Theological Ramblings.

I'm waiting for the moment when someone screams "praise jesus" so I can be like "praise the sun!"

I have no problem with atheists. If you want to resign yourself to the idea that your existence is meaningless and can be happy doing it, then more power to you. I just get annoyed by the ones who feel the need to make an appearance in every single religion thread and talk about how stupid religion is. We get it, you're an atheist. You think belief is an afterlife is a waste? We all heard you the first time. The more atheists feel the need to assert the exact same viewpoint, the more it seems like they're insecure about their own opinions. And since everyone seems to want to take my words and turn them around every single time I post, yes, religious people often do the same thing in their own way.

Of course we all know people like you love your echo chamber. Maybe you should check with an atheist before pretending to know what our views are.

My favorite echo chamber is the Grand Canyon.

I'd like to also argue that there's not much meaning in devoting the only life you know you'll have to a being that drowns babies because he got mad, under threat of eternal torture.

Also, he loves you.

Atheists have nothing to gain by keeping quiet.

Between the obsession of Islam with world domination, the squabbling between infinite sects of Christianity, Jewish claims of being chosen by God and the skirmishes between these faiths and the others that exist on this planet religion deserves to be criticized for making claims it could never hope to back up.

Perhaps there is some infinite creator entity out there. Perhaps the universe is all part of some advanced species design. Perhaps religion has valuable lessons to teach on charity, camaraderie and psychology. Perhaps all religion are merely projections of human thoughts, hopes and dreams. Perhaps we're destined to play this game until we're relegated to the dustbin of history.

That's the fun of questioning everything including your faith. Some of the greatest theologians did the same and gave birth to our modern methods of science. Change is inevitable and I have no intention of keeping quiet while I have the opportunity to reason.

No, please, question faith. Present some quality arguments that make people think. "Ur so dum for beleev in god lol" (or the equivalent) doesn't do that.

I've never once called someone 'stupid' on for their beliefs. I seem to recall consistently bringing up theologians and scholars who have made solid arguments despite their claims to a faith. You can find this in pretty much every major religion from Christianity to dead faiths.

What I have done rather is consistently is disagree and attack those who make claims they cannot back up and use their unfounded beliefs to impose their will upon others. You know, like the wingnut evangelicals and their ilk.

Also, I'm not the one making claims. Burden of proof falls on the theist, always. Asking an atheist to debunk beliefs is merely playing lazy with faith.

You make claims like "Atheists believe life is meaningless" with no evidence other than your own biases to back up your claims. In actuality I don't think my life is meaningless but hey, you know me more than I know me.

He's talking about me when he says things about calling people dumb or stupid. I tend to do that a lot.

The problem with that is that religion is a non falsifiable claim. You can't disprove a negative. It's the same as asking for arguments that disproves that there's a giant green dragon floating behind me right now.

What you can do though is to point out their absurdities. For instance, pretending your life has meaning in one particular faith when in reality, you're just under constant threat from a homicidal maniac.

You're the one calling me ignorant for considering it. I'm calling you a *** for calling me ignorant for considering a hypothetical. Learn the difference.

And I've never been one to be bothered by the pointless barroom arguments about whether Batman or Superman would win in a fight, even when the answer is obviously Batman (note the intentional irony). Dunno what you mean by conservative, either. I'm a moderate: we're always the ones criticizing both sides. Hell, I'm neither atheist nor religious (at least not by the standards most people use), so figure that one out.

Would it make you feel better if I removed the afterlife component and just said, "I wonder what it'd be like not to have hormones"? It's the same damned question. The veneer of mysticism is irrelevant if the point of the question can conceivably lead to either personal epiphany or scientific inquiry. Oh, didn't you think of that while you were knee-jerking at the merest mention of something metaphysical?

Don't think that my comments were referring to you specifically. I've had wonderful discussions with atheists before that were both non-aggressive and very knowledgeable about religion, going beyond
Wikipedia and the gullibility-induced "I heard your church believes (insert weird thing here) so you must be wrong."

Here's an idea: keep your religion to yourself and then people wouldn't call your beliefs stupid. You're free to believe whatever you want as long as you don't try to impose it on others, however if you start talking about it, don't be surprised/offended when people rip on you for making it public.

It's not that hard of a concept.

I have a few crazy beliefs that I talk about with certain people but I don't go around trying to discriminate others because of them or get offended when I'm told I'm a crackpot if I have a belief that I cannot backup with any actual evidence.

In fact those said beliefs are in fact in regards to the nature/causation of the universe, so one could go as far as to say it is a religion, but it depends on how one defines a religion, but I have no actual central object for the said belief. I have little to backup said belief, so I just don't talk about it.

Nope, I'm calling you a moron for considering it.

Seriously. I literally used the word 'moron' to describe you and you literally used the word 'ignorance' to describe me. How could you still mix that up?



It wouldn't even be a blip on my radar if you were talking about some severe medical condition.

And don't pretend like I want to engage in some prolonged argument with you. I saw something, called it stupid and moved on. All I'm doing now is obliging when people pull me back in.

Keep my religion to myself? It sure is hard to impose my religion on people when nobody in these forums even knows what my religion is. If you'd read my other posts then you'd realize that I have no objections to atheists who question faith, just the ones that ridicule needlessly and have absolutely nothing worthwhile to say. Especially when this is a freaking thread about religion. Try contributing something worthwhile yourself, Jet.

He's speaking in general terms, not anyone specific.

There are more than enough examples of people trying to impose their religion on other people in the world.

Indeed, if people are talking about something in a public forum, don't expect people to not come in and disagree.

I described the condition you promoted as ignorance. Specifically, the common phrase "ignorance is bliss." I wish to consider an idea, you tell me, "Omigawd, why can't you just be happy?" with the coded meaning of "Stop thinking."

You really cannot divorce the concept of thought and identity, based on your responses in this thread. Which I suppose makes you quite ignorant. But that wasn't my original assertion.

Oh, and your "severe medical condition" could be something as crazy as digitized mind. We're getting closer and closer to that. Again, just because I used a veneer of mysticism does not make this a foolish idea to contemplate. Someone as blindingly stupid as you won't, but that's ok; enjoy your bliss.

"Keep your religion to yourself." Followed by: "Don't expect people to not come in and disagree."

So, don't talk about your religion in a religion thread, unless you're an atheist, in which case you don't have to keep that to yourself, but it's not okay to disagree with an atheist? Man, I'm confused.

Yes, you are confused. Maybe some of the things you thought were true really aren't?

That was sad. You can do better.

Atheism by the strictest sense cannot be a religion, it lacks multiple requirements, even if you use the more popular definitions.

You are confused.

Don't talk about your beliefs regardless if they belong to a religion or you made them up entirely your own unless you want to present yourself with the possibility that they will be ridiculed if you can't or even can back them up with logic and facts, there will always be those who feel the need to tear you a new one. The point is: get your panties out of a knot.

Stop thinking stupid things.

My entire message to you this entire thread is the latter half of that phase. Shouldn't leave it out because it makes your post sound nicer.


Yeah, it kinda does. It's not any different in wondering if the chant to case fire spells is more complicated than the chant to cast water spells.

You're literally trying to claim that calling this example stupid is 'ignorant', only you're using a different set of 'mysticism'. News flash: neither examples actually exists in this reality.

Ah, Jet. You're trying too hard to make something out of this. I'm just asking for more constructive arguments, that's all. I know I'm in the absolute wrong place to expect such, but a man can dream.

I'm not too sure. Any good theology 'theory' are almost always circular or they just have little meaning overall.

For example, my family has a fair number of people being Buddhists and they all believe in karma. As far as I understood the theory, it means 'if you do bad things then bad things will happen to you'. Then they add in the vice versa 'if you do good things then good things will happen to you'. However, people eventually see that some evil dudes just keep on with their happy lives (long lived and rich tyrants for example) or some perfectly good people just live in misery, poverty or sickness. Then they came up with the 3rd part 'unless bad things already happen to you in your previous life then you get good things now even though you're pure evil'. Then, of course, 'keep doing the good things and you'll be rewarded in your next life' or 'you're paying your debt to the evil deeds you have done in the previous life'...etc.

Then there is heaven. How do people know there is Heaven? If someone goes to heaven then they would be very dead. If they are dead then they can't talk to the living unless you believe in them psychics - which opens up another can of worms with magic, ESP, fireballs, werewolves and vampires. And even if they can somehow talk to the living then they wouldn't be in Heaven or they wouldn't be stalking people.

Then there is the power of the All Creator (God, divine intelligence or whatever). If the world/universe was created then you can look at the history of human and you can conclude that the creator would be Evil, Twisted, Idiotic or maybe the All Creator isn't that powerful and should not be feared.

Ex: God created man as an experiment. Being all wise and can see the future, he realized he made a mistake. In his valiant attempt to save the failed experiment, he created woman from man. Then it became obvious to him that the byproduct of the failed experiment won't be fixing his failed experiment. He went QQ and said 'no more experiments or miracles'.

Dreams where made to be crushed

Cell phones didn't exist in the reality of the 1960s, but that didn't stop Gene Roddenberry thinking about a possible equivalent technology. Your argument holds no water because you're clinging too desperately to it in a vain attempt to suggest you were right from the beginning.

shush conagh you are just sad because people without souls can't float

You have to crawl before you can walk and walk before running. It kinda begins with the idea that you want to progress your arguments and be open to new data in both the theist/atheist corner.

I spent a year of college getting reamed by a theology professor for having crap arguments in my corner regarding religion and then another being chewed out by philosophy professors who enjoy doing little other than deconstructing arguments for no real purpose other than to facilitate personal development. I was that cocky college atheist and got put on my *** on more than one occasion. A similar thing happens to cocky theists who think they "know" when they don't really "know" anything.

Yes, it sucks to get embarrassed and its even more aggravating when someone puts you in a position where you're forced to just say "yeah man, whatever." But the idea is that you'll be back - and back with better arguments / evidence. A commitment to learning.

The problem with all this is that the most popular forms of theism discourage critical thinking in exchange for blind adherence. If someone presents you with ideas that challenge beliefs, the texts encourage you to ignore this and encourage murdering said individual because God's word is eternal. When presented with every possible reason to go left, you're instructed to stay the course and go right off a cliff.

Of course many theists ignore this for obvious reasons. Personal beliefs, changing social atmospheres, self-generated systems of rationalization, acceptance of scientific truths or ignorance of the texts all coincide with strict adherence to writ. It's also why fundamentalists are so dangerous as they take ignoring reality to the extreme. This isn't to say that the atheist cannot hold the course regardless of evidence mounting towards any theism as humans are prideful creatures but where the atheist merely has an ego to protect, the theist has a supernatural entity to defend under pain of eternal reward/punishment.

The stakes couldn't be higher.

My god (irony) that's a stupid post. You're comparing literal voodoo magic powers to potential future technological innovations.

To use an old example, this is the equivalent to defending fire spells because some time in the future, someone will create a lighter.

Wut? Voodoo magic? Fire spells?

It was NAVEL-GAZING, ***. I didn't say that I could separate my consciousness from my body and travel to the astral plane. ***, is this the best you can do for argumentation, make up the dumbest straw-man possible instead of just backing up two steps and saying, "I over-reacted"?