(December 9, 2015 at 9:37 am)Aractus Wrote: They have no evidence for what Evie? They have abundance of evidence for some things, including that religious people tend to be happier and healthier.

Statistics on that? Also, regarding religious people being happier and healthier, I could also say that since a comparison is being made there, that if you look at the majority of people in prison, most of them are religious. Here let me get some statistics on that: 

This link shows a nice article complete with statistics on every religion and on atheism and the percentage of prisoners in each category. 

See? This is a factual claim I am making. You are asserting that religious people tend to be happier and healthier. Where is your proof? Also, based on the facts above, religious people also tend to engage in more criminal activity than atheists do.

The way I see it, regardless of whether it's true or not whether religious people are happier and healthier or not it's completely fucking irrelevant.

Why the fuck do I need to refute Christian arguments? Even if Christian arguments were valid, argument is not evidence - their premises are unsound and they lack evidence.

The onus is on them to provide evidence for the truth of Christianity. They fail every time. It's laughable to think that Christianity is worth refuting: Is Zeus worth refuting?

Aractus Wrote:They have no evidence for what Evie? They have abundance of evidence for some things, including that religious people tend to be happier and healthier.

You can't just use catch-all claims like that. What you can say though is that they ignore other evidence that has firm academic support (such as Egypt was not as depicted in the Old Testament, and neither were Canaan cities).

You didn't notice that 'religious people tend to be happier and healthier' is a catch-all claim?

I'm stumped what fucking relevance this has to do with the fact that Christianity can't fucking defend itself. Why exactly must we refute a belief system that has no evidence to back up its claims?

What the fuck has being happy and healthy got to do with an invisible god in the sky that doesn't exist? Even if Christians were happier and healthier on average, so fucking what? What, we must refute all the bullshit arguments they make now despite the fact argumentation is not evidence?

(December 9, 2015 at 11:25 am)Evie Wrote: I'm stumped what fucking relevance this has to do with the fact that Christianity can't fucking defend itself. Why exactly must we refute a belief system that has no evidence to back up its claims?

What the fuck has being happy and healthy got to do with an invisible god in the sky that doesn't exist? Even if Christians were happier and healthier on average, so fucking what? What, we must refute all the bullshit arguments they make now despite the fact argumentation is not evidence?

Also, correlation not causation.

Quote:So do me a favour guys, stop making stupid arguments. If you're not going to at least get your facts on religion from scholars, then you can't expect anyone else to get their facts on other things from scholars either.

Fuck off, Danny.  YOU don't get to decide which scholars are real and which are not.   You keep your tiny little mind confined in a tiny little box and anything which challenges your predetermined notions is something which simply CAN NEVER BE REAL.

You're pathetic.

(December 9, 2015 at 9:37 am)Aractus Wrote: They have abundance of evidence for some things, including that religious people tend to be happier and healthier.

And there's significant evidence that that is not, in fact, the case:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.10...9908406340

Quote:The aim of the present work was to test for an association between religiosity and happiness... It was found that higher scores on the Francis Scale were associated with higher scores on the DHS, the OHI, the PIL, and the ISA, providing evidence for a positive association between religiosity and these facets of subjective well-being. However, partial correlations suggested that the association between religiosity and happiness is a function of purpose in life.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/713675504

Quote:A number of recent studies have consistently reported a positive association between religiosity and happiness, when happiness is operationalised in terms of the Oxford Happiness Inventory and religiosity is operationalised in terms of the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity. However, this general finding is not consistent across other measures of either construct. The present aim was to examine the generalisability of the link between religion and happiness using the Francis Scale and the Depression-Happiness Scale. Among two samples (Anglican priests and members of the Anglican Church), no significant associations were found between scores on the religiosity and happiness measures. Further research is now required to clarify the components of happiness that are associated with the Francis Scale.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art...6997889106

Quote:The aim of the present work was to test for an association between religiosity and happiness... The present data provide no evidence that, among two samples of undergraduate students, religious people are happier.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023...234#page-2

Quote:A sample of 331 students completed German editions of the Oxford Happiness Inventory and the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity...  These data provide no evidence for a relationship between religiosity and happiness among German students, contrary to the conclusions of the recent studies that have employed the same indices in the UK and in the USA.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023...485#page-1

Quote:Robins and Francis (1996) note that the relationship between religiosity and happiness varies according to the precise measures used and the sample studies.  The further explore the association between religiosity and happiness, 154 North Irish undergraduate students completely the Depression-Happiness Scale and a measure of frequency of church attendances.  No significant association was found between a greater frequency of church attendance and happiness scores...

So if you're talking about uninformed arguments annoying you, you just walked into one.

(December 9, 2015 at 10:32 am)Evie Wrote: That isn't remotely relevant because it in no way says that what they believe is actually true. Why should I waste time refuting Christians when they still lack evidence for their God?

100% this. One's happiness does not mean that one's theistic beliefs are true.

(December 9, 2015 at 8:12 am)Aractus Wrote: There are three types of arguments I see getting used against Christians.

1. Informed arguments - these are the ones an atheist or sceptic can back-up with evidence.
2. Uninformed arguments - these are the ones that atheists or sceptics think are good arguments, but are not backed up with evidence.
3. Valid points that are more-or-less meaningless. This is where an atheist or sceptic comes up with a valid point, but doesn't realise that the point doesn't threaten most Christian's beliefs or understanding about the Bible and their God.

It is the uninformed arguments that I hate the most - as everyone pretty much knows - because this is where some people will make arguments such as Jesus Mysticism based on books or websites written by people who are either not Greek scholars, or, if they are they aren't respected scholars by any stretch of the imagination. Yet at the same time the sceptics want young-earthers not to listen to the scientific quacks: that's the very definition of 'hypocrite'.

The funny thing is that many Christians when pointed out that they shouldn't be using unqualified Apologists and Evangelicals to support their arguments from an evidence-based point of view will AGREE! They will say "Yes you're right, that's an apologist not a scholar".

I'm not even sure why so many atheists here have begun attacking the character of Jesus. Even Life of Brian didn't do that, because they couldn't find anything in the gospels that suggested he was a raving mad lunatic hell-bent on power, or however else you might imagine him. Scholars are divided over whether he actually claimed to be the "Son of God" or not.

Pinning down when the gospels were written is guesswork. And though loathed to admit this, you do find scholars acknowledging that in various places. I've pointed out many times now that it's my belief the church in Jerusalem was destroyed by 70AD.  By that time I believe the church had already advanced through three different stages of belief - their initial beliefs at the time Jesus preached that carried on for some time. The divorce from the Hebrew scriptures and the Law of Moses in 50AD. And, finally, the reshaping of the church in the Syrian and Greek regions. As a religion it was almost wiped out forever at that time.

Atheism doesn't mean a belief that religions are "bad". I've already made that argument from Game-theory and Evolution. Systems and processes evolved just as living organisms themselves do and those that are successful tend to displace those that aren't. In Palaeolithic times this meant we had a paradigm where women cooked and gathered fruits and vegetables, and men hunted and brought home the "bacon" literally. And yet today how many people can't work out why there's gender imbalances in the workforce? The fact is it was human nature for over 300,000 years, and we expect to just "move on" easily from these ancient behaviours? I don't think so. My cat lives with me, and he knows I go to the toilet in the bathroom - but he instead chooses to dig a hole in the garden (or use his kitty litter) and then cover over his business. No one taught him that behaviour, he just knew it. He knows I take a bath, and wash myself with soap. He grooms and washes himself with his tongue. Again - how does he know to do this, no one taught him?

Religion and traditions are also largely human nature. They just come to us naturally, we've been following them for so long - to guide us, and to give us direction and hope. But the problem now is that we've realised that other peoples have different ideas about religion, they have different cultures, and a different set of values. And for a long time we didn't like that, we wanted other people to assimilate to "our" ways.

Religion still does more good than harm. It still provides people with the benefits that they've drawn from it for 300,000 years - in all of its various forms and belief systems. If gives people a sense of belonging, community, engagement, and purpose. This idea that I've chosen to be an atheist is wrong, and the idea that other people should choose atheism is also equally wrong. What I want to bring to people is a greater appreciation for things that sometimes religion can shackle. Sciences, history, and social justice - those kind of things. I'd rather everyone in the world follow religion AND show deep respect for all sciences, and for real history, and for social justice. If not for religion causing a barrier to these things I don't wish it any ill will.

So do me a favour guys, stop making stupid arguments. If you're not going to at least get your facts on religion from scholars, then you can't expect anyone else to get their facts on other things from scholars either.

Wow. 

Irony??

I'm not sure how you can be critical of people presenting stuff with out evidence and then do soo much uninformed speculation in your thread. Religion is 300,000 years old? Based on what? That's not backed up by anything, much less that even if truly prehistoric people had supernatural beliefs or burying rituals (so do Elephants) it's a far cry from religion, it doesn't mean they got any benefits from it. That is all extrapolation and speculation. The exact thing you are whining about for pages.

What else do they have, really? Oh, I'm assuming we're talking about theists. If you mean atheists, the situation is nearly the same. Just goes to show the futility of arguing over such a poorly defined 'entity' .. if the term 'entity' is even is loose enough to capture what everyone means by 'god'.