Neutrality is better than action…I get it. Moral neutrality…now there’s a concept, so why all the rage about Gitmo or Iraq? Is it simply your taste on things…cuz you’re morally neutral.
Ohhhhhh, how cute, “disbelief in Zeus”. Atheists working together as atheits working for atheistic ideals apparently can happen except when other atheists don’t like it, then it is fanatcism or something else. Of course when to Christians rob a bank it is because of their religion; I get it.
Apparently you reading skills are not are their best today. Or is it simply desperation? It is worse, every freaking time atheist how come to real power they kill in a way that would blush even a black-legend parody of an inquisitor.
It’s better than evil, stupid actions; the kind that religion by nature induces in people.
If I was JUST an atheist you’d have a point. But then, if I was just an atheist I’d just sit in a corner and do nothing. I don’t base my moral code on my atheism.
Oh, I’m sure you get it; you just don’t want to admit it so you keep distorting what I’m saying. But then, it’s not surprising; among their many flaws believers tend towards casual dishonesty.
Atheists don’t work together for “atheistic ideals”, because there ARE no such ideals. And Christians work together for Christian purposes and ideals because such purposes and ideals actually exist. Again; you are trying to compare two completely different things when you compare atheism and religion. The opposite number of atheism is not religion, but pure theism; the bare claim there is a god or gods.
Oh, nonsense, for all the reasons already pointed out. But it does underline my point about just how much the believers hate atheists. Even on the relatively atheist friendly SDMB, you can’t get away from the “atheists are all mass murdering monsters” crowd.
Ají de Gallina
if you want a very short version of why atheists don’t believe here is my take
some 2000ish years ago the bible was written by people/person who claimed they were “directed by the word of god”
and you believed them.
and you still believe them.
no atheist can figure this out, why would you ever take anyones word that such a ridiculous book so packed with hatred and intolerance was really a message of peace and eternal life?
yeah it really is that simple, the only proof any believer has at all is that some one else told them so.
Causation & correlation. Ever hear of those terms?
Quoting scripture to “justify” a murder? Causation.
Hitler & Stanlin both had mustaches and charged as atheists? Correlation.
You might also be surprised to learn that you’re an atheist too. We all are. That’s right. How many gods do you NOT believe in?
Lastly, atheism is simply that, a lack of belief. No morals, no dogma and/or doctrine, least of all a way of life.
That seemingly impossible choise for belivers is made everyday by your pious, buffet-picking type.
Uzi, RegardsShodan I just toy with when the whim hits. You, I disagree with profoundly when politics are at at stake – but come on now. Are you seriously going to parse each and every statement from W and go apologetic on them? Fine. If you must. But you’ll have a very hard time convincing me – and I suspect many others – that whether or not he used religion as a screen, the end result is that he acted as fully conviced that Og was on his side.
Should you be interested in this particular line of thought, I can point you towards some relevant books that go into the issue with rather extensive detail.
RegardsShodan,
I normally skip your one-note post. Your last response only reinforces my conviction.
Rest assured that if I ever want a cult of dittoheads, I’ll be thinking of you high on my list. But I highly doubt I’ll be desperate enough to lead a flock of mindless’ bots…though you’re likely the best of them,I am not impressed. Quite the opposite really. More of the same – vapid is your middle name.
May The Big Nothing bless you forever.
…and your point is? 'cause that’s not even remotely what I was talking about-
Can you get my name right? Confusing a Gallinazowith Ají de Gallina is… I’ll be calling you WhiteSissy.
Your correlation-causation stuff is like the uncle finding a coin in your ear, surprising when you’re 5. You’re, apparently, also a memeber of the atheits-cannot-do bad-things club.
No morals, so you cannot say what is wrong or right morally speaking; now I see where your inablity to understand the things we’re discussing.
That’s why I put it in quotes. A ‘belief system’ would be a better term as it is more to the root. And I think it has clarified some things for myself by doing so. It isn’t the belief in magic sky pixies that is the issue. It is the belief in a system that has little or no supporting evidence to the exclusion of other ideas, opinions and options.
Imagine the following people:
-A man who goes to church every Sunday and teaches Sunday School afterwords. He always gives to the charities around town because of his faith, and is always the biggest helper in any donation drives or community outreach programs that this church does. He is warm and friendly towards all comers, even those who are atheist, whom he does not confront but prays for when he prays.
-An old lady who makes her income by knitting plush versions of various Bible characters. She has an internet business devoted to this, and makes enough to live on. When she was younger, she devoted all of her time to her children teaching them according to the facets of her religion, but now that they are grown and living well, she does almost nothing but knit and go to church.
-A middle aged man who uses the bible to support his outlandish conspiracy theories. He believes in the bible code, and, while he does not rant about it to strangers, he has written pages and pages of crazy on his blog and in his journal. He is also homophobic, with his bible as justification.
-A local politician who runs her campaign based on ‘traditional American values’. She constantly harps about the importance of religion in a person’s life. She wants school prayers back, as well as Creationism in public schools and any “implements of Satan” banned from the community. She goes to a different church every Sunday, glad-handing the entire time.
Now, Der (or whoever said that religion was black and white), would you treat these four people with the exact same attitude? After all, all 4 of their lives are primarily influenced by religion.
That and a plausible method of managing capitalism’s cyclical collapses was only invented in 1935. Earlier, we had models of individual markets, but not entire economies.
Brezhnevism for example doesn’t look too bad compared with the US during the Oct 1929- Mar 1933 era.
Separately, all manner of quackery (Marxism, Freudianism) was permissible before Popper and others formalized the scientific method.
Communism is not a religion, the first Christians practiced the purest form of Communism, they shared everything in common. It wasn’t their belief or religion but a way of helping their fellow believers. Communism as practiced in the Soviet Union,Cuba, or China is a differnt kind of communism,the head guys kept the people down and had a lot of wealth for themselves.
Humans are not all so generous as the First Christains were said to be, so Communism doesn’t work.
That isn’t Communism. Communism doesn’t mean “we all share stuff.” It’s a very specific and detailed political theory that makes claims as to how industrialized societies develop.
Communism was anti-everything-but-us. Religion just happened to not be them.
The French revolution was atheistic and strongly anti catholic. Denying it is the little story you tell you teddy bear.
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The French Revolution was anti-abuse, anti-those-in-power. One of the abusers was the Catholic church, therefore, they were against the Catholic church. You’re confusing correlation with causation, plain and simple. Your entire argument is based on ignorance.
Simply put. You have NO idea how causation & correlation work. No need to disguise your ignorance; just come out and say as much.
Cite? Again, other than having no God/s-belief, atheists come in all kinds. Including murderers.
You will, however, no doubt be shocked and awed by this study. Or, more likely, hand-wave it away as any other evidence that contradicts your confirmation bias.
Now that’s just plain dumb – not that I expect any different from you. Fact is, we ALL pick and chose the way we behave. Ever hear of “cafeteria Catholics?” Ten to one you’re one of them. Meanwhile, I simply chose to do what I consider best for those around me and myself. Except I do it without fear of a Sky Pixie punishing or rewarding me for my actions.
In your case though, without your God, presumably you’d be running around comitting all sorts of crimes, correct? Again, wacky wacky stuff.
At the risk of sounding contentious, your statement is a greater fairy tale than that.
Stem cell research has not been blocked. It is only embryonic stem cell research, t a limited area of stem cell research itself, that has been blocked. Even that, however, is not specifically due to religious belief, since you don’t have to be a Christian (or even a theist) to believe that life begins at conception. (The religious will tend to believe that it does, and atheists are more likely to believe that it doesn’t, but this does not make belief in life at conception an exclusively religious belief.)
A stem cell being “alive” is not what the controversy is about. It’s about whether it is a little tiny person, as the religioids would have us believe. My blood cells are alive, and no one is biitching that the Red Cross is killing billions “living” cells when they freeze a pint of blood.
It may no be specifically atheistic, I’ll grant you that.
You mean my knowlege that when atheists have gotten real power they’ve killed people in a way that would shame Al Qaeda?
(my numbers)
Yes I have (gotta called your mind-reading helemt’s help centre), it’s simply that your examples are bad. You think you’re being witty with the moustache stuff, that’s the problem.
If you’re not a member of the club, I apologise. Of course atheists come in all kinds, the ones that behave like upstanding citizens (most atheists I know are in this category) and those who behave like shit.
Your study is no shock because I read it 3 years ago; interesting stuff and makes you think; I’m not entirely convinced on the causation/correlation they say they’ve found, especially because they have no control group (common in this type of studies). I’m sure I read a nice Christian analysis on it, I’ll try to find it.
Surprisingly (again, help center) I am the opposite of that. Really conservative.
No, I wouldn’t, in the same way that individual atheists don’t go around killing people. I would simply know that things are not inherently right or wrong.
You’re using “alive” in a different sense, that is, not referring to a distinct organism. It’s the fallacy of equivocation. Even embryology textbooks and other medical texts affirm that the embryo is a distinct organism – not merely alive in the same sense that a single cell might be.
One might disagree with that viewpoint (misguidedly so, IMO), but the point remains that its existence as a distinct and living organism is not an exclusively religious view (further cite).
