Does it really matter? If Darwin, Einstein, Dawkins, Harris, Nietzsche, Jung, et al, decided at some time in their lives to believe in god that would in no way prove the existence of a being who has never deigned to show himself in a way that comes anywhere near as credible as the science these men documented.

Quote:Does it really matter?

Yes, because it shows the depth of the bullshit these fucktards are willing to reach trying to prop up their silly-assed religion.

Exactly. The religious are often prone to logical fallacies.

(April 19, 2016 at 10:58 am)robvalue Wrote: Indeed. Apologetics is based on dishonesty.

While you didn't mention anything in this post about used cars and paint jobs, your post did trigger my response and in turn inspired a poem. Last poem of the last page of the poetry link in my sig if you are interested. #826 "Better Get Macco", metaphor for how religion has to constantly repaint old junk to sell it.

Oh so this guy was there on Hitch's deathbed was he?

No.

Case closed.

(April 19, 2016 at 1:15 pm)Brian37 Wrote:

(April 19, 2016 at 10:58 am)robvalue Wrote: Indeed. Apologetics is based on dishonesty.

While you didn't mention anything in this post about used cars and paint jobs, your post did trigger my response and in turn inspired a poem. Last poem of the last page of the poetry link in my sig if you are interested. #826 "Better Get Macco", metaphor for how religion has to constantly repaint old junk to sell it.

Awesome! Thanks, I'll check it out

(April 19, 2016 at 12:58 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Yes, because it shows the depth of the bullshit these fucktards are willing to reach trying to prop up their silly-assed religion.

Doesn't matter, since I don't guess this guy, who's name I already forgot, did hold Hitchens's hand when he breathed his last. Also, an on a strictly personal note, I never needed any prominent atheist to become one. So I couldn't care less if one of them converted. Doesn't change my own point of view.

At the heart of christianity, in its seats of power and its most fundamentalist pulpits, there is a colony of vultures. These vultures believe that everything belongs to them in the end, that all things are pawns to make rhetorical points for their preferred religion, and that all who dare disagree are little more than sustenance for their own grotesque beliefs. It is, to them, the rightful price to pay for the sheer cheek of diverging from their wishes.

If you let them, they will take everything from you to fuel their ends. They will take your voice, asserting that you only disbelieve because you wish to sin, not for the reasons you state. They will take your heart, telling others that you secretly do believe in their god, you just say otherwise. They will take your mind, loftily scoffing that you have no justification for your morals, your reasoning, your emotions, because the only justifications there could ever be belong to them (of course). And then, when you're at your weakest, when your life is done, when your grieving family has let you go and faced a new day without you, when you cannot speak or move or defend yourself, they will even take your death. That last little piece of you, the final dignity of your mortality, the ending of your story, will be stolen from you, ripped from your still warm hands, and tossed onto the pyre, because not even death can save you from their petty, awful need to get at you and twist the memory of you and turn you into a tool to work for them. Not even the grave can quell the utter affront of these vultures, that you would ever dare to presume to believe something they do not. They will take your death, and they will make it about them, because all you are and all you ever were and all anyone could ever amount to is a quantity, its value judged by how much it can help them.

They will rob you, if you let them, and they will strip every last piece of carrion from your bones. They will grind you down into an idea they will label "enemy," and they will turn that idea into a lie to beat your group with, and then when you're dead they will take that lie and they will smugly add their own coda to it, a little deathbed conversion, so they can hold up the lie they've extracted from your legacy and say "see? Nobody can get away with disagreeing with us forever."

There are vultures at the core of christianity, and you are merely grist for the mill, to them.

(April 19, 2016 at 3:10 pm)abaris Wrote:

(April 19, 2016 at 12:58 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Yes, because it shows the depth of the bullshit these fucktards are willing to reach trying to prop up their silly-assed religion.

Doesn't matter, since I don't guess this guy, who's name I already forgot, did hold Hitchens's hand when he breathed his last. Also, an on a strictly personal note, I never needed any prominent atheist to become one. So I couldn't care less if one of them converted. Doesn't change my own point of view.

Fame certainly is not a good reason to hold any position, but he was educated and for me, famous or not, if you are simply holding the "off" position without any knowledge of world history or science and simply say "that's crap" you may be an atheist sure, but I'd say unarmed you'd be very easy pickings for a slick snake oil salesman.

I know far more now than I did when I first started doubting and back then in my awkward not fitting in stage if the right empathetic sounding apologist had cornered me then, I would have been much easier to convince. I guess I got lucky I didn't fall for my emotions back then and wasn't desperate enough to want to "find anything" to have a sense of belonging. 

Hitchens was not an atheist simply to piss people off to get attention, or to make money. He knew his history and was well versed in theist apology and didn't single out any one religion. So I still value his works but I certainly don't worship him. 

I seriously doubt he even "considered" at all. And for the author to say he liked some religious people yes he said that forever, even in "God Is Not Great" so to say that like was sudden is also bullshit. He'd always had religious friends of all stripes. He simply never feared even telling his religious friends what he though of what religion as a construct does to human thought.

Very powerful language, Esquilax!