Why I care about religion

[Viking]

Originally posted by Black Sheep
Then explain why it doesn't deviate off course. The most minute deviation would render this planet inhabitable to all life forms. I'm familiar with gravitational pull. And I am also familiar with Kepler's Laws and some other mathematical conjecture that tries to explain it. But that Earth just hopped into a near-perfect elliptical orbit with the Sun.... is hard to believe. Most objects nearing the Sun for the first time - get slingshot somewhere else never to return. So this planet had to initially come from somewhere to get HERE. And stay here. And gravity wants us to become one with the Sun, but something has to hold us back. I don't believe it's the earth all by it's little self.

Actually I don't think you're much familiar with the concepts of gravity since you wrote that post. However I'm not even going to try to explain - not because I think you wouldn't understand, but because I don't think it will change anything. And if it doesn't change anything, there's no point.

The universe is incredible simple. There's just so astronomically many small simple things interacting with each other that it makes it mind-boggling complex. We can't hope to understand it all - so we call it God.

[hacksaw1]

Hawk68 said:

Atheists tend to start with no actual assumptions and work their way up.

Hawk, I don't know if I can go along with that. As a naturalist relating to the world around me, I "believed" matter and energy, by inherent properties contained within, issued forth in the Big Bang, some 15B years ago, and we all lived happily ever after. Somehow, according to the assumptions I was operating on, inert matter jumped the prebiotic hurdle by purely natural processes.  Assumptions of natural, inherent properties of matter and energy were a major factor through which I dealt with, or rather denied, the possibility of a Creator. Maybe that is not what you are getting at. But I would say, from my experience, that there are basic assumptions about existence that a naturalist clings to and they have a significant influence on the readiness to consider the possibility that God is.

Since orbits have just been mentioned, I'll take a moment to comment on a post a few pages ago about spectacular Solar eclipses.

Dead said:  "And oddly enough, the moon used to be a lot closer, and is moving farther out by about 3.8cm a year"

3.8cm = 1.5 inches

In 5280 * 12 / 1.5    =    42,240 years the moon will have retreated from earth by ONE MILE.

In 420,000 years it will have moved 10 miles farther than its present orbit.

In 4,200,000 years it will have moved 100 miles farther.

In 42 million years it will have moved 1000 miles farther out.

Since the lunar perigee is ~ 221,000 miles and the apogee is ~ 252,000 miles the difference in radius of 10,000 miles in 420 million years would hardly be noticed.

So, even for those who look at natural history from the typical modern view of long ages, any hominid that I'm aware of ~5M years ago would have seen basically the Solar eclipes we see today, with a moon about a 100 miles closer. I don't really think that is much of a Cowboy job.

Best Regards

[Debonair]

thats inaccurate.
both the earth & the moon sweep up many tons of meteroric debris every day, altering the orbital dynamics.
also there are other sources of gravity & as you certainly know, any orbit with three or more bodies is inherently unpredictable.  there are solar winds to factor in also....

[-dead-]

Originally posted by lazs2
I am not sure what deads point is.   we have no idea what gods plans are, or, if he even has any for us.   We have no idea if we are alone in the universe.

My point is why stop there? The uncertainty can continue: we have no idea if gods are there at all.

As to "are we alone in the universe"? I think it's highly improbable that we are "alone". Too much space, too many planets for it not to have happened somewhere else.

Religions, on the other hand, are generally of the opinion that this is the only game in town. Read the myriad creation myths (funny how creationists never want to give equal time to all of them in the classroom): not much scope for other life forms on other planets. Everything tends to be terracentric. Which one can speculate is most probably because ancient people on Earth have made this whole god business up, rather than vice versa.

Props to the Dogon tribe however, for their righteous "Sirius is a binary star and god came from there" thang. Weird stuff indeed, there.

We have no idea how he came to be...those who do not believe in him have no problem explaining that the universe was allways there or.. that it suddenly created itself.

Or indeed if he came to be at all...

I do have a problem with explaining the whole universe origin thing.

Frankly I have no idea, but it's fairly obvious if you chuck in a brand X god and squeal "that's the slag wot done the blag", you've merely put the whole question off. It just begs the question: "where did brand X god come from then?" It explains nothing, and imparts no new knowledge about the process, and in a logical sense is an unnecessary extra layer to "no idea how it happened".

Worse still for the creationists, their particular brand of special G sauce is the mother of all irreducibly complex and highly improbable things, ergo(so their argument goes) the big G must have been designed. ID is a complicated way of arguing your way into an infinite regress.

We have no idea why every group of man from the first has believed in a god.

Well, there I'm of the opinion that there are a few psychological needs at play:
1. The cosmic parent to smite the naughty, to kiss it better when it hurts and to blame for random "acts of god" (now there's a coincidence!).
2. Life everlasting/better life after death and other cosmic justice.
3. A handy bendy dandy explanation for everything we can't work out.

Add to that the fact that god inc. is a big money-making scheme (God is not an Englishman after all -- turns out he's from Nigeria*), and bingo you have organised religions all over the shop.

You will note however on the fundamentals -- what's god like, what does god want, how many gods are there -- there are profound disagreements.

The idea that god needs to prove himself to those who don't believe in him is ludicrus.

As indeed is the idea that "he" needs people to believe in "him". What's so secial about people believing in you?

To say that the unexplained is simply science not yet reached is  very glib... it is in fact...  a religion.   There is no basis for it other than faith and past performance on some level.

No I say the unexplained is just that: the unexplained. I have no idea if science can come up with explanations for the as yet unexplained.

Science doesn't really come up with explanations at all -- that's religion's job. It's why religion stifled science -- because religions already know everything there is to know.
Science comes up with theories, that only stick around as long as they work as models for how stuff works -- ie they make predictions that come true. Science professes uncertainty, and is open to change. It often takes a long time to change, but science will admit being wrong. Religions do not.
I also note that whilst you posit that saying "that the unexplained is simply science not yet reached is very glib", you seem to be of the opinion that saying that the unexplained is simply god is somehow very profound.

something created the universe and did it in such a way that everything we see is possible.

That's just sloppy thinking -- who says something has to have created it? Personally, I freely admit that I don't know at all and couldn't conjecture. But it's also not necessary to drag god into it -- as George Carlin says, "god has problems, too: Everything he makes dies."

Some scientists are however thinking about the origin of the universe, and have come up with theories about it, some of which seem to be borne out by the current state of the universe. String theory & zero point energy certainly look like promising avenues of inquiry.

The problem with religions is that saying "god dun it" and dusting your hands doesn't advance our knowledge. When someone then asks for details -- "how did god do it?" -- religion provides another useless answer like "by magic" or "he moves in mysterious ways" or the supremely self-referential "he's god: he just did it". It just doesn't move us forward. It is perhaps no coincidence that the era of the most unquestioning xian faith in Europe was known as "the dark ages".

For many of us.... something has given us strength from time to time that we could not have had on our own...  some of us see others with no faith in a god who will lay down and give up.

In that respect... my god is very good for me.

Again, there is no evidence that this is a god. That does sound like the psychological crutch I mentioned before. But [Insert muse here] will get you through tough times just as well. In fact how do you know that it wasn't just you that gave you strength? I've had some mad fun and "deeply spiritual" moments on mushrooms and that was all entirely me and my brain chemistry (the mushrooms would have no effect on the brain if they didn't act like the brain's own chemicals).

And indeed what is this "strength"? Can you define it all? I ask because it may be crucial to working out if you could indeed not have had it on your own.

And indeed some numbers on those with no faith in god giving up versus those with faith giving up would be nice.

And as such this distnction between those with faith going strong and those without giving up would appear to be at odds with your assertion that atheism is just another faith-based religion. And if indeed you are correct that it is a religion, you would then appear to be wrong about them giving up -- because it's a very early religion (the word itself is circa 500 BC

In either case... god can be what you want.  some of you want it to be man and science but we can't put that on the money.

Well god seems to be a social fiction to me. And god doesn't need replacing with man or science or anything else because god didn't do anything, due to being a made up concept, by a minority of terrans.

"In God we Trust" is good enough for everyone...let your god be whatever you want it to be.. the government has not right to tell you what that is....

just as it should be.

Sadly for the atheist, it translates to "In utter pants we trust" Which does at least have the merit of explaining the missing WMDs and other fiascos in Iraq. Whoa! More proof of gods' non-existence off of a dollar bill and US foreign policy?!? Shome mishtake, shurely?

*Let him that hath understanding count the number of god: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Four hundred onescore less one.

[Seagoon]

Hi again Chair,

Originally posted by Chairboy
This thread was an effort to have a discussion about the constitutional violations surrounding religion and atheism, and you and I agree on those points.  Isn't that enough?

Alright, before I reply to any of the other posts, lets for a moment attempt to assess this idea that Christianity poses a threat to the liberty of Americans.

Let us set aside the fact that America was not founded by atheist and communist emigres who in the pursuit of freedom from religion, left the Old World and landed on the West Coast at Berkley and then made the great trek East by VW Bus.

Let's just talk about the credibility of the Christian "threat" to the rights of Atheists.

Obviously you are not talking about a threat from the Christian left, that is the modern mainline churches like the PCUSA, UCC, UMC, ELCA, NBC, and TEC. They have become both theologically and politically liberal and are actually amongst the most vociferous voices for progressive politics in the nation. They also tend to despise fundamentalists more than most atheists. It's interesting to note, for instance, that Barry Lynn the executive director of "Americans United for Separation of Church and State" is an ordained minister in the UCC. To be frank, Chair, you probably take the bible more seriously than the average UCC minister. Additionally a huge proportion of the Roman Catholic church is also politically and theologically liberal. This is important to note because we are talking about millions of Americans who would identify themselves as Christian.

Then lets talk about the people the media would "the Christian right." The "Fundamentalists" or Evangelicals. You know, me and my homeboys. You are concerned that they are co-opting the society. Actually, being a resident and long-time observer of that particular sub-culture, I can tell you that actually exactly the opposite is going on - the culture is co-opting the church. Pick the largest evangelical mega-church in your area and attend one Sunday, odds are good that you will find a service that looks more like a Baptized version of "American Idol" and if there is any sermon at all in between the entertainment portions of the service, it will most likely be lacking in anything except a vague feel good message and lots of entertaining anecdotes. While most American evangelicals are still politically conservative, their theology is increasingly adrift.

You fear that they want to enforce the Ten Commandments in society, but surveys indicate that the majority of American evangelicals can't even give the Ten Commandments in their correct order or tell you where they are in the bible. I come from what is considered a theologically robust denomination, and yet many of the ministerial candidates graduating from Seminary whom I tested and interviewed on the candidates committee of two different regional presbyteries were generally weaker in their knowledge of the bible and theology than Presbyterian laymen in the last century. Their worldview as well tended to be a Christianized reflection of the American popular culture. The average American evangelical, far from wanting to reinstate the blue laws, can't wait to get out of church so they can have brunch, go shopping, and watch football. The increasing proliferation of signs on American business saying "Now Open on Sunday" has a lot to do with the consumer habits of American Christians.

As for the impact of evangelicals on the laws and mores of our society, I would say it is at best marginal and currently declining. For instance, I am currently doing a brief series of Wednesday night studies on the problems with evolutionary theory, and the inadequacy of neo-Darwinianism to explain creation or even "the origin of species". After the last series, I was asked by one parent what could be done to get public schools to revise their text books to at the very least remove outdated and erroneous information. I answered "realistically nothing" and explained that even if 100% of the parents in a particular area insisted on such a revision, it would be impossible to implement as it would be blocked by legal action from the NCSE, NEA, AU,and ACLU. I pointed out that it was not possible to introduce material from mainstream Science publications that even questions the validity of Darwinianism. Parents today have almost an impossible task in ensuring that their children are not taught about homosexuality in a positive light in Kindergarten. High School Valedectorians could talk for hours about how Marxism, Scientology, or Cross-Dressing improved their lives and enabled them to get higher grades, but if they talk about Jesus, their microphones are unplugged.  

Personally, I am in no fear of a Christian take-over of the government, quite the opposite. I teach our congregation to expect days of increasing persecution in the future, and to be ready to endure them with longsuffering, hope, and patience and point out that in actuallity the freedom from persecution that Christians have enjoyed in this country for 200 years is the historical anomaly, and that what Christians endure in Pakistan and Indonesia and North Korea is much closer to the historical norm. In some ways, while I don't look forward to being persecuted, I do see the need for it. As one Chinese pastor observed to me, the modern American church has become the ecclesiastical equivalent of a suburban couch potato: fat, indolent, lazy, and spoiled. And nothing separates the wheat from the chaff like persecution.

[68Hawk]

Hacksaw, you have a good point.

My comment on assumptions is specifically directed at the initial assumption that there is a god.  It's kinda like one person saying 'there is a god' and one person saying 'there is a what?'.  

The scientific 'assumptions' you talk about are observations that have largely been tested and proven through the scientific method.  I think, correct me if I'm wrong, that we're talking about the difference between a scientific hypothesis and a scientific theory.  Even if we don't completely understand all the dynamics of how gravity functions, we know it is there and have observed hard evidence of its effects.  This is not really speaking about an assumption.

Also, I certainly wouldn't argue that some people might approach religion from completely different angle that I do, and if you do operate under some things that are pure assumption in your evaluation of the universe that's quite alright.  I only mean to convey my perspective on it, and to refute those who insist that I'm beliving something without cause or reason.  No one will ever be able to see inside my head, and honestly it would scare the crap out of them if they did.  Scares me every night!

[Seagoon]

Hello Hawco,


Please forgive me for snipping and a relatively brief reply, but I have to teach a class at 6:30 and I have some materials still to get ready.

Originally posted by Hawco
I have decided to expand on my train of thought as the community has brought up Faith based murder and the concept behind that, As an avid philosopher, I'd like to look at that point and expand it for disscusion.

In your point about God's command to Abraham to sacrifice his son you do not stop to consider the greater theological importance of that event in the broader context of redemptive history. Abraham had such confidence in God's promises, which he had tested and found faithful, that he knew that even if he had slain Isaac the promise that Isaac would be the father of a people more numerous than the stars of the sky and the source of a great blessing to the nations, meant that God would deliver him back from the dead. That is the point made by the author of Hebrews in Hebrews 11:17-19 -

"By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, "In Isaac your seed shall be called," concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense."

Additionally a host of further lessons are taught in this episode: first that God calls us to love Him as wholeheartedly as He loved us and not to put anything else before Him. Second that God Himself will provide the sacrifice of propitiation that turns away death, third that God's love to us is demonstrated in that while he did not call upon his followers to prove their devotion by going through with the actual sacrifice of their children, He did not stay His own hand as he commanded Abraham, but slew his only begotten Son, Jesus, in order that our sins might be atoned for. I could go on, but lets just say preaching the Gospel from Genesis 22 is not hard to do.

Before you say that God could never command such wicked things,remember that the God of the three Abrahamic faiths not only ordered the sacrifice of Issac, but also condoned the rape of a wife as punishment to the husband (2 Samuel 2) ordered the killing of followers of other religions (Deuteronomy 13) and sentenced blasphemers to death by stoning (Leviticus 24). It seems there are no limits to what god might ask and some people of faith will do.

Very quickly, and I'm going here from memory - 2 Samuel 2 concerns the brief civil war that preceded David's ascent to the throne. I don't recall any rape there, what are you refering to? Deut. 13 forbids and punishes syncretism and apostasy, i.e. that the people of Israel would turn away from the God who saved them and worship the false gods of Canaan and practice their abominations (which included male and female ritual prostitution, bestiality, and the sacrifice of infants by burning them alive). Had they turned aside and gone after those idols they would have been subject to the same temporal and eternal judgment that fell upon the Canaanites (incidently God specifically stated that he had given the Canaanites 430 years to repent). Finally, considering that the Bible makes clear that God could simply have judged everyone after the fall, and that he mercifully extended salvation by grace, treating Him as holy and punishing cursing Him isn't exactly asking too much of His people. You question presupposes that all men were good and inherently worthy of salvation and that God is somehow dealing with them in an unfair and arbitrary manner. All sin is cosmic treason and even the NT makes the point that they are all worthy of death. God's mercy is seen that he covers the eternal penalty for those sins by the atoning death of His Son. You see the Good News is so Good, precisely because the Bad News is so very Bad.

[-dead-]

Originally posted by hacksaw1
Dead said:  "And oddly enough, the moon used to be a lot closer, and is moving farther out by about 3.8cm a year"

3.8cm = 1.5 inches

In 5280 * 12 / 1.5    =    42,240 years the moon will have retreated from earth by ONE MILE.

In 420,000 years it will have moved 10 miles farther than its present orbit.

In 4,200,000 years it will have moved 100 miles farther.

In 42 million years it will have moved 1000 miles farther out.

Since the lunar perigee is ~ 221,000 miles and the apogee is ~ 252,000 miles the difference in radius of 10,000 miles in 420 million years would hardly be noticed.

So, even for those who look at natural history from the typical modern view of long ages, any hominid that I'm aware of ~5M years ago would have seen basically the Solar eclipes we see today, with a moon about a 100 miles closer. I don't really think that is much of a Cowboy job./B]

Well, first off the moon has been there for 4.53 billion years (the sun has been out there for about 5 billion, which suggests a move of 1,000,000 miles further out since incept (although I doubt the rate is constant -- as earth/lunar gravity weakens, the moon will probably accelerate away). And in a billion years' time (so the BBC tells me), the Moon will appear too small for there to be any total solar eclipses at all. The sun - it is estimated - will last another 4 billion after that.

But secondly (from my big book of eclipses the webpage ):
"When there is a solar eclipse, the Moon is about the right size to completely cover the disk of the Sun. If the Moon is close enough to the Earth, it will cover it completely, and we get a total solar eclipse. This is the most spectacular kind, where the day changes into darkness, and one can see the stars in plain day. If the Moon is further away from the Earth, then its disk will not be big enough to cover the Sun completely, and we get an annular eclipse, where most of the sun is covered, but an annulus remains, surrounding the dark disk of the Moon."

So we don't always get full eclipses even now. Which is only down to a difference of 31,000 miles. So we're back to the Cosmic Cowboy builder again. "Ahh, good enough -- they'll never notice!" As your attorney, I advise you to follow Basil Fawlty's timely example and insert a gnome into the builder in question.

Furthermore only a cowboy would stick the whole damn thing in the middle of what is essentially a shooting gallery and then shoot things at it. Ye-hahweh, I presume.

Actually i think it's partly down to the human knack of pattern spotting -- the eclipses don't happen perfectly over the whole of the part of the globe in sunlight, just in certain limited areas. And even in those certain limited areas it usually does not happen perfectly. Not particularly significant in the end. It merely seems significant to our very pattern-recognition-orientated brain.

Here is a further wonderful pattern you may care to enjoy and marvel at: 23 Skiddoo. The Daily Mirror believes it all. The smallest measure of time is 10 to the minus 23. We all have 23 pairs of chromosomes... and each person contributes just 23 chromosomes to our offspring... DNA has bonding irregularities every 23rd angstrom... 23 + 2 + 3 = 28 the lunar phase! What luck! How amazing! Be careful though -- keeping note of all the 23s out there can become extremely scary. Which is basically the point. Try it for a month.

And finally as I noted previously -- it's essentially a misuse of probability to wonder at the odds against event X using the finishing point and working back. Event X is always entirely improbable for any given event - be it you posting on this BBS, brushing your teeth, or the moon being exactly where it is.

[Hawco]

Originally posted by Seagoon
Hello Hawco,


Please forgive me for snipping and a relatively brief reply, but I have to teach a class at 6:30 and I have some materials still to get ready.




In your point about God's command to Abraham to sacrifice his son you do not stop to consider the greater theological importance of that event in the broader context of redemptive history. Abraham had such confidence in God's promises, which he had tested and found faithful, that he knew that even if he had slain Isaac the promise that Isaac would be the father of a people more numerous than the stars of the sky and the source of a great blessing to the nations, meant that God would deliver him back from the dead. That is the point made by the author of Hebrews in Hebrews 11:17-19 -

"By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, "In Isaac your seed shall be called," concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense."

Additionally a host of further lessons are taught in this episode: first that God calls us to love Him as wholeheartedly as He loved us and not to put anything else before Him. Second that God Himself will provide the sacrifice of propitiation that turns away death, third that God's love to us is demonstrated in that while he did not call upon his followers to prove their devotion by going through with the actual sacrifice of their children, He did not stay His own hand as he commanded Abraham, but slew his only begotten Son, Jesus, in order that our sins might be atoned for. I could go on, but lets just say preaching the Gospel from Genesis 22 is not hard to do.




Very quickly, and I'm going here from memory - 2 Samuel 2 concerns the brief civil war that preceded David's ascent to the throne. I don't recall any rape there, what are you refering to? Deut. 13 forbids and punishes syncretism and apostasy, i.e. that the people of Israel would turn away from the God who saved them and worship the false gods of Canaan and practice their abominations (which included male and female ritual prostitution, bestiality, and the sacrifice of infants by burning them alive). Had they turned aside and gone after those idols they would have been subject to the same temporal and eternal judgment that fell upon the Canaanites (incidently God specifically stated that he had given the Canaanites 430 years to repent). Finally, considering that the Bible makes clear that God could simply have judged everyone after the fall, and that he mercifully extended salvation by grace, treating Him as holy and punishing cursing Him isn't exactly asking too much of His people. You question presupposes that all men were good and inherently worthy of salvation and that God is somehow dealing with them in an unfair and arbitrary manner. All sin is cosmic treason and even the NT makes the point that they are all worthy of death. God's mercy is seen that he covers the eternal penalty for those sins by the atoning death of His Son. You see the Good News is so Good, precisely because the Bad News is so very Bad.

You haven't adressed the issue of the rationality of faith, also would you accept that there is any constraints on "gods" powers?

[hacksaw1]

Hello Dead,

I took a look at the site you linked. To me the picture of the annular eclipse is quite spectacular as well, knowing that there is a difference in distance of times 388 between the two bodies.

If you are saying that all events in the universe have an equal statistical unlikelihood of occurring, then I don't think I can agree with you.

We observe the universe around us and draw conclusions about the way objects relate to one another in time, and we call those conclusions Newtonian physics, Special or General Relativity, or Quantum Mechanics. We also postulate extrapolated effects forward and back in time to strengthen or diminish the confidence we have in our observations. The fact that there are physical "laws" at all means that some outcomes of interactions are likely while others are highly unlikely, or impossible under certain constraints. Working backwards from event x and drawing conclusions about likelihood is not invalid at all.

Two of the examples you give - posting on this BBS, brushing your teeth � must also take into consideration human intent. In that context of intent, I would say the following two strings are not equally likely, and do not have equal information content.

p nm3 9aes"a  23 q (o a]v - @3 65% L =i3n #@ 3 qp I ksd

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

I, as a being with the capability of expressing intent, have typed, "In the beginning...." many times in my life and likely will type it again someday. But that was the first time I typed, "p nm3 9aes"a..." and I cannot imagine ever typing it again, nor other meaningless gibberish like it. Based on experience, there is high probability for one outcome, and low probability to the point of non-existence for the other outcome.

By the way, my reasons for asking myself about the purpose of my existence, as I mentioned in my post several pages ago, are related to a lot of other "life" experiences that I chose not to include. But to briefly mention a few, as a budding naturalist, age 15, I discovered a growth on my body that was not diagnosed for about 3 months, and an uncle had died not long before of a malignant cancer. So, though not knowing, I considered the possibility that the growth was cancerous and that I might be entering my everlasting void a lot sooner than I'd expected. That was not a particularly buoyant feeling. Family problems also contributed to my inquisitive approach to the purpose of life. My dad was drunk a lot of the time, unfaithful to my mother, and violent when I was very young. So I suspect that my circumstances were different from those you grew up in. By the time I reached university, still a confirmed naturalist, I was exposed to more physics and chemistry and was amazed at the high order of the universe from micro atomic level to the macro. So, I didn't proceed with "sloppy thinking" or non sequiturs, but I weighed a lot of information for a long time.

The bottom line for me is that my relationship with the Creator is not a result of science. However, once I admitted that science does not rule out a priori the possibility that there is an eternal Creator, then I left my insular rejection, and began to "test" communicating with Him. I was in the Marines at the time, and in electronics/avionics courses to learn to service airborne fire control radar. Since then I have reached the conclusion, through indelible experiences, an abiding awareness of God's presence, as well as study, that God is very interested in every one of us, whether we are interested in Him or not.

[Gunthr]

Chair, let me get this out of the way.  I believe very strongly in my own concept of God, to the point where it is the core of my life.  I consider my philosphy to be private, and I don't consider it my duty to evangalize.  If someone asks, I might explain it, but otherwise you won't hear about it.  

Yet, I strongly support separation of church and state.  I believe that it is the only way we can have a real democracy.  For me, it is a case of "give unto Ceasar..."

I do not feel threatened at all by atheism.  The thought of the athiestic philosophy doesn't grab me emotionally in any way.  I welcome your proposal that our laws should be consistent with the constitution, and I believe that they will be, eventually (laws effecting athiests are not the only laws that are inconsistent with the consitution or archaic, or outdated).


Chair, if the video you linked succinctly represents your views, I need to ask you a question.

Why does the producer of the video, and by extension, you, assert that a person who is against abortion, for example, is someone who is in the grip of "religious ferver."  ??

In your worship of rationality, isn't it true that some arrogance has crept in, allowing you to assert that anyone who disagrees with you on an issue like this is doing so out of religious ferver?  


Is it part of the dogma of the atheist religion that no atheist can be against abortion?
Are you seriously telling us that there are no atheists who believe that abortion is murder?  Are you telling me that because I am against abortion, it must be due to religious ferver, which I assure you, it is not?

[lazs2]

dead...  I believe that you would be considered an athiest.   I was at one time myself.   I believe in a god.   I believe there is a god in my life.

I freely admit that I have no proof that I could show you.  I know that I have been given strength that I did not posses when I have asked my god for it.

I have no problem with science and my god... no conflict.  I am curious and look forward to scientific discoveries... I have, of course, lived long enough to have seen many scientific theories that were touted as absolutes.... be latter proven wrong.

I believe that the closer that science gets to god the more it will simply prove his existence.

It is not only the wonder of the universe that proves his existence to me but... more importantly...  the fact that I can appreciate it.

You claim that it is highly probable that we are not alone... you are agnostic leaning toward believer on alliens... your proof?   "how could it be otherwise?"   That is my "proof" if any that god exists.

I don't believe that god needs worshippers.   God isn't the one who benifiets.  

lazs

[Chairboy]

Originally posted by Gunthr
Is it part of the dogma of the atheist religion that no atheist can be against abortion?
Are you seriously telling us that there are no atheists who believe that abortion is murder?  Are you telling me that because I am against abortion, it must be due to religious ferver, which I assure you, it is not?

You're right, that part of the video does not represent my personal views.  I make no assertion that an objection to abortion is part of any religious hysteria, and there is no connection between atheism and that opinion.  I should have noted that earlier, I guess I just missed that part of the film.  An objection to abortion is rational and does not reflect any mental illness or fervor.  Thanks!

[lazs2]

I also support the seperation of church and state.   The ten commandments in a court may be over the edge....

A nativity scene may be also in a public owned building...  

In god we trust or "under god" are not.   So long as god is a generic one then there is no violation of the seperation of church and state.

However... those who are offended by a nativity scene or crosses on military graves are PC aholes.   There may be some violation but it is not intended as such.  it is meant to give cheer and comfort.... only an ahole would try to take that away from people.

68.... either you believe with all your heart that it is impossible for there to be a god and you are of the athiest religion or...

You admit that you don't know and you are an agnostic.

there are no degrees of athiesm.   You are a believer in the religion or you are not.

commies are true believers and... they don't believe in seperation of church and state when it comes to their religion (athiesm) it is above all others and controls the government.  

I would contrast a government formed on a beliefe in god (the U.S.) with one where god was outlawed (soviet russia).

Seperation of church and state is good but no god in government is bad.

lazs

[Gunthr]

However... those who are offended by a nativity scene or crosses on military graves are PC aholes. There may be some violation but it is not intended as such. it is meant to give cheer and comfort.... only an ahole would try to take that away from people.

I agree they are PC Aholes.  I think the gubmint can allow any symbol a person might want on thier grave, even in a gubmint owned cemetary, without violating church/state.
 
But the argument whether to allow a nativity, or ramadan or a satan upsidedown cross, or wiccan pentagons or Buddahs or whatever, on the lawn of a city hall is a little different.  I think we just have to acknowledge that the world is different today, the make up of the US population is way different. Gone is the day when the population was 98% religiously homogenius and nobody minded nativities because most of us believed the same.  No more.  

For me, I'd rather the government face the difficulty of allowing every religious philosophy under the sun be allowed to have displays for the sake of fairness to taxpayers, or allow none of them.  Its a bit much to expect government to get involved in all that and it does require a lot of money and resources to be fair to every taxpayer, so we should just allow no religious displays that are payed for with public monies.  But gubmint should be tolerant and allow people, groups, to display any religious symbols they want, which is their right.

I know for me, if I lived in Dearborn, MI, an Islamic enclave, I'd rather have no displays allowed at all, than to have any kind of Islamic claptrap in the lawn of city hall, since I'm not too fond of that particular religion any more.  I'm worried about Shariah creeping into that gubmint in Dearborn, let alone Islamic symbols on city hall lawn.