Rise in atheistic fundamentalism

[Bazzlad]

Is the world a better place because of it? Yes.

[fuddam]

Thanks Fuddam.

So to sum up: (and please correct me if I'm wrong)

You believe I (as a non religious individual) will be accepted by God. This then leads to the question, "If God accepts you without worship/religion, why do it?". To which, as far as I understand it, you believe you gain the ability to converse with the almighty and through that you gain a unique understanding on life.

you are already accepted by God, BUT have you accepted Him? that is the difference between us.

It would not make sense for you to be with God for eternity if you do not want Him.

also, to reiterate, in accepting Him, you would be cleansed of the stain of sin, which would make it possible for you to enter His presence (after you die)

here is a quick google response to the How To: 1way2God.net - Take The Step Towards God
or here: linkage
or here: Personal Relationship With God

[LWA]

you are already accepted by God, BUT have you accepted Him? that is the difference between us.

I see.

To my previous point, and I guess what a lot of non religious people don't understand, is what exactly do you feel you get out of it? (I tried to guess in my previous post, being able to converse with God etc)

[G4Z]

I would be interested to know what the consequences are for rejecting this idea, if I was to die and let's just say your right and I float up to the pearly gates and the big man says, -big booming voice- 'accept me and I will let you in'. Now, me being me I turn around and say "You must be joking, clearly it is much more likely that I am not dead and in fact I am in a coma and for some reason instead of waking up in a 1970's police drama my conversations with Fuddam have made me dream up you, in fact I can't even believe I am talking to a figment of my own imagination". what happens then, do I burn in hell or do I simply cease to exist? (which is exactly what I think will happen anyway once all the neurons synapses and axons stop working) Does it say that in scripture or did the big man tell you?

Incidentally this whole thing must rely on some sort of eternal soul idea, not a physical part of the body, so how exactly do you account for the effects of brain damage? - I.e If I break a bit of my brain, I might lose all of my memories or I might stop being *me* all together. If you break a certain area you lose your speech and if you damage another area you can lose your sight. Surely if you have a soul, it would not be possible to change personality by simply clattering somebodies melon.

[iranu]

true, I dispute evolution as a phenomenon of chance:

1) I venture evolution without God's assistance is ludicrously beyond plausibility. the logic of evolution is *nice* but the numbers do not compute. FWIW have a looksee into Darwin's finches.

2) I believe humans are separate and distinct from any other species, ie did not evolve from apes. They COULD have evolved from apes with His help but He says they did not, so not a biggie. Call me gullible.

You contradict yourself here. How do you account for the masses of scientific evidence for evolution? How do you explain this evidence away? How do you account for the theory of evolution predicting and the applications that have arisen from it? Later you say that Christian scientists don’t have any conflict yet here you are dismissing claims that are supported by Christian scientists – see Ken Miller video again. How can you take this position? It’s contradictory to your argument of god doesn’t say so.

that's not appropriate. As the stuck record keeps on saying, there is plenty of evidence for God, but if you don't consider it evidence (which is the principal disagreement between christians and atheists, I would venture) then never the twain shall meet. And no, am not talking about ID at the moment. .

He doesn’t see the irony.

As the stuck record keeps on saying, there is plenty of evidence for evolution, but if you don’t consider it evidence…..

The difference is that the theory of evolution is testable. If the evidence for god was evidence and testable via scientific logic (see posts above) then we would be able to decide the existence one way or the other.
I am very interested in this evidence because it is the basis of your position. I would like a list of this evidence. I’d also like you to propose the methods for testing this evidence so that I can do it myself in order to find out.
And please don’t quote the bible. If you do then you are using circular reasoning and as we all know this is a logical fallacy. And what do we do when logical fallacies crop up in an argument? Yep, we have to dismiss the argument.

interesting piece, but ignores one essential point: the evidence

IF he truly was a Christian, then he would have evidence (ie his relationship, 2 way) that his subsequent conversion to atheism would not be able to explain. .

Yay! The no true Scotsman fallacy! No true Scotsman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - what do we do with fallacies kids?

I would venture he was born/raised into a Christian tradition, and it was this viewpoint he used to defend. Then, once he started doubting, it was simple for him to reject his original perception, because it was built on BLIND FAITH. Just like a kid learning that there is no Santa. .

No 1 speculation. No 2 “blind faith”. Faith is belief without evidence and therefore by definition is blind. There is no other kind. Now we start to see the twisting of language and meaning which will become almost unbearable later on.

As to the specific objections he raises now, he is simply talking to the wrong people. As usual. Like a lot of people on this thread (and many others) who see God as a genocidal, sadistic maniac - selective reading can be used to justify any argument. .

Well there is a lot of genocide in the bible, the greatest being the flood. I’d count that as pretty nasty.
I was reading the paper yesterday and I came across two articles. The first was the girl that was killed due to a gas explosion whilst walking to school with her mother, the second was a two month old baby scolded to death because the boiler above her room malfunctioned and flooded her room.
As an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, omni-benevolent god how can anyone not equate this with a sadist? More on this later.

His notion of 150 major religions, then 10,000 other religions etc is trite. He is giving each one equal validity, and if that were viable, they would all have
1) the same level of internal coherence
2) the same level of coherence with established historical fact
3) the same impact on lives of the believers
etc etc

dat ain't so.

Oh dear. The old my religion is more valid argument. 1) Christianity is not internally coherent therefore to say that yours religion is less valid because it’s less coherent than mine is ridiculous. 2) What historical fact? Again we have been through this argument many times and there is no basis for the existence of jesus christ let alone a great flood etc. Infact there is more evidence for the existence of Mohamed than Christ. 3) Completely irrelevant. /sigh.

I work a lot in the muslim world, and just to compare christianity and islam is an unfair contest. No, not because I'm a Christian, but because the *scriptures* of those religions have vastly different results when measured against the above criteria. The Quran, for one, has over 1500 revisions in the earliest known historical document. Over 1500 amendments, alterations, excisions etc, compared to the NT which has none other than the 45 recognised verses that in no way contradict the original scripture but support it (ie no conflict). And one always has to come back to the scriptures as ultimate reference (not to people).

Well your criteria is nonsense so you haven’t a leg to stand old there old chap.

Catholics & Protestants & Anglicans (etc etc) all agree on the fundamentals - who Christ is, why he came to earth, salvation from sin and why it was necessary, etc. It's only in the application of scripture that they differ, which is not only a non-issue but to be expected, since human beings will only have an imperfect grasp of perfect truth. People often resent the 'interpretation' of scripture, wanting a single perfect understanding - how can that be so, since context changes through time? Not only within a culture but within individual circumstance. That quite aside from man's imperfect nature. )

This is hysterical. “Perfect truth”, what on earth is that? Again we see the flowery language come out. Something is either the truth or not, there is no perfect about it. It’s like saying a perfect triangle. So here we have this scripture that is the word of god that is interpreted differently because man is imperfect and context changes over time. Therefore by your own admission the scripture is worthless, yet you continue to refer to it. You have just made most of your arguments on this thread null and void through your own admittance. Care to take back this statement? Mmmn now lets see. If that is so then god would know about it and would either ensure that the scripture had exact meaning or he would ensure revisions in order to keep it up to date and within context so by your own logic the muslim religion would be a better indication. He does not do this. Why?

Agreed, but if ongoing historical research supports scripture, rather than negating it, then it brings a certain respect for the words written in scripture. For example, if every single reference to a historical person within the Bible was ultimately proven to be true through non-scriptural sources, how would that impact your perception of the Bible? Your constant claim that there never was a living person Jesus would look rather hollow, n'est pas? Well, since the secular British Museum is starting to use scripture on its walls (for one), your claim as to the absurdity of the Bible is beginning to look less......empirically based.

Even if there was evidence and complete agreement that “a” jesus existed then this does not mean that he was who you claim he was and therefore cannot be considered evidence for god. To do so is a non sequiter.

From a skeptic's POV, if there really is a big deity out there, one assumes there would be some way of knowing about it. )For a deity to create an entire universe but then withhold knowledge of him/her/itself doesn't make much sense (from our limited perspective). If that logic holds,

I don’t think that logic necessarily holds. Who knows what the deity’s thinking and what purpose it had when creating the universe. Why assume we could find out about it? It’s outside of our natural world therefore impossible for us to do so unless it interacted with our world on a regular basis. This would then have drastic problems for the idea of free will which Christians say we have.

then how is he/she/it to communicate to an entire planet of people?

In anyway it wants to after all it’s an omnipotent being! It could quite easily make itself known by beaming pictures of itself onto every TV, bill-board, T-shirt on the planet.

Methinks there would be need for some sort of scripture, rather than relying purely on oral tradition, some objective method for individuals to learn about said deity.

Yes you think that because it supports your own reasoning and you can’t see past the big book. If scripture was the chosen method then why is the “correct one true scripture” not found by Europeans to be in both Australia and North America when those lands were visited? I’ve already proven that scripture is worthless, by your own admission, so why would a god choose this fallible method? Doesn’t add up does it?

That is why all the major religions refer to scriptures of some kind,

Circular reasoning another fuddam logical fallacy.

and also why the FSM does not.

O RLY? Amazon.com: The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster: Books: Bobby Henderson

And it is in having the scriptures that we are able to start on some serious dissection and comparison of the claims made by these scriptures. For you to claim that Christianity has no more validity than the other 149 religions, that they are all equally junk, shows a SERIOUS paucity in your academic approach. Even if there were no God, to equate the validity of 150 systems of thought followed by a minimum of 10 million people is unbelievably ostrich-like. Purely on philophical terms, some should rank higher than others. (sigh)

Circular reasoning followed by argumentum ad populam. (sigh)

lol. agreed about the last point. The difference from hearing the FSM or others is what impact that has on the individual's life. For example, let's say this imaginary voice (from your POV) discussed things with you, debated, laughed, advised etc, and (VERY NB) it had a profound effect on your daily life in the following ways: restored relationships, restored marriages, release from addictions, prophetic revelation, joy in the face of extreme persecution (as opposed to joy simply when things are going well), a growing love for one's fellow human beings, blah blah blah. You get the idea. You might give it some attention, methinks. )

Appeal to emotion fallacy.

Yes, he is talking to everyone but it is only on acceptance of His love, and submission to it, that He has permission to enter the individual's heart. Beforehand, as you've no doubt heard a zillion times, He's just knocking on the door. )

Talking to everyone. How? “His love” – you do understand that love is a human emotion and therefore is produced by the brain in response to stimuli (Stimuli) which can only be gotten through nerve endings via sensory organs.
“permission to enter the individuals heart” Again flowery language that in all essence has no meaning whatsoever. How on earth do you give this permission? How do you submit to something you have no sensory knowledge of? How can you empirically know that it’s god that you are submitting to and not anything else? It’s this kind of nonsense that I find quite funny. No one ever talks like this in their daily lives, it’s only the religious that do so when discussing their god. It seems to me that they simply haven’t got the language to express this god.

Why do people reject it? The most important reason, I would argue, is that it requires submission, i.e. humility, which is probably the most unnatural act for people. We are by nature selfish. We don't want to take advice (or ask for directions ) but do our own thing. )

False equivocation

The irony is that the submission to Christ brings more freedom than anyone could believe possible, most particularly from guilt, from the burden of sin.

What? This is nonsense. What burden of sin? I have no burden of sin period so how can I be freed from it. Again you are making things up in order for a reason to believe.

Oh, and however simplistic is sounds, the essential reason for His communication to us is His love for us. .

The same way he has love for that two month old who died from scolding? The same love he has for me, a sinner, who does not believe, who will suffer eternal torment for using his free will?

In the beginning there was god. Before god created the universe he knew that at some point in time in that universe he expressly created for humans that there would be a human born of the name iranu. He would also know that iranu would not believe in him and he would therefore make iranu suffer for all eternity.

I’m going to breed puppies with the single intention of torturing them but I’m only doing it cos I love puppies. Nice.

[iranu]

Love seems to motivate people to do all sorts of extreme things, and experience all sorts of fantastic emotions - across culture, across history. The difference is His love is bigger than ours, without the negative bits.

Change love for hate. Same difference. Again an appeal to emotion. As already said love is a human emotion and there cannot be ascribed to god, it’s simple projecting, nothing else.

I don't work within denomination, and second, you are totally right. Christianity is about RELATIONSHIP with a living God, .

”living” god, god by definition is eternal and immaterial, but to describe him as living is nonsensical because the word is used for biological entities that by definition are made of matter.

not adherence to rules and regulations. Anyone who claims to be Christian but does not have communication with Him is fooling themselves. They are not Christian. They are simply religious (like many footballers about football etc).

No true Scotsman fallacy. Again!

faith is essential, that He will do what He claims, that all He says is true, without having experienced it all firsthand etc, faith that when we are asked to get out the boat, we won't sink, but not faith that the experience of Him is real - that is self-evident.

Word salad. Word salad - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This is starting to get tiring.

[Bazzlad]

What I've never understood is why people are so quick, eager and malicious in slating other people's religious views? What do you get out of it? Do you think that your opinion (and it is an opinion, nothing more) that God doesn't exist, is going to change Fuddam's opinion that he does?

Stand to Reason: What Science Can't Prove

Very good read.

Some take the position that if science doesn't give us reason to believe in something, then no good reason exists. That's simply the false assumption of scientism. Don't ever concede the idea that science is the only method available to learn things about the world.

Remember the line in the movie Contact ? Ellie Arroway claimed she loved her father, but she couldn't prove it scientifically. Does that mean she didn't really love him? No scientific test known to man could ever prove such a thing. Ellie knew her own love for her father directly and immediately. She didn't have to learn it from some scientific test.

There are things we know to be true that we don't know through empirical testing--the five senses-- but we do know through other ways. Science seems to give us true, or approximately true, information about the world, and it uses a technique that seems to be reliable, by and large. (Even this, though, is debated among philosophers of science.) However, science is not the only means of giving us true information about the world; its methodology limits it significantly.

One thing science cannot do, even in principle, is disprove the existence of anything. So when people try to use science to disprove the existence of God, they're using science illegitimately. They're misusing it, and this just makes science look bad.

The way many try to show God doesn't exist is simply by asserting it, but that's not proof. It isn't even evidence. Scientists sometimes get away with this by requiring that scientific law--natural law--must explain everything. If it can't explain a supernatural act or a supernatural Being then neither can exist. This is cheating, though.

Scientists haven't proven God doesn't exist; they've merely assumed it in many cases. They've foisted this truism on the public, and then operated from that point of view. They act as if they've really said something profound, when all they've done is given you an unjustified opinion.

[fuddam]

You contradict yourself here. How do you account for the masses of scientific evidence for evolution? How do you explain this evidence away? How do you account for the theory of evolution predicting and the applications that have arisen from it? Later you say that Christian scientists don’t have any conflict yet here you are dismissing claims that are supported by Christian scientists – see Ken Miller video again. How can you take this position? It’s contradictory to your argument of god doesn’t say so.

a quick quote here, since am running out the door: Evolution vs. Design: Is the Universe a Cosmic Accident or Does it Display Intelligent Design?

you think you have such a wonderful handle on things, right? If only life were that simple......
and just as a side issue:

A skeptic or atheist is governed by two main principles: 1) all beliefs must be supported by observational evidence, and 2) beliefs that contradict observational evidence cannot be tolerated. However, strong atheism states that there is no god, even though observational evidence indicates that the universe has a cause that cannot be detected observationally. So despite the lack of observational evidence for a naturalistic cause for the universe, the strong atheist believes that the universe has a naturalistic cause and that there is no god, contradicting the tenet that all beliefs should be based upon observational evidence.

more later

[iranu]

Oh dear. You do realise that there are other methods of determining evidence other than observation.

lol - I presume you haven't watched any of the links given in previous posts. fine tuning is has already been dismissed.

The physical laws of the universe fall within very narrow ranges in order for life (or even matter) to exist, suggesting design (the evidence supporting this statement will be presented in

That rubbish. Gravity is not needed for life. Sigh the same old nonsense trotted out. It's been refuted 1000s of times.

Supernatural events cannot occur by definition. Events can only occur within the natural realm. That site falls down so hard it's not true.

God of the gaps is it's only argument.

It's rubbish like this "

strong atheists" (not working out in the gym, but having a belief that no god exists) have just violated one of the main rules of atheism - that all beliefs are based upon observational evidence.

that get our backs up. Talk about strawmen. Infact that whole site is one big strawman argument. It's utter nonsense.

Oh my god my sides just split. Read this. Can you spot the flaw?

If we use Occam's razor, which states that one should use the simplest logical explanation for any phenomenon, we would eliminate the super universe/multi-universe explanation in favor of the simpler God-designed universe model.

Just because the word god is simple and god did it is a simple argument it does not mean that this fits Occam's razor.

Surely something that is so complex as god is the last thing that would comply with occam's razor?

I'm sorry fuddam but that site is a crock of crap.

Common cosmological misconceptions. | Rational Responders

[malfunction]

What I've never understood is why people are so quick, eager and malicious in slating other people's religious views? What do you get out of it? Do you think that your opinion (and it is an opinion, nothing more) that God doesn't exist, is going to change Fuddam's opinion that he does?

Well this thread has turned into (yet another) debate as to the existence of god. I don't go around denouncing anything or anyone in my normal life just as I'm (fairly) sure Fuddam doesn't go around trying to convert everyone to his way of thinking. I think I said earlier in this thread (or one of the other related ones) that I don't really expect anyone to be converted one way or another and I imagine most people think the same. The useful thing about this kind of discussion is that you get to understand eachother's point of view better but I doubt that any such understanding would lead to a conversion for anyone.

Also some of what Fuddam has been expressing is quite extreme and uncommon as far as I'm aware - in that he has directly stated several times that he talks directly with god. Like others here I think that any literal interpretation of that is at best delusion and at worse mental illness. This may sound harsh but that's just the way it is - e.g. if there is a god I'm not sure why he'd speak to Fuddam in preference to people with greater needs, me, my uncle bob or Mother Theresa.

Some take the position that if science doesn't give us reason to believe in something, then no good reason exists. That's simply the false assumption of scientism. Don't ever concede the idea that science is the only method available to learn things about the world.

Remember the line in the movie Contact ? Ellie Arroway claimed she loved her father, but she couldn't prove it scientifically. Does that mean she didn't really love him? No scientific test known to man could ever prove such a thing. Ellie knew her own love for her father directly and immediately. She didn't have to learn it from some scientific test.

There are things we know to be true that we don't know through empirical testing--the five senses-- but we do know through other ways. Science seems to give us true, or approximately true, information about the world, and it uses a technique that seems to be reliable, by and large. (Even this, though, is debated among philosophers of science.) However, science is not the only means of giving us true information about the world; its methodology limits it significantly.

One thing science cannot do, even in principle, is disprove the existence of anything. So when people try to use science to disprove the existence of God, they're using science illegitimately. They're misusing it, and this just makes science look bad.

The way many try to show God doesn't exist is simply by asserting it, but that's not proof. It isn't even evidence. Scientists sometimes get away with this by requiring that scientific law--natural law--must explain everything. If it can't explain a supernatural act or a supernatural Being then neither can exist. This is cheating, though.

Scientists haven't proven God doesn't exist; they've merely assumed it in many cases. They've foisted this truism on the public, and then operated from that point of view. They act as if they've really said something profound, when all they've done is given you an unjustified opinion.
Very good read.

Emotive clap trap I'm afraid - I'm pretty sure that love - and other emotions - have plenty of theory and evidence surrounding them (psychological, biochemical, etc). As for foisting things on the public that's a pretty rich statement from a religious stand point! Religion is at best something that stems from people wishing to understand their place in the world - and personally I think the cold, boring theories 'foisted' upon us by science offer better explanations than those in any scripture. God created the world in 7 days and he had a laugh by creating dinosaur bones and radioactive decay while he was at it. Christianity to me is just one of the longer established cargo cults.

[iranu]

Bazzlad - oh dear oh dear. No atheist has ever said I can disprove the existence of god. Nor for that matter has any scientist ever said that either. Again you are linking and quoting sources that set up strawmen in order to knock them down.

You do understand why it's impossible to disprove a negative don't you? Probably not.

It is required by the positive claimant to provide proof. Otherwise I could accuse you of raping my daughter and because you can't disprove it didn't happen we should lock you up and throw the key away.

It's nonsesical crap like this that has been refuted time and time again yet somehow people think they have got a new, novel angle on things that they keep regurgitating it. We've seen those mountains of sick before.

[TheAnimus]

What I've never understood is why people are so quick, eager and malicious in slating other people's religious views? What do you get out of it? Do you think that your opinion (and it is an opinion, nothing more) that God doesn't exist, is going to change Fuddam's opinion that he does?

Stand to Reason: What Science Can't Prove

Very good read.

No, no its not.

Take the assumption that you can't prove love.

I'd say you could, quite easily. First define love, and it should be simple.

As people have said, that link is terrible.

[Bazzlad]

Ok let's play - define love TheAnimus.

[Bazzlad]

You do understand why it's impossible to disprove a negative don't you? Probably not.

Do you understand how much of a idiot you appear trying to belittle somebody on an internet forum?
Probably not.

[G4Z]

"Some take the position that if science doesn't give us reason to believe in something, then no good reason exists. That's simply the false assumption of scientism."

Have to say, I stopped reading right after that bold word there and posted this. Any book that creates words like that is clearly looking to equivocate science as a religion (as so many religious people love to do) and is clearly biased. So as far as I am concerned your quote and that book is worthless.

[Bazzlad]

adoration, adulation, affection, allegiance, amity, amorousness, amour, appreciation, ardency, ardor, attachment, cherishing, crush, delight, devotedness, devotion, emotion, enchantment, enjoyment, fervor, fidelity, flame, fondness, friendship, hankering, idolatry, inclination, infatuation, involvement, like, liking, lust, mad for, mash, partiality, pash, passion, piety, rapture, regard, relish, respect, sentiment, taste, tenderness, the hots, weakness, worship, yearning, zeal.

Go.