A Quote For Atheist to consider :

[The Grand Nudger]

I couldn't help it, I watched the whole thing. This "documentary" is funny in an uncomfortable way. I bm'd it, I'll probably watch it again..lol.

[Judas BentHer]

GodIsRealOrNothingMakesSince Wrote:
... I'm not just spewing crap and then leaving. Im trying to have an intellectual debate.

If so, you need to PM an Administrator and ask them to correct your screen name to read "Sense", rather than "Since".

That's really distracting.

Nothing about god makes sense. You should try reality without thinking it necessary to believe something never proven to exist, something you've never seen, something that's track record in narrative is that what affords the role model profile for a psychopath, is responsible for everything that is was or shall be, including your being created as unworthy of it's love.

Love yourself. See yourself as creator of your destiny by being responsible for the choices you make, rather than begging/praying for help, relief, guidance. And instead strive for what you want because you believe you're worth all good things that may come to you through taking the incentive to go get it. While all obstacles, any negativity isn't the work of some devil god created and let to live in order to tempt you from paradise again, but rather is simply life with all the hurdles that go along with it, so that in overcoming them you appreciate the effort of your personal journey having survived the challenge.

No thing unseen cares about you. Nature doesn't like you. Nature doesn't know you personally. Not even when it's named, "god".
That's your job. If you don't want it, put it off on something you only hope is there. When your life is over you think you'll find you were right all along and it was all worth the effort.

But by then wrong or right is immaterial.
Because you are.

[Anymouse]

Oh what a surprise yet another person just insulting me and avoiding discussing what was actually said

I did respond to you, and I didn't insult you. You ignored me (for some reason that seems to happen a lot).

[theVOID]

There are many things i could say but that would require much typing which i don't quite feel doing. But what I will say is I think the evidence is all around you. Just look at how intricate and specific and perfectly in place everything in the world and universe is. If the planet was just a few miles closer to the sun it would be to hot and if we were a few miles farther it would be to cold for liquid water. And if the earth was just a little bit off its axis the earth couldn't support life. If certain mathematical equations of the universe were just slightly off the universe would collapse in on itself as soon as it was created or it would be completely off couldn't sustain stars or planets and therefore life. And then just look at the cell, which i believe is one of the strongest evidences. They used to call the cell the "simple cell" but in the last few years in science we've discovered just how perfectly intricate the cell is. Do your research on it. The cell is so perfectly specific and so extremely complex that some scientist are even saying that aliens seeded life here on earth. Now just think about that for a moment. That doing the same thing you claim I do and just throwing off the problem onto something else and begs the question "Well where did the aliens come from?". It just shocks me that such intelligent people would rather believe that aliens created us that God. The evidence is right there in front of them, they just don't want to admit it.

What aspect of the universe being 'intricate and specific' do you think there isn't a good naturalist understanding of? We understand in great detail how a lot of the universe operates via natural process and how these processes came to be, what the precursors are etc. The stuff we do not have a good explanation for is simply unknown and positing that a cosmic wizard willed it that way is a complete farce.

If our planet was about 10,000 miles closer or further from the sun maybe. And big deal, there are 200 trillion stars in our galaxy and 100 trillion galaxies, the chances of any one planet orbiting any given star in the 'goldilocks zone' is small but non zero, we would expect millions of them throughout the universe at minimum.

Show me this evidence that if the earth was 'off-axis' it couldn't support life - that sounds completely bullshit, especially considering there exists models showing how tidally locked planets (a much more extreme situation) could still support life in certain regions. At the least the parts of the planet that currently can't support a lot of life, such a deserts, would be in different locations on the planet, at worst there would be a much smaller percent of the planet with habitable zones.

Also you raised the apparent fine-tuning of the universe, something that I am intricately familiar with. There are at least 8 possible explanations for such a thing that come to mind, a deity is just one of those options. The fine-tuning is no more evidence for a god than it is evidence for cosmic evolution, changing laws of physics, context dependent cosmological constants, inflationary multiverses and string theory - All of these are compatible with the observed phenomenon.

As for your simple cell; The cell is indeed complicated, but we know a great deal about how it works, so much so that 99% of scientists in the relevant fields see no need to posit a deity - most of us acknowledge that highly complex systems form in nature frequently and there is no reason to presume any differently. Panspermia is also NOT the idea that "aliens seeded the earth", it is the idea that the basic building blocks of organic materials could have formed from the myriad of reactions during a very hot and volatile early solar system and if that is the case, considering the range of debris in the early solar system the chances of some landing on earth are relatively high - Not only that but we have empirical evidence demonstrating that certain organisms would easily survive such a process.

[Whateverist]

I'm not sure why some folks don't think you have any business here. Without you .. what else is there to do here? Preach to the choir? Congratulate ourselves. Vent against institutions and individuals that tried to impose a medieval mindset on us when we were young and vulnerable. I'm no longer interested in the existence of magical beings but I am interested in why some very interesting and otherwise rational people are. I imagine you are younger and naive. (That's not a crime and I don't think it makes you a loser.) However there are very interesting people who are deeply religious but also quite rational and accomplished. Bill Moyers, the pbs tv journalist, comes to mind. I know why one would reject religion if it were thrust on you - been there, done that. What I don't know is why you would embrace it even conceding that the bible is a hodgepodge, that church doctrine is fallible, and that evolution and the rest of science represents our best understanding of the natural world.

While I don't think a 'god' has anything to do with it, I know there are dimensions of human experience more profound than rationality. That too is unprovable, and I wouldn't try. I suspect that, while hardly necessary, religious thought can tap into an experience of the deeper self. There is a sense of otherness about this deeper self in that it is what it is independent of what your would have it be. Sometimes I think this dimension of experience is merely our animal knowing, the intelligence and intentionality that all mammals at least possess but which we become alienated to by our reliance on language. I don't know but I do know that life without coherence between my rational self and deeper self isn't enough. To the degree that the religiously inclined use religion to seek and accomplish such coherence, I can't find fault. When someone like Bill Moyers talks about god you can tell that for him it really is something mysterious, that he isn't starting with a lot of doctrinal presuppositions. I would really enjoy talking to that sort of theist.

[Anymouse]

I'm not sure why some folks don't think you have any business here. Without you .. what else is there to do here? Preach to the choir? Congratulate ourselves. Vent against institutions and individuals that tried to impose a medieval mindset on us when we were young and vulnerable. <rest cut>

There is also organising your defence against those that say that "atheists should not even be citizens of the USA" (such as GW Bush). And with people like that who would take power and strip atheists of their basic citizenship rights, and people like Sarah Palin who only feel that Americans even have rights, us poor pagans are just f----d.

On a different atheist forum, my wife, who actually is an atheist, not a person who just happens to be on the same side of the fence most of the time like me, is holding forth against someone who is insisting on the "Christian values of our nation," and why the "Arab spring" people shouldn't be allowed democracy because they are not "civilised" and do not have an "education in democratic institutions" (like our nation did when it was a colonial dominion of the UK, or Turkey after the fall of the Ottoman Empire after WWI, or Spain's dispatching of fascism after the death of Franco, ad nauseum.)

James

[Shell B]

I know this has probably been handled in the eight pages I couldn't bring myself to read, but I can't fucking handle blatant disregard for spelling and punctuation use. There is a reason why you're and your are spelled differently. You're is a contraction of you are. Your signifies another person's possession of a thing, be it material or intangible. Grammar is not grammer. Since is not sense. Speech and writing are two different animals. Sure, we can figure out what you mean in context, but it makes me have to pause for a fraction of a second and mentally replace what you have written with the correct word. I typically don't mind this as an accidental mistake pops out of everyone's keyboard every now and then, but you seem to be deliberately typing every common spelling mistake there is. It's annoying to read your posts because of it. If you were a genuinely interested participant in this conversation, I would read over those mistakes without complaint. Fuck, I know some very intelligent people who can't spell worth a damn, but some suspicious part of me thinks that is part of your act, so I tire of seeing your mistakes.

Now that I have that off my chest, your quote is akin to seeing a "This is your brain on drugs" campaign. It's been said ... enough. We have all seen it. We have all dismissed it and you are acting like we should see it as some stroke of genius. As if this played out fucking quote is going to stump the idiotic atheist masses. It isn't. It is demonstrative of the general lack of interest among Christians regarding what atheism is and isn't. You want to attribute beliefs to atheism, which has nothing to do with belief in anything, even science.

Chew on this, if you want to quote sling, "An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that deed must
be done instead of prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated." ~ Madalyn Murray O'Hair

You know, I had a situation this week that has required me to seek help for a displaced family. I posted everywhere looking for help, but came in here only looking for instructions on how to get a donate button on my facebook profile. Without my even asking, I had several atheists from here and elsewhere (writer friends) help me out. One or two Christians, one a homosexual family member, helped me out. So, I wound up getting help for these people from an exponentially higher number of atheists, agnostics and homosexuals than I did from Christians. (Not to knock Christians that helped, because they are awesome too. I'm just making a point.) You know what most Christians offered them? Prayers. Atheists who couldn't help didn't bother to patronize. They gave us condolences and encouraging words, which is also greatly appreciated. Fuck, I even appreciate prayers. My point is, I don't give a shit if atheists really did believe nothing came from nothing and blah, blah, blah. In my experience, Christianity leads people to think that god is going to work things out, medicine doesn't matter because it is up to god, things we do here don't matter because Heaven is the real goal, etc. I think this really clouds (some) Christians' judgment. I honestly think that for every Christian there is praying on this Earth, there is an atheist somewhere helping a stranger with something more tangible than an request of the air around them. /rant

[Whateverist]

I'm not sure why some folks don't think you have any business here. Without you .. what else is there to do here? Preach to the choir? Congratulate ourselves. Vent against institutions and individuals that tried to impose a medieval mindset on us when we were young and vulnerable. <rest cut>

There is also organising your defence against those that say that "atheists should not even be citizens of the USA" (such as GW Bush). And with people like that who would take power and strip atheists of their basic citizenship rights, and people like Sarah Palin who only feel that Americans even have rights, us poor pagans are just f----d.

On a different atheist forum, my wife, who actually is an atheist, not a person who just happens to be on the same side of the fence most of the time like me, is holding forth against someone who is insisting on the "Christian values of our nation," and why the "Arab spring" people shouldn't be allowed democracy because they are not "civilised" and do not have an "education in democratic institutions" (like our nation did when it was a colonial dominion of the UK, or Turkey after the fall of the Ottoman Empire after WWI, or Spain's dispatching of fascism after the death of Franco, ad nauseum.)

James

We live in weird times and in a country I am often not proud of. Hopefully there will not be witch trials to root us out. Thank god (pun intended) for the establishment clause. It is a political reality that no one who openly espouses atheism will get elected to a prominent public office in the US in the foreseeable future. Unfortunately I don't think rational arguments are going to change many minds. Having grown up during segregation and having seen women's rights and gay rights win more general acceptance, I'm actually hopeful that, in time, religious bigotry may also go out of fashion to some extent.

Any how, you're right. I hadn't thought about political activism as a use for the forum.

[GodIsRealOrNothingMakesSince]

Ooh my gosh! Too many post! Look it's very late where I live. I'll get to everyones post amd reply tomorrow and if everyone could refrain from posting a whole lot more untell I get this stuff under my belt it would be great! Thanks

[Welsh cake]

God is the one who CREATED the laws of science in the first place and doesnt have to follow them.

Okay, now all you need to do is prove it. Good luck with that.

Oh what a surprise yet another person just insulting me and avoiding discussing what was actually said. And then there's others who are just correcting grammar things. I can't say I'm surprised at all I actually expected all that ...

It should come as no surprise, you insufferable twit, barging onto an atheist message board/forum having no prior understanding of what atheism actually means, create a username that is an argument from ignorance in of itself, and then also display atrocious spelling is obviously going to land you in hot water; being the "boffin who finds intellectual debates stimulating" as you claim, you're left without excuse; the fact that you've been corrected upon this a gross error a dozen or so times, that we're TEN pages into the thread, and you still refuse to amend it, displays to us your own overbearing stubbornness, hubris and wilful ignorance. I strongly urge you to PM the administrators and have that corrected ASAP.

You guys are really showing your true colors and intelligence and willingness to have an intellectual collective discussion free of meaningless bullcrap that is not contructive....

LOL. It was a really short discussion. You have a misconceived presupposition about what atheism actually is. That we've responded to this yet you dogmatically stick with your original misconceptions is no fault of our own. Do try and keep up with current events will you?

There are many things i could say but that would require much typing which i don't quite feel doing.

Oh my life... you say that yet continue to rant onwards about the universe and submit that as evidence? That's not what we're asking for; the fact that nature is complex says nothing about a deity or intelligent designer, at all. Now put up or shut up already. DEFINE GOD OR GO AWAY.

The cell is so perfectly specific and so extremely complex that some scientist are even saying that aliens seeded life here on earth. Now just think about that for a moment. That doing the same thing you claim I do and just throwing off the problem onto something else and begs the question "Well where did the aliens come from?". It just shocks me that such intelligent people would rather believe that aliens created us that God. The evidence is right there in front of them, they just don't want to admit it.

Stop pretending you actually know what real scientists do, unlike you they're open-minded; they'll take claims and test them. That hypothesis for abiogenesis is not what scientists believe is factual, in that it actually happened. Go read a science book when you're finally done reading the Book of Genesis.

You say things like God is contradictory and that its ridiculous that he's watching over us and that there is no afterlife but u bring forth no evidence or explain why your statement and explain why you believe so.

Don't shift your burden of proof onto us douche. Provide a clear positive ontology for your god or piss off.

Actually I have not insulted or attacked anyone. I'm actually the one that is being insulted and attacked.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL1lfSzgcAw

I'v stated this. In YOUR realm of thinking something HAS to come from nothing.

STOP. That's not even what we're arguing or what the big bang theory is all about, and that you keep asserting it is over and over again either demonstrates you are a buffoon or deliberately trolling us. Big Bang model is all to do with cosmology, NOT cosmogony, which is concerning the origin of reality as we know it. The Big Bang is not "something from nothing", it's a gravitational singularity where all the matter and antimatter originated from; the origins of that, or why antimatter lost out to matter, and as we're already explained to you, are still unclear and the pursuit of scientists and epistemologists everywhere because we have no empirical evidence of anything before the expansion of space-time and Planck time breaks down when you try to look at what happened before this event.

As well as in mine but theres a big difference. If you actually think of in the realm of that there is a God the fact is that he is God and does not require the need to follow the laws of man like having a beginning or being created by something else. The reason you can comprehend the fact that God has no beginning is because everything in YOUR would does. God is much greater than that. He's GOD he doesn't need to follow the laws of man which he created in the first place. But in your model there is no God with the power to bend the laws of everything needing a beginning. If you truly just think about it a god is the only way for anything to happen because at some point the laws of having no beginning HAVE to be bent.

If god's above the natural physical laws and logical absolutes then its pointless trying to present a case for him, he's not simply within or beyond our comprehension or understanding - he's complete nonsense, a childish fantasy, a fabrication of the human imagination that you have a conviction for, not us. If god as the uncaused first cause doesn't require a beginning then its safe to say that the universe also doesn't require a beginning either and that it has always existed in some form or other. Goodbye.

You see I actually ENJOY intelligent debate and discussing things, it intrigues me.

Cut the bullcrap, you are seeking confirmation in your personal evidence-free beliefs, reaffirming your Christian identity and faith in your sky daddy rather than responding to us non-believers, you are not here to debate but to proselytise and thus are on thin ice, I can't see you lasting very long here.

God is a very vast and uncontainable being that you can't just put in a box and conform to what you want. I'm not even out of the realm of thinking that maybe God created other life. Why should I be so close minded and selfish to limit God and to think that God does not have the capability to create other life and sustain it just as equally.

Okay finally, you're now describing this deity's attributes for once, so I gather he's very big, just how big? Approx dimensions please. And why would he care about life if it's so damn small, frail and insignificant compared to his majesty? How does god sustain life on Earth? What biological processes does he maintain 24/7? EXPLAIN.

I want both of you and anybody else involved in this post to please go and watch this :

I refuse to waste any more of my one-and-only life on Lee Strobel, do you really think we're not already aware of him and his antics? He's intellectually dishonest about his own life for Pete's sake and therefore not fundamentally serious about his supposed position in his quest for knowledge, he was never an atheist but sceptical of atheism from the get-go, much like Kirk Cameron is.

I repeat: DEFINE GOD OR GO AWAY.