Is America the greatest country

[Catholic_Lady]

[...]Being in the Air Force, we know a lot of fellow officers who own guns and like to go shooting. They are still innocent people. They are still good people who don't deserve to die.[...]

Ha! That's rich. I must remind you that according to your imaginary friend NOONE is innocent and EVERYONE deserves to die, including infants - in whatever gruesome way Jeezles sees fit - because a b*tch ate some fruit once. Your fabricated outrage is laughable. Stop it.

Sure - an idea that guns should be purposefully made defective is dumb, especially that retards seem to have little trouble hurting themselves and their own families with weapons in perfect working condition. But there's little use in getting your panties in a twist over a throwaway emotionally motivated comment.

And as far as "wishing for innocent people to die" - there's a website called "Darwin Awards", where we celebrate morons, who killed themselves through their own stupidity, thereby removing their defective genes from the gene-pool. They may be "innocent" for all intents and purposes and I'm sure their families suffer because of their deaths - still, the world is a better place, each time a stupid person stops being a problem for everyone around. That's just how mother nature (or - if you like - god) works - through natural selection...

http://www.darwinawards.com/

Homeless Nutter is a stand up guy, ladies and gents.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Ha! That's rich. I must remind you that according to your imaginary friend NOONE is innocent and EVERYONE deserves to die, including infants - in whatever gruesome way Jeezles sees fit - because a b*tch ate some fruit once. Your fabricated outrage is laughable. Stop it.

Sure - an idea that guns should be purposefully made defective is dumb, especially that retards seem to have little trouble hurting themselves and their own families with weapons in perfect working condition. But there's little use in getting your panties in a twist over a throwaway emotionally motivated comment.

And as far as "wishing for innocent people to die" - there's a website called "Darwin Awards", where we celebrate morons, who killed themselves through their own stupidity, thereby removing their defective genes from the gene-pool. They may be "innocent" for all intents and purposes and I'm sure their families suffer because of their deaths - still, the world is a better place, each time a stupid person stops being a problem for everyone around. That's just how mother nature (or - if you like - god) works - through natural selection...

http://www.darwinawards.com/

Homeless Nutter is a stand up guy, ladies and gents.

Perhaps you could answer his point that your god dooms people to death based on Eve's applebite?

I'm no big fan of cheering anyone's death, and don't enjoy the Darwin Awards tales or such, but there is a point he's made that you're eliding, preferring instead to attack him personally with sarcasm.

[Anomalocaris]

It is always possible, indeed unavoidable, to chose what to believe.

Actually it's never possible to choose what to believe. You're either compelled and convinced or you're not. A belief is like a lever that gets pulled when reality (or what you think is reality, even if it's complete nonsense) hits.

You can influence what you believe to a certain extent by deliberately only looking for evidence that supports a certain belief you already hold, and not looking for anything that does: I.e. intentional confirmation bias. But once you see the evidence and you're convinced by it, it's too late. You're either compelled and convinced or you're not.

I think you are grossly oversimplifying and idealizing the thought process involved in deciding what to believe.  Humans first decide what their objectives are in embracing the concept of evidence. That  that objective may not be to form the most predictive model of reality come hell or high water. That objective could very well be as in cases of wormy theists like wooter, drich, and their ilk, to  maximize self importance, or minimize emotional discomfort. Each of which is susceptible to a countless array of manifestations upon standard of  evidence as well as willingness to embrace cognitive dissonance and intellectual dishonesty.  Downstream of this process there then appears multiple other points in which individual decisions can be made regarding the precise Degree of intellectual dishonesty, evidence denial or fabrication, and cognitive dissonance to embrace.

The process you idealized does not remove decision from belief. What it is is the end result of a string of but one of the countless possible permutation of multiple decisions.

[Catholic_Lady]

Homeless Nutter is a stand up guy, ladies and gents.

Perhaps you could answer his point that your god dooms people to death based on Eve's applebite?

I'm no big fan of cheering anyone's death, and don't enjoy the Darwin Awards tales or such, but there is a point he's made that you're eliding, preferring instead to attack him personally with sarcasm.

I don't see how his analogy makes sense. He's pretty much saying that believing in hell is the same thing as wishing death upon someone. This analogy would only work if you wished someone would go to Hell. Then you could compare it to wishing someone got killed. But on the contrary, wishing Hell upon someone is fundamentally contrary to my beliefs and to what the Church teaches our attitude should be.  

As for the claim that "God dooms people to Hell", I have talked about this quite a bit and even wrote a thread about it. I'll look for it and post it here. 

Basically, I don't believe God dooms people to Hell.

[Catholic_Lady]

Perhaps you could answer his point that your god dooms people to death based on Eve's applebite?

I'm no big fan of cheering anyone's death, and don't enjoy the Darwin Awards tales or such, but there is a point he's made that you're eliding, preferring instead to attack him personally with sarcasm.

I don't see how his analogy makes sense. He's pretty much saying that believing in hell is the same thing as wishing death upon someone. This analogy would only work if you wished someone would go to Hell. Then you could compare it to wishing someone got killed. But on the contrary, wishing Hell upon someone is fundamentally contrary to my beliefs and to what the Church teaches our attitude should be.  

As for the claim that "God dooms people to Hell", I have talked about this quite a bit and even wrote a thread about it. I'll look for it and post it here. 

Basically, I don't believe God dooms people to Hell.

Here are my beliefs regarding Hell: 

http://atheistforums.org/thread-35781.html

[Cyberman]

The analogy is not that believing in hell is the same as wishing death on someone, but that saying that someone deserves torture and endless suffering is. It's not the belief, it's the intent. For the record, I subscribe to neither opinion.

As for the Darwin Awards, the humour comes from the stupid and/or ironic means of death, not that people die. Incidentally, death isn't the main criterion to qualify for a Darwin; merely that the nominee is removed from the gene pool. That could involve sterilisation or some other means of making reproduction impossible.

[Catholic_Lady]

The analogy is not that believing in hell is the same as wishing death on someone, but that saying that someone deserves torture and endless suffering is. It's not the belief, it's the intent. For the record, I subscribe to neither opinion.

Ah I see what you're saying. Well hopefully my explanation of Hell clears that up as well.

[Minimalist]

The doctrine of eternal punishment is in perfect harmony with the savagery of the men who made the orthodox creeds. It is in harmony with torture, with flaying alive, and with burnings. The men who burned their fellow-men for a moment, believed that God would burn his enemies forever.
-- Robert Green Ingersoll

[Cyberman]

The analogy is not that believing in hell is the same as wishing death on someone, but that saying that someone deserves torture and endless suffering is. It's not the belief, it's the intent. For the record, I subscribe to neither opinion.

Ah I see what you're saying. Well hopefully my explanation of Hell clears that up as well.

Not really, because it's still relying on an opinion that a particular set of people are deserving of some form of segregated, exclusionary treatment. It doesn't even matter at that point what you think that treatment entails. As I said, it's the intent that counts.

[Catholic_Lady]

Ah I see what you're saying. Well hopefully my explanation of Hell clears that up as well.

Not really, because it's still relying on an opinion that a particular set of people are deserving of some form of segregated, exclusionary treatment. It doesn't even matter at that point what you think that treatment entails. As I said, it's the intent that counts.

It's not "treatment," that's the thing though. They're not being pained by someone else mistreating them, they are being pained by their own thoughts and choices.

It's like if someone is a huge bigot and just hates everyone else. That person becomes consumed by their own hatred and bigotry, isolates himself from everyone else, hates everyone else, and decides to live a lonely life of hatred and emptiness. In doing so, this person just makes themselves extremely bitter and unhappy, because as human beings we need love and companionship. But this person is too consumed by hate to open his heart to those things.   

Does that person deserve to be as unhappy as he is? It's not a matter of deserve or not. If you hate everyone else and you isolate yourself, you're going to be unhappy. That's just cause and effect. Hell is the same type of idea.