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SonofMonica
Guest
Ughh… can we please not turn this into a creationism/evolution “debate” thread? Proving either does not discount the other, and neither is really all that related to the concept of whether God exists.
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srferdave
Guest
You’re right. My fault. I diverged off the topic.
As you pointed out evolution has nothing to do with the existence/non-existence of God. And it may be important to note that the Catholic Church does not hold a position on the theory of evolution. So this is irrelevant to this conversation.
Will direct myself back to the topic.
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Dokimas
Guest
Sure I expect to have a point depending upon your answer. So please give me a simple science lesson. Again, thanx.
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AntiTheist
Guest
No. You can make a point or not. I don’t care.
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Dokimas
Guest
You must realise there’s some inconsistancies to what you believe and that’s why you don’t want to share a science lesson on the universe. So be it. I don’t have to make my point.
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yankee_doodle
Guest
what “science” do you believe helps support theism?
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cantheist
Guest
Do you have some idea that atheist are less moral than people who believe in god?
More people have died or been killed for god than any other reason.
Atheist have not gone on mass killing sprees like the catholic crusades and witch hunts.
Where is the morals when a priest _________ a child?
There it not any differences in divorce rates between believers in god and nonbelievers.
Why douse god allow all this killing in his name?
The only difference between us is I do good things because I am good and you do them to please god. You are not more loving or giving. You just believe in fairy tales and I do not.
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AntiTheist
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Ah, now here we go. This is the point you want to get to.
Okay, what inconsistancies do you think there are in “what * believe”?
Just out with it already. You can assume that I provisionally accept everything that peer-reviewed science has agreed upon and that I am willing to say “I don’t know” to areas where we don’t have good evidence or explanations yet.*
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cantheist
Guest
Evolution is just a theory god created the earth in 7 days only 6,000 years ago this video will help you.
youtube.com/watch?v=LIm2H0ksawg
youtube.com/watch?v=LIm2H0ksawg
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yankee_doodle
Guest
Very nice. Here’s another great video about abiogensis:
youtube.com/watch?v=U6QYDdgP9eg&feature=related
Also, here’s an excerpt from a very interesting article:
*What was before this universe is currently anybody’s guess, but it is highly likely that it was preceded by a similar universe and therefore time existed before the Big Bang. The evidence to back this theory is said to be found in the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation left behind by the light created when the universe was only 400,000 years old and could explain why time seems to move in a single direction, when logic says it should be reversible.
The CMB fills the entire space of the universe in all directions and although it is generally relatively smooth, it does contain some temperature fluctuations that are associated with the galaxy clusters we see today in the visible universe. The same fluctuations could be evidence of the fact that the current universe inflated from a previous one, says Dr Adrienne Erickcek from the California Institute for Technology.*
news.softpedia.com/news/Physicists-Claim-Evidence-of-Universe-Before-Big-Bang-87494.shtml
Here’s another (perhaps better) article on this topic:
sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/39537/title/Lopsided_universe_demands_different_explanation
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staffsgt7
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1 no.
2 too generalized of a statement considering that such people as Stalin and Mao killed close to 100 million all by themselves in the space of a few decades. And many such people still kill for no religious purposes. I would say you also do not have a good grasp of history to state such a thing.
3 oops, you missed Stalin and Mao, just to name two. Stalin replaced himself as the ‘god’. People were ordered to take out any religious items and replaced it with himself. This is just one example.
4 there are no morals there, but they are dealt with in these Judeo-Christian, and communist, countries via their laws. The Church didn’t deal with these men very well, and the best thing is that it all came under close scrutiny. But under Sharia laws pediphilia is ok if the child has the label of ‘wife’ or ‘slave’. And nothing is done, and no one says too much about it from the atheist community from what I have noticed, except to bash Christians. Atheists can be guilty of these acts too so don’t act like atheists are superior.
5 probably not
6 free will according to religions (except Islam which sanctions it if it done against non-muslims), and some are just mentally sick, and others have no excuse other than they might be psychopaths/sociopaths
7 you do not know what is in the heart of another person. Many atheists do indeed believe in fairy tales, only they believe in the fairy tales of anti-religious people.
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josie_L
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Even if there was a universe preceding ours, we still don’t know the primary cause for the existence of space, time, matter and energy?
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yankee_doodle
Guest
I agree, but so what? There’s equally interesting research being done on the search for evidence of multi-verses (actually Fermi Lab is trying to detect surplus gravitons, more than needed for gravity, and watch them disappear into unseen multiverses).
Yet even if we find evidence of something like multiverses (that only a few years ago was perceived as far fetched, but now leading physicists believe they’re likely) you still have a metaphysical argument (though it obviously becomes more cloudy).
We’ll be left wondering if there was another universe before ours, then was there another universe before that one, and before that one, and so on. If there’s unseen dimensions what does that mean exactly? I’ll tell you one thing … ancient myths will only seem that much more far fetched in the face of all this potential new information.
It’s not only theoretical and astrophysics. Chemists have come up with viable scenarios for abiogenesis (in other words simple organisms can arise from pure chemical reactions, and evolve from there). We’ve even reached the point in the Genome project where we’ll soon know what our genetic “master switches” are (which creates a whole host of possibilities).
Look, you folks put your hope in what you want to put your hope in (and obviously that’s fully within your right) … but to believe we’re unreasonable for putting our hope in real science, doesn’t seem very productive. In fact it seems pretty ignorant and backwards.
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KyivAndrew
Guest
Well not all societys’ values lead to a society which wants mass murderers punished. In the atheist Soviet Union it was the mass murderers who, on the contrary to what you claim about normal values, became the Rulers of the State. Many of the states’ subjects’ “values” also comported with Stalin’s values and they believed in the mass murderer Stalin even when he was arresting their grandparents and sending their kids to state-run orphanages away from their parents. Some values. Many Soviets truly loved Stalin the murderer and praised the Gulag.
Your view on “values” is simplistically Western-based and implies we are dealing only with a stereotypical rational Western world which may not be the case for others in history, especially regimes like the Soviet Union. There were Soviet societal values.
You’ve claimed calling something wrong is “nonsense talk”. So were the crimes of the atheistic Soviet Union, the killing of tens of millions of innocent children, men, women wrong? You’ve said talking of “right” and “wrong” is nonsense talk. This topic was on the problems of atheism, and one problem, IMHO, is that there is no objective morality to atheists and even more than that certain atheists believe in some type of morality and others like yourself do not believe in morality whatsoever. You can’t figure the moral argument amongst yourselves never mind coming on here and lecturing us on ethics.
You’re arguing for no moral sphere to humanity is a major atheist problem to Catholics. You may believe yourself to be an amoral animal or us but we don’t.
Even atheists who give to charity, like Bill Gates, who you pointed to seem peculiar. Isn’t it slightly ironic his philanthropy only really started taking off when Microsoft was saddled with a bad PR reputation and the EU began investigating him on Anti-Trust laws. It was then I believe that he seriously undertook to brighten his reputation with philanthropy. However, far be it from me to judge his motives.
There have been many societies - Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Mao’s China – where the citizens values included “liquidation of entire nations and people”. Not every society and its citizens frowned or frown upon horrendous state-supported murder.
I know what words I would use to condemn Soviet and Nazi crimes as morally wrong and evil. AntiT, what language would you use to condemn Soviet and Nazi crimes. Why can’t you say they were evil?
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yankee_doodle
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Seriously Kyiv … haven’t you guys beaten this dead horse over the head enough? This is a classic red herring my friend. When countries like Sweden, who have almost completely abandoned Christianity, maintain among the highest living standards on earth (not to mention most of the rest of northern Europe) you can’t really say there’s any inherent relationship between atheism and communism.
I know we’ve been down this road before, and I’ve pointed out the father of market capitalism (Adam Smith) was atheist or agnostic. Stalin was an atheist yes, but so was Churchill. Stalin probably also liked vodka, does that mean vodka is evil (well, that might be a bad example
).What about secular philosophy. Frankly, just because I don’t view Jesus as a god, I see nothing wrong with reaching into the bible, and other ancient sources (like stoic philosophy or whatever) to help shape our morality. We have Anglo-American jurisprudence and our common law, the rationalist thinkers of the enlightenment, etc.
We have thousands upon thousands of sources to help us form a quite advanced notion of morality. So I’m not sure how can you seriously think bringing up Stalin or Karl Marx represents a credible argument?
Stalin (and his progeny) imposed atheism on their societies – those societies weren’t atheistic before these men seized power. In other words it’s logical to say atheism is one component of Marxism; but it’s not logical to say Marxism is a component of atheism. The greatest market capitalists and free thinkers in history have been atheist or agnostic, yet you guys harp on Marx? I just don’t get it.
It doesn’t seem like an argument on the merits … even though I do agree, morality is important.
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KyivAndrew
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Because AntiTheist doesn’t hold to your view that we have “a quite advanced notion of morality”. He thinks morality ridiculous unlike you, so I was asking him specifically how he would condemn crimes which ended up in the deaths of millions? Your view of morality is different from AntiT’s.
Anyway gotta go to bed. G’night yankee.
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gearhead
Guest
Actually, I’d say there’s a stronger relationship between communism and religion, especially Christianity. The longest-lasting communist groups tend to be religiously-based - the Hutterites, for example. And I’d say that many Catholic religious orders are rather communist in their structure.
I think the odd thing about the whole “yeah, the Crusades were bad but Stalin was worse” argument is that it ignores the common thread that runs through the worst religious persecution AND the worst movements that rejected theism: one group was imposing their ideology on everyone else. When people do that, bad things happen.I know we’ve been down this road before, and I’ve pointed out the father of market capitalism (Adam Smith) was atheist or agnostic. Stalin was an atheist yes, but so was Churchill. Stalin probably also liked vodka, does that mean vodka is evil (well, that might be a bad example
I think it’s safe to say that most modern atheists, even if they don’t call themselves “freethinkers”, have been heavily influenced by the freethought tradition. They’d reject any imposition of any ideology on anyone. Speaking for myself, the actions of Stalin are just as abhorrent to me as any episode of religious persecution. When people bring up Stalin as a retort to criticism of past actions done in the name of the Church or God, it says to me that they don’t really understand what my beliefs (or IMO the beliefs of most atheists) actually are, or what it is I find objectionable about those actions.
I agree.
Just because I’m an atheist doesn’t mean that I can’t read the Bible or take meaning from it. What it does mean, though, is that I’m free to evaluate each item in it on its merits, keeping the good and discarding the bad. Same with Catholic Tradition or any other source of teaching.
I’ve seen Christians hold up their moral codes and teachings as examples of why Christianity is good. I don’t think they realize that I already accept everything in them that I think is good, so the difference between their morality and mine is only a list of things that I’ve already rejected… in many cases, it’s just because I don’t agree with their factual basis, but in some cases, I reject them because I consider them positively abhorrent.
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AJTheMan
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That’s fine. Just as theism gives you hope and makes you happy, so too does nontheism make me happy and give me hope. I find that when I was a theist I was very sad. I was helpless. I expected the gods to get me out of everything and anything that didn’t go my way. These days, I look for myself with help.
I’m glad that you have found something that works for you.
Namaste
I’m glad that you have found something that works for you.
Namaste
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Dokimas
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