You do your namesake proud, Polycarp. I’m glad you’re here.
Oh, great- make a nasty, snide, and completely uncalled-for suggestion that Jesus masturbates while watching people shower- and then claim that the fact that you angered people with your comment means that you’ve legitimately touched a nerve.
That’s the kind of thing the fundies do:
“One day you’ll realize your carefree life of sex and drugs is meaningless, atheist!”
“Up yours, bigot!”
“Aha! You wouldn’t be so angry if you didn’t know deep down inside that I’m right!”
Thanks, FWF!! It’s been a pleasure knowing you, too.
BTW, Isis and Captor – there are actually parts of your statements with which I’d agree, in part at least. But since you’re the ones making the overall putdown remarks, let’s see what you can come up with to support them. I might even help out with examples that make one or two of your points valid once you start.
Nope. Isis painted a picture of someone who believes that God is somebody who hangs out “up there” in a second-story Heaven suggesting that God told him that a given behavior is mandatory for “going to Heaven when you die.” There’s a significant difference between this and the works of Paul Tillich, John Shelby Spong, Schillebeeckx, Martin Buber, John A.T. Robinson, Hans Kung, and other theologians and scholars, or even the practical teaching of Francis Shaeffer, the Grahams, or Max Lucado.
It’s very much akin to the rants assuming that all liberals are interested in destroying the moral basis of America, converting all people to homosexuality, freeing all criminals without reference to the harm to society, etc. ad nauseam that one gets from conservative extremists.
I’ve never insisted that people agree with me or be considered idiots – all I ask is that they return the respect.
The bottom line is I could care less what any of you believe in the area of religion, being birthed into a religious family and spending 18 years in the church was enough for me and I made my own choice, which according to the bible is something we are freely given.
I wouldn’t go as far as saying that, my entire paternal family holds their belief in god, I would never say they or anyone else are blithering idiots
What I say and what I do doesn’t affect you unless you respond to it in some way.
Furthermore, when did I lump anyone in a group?
Second, when did I put anyone down? I don’t recall saying anyone was stupid…or calling anyone names.
Third, when did I sterotype?
Isn’t it beautiful to live in a free country where any moron on the street/internet can form their own ideas and blabber them to the public?
Even more beautiful is when they don’t suggest but simply state a question and the public comes up with thier own notion of what the answer may be, then blames someone else. Its not my fault thats the answer you came up with it.
NOTE: Sometime ago I HAD a theory
My theory obviously is unfounded and no longer held by me, hence the past tense…for gods sake I can’t come up with some conspiracy theory? I know I am no Alen Spencer but come on, its over, its done and I know its ridiculous. (exactly why I no longer hold it)
Anyway…thats my OPINION on all of that.
{BGI}
POLYCARP: your contributions to ANY thread I have participated in by writing or reading have been without exception well-thought-out, positive, well-informed, tolerant, and in general models of restraint. Thank you for being a part of this one.
Now then. Any further seriously-intended responses to the OP? Or have we reached the flameout point at which all good threads meet their terminus?
Point taken, you’re not a Christian like fundies are Christian. But you know, if I joined the Ku Klux Klan even though MY reasons for joining had only to do with a deep appreciation of Southern culture, I still might reasonably expect to have to do a certain amount of arguing with outsiders about some of the stuff my brethren come up with. (I am NOT saying Christianity is the same as the Klan, OK?)
So, your Christian God is maybe the spiritual equivalent of electricity and heaven is His Magnetic Field, while for others the Christian God is the Hairy Thunderer who lives in Candyland. Wouldn’t it be simpler to just start your own religion? Specially since the Candyland crew obviously has the by far predominant viewpoint?
Tell you what, Isis and Captor: given that you have made assertions in your posts just above, produce evidence to prove them. Specifically:
Thank you so much for the invite to the fish shoot and the barrel, too.
**
[ul][li]… so much of [religious belief] is obvious crap.**[/li]
[[li]Da Bible. Walking on water. Loaves and fishes. Holy Ghosts. Heavens. Hells. Such lard-brained bilge hardly deserves a response, it’s really ANNOYING to hear it mindlessly parrotted in modern culture.[/li]
[li] much of religious belief is so stupid that it’s hard not to insult it when describing it honestly.[/li]
[li]Da Bible. See above. Might add, “world created in six days by Hairy Thunderer.” Don’t forget Noah’s Ark! Bilge, bilge, bilge.[/li]
[li]Christianity, Islam and Judaism were all dreamed up by a bunch of wacked-out, supersitious, butt-ignorant desert nomads 2,000 years ago. (Hint: there are three factual errors in this sentence as written; separate out the parts and you might have defendable theses.)[/li]
The Jews were nomadic at some point, and city dwellers at another, minor point but you can have it if you want it. You can debate the 2,000 years, how 'bout if I say CIRCA 2000 years, does that work for you? Butt ignorant? See previous points. Read the Bible. Wacked-out? Matter of opinion. Superstitious? Burning bushes. Cities (Sodom and Gomorrah) destroyed by flaming plagues sent by God, for being inhospitable. Woman (Lot’s wife) turned to salt for looking in the wrong direction.
[li][Christianity, Islam and Judaism] read like the sort of stuff you might expect from people who think mass murder, rape and slavery are all OK, and whose idea of criminal justice is horrific tortures like scourging[/li]
[li]Da Bible. The Old Testament has passages where God commands the Jews to figh neighboring tribes, kill all the men and enslave the women and children. Scourging is mentioned in the Bible as an appropriate punishment for a woman taken in adultery or prostitution or somethign along those lines.[/li][/ul]
I eagerly await some cites supporting these facts.
I figure this is because you’re going to turn this into a Bible class. Don’t even think about it. Bores the toes off me. I’ve BEEN to Bible class, I’ve HEARD it all. It was lard-brained bilge then, it’s lard-brained bilge now.
I respect your right to your religious beliefs, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I respect your beliefs.
You don’t threaten my beliefs in any way. What made me “testy” is having my dignity as a thinking human being egregiously insulted by being lumped into a group you were prepared to mischaracterize in a fictional dialogue and then make snide remarks about. Simple as that.
Try driving around and hearing mainstream religious leaders use phrases like, “thieves, murderers and atheists” on your car radio. I beleive I have you totally trumped in that area.
[huge completely unrelated hijack]
Provoked by this:
I’m wondering who this namesake is? Polycarp, what does your name mean?
Y’see, I ask because I’m thinking poly=many, carp=a type of fish.
polycarp=many fish.
And there is an album by dance act Underworld title ‘Beaucoup Fish’. Or beaucoup=French for ‘many/lots of’ fish=fish.
beaucoup fish=many fish.
So what’s the deal? What is with all the fish?
[/world’s biggest most completely unrelated hijack]
My ear itches to find out.
The problem is that Cervaise raised the bar for atheist/agnostic responses too damned high too early in the discussion.
Now I’m just hanging around to watch Bluegreen get swatted (in a polite, reasoned and well-documented way, of course).
Thus speaks the person trying to kill a tiger with a toothpick.
Evil, the sole evidence you present to support your opinion is the Bible.
The sole evidence which Young Earth Creationists present to support their opinion is the Bible.
Enjoy the party, but forgive me if I don’t come.
Evil Captor, thanks for responding as you did. To answer your points briefly, we’re not in total disagreement. Much of the Bible is myth. (People vary on what parts they consider to be literal truth and what fabulous, but I trust you see my point. Certainly Acts 27:4-5 is probably a literal account: “From there we put to sea gain, but as the winds were agianst us we sailed under the lee of Cyprus, then across the open sea off Cilicia and Pamphylia, taking a fortnight to reach Myra in Lycia.” On the other hand, the Tower of Babel shows every evidence of being a myth.)
The thing is, Myth is a useful thing. People have gone to war and risked their lives to defend, not a piece of parchment in an inert atmosphere in Philadelphia, but the idea of freedom under law that it symbolizes. Oedipous Tyrannos or the Oresteia says a lot about human nature that would never have the same impact as 20 pages of an abnormal psych. textbook.
As for why I call myself a Christian despite the people who are using it as a stick to beat others, I do it because the Man Who founded the faith said things that I not only agree with but which are the foundation of how I try to live. And He had to deal with a bunch of people prepared to reduce “how to live a morally sound and fulfilling life” into a bunch of rules that tended to have loopholes for themselves but needed to be enforced strictly against others – the Pharisees as depicted in the Gospels. As for hate-filled “Christian” radio, I doubt you have me beat – I live in rural North Carolina, after all; point your finger in any direction here, and you’ll be pointing at a Southern Baptist church! (BTW, since you brought up the “loaves and fishes” deal, let me point out that the story of the Feeding of the 5,000 can just as easily be read as the story of Jesus using the generosity of the kid with the five loaves and two fish to shame the selfish crowd into sharing what food they’d brought along for themselves – there’s not a word in it that says He “r’ared back and passed a miracle” to turn the kid’s stuff into enough food to feed everybody.)
Gex gex, the name comes from Polycarp of Smyrna, a man whom I admire greatly, who was taught as a boy by John the Beloved Disciple in his old age, then lived until 156 AD and was killed at age 86 (or possibly over 100) for what he believed in. It literally means “many seeds” though the significance behind that name is lost to history. (And it was very tempting to do a Douglas Adams riff on “many fish”!! ;))
Wasn’t praying to Polycarp supposed to help against earaches?
: sidling slowly away from Bluegreen_isis :
I’m torn: While I appreciate the compliments I’ve received, I honestly wasn’t trying to produce any sort of be-all, end-all atheist manifesto. In fact, as I described, this is stuff I’ve been thinking about for a couple of years but haven’t really been able to express or discuss anywhere else.
And in fact, more to the point, one of my primary motivations for offering it here was to subject it to the intellectual autoclave that is Great Debates. I submitted my post with some trepidation, knowing that any fallacies or weak reasoning would immediately be seized by the rigorously precise thinkers on the dope, thereby leaving my logical lacunae exposed. While this would be embarrassing, it would give me the opportunity to reconsider anything that required it, and thereby strengthen my position.
The fact that as abstruse a thinker as Lib had to delve immediately into the intricacies of ontology and epistemology to form a rebuttal gives me confidence that my point of view is more solid than I had hoped. If I stole anyone’s thunder, I’m sorry.
(“Intellectual autoclave.” Heh. I like that.)
Cervaise wrote:
To be fair, I delved into the intricacies of ontology and epistemology only because you did yourself. 
You drew a dichotomy as to the nature of God (ontology). And you criticized narrative as a means of acquiring knowledge (epistemology). We also discussed science, deontics, sociology, and pantheism. I might be an abstruse thinker, but I believe that I responded to your famous post intensionally and with plain language.
My post is thus proven: that you (Cervaise), while not covering the totality of possible reasons why one might be a nonbeliever of one ilk or another, have nevertheless raised the level of discussion beyond mere subjective experience.
This limits what the rest of us can post; somehow, “I don’t believe because I was brought up in a non-religious environment” seems so …trivial…after the deeper philosophical discussions you, Lib, et alia have been having. I shall continue to observe with interest.
I read some posts- not all, so forgive me if i say something that was already brought up but just a couple thoughts: first off i think its tough to ask a question in such a way to look for responses to prove that something isnt true- you want people to provide proof that god doesnt exist, its kind of like Bush telling americans that Iraq has these weapons because they cannot prove that they dont have them… In fact he should either find proof of weapons or else stop threatening war. So i guess what im saying is that the question is kind of backwards… but still worth asking. I have many reasons why i dont believe in god. I saw many of them in the posts that i read but one of the biggest reasons that i dont beleive in god is because so many religions exist, most all of them claiming to have the only god and contradicting all the others- do you really think that any ONE of them is correct? Another idea that i believe to be true is that people look for something to believe in, sometimes looking for guidance through life, or fear of death or any number of reasons- and if someone wants to believe in something, they usually will…
PHAE_DRUS:
“…you want people to provide proof that god doesnt exist…”
Again, I’m not asking anyone to “prove a negative,” only to give some sort of account of how and why they came to an atheistic conclusion.