I am an atheist

[_A]

First of all, you MUST not be married.

Second of all, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that a spouse needs to get all bent out of shape over the least little things. The other spouse would need to be doing something seriously inappropriate for the concerned spouse to be concerned. But even then, the aflicted spouse should only voice his/her concern and suggest counselling depending on how bad the situation was. Violence, threats, verbal abuse, or manipulation as you say are never the answer to marital strife. If the offending spouse is any kind of spouse at all, he/she will apologize, and that will be the end of it. Willing sharing is a terrible idea. What person in their right mind would enter a relationship, buy a house, car, have kids with a person who could walk out the door any time any day? Not me. No sir. You may say that married people do this too, but I would argue not as often, and if they did, the leaving party would have a lot more to account for spiritually when he/she died.

If God killed people as you mentioned, chances are the people he disposed of sinned big time with no thought or inclination toward repenting of their sins. I could be wrong, but like I said in my previous post, the mass killing didn’t seem to be “working out,” so God decided to try a more personal approach and sent the world its own personal rabbi - Jesus - to teach us how to live.

You keep talking about your “moral standards.” Where do you think you got those “moral standards” from? Your genes? Maybe. Or maybe God writes on the soul of every human being a code of reasonable moral standards just in case they don’t have the opportunity you have here today to learn about God, His Love, and His just punishments. (I did say JUST. Please notice this.) You may as well put those moral standards to work for you and find a nice church somewhere so you can thank God every Sunday for all His blessings and ask gently for any needs you may have. (A Catholic church is preferable, of course, but a Protestant church is better than no church.)

Thanks for reading,

Tracy

Force has no place in a loving relationship.

 

[phooney]

At last!!!

I have read the whole thread, my goodness that was a long read.

@Socrates4Jesus

I’m guessing this prophecy regarding Tyre is what you were going to be presenting to me in the thread I started? This thread started by A seems to be getting all the love, so I thought I would crash this party, lol.

 

[Pax]

First of all, God was not defending himself or his home when he caused the Flood. The Flood killed the innocent animals and other creatures as well as the supposedly guilty humans. Not exactly fair, now is it?

One has to twist and turn and take a position of ignorance in order to worship the God of the Old Testament.

Thank you for your wishes of help.

I never claimed that God was defending himself or His home when He caused the flood. The examples I gave were not intended to give that impression. It is the comparison of your rights and dominion over things in your environment with the rights and dominion that the Creator has over all things.

Fair has nothing to do with whether or not God should have or should not have unleashed the flood. You are attempting to place an arbitrary and strictly human understanding of fairness on the Creator. This is an untenable position. When a man plants a fruit tree, he is within his rights to later uproot it and dispose of it if he so chooses. The man does not need to justify this to you, or me, or anyone else. Likewise, a scientist may create a new chemical compound; he also is free to destroy it if he so chooses. A robotics engineer can create a life like robot and then destroy it. As long as it belongs to him, he can do with it what he pleases.

Some scientists will even try to play God. They will artificially create human life. They will then take the human embryo and strip it of embryonic stems cells killing it in the process. Secular scientists see nothing wrong with this activity. My guess is that you may not have a problem with this either. For purposes of this discussion I find these examples, especially the latter one, to be problematic for your case against God’s actions in the OT.

Man exercises dominion over many things and we take them for granted. Some people like to fish. Somehow I don’t think the fish enjoy being caught, starved of water and oxygen, filleted, cooked, and eaten. I don’t have a problem with fishing and eating fish, but it brings home the point. We exercise dominion over things around us. Likewise, the Creator exercises dominion over His creation. The fish is in no position to judge our actions as fair, moral, immoral, or anything else. Likewise, we are not in a position to judge the actions of our Creator.

 

[phooney]

@Pax

I have put the Peter Kreeft book on my amazon wishlist, this sounds very interesting. But please note that just because he says his arguments contain no logical fallacies doesn’t mean that they really don’t. I’ll look forward to reading it though.

 

[phooney]

@Redsoxfan

I thought I’d let you know how I would react to your scenarios!

1. You find out that you are extraodrinarily lucky in avoiding death. You have been shot at, strangled, poisioned, and had your break line cut in your car, but are still alive.

People shoot at people all the time, the vast majority of the bullets miss the target, this is meaningless. What would you think if you were shot at twice, the first bullet misses you, the second bullet takes out a kidney. Would you think that at first God was in your corner but in the seconds between the first and second shot you somehow angered God and he removed his protection? If I could actually have all blood supply cut off to my brain and still live, I would definitely think there was something weird going on, but the problem with this and all the other murder escapes is that, while (depending on the exact circumstances) it may be a relatively unlikely event, they don’t point to anything at all, there is no link to the conclusion you are aiming for, you are just begging the question. It would depend on the nature of the poison of course, we all regularly ingest poison of course, I had a bit too much vodka last night for example, and oxygen was poisonous to the early forms of life. But yes, again if I was surviving something like cyanide, which is supposed to be pretty uniformly bad for us, I would want to investigate further. Still has no connection to a deity. As for surviving with no brakes, I’d be glad I had the presence of mind to change down in gear and crash into somebody’s mailbox to stop myself

1. While praying a rosary the statue in the corner of the room begins to cry.

Unfortunately again, it would be difficult to come to any conclusions based on this. Maybe the tears are being caused by some other god that is a bit disgruntled at the popularity of Yahweh and the fact that I was praying in a church that was dedicated to a fictional character. Maybe due to temperatures ,water happens to be condensing on the statue, dissolving small quantities of the mineral of the statue resulting in the water tasting salty. The statue actually crying though, is a completely fabricated example. Instances of this happening previously have all either been frauds or not noticed or not scientifically investigated, or purely anecdotal.

1. Riding on a road to Damascus you are knocked off your donkey and see a vision of Christ. He asks you to stop persecuiting his people.

A vision of Christ or Christ in the flesh or what? A vision I would put down to the bump on the head I received when I fell off my donkey. I guess I should have read the small print of my motor insurance in regards to the courtesy car a bit better! If in the flesh, then I would assume it was just somebody who claimed to have the name of Christ. I’m not sure if I would stop persecuting his people or not.

 

[phooney]

@Zerinus and bogoljub

My goodness, you are having a hard time realising that Atheism isn’t a belief or a faith. Lacking a belief in the Christian god doesn’t mean an active belief in something else. You have presented a false dichotomy in belief in god/belief in no god. In very general terms it is at the VERY least a trichotomy of belief in god/suspension of belief/belief in no god. Belief in god being theism, suspension of belief in god being atheism, belief in no god is called strong/positive/absolute atheism or perhaps antitheism.

You are constantly conflating atheism and agnosticism. Agnosticism is NOT the middle ground between belief and disbelief, it is a term to describe something completely different. Theism is the belief in God, we all agree on that. Atheism is the opposite of theism, it is the lack of that belief. So what does Agnosticism mean? Well note the ‘a’ at the front of the word. Agnosticism is the opposite of Gnosticism. Gnosticism and agnosticism describe whether we have KNOWLEDGE. So you can have an agnostic atheist, an agnostic theist, a gnostic atheist, and a gnostic theist.

I myself am an agnostic atheist, and I think this is potentially the category that A would fall into, but I don’t presume to speak for him, as the only thing that Atheists neccessarily have in common is this lack of belief.

You are flat out wrong in what you think atheists believe. I hope this will clear up your misunderstanding.

 

[phooney]

@Pax

I like Greek mythology too, absolutely fascinating stuff! It’s certainly incorrect to say that the Greek gods had human characteristics but Yahweh doesn’t. The bible says we were made in God’s image, so regardless of whether you consider God to be material or immaterial that statement alone shows that, if the bible is true, God has some characteristics in common with humans, depending on whether you think that statement is in regards to physical image or mental image would dictate what characteristics. As far as other human characteristics, Yahweh is described as veangeful, jealous, just, righteous, murderous, wise, etc. All human characteristics. Yahweh has desires, like hopefully we will stop believing in Baal and believe in him. The god of the bible is anthropromorphic to a very high level.

 

[phooney]

@believers

Nobody say the big bang created everything. Do you know what the big bang is?

 

[Pax]

Kreeft is a gifted philosopher and I am not. I couldn’t find any flaws, but maybe you can. I couldn’t even see all of the problems with the failed arguments pro and con without him pointing them out. I hope you find the book worthwhile.

 

[phooney]

@PatrickRabe

We can indeed agree that the world is wonderful, I am a big fan of it. Who said it came from nothing? Have you actually heard an Atheist say that the universe came from nothing, or have you just heard theists say that since atheists don’t believe in god, that means atheists believe that the universe came from nothing? They are very different things. Evolution does account for the diversity of life you see around you, but it is not a theory about how the universe began, and it’s not even a theory about how life started. Evolution by natural selection is only applicable once self-replicating life was already here on earth.

 

[phooney]

@Johnnydigit

Regarding probability, how did you come up with these numbers for your assessment of the odds?

Shuffle and deal out in a straight line all 52 cards in a deck, face up. By your reasoning you’ve just performed a miracle, because the odds of you dealing the cards in exactly that order was 1 in 80,658,175,200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. How could this possibly happen?? The odds are stacked pretty heavily against this happening. But it did. Same thing happened with the chain of events that led to us and our world. We both may realise that the odds are long, but you are assuming that the universe and everything in it had the goal of producing us, that this was the specific goal. You didn’t have that specific goal for the deck of cards, and the universe is indifferent to us.

My thoughts on the website you linked? Dripping with strawmen.

 

[phooney]

@Jacafamala

“My book “talks” about it. The anthropic principle reveals a physical universe designed expressly for human life.”

This is somewhat inaccurate. If this were true, you would expect that a large percentage of the universe would be inhabitable by humans. In reality the vast majority of the universe is empty space currently sitting at an average temperature of 2.7K. That’s really not too far off absolute zero, where all atomic activity halts. Good luck surviving there.

The next largest chunk of the universe is tied up in stars, I can’t remember off the top of my head what temperature stars get up to, but I would have to say “reasonably warm”.

The next biggest section would be the volume of the universe taken up by planets, surely at the very least in a universe designed expressly for human life the planets would be perfect for us right? Well no it turns out that isn’t the case either. On the majority of the planets in our solar system alone we would either be frozen or incinerated or crushed or suffocate, though there may be other planets out there that we could one day figure out how to colonise but not yet.

How about the earth then! Of all the places that could be for humans, it’s the earth right? Wrong again! Dig down for a while and you’ll soon find that the earth gets way too hot for us, fly up for a while and you’ll find that the atmosphere runs out, dive down in the oceans, and besides the fact that you can’t breathe underwater, you’ll get crushed by the weight. Of all the volume of earthly space, we are limited to a thin band of livable space near the surface, a tiny percent of it.

Was the earth always even this little bit friendly to us? No, not really. For approximately the first two thirds of the existence of the universe, the earth didn’t even exist. Our sun is a second or third generation star and the carbon atoms we’re all made of are the result of previous supernovas needed to form heavier elements. As Carl Sagan said, we are all made of star stuff.

When the earth WAS first formed, the environment was completely hostile to human life. In the early days of the planet it was having significant hits reasonably regularly due to the fact that the solar system had many more things for our planet to run into, it takes time for them to eventually collect together with gravity or run into other things during their orbits. Look at the moon to see just how many impact craters there are.

Aside from that, the earth was in a somewhat turbulent state anyway, with many volcanic eruptions and acid rain, no good for us.

We didn’t have enough oxygen in the atmosphere for our kind of life until there was already another kind of life here that brought the (then) dangerous poison oxygen up to higher levels. For those that was left, it was adapt or die.

So now we have oxygen and life is evolving nicely, time for mankind to make it’s move? No, the dinosaurs seriously outmuscle us, the first true mammals were tiny shrew-like nocturnal animals. Fortunately(not for the dinosaurs) a meteorite hits, putting in motion a chain of events that was the second biggest mass extinction event in history. Smaller things were more likely to survive due to needing less food and being warm blooded didn’t hurt either, among other things.

At last we are kind of in a world where humans could survive. Nevermind that there WERE no humans though, at least the world was suitable for us. So now we’re set forever, right? I’m sure you saw this coming… no we are not. Our planet is currently in what theists like to call the ‘goldilocks zone’ we’re not too near the sun, and not too far away from it to burn or freeze. This won’t always be the case though. Our sun is a main-sequence star, and once it has used enough of it’s hydrogen fuel it will become a red giant, with a radius of 1 astronomical unit, which is the current distance from the sun to the earth. So it’s pretty much going to be right in our front yard. That’s a little too close to home, and while the surface of the sun will actually be cooler than it is now, I would suggest that anybody alive on earth at that time put on some SPF one million sun block and wear a t shirt, because it’s going to be quite uncomfortable when not in the shade. Those of you that are looking forward to the end of the world with Jesus coming back before 5 billion years won’t have to worry about this. I’ll be dead too, so I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.

 

[phooney]

continued…

So let’s recap… our habitable area of the universe is infinismal when considering how huge it is. I’m not sure how long current theories give us until heat death that another poster has mentioned here, but by the time the sun swallows the earth it will have been habitable for approximately half the time that the universe has existed, assuming we don’t mess the planet up too bad before then. Half the time for a universe expressly designed for humans? No, I’m afraid this isn’t all for us, the universe, if I might be permitted to anthropromorphise it myself, is just indifferent to us.

 

[Tracyms1974]

Force has no place in a loving relationship.

Where in my last reply did I say anything about force?

 

[phooney]

@Awfulthings9 regarding post 367

1. Irreducible complexity, the heart and soul of the intelligent design movement and Behe it’s leading proponent were mercilessly crushed in that trial in Dover. There’s an excellent video of Ken Miller explaining a few things from the trial and some interesting evolutionary facts at some lecture in Ohio, oh and if I recall correctly, he is a Roman Catholic. It’s quite long, just under 2 hours, but very interesting overall, as already mentioned by notself I admit I didn’t realise that Behe was still clinging to the sunk ship of irreducible complexity, what new arguments has he made in the past year or so?
2. Why would there be nothing rather than something? You are making a massive assumption that ‘nothing’ is more likely than ‘something’

6)A) The link you provided does mention potential reasons for the preservation and also mentions that, while most ‘incorruptibles’ are catholic/orthodox, there are examples of other non-christian bodies being the same, as well as a kind of positive confirmation bias by the catholics digging up the bodies more often than others!

B) Self-inflicted frauds, or not noticed, or not scientifically investigated, or purely anecdotal.

C) Examples?

1. Evidence only that people believe in it, has no relevance to the truth, argument from popularity.
2. You mean the prophesies that anonymous writers, editors and copyists claim he fulfilled while they were writing non-contemporaneously to the time that Jesus was supposed to have lived whilst knowing full well what the earlier myths were and having an agenda of their own?
3. What historical testimony is that?
4. Again, what testimony is that, and should it be produced, it is still only evidence that they themselves believed it.

The eye is easily explained by evolutionary biology, I can’t remember the exact numbers, but I think the eye has evolved about 40 independent times in the animal kingdom. All it would take to get the process started is any surface skin cells being slightly more sensative to light. These apparent sharp bursts of evolution you mentioned are covered in part of evolution known as ‘punctuated equilibrium’ but I haven’t looked very deeply into that aspect.

 

[phooney]

@BCH

It’s perfectly reasonable to feel that awe, I do too sometimes when I learn about some absolutely amazing thing that something in the animal kingdom can do. But all that diversity is explained by evolution, and to describe the process as ‘willy-nilly’ shows a lack of understanding of it, no offence at all intended.

@A

Indeed indeed, not all animals are bilaterally or radially symmetrical, such as this flounder you’ve mentioned and the internal organs. I think it was in that same Richard Dawkins book that he mentions external phenotypes being more ‘malleable’ to evolutionary processes than internal phenotypes (observable traits of an organism). But, symmetry isn’t the goal of evolution, because there is no ultimate goal of evolution, it just so happens that symmetry happens to be quite efficient for various things, so it is reasonably prevalent. The flounder is really interesting too. I’m sure you knew this, being into your fishing and everything, but flounder actually do start out as bilaterally symmetrical, but the eye moves over to one side when the fish is about a month old! I guess the survival advantage of being hidden on the bottom and being able to see still outweighed the advantages of having an eye on each side of the head

 

[Pax]

@Pax

I like Greek mythology too, absolutely fascinating stuff! It’s certainly incorrect to say that the Greek gods had human characteristics but Yahweh doesn’t. The bible says we were made in God’s image, so regardless of whether you consider God to be material or immaterial that statement alone shows that, if the bible is true, God has some characteristics in common with humans, depending on whether you think that statement is in regards to physical image or mental image would dictate what characteristics. As far as other human characteristics, Yahweh is described as veangeful, jealous, just, righteous, murderous, wise, etc. All human characteristics. Yahweh has desires, like hopefully we will stop believing in Baal and believe in him. The god of the bible is anthropromorphic to a very high level.

I think I already answered this one. I will, however, comment on the first part because I did not address it directly. Please be advised that it is one thing to say that man is created in the image and likeness of God, and it is quite another thing to say that God has human characteristics such as human emotions.

When scripture says that we were made in God’s image and likeness it means that man was created in goodness, with a spirit, with intellect, and with free will. Please note that these are attributes given to man by God. They are not human attributes that man attibutes to God. Greek mythology works in one direction. The Greek deities are very much like people and they have purely human attributes given to them by the men that created them. They are the work of human hands and human minds.

Even the myths as to how these so called gods came into being shows that they cannot be real. Yahweh, on the other hand, did not come into being in any such fashion. The Judeo-Christian God always was and always will be. He created all things out of nothing. God has revealed himself to us…we did not make him up.

 

[phooney]

I see what you are trying to say, being that God was there first, they are god-like attributes that we have, not human-like attributes that God has.

Regardless of precedence though, if two things have some of the same features/characteristics, they literally do have some of the same features/characteristics! God would share characteristics with us.

It’s really no different then to the Greeks anthropromophic examples, and you’re just asserting that your god always was and always will be and that he isn’t made up.

I obviously can’t say for sure what has been privately revealed to you, but whatever it was is obviously not something that you can use as evidence for anybody else that doesn’t already believe, which is kind of pointless for the purposes of evidence.

I’ve already argued regarding private revelation in the other thread I was in entitled “Another Atheist”

 

[_A]

At last!!!

I have read the whole thread, my goodness that was a long read.

@Socrates4Jesus

I’m guessing this prophecy regarding Tyre is what you were going to be presenting to me in the thread I started? This thread started by A seems to be getting all the love, so I thought I would crash this party, lol.

WELCOME! Glad to have you, phooney. Nicest bunch of believers and infidels in this part of the universe, right here to chat with.

 

[Pax]

I see what you are trying to say, being that God was there first, they are god-like attributes that we have, not human-like attributes that God has.

Regardless of precedence though, if two things have some of the same features/characteristics, they literally do have some of the same features/characteristics! God would share characteristics with us.

It’s really no different then to the Greeks anthropromophic examples, and you’re just asserting that your god always was and always will be and that he isn’t made up.

I obviously can’t say for sure what has been privately revealed to you, but whatever it was is obviously not something that you can use as evidence for anybody else that doesn’t already believe, which is kind of pointless for the purposes of evidence.

I’ve already argued regarding private revelation in the other thread I was in entitled “Another Atheist”

I realize that you consider most everything on the part of theists to be an assertion. I would say, however, that although the gift of faith that has been granted to me may be private, the divine revelation given to man is public.