It got serious attention in this thread.
Oh, sorry, you meant attention you agree with.
rjung wrote:
How about a “thrice-damned godless atheist”? It packs all the punch of “damned godless atheist,” plus, it has “thrice” thrown in for extra measure. Where else would you find an excuse to use a neato-keen word like “thrice” in a sentence?
Revived… thread… brain… hurts…
Esprix
You meant to say ‘Unicorn’, not ‘dragon’, surely?
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Wildest Bill *
**
This Pascal’s wager is nonsense.
First, believing in God isn’t free. You invest time in Church, prayers, you change your conduct, you possibly vote differently, try to convince others, etc…And you have no clue about the odds. If I say : “flip a coin, if you loose, you’ll give me 100 dollars, if you win, perhaps I’ll give you 1 billion dollars”, would you agree?
Second, this wager makes only if there are only two possibilities : god exists and will reward you if you believe or he doesn’t exists and nothing will happen. But unfortunately, there are thousands of religious beliefs. And your religion don’t give you any guarantee that you’ll be rewarded. Perhaps your poor soul will be forever hunted by wolves because you didn’t make the proper sacrifices to the ancestors?
No, something else : actually, there is a God who created the world, and did nothing else since. However, he gave a rational mind to people and hates humans who don’t use His gift(he’s mean, but hey, he’s a god!). Actually He will torture forever (he’s a hateful god) everyone who will have held irrational beliefs. People who have believed politician’s promises will only go to the purgatory for 1000 years, but people who have wrongly given Him ridiculous atributes based on some old book have insulted him and there’s no way they will make it to heaven (he’s kind of vain-glorious).On the other hand, He don’t care if people don’t believe in Him, since there are no proof of His existence. At the contrary, he proves you use the rational mind He gave you. Sorry, but you’re damned while all the rational atheists like me will live forever in joy.
Ridiculous? Not at all. The odds this God I just invented actually exists are the same that your god exists. The odds that you will be punished forever because you believed in your god are the same that the odds I’ll be punished forever because I don’t believe in your god.
Without any evidence that a God could exists, and no evidence about the kind of God it could be (perhaps He’s a Great Cosmic Cabbage, and the only purpose of humans is to take care of cabbages in fields), and no way to know what he expects us to do (dancing naked in the woods each friday evening?), the only rational possible choice isn’t to bet that a particular god your parents/neighbors/whatever believe in is for real and will reward you. It’s to ignore the issue altogether, and live according to what makes sense from a rational point of view.
If I say you that actually I’m God, will you worship me just in case I could send you to hell? If not, why? As you said in your post " what a tremendous outcome that is. Spending an eternity in cool comfortable place or burning in awful hot place called Hell forever". You perfectly understand the outcome. If you really believe that your argument makes sense, believe in Me as only God and Savior. For your eternal soul’s sake. Who knows?
OK. My points had already be made. Next time, I’ll read the whole thread before responding. Sorry.
If we get to pick our own insults, can I be simply known as: future worm food?
If WB gets to pick, I think it’s only fair that he shorten a polite term for atheist, just as they do with the term fundamentalist.
Along the same lines, I advise everybody to have immediatly a thought of respect for the Bouddha Amitabha, who, according to what I read, will welcome in his paradise all people who had, even only once, such a thought. The likehood to be rewarded in your future life is the same than with christianism, and it’s much less time-concuming.
I perfectly agree to treat religious beliefs with the same respect I treat beliefs in ET abductions and fairies.
I always thought “fundie” was a derogetory term not for all Fundamentalists, but the increadably wacked-out, if-you-don’t-think-like-me-you-should-suffer types, the ones who use their religion not as a guide for one’s own life but as a weapon against others.
For example, the hijackers and Osamma bin Ladden (I’m sure I’ve spelled that wrong) would be “Fundies” in Islam, the kind of people that The Muslim Guy says are breaking Koran rules left and right. Sorta like “Feminazi” is not meant for all feminists (is it?) but those who fit the absolute worst stereotypes and hate men and all that. The “fringe,” if you will.
That’s how I use those terms, anyway.
Patty
To DMC:
“future worm food” sounds OK for you who likes to be buried. How about “dust in the wind, no soul left behind” for those of us who prefer cremation.
I’m not an atheist, and slurs like “hellbound sinners” offends me, too.
clairobscur, your comments show such ignorance of most Christians’ faith. They beg to be adressed.
Winning the lottery changes the EXACT same things. You invest time in how to spend the dinero. You may change your conduct to reflect your winnings: maybe buy a bigger house, or something. You may vote differently: maybe against a new law that taxes the rich. Whether winning the lottery is good or not is a subject for a different thread. However, doing things differently because of circumstance is not necessarily a bad thing. Any paradigm shift implies changes.
Er, according to Christianity, which you cite, God is extremely involved in daily life. After the creation of the universe, a few eons passed before the proverbial “Adam and Eve” came about. Roughly four thousand years ago, according to dogma, Abram and Sarai trotted around, god making a covenant to make their offspring as numerous as the stars. Two thousand years ago, God actually came to Earth, Christians believe, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The Holy Spirit descended on the apostles during the early days of the Church, at something called Pentecost. Some people believe that God gave the Book of Mormon to someone less than two centuries ago (although I’m not one of them.) God has done nothing sice? Give me a break.
Buddy, I cannot prove to you that I exist, let alone the Christian God, or any God for that matter. Besides, what would you consider as undeniable proof that God exists? Answer me that. Whatever you might say, I can point to someone who has experienced it. Anyway, what would be the point of having a God that you could prove existed. We would have no choice but to believe. I highly reccomend the movie Dogma. Listen to Bartleby’s rant in the parking garage, and you will understand my point.
There is a fundamental difference between religious faith and believing in aliens and faries. If billions of people used their belief in aliens and faries to serve the poor, comfort broken people, save lives, and give hope for undtol numbers of people all over the world, your argument would hold water. If a group of people founded am organization that built houses for low-income families based on the sincere belief that flying fish are the True Gods, I would have to respect the belief, even if I disagreed with it. I respect Atheism, which gives many rational people an outlet for rationality and objectivism that they cannot find in a religious faith, although I disagree with it. I know that some have bastardized Christianity into a form that, they believes, justifies genocide, racism, or blind obedience. This, I do not respect.
Life should be based on a basic respect for all things and all people. Life should be based on making the world better for all humanity. Christianity is the basis for my views of life. Although I’m not perfect, I wish to be treated with respect. You can feel free to criticize Christianity in a logical way, but please don’t lambast it out of ignorance.
-Soup
I’m your basic agnostic. Call me what you will if it refers to basic agnosticism. When a card-carrying member of a fundamentalist Christian religion (is that okay?) once told me I was “immoral” if I didn’t follow the Bible. When I started to say I would not believe in a male god, and didn’t like the things some Christians do, he said “Well, people who claim to be Christians.” I told him “I think of Christians like I think of homosexuals. If you say you are one, I believe you are.” I thought he was going to pass out.
Mangetout wrote:
No, he meant “dragon.”
He was paraphrasing an argument from Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World.
I’ve been brought up as a christian. So I believe I know what the christian faith is all about. Actually, I know the christian faith better than a lot of christians around me.
You didn’t understand my argument. We were talking about Pascal’s wager, and the basis of this argument is that you don’t loose anything when you choose to believe in god, and if you win, you win an infinite reward. My first point was that you actually lose something (time, etc…) when you choose to believe.
Once again, you didn’t understand my argument. I was refering to the who punish the believers and reward the atheists, here. Not to the christian god.
You could prove that you exist. For instance, I could take the plane and meet you somewhere. Can I do the same with your god?
Taking a plane and meet him somewhere?
I know. And there are plenty of people who have saw milk pouring from Ganesh statues. And plenty of people who have been abducted by ET. Do you believe in ET abductions? Do you worship Ganesh? Why don’t you?
And what is the point in being unable to prove he exists? Making sure that there will be plenty of people who will be tortured forever? How can you pretend you worship a loving god? I call this being a divinity of terror.
I would respect people who help the poors, etc…Of course, I respect more those who do that without being motivated by a religious belief, since I’m sure that they don’t do that only because they want to go to heaven/are affraid of hell, but out of genuine concern (I didn’t say that a christian won’t do the same genuinely, but I don’t have any guarantee it’s true)
But though I could respect people who do that, I still don’t respect their beliefs more than I respect the belief of people who believe they own a haunted house.
Atheism gives no outlet for rationality. It’s a consequence of rationality, and a lack of belief, plain and simple. It gives nothing, and there is no moral code or whatever else attached to atheism. Would you say that being an asantaclausist gives an outlet for objectivism?
Why bastardized? They refer to the same scriptures than you, quote the bible like you, worship the same god you do.
The only difference is that you pick different quotes, or give more importance to other verses. In other words, you have a different interpretation of the religious texts. If the testaments were clear and not ambiguous, if they didn’t contradict themselves so often, christianism would be easier to believe in. Actually, you only choose an interpretation which fits your moral values. Modern moral values. Values which have been supported by people in the past despite religion, and in some cases at great risk.
I agree
The basis of views about religion is that religion spread ignorance and is potentially dangerous. Could you respect Stalinism, which has been the core of the set of belief for many people? And induced a lot of them to adopt an altruistic behavior? Or would you try to fight the ideas they promote to avoid that someday they could won the presidential election? Would it be different if the current stalinists said that in USSR, Stalinism has been bastardized, and that the stalinism they promote is the real one, and based only on good and humanist values? And could the fact that some dissdents (from their point of view) stalinists plant bombs, for instance, influence the respect you have for Stalinism?
As I said before, I know christianism from the inside, like many atheists, thank you. It’s more than most christians can say about atheism. And no, I didn’t meet christianism under a devious disguise which disgusted me forever. My parents are fine people. I just realized that it made absolutely no sense.
I like it when Christians refer to me as a Lost Soul, especially when they add that pitying shake of the head and a condescending little smile.
And “The Lost Souls” would be a good name for a band.
“Athie”? Sounds like a houseplant… 
I always thought “hand stabber” was pretty good. I reserve it for the evangelistic atheists.
For those who might not know, the origin of that name goes back to an apparent urban legend that says that when a bailiff offered MMO a bible to swear on, she stabbed him in the hand with a pencil. I’ve been unable to confirm that that ever happened despite that it appeared in purt near every church bulletin in the country.
“Hell-bound Harlot” will live on in my memory until my dying day! That’s an outstanding term, right up there with “Shameless Hussy”. Regarding atheist names, I love “Born-again pagan”.
Regarding the use of names in referring to groups or individuals, what is acceptable behavior on GD? My impression is that humor, with no intent to hurt or insult, is acceptable. Hurtful name-calling is not. Are my impressions anywhere close to correct?