Theological Ramblings.

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.

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.

Again, Jet, you completely miss the point. Attack my beliefs all you want, but at least give it an honest effort beyond name-calling. If you run for political office and have to hold a debate, for example, you're going to need a whole lot more than "you're stupid" or "you're wrong" in order to win.

I really don't care about Billy Graham the Pope etc. If you want to be religious fine. If you don't have a religion that is fine. What is there to really discuss ? Just your reasons why or why not.

Another Chanti bait thread...

.... If you seriously don't want to even consider one of the primary conundrums of religion and philosophy, maybe you should go elsewhere.

.... If I sat here and openly expressed my concerns over what Wolverine would do to me when he finds me, first of all you'd think I'm insane, but secondly, you'd roll your eyes pretty hard if I said you were ignorant for not even considering it.

I'm sorry that you think that people's stupid religious beliefs deserve any amount of respect and or time to dismantle.

Argument is welcome but I would prefer it to be a a bit more scholarly. Then again I do realize this IS the internet.

And yet here we are, with people like you going out of your way to ridicule things that aren't worth your time or respect. Interesting. Regardless, I'd use Sparthosx as an example of an atheist who gets it, even if I generally don't like him.

Atheists have nothing to gain by keeping quiet.

.... Jewish claims of being chosen by God.... religion deserves to be criticized for making claims it could never hope to back up.

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.

I didn't say they weren't worth my time or respect at all, just not enough to dismantle. There's a big difference.

Oh didn't you hear? I'm not an atheist now, I'm apparently not allowed to use the word.

Well I always thought you were using it inaccurately as well, but I'd rather not get into semantics with you again. We've done that enough in the past.

I have no objections to atheists who question faith, just the ones that ridicule needlessly

If you want to resign yourself to the idea that your existence is meaningless

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

....

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.

....
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..

....
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'.

The Madalyn Murray O'Hair branch of Atheism sure looks like one.

re·li·gion
[ri-lij-uhn] Show IPA
noun
1.
a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.
2.
a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects: the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion.
3.
the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices: a world council of religions.

....
The problem with all this is that the most popular forms of theism discourage critical thinking in exchange for blind adherence.

.... It's also why fundamentalists are so dangerous as they take ignoring reality to the extreme....

.... I'd use Sparthosx as an example of an atheist who gets it, even if I generally don't like him.

Define scholarly, please. Do I need to quote Descartes before I'm allowed to speculate on the existence of personality separated from the biological mechanisms of the endocrine system? ....

Ugh, and I'm all angried up and defensive right now, too, because maybe you didn't mean anything by that. Please do tell me what you mean.

So your argument is now that you don't have an argument and I'm wrong because

No, you needn't put Descartes before dehorse to reply.

I'm sure a lot have a lot of similarities, but going by this:

a group defined purely by that they're atheists can't solely be considered a religion, the lack of (or even the supposed denial of) a belief in a god, isn't a set of beliefs, which all of those definitions require.

Now we can probably get into some conversations about other definitions of the word "religion" or what people consider one as, or even talk about how that group can identify as one thing and yet inherently still be very religious.

Or that by some definitions persons with religion that doesn't have a deity could still be considered atheists, by several definitions of the word....

You and Jetackuu seem to have this misunderstanding.

A lack of an argument doesn't require an argument to rebut it.

We've been through all the points. You think X, I think X is stupid. That's pretty much all there is to it.

What is this argument, what is this strawman, what is this desperate clinging that's supposedly required for all this? None of it actually exists and none of it is actually transpiring between us, you're just pulling all the usual things out of a hat and throwing it at me because I said you're dumb.

(And you are)

Why I say that The Madalyn Murray O'Hair branch of atheism looks like a religion.

1, They have regular meetings.

2, They study the bible. OK, they are looking for salacious content, but they do study it.

3, They proselytize.

heyheyhey now, don't lump me in now with them.

You and Jetackuu seem to have this misunderstanding.

A lack of an argument doesn't require an argument to rebut it.

We've been through all the points. You think X, I think X is stupid. That's pretty much all there is to it....

I am a terrible person for laughing at that. I normally loathe puns, too, so congratulations.

I do have serious issue with how you argue your points, but we can go over that in the next gun thread

I agree. So why the constant reiteration? Half of your posts in this thread are basically that last line.

if we're not actually having an argument

You don't do a good job yourself at that when you start with something like this:
that's like belittling an atheist by default.

If you really want to show to be open-minded then you should start by presenting your arguments in a more neutral way, don't you think?