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Atheism

Ermintruder,

..Judaism = Christianity without the loyalty-tokens>free-coffee at the end...

Yes, people tend to forget that Jesus was a Jew. So Christianity is really just a more 'user friendly' extension of Judaism. If it hadn't been for the Romans seeing the political implications and taking it on board it would possible have faded away.

INT21
 
Again. You have to invent explanations for why there's no shape of God on the board.

Again, that's true if you're using religion as the basis for your interpretation of the shape of a god. As I said though, if, as I don't doubt is the case, religion is a load of hoary bollocks, we don't really know what we're looking for (or perhaps what we're looking at).

And as I've stated a couple of times already, I'm not pushing the idea of a Christian (or otherwise) deity here. All I'm trying to justify is that agnosticism is not an intellectually dishonest position to take.
 
Islam and Judaism are very closely related, in many ways closer than Christianity and Judaism. Neither Islam nor Judaism have a concept of 'original sin', for instance. I like most aspects of Christianity, from an atheist viewpoint, of course; but the 'original sin' concept gets my goat.
 
Another problem with that is that there was supposed to be absolitely nothing before the big bang. not even a huge vacuum. So where was the super dense material residing, how di it come to be there, and should there have been some Deity that initiated the whole thing, where was it located ?

And all this before breakfast.

INT21

In the beginning there was nothing, and nothing was made of maths, and nothing used maths and spontaneously divided itself by itself due to the pressure it was under, creating infinity and one. It was all downhill after that.
 
In the beginning there was nothing, and nothing was made of maths, and nothing used maths and spontaneously divided itself by itself due to the pressure it was under, creating infinity and one. It was all downhill after that.

True.

But I like a bit of irrationality.

I eat lamb, beef, pork, venison but am disgusted at the idea of eating rabbit.

So its hardly surprising that I'm an agnostic.
 
Heckler,

..An eternity of being everything everywhere simultaneously would be glorious...

How so ?

Mungoman,

I'm ok down to the quark level. Then it's squiggly forces all the way down. To where ? who knows.

I can easily accept that by simple reduction we can get right down to us being more space than substance. The question becomes 'what is controlling the way the quarks assemble in their constituent protons etc and their eventual forms as substance ?

This is quite awkward for me to type as the 'q' key doesn't work. I have to type, say, 'uestion' then use the spellchecker to get 'question' and copy and past the letter 'q' into all the words that need it.

An odd way of doing things but it is easier than reconfiguring the keys and cheaper than buying a remote keyboard.

AlchoPwn.

..So if the physical systems of the universe bring it into being from a previous super dense state, why does there need to be a creator who was present but contributed nothing?.

Another problem with that is that there was supposed to be absolitely nothing before the big bang. not even a huge vacuum. So where was the super dense material residing, how di it come to be there, and should there have been some Deity that initiated the whole thing, where was it located ?

And all this before breakfast.

INT21


Quarks? Posh ducks, innit.


I personally can't see why creation can't have happened, and then evolution kicked in - it sort of makes sense to me - everything, given time, changes...So...why can't their Divine Majesties create and set the Quarks/situation, instill a lesser divine form (Us), and then leave us to it.

As for the big bang? maybe that's the nursery door closing.
 
eat lamb, beef, pork, venison but am disgusted at the idea of eating rabbit.

Interesting Ramon - as an Irishman that somehow doesn't surprise me - seeing as how the rabbits physical proximity to the Hare...and the importance in mythology of the Hare.
 
Again, that's true if you're using religion as the basis for your interpretation of the shape of a god. As I said though, if, as I don't doubt is the case, religion is a load of hoary bollocks, we don't really know what we're looking for (or perhaps what we're looking at).

And as I've stated a couple of times already, I'm not pushing the idea of a Christian (or otherwise) deity here. All I'm trying to justify is that agnosticism is not an intellectually dishonest position to take.
Then the issue is that, outside of religion there is no God concept. It's where it originates, more or less.
Dismiss all of the various God concepts and what you end up doing is trimming away at the puzzle piece until it fits in with everything else.
You sort of have to assume the conclusion and then try to fit the data in.
 
*Chuckle* If you think reincarnation is scary, how about an afterlife in Hell? Hinduism and Buddhism also have hells as part of their reincarnation beliefs. The monotheists don't have a monopoly on ideas of retributive afterlife justice. I would put money on the notion that the ideas of hell the monotheists use are actually adopted and reconfigured from Hinduism and Buddhism.

I've always believed that this was probably the case, as Indian beliefs in various hells and paradises predated those in Europa and Near-East (the oldest mentions in those regions of a Hell similar to what we would become later familiar with seems to be by Plato). That Hinduists, followed by Buddhists, added the notion of stays in hells and paradises between two incarnations is itself strange, as the cycle of reincarnations already worked efficiently as Hell, and the fusion with the Brahma worked as Paradise.
 
Surely, on a thread about Atheism, going on about God and Creation is massively going off thread?
Atheists don’t believe in God. If you want to discuss God and His Creation, or Holographic Universes, start a new thread or contribute to existing ones.
 
Surely, on a thread about Atheism, going on about God and Creation is massively going off thread?
Atheists don’t believe in God. If you want to discuss God and His Creation, or Holographic Universes, start a new thread or contribute to existing ones.
I dunno. Seems that atheists being a minority, discussion of religion (the majority), would be useful for both.
 
Free speech is always the better choice. Different opinions are always welcome in my book, especially ones I don't agree with. It stops groupthink.
 
Free speech is always the better choice. Different opinions are always welcome in my book, especially ones I don't agree with. It stops groupthink.
Well, without the negotiation that free speech allows, all that remains is one party forcing a view on another, which we call 'tyranny'.
 
Well, without the negotiation that free speech allows, all that remains is one party forcing a view on another, which we call 'tyranny'.
I've been struggling with this lately. On the one hand I completely agree. Restricting speech always ends badly.
On the other hand, I've noticed more and more that what is entertaining and simple is much easier for mass consumption than what is complicated and nuanced.
Its always been so, but the spread of information was a bit slower.
It seems to go round the other way and become a different form of tyranny.
 
I've been struggling with this lately. On the one hand I completely agree. Restricting speech always ends badly.
On the other hand, I've noticed more and more that what is entertaining and simple is much easier for mass consumption than what is complicated and nuanced.
Its always been so, but the spread of information was a bit slower.
It seems to go round the other way and become a different form of tyranny.

Prior to this Ss, education usually sorted out these sychophantic inclinations of the mob - just as at one time there was the truth and then there were untruths - now we have opinions and misspokes (is that really a word?)
 
Islam and Judaism are very closely related, in many ways closer than Christianity and Judaism. Neither Islam nor Judaism have a concept of 'original sin', for instance. I like most aspects of Christianity, from an atheist viewpoint, of course; but the 'original sin' concept gets my goat.

To say that Islam and Judaism are closely related based on a single point of commonality is a dangerous assumption. Doctrinally they have little in common. While Mohammed is on record saying that there is no difference between Judaism and Islam in the Koran, any objective assessment of this claim will hastily dismiss it based on historical and scriptural evidence. The reason this was included entirely political. It was done in order to try to legitimize his cult and woo the Jewish tribes of the region over to Islam. Mohammed ultimately performed genocide on those tribes and enslaved the survivors when they didn't want to convert. In particular Rayhana age 15) of the Jewish Banu Quraiza tribe stands as a particular indictment against Mohammed, who killed her family, thus orphaning her and making himself a hypocrite, then turned her into a sex slave, compounding the atrocity with further pedophilia and slavery. Unlike many other women captured and abused by Mohammed, Rayhana never converted to Islam and never became a wife of the prophet.
Much later, after the death of Mohammed, and subsequent to the Arab invasion of Sassanid Persia, a number of Jews found it worth their while to convert to Islam and helped turn Islam into a coherent religious doctrine. They also covertly introduced some Judaism into the mix in the reasoning. The result is that Shi'ism has elements of Judaism in its interpretations, though Shi'ites will no doubt be offended if you raise this pertinent historical fact.
 
misspokes
People have a deeply embedded aversion to being lied to, and while the word' misspoke' is a euphemism for 'lied', it somehow doesn't seem as bad as 'lied' even when we know what it means. I suspect it's because telling someone they're lying is a pretty confrontational thing to do and we are for the most part confrontation averse, even inside our own heads.
 
Ermintruder,

..Judaism = Christianity without the loyalty-tokens>free-coffee at the end...

Yes, people tend to forget that Jesus was a Jew. So Christianity is really just a more 'user friendly' extension of Judaism. If it hadn't been for the Romans seeing the political implications and taking it on board it would possible have faded away.

INT21

Bad business, confining your trade to one tribe only. Jesus specifically said to spread the message to all nations.

Misspoke originally meant misleading by accident, rather than deliberately.

It is my suspicion that most people wouldn't know the actual truth if it fell on their heads, and so nearly everyone is misspeaking most of the time, since they put their own interpretation ahead of such few truly objective facts as we actually have. E.g the unreliability of witnesses. In clarification, I am not referring to The Truth in a religious sense.
 
Uh...where's the thread entitled 'Agnostic'....?



;)
 
True, but it's increasingly used to give that impression, when in fact a lie was told.

It's become the standard excuse for liars who have to back-pedal from an outright falsehood ...
 
Thanks.....I should have looked for that spelling......but 'militant agnosticism'...? Really?

I would think that only applied to the Dawkins school of militant atheism..?
;)

Stu posted that later thread to ask both (a) whether agnosticism was the orientation most consistent with Fort and (b) what it might mean for agnostics to be 'active' and even 'militant'.
 
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