it - to respect the author. I will give a short summary of a chapter, we can discuss it to death, then move on to the next. If you are interested in seeing how accurate I am, feel free to purchase your own copy. Thanks.

Lastly, I am on Pacific Daylight Time and I, too, have a life elsewhere. Classes are over for the spring term and I am not taking a summer class, so I have time to give this discussion some thought. I will post up the first chapter summary tomorrow afternoon my time.

  One of the reasons why I stopped debating with Christians, or any other theist from the Abrahamic camp, is that once you establish the belief system and worldview, the impasse pops up immediately and the theist's true reason for debating in the first  place, which is proselyltizing, becomes transparent and the debate goes nowhere and degenerates into ad hominem attacks and name calling. I've learned what I came to learn on these forums in debate and thus any further banter will become repetitious and boring.

That said, I believe I have isolated the faulty logic that is present in both theistic and some atheistic worldviews, which have led not only to historical atrocities such as genocide, but also to a mistaken viewpoint of who and what is really to blame in these psycho/socio mechanics.

Let's look at the extremes of both atheist and theist camps which have come under the most criticism as well as the claims and blames. Christians have made the erroneous claim that atheism,materialism,scientism and the like are amoral and thus lead to a social breakdown of morality. They cite the atrocities of communist regimes as well as what they perceive as a breakdown in western society's morality since around WW2, with their chief complaints being the changes seen in human sexuality, the acceptance of homosexuality and abortion being their most forefront complaints.

   I usually hear this from New Agers who will blast Jihadist Muslims and Christian Fundamentalists with one breath, while in baited breath blather on about reptilian shape shifters who run the world's economy and last night's episode of Ancient Aliens on the History Channel. Can "spiritual" just mean "mental/emotional" or "deeply intuitive understanding"? Why does it have to take this supernatural or paranormal connotation? When you ask a "spiritual" person about this, the usual answer I get is,"Oh it goes beyond that.." Please explain. That's when they usually roll their eyes,get irritated and say something like,"You have to experience it to understand, it can't be verbalized..."pressed further you get something like, "You'll never find it with rational thought..." or "If you approach everything in life with rational thought, you'll miss spirituality.." Really. What else is there? intuition? Emotion? I have those, am I spiritual? "No it goes beyond that..." WTF? Here we go again.....

It makes as much sense as the scripture that Christians get all gooey and wet over about "evidence of things unseen and substance of things hoped for"....huh?Call me a materialist clod, but somehow I don't see that I'm missing anything.

Why would a beautiful and intelligent woman like Kelly Obrian go into porn?
You can't have intelligent atheist vs theist debates in the ignorant world of porn.

Is it egotistical to think that a God would die for you?

People who believe in the barbaric human blood sacrifice of the Triune Jesus/God must believe that the greatest force ever to exist decided that humans, lowly creations whom we are told are infinitely inferior to God, are somehow more important than God’s own life and that he would give it up for believers.

That is like a slave master dying in place of his slave. A rather silly notion to me.

Jesus preached that we should develop a humble character with little self-pride.

How is placing your own life above Triune Jesus/God’s showing a humble character as you think that he would die for you? That is taking self-pride to the maximum.

I think that those with good morals will know that no noble and gracious God would demand the sacrifice of a so called son just to prove it's benevolence.

Yet Christians who think they are moral will believe that God would do such a despicable thing as having his son killed even as scriptures say that God prefers repentance to sacrifice and does not believe in asking or accepting a ransom.

Is thinking that to believe that God would die for you the epitome of an inflated ego?

If not, what could possibly inflate an ego more than that?

Regards
DL

Been a while since I visited here. Took stock of my life and views after having second thoughts regarding being atheist. Yes, I had a "relapse"...I mean, come on, who of us wouldn't like to

know for certain where everything began and what happens after death, as claimed by religion?

However, at the end of all the meandering, I came to a conclusion.

Funnily enough, the answer came to me after reading the books of Douglas Adams! Reading those funny, weird stories, I realized that the answer is all in my head.

We can believe anything we want, as long as we convince ourselves.

But, in my opinion, being an atheist means subscribing to the age old saying: " Seeing is believing"...it's as simple as that!

If you believe in god, fine...now show him/her to me!

Science is the only way with which we can explain the universe. Any thing else is just in the mind!

Let's assume we're skeptical or certainly against an imaginary friend in the sky who judges us the day we die.

Why does that still mean we should partake in religion or spirituality?

Two arguments I know of that still support religion despite skepticism are Russell Kirk's and Immanuel Kant's:

http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=06-01-005-f

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-religion/#3.7

The gist of these arguments is that civilization depends on dogmatic language arts in order to unite people in common.  That is literally, communication is the foundation of community, and religion provides domains such as ceremonies, mysteries, scriptures, and edifices where people can dogmatically correspond semantics with aesthetics.  That is people have purposes for matching ideas to forms such that people can agree on the definitions of words.

In turn, this correspondence allows for civilization to flourish because people can understand and agree with one another over appropriate definitions of the rule of law.  No longer are people stuck in what Ludwig Wittgenstein called "language-games" over "family semblance".  The dogmatism of language inhibits people from being forced to assume the risk of impractically misinterpreting what people intend to say.

Belief in Angry God Associated with Poor Mental Health

If God exists, is he (or she, or whatever) inherently benevolent or punitive? The two Bible selections above clearly demonstrate that God can be both, but many believers cordon their perception of the Almighty into a singular view. This fundamental categorization may be more influential than one might think, as recently published research demonstrates that how a believer conceives of God could affect his or her mental health.
 

http://www.cbs12.com/news/top-stories/stories/vid_6034.shtml

A christian student got offended during an exercise where the prof asked them to step on a paper with "Jesus" written on it to illustrate how much we value things in our culture.

And that student was Albert Einstein.

No article or source necessary. It's everywhere. So will this guy be better or worse than the last? Time will tell.