Lying’s a sin Polycarp. 
Well, you can start with all the quotes from him in Sarahfeena’s last but one post. Perhaps to you they come across as perfectly polite and respectful - to me they come across as snide, arrogant and reeking of false superiority - the kind of thing I would expect from a pimply adolescent who thinks he’s smarter than everybody but is unaware that every point he raises has been chewed over by people far smarter than him for thousands of years.
Gosh! That’s dropped jaws all over Christendom as people contemplate this new and terrifying paradox which Badchad has discovered :rolleyes:
You lot even manage to get me standing on the side of people who fix their religious beliefs on a compendium of millennia-old morality fables, flawed copying, political editing and translation errors, fer crying out loud.
Really? Is that true? Well blow me down, I never realised. Thank you for pointing that out, O wise and sagacious master of theology and debate.
Right. Why bother? I’ll happily debate with Polycarp or Diogenes.
Hey Slaphead, those rolleyes make me think in your contemplation you must have come up with a really good explanation for the problem of evil. Do share.
Also it’s not a new paradox, it’s old, and I implied it’s old.
You ignored these Sarahfeena:
Well, there you go, Mr. Superiority Complex. A couple heathens question the existence of your brand of fairy and all of a sudden, everyone’s on a fuckin’ cross. It’s absolutely within the bounds of civil discussion to ask why someone doesn’t apply the same weight to all imaginary friends as she does to one. The air of superiority comes from those who consider themselves so special as to be chosen to hold the knowledge – not the other way around. Those of you who confuse style with disrespect need to get out more. You won’t be happy until he gets in line for communion.
So, if I claim that I love my husband, that I know I love my husband, you are free to shriek at me and call me names. Hmm. Interesting.
There are lots of things we experience that we can’t prove. I think religion is a bit fat crock, but saying that someone is being rude to you if they say something they can’t prove is just stupid.
I wore red socks yesterday. I have no way in hell of proving that. My favorite food is cauliflower. I have no way in hell of proving that. I missed running over a groundhog this morning by inches. Can’t prove it. I know the Holocaust was wrong. According to you, all of this means I am a fair target for your viciousness.
Except that it’s not slaphead’s brand of fairy, and he said so.
Saying this to atheists is insane. I mean seriously, no-holds-barred insane.
badchad –
The point – which you missed – is not that I assume this, but that I am told this. It takes no assumption on my part. As far as I can see, the difference in the sides – at least as represented in this discussion – is that the atheists think the Christians believe they are amoral and going to hell, but the Christians don’t actually think that, which the Christians believe the atheists think they’re stupid or deluded, and the atheists actually do think that, and have said so repeatedly, in several recent threads. I haven’t had to “assume” anything. Unfortunately.
Right. 
Because if there’s one thing I’m known for, here and IRL, it’s a reluctance to open my mouth.
You would have played the game better if you could at least feign civility long enough to lure your opponents into the ring. But if they won’t get in, because they think you’re an asshole, how will you defeat them? How will you dazzle others with your brilliance? How will you continue your intellectual wanking-off on this, the only subject you ever discuss? Guess you didn’t see that turn coming.
Kalhoun –
Yep. But then I never said I didn’t have any baggage, you did. And that’s BS.
I don’t know what you mean by “truth” or “accuracy.” Your moral, ethical, and religious truth (or lack thereof) may be different than mine. You have to take the tools at hand and work on what you’re given, and reach your own conclusions. In my life, the Bible is a combination of mythology, literature, history, and moral guidelines, not a rule book. I read it and evaluate using the other tools I’ve been given, including critical thinking and personal morality, because it is my belief – and the belief on my church that those are gifts from God as well.
All of the above. There is also an enormous amount of literature, writings, and western history to look at as well, so much that no one person could ever get through it all, even if it was their chief hobby, whcch in my case it is not. It’s not like people haven’t struggled with these issues for the last 2000 years.
And despite your insistence on describing it this way, it is not a matter of what is “unpalatable” to me. As I’ve already stated, if I was going to base my faith or lack thereof on what was palatable and easy, I’d be an atheist too.
Right. “I didn’t tell you that you are dumb, Senora, I only said you do dumb things.” I’m sure they appreciate that fine distinction.
Sure. But if I was not actually breaking a rule or law, and did not believe I was making a mistake, I probably wouldn’t appreciate someone informing me that I was. And neither would you.
Do you really think that having atheists tell us our beliefs and faiths and faith-based actions are “dumb” makes you guys look anything other than arrogant and hostile? Get some perspective.
Kalhoun –
It obviously is not. Again, you frame the debate so thoroughly from your own POV (“God is nothing more than an imaginary friend”) that there is no room for any POV but your own (“Why doesn’t she apply the same weight to all imaginary friends?”). You know she doesn’t believe God is merely an imaginary friend, and you are neither civil nor even intellecutally honest in your “debate” when you insist on referring to the concept in a way that both (a) insists your POV is the correct one and (b) belittles her POV.
This is not civil. Civil would be “Let’s talk about this concept we’ll call ‘god.’ I understand that you believe in it and you understand that I don’t. But I have a few questions about why you believe.” “Tell me why you insist on believing in your imaginary friend” is not civil. It just isn’t.
And it’s ridiculous to expect any believers to engage in substantive discussion with you when not only do you not agree to try for civility, you do not appear to know what civility is.
Actually, what I said was this:
If you read carefully, you will see that, although I did indeed say that I know God exists, I also said that I think no less of someone who **knows ** something different. I didn’t say “someone who thinks something different” or “someone who believes something different.” I also said that it comes from within. Something in me tells me God exists. Something in badchad tells him God doesn’t exist. I don’t know if he really considers it something he knows for a fact, or something that just seems that it must be true because that is logical to him, or what. The point I was trying to make is that it doesn’t matter…on this subject, his reality is different from mine. And it makes no difference to me, whatsoever. I really don’t see how this can possibly be condescending to him, or to anyone.
Oh for fucks sake.
Because not sharing someone’s beliefs is automatically offensive to them? Narrow-minded much?
Riiiiight. And she’s being condescending? I think the two of you are being distinctly uncivil, and that has nothing to do with my belief system and everything to do with my experience of what constitutes a polite discussion versus a stream of thinly veiled insults.
Well, I can see that any hopes I had of atheism becoming a more widely held viewpoint are doomed to failure, thanks to you and badchad. Ten minutes trapped in a room with either of you two would be enough to turn the Stephen Hawking into a suicide bomber. I would ask you to do the rest of us a favour and shut the fuck up, but I can tell it would be a waste of time. Enjoy the rest of your circle jerk.
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Hmmm - on preview I see that the terrible twins find reading for comprehension just as challenging as being polite. I think I can safely file this thread under “total waste of time”.
I should qualify and clarify that I am referring here only to the “fundamentalist atheists.” There have been many reasonable atheists who have also weighed in, and this is not directed at them.
No I didn’t…my answer at the bottom applied to all 3 quotes
The “you” was the collective believers and anyone who thought that last exchange with BadChad was disrespectful. There’s no way to say “delusional” without them taking it offensively. It simply can’t be discussed without stating that their selective belief in the supernatural is no-holds-barred insane. Sorry if I wasn’t clear who it was directed to.
There is a substantive difference between believing in God and believing in the Magic Sky Pixie, the Invisible Pink Unicorn, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or an invisible friend. The only attribute these entities share is that there is no positive proof of their existence. When we are talking of God we are talking about an entity which has been believed in for thousands of years by an enormous number of people; about which there is a large body of theology that has been extensively discussed by people who have often given independent evidence of their own intelligence; which is held to have certain characteristics and may place certain expectations on those who believe in it. An invisible friend is the product of the immature child’s unlearned concept of reality; or else is known by the child not to exist but treated as quasi-real for the sake of emotional comfort. The other three are all acknowledged to have been made up either for the purposes of learned debate or else in order to play silly buggers, and I know which side my stake is placed on that particular question.
Now, mark! I have not said that belief in God is patently right when belief in the others is patently wrong. But I have said that the differences between them (as though anyone actually did believe in the MSP, IPU or FSM) are marked enough that they ought not to be mentioned in the same breath, unless you are particularly concerned with offending the theist.
This is your failing, and badchad’s, and possibly a couple others’, but fortunately IME it is not widely held among atheists and agnostics of general good will. It certainly is possible to discuss matters of faith among people who disagree and be civil and have constructive and illuminating discussions.
You can’t do it. That doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
The problem isn’t with me. The problem is that the question…no matter how it’s phrased or how many times it’s posed…remains unanswered, except for the pat response, “I use a different standard to measure the validity of the concept of god than I do everything else the falls into the “supernatural” column.” We ask why you have separate standards and the reply is always "I dunno…just do!" You can understand our frustration when otherwise intelligent people refuse to respond intelligently to a fair question.
No, because describing one’s opinions as knowledge is offensive. True, Sarahfeena patronizingly allows badchad to describe his own opiinions as knowledge, but only to allow herself to claim that she 'knows" God exists. She knows nothing of the kind. She thinks that God exists, as badchad thinks God does not, but calling your opinions “knowledge” doesn’t make it so.