Christopher Hitchens is a horrible human being, even by our standards.  He is rude, crass, and his entire career was built on spreading lies and misinformation about God and religion. 

Truth be told, I did not follow the Hitchens cancer story too much.  I've been too busy.

But today, I just caught the interview that he did with Anderson Cooper and I was saddened to see him in such a weak state.

I only hope that he finds it in himself to change his mind about God because unfortunately, the pain he is experiencing now will be nothing compared to what awaits him in Hell if he does not repent. 

Then again, I am sensing fear in him.  He says that he does not mind if we pray for him.  He even acknowledged that as he comes closer to death's door, his mental state will change and that he may eventually profess that he has accepted Jesus as his lord and savior so long as his mental state changes.  I think he is simply saying this to cover himself, such that he will not be remembered as a hypocrite when he passes on.  By the time he dies, he will have made amends with God while leaving room for atheists to disregard this based on what he previously stated.

There truly are no atheists in foxholes.

 Discuss.

There I was, idly reading a sermon about holiness as I explored a favourite topic of mine, the relationship between post-conversion christian life and the necessary and contradictory good works Jesus demands of the saved, when I came upon this passage from Isaiah.

"And all our righteous acts are like a polluted garment"

Or in another translation:

"All our so-called righteous acts are like a menstrual rag in your sight".

Meanwhile, the KJV compares our righteous acts to filthy rags.

Notwithstanding the slight to the normal female reproductive cycle, what do atheists and theists think of this passage?

The bible clearly says that without god we are incapable of doing good.

Do we agree with this passage or is it part of the adhom incorporated into the garden of eden story?

Atheists, do we feel we can do good? And theists - do you really believe you did no good before you were saved?

The belief that faith overrides logic had been, until recently, one of those annoying things which Theists did; a logical cop-out under the guise of dignity. It always bothered me that the same people who were trying to find some logical justification for God, and claimed that "it takes more faith to believe in atheism than it does to believe in God" (often saying junk like, "the chances of life developing are so small...&quot, would, when cornered, resort to saying, "well, I believe because of faith. Faith is belief without evidence" and then they'd go on to talk about how faith is important to their religion. Many instances in the Bible also seem to hint that a part of faith involves belief with a lack of evidence. Jesus himself, when he supposedly came back to life says that those who believe without seeing are fortunate, and the apostle Paul also defines faith as belief without evidence.

Now, this sort of thought had always bothered me and until recently, I hadn't noticed exactly how paradoxical this position is. I had tried to express the paradox in my own words, until it was brought to my attention that the book cited in the title had also lashed out against such thought. It is known as the "Babel Fish" argument.

It goes as follows:

I got this off wikipedia and was just wondering if anyone can confirm that this is a catechism of the church or not

If God does not exist, if there is no eternal spiritual realm beyond the temporal material realm where reason and emotion have their ultimate foundations what meaning does love have? In an atheist worldview where love has no spiritual/non-material foundations what is the difference between the love of a man for his wife and a couple of pigs mating? If love only exists in a material form and is just a series of reactions of chemicals in our brain than what is the difference between a parent's for their child and a junkie getting high?

I hear a lot from atheists about how our sole purpose is to propagate our genes? That our genes like those of all life forms want to survive and propagate. But why do genes “want” to survive and propagate? How can something which has no conscious or will “want” to do anything let alone “survive” and propagate unless it was programmed by an outside conscious/will to do so?

I have often heard creationists say that everything in existence must have been caused by something else thus leading to a chain of causes all the way to God Himself. To which atheists respond, “Then what caused God to be in existence?” But this passage from C.S. Lewis refutes this common atheist counter to creationism.”

“For instance, it is a mistake to view everything as needing a cause, for in this case there would be an infinity of causes and even God would need a cause. Only limited, changing, contingent things need causes. Once one arrives at an unlimited, unchanging, necessary being, there is no longer any need for a cause. The finite must be caused, but the infinite being would be uncaused.”

Furthermore. . . . .

 Hey guys,

I wanted to share my opinion of free will and possible issues with it. So heres what I've been thinking lately. I'm doing a PhD in Mathematics and Physics, and being involved in the scientific community you realise how fickle some ideas can be. I have a slight problem with the big bang theory as it is presented today. I suppose it boils down to the question of whether the Universe is a closed or open system. Assuming it is a closed system, implying that the universe is not interfered with by outside influences, then the big bang can be viewed as the only input to the system. This implies that if a closed universe was started elsewhere with the exact same big bang, then it makes sense to assume that it would propagate in exactly the same way as this universe. This means that free will is merely an illusion, and the fate of ourselves and our universe is determined. I suppose it boils down to determinism, but I feel a lot of determinism theories do not appreciate the scale of what I'm talking about. 

There is also an issue with quantum mechanics and uncertainties which give rise to probabilistic approaches. I feel that these are nothing more than human limitations. Anyway, I'd like to get your thoughts and ideas.

S.

Let us answer these questions with all the honesty we can muster...

A yes or no - Fact or Fiction

Babys are born with sinful thought.

Babys are born Atheist.

(Most inclusively, atheism is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist) Wikipedia

The bible is made up of true life events.

Atheist are as a rule evil people.

Evolution is made up of fact based science.

Christian believe in god.

(The concept of belief presumes a subject (the believer) and an object of belief (the proposition).So, like other  propositional attitudes, belief implies the existence of mental states and intentionality, both of which are hotly debated topics in the philosophy of mind whose foundations and relation to brain states are still controversial) Wikipedia

I know there are a lot more where these came from, but lets start with these and see where we end up.