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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: 1000 Posts at the UCC: would anyone like to join in?

« on: March 11, 2007, 07:23:19 PM »

Dude you seem to be doing pretty well in that forum.  Hope you're winning converts to the stance of rationality.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: The Death Penalty

« on: March 06, 2007, 01:42:33 PM »

"Even if we kill 1 innocent man for every 100 dead child molesters, i believe it to be worth it to protect the children."

That's stupid.

"By killing murderers we are stooping down to their level and we should never do that. "

It's not stooping to their level because murders are, by definition, unjustified killings.  Killing a murderer is justified.

By the way, let me make my quick rant and say that I hate the layout of these forums now. 

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The Lounge / God

« on: February 18, 2007, 10:47:49 PM »

You're really ridiculous, you know that?

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The Lounge / Dawkins on CNN

« on: February 13, 2007, 09:36:15 PM »

Well the atheist obviously wouldn't have had enough time to go through all that.  If I was the atheist on the show and the Christian had to throw the old 'where do you get your morality from?' card out on the table, I would simply respond by saying: "With all due respect, I'm surprised you're even asking this question.  There's so much literature on this subject that this leads me to believe that you're just ignoring the answers that have been given already."  I might then reference some works on this subject.

Perhaps I would say something similar to what George Carlin said in his stand-up comedy: "And for all of you who look to the Bible as some sort of moral code, I also suggest you look at Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Little Pigs, and Humpty Dumpty."

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The Lounge / Dawkins on CNN

« on: February 13, 2007, 07:56:03 PM »

Almost eight minutes.

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The Lounge / I'm an atheist in a family of pastors.

« on: February 13, 2007, 07:54:30 PM »

Out of curiosity, Knight, what do you find appealing about the culture of Christ? I find it rather icky, to be honest.

I find some nuggets of wisdom by going to church, but I assure you that I never hesitate to criticize the 'culture of Christ'.  In fact, I honestly hope that within the next two years I can study and learn about this subject enough to be able to give a lecture here on campus--more preferably a debate (or a series of debates).  If religious beliefs maintain their current levels of irrationality, I feel that we might not be able to save civilization.

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The Lounge / Dawkins on CNN

« on: February 13, 2007, 01:40:49 PM »

I saw about seven minutes of it but I think it was also a cut version.  The debate part was from about minute three to minute seven and, just let me be the first to say, the Christian that was speaking/debating was an idiot.  Even I could've sat there and made him look like a fool.

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The Lounge / Skeptical Christian

« on: February 11, 2007, 09:27:57 PM »

1) We don't know whether or not space existed before the Horrendous Space Kablooie (Big Bang), but the general consensus is that time didn't exist before it.

I'm studying the philosophy of space and time currently for Philosophy of the Sciences, so if I learn anything important about this I'll let the rest of you know.  I would suggest, to any intelligent and mathematically-able person on here, the book we have to read called A Treatise on Time and Space by J.R. Lucas.

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The Lounge / I'm an atheist in a family of pastors.

« on: February 11, 2007, 07:02:54 PM »

Personally, I'm a Christian Atheist so I go to church but don't believe what everybody else in the room believes.  I usually make it clear to people that I'm not a dogmatic atheist, I'm just a person who has yet to be convinced that a god exists.  If your family doesn't like that, you should simply say something like: "Well please explain to me why I should believe in a god.  What evidence do we have to believe?"  Pretty soon through this discourse they'll find that they don't have very good reasons to believe at all.  Good luck.

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The Lounge / An Argument for Creationism

« on: February 11, 2007, 06:50:42 PM »

1. Why didn't God save the dinosaurs?

Some Creationists say that dinosaurs were saved on the ark and that they went extinct sometime after the flood.  Kent Hovind supports this type of thinking by stating that dinosaurs used to be called 'dragons,' which are mentioned in the Bible and which the humans killed off.

2. Why are there no human fossils? - If every human in the world apart from Noah and his family died from the flood, wouldn't many humans also be fossilised?

Hovind says that humans made it up to the higher ground before dying because they were more intelligent.

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The Lounge / An Argument for Creationism

« on: February 08, 2007, 07:16:00 PM »

Why even believe in evolution? If I'm right, and there is a God, then I go to heaven, you burn in hell; if you're right, we both die, and nothing happens. So, isn't it safer to just go with the safe choice? I'm sure I'm being ignorant again, but that's just the way it seems to me.

Ah, Pascal's Wager.  Perhaps the worst argument for believing in god ever.

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The Lounge / Erasmus: Islamic militants, Republicans, and other insects

« on: February 07, 2007, 06:45:42 PM »

Knight, I'm almost ready to send those bastards a letter. It'll be ... fun.

Check out this link: http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6142&start=0

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The Lounge / Erasmus: Islamic militants, Republicans, and other insects

« on: February 07, 2007, 04:02:51 PM »

I noticed a lot of usage of quotes from Paul Tillich in the God Delusion thread on that website.  Don't these people know that Tillich was a Christian Atheist?  He did not believe in god in the noun sense, because he realized that god in the verb sense is more foundational, and thus, he only worshiped Being itself (that is, he worshiped the act of existing) because all noun-gods are idols.  Check out this section of his Wikipedia article and shove this information in their faces:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Tillich#Critical_views

Thus, the fact that they were quoting the thing he said about accepting the truth even if it hurts is actually a message to other Christians and theists.  Accept the truth that the universe is a mystery, and that your religion is a social construct.

By the way, Ubuntu, I admire you for trying to get these people to enter their beliefs into a rational discourse.

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The Lounge / Erasmus: Islamic militants, Republicans, and other insects

« on: February 06, 2007, 11:44:59 PM »

One other thing Ubuntu.  You should post this link sometime and ask them to find holes in this reasoning based on scripture:  http://www.godhatesfags.com/main/faq.html

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The Lounge / Let's get this straight.

« on: February 06, 2007, 11:28:43 PM »

My mother is a Quaker and she believes that God is essentially just a word that means the goodness in us all.

She uses the word god (traditionally not capitalized because 'God' is a character) in the transcendental manner that many theologians use it in, I think.  In this sense, we can say that god exists.

I'm an atheist to that kind of God only in that I think "god" is the wrong word to use.

From what I understand, Nietzsche felt the exact same way.  In fact, he thought that the word 'god' was so ambiguous that we ought to stop using it altogether.  If we're going to believe "god = good" or "god = Being (in the sense of the act of existing itself, a verb)", and then we're going to turn around and say "god exists," then why don't we just stop using the word 'god' and start using the words 'good' and 'Being' and anything else that we mean by the word.  It's really a good point.

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The Lounge / Erasmus: Islamic militants, Republicans, and other insects

« on: February 06, 2007, 09:04:00 PM »

I just read that thread on the other website and I must say I felt like signing up for an account and debating with Jim a little.  I especially enjoyed the line "context, context, context."  Yes, context, right?  We have to look at the context of history in which God commanded all that killing.  Back then, he commanded us to kill homosexuals.  Since we're all a little more mature than that now (I hope), we find a way to avoid those immoral commands by saying that Jesus nullified them or something (even though he clearly states several times that the Law of Moses shall not pass away).  Even looking at it in this light, what does it say about your god if he used to command the killing of homosexuals?  That he was immature in the Old Testament, to say the least.  To be honest with ourselves, we would probably have to conclude that he was simply a constructed entity that reflected the values of that immoral society.  Hey, guess what?  Look around, you'll probably have a light bulb appear above your head and hear a little dinging sound when you realize that this is exactly what a religion is, a social construct.

Anyway, I'm going to go read some American Military History.  The religious conversations will have to be put on the back burner for now.

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The Lounge / Erasmus: Islamic militants, Republicans, and other insects

« on: February 06, 2007, 08:39:02 PM »

He's referring to the fact that Ubuntu did not write that post.  By the way, the real knight will be on tomorrow.  He sends his regards.

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The Lounge / Show me a Christian as logical as Harris and I will convert!

« on: February 05, 2007, 09:22:14 AM »

Okay, but I fear that William Lane Craig might be the biggest competition.

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Arts & Entertainment / Super Bowl XXXXI

« on: February 04, 2007, 09:33:26 PM »

I'm probably on pretty firm epistemological grounds when I say that you didn't 'know' the Colts would win.  But now I'm just being technical.

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The Lounge / Show me a Christian as logical as Harris and I will convert!

« on: February 04, 2007, 08:02:05 PM »

Yes, I am a pure atheist, and I do believe that Christianity is not necessarily a good thing for society. However, I'm not going to go around saying, "Hey, are you Christian? Yeah? Well, fuck you! Christianity is a disgusting, vile sort of religion, and ahteism is so much better than you!"

That's not what Sam Harris does.  He says something more like: "Do you have beliefs that affect the rest of society?  Are these beliefs negatively affecting the rest of us?  If so, then I want to hear some rational justification for these beliefs.  If you can't provide any, then the rest of us are going to make fun of your irrational beliefs until it becomes uncool to believe in those things."

Really, he's just trying to make people submit their beliefs to a rational discourse so they can figure out if they really have good reasons to believe what they believe.  It's a noble cause.

Knight, but you see, my challenge is loaded because theism is illogical.

We cannot believe at the outset that theism is irrational (I'm not sure how you think it is illogical, but perhaps you mean irrational).  We have to give theists a fair chance to make their case, and then we have to consider the evidence and make our own decisions.  So if you're truly interested in figuring out if there is evidence for a supernatural being, then you should give William Lane Craig's books a read.

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The Lounge / Show me a Christian as logical as Harris and I will convert!

« on: February 04, 2007, 07:19:44 PM »

Ubuntu, from what I hear, C.S. Lewis was a pretty intelligent Christian apologist.  Also, one of the most popular philosophers today is William Lane Craig.

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The Lounge / Why Won't God Heal Amputees

« on: February 03, 2007, 10:11:42 AM »

I just flipped a coin, guys, and it turns out that God exists.

On another subject, I like your idea beast.  I've had that book on my reading list for some time, I just haven't had the time to buy it and read it yet.  I have many theistic books on my wish list on Amazon and I sort of wanted to do the same thing with that book.  But I trust you'll do a much better job than I would.

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The Lounge / Why Won't God Heal Amputees

« on: February 02, 2007, 10:23:39 PM »

Thank God.

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The Lounge / Why Won't God Heal Amputees

« on: February 02, 2007, 07:57:14 PM »

I just skipped over here from page six.  I don't really feel like reading page seven and page eight, I'm just curious why you guys are still arguing with this guy.  He's already stated that the Easter Bunny's existence is a coin toss, as well as the existence of a supernatural deity.  He has not really provided evidence to support such a position, except to make the claim that he's being more rational than we are.  Let's look at it this way:

1) A conscious, intelligent, complex, supernatural being exists foundationally, always has existed and always will exist.  This being created the universe.

2) Energy has always existed.

We have outside, objective evidence that energy exists, but not evidence that this supernatural being exists.  Thus, it's automatically more probable to believe number two.  Yet this guy keeps saying (unless he changed his position in the last couple of pages) that there is a 50-50 chance of either one being the correct model.  Why?  Because he apparently doesn't think about it enough.  Okay guys, let him think about it, quit giving him the pleasure of typing posts that simply call you all "assholes" and the like (as he has been doing).  Finally, check out this awesome video:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5464505634137914176&q=God&hl=en

BTW in regards to this video, I don't know what this lady is so upset about because there's a 50-50 percent chance that her religion is right and there is a 50-50 percent chance that astrology, tarot, psychics, etc. are true sources of wisdom  

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The Lounge / Why Won't God Heal Amputees

« on: February 02, 2007, 04:58:46 PM »

Sorry, no rational person thinks the existence of the Easter Bunny is a 50-50 coin toss.  Just like the existence of a teapot orbiting Mars is also not 50-50.  But whatever, I think you already know that.

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The Lounge / Global Warming

« on: February 01, 2007, 09:23:23 PM »

Ah crap.  I never bother with the first page.  Even after you said that, I still didn't read your whole first post.  Oh well, I trust that you've already pointed out what I pointed out.  Although I was under the impression that the actual report was only released today.  Anyway... on another note... *whistles*

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The Lounge / Global Warming

« on: February 01, 2007, 07:39:02 PM »

The scientific community has just released a report that states that global warming is "very likely" caused by mankind.  Check it out here:  http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/02/01/climate.talks.ap/index.html

Don't pass this one up!  Spread the word!

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The Lounge / Is it ok for churches to say "Jesus Loves Osama"

« on: February 01, 2007, 06:17:17 PM »

On a similar note, I love this clip of George Carlin:

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The Lounge / Is it ok for churches to say "Jesus Loves Osama"

« on: February 01, 2007, 03:01:46 PM »

It's kind of hard to not believe in God. It's easier to be unsure.

This statement actually seems contradictory, in a way.  When you say that it's hard "to not believe in God," you're essentially saying that it's easier to believe in God than to not have a belief about God's existence.  However, it's clearly easiest to be agnostic towards the existence of God (which is not believing in God and not believing that God does not exist).

Anyway, I'm too lazy to formally point out your error in meaning, but I think your statement, if properly worded, should've said something like this:

"It's kind of hard to believe that God does not exist.  It's easier to be unsure."

However, that's a matter of debate in itself that I'll let you guys have.  I have other fish to fry.

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The Lounge / Is it ok for churches to say "Jesus Loves Osama"

« on: February 01, 2007, 02:13:03 PM »

There are six things the LORD hates, seven that are detestable to him:
haughty eyes
a lying tongue
hands that shed innocent blood
a heart that devises wicked schemes
feet that are quick to rush into evil
a false witness who pours out lies
and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers.

Seems to me that Osama is stirring up dissension among brothers and, in the eyes of Christians, bearing false witness about the One True God.  What do you think?