(November 16, 2017 at 10:23 am)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:

(November 16, 2017 at 10:20 am)mh.brewer Wrote: Mental illness, yes, unfortunately one still accepted by society because they are functional. But society puts up with a lot of functional mental illnesses, the ill are just less organized.

You must mean like people who are hopelessly confused about their sexuality.

My eldest is transgender. While everyone is broadly supportive, there is one group which is not and hurls spittle flecked fulminations everywhere. The religious.

(November 16, 2017 at 10:21 am)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:

(November 16, 2017 at 7:30 am)Mathilda Wrote: It's not fair debating a tag-team of theists because each one sincerely believes a different fairy tale. So they can choose a belief system to best answer a question. Whereas atheists are constrained to argue about what happens in reality.

You act shocked by the idea that Christians can think for themselves and have ecumenical disputes. Our ability to constructively engage each other undermines your thesis that theists are childish. As for indoctrination, that part is true. Each of us received education in the doctrines of his or her faith tradition. That does not automatically entail mindlessly accepting them. If that were true, AF would have no members that were formerly theists. Your real objection seems to be that other people don't reach the exact same conclusions as you. That seems kind of...I dunno...childish.

Not that what she claims I supposedly said is even true: "CL challenges me on saying that christianity teaches that only their god can judge and says that what this actually means is all their god can do is decide whether your soul is in heaven of hell", which is NOT what I said. But whatever, right? That only keeps with the whole theme of this thread which is consistent strawmen bullshit since the OP itself.

(November 15, 2017 at 10:16 pm)Simon Moon Wrote:

(November 15, 2017 at 10:05 pm)Abaddon_ire Wrote: So you're all good with genocide. What a horrible position.

A genocidal dictator can save his 'soul' on his death bed, but an extremely ethical, moral atheist gets eternal punishment for a thought crime.

Why is this constantly mis-characterized? We are not punished for any one sin. We are separated from God for not being holy nor accepting the atonement that will make us so. No "punishment for a thought crime", just consequences for decisions we make.

Jesus seemed to think otherwise.  Fuck that guy though, right, you're here to tell us what's what.  We don't need his input. The catholics insist that we might be punished even if we are without -any- personal sin. Not one, not one hundred. That we're fundamentally seperated from god by the original sin of our first parents. What do you think about that?

(November 16, 2017 at 11:07 am)Abaddon_ire Wrote:

(November 16, 2017 at 10:23 am)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: You must mean like people who are hopelessly confused about their sexuality.

My eldest is transgender. While everyone is broadly supportive, there is one group which is not and hurls spittle flecked fulminations everywhere. The religious.

If someone has depression it does them no favors advising them to get over it. Conversely it is not helpful to normalize their illness by noting how many famous artists etc had depression. There is a balance. People with chronic illnesses should be neither demonized nor coddled. Gender dysphoria is a medical condition with serious health consequences. To frame it as a civil rights issue is as misguided as attributing it to mere personal choice.

(November 16, 2017 at 9:42 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote:

(November 16, 2017 at 9:18 am)alpha male Wrote: So argue about what happens in reality. You haven't done that at all. You've offered armchair psychologist speculation. If your speculation is true, shouldn't there be deep and widespread real world repercussions for people so severely handicapped emotionally and intellectually?

She posted an article once which claimed that psychologists were saying people of faith are mentally ill. Turns out the article was completely satire, as someone soon pointed out.

So much for being a skeptic. How embarrassing.

Is this the best you can do? It looks very much to me as though you're scraping the bottom of the barrel, ie, you have no arguments left.
Not that you ever presented any rational arguments to begin with.

(November 16, 2017 at 11:36 am)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:  Gender dysphoria is a medical condition with serious health consequences. 

Yeah, like a lynching by the religious.

(November 16, 2017 at 9:14 am)alpha male Wrote:

(November 16, 2017 at 3:24 am)Hammy Wrote: The Bible doesn't 'teach' anything. And to believe that such rewards exist after death based on a book written by goatherders over 2000 years ago just because you can't cope with the idea that there isn't a super caretaker to take care of your fate, is indeed utterly childish.

Aren't you the guy who lives on video games and frequently feels as if he's an observer of his own life?

Err, isn't that the whole point of video games? And see above answer to CL.

(November 16, 2017 at 11:45 am)Succubus Wrote:

(November 16, 2017 at 9:42 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote: She posted an article once which claimed that psychologists were saying people of faith are mentally ill. Turns out the article was completely satire, as someone soon pointed out.

So much for being a skeptic. How embarrassing.

Is this the best you can do? It looks very much to me as though you're scraping the bottom of the barrel, ie, you have no arguments left.
Not that you ever presented any rational arguments to begin with.

Arguments for what exactly? That was my response to Alpha calling out Matilda for having nothing to back up her diagnosis of us being mentally ill.

(November 16, 2017 at 11:31 am)Khemikal Wrote: Jesus seemed to think otherwise.  Fuck that guy though, right, you're here to tell us what's what.  We don't need his input.  The catholics insist that we might be punished even if we are without -any- personal sin.  Not one, not one hundred.  That we're fundamentally seperated from god by the original sin of our first parents. What do you think about that?

The vile claim that you are broken at birth is an insane claim to me. Or that one should suffer the same pain because of their ancestors is insane to me.

"Sin" is a mythological word. If one wants to say that humans make mistakes, or that humans can be cruel, nobody can or should dispute that. But to sell a kid the idea that they are broken BEFORE they do anything wrong is absurd and dangerous.

Humans are flawed yes. Humans can be cruel yes. But to sell a child that they are broken at birth, is cutting their legs out from under them before they can think for themselves. 

OUR flaws as a species are not a result super heros or super villains. We should not be teaching children that they are unworthy by proxy of old mythology or the acts of their ancestors they were not responsible for because they were not alive.

And the worst part is when the theist claims this "all powerful" deity set up the game himself.  Takata airbag maker KNEW it's product was bad, and they got sued. I'd say if you are "all powerful" you'd have no excuse for making defective product.

I'd say the reason humans do good or bad, isn't magical either way. I'd say we'd all do better if we want to reduce the bad, to understand nature in real terms and not chalk it up to old mythology.