I not trying to parce words but I think this is an important point. As a Baby you were incapable of belief therefore you were ambivolent towards either a consept in God or in Athiestism. Just because you don’t have an ability doesn’t make the counter ability a truth for you. In other words it is ridiculous to claim a dog is an athiest. A dog is incapable of such a distinction so it is ambivolent, it doesn’t care if their is a God or not. Dogs just don’t opperate at that congnative level. They are ambivolent. So are babies. Athiesm does not mean belief in nothing is a default; it means the person does not believe in God and in order to determine there is no God you must have some consept of what a God is to say there is no God. Otherwise you are ambivolent.
I can. But, I don’t want to. I have chosen not to believe in the tooth fairy.
Uh, how can you say the first-part-above “definitively”? And what makes what you say (in that case) definitive!?
Do you believe in Justice? Do you believe in Fairness? Do you believe in Right and Wrong? Do you have personal standards and what are they based on? How do you come to these beliefs I wonder.
Whatever you cannot will yourself to honestly believe in the tooth fairy. You can tell people that you believe in the tooth fairy, you can behave as if you believe in the tooth fairy but you cannot choose to honestly truly believe in the the tooth fairy. Either you believe in it or you don’t.
Do I have standards, yes. They are based upon the fact that I realize that we are all in this together and that my and all of our success in this world depends upon our ability to successfully integrate ourselves into the community. We need to make our community as strong and healthy as we possibly can…as this will benefit us all. This is true whether there is a god or not. I also believe that people who behave selfishly and cruelly end up making a lot of enemies…I don’t like having enemies. It’s hard to make it through life when everyone hates you. I do have this innate desire to see all of us do well in this life, I suspect that this just means I was brought up well.
Have you read my previous posts on how belief is a submission of the will and intellect and not an impulse of the mind?
I wonder then why we’re not a bunch of Roman pagans?
After all, we can all trace our families back far enough (if we had the geneological tools to do so) to where the family was not ‘born’ Christian.
Your obsession with birth control; your belief that catholics can turn bread and wine into god; your inability to understand that a god that will permit someone he created to suffer the eternal pains of hell could not possibly be all-loving and merciful; the concept of the trinity; your insistence that the bible is the word of god despite the fact that it is clearly flawed and inaccurate; the horror you feel at the suggestion that Mary might have actually have had sex with her husband (Joseph patron saint of cold showers); your insistence that we have free will (the ability to determine our own path within our limits) while at the same time god has perfect knowledge of everything we will ever do…long before we will ever do it
Have you read my previous posts on how belief is a submission of the will and intellect and not an impulse of the mind?
I wonder then why we’re not a bunch of Roman pagans?
I wonder why all of the middle east isn’t still christian. Like I said, there are exceptions, but clearly most of us will die into the faith they were born into. Ussually when you see mass changes in faith in a region it has a lot to do with swords and spears and/or proclaimation by governement. There are several example of new faith taking off and dominating an area.
P.S. - the Priest who celebrated Mass this past week comment on how he wasn’t born Catholic - it took about 10 days to be made one. (hint, he was baptized 10 days after birth)
Listen, if I believed in god i would believe in god. I think it would be awesome to believe that the universe’s single most powerful entity wanted a deep and personal relationship with me (sounds kind of dirty when I put it that way…not intended). I’m a non-believe because I genuinely don’t believe…if I could make myself believe perhaps I would…I don’t know.
Why not start ask here. Start a thread - one for each question. You may find out that they are so crazy after all. (at the very least, you’ll find out just how crazy we are
)In the case of the Middle East, when Islam came around, there was a lot of conversions by the sword. If you look at the spread of Christianity, it was spread by peaceful evangelization. In fact, it was the Christians who were put to the sword in their evangelization (not the other way around).
Therefore do not seek to understand in order to believe, but believe that you may understand (Saint Augustine, Tractate 29 on John 7:14-18, 6)
I - k n o w - y o u !
Of course it didn’t hurt that Constantine just declared it the official religion of the empire and that it remained the state mandated religion of Europe for a very longtime. Of course, once this stopped you observed a very stead decrease in the number of Christians throughout Europe (in addition to a very stead increase in the level of education). Christianity is now depending heavily on largely illiterate, poverty stricken third world nations (where massive procreation is only exceed by a massive inability to maintain a growing population) to avoid shrinking further into insignificance. Poverty stricken illiterates make very easy prey for missionaries. Even in the USA (Christianity’s bastion) it continues to make up a shrinking percentage of the nations population. Catholicism in the USA has managed to retain it’s overall numbers only because of the large number of Latin Americans who continue to illegally enter our nation.
I would gladdly claim to be this indidual you mentioned. Believe it or not, there is more than one person how does not think as you do.I - k n o w - y o u !
Your “new” here, again, aren’t you!?
Good to have your “stimulating” person-ness back, St. Doubting Wannabe-Thomas!
:shamrock2:
I don’t think I could have made my point any better than you just did. Thinks for not acting wierd and crazy.
So, you’re OK with murder?
And you’re OK with violence to spousal relationships?
And you’re OK with denying reality?
You’re OK with injustice?
You’re OK with truth being called untruth?
And you’re OK with people being chaste if they want to be?
You’re OK with being a robot?
And you’re OK with saying the universe possesses no underlying orderliness?
Why are you OK with these things?
Since you don’t understand why it is that we believe as we do, and assume that there can’t POSSIBLY be any good reasons for believing what we believe, we’re just “weird” and “crazy”?
Even for an atheist, or from your perspective, especially coming FROM an atheist, isn’t that a bit “unreasonable” for one who supposedly prizes “reasonableness” so highly?
:shamrock2: