Atheist vs. Theist
Atheist Vs Theist with friends?
Submitted by Gizmo on March 30, 2007 - 9:45pm.Im curious on how many people here have friends who are theists and if you find yourself debating with them in regards to their theism or if you debate with people you generally don't know but you leave your friends alone? Let me know what others do.
If you are going to argue for the Christian god, first make an argument for the Bible being true.
Submitted by Ig on March 30, 2007 - 12:23pm.I keep running into Christians taking this top down approach of arguing for a first cause or fine tuning. Let me tell you why this wont work(for me at least).
Let's say I grant you that some deity created the universe. What does that have to do with us? All you have convinced me of if deism. Am I then supposed to swallow ridiculous stories like Adam and Eve, Noah's Flood, Jesus actually existing?
Intelligent Design debate I'm having at the moment
Submitted by phooney on March 29, 2007 - 5:47pm.Sorry everybody, this is quite a long one, but if you could read it and offer me any further advice or sources to help fill out my arguements that would be great. I have put my opponents in italics and my own comments in plain text
<i>OLD) Posted By: Brink on Thu Mar 29 15:28:37 CEST 2007
seems like u have a bigger beef with god than ID...but thats my 2cents. You seem to associate a belief in God as backwards and that the only true sign of civilization is progress and that that progress cannot include a healthy belief in God.</i>
You are probably correct there, in that I have a bigger beef with God than with Intelligent Design, but even more so with organised religion. After all you can't have intelligent design without any intelligent designer. Also correct, a belief in God is backwards, progress should eventually banish God, and a belief in God isn't especially healthy anymore.
Let's start with an apology . . .
Submitted by chamathman on March 28, 2007 - 12:56pm.
I’m a Christian school teacher in southwest Virginia and your group was brought to my attention through a story my local TV station did about your "Blasphemy Challenge." I’ve never written you or had any personal contact with you or your group, but I want to start with an apology. Based on some of the discussions threads I’ve perused from your site, I want to apologize on behalf of rational Christians (an oxymoron to you, I know) for the following (the posts I refer to I read in your radio show mail bag):
1. People who try to deduce universal statements of reality from the lyrics of pop songs [I mean, John Lennon? Come on!] (‘Adam’ on 11-29-06)
The real son of god
Submitted by Vastet on March 28, 2007 - 6:22am.
As for god himself...well....it died a bit more than 4 and a half billion years ago. Sorry guys. 
Strangest theist argument
Submitted by gobaskof on March 27, 2007 - 5:39pm.Some theist (I'm pretty sure they are Christian) came up with the whole We can have morals without god.
And I pointed out the Golden rule, do to others as you would have them do to you.
But this guy thinks that that is a circular argument!
Something about you have to have already decided the thing is wrong before you can choose that you don't want people to do it to you.
So I said:
I don't like being hurt
If someone did X it would hurt me
So I don't want people to do X to me
Therefore I will not do X to another person
Is The Bible the best guide to morality?
Submitted by AModestProposal on March 27, 2007 - 4:58pm.One thing you hear over and over again is that regardless of whether the events of The Bible literallly happened, The Bible is a still a good guidebook to morality. In fact, I believe it's always said to be "the best guidebook to morality." Let's test this assertion, shall we?
The Bible says it's wrong to kill. - Okay, I think you and I will both agree that this is generally true. I'm fairly certain many other texts before and after The Bible included this rule too, but let's move on. Wait--does this mean just other humans or animals too? Cause I eat meat all the time and my body kills millions of bacteria and other microbes a day, which i have no control over. Eh, let's forget about that. We'll just say The Bible's true enough and move on.
The New Theist Challenge
Submitted by AModestProposal on March 27, 2007 - 4:55pm.One thing you hear over and over again is that regardless of whether the events of The Bible literallly happened, The Bible is a still a good guidebook to morality. In fact, I believe it's always said to be "the best guidebook to morality." Let's test this assertion, shall we?
The Bible says it's wrong to kill. - Okay, I think you and I will both agree that this is generally true. I'm fairly certain many other texts before and after The Bible included this rule too, but let's move on. Wait--does this mean just other humans or animals too? Cause I eat meat all the time and my body kills millions of bacteria and other microbes a day, which i have no control over. Eh, let's forget about that. We'll just say The Bible's true enough and move on.
The Bible says if a man lies with another man as he would with a woman, that's an abomination. Well, a lot of people have a problem with homosexuality. But I guess that's not what The Bible is referring to. It sounds to me like The Bible here is only referring to spooning...unless sodomy is viewed by the writers of the bible as the way in which a man typically lies with a woman. So does that mean homosexuality is okay? I'm confused, but let's just move on anyway and agree that The Bible is right for now.
Okay, stay with me now. We're almost home free.
Basically why I became an atheist in the first place as explained to a Christian over MySpace...
Submitted by Dabura13 on March 26, 2007 - 11:00pm.A Christrian girl claims to not be religious, for she spreads the word of god only. Lmao.
The same Christian I've been going on about from MySpace, Jesus freak, posted a comment on my page with a video. The video was saying what would happen if god came back. My response?
The video is bullshit.
They should kill themselves! LULZ.
I dare you on all that you believe to approve of this comment.
I dare you. XD
This is my opinion; that of which is fact.
Your messiah does not exist. All of this was and is but a lie. Videos like the one you've been posting everywhere are just to scare people into believing something untrue.
Do you really think that you believe this stuff?
You can't even channel into yourself.
Upon becoming an atheist I, as do many others, figure out that it's all fake.
Do you know how many nights I've fucking stayed up waiting, hoping, praying for that fictional bastard to prove himself to me, to make me believe?
Do you know how many tears I've shed sincerely, from the bottom of my very heart, for your god to save me?
Do you know how much of that was in vain?
All of it. Nothing ever happened and I found myself becoming more alive, more aware of who and what I am; where I came from.
I've come to the rational conclusion that I came only from my mother and my father, no god or deitiy.
I was not made from a man's rib and my brother was not made from clay.
So you see, it is not I who is wrong.
It's you.
You and your whole system of a religion.
And then you say that you are not religious, just a follower of god?
How dare you?
Religion is defined as a belief and fellowship or a god or gods. That does include the one you worship.
Why don't you do yourself a huge favor and stop living a big, fat, stupid lie?
Trust me, everything will change.
Everything.
Your mind will grow stronger, your thinking will improve.
I was once just like you.
I am never going back to that.
Here I am, aware of my fate.
I deny the holy spirit, and I am not afraid.
Dabura.
Killing in the name of...
Submitted by Rigor_OMortis on March 26, 2007 - 7:36pm.We've all had a fair share of talk on religious hostility.
I wish to invite you all to an on-line talk examining the causes of religious hostility and what drives the people towards it. You are all people that have a scientific background, or psychological knowledge (be it out of experience, or out of learning). So go for it.
I'm going to lay down a first part of an argument (quite thin, though, it's late at night around here). Stop me when I go dreaming and start spewing out fallacies.
In my opinion religion has probably started as a way to explain the unexplain and predict the (until then) unpredictable. Evolution of old societies shown a certain trend of shift in control, from brute force towards psychological force. As people have become more and more socially bonded to each other, specialization of individuals was not only necessary, but also natural. Think it on the lines of the ants: the hive will not survive if you take out a generation of workers, or the queen, or the soldiers. For advanced societies to develop, its individuals had to become more and more centered on their jobs. We now find not only the inclusion of the weak, but also a choice that everyone was able to make: "am I strong or am I weak?", from a physical point of view.
