Giving up on God

[Kalhoun]

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
I couldn’t find many pictures but the parking lot map was scary enough. Any church that puts this
first in their belief section bothers me. That means they are teaching that error to the many people who come there every week.

Here’s Two Rivers. Very professional website. What made me laugh was the Starbucks add in the eleven:01 youth worship section. “We proudly serve Starbucks coffee at every eleven:01 service”, complete with logo.

I checked out Smyrna Assembly of God and noticed they had no pictures either. What’s up with that? Three Mega churches with few pictures of the church?
[/QUOTE]

I think they know that it leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths. Willow Creek has freekin’ photo IDs:

Temporary and Photo I.D. InformationWe use a digital camera, a PC computer, and a color ink-jet printer to print ID badges and tags. The images are downloaded into a form that was created by a volunteer. We used to use a Polaroid Camera for photo I.D.s

There was a Sunday evening burglary there once, and the bad boys reportedly got away with nearly $40K in cash. How else are they going to pay for their campus?

But when you talk about Church Overkill, nothing brings it home like the Giant Jesus:

Touchdown Jesus (Gone), Monroe, Ohio

[kanicbird]

[QUOTE=LilShieste]
To use the common clock-in-a-box example: I toss the parts of a clock into a box, close the lid and shake it around. When I remove the lid, a fully-functional, working clock has been assembled. I wouldn’t necessarily classify this as a miracle - there was a very very small chance that something like this could occur.

OTOH, imagine Jesus came to me with an empty box. He shows me it’s empty, puts a lid on it, and shakes it around. When he removes the lid, I see that a fully-functional, working clock has been assembled. I would classify this as a miracle.

IMO, one of these scenarios defies the laws of physics as we’ve observed them, and the other merely defies some odds.
[/QUOTE]

If you look back at my roulette wheel example you will see how at a certain level of complexity somethings can never happen. To summarize it:

A-Take a infinite # of roulette wheels with a infinite # of spins there will be a subset that will never ever hit # 26. For that matter a infinite number of wheels in that subset.
B- But any roulette wheel spun a infinite # of times will hit every number a equal number of times.

A and B can not logically exist together.

I content that a Atheist must accept that those 2 conditions not only can exist but must. Life itself is just to complex to ever just happened by shaking a box. Or to put it anther way, giving a typewritter and an infinite number of monkeys a infinite amount of time (excluding evolution), you will never get a copy of Hamlet from them, just some shitty paper.

[Quiddity_Glomfuster]

[QUOTE=Contrapuntal]

And again, I can hold that concept to be true and still hold that, for example, “Defeat of all our enemies is the ultimate good.” What about a culture that believes that the greatest good a human can perform is to die in battle? Are the warriors not the ones closest to God?
Unless the path to harmony involves murder. Who can say it doesn’t?
[/QUOTE]

It doesn’t because murder is not an act of love. ‘Harmony’ cannot be achieved through acts of violence or hate. As cosmosdan said:

Part of my feeling about it is that we are all connected beyond anything we can do to disconnect. So literally when we act to harm others we are harming ourselves as well.

[QUOTE=Happy Scrappy Hero Pup]

cosmosdan said it better above but I would like to reiterate that you, Contrapuntal, are engaging in dishonest tactics, including, but not limited to, describing all the borders of a position but then refusing to admit you hold it. You’ve already won the debate in your own mind, so I don’t see the point in continuing to engage you if you aren’t willing to have an honest give-and-take. And you are unwilling.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]

Again with the accusations. It’s unfortunate if I’m not getting your point or you’re not getting mine but there’s no need for accusations of dishonesty and trickery.
[/QUOTE]

SOP for debating Contrapuntal, it seems. Just wait until he calls you a liar. :rolleyes:

[QUOTE=Kalhoun]

Well, I’m not much of a joiner. I don’t need groupthink to know that other people need food and shelter. The money I would spend supporting a church would be better spent supporting, say, someone’s AIDS meds for however long. Or feeding people.
[/quote]

So you’d give your money to a group of people who come together - just a different group. Not really seeing a distinction here.

I just think any reasonable person can do all these things without joining anything, but because they need doing. Atheists do it all the time. I get the “coming together” thing; I just don’t get why they have to “come together” on something unrelated to being a good person.

Well, it’s your opinion that it’s unrelated to being a good person. Not everybody likes to work as a solo agent. People go to religious services to spend time meditating and praying in the company of likemindeds, to share a common experience, to listen to (hopefully) inspiring words together, to forge a bond built on common experience and fostered by the comforts of ritual.

A lot of people who wouldn’t forge onwards on their own to do good works join church-based groups to do so. In fact, any good you claim to wish to do is going to be conducted by some group or other unless you yourself run your own AIDS hospice or food bank, and even then you’ll involve others. So this bit about 'good can be done without people having to ‘come together’ is kind of odd.

And atheists are ‘coming together’ just as much; there’s a stack of websites devoted to gathering atheists together to go beat back the horrors of religion. And there’s magazines and meetings - ever heard of the Humanist Association? They get together in groups to discuss their dogma and even have ceremonies.

[kanicbird]

[QUOTE=Quiddity Glomfuster]
And atheists are ‘coming together’ just as much; there’s a stack of websites devoted to gathering atheists together to go beat back the horrors of religion. And there’s magazines and meetings - ever heard of the Humanist Association? T
[/QUOTE]

I think we had a thread a while back where we defined anti-religious (anti-Christian) people as their own category then those who just chose to believe that there is no ‘god’ - and yes it is a belief system as agnostic is more of a honest ‘I don’t have enough information to make a choice’ non-belief system.

[Kalhoun]

[QUOTE=Quiddity Glomfuster]
So you’d give your money to a group of people who come together - just a different group. Not really seeing a distinction here.
[/quote]
There might be 200 people contributing or there might be none. I have no way of knowing because it’s unimportant to the end result. The fact that I offer the money through a conduit that delivers it doesn’t mean I’m a “joiner.” You don’t sign up, you don’t pledge…you give the money or the time or the goods.

Well, it’s your opinion that it’s unrelated to being a good person. Not everybody likes to work as a solo agent. People go to religious services to spend time meditating and praying in the company of likemindeds, to share a common experience, to listen to (hopefully) inspiring words together, to forge a bond built on common experience and fostered by the comforts of ritual.

The fact that it can be done individually pretty much proves that it’s unrelated. You may do good acts while simultaneously being part of a group, but the two are not dependent upon each other.

A lot of people who wouldn’t forge onwards on their own to do good works join church-based groups to do so. In fact, any good you claim to wish to do is going to be conducted by some group or other unless you yourself run your own AIDS hospice or food bank, and even then you’ll involve others. So this bit about 'good can be done without people having to ‘come together’ is kind of odd.

It may be odd to someone who works best under group think circumstances, but it’s not odd in the slightest for those of us who help because it’s needed.

And atheists are ‘coming together’ just as much; there’s a stack of websites devoted to gathering atheists together to go beat back the horrors of religion. And there’s magazines and meetings - ever heard of the Humanist Association? They get together in groups to discuss their dogma and even have ceremonies.

You really don’t get it, do you? Celebration belongs to people; not god. That’s all they’re saying. You may have been under the silly spell of religion too long and have actually started to believe that you folks invented everything under the sun. Well, celebration began long before man invented god. Ouch…I bet that hurt.

[cosmosdan]

[QUOTE=hotflungwok]
Um, yeah it is a contradiction. If the only thing holding you back from murdering and raping is the idea that there is a god watching you then 1) you are a bad person, one might go so far as to say psychotic, and 2) you just keep believing in that there invisible person in the sky, it might be best for all of us.

I don’t need a god threatening me with hell to be good. I can see lots of reasons not to rape and murder as well as reasons to be nice to my fellow man without it. The fact that you can’t worries me.

[/QUOTE]

I’ve replied to this post again only to point out that this is the second time hotflungwok has grossly misrepresented my position.

The other time was in this post in the God /philosophy thread.

Both times I issued a direct challenge to defend the argument or admit a mistake. In both cases hotflungwok completely bailed and ignored the challenge.

Of course that’s his choice. It’s only a message board after all. I just wanted to point out what I predict will be a pattern. I can overlook an honest mistake. I’ve made plenty myself. I have a low tolerance for having my posts grossly misrepresented. Have the nerve to either defend your statement or just admit an error.

There I’ve vented and feel better.