gobear, first off, don’t read the threads then, second, you say don’t talk about religion, and then preach your own, and finally, how on earth will the world be happier knowing God doesn’t exist? Not only that, but how can you say that God doesn’t exist? Maybe you think God doesn’t exist, but to make an absolute statement like that, you need absolute knowledge…are you saying you have absolute knowledge? And last, who is on your back?
…Especially when the principles taught by the Founder of that religion, whom his followers claim to be their Lord, are explicitly against forcing obedience to laws they’ve written on the basis of that book on others. I’m convinced that I’ve been very lucky in getting unabridged Bibles – along with the Apocrypha, the fundies. seem to have edited out the passages where Jesus bawls out the Pharisees for just that.
Svt? There’s a thread here in Great Debates that I started named something like “Judge Not…(What Part of No Don’t You Understand?)” It’s a little over a month old. The OP is about 95% Scripture quotes. I’d appreciate your comments on it.
I think it does not matter what Ego thinks you’re going to say. Is it really so difficult to answer “yes” or “no”?
Again, you don’t get to dictate my actions. I’ll read what I please.
I don’t preach religon because I deny all faith in the supernatural. My uses of Islam and Hinduism were merely as examples.
Because then we can deal with the world as it is instead of relying on ancient fairy tales for solutions.
All you need to deny God’s existence is to imagine the world as it would be if a beneficent God existed. Certainly, all the believers would have superior gifts and wisdom to impart. They would be wise teachers who would be exemplars of God’s grace to a suffering humanity. When I see that the most vocal Christians are the most bigoted, ignorant, and credulous people on Earth leads me to believe that their God does not exist.
Look in a mirror, pal. Your lot are the enemies of peace, freedom, and goodness. You praise hate, and you embrace ignorance. You are the harbingers of darkness.
- You have NO.FUCKING.RIGHT to tell another poster what threads he can and cannot read.
- I did not see him preach any religion in that post.
- On what grounds do you claim to know more than him about the existence of God? Much less what He wants?
- “Who is on your back?” Look, my evangelical friend [edited from a very hostile term], an overwhelming majority of your coreligionists and mine are attempting to keep in place the rules that make it illegal for him to marry his beloved, to throw out the rules that say he cannot be discriminated against for his sexuality, and attempting to reverse the recent Supreme Court decision that threw out the laws that would put him in prison for making love to his beloved… That’s who’s on his back. You’ve very carefully avoided committing yourself on any question having to do with your beliefs regarding homosexuality, and kudos to you for that. But the time has come for you to stand up and be counted. Are you a part of the problem, or a part of the solution? Does God love him, just as he is? Is there any reason to support the AFA and Sen. Santorum and the rest of them?
How should I know? Do you think I’m God, and that I know your mind? You flatter me with your undeserved faith.
There were three honest and complete answers to my question:
Yes.
No.
I don’t know.
#3 would probably have been the most humble and wise answer.
As it is, since I know you choose the path of obfuscation I see no reason to ask you anything more. You are just as evasive as any corrupt politican or Pharisee could hope to be.
I suppose it’s pointless to debate, though, since everyone will find out what happens when you die eventually, except maybe for immortal robots or something.
ROTHLAO. A Christian Fundamentalist, who bitching about someone else making “absolute statements.” So you don’t make absolute statements about God? That he exists? That Christianity is his preferred religion?
You don’t make absolute claims that those who die without the grace of Christ go to Hell?
Because if you don’t make absolute statements about God, you should change your password, because someone’s been on your account doing exactly that!
Wow.
No one can be saved from Hell without either perfect adherence to the Law or through faith in Christ.
Except for the kids.
Cherry-pick much, Svt?
ok ok people. settle down. I remember someone once saying that their character is somehow reflected of their posting…
Even the most benign tyrant is still a tyrant.
Because there is no evidence that such a being exsists.
Maybe you think God doesn’t exist, but to make an absolute statement like that, you need absolute knowledge…are you saying you have absolute knowledge?
[/quote]
By that standard, how can you say with such certainty that God does exsist?
Yes Noahic laws apply to all people but they are applied differently to gentiles because they (presumably) do not have the guidance of the Torah or the Talmud. Therefore instances of idoltry and blasphemy are judged by their intent rather than their strict legal definition. For example, worshipping Jesus, while technically idoltrous in judaic law, would not be considered a sin because there is no idolotrous intent. The intent is to worship God. It’s the same with blasphemy. A person has to intend to utter blasphemy. Blasphemy uttered in ignorance or innocence is not punished.
The rest of the codes are your basic “Don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t fuck your neighbor’s wife” type stuff which essentially speak to more or less universal standards of ethical behaviour rather than representing purely religious injunctions.
Bullshit. It is not your place to tell someone on this MB what they may/may not, should/should not read. Furthermore, gobear’s been here a fucklot more time than you have and has a lot more respect from the general SDMB community in his armpit hair than you have in three of your … being. For you to presume to tell gobear what to read is pride of the most disgusting kind.
WTF? Where in the BLOODY HELL does gobear preach his religion? HE DOESN’T HAVE ONE TO PREACH! There is no holy book for atheists. There are no doctrinal writings, there is no established code of conduct. What gobear is ACTUALLY saying, since you have established yourself here and elsewhere as unable to parse sentences longer than “that’s what i think”, is that it is not proper for YOU to preach YOUR religious beliefs at someone who does not subscribe to your beliefs. IE it is POINTLESS to say, for example, “you shouldn’t be allowed to mary a man because my religion doesn’t approve.” Sweet thundering fuck, if that’s the measuring stick I’m tempted to found a “nobody is allowed to marry anyone without approval of the Invisible Pink Unicorn.” Just as logical, yes?
What gobear DOES do is try to hold himself to a general standard of conduct because he has a moral code. But in the holy name of Martin Luther wearing a kimono, the notion that gobear is trying to preach his religion is so fucking absurdly ludicrous I’m wondering if you actually have understood ANYTHING he said.
One reason springs to mind right quick: the people who use their faith as a means of inhibiting the private lives of others (i.e. gay men, etc) would be shown to be utterly unfounded in their stance (they currently are, but it’d be a lot MORE obvious).
The same way you can say that God DOES exist. gobear is every bit convinced that God does not exist as you are that He does.
What. the. fuck. are. you. on? Have you completely missed your whole “The Bible says [this]” and “The Bible says [that]” schtick? YOU HAVE NO ABSOLUTE KNOWLEDGE EITHER YOU FUCKING IDIOT. Yet you parade around here as though your faith is fucking law poured into indestructible concrete! Do you have one standard for yourself and one for everyone else? How is it that you are allowed to go around saying stuff and not be able to prove it, yet you question anyone who makes a similarly absolute statement?
Focus on the Family, the SBC, GWB and administration, Fred Phelps and crew, Concerned Women for America, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, etc. Shall I go on, or do you see the point by now?
The SBC??? :eek:
What does the phone company have to do with gobear’s high level of annoyance?
(checks link)
…never mind.
Svt4Him
I sure hope you don’t call what you’re doing here “ministry”. See, the idea is to win souls, not lose them.
“A tree is know by its fruit.” — Jesus
I will answer this as it is the general consensus.
That’s the problem I have. I will not, for the fact that then I will be on his back, and honestly I’d rather not. It’s nice for you to ask, but when someone is already talking about how he doesn’t want anyone to preach to them, then why would I? And I thought that that was already covered in another thread, and I can get my quote if you like. Is this being evasive? I don’t think so. But the poster said he’s tired of all these threads, and I don’t see a single thread from FOTF, AFA, Sen.Santorum or the rest of them.
So my statement stands. If he has a problem with the threads, don’t read them, but I’m not saying he can’t. Not only that, but I haven’t started any of these threads, and some I agree with him on. But I don’t think I can tell you what threads to start, I can however choose what threads to read.
Oy. And the beat drones on.
Nonesense. You make the claim that God exists, you back it up. The evidence thus far indicates that no God exists, or at least not a God who is both all powerful and all good. Even if one can trace manny current troubles to the consequences of sin, that still does not idicate any reason why an omnipotent, omnibenevolent deity would permit earthquakes, infant leukemia, and other disasters that afflict the innocent.
Again, nonsense. All one needs is to show that one has taken representative samples of Chinese soil and found no gold. Of course, all one needs to do to refute the no-gold-in-China is to fins a speck, as you indicated. That’s the wonderful bit about the scientific method, that it is self-correcting and errors are corrected as more evidence is discovered and taken into account. Religion, OTOH, has no such corrective mechanism because no amount of logic or evidence can sway the true believer from clinging to his pathetically blind faith.
In any event, one does not require “absolute knowledge” to prove a negative. One may test a proposition by assuming the positive and then seeing the consequences of the proposition. If you claim you can fly by flapping your arms, I can test your statement by throwing you off the nearest cliff. Similarly, if we accept that a wise, loving God exists and that He extends special grace and wisdom to His adherents, one would expect to see Christians as exemplars of joy, kindness, forgiveness, and charity. But when we see that the great majority of Christians (or at least the really noisy ones who have made Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye multimillionaires) are backward, ignorant, hateful fools, and that pain and suffering are evenly distributed among the faithless and believing alike, one can conclude that their faith is mere delusion.
The world we see before us is indistinguishable from one in which no God exists, therefore the God hypothesis may be safely discarded.
And I will continue to read and post in these threads because your pernicious ignorance must be fought at every turn.
Mind you, my atheism is based oinly on the evidence thus far. If the Rapture happened tomorrow, you can bet I’d be revising my hypotheses PDQ. So far, I see no reason to do so.
“You never know what’s around the corner.” — Lib’s sainted mother 
Svt[4awhim, you still haven’t answered the charge that your position is logically untenable:
How come it’s okay for you to claim that God exists, which of course would require absolute knowledge, but not for gobear to claim that God doesn’t exist?
Why is he held to a different standard than you?