I’m confused. What does this have to do with badchad’s behavior?
Ah but to be a thing of beauty you need to box or debate with an opponent who is themselves at their best. Playing silly games like saying “Jesus was a cunt” is just a jeuvenile (and mostly succesfull) attempt to agrivate the Christians reading so as to have them debate from the weaker position of being upset and angry. Hence my analogy of hitting bellow the belt. I actually agree with the value of much badchad is trying to get answered. It is annoying as hell that he does so in such a way that it takes 5 threads of insults to get one attemted answer. By being confrontational he just spoils his own worthwhile ideas. People who would debate with him resist due to his rudeness, people who would listen see so much chatter and talking down to others that it is difficult to see the points he is making. It is like one of the old timers who would state something on page 2 of a thread, then refuse to restate it more clearly when others missed the point instead continually saying “I’ve allready answered that question” even when he was right it was so annoying that you fealt like banging your head against a wall when reading the debate.
I’ll bring a machine gun, you can bring a bazooka 
Considering that the evidence is clearly on my side and not on theirs, no. Am I like a crazy fundy for flatly disbelieving in elves and goblins, too ?
Einstein is a good example of my position; his belief in God crippled him. He developed a religious objection to quantum physics; “God does not play dice”; as a result, he became incapable of doing anything new from that point.
Well, aren’t you a prince. :rolleyes:
Redfury , you are my first board crush.
Everyone else: please excuse the interruption. Carry on with the Holy War.
I did. See it my previous post, I think I made my position clear. What do you have to offer?
You explain to them why the things they do are dumb? Of all the charity much of Latin America is in need of, you go with “you people should be less dumb”? One can only imagine the gratitude. I hope in addition to your sermon you give them a sandwich or something, like the rest of the missionaries.
Einstein’s religious beliefs seem to be commonly distorted. While I know that quote is real, he was more of a Pantheist - thinking nature itself as “God”. ISTM, not accepting randomness was an intellectual objection not truly religious.
Lemme ask you this-badchad, RedFury, the rest of you-so basically, your minds are made up-anyone who has any religious belief whatsoever is automatically beneath your contempt? So why bother even trying to debate?
I do not feel that anyone is automatically beneath my contempt. I will not allow a fundamentalist, shaming and discriminating, and damning literal Christian into my home for a social visit; but if a person of that description needed food, water, or just a kind word I would give up my own in a heartbeat.
Yeah, I’ve never gone in much for that theory. In my mind, things exist or they don’t. Whether or not it can be conceived by man, or proven by man, is really irrelevant. Anyone can assume anything they want to, but the assumption doesn’t make it so.
Well, and I didn’t mean to sound like I was directing this at ALL atheists-I mostly meant those who were sneering and talking down to those with faith-badchad, Der Trihs, etc. FWIW, I agree with you on the above, although I’d go further and say I DO feel that the Jack Chick types are beneath my contempt. Assholes, every one of them. I wouldn’t deny them needed aid in an emergency, but I feel that way about everyone.
As for MY personal beliefs? Well, basically, I’m of the belief that I think there’s something there, some kind of god, or force, or whatever, that most religions are simply different ways to reach that god*, but that I don’t have all the answers, and I don’t think anyone can truly know one way or another until we die.
*I’m excluding things like Scientology, or the Jim Jones type cults which are only out there to fleece people.
I want to answer this; not to continue the argument, but to clarify why and how religion sometimes contributes to breakdowns in society. The detractors here have a valid precedent for discounting religious belief: “Religion is the opium of the people” (Karl Marx)
I am in close daily contact with many, many Christians who refuse to solve problems of their own volition. They expect God to heal illness and refuse medical care. They state flatly: “God will help me through this, it is in His hands.” Christians often blame Satan when their child is truant or irresponsible. I take parents to court for neglect because they will not seek help for their teenager with substance abuse issues; but they will assure me that they are praying. I watch criminals excuse their unlawful behavior with “It is part of God’s plan, or I would not have done it.” Kids are prevented from learning basic evolution then suffer both a moral dilemma and ignorance when it is time to study microbiology in college.
Oh, and I want to include my favorite Christian absolute: “This world is temporary; I need to worry about eternity, not whether or not little Charlie is going to finish 11th grade.” Or whether little Charlie can read. Or whether little Charlie will suffer infertility from his untreated STD.
A belief in an afterlife and a revolving door of forgiveness removes responsibility from the individual.
God has become a scapegoat for the lazy and unmotivated Southerner. I, too, would prefer it if people would think for themselves. Blind faith can be infuriating.
The Christians on this board are educated, enlightened; well-informed. They are the exceptional representatives; but they are not the norm. Not every Christian has the inclination to open their mind and expand thier world to include other ideas, and other people. And not every Christian bothers to live a responsible life when they don’t fully understand the world around them.
Well, this thread has moved on way too fast, but…
[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
You are absolutely right! So, I invite anyone who is interested in knowing exactly what it means to me to be a Christian to read the Catechism of the Catholic Church, as I suggested to badchad. I don’t think the mods would appreciate it if I cut & pasted the whole thing here.
Well, I’ve searched and bookmarked one source for the catechism, so I can at least follow along :), but you’ve already noted upthread that you’re not 100% in agreement with that either. So which are the parts you can dispense with, and how did you reach the conclusion that they were dispensible?
But honest POVs occur here, just as they do in GD; it’s just that the signal-to-noise ratio is lower. If you’d rather save those discussions for GD, then that’s fine; I had a question for you in post #216 of that thread that (presumably) got lost in the shuffle.
The problem with that statement is that there’s an infinite number of potential whatevers that can’t be proven to not exist. I’m not going to haul out the tired standard examples, so I’m just going to ask why the Judeo-Christian god is somehow a more compelling something-that-can’t-be-disproven than any of the infinite other things-that-can’t-be-disproven.
Replace “hoping to” with “knowing he can” and I’ll agree with your statement.
[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
You are absolutely right! So, I invite anyone who is interested in knowing exactly what it means to me to be a Christian to read the Catechism of the Catholic Church, as I suggested to badchad.
But you think the bible is full of errors and I thought the Catholic Catechism claimed inerrancy.
The inconsistencies are not minor.
If you assume we already think that, how much worse can it get? I think your just operating under the principle of it’s better to remain silent and be assumed a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt. You would have played that game better had you not chimed in on this thread in the first place, but I guess you didn’t see the turn around coming.
It’s good to know you admit no rational basis for your belief. That’s half my point anyway. Be sure to remember that you yourself have no rational basis for belief when you deride biblical literalism because all you Christians are standing on the same slope.
But as far as you know, Jesus does, right?
Your god is generally asserted to be both omnipotent and omnibenevolent, correct? Have you really never heard of the “problem of evil?”
One might rationally say that if you can’t see, hear, touch or otherwise detect him, then there is 0.0 reason to believe he exists. That’s different then saying he can’t exist. However, once you start attaching attributes to your invisible being (all loving and all powerful) then we can say he can’t possibly exist.
As Der Trihs has already pointed out there is no more reason to believe your gods exist than the Greek gods exist or for that matter vampires werewolves or the spaghetti monster. Can you really not see the logic in this?
Hey great, we both think Sarahfeena’s beliefs are silly. Welcome to the club.
Knowing your belief is irrational is half the battle.
No, I think we get it. Your beliefs are remnants of your childhood indoctrination. You know they are irrational but you just believe anyway without a well thought out reason why. We not only know it, it’s a large portion of our argument. The soul in an antiquated concept BTW.
But your beliefs are in fact irrational and some might say stupid. If you internalize this, and it really bothers your self esteem, that’s your problem not ours. I’d suggest adopting a more rational belief system as a cure.
How do you reconcile disbelief in hell with belief in heaven, considering the evidence in favor of each is identical?
Yes, belief without reason. Yeah I criticized it, not that it was really needed.
While I agree with the overall nature of your post, I look at this last part a little differently. It sounds like the Christians you were criticizing earlier are poor and uneducated and as such have a reasonable excuse for their ignorance. Contrast this with Jodi for example, who is well educated, an attorney no less, is aware of all arguments against her belief, and who’s “coyness” proves (IMO) that she knows her beliefs can not withstand rational scrutiny. And yet she still believes. I don’t look at that as enlightened but rather irrational with little excuse.
I don’t quite understand what you’re saying here. Occam’s Razor isn’t a theory; it’s more properly a principle or a maxim.
The rest sounds like a declaration that once you’ve made up your mind about the existence of something, it’s fait accompli, regardless of data, observations, or logical proof. Am I misunderstanding?
Why exclude Scientology? Regardless of whether its original intention was simply to fleece the gullible, clearly there are a fair number of people now who get something life-affirming out of it. Is it really that much more preposterous than any other religion?
Frankly, many of the badchad-supporting atheists in this thread do seem to have a chip on their shoulder. I’ve seen many posts in this thread where they made the claim that “Christians” are telling them they are going to Hell for not believing. This, of course, despite the fact that no one in this thread has claimed that anyone posting here would find themselves in Hell due to their lack of belief. In fact, even FriarTed, who might be the more fundamentalist Christian here, is in fact an Universalist. To me it just shows that these people have trouble understanding what non-fundamentalist Christianity is.
I’ve never had the impression that Christians think that I’m immoral or that I’m going to Hell due to the fact that I don’t believe. I have trouble understanding Christian belief, since to me it doesn’t make much sense, but I do understand belief in general, and I have no trouble accepting that Christians can be good people. I don’t know. Is the religious right in the US so omnipresent now that you get fundies accosting you at every corner to tell you you’re the devil, or are some of the atheists here projecting their fundamentalist childhood and the anger they feel at having been lied to onto Christians in general?
Also, to Der Trihs and badchad, and the other atheists who think that it’s ridiculous to believe in anything unless you have complete, convincing proof: I see your point, but you’re underestimating the power of faith. Maybe you’ve never felt the urge to believe, but I have (and I am nevertheless an atheist), and it is a powerful, natural human feeling. And don’t forget that you can’t ever prove the non-existence of God. Despite this fact, you may (and probably will) still think it’s dumb to believe, but believers aren’t ignoring the evidence: there is no evidence against their belief.
Not quite omnipresent, but it feels that way. More importantly, they have a great deal of power, and are very loud.
Not at all; that’s why I call it crazy; that’s why I’ve said that I don’t believe most religious people can change their mind. IMHO, the more religious someone is, the more they become the puppet of whatever religion has infested them.
It’s not my obligation to do so, as I’ve said; it’s the obligation of those who believe to prove it.