Atheists Seek to Erect ‘No Gods’ Display at Arkansas Capitol After Ten Commandments Approved

[pocaracas]

oops, you did it again!

pocaracas:

808, I had a tough time reading your comments in that quote… I may have missed one or two.

Yep, and that’s called indoctrination.
Seen by many (non-believers) as brainwashing children into belief. Not a 100% perfect endeavor, but pretty close.
And it works for christianity as well as it works for just about any other form of belief.
The muslims even claim that all people are born muslim, but then “indoctrination” in other religions changes the original belief of the child.

I should have differentiated my response to you. Yes, indoctrination is one way of describing it. We’re all indoctrinated to some degree when we are born and as we grow up. It’s what defines us and a reason some immigrants have a difficult transition into the American culture. Subsequent generations generally have an easier time as long as the family desires to assimilate and integrate into our culture.

“Indoctrination”, as you define it, is not always a bad thing. Even atheists indoctrinate new comers into their belief system.

I will agree with my Muslim brothers and sisters regarding we are all born knowing God. They grew up in Islam and I grew up as a Catholic.

Indeed, indoctrination takes many forms… some are more… forceful than others; some are more evident than others.
As far as I’m aware, most atheists prefer to teach things which they feel are well researched and have ample evidence for… believers teach their beliefs, which are just that, huh? not much to back them up…

Not too long ago, I read an article where scientists spotted a brain location which becomes consistently activated during “spiritual experiences” - I say consistently, because it’s the same region (more or less) for different people tested. This hints that evolution within a believing society has developed this sort of specialization in the brain… it’s not present, or particularly active, in everyone, hence the 20% non-believer worldwide population… after all, it must be a rather recent evolution, sparked by the requirement to belong to the group - the group of believers.
Of course, it has also been interpreted as the actual place where humans can contact the divine… not a view I’d stand by, but many would.

Either way, this is probably the brain location that gets exercised and enhanced by religious indoctrination.

pocaracas:

Iran and Saudi Arabia are two that I’m aware of.
Afghanistan, maybe…

Oh, nothing a quick google search can’t fix: reuters.com/article/2013/…9B900G20131210

“Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.”

…hmmm…all Muslim countries…
"pocaracas:

I know where I’m never going on vacation!

I’m with you there!!! I’m even hesitant to go to Jerusalem!

My grandmother went there some 10 years ago, as part of a group and it went well… nowadays, I don’t know… but Israelis are mostly nice people. Palestinians are also nice people, mostly - some would say they’ve been wronged by the international community when Israel was created after WWII, but right now it’s just hate and propaganda against each other…
Those people need to learn how to get along!

And yes, muslim countries, that follow Sharia law are the ones who read in their holy books that they “should suffer no infidel to live”, or something like that (these verses may be out of context, I just found them through a google search):

• Slay the unbelievers wherever you find them(2:191)
• Make war on the infidels living in your neighborhood (9:123)
• When opportunity arises, kill the infidels wherever you catch them (9:5)

Now, imagine someone putting this “spirit of the law” in the actual civil law of a whole nation…

pocaracas:

Mostly middle-eastern, some are more around India and I spot four African countries, as well.

If my 60+ yo parents and some of their friends are anything relevant, then some “elderly” think like these young ones I mentioned.
My grandmother and in-laws, on the other hand, are devout to the bone - praying at every meal and stuff like that.

Praying before every meal is a way of giving thanks to God Who provides us with everything we have. God Bless your grandmother and in-laws for remembering this!

From the unbeliever’s point of view, it’s just a waste of time, while the food cools down.

 

[Jelrak_TB]

Again, that is a mystery that has yet to be revealed by God. Perhaps He’ll reveal it to us one day. I like to remind myself, when it comes to God, He can do anything, even things we haven’t thought of yet! God Bless you.

Thank you. I appreciate the consideration…

 

[DCNBILL]

Sorry, I must have missed the part where you declared the results from such experiment… I still can’t see them… could you point me to them?

Post # 67

“significant”? LOL, no!
Born in a muslim country: 99%+ remain muslim,
Raised by practicisng christians: 90%+ remain christian
Raised by jews: 99%+ remain jew (even if they call themselves secular jews)

(Putting all christian and muslims sects in one bag for each of these major religions as I concur that some people change denomination, but not the overall underlying religion).

Raised by non-believers: can become whatever their love interests are.

I would say that people do not change their religion so much as their practice of it.

I’ve spent quite some time on another forum, where I’ve heard the stories of those who leave the faith, those who need to remain closeted because their parents wouldn’t accept it, those who I and others must warn against posting on that forum, because they live in countries where atheists are sentenced to death…
In the end, it’s not the same numbers…

I have heard these stories as well, it is sad when people use religion as a pretext for unjust behavior.

I’ve also talked to many people of my age and younger, from my country, a traditionally catholic country in southern Europe, Portugal - you may know it from Fátima - and most couldn’t care less for religion… the people who were parents in the 70’s- 80’s didn’t pay much attention to the religious upbringing of their kids, around here… this is the result, and I can’t say it’s a bad one… time will tell.

Yes Europe has changed very much in general.

You may have heard of a famous philosopher, Antony Flew… he too converted, from atheism to deism.

On the other hand, you may have heard of Stephen Hawking, who said recently:
“Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.”
He added: “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going.”
He didn’t change his mind.
Many other physicists and scientists and philosophers didn’t change their minds… or rather did change them from some belief to none, as they grew in understanding and awe of the world around them.
Why should I take the example of the few who do change to become believers?

Mr Hawking should stick to physics he can demonstrate, he has yet to demonstrate exactly how the universe can pop into existence from nothing, especially since that without matter gravity does not exist.

Einstein said the God does not play dice, a “clear indication of some belief in the existence of the deity”, huh?.. Or just a jest of his part, as a feeble attempt to deride quantum mechanics as they were developing and he failed to acknowledge that the world actually worked like described. Einstein is on record as claiming to be agnostic:
“an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being”.

Not only scientists, but I could even draw your attention to Bart Ehrman who started his studies of the New Testament as a strong believer and now claims to be an atheist… even as he continues working in that field, which is astonishing, to a degree.
Then you have Matt Dillahunty who was actually “Raised Southern Baptist, Dillahunty sought to become a minister. His religious studies, instead of bolstering his faith as he intended, led him to no longer believe in Christianity and, eventually, all religions.”

So now you agree that people do change their beliefs?

There are examples of people going one way and there are examples of people going the other way. I didn’t even mention all the people who convert to islam or any other religion, like Tom Cruise… -.-’
So what?
The fact that people change their minds proves nothing with regards to the actual existence of any deity… it proves that people change their minds.
The divorce rate should be enough for us to get that result!

Ok.

 

[claymcdermott]

Hey pocaracas I actually have off for a few days and am actually ahead of the work for once (IT’S A MIRACLE!), so, I thought I might follow up. I agree that whether there can be atemporalities, or whether it is meaningful to talk as though there were, is probably the biggest gulf between our ontologies and would probably require a lot of ground work, beginning with a philosophy of numbers but not limited to it.

We also might have to examine what we mean by “evidence,” because I think one actually can find sorts of evidence, but we might have to work out what we mean. We’d also have to parse finely what intuitive probabalism is okay, and what intuitive probabalism is not okay (since, I think we’d both agree that there are limits).

The only thing I want to say here before I go back into a study hole (because all of the above sounds like work, and I just can’t do any more work haha) is that I think this discussion may be a bit more serious and rigorous than you might imply by dismissing the theist camp as self-deceived or delusional (although, granted, who ever is wrong here is by strictest definition, deluded…just not in a mean way.).

The only thing that bothers me more than that, is the treatment you are getting from some (but not all) of the people on here. People really should be able to have real conversations with people from whom they differ, and I am sorry that some of these guys don’t appear to know how.

Anyway, here’s to learning from each other, and I will pray for you and your debaters (which you may consider worthless, but, hey, think of it as “good vibes” if you can quantify it haha). And cheers!

 

[pocaracas]

Hey pocaracas I actually have off for a few days and am actually ahead of the work for once (IT’S A MIRACLE!), so, I thought I might follow up. I agree that whether there can be atemporalities, or whether it is meaningful to talk as though there were, is probably the biggest gulf between our ontologies and would probably require a lot of ground work, beginning with a philosophy of numbers but not limited to it.

We also might have to examine what we mean by “evidence,” because I think one actually can find sorts of evidence, but we might have to work out what we mean. We’d also have to parse finely what intuitive probabalism is okay, and what intuitive probabalism is not okay (since, I think we’d both agree that there are limits).

I’m with you, so far!

The only thing I want to say here before I go back into a study hole (because all of the above sounds like work, and I just can’t do any more work haha) is that I think this discussion may be a bit more serious and rigorous than you might imply by dismissing the theist camp as self-deceived or delusional (although, granted, who ever is wrong here is by strictest definition, deluded…just not in a mean way.).

Yes, indeed the discussion can delve into the depths of human psychology and the simple “self-deception” label may turn out to be inadequate… until then, and not wanting to do much work myself let’s stick with it!

By far, I don’t think most (99.9999% or so) religious people have any malice in them when they try to convey their belief to someone else, whether that someone else believes in something else, or withholds belief in them all…
And I can attest for myself that no malice is intended in anything I write.

The only thing that bothers me more than that, is the treatment you are getting from some (but not all) of the people on here. People really should be able to have real conversations with people from whom they differ, and I am sorry that some of these guys don’t appear to know how.

Don’t fret, It’s to be expected.
You should see the treatment christian apologists get on atheist forums. This is nothing, trust me.

Anyway, here’s to learning from each other, and I will pray for you and your debaters (which you may consider worthless, but, hey, think of it as “good vibes” if you can quantify it haha). And cheers!

Pray away… I’ll endeavor to be as clear and concise as possible (the character limit per post forces it a bit). See you around!

 

[pocaracas]

Post # 67

Roger that!

Allow me to attempt to run some statistics on this very forum!

Using the search function, for your username, how many posts contain:
true: 145
truth: 180
TOTAL : 325

real: 73
reality: 25
TOTAL: 98

Granted, some of these words will be contained in quotes from other people, or the post’s title, but we can see a certain disparity.

How about the general forum? Not just you.

true: 938
truth: 931
TOTAL: 1869

real: 936
reality: 957
TOTAL: 1893

About even… almost seems like there’s some rough cap on the search function… :ehh:
Let’s try google (e.g. google.com/search?num=100&safe=off&q=true+site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fforums.catholic-questions.org&oq=true+site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fforums.catholic-questions.org&gs_l=serp.3…4495.6203.0.6572.6.6.0.0.0.0.127.431.3j2.5.0…0…1c.1.64.serp…6.0.0.s6H5r-ETpW4)
true: 108000
truth: 135000
TOTAL: 243000

real: 68800
reality: 29100
TOTAL: 97900

Again, an almost threefold disparity.
But there may be duplicates… but google doesn’t discern individual posts… only full pages, so to search for one, removing the other word, would produce unhelpful results.
Not to mention that these results ARE for full individual pages, duplicate occurrences of each word on the same page are discarded. This should increase the disparity a bit…

Still, the disparity isn’t as large as I was expecting… interesting… but it seems a bit larger than you were hinting.

 

[josh987654321]

.

Hi pocaracas,

Mind if I ask if you have heard of or read the book ‘Mere Christianity’ by C.S. Lewis before?

I believe it is an excellent book when it comes to clearing up common misconceptions, and even if you still disagree with what is in there, I’m usually happy that our side was fairly represented by it.

The following youtube videos I believe are really enjoyable to watch and short, it’s just doodles with an audio of a chapter in the book.

The Reality of the Moral Law by C.S. Lewis Doodle

‘Right & Wrong’ – A Clue to the Meaning of the Universe by C.S. Lewis Doodle

Anyway, these two videos are only 10 minutes each and I thought very enjoyable to watch, just hoping you might like to have a quick look at them and if your not interested or disagree than that’s fine.

God Bless You

Thank you for reading
Josh

 

[pocaracas]

Hi pocaracas,

Mind if I ask if you have heard of or read the book ‘Mere Christianity’ by C.S. Lewis before?

I believe it is an excellent book when it comes to clearing up common misconceptions, and even if you still disagree with what is in there, I’m usually happy that our side was fairly represented by it.

The following youtube videos I believe are really enjoyable to watch and short, it’s just doodles with an audio of a chapter in the book.

The Reality of the Moral Law by C.S. Lewis Doodle

‘Right & Wrong’ – A Clue to the Meaning of the Universe by C.S. Lewis Doodle

Anyway, these two videos are only 10 minutes each and I thought very enjoyable to watch, just hoping you might like to have a quick look at them and if your not interested or disagree than that’s fine.

God Bless You

Thank you for reading
Josh

Those doodles are sooo cool! Want more!!!

But I found a bit lacking the constant comparison between natural laws - mathematical descriptions of the world, and human law - rules of behavior. Not exactly comparable things, in my book… but heck…

He seems to end with the certainty that human law, or moral law, is something that exists, outside of mankind - mankind simply obeys it.
Usually, moral rules of how people should behave are somewhat localized, but, as he points out, there are a few that are somewhat horizontal across all tribes/states/countries.
Where do these rules come from, then?
The standard reply is that they come from an external law giver, right?

Well, why do some animals follow a few of these rules as well? Were these rules handed down to humans as well as a few other animals?.. for example, other simians, genetically similar to man, can feel (un)fairness in external actions!
What do all these animals (man included) have in common? They live in groups, or packs… solitary animals don’t show any such rules to obey, except at mating time where they must coexist with the opposite sex for a brief period (either just for copulating, or until the offspring is capable of fending for itself, or anything in between).

So, the rule is no longer a human law, but rather a social law - a way of getting several individuals to coexist, for a greater chance of survival of the group.
And here lies the answer: As social species evolved, they must have found what works, which types of interactions help the group (and themselves, of course) and what doesn’t, which behaviors lead to a decline in the group. Some social species may have gone extinct due to negative individual behavior, while others thrived.
Give them enough generations and evolution equips social animals with the instinct to follow a certain set of general rules which enhance the group’s chances of survival, of thriving, or becoming better.
Just like it has equipped seeing animals with the instinct to get out of the way of some object perceived to be coming toward them.

This must be a rather old instinct, given that it can be found in flocks of birds, groups of mammals or packs of fish… that or it has evolved differently for each of these classes. I don’t know…

So the external moral lawgiver must be… all our ancestors which imparted on us the genetic instinct to behave in accordance with the best interests of the overall group… honing this instinct a little more with each generation, since prior to the dawn of man to this day…

This has some parallels in the sped up evolution of foxes as a means of making them good pets, currently going on in Russia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox.

 

[josh987654321]

Those doodles are sooo cool! Want more!!!

There are more here - youtube.com/channel/UCw-kYN6wWXWDyp_lB0wnlxw

I have really enjoyed watching them and I hope you do too.

But I found a bit lacking the constant comparison between natural laws - mathematical descriptions of the world, and human law - rules of behavior. Not exactly comparable things, in my book… but heck…

He seems to end with the certainty that human law, or moral law, is something that exists, outside of mankind - mankind simply obeys it.
Usually, moral rules of how people should behave are somewhat localized, but, as he points out, there are a few that are somewhat horizontal across all tribes/states/countries.
Where do these rules come from, then?
The standard reply is that they come from an external law giver, right?

Well, why do some animals follow a few of these rules as well? Were these rules handed down to humans as well as a few other animals?.. for example, other simians, genetically similar to man, can feel (un)fairness in external actions!
What do all these animals (man included) have in common? They live in groups, or packs… solitary animals don’t show any such rules to obey, except at mating time where they must coexist with the opposite sex for a brief period (either just for copulating, or until the offspring is capable of fending for itself, or anything in between).

So, the rule is no longer a human law, but rather a social law - a way of getting several individuals to coexist, for a greater chance of survival of the group.
And here lies the answer: As social species evolved, they must have found what works, which types of interactions help the group (and themselves, of course) and what doesn’t, which behaviors lead to a decline in the group. Some social species may have gone extinct due to negative individual behavior, while others thrived.
Give them enough generations and evolution equips social animals with the instinct to follow a certain set of general rules which enhance the group’s chances of survival, of thriving, or becoming better.
Just like it has equipped seeing animals with the instinct to get out of the way of some object perceived to be coming toward them.

This must be a rather old instinct, given that it can be found in flocks of birds, groups of mammals or packs of fish… that or it has evolved differently for each of these classes. I don’t know…

So the external moral lawgiver must be… all our ancestors which imparted on us the genetic instinct to behave in accordance with the best interests of the overall group… honing this instinct a little more with each generation, since prior to the dawn of man to this day…

This has some parallels in the sped up evolution of foxes as a means of making them good pets, currently going on in Russia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox.

I personally disagree, but I have neither the knowledge or experience to go into my disagreements or give sufficient reason for them. I believe there is much that evolution fails to account for. Including the Moral Law that C.S. Lewis speaks of.

I also liked the following quote from G.K. Chesterton

Modern Histories of mankind begin with the word evolution and with a rather wordy exposition of evolution. There is something smooth and gradual about the word and even the idea. As a matter of fact it is not, touching these primary things, a very practical word or a very profitable idea. Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something. Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else. This notion of something smooth and slow, like the ascent of a slope, is a great part of the illusion. It is an illogicality as well as an illusion; for slowness has really nothing to do with the question. An event is not any more intrinsically intelligible or unintelligible because of the pace at which it moves. But evolution really is mistaken for explanation. It has the fatal quality of leaving on many minds the impression that they do understand everything else.

• G.K. Chesterton

God Bless You

Thank you for reading
Josh

 

[pocaracas]

There are more here - youtube.com/channel/UCw-kYN6wWXWDyp_lB0wnlxw

I have really enjoyed watching them and I hope you do too.

On it!
Thanks!

I personally disagree, but I have neither the knowledge or experience to go into my disagreements or give sufficient reason for them. I believe there is much that evolution fails to account for. Including the Moral Law that C.S. Lewis speaks of.

I gave you a possible way that evolution could come up with such a law.
One law which is seen to apply not only to humans…

I also liked the following quote from G.K. Chesterton

Modern Histories of mankind begin with the word evolution and with a rather wordy exposition of evolution. There is something smooth and gradual about the word and even the idea. As a matter of fact it is not, touching these primary things, a very practical word or a very profitable idea. Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something. Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else. This notion of something smooth and slow, like the ascent of a slope, is a great part of the illusion. It is an illogicality as well as an illusion; for slowness has really nothing to do with the question. An event is not any more intrinsically intelligible or unintelligible because of the pace at which it moves. But evolution really is mistaken for explanation. It has the fatal quality of leaving on many minds the impression that they do understand everything else.

• G.K. Chesterton

Some things in this quote are wrong…
But I’ll just leave there that evolution is a model. Like any other “law of physics”. They’re all models, some more accurate than others, some pertaining to a particular aspect of nature. For example, the law of gravity - Newton’s law is a rough approximation, it’s accurate enough to get us to the moon and back… but it’s insufficient to keep the atomic clocks in all GPS satellites properly synchronized. Enter Einsteins general relativity and that become enough for GPS satellites, but insufficient for black holes or the big bang. Something else is required…
Evolution has happened and can be seen by the fossils left… but it’s seriously impaired in determining the behaviors of those proto-presentday-animals. Somethings can be inferred from the positioning of the bones, hoe they moved, how fast they could run, how tall they were, etc… but not much about the actual social behaviors I mentioned.
These come from working backwards from what we see nowadays. It seems strange that a monkey will learn how to behave through observation of a human being, let alone how a whole group of monkeys will learn how to behave by learning it from humans, huh? That group of monkeys must have then learned it in some other way…
I speculated one way, which builds on the general principle of going from simplicity to complexity, evolving. Btw, it’s how evolutionary biologists think such mechanisms must have come by.
If it can work that way for animals, then humans mustn’t be very different… they just went a few steps further in their socializing.

Thank you for reading
Josh

Avid reader, here. I’ll read that book by C.S.Lewis… but it’s on a very long list.
cheers!

 

[DCNBILL]

Roger that!

Allow me to attempt to run some statistics on this very forum!

Using the search function, for your username, how many posts contain:
true: 145
truth: 180
TOTAL : 325

real: 73
reality: 25
TOTAL: 98

Granted, some of these words will be contained in quotes from other people, or the post’s title, but we can see a certain disparity.

How about the general forum? Not just you.

true: 938
truth: 931
TOTAL: 1869

real: 936
reality: 957
TOTAL: 1893

About even… almost seems like there’s some rough cap on the search function… :ehh:
Let’s try google (e.g. google.com/search?num=100&safe=off&q=true+site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fforums.catholic-questions.org&oq=true+site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fforums.catholic-questions.org&gs_l=serp.3…4495.6203.0.6572.6.6.0.0.0.0.127.431.3j2.5.0…0…1c.1.64.serp…6.0.0.s6H5r-ETpW4)
true: 108000
truth: 135000
TOTAL: 243000

real: 68800
reality: 29100
TOTAL: 97900

Again, an almost threefold disparity.
But there may be duplicates… but google doesn’t discern individual posts… only full pages, so to search for one, removing the other word, would produce unhelpful results.
Not to mention that these results ARE for full individual pages, duplicate occurrences of each word on the same page are discarded. This should increase the disparity a bit…

Still, the disparity isn’t as large as I was expecting… interesting… but it seems a bit larger than you were hinting.

I would think that the context should be taken into account as well like

“That was real funny” Vs “that was truly funny” and such would skew the results.

The word real would show up on this forum in the context of the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. Maybe a search of “real” along with “Eucharist” or “Presence” would isolate those references.

Thanks for the insights.

 

[robsully]

Hi pocaracas,

Mind if I ask if you have heard of or read the book ‘Mere Christianity’ by C.S. Lewis before?

I believe it is an excellent book when it comes to clearing up common misconceptions, and even if you still disagree with what is in there, I’m usually happy that our side was fairly represented by it.

The following youtube videos I believe are really enjoyable to watch and short, it’s just doodles with an audio of a chapter in the book.

The Reality of the Moral Law by C.S. Lewis Doodle

‘Right & Wrong’ – A Clue to the Meaning of the Universe by C.S. Lewis Doodle

Anyway, these two videos are only 10 minutes each and I thought very enjoyable to watch, just hoping you might like to have a quick look at them and if your not interested or disagree than that’s fine.

God Bless You

Thank you for reading
Josh

Thank you Josh for the links, I watched the first and I too found the doodles neat.
I found that Lewis left out any evidence to support his opinions/ conclusions. As stated by another poster, morality and a sense of “fairness” is not unique to humans.

 

[808Catholic]

Thank you Josh for the links, I watched the first and I too found the doodles neat.
I found that Lewis left out any evidence to support his opinions/ conclusions. As stated by another poster, morality and a sense of “fairness” is not unique to humans.

What is your proof to say “morality and a sense of ‘fairness’ is not unique to humans”?

 

[robsully]

What is your proof to say “morality and a sense of ‘fairness’ is not unique to humans”?

Studies involving chimpanzees and bonobos.

 

[robsully]

What is your proof to say “morality and a sense of ‘fairness’ is not unique to humans”?

Where is Lewis’s proof that it is?

 

[josh987654321]

Thank you Josh for the links, I watched the first and I too found the doodles neat.

I found that Lewis left out any evidence to support his opinions/ conclusions.

I believe he gives those in his book.

I tried to address the evidence for the moral law in the second video, but in his book I believe he goes into more detail and addresses several objections to it.

As stated by another poster, morality and a sense of “fairness” is not unique to humans.

May I ask for further explanation on this point? furthermore I don’t know how one could know that, as we can only observe what animals and other people ‘do’ and not the moral law that may or may not be pressing on them and whether they obeyed it or not.

C.S. Lewis I believe reaches the conclusion of an objective moral law pressing on man, because he himself is a man (like you and I) and thus has the inside information to reach such conclusions in which scientific study from the outside could never have given us.

Anyway, this is just my understanding thus far, I believe the book goes into more detail.

I hope this has helped

God Bless You

Thank you for reading
Josh

 

[josh987654321]

In regards to the titled thread, I worry about it because it takes the form of a demonstration over not favoring certain ‘beliefs’ over others, when in actuality it intends to subtly and cunningly simply replace them with others.

I would prefer the objection to the statue of the Ten Commandments, not one regarding favoritism of a certain religion, but one that addressed what exactly of the Ten Commandments that one objected to and wished removed.

The main problem I have is that I find that Atheism holds a whole set of beliefs based around it’s world view that is instead ‘favored’ in it’s place under the guise of not favoring any religion.

I believe many atheists take issue with atheism being labelled a religion, but I believe the facts indicate that it is quite the same as a religion, given that it carries with it a certain set of beliefs based on it’s world view, which in turn carry with it very real consequences like, Abortion, Euthanasia and Eugenics etc etc.

So I believe the argument put forward, that it is wrong to favor a religion on state property, is most often a guise to favor another religion, namely Secularism and Atheism, which carries with it simply another set of dogmatic beliefs.

The other issue I have with it, is that in another place, a similar thing was done where the Atheists and Secularists were allowed to also put up a monument, and when the monument was revealed, It wasn’t simply dedicated to nothing or to disbelief, nor did it espouse the same or similar morality as espoused in the Ten Commandments just without it’s dedication to God, instead it was a monument erected specifically to attack the one that was already there, quote it out of context and misrepresent it. It was malicious.

Such as the following - i.imgur.com/21SGvyD.png

Anyway, these are my views on it at this stage, I hope this has helped

God Bless

Thank you for reading
Josh

 

[808Catholic]

Studies involving chimpanzees and bonobos.

So you believe chimpanzees and bonobos have morals same as humans? And they have a sense of fair play as well?

 

[robsully]

I believe he gives those in his book.

I tried to address the evidence for the moral law in the second video, but in his book I believe he goes into more detail and addresses several objections to it.

May I ask for further explanation on this point? furthermore I don’t know how one could know that, as we can only observe what animals and other people ‘do’ and not the moral law that may or may not be pressing on them and whether they obeyed it or not.

C.S. Lewis I believe reaches the conclusion of an objective moral law pressing on man, because he himself is a man (like you and I) and thus has the inside information to reach such conclusions in which scientific study from the outside could never have given us.

Anyway, this is just my understanding thus far, I believe the book goes into more detail.

I hope this has helped

God Bless You

Thank you for reading
Josh

My apologies for offering such a weak response regarding proof. I will try and find a link to a documentary on the work with primates Until then I believe Frans de Waal’s research on primates and morality will pique your interest. In the documentary it also reveals research that shows humans are not the only species that are self aware.

 

[cornbread_r2]

Monkeys Show Sense Of Fairness, Study Says

If you expect equal pay for equal work, you’re not the only species to have a sense of fair play. Blame evolution.

Researchers studying brown capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) have found that the highly social, cooperative species native to South America show a sense of fairness, the first time such behavior has been documented in a species other than humans.

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