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Answers needed
#31
RE: Answers needed
(June 25, 2015 at 11:32 pm)Louis Chérubin Wrote: "Murder is not good for the individual human." Murder could help rid societies of defective genes. It could rid societies of unproductive dependents. It would also allow the murderer to acquire the murdered person's goods.

BTW. I don't murder because my God-given conscience restrains me and because God tells me not to.

It would also allow the murderer to spend the rest of his life in jail and/or be killed himself. A person who murders innocents would have a hard time finding a mate to propagate his genes. In early societies, it would result in either being killed or cast out of the society you live in, which would have been a death sentence. You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what evolution is.

I'll say it again: Evolution does not work on the level of individuals. It works on the order of populations.
"There remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking." ~Christopher Hitchens, god is not Great

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#32
RE: Answers needed
(June 25, 2015 at 11:37 pm)das_atheist Wrote:
(June 25, 2015 at 11:32 pm)Louis Chérubin Wrote: "Murder is not good for the individual human." Murder could help rid societies of defective genes. It could rid societies of unproductive dependents. It would also allow the murderer to acquire the murdered person's goods.

BTW. I don't murder because my God-given conscience restrains me and because God tells me not to.

How does goes speak to you? Is it an audible voice?


This is getting kind of off-topic (since I want to know what you believe). But God speaks through nature and the Bible.
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#33
RE: Answers needed
The Bible is rather contradictory on this point. God punishes Cain for killing Abel. And god does command, thou shalt not kill. But god kills a whole number of first born Egyptians himself. And he orders his people to kill rape victims, whole cities just for being on land he wants for his people. God seems rather more ambivalent about killing than I am.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god.  If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.
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#34
RE: Answers needed
(June 25, 2015 at 11:41 pm)Jenny A Wrote: The Bible is rather contradictory on this point.  God punishes Cain for killing Abel.  And god does command, thou shalt not kill.  But god kills a whole number of first born Egyptians himself.  And he orders his people to kill rape victims, whole cities just for being on land he wants for his people.   God seems rather more ambivalent about killing than I am.

Well he can, "because God"

Christian logic...
"Adulthood is like looking both ways before you cross the road, and then getting hit by an airplane"  - sarcasm_only

"Ironically like the nativist far-Right, which despises multiculturalism, but benefits from its ideas of difference to scapegoat the other and to promote its own white identity politics; these postmodernists, leftists, feminists and liberals also use multiculturalism, to side with the oppressor, by demanding respect and tolerance for oppression characterised as 'difference', no matter how intolerable."
- Maryam Namazie

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#35
RE: Answers needed
I hate new posters who come into an atheist website thinking they have earth shattering arguments we have not seen before. Not so much in the repetition, yes that bothers me too. But in the context that they think their arguments are unique to them and only their religion even down to the sect. 

The only reason I put up with this bullshit repetition is that I still learn from all the ways theists mask their skunk of arguments in new word arrangements.

I don't give one fuck what fictional sky hero one claims. It still amounts to humans concocting fictional super heros that amount to nothing more than a reflection of their own desires.

If a god by any label existed, it should be condemned for the bullshit it has allowed.
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#36
RE: Answers needed
(June 25, 2015 at 11:32 pm)Louis Chérubin Wrote:
(June 25, 2015 at 11:14 pm)SteelCurtain Wrote: So utterly incorrect. Selection works on populations. Individuals do not evolve, populations do.

Murder is not good for the individual human. We live in societies, we are social animals. Murders attract attention, come with the near inevitability of extremely negative consequences, none of which are good for the propagation of our genes. This is not true with him or me situations. Which is why our society developed a self-defense caveat.

And be careful. You are intimating that the only reason you don't murder is that you don't think you'd get away with it.

"Murder is not good for the individual human." Murder could help rid societies of defective genes. It could rid societies of unproductive dependents. It would also allow the murderer to acquire the murdered person's goods.

BTW. I don't murder because my God-given conscience restrains me and because God tells me not to.

So, if it weren't for your god, you would murder?
Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.
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#37
RE: Answers needed
(June 25, 2015 at 9:59 pm)Louis Chérubin Wrote: Hi everyone!

I'm not sure whether this is the right place to post this, but I'd really appreciate some answers to some/all of the following questions. I'm interested in how an average atheist thinks about these topics. It would be great if you could give some explanation for your answers. I'm coming from a protestant worldview.

1. Does God exist?
2. Where did the universe come from?
3. Does my life have a purpose?
4. Why do people suffer?
5. Is there life after death?
6. Can I distinguish right from wrong?
7. Can people know truth?

Sorry for being point form.  Tongue

1) Don't know
2) Don't know
3) Don't know
4) Because humans have mainly evolved to want certain things and to avoid certain things but the nature of life means we can't always avoid certain things (cancer, rape, war, being crushed to death) and we don't always get what we want (money, fame, fortune, sex)
5) Don't know
6) You can try
7) I think people can believe they know the truth and be right, but I don't think anyone truly knows they know the truth.

Sorry for being late in answering.


Are you ready for the fire? We are firemen. WE ARE FIREMEN! The heat doesn’t bother us. We live in the heat. We train in the heat. It tells us that we’re ready, we’re at home, we’re where we’re supposed to be. Flames don’t intimidate us. What do we do? We control the flame. We control them. We move the flames where we want to. And then we extinguish them.

Impersonation is treason.





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#38
RE: Answers needed
(June 25, 2015 at 11:49 pm)paulpablo Wrote:
(June 25, 2015 at 9:59 pm)Louis Chérubin Wrote: Hi everyone!

I'm not sure whether this is the right place to post this, but I'd really appreciate some answers to some/all of the following questions. I'm interested in how an average atheist thinks about these topics. It would be great if you could give some explanation for your answers. I'm coming from a protestant worldview.

1. Does God exist?
2. Where did the universe come from?
3. Does my life have a purpose?
4. Why do people suffer?
5. Is there life after death?
6. Can I distinguish right from wrong?
7. Can people know truth?

Sorry for being point form.  Tongue

1) Don't know
2) Don't know
3) Don't know
4) Because humans have mainly evolved to want certain things and to avoid certain things but the nature of life means we can't always avoid certain things (cancer, rape, war, being crushed to death) and we don't always get what we want (money, fame, fortune, sex)
5) Don't know
6) You can try
7) I think people can believe they know the truth and be right, but I don't think anyone truly knows they know the truth.

Sorry for being late in answering.

1.Yes we do know that gods do not exist, in the same way we know parents invent Santa to get children to behave. They are products of human imagination reflecting humans desires.

2. False analogy. The skeptic plays into the delusion of the theist by trying to split the baby with "We don't know" We also don't know when the first clouds formed but science does not default to Poseidon being the cause of hurricanes. We do know conditions, so what came prior to this universe even if unknown at this point still would not require a super natural cognition. Stephen Hawkins "A god is not required"
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#39
RE: Answers needed
Hi everyone,

Thanks for your posts! First, I honestly don't claim to know everything about evolution. Second, I'm sure you know lots about the Bible. Third, I'm definitely not here to get converts. I simply just want to know how you deal with the questions that drive me to God. I personally believe that Christianity provides the most satisfactory answers to ultimate questions (some of which I originally asked about), but I also understand that there are lots of rational people in the world that don't share my thinking. So, please continue to share your thoughts. (Thanks admin for allowing it to continue.) I am reading all the posts, though I can't possibly respond to them all.

Since everyone is being so obliging, I do have another question for you. I recently heard a researcher state that naturalism leads him to understand that consciousness is simply a product of chemical reactions. This is the obvious conclusion of naturalism. If you believe this, how do you know that your logic is true? How can you be so dogmatic about the conclusions you draw? Isn't there a good chance they are false? We have a strong conception of free will, but, according to naturalism, that is simply an illusion. Couldn't our minds be playing other similar tricks?

Again, I really don't care what you think about me, so please just share with me your own beliefs.  Heart
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#40
RE: Answers needed
(June 25, 2015 at 10:53 pm)Louis Chérubin Wrote:
(June 25, 2015 at 10:30 pm)Stimbo Wrote: Hi Louis. How about telling us what you think of those things first? As the resident prophet, I'm pretty sure what you'd say; but if you don't actually say it and complete the prophecy I'll just end up with a headache. You don't want that, do you?

I would love to. 

1. Yes, there is a God (seen in nature and the Bible)
2. The universe came from an omnipotent creator
3. My life has purpose: to worship God.
4. People suffer because of sin (which came because God created man with a free will, the best possible creation)
5. Yes, there is life after death
6. Yes, because God created me a moral being
7. Yes, we can know truth (about nature and super-nature)

You answer for point (3) is something I was thinking about today. 
 You life is dedicated to worshiping god and to me this is something I find depressing on so many levels and it prompts me to ask you some questions.
I don't think it derails the thread too much so I don't think it's wrong to post the questions here.

1) You dedicate your life to god, which is an awfully long time, have you put much consideration into thinking about the fact you might be wrong in doing this?

2) Are you aware that putting forth a lot of dedication towards things for long periods of time often causes psychological denial?  Like a person who has invested money into a bad investment but continues investing money.  Do you ever think that in the future you may just change your mind about god existing but then look back and see that you have wasted years of your life?

I'm asking these things because I could be like you, but I love doing things that in your religion would be considered sinful but in nature is fairly common which is having sex outside of marriage, before I had sex in my life I was anxious, angry depressed and so on, and ontop of that I find praying, going to church and so on very very boring and time consuming.
Now maybe you have a whale of a time going to church, maybe your church has you singing and dancing, and maybe you don't want sex outside of marriage and you have a nice wife.
But what I find morbidly depressing is that what if I had a belief that was basically it's ok to go through this life avoiding what makes me feel really good and gets rid of my depression, go to my local church and be bored, but at the end of it is a fairground of happiness once I die.  It seems like a horribly optimistic bet on my behalf to assume it's true that the fairground exists.

But as I say I totally take into consideration you might be one of these stereotypical happy Christians with a wife and children with a monogamous attitude to sex and who loves church.


Are you ready for the fire? We are firemen. WE ARE FIREMEN! The heat doesn’t bother us. We live in the heat. We train in the heat. It tells us that we’re ready, we’re at home, we’re where we’re supposed to be. Flames don’t intimidate us. What do we do? We control the flame. We control them. We move the flames where we want to. And then we extinguish them.

Impersonation is treason.





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