I'm just curious about it. There is a whole bunch of them at my university and I can honestly say everyone of them who has come up to try recruit me is crazy. Tbh it seems rather like a cult to me.

All I want to know is what do they believe? All I have managed to get them to explain so far is that its not a cult, its science and it's from india. Thats all i've gotten out of them when they ask me to come meditate with them (I say no every time). Anyone know what they are all about?

I have a book from the International Society for Krishna Consciousness but I couldn't get past the 5th page before I started to feel insane.

Matt has stand alone stuff about this topic both in podcast and in their weekly show, but this is the first formal debate he has done on the topic.

A link to all the different Atheist Community of Austin stuff:

http://www.atheist-experience.com/ Main weekly public access show location

http://www.atheist-experience.com/archive/ Series archive

http://www.nonprophetsradio.com/ Regular podcast

http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Main_Page Anti-apologetics wiki created by the group

http://atheistexperience.blogspot.com/ Blog

Part 1 below, see this site for the whole batch or just go to youtube.  http://atheistexperience.blogspot.com/2010/11/source-of-human-morality-debate-videos.html

Existence of God
You may be a fundy atheist if....

 It’s bad enough that rabid secularists hate Christmas. It’s downright tragic that some Christian purists judge others for celebrating the holiday.

Two weeks ago when I wrote about how God worked in the lives of people in the biblical Christmas story, several readers jumped in to remind me that the modern celebration of Christmas is a pagan holiday that is luring unsuspecting, gift-giving revelers into hell itself. One person who identified himself as “Albert” wrote in our online forum that he “isn’t comfortable celebrating Christmas” because of its demonic origins.

You probably know there are many Christians who boycott Christmas for various reasons—some factual and some quite debatable. These people insist:

* The holiday has become too commercialized and promotes greed. (I would agree.)

*No one knows when Jesus was born. (True—and the Bible is silent about the date. However, “Albert” and other anti-Christmas purists insist Jesus was born on Sept. 11, in 3 B.C., during Rosh Hoshanna.)

“I unashamedly love Christmas. I love the trees, the ornaments, the lights, the smells, the foods, the music, the gifts and the family and friends who share the celebration with me.

* The Dec. 25 date was chosen to “Christianize” the pagan celebration of Saturnalia, an ancient winter solstice festival. (Probably true—but is there anything wrong with Christianizing something? I’m glad a pagan celebration was replaced.)

Recently I've been reading up on the Baha'i faith.  I've been somewhat disappointed by the faith presented so far.  While they do seem to hold reason and even scientific inquiry as points of doctrine, their doctrine has, in other areas, not managed to escape the irrational failures of more-established monotheistic religions.  I did a little research into the authors of the linked book, and discovered that one of them formulated a tidy little proof of the existence of God. 

In summary, it goes like this:

1) Everything in the universe is either preceded by a cause or else contains within itself a sufficient reason for its existence.

2) For every system or composite phenomenon, any cause for the system is also a cause for every part of the system. (Every material thing, except possibly the elementary particles of quantum physics, is composite.)

3) The existence of a whole system cannot precede the existence of its components (or, he writes, "the constitution of a whole obviously supposes and depends upon the prior or simultaneous existence of its components.&quot

For a more complete version, see here. I'll note that both of the last two links lead to what appears to be an official Baha'i site, which I'll be looking into in more depth when it isn't two thirty in the morning.

Hello guys,

I haven't visited the forum in a while but I'm glad to see I'm still a member.

I'm a postgraduate student at a university in the north west of England (Manchester) and recently I got involved in debating the existence of god with some Muslim students who were proselytizing on campus. Just to make things clear - I am an atheist and I think I held my ground rather well. I even confounded a few with rather simple but fundamental questions like "if god is omnipotent and all-good why won't he heal cancer sufferers. Either because he can not, or because he wills not, in which case he can not be all loving or all powerful"

On area I struggled in is the origins of Earth and the Universe. Their line of argument was that something can not come from nothing, and order doesn't spontaneously rise from chaos. As soon as they got me to admit those two assumptions I knew I was sort of trapped, cause everyone can see where this argument was heading. (god caused the big bang, & evolution & so forth)

They have a booklet called "The Man In the Red Underpants" that is designed to show how the Big Bang was so fine-tuned that the rate of expansion was just right etc that it is extremely unlikely that it happened by accident. Btw I haven't finished the booklet yet as I was only given it today, I just scanned through it.

im just curious, how athiests defend this apparent contradiction that many so called intellectual athiests hold. 

I watched the debate between kelly and brian and kirk cameron from a couple years back and i was overwhelmed by the utter lack of knowledge possesed by kelly and brian in terms of modern cosmology and physics and meta physics and in terms of being able to form strong logical arguments.

For example brian mentions the 3rd law of thermo dynamics as support for an eternal past and matter being an eternal being.  This premise is only contigent in a post big bang universe according to all modern science so if we can prove that the universe came in to being which seems far more logical than this fallacy of an infinite number of past events that all but rendors that little argument useless.

Further more even if we permitted the argument based on his inaccurate depiction of the 3rd law of thermo dynamics wouldnt the second law of thermo dynamics form quite the conundrum for the athiest, specifically an athiest that holds to the eternal presence of the universe.  The second law of thermo dynamics states that in a closed system( which is ultimately what an athiest/naturalist has to subscribe to) that all things eventually will lend to disorder and chaos, so if we have in fact had an infinite past would we already be destroyed by chaos and disorder? hmmm?

Hello,

Is it logically possible for atheists to have morals? I thought it best to start on a fresh topic. Besides the laws of the land, what keeps you from being a rapist or a mass murderer since you are worthless according to atheism and no ethics can be afforded to you.

Why is it that via your nature, everything you do is against the Bible. You don't go against Scripture because you intellectually go against Scripture, you do it because you "want" to via your desire. Where does your desire come from?

Isn't hating God a Hate Crime? Why would you be so intolerant about God when He tolerates you and allows you to breath. Why are you so intolerant and why are you so narrow minded that you don't allow the possibility for God.

But then again, according to this site, an agnostic is an atheist. lol. wow, that's a Classificational Fallacy if I ever saw one. Atheist via the etymological term is a fixed claim that there absolutely is no God. And now there are as many definitions for atheism as there are ice scream at Baskin Robbins. Just pick your flavor.

And this is what we would expect to find, since atheism is confusion and ridiculous. Atheism is by definition narrow-minded and is a hate crime since they hate God.

I will be moving for a while so will not be able to get back to this. Perhaps tomorrow before I go. But will return to see the pathetic attempts where atheists claim that they can have morals and they don't kill because of XYZ. Wow, 

To my athiest friends (I apologize if this is a simple or silly question): On what do you base your sense of morality? I know many of you claim that God is evil and not moral, so what is your ultimate basis for morality? Are there moral absolutes in the Athiest worldview?

    If you got 1 hr.8 mins. to kill watch this  www.booktv.org/Watch/11840/Debate+Does+Atheism+Poison+Everything+with+Christopher+Hitchens+David+Berlinski+aspx