Religious moderates enable religious extremists

[Sword of Christ]

You've been told what I believe on this subject in other threads

And I have told you what you as an atheist without a belief in God arguing against the general existence of God as you are right now will have to believe. You are a materialist/naturalist. If you don't understand what you believe or it's implications then I'll tell you.

so stop lying. (See, Lion, this is what I'm dealing with with this guy. He constantly and willfully misrepresents what I believe, despite input by me to the contrary.)

You believe in material naturalist philosophy. If you don't then why are you attempting to argue against the existence of God or a purpose giving higher power?

Also, if you can't demonstrate your god contributes this human goodness, you have no right to be asserting that it's the sole reason for that goodness.

No but I can claim God has a relationship with humanity same as you can claim that all we're in relationship with is a bunch of chemical reactions in the brain making us do all this stuff. It's not like you can prove what you believe you will just assert it as fact because that's what you think.

They also helped propagate it in the first place, and defend it against abolition.

Lets say the side God favored won out. Morality is real you know not something we make up ourselves, it's real because it's from God not chemical reactions in the brain.

You know, like one would expect that people would, if god wasn't actually the source of human goodness and his book is filled of fantasies that can be spun any way you want? Funny, how that plays out.

You can do that with what is written in a book by the hand of man but you can't do that to what is written within the human heart by the hand of God

"This isn't an inequality thing, certain churches just don't want gays to have equal rights under the law."

The Anglican Church doesn't really have a problem with it we have gay clergy. If they marry they have to remain celibate though.

This is actually what you're saying. Just telling me it's not an issue of equality doesn't change the fact that it demonstrably is by definition.

It depends what if you equal as a human or within the establishment of the Church. Women can't be bishops or priests in the Catholic Church for instance, it doesn't mean Catholics regard women as inferior in general but that's their tradition. The view for many Christians, though not myself, is that homosexuality is a sin against God but a lot of things we do would be anyway. It does depend somewhat on the Church/denomination in question some are more progressive/liberal than others.

Rather puts a dent in your theory that we all believe all humans are machines and there's no good and evil, doesn't it?

You believe that we're just organic machines produced by a natural non-directed processes without any greater purpose beyond DNA replication. If you're arguing against the existence of God, a creator or a greater purpose in life then that's what you're left with. It's just factually what you believe if this is what you're here.

And the only one deserving of that credit is the human, until you can show that your god exists.

You give humans and God the credit. Else we don't really get any credit all we're just controlled by our genes/instincts or whatever. How are we supposed to get credit for following our program and conditioning we have no choice but to slavishly follow?

Go ahead, tell me that there's no scientific proof you can give for god.

Proof no, evidence from science to back up a reasoned argument for an intelligent designer/creator yes most certainly.

I've already told you that's not the only proof I'd accept. Say it anyway, like you always do.

There isn't any "proof" to accept this is called faith for a reason. You use the Bible, the scriptures, Christs resurrection and the inner experience of the Holy Spirit through prayer and meditation as evidence to support your faith.

Oh, I can do that very easily: I don't believe in a god. The verification is my own mind, and what I think. I do not believe in a god, and henceforth my atheism, the lack of belief in a god, is true.

True for you.

Easy!

You can believe in God just as easily.

What's an "atheist ideology?"

Philosophical material naturalism.

Atheism is a position on a single issue

An issue with far and wide ranging implications on a number of issues.

, and I'm willing to bet that you can't produce a single tenet of an atheist ideology that would actually map to what atheism is and not, say, your drastic misrepresentation of it.

Atheism no but material naturalism is the belief that the physical world is all there is to exist and we are unintentional byproducts of the process, consciousness is a creation of matter and morality the creation of the human mind. Physical laws are and without intentional design and exist as they are by themselves. Without material naturalism as a philosophy atheism becomes pointless to the extent that you may as well believe in God.

Antitheism is the anti-religious component, not atheism. And atheism is a disbelief in god by definition: A- prefix denoting a lack of something, theism- belief in a god. Atheism: lack of belief in a god. The term you're looking for, the denial one, is gnostic atheism, which I and most of the others here are not, and the anti-religion one is antitheism, which also isn't me and most of the others.

Anti-theism is the belief that religion is evil and the cause of human death and suffering. You have presented anti-theistic claims yourself, many atheists are anti-theists as well as naturalist materialists. Without all of this you wouldn't have anything much to say.

Besides, as I've noted elsewhere, even if you change what atheism means, that doesn't obligate us to take up the new beliefs. We'd still believe what we always have believed.

Atheism itself isn't a belief but you have to support it with various philosophies and assertions for it to carry any weight in opposition to faith. For the most part it is in opposition and reaction against faith and a belief in God or greater purpose.

So, to be clear, the bad stuff is all human, but the good stuff is all stuff god gets the credit for?

Bad stuff=human sin (and the tempting power of Satan if you want to throw him in)

Good stuff= God and humanity in harmonious relationship

Not according to the words in the bible. You know, the ones about killing all those of different religions?

It doesn't actually say that anywhere in there it says things like this.

"And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt." Deuteronomy 10:19

Any examples of you may want to find were purely about taking the land not about killing people of different religions. Not that I would defend everything they did or wrote but it was a different time and culture. This was before the coming of Christ as well much of the modern Western world is based on his New Testament teachings which are essentially pacifistic and universal not about tribal warfare in the bronze age.

And I'm saying they were wrong morally, and that if they were indeed using evolution as a source, they were misunderstanding that.

Evolution isn't about the survival of the fittest and the extinction of the weakest then? Because if it this they applied the principal in human life perfectly well. You shouldn't apply this principal in human life though, you apply the teachings of the Christ or the universal teachings of God through all genuine spiritual religion.

You're thinking of social Darwinism here, which has nothing to do with biological evolution, or atheism.

It was a false man made ideology that had nothing to do with the true God. That's the danger of what can happen when human reason supplants Gods Law. Communism was another example of a human ideology gone disastrously wrong. The closer we cleave to the genuine God (through Christ ideally but other religions are fine as well) the better for all humanity that will be.

Hell, the regular kind of evolution doesn't have anything to do with atheism.

I didn't say it did. Atheists like to use evolution as something to support their case when it doesn't really. It's part of the natural order God set in motion from the beginning of time.

Incidentally, you're just flat wrong, anyway: a list of books banned by the Nazis in 1935 had "Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism (Häckel)" on it, and Hitler himself was said to have been a proponent of microevolution, if anything:

The Nazi's had their own ideas about evolution but it consisted of the Germans being the highest form of human life. We're equal as members of the same species but they applied the general idea of evolution to themselves as a false ideology and a pseudoscience.

Whatever else, he was definitely a proponent of intelligent design:

You can call what the Nazi's practiced social Darwinism. The fittest (the Germans) proper and the weakest perish or are enslaved. Now if morality is purely a man made fabrication what would be wrong about adopting this model of society? It would in any objective sense be just as good as ours it would really just be a matter of differing opinion.

Isn't it amazing what a small amount of research will do? Oh, you wouldn't know: it's clear you didn't do any.

We all know Hitler believed in God and divine provenance. Not a God that had anything to do with Christ or what he taught or any other genuine religion though just his own deluded fantasy.

I already told you, with supporting evidence, that whatever they did, it wasn't done on behalf of atheism or evolution, so just completely ignoring that isn't going to help your case.

False. Man made. Ideologies.

Which would make them antitheists, not atheists.

You have to be an atheist to be an antitheist. One false ideology can lead to another.

So why try to make a connection between them and atheism at all?

They're examples of ideologies

You are entirely too stupid to talk to.

Nice bit of ad hominem there.

So, now that we have our snarks out of the way- and I hope, I really do, that what I just read was sarcasm- care to work on the fact that all you did to begin with was a bare assertion?

Assertions supported by evidence, examples and reasoning. Your main argument seems to be "God doesn't exist because I don't want to believe God exists" there isn't a great deal there beyond that.

Prove it.

You can prove it to yourself you can't do it through science.

So, I've called you on this dishonest theft of human goodness several times now... do you really think that continuing with it is going to make your argument more convincing?

May as well claim that atheism is the theft of Gods goodness and putting it all down to evolution or whatever. I don't think you can entirely explain humanity in those narrow mechanistic terms however. Yes we evolved naturally over time, yes we have animal instinct/drives but yes we are also a part of Gods creation and in his image.

Prove it.

You have faith in it based on reason and subjective experience not proof in it.

The fact that we're beings who have evolved emergent intelligence capable of generating that stuff.

Our intelligence is a reflection of Gods intelligence and God created the universe with these intelligence's in mind from the beginning. That's why the universe had to be as utterly fine tuned as it actually is. So essentially we can agree I'm just going to provide a little extra context so it will make greater sense of our purpose.

Because a bare assertion from a proven liar isn't what I'd call a good reason, and having an explanation that you insist is correct doesn't make it correct. Do you care about having an explanation, or having the correct explanation?

I don't remember being a proven liar and you made plenty of assertions about what you yourself believe just stating it all as a fact. While I have made some statements of faith I also have given various examples and evidences for God and reasons to support this faith as a genuine reality. Now I realize there is a possibility that I could be wrong and I have no proof but this is why it is a faith. It's worth mentioning that you don't know for a fact all the assertions you made either but you're just making various assumptions.

Don't tell me what I think, fool.

If you're an atheist and you don't believe in God, a purpose giver, higher power or creator then this is what you believe. If you eliminate everything else then what you're left with is what you're left with. The physical universe as it is and the mechanistic explanations as they are.

No, not randomly: every individual action is supported by the ones that came before, and the laws of physics beyond them.

What created the laws of physics?

The individual reactions can be small, almost negligible, but they've had billions of years to scaffold themselves up to the current state of the universe.

So it's a precisely ordered and balanced physical system of immense complexity then? We agree on this point. I would say there is a good reason why the universe has all the precise fine tuning and development you would say it was just the way it is because it was.

It's like if you had a hundred dice, and you wanted to roll all threes with them, so you keep the threes you do get and roll the ones you don't again. You aren't starting from nothing with every roll.

So there is random variation but within a structured system with an outcome of structure and utterly complex life then?

Why would an answer of "I don't know," invalidate my thoughts? Especially given that evolution is proven.

I'm not saying I know I'm saying I have reasons I'm convinced by to have faith that God is the at the heart of the show. Evolution is fine if the universe itself evolved toward an intended purpose as part of a grand design for life. There's no incompatibility there.

I didn't say there would be a direction, just that we will fade, and with any luck the things that will be selected for will turn out beneficial in the face of environmental and social concerns that we have no way of predicting in the future.

Or we are the apex of a physical process begun with the big bang as initiated and designed by the eternal God and to God we will eventually return. If you want to assert what you believe has happened and will happen in the future.

Good thing you don't know that's what will happen then, isn't it? It's one possible future, but it's equally probable that life survives in some form or another, finds a way to cease the decay, or even starts again.

We know the fate of our universe and humanity in the physical sense. So you believe in a physical restoration and resurrection of humanity /life then? I like where you're going with this.

Besides, why does impermanence make the time we do have depressing? The fact that my lunch will end when I'm finished with it doesn't mean that lunch is useless, or that I can't enjoy it.

Because it would be for nothing ultimately and we're purposeless machines. But as creatures of God we get the full eternal value from our labors in relationship/partnership with him.

I have a multitude of goals and purposes in my life, and I don't believe in your god.

Without God all your purposes are purposeless.

I'm not a materialist. Stop lying to everyone.

You believe in God/a non-physical higher power, creator, designer purpose giver or Spirit then? Because if you do.

Prove it.

I don't need to prove a statement of theological faith. May as well ask you to prove that the universe just exists because it does and morality is purely the product of chemical reactions or whatever.

So, if christians get to decide what atheism is

*glances around conspiratorially*

I don't know if anyone has has ever told you this but atheists don't in fact believe in a God. *taps nose*

So I'm arguing against this position that God (or any equivalent of God by any other name) doesn't exist. That position is your own position.

- in conflict with what the word actually means- does that mean atheists get to decide what christianity is? Because I would very much like christianity to be a good rock-type Pokemon right now.

With atheism you have to be defined by all the beliefs you reject. Ultimately you will have to reject anything you can't know or "prove" as you keep saying. This will ultimately end you up with materialism as you reject anything beyond the physical world that you can't know for a fact does exist.

Nope.

You're only "good" because your brain which is purely just a computer injects pleasurable chemicals into your physical system then? It's the kind of thing Sam Harris would come up with but in the absence of God it's a decent explanation. He assumes that all human morality is strictly utilitarian and survival based but that doesn't quite fit to the full reality of the human experience in my opinion. It an opinion from the stance of faith and he has an opinion from the stance of materialism it's the same deal.

No, an ad hominem would be undeserved and would be the entirety of my argument. I had plenty of other things in there with the insults. And I don't want you to meekly back down; I want you to fucking educate yourself before you go shooting your mouth off about things you don't understand.

I'll make sure to read plenty of Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett books and ensure that I believe everything they have to say on the subject of God. If that's your idea of "an education".