Why is this site overwhelmingly atheist?

[dougie_monty]

@Bryan_Ekers

Atheism is good because the alternative is crazypants.

Hey, you just pulled that one out of thin air, didn’t you?
You sure can turn a phrase.
You sure can turn a stomach.

[Bryan_Ekers]

Actually, I found it evident in the absurd contortions you’re putting yourself through to deflect challenges to your beliefs, i.e. crazypants.

[dougie_monty]

[ QUOTE=Bryan Ekers;17711429] Actually, I found it evident in the absurd contortions you’re putting yourself through to deflect challenges to your beliefs, i.e. crazypants.
[/QUOTE]

I’m not the one calling names around here.

[simster]

@dougie_monty

@Bryan_Ekers

Actually, I found it evident in the absurd contortions you’re putting yourself through to deflect challenges to your beliefs, i.e. crazypants.

I’m not the one calling names around here.

and neither is he.

[Bryan_Ekers]

I’m okay with dougie’s stomach being turned - I figure it could be a natural reaction to finding out reality as he knows it is being altered, in the sense that not only do people exist who don’t believe in his god, but they’re content in that disbelief. That’s hard to reconcile with the idea that nonbelievers are sinners and sinners suffer.

[crowmanyclouds]

@Voyager

{…} Do you think that if even one tiny bit of the Bible was proven to be false, the entire thing should be thrown out?
If atheists thought that we’d be rightly condemned as extreme.

It is the position of (some/most/all ?) Christians that reject the current scientific explanations of the origins of the universe, life, and [DEL][COLOR=“Black”]kinds[/DEL][/COLOR] species.

[My father] was always very adamant about one thing - if you can’t trust the Book of Genesis as literal history, then you can’t trust the rest of the Bible. After all, every single doctrine of biblical theology is founded in the history of Genesis 1-11. My father had not developed his thinking in this area as much as we have today at Answers in Genesis, but he clearly understood that if Adam wasn’t created from dust, and that if he didn’t fall into sin as Genesis states, then the gospel message of the New Testament can’t be true either.[RIGHT]CITE[/RIGHT]

Ken Ham thinks that if even one tiny bit of the Bible was proven to be false, the entire thing should be thrown out . . . and he is not alone in this thinking.

It gets worse,

No apparent, perceived, or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record.[RIGHT]CITE[/RIGHT]

CMC fnord!

[Jonathan_Chance]

@dougie_monty

Hey, you just pulled that one out of thin air, didn’t you?
You sure can turn a phrase.
You sure can turn a stomach.

That’s another warning. You will immediately stop insulting other posters or bad things may occur.

The rest of you, take that to heart as well.

[Voyager]

@Budget_Player_Cadet

Well… yeah. I personally believe any Christian who believes the bible is divinely inspired and isn’t a denialist is a hypocrite (although this is one of those cases where hypocrite is not the worse option). What’s missing in my reasoning? Don’t just appeal to the consequences (especially because the consequence, that the Bible may not be divinely inspired and may be of no more value than any other dusty tome full of fairy tales, is hardly something horrifying); what am I missing? Are parts of the bible divinely inspired, and others not? How could you determine which are which (other than “the parts which are wrong aren’t”, which seems fallacious to me)? Does divine inspiration not mean that the texts are flawless? But if so, why should we care? The bible is not perfect, and contains numerous flaws - why should it not be considered worthless as a primary source?

We just had a big long thread on this very subject. I didn’t get a lot of people giving good explanations for why they thought some parts were divinely inspired and other parts weren’t, but the vast majority of believers didn’t feel like that had to believe in the entire thing. All or nothing would quickly lead to nothing.

[Voyager]

@Twoflower

Wow. So Tommy Jefferson was a commie pinko…

“Eisenhower was a Russian spy,
Roosevelt, Lincoln and that Jefferson guy”

Dylan, Talkin’ John Birch Society Paranoid Blues

[eschereal]

I would like to hear more about what happened to the people who were created in the first chapter of Genesis. Were they ever in the garden of eden, or did they just wander off and do their own thing until “the fall”?

[XT]

@eschereal

I would like to hear more about what happened to the people who were created in the first chapter of Genesis. Were they ever in the garden of eden, or did they just wander off and do their own thing until “the fall”?

They were actually In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida…

[Voyager]

@crowmanyclouds

It is the position of (some/most/all ?) Christians that reject the current scientific explanations of the origins of the universe, life, and [DEL][COLOR=“Black”]kinds[/DEL][/COLOR] species.Ken Ham thinks that if even one tiny bit of the Bible was proven to be false, the entire thing should be thrown out . . . and he is not alone in this thinking.
It gets worse,

But most Christians are not that extreme. If the Bible said 2 + 2 = 5 some would say addition is an atheist plot, but my point was that there are plenty of believers who aren’t nuts in that respect.

[Voyager]

@simster

His not being at the Convention has nothing to do with his work on the articles themselves.

In any case Madison, who was at the Convention, was just as much a deist as Jefferson. Madison helped Tom Paine in France and when he returned to the US.
Dougie should read “The Age of Reason” if he wants to know what one Founding Father thought about Christianity.

[dougie_monty]

@Voyager

“Eisenhower was a Russian spy,
Roosevelt, Lincoln and that Jefferson guy”

Dylan, Talkin’ John Birch Society Paranoid Blues

I trust that was the JBS’ sentiment, not Dylan’s. I would blow some fuses at any remark disparaging Lincoln (and it takes some doing to attack Jefferson or either Roosevelt who became President).

[crowmanyclouds]

@Voyager

But most Christians are not that extreme. If the Bible said 2 + 2 = 5 some would say addition is an atheist plot, but my point was that there are plenty of believers who aren’t nuts in that respect.

They are not true Christians!

CMC fnord!

[Captain_Amazing]

That was Dylan’s satirical take on JBS sentiment. The song makes fun of the JBS.

[GIGObuster]

@dougie_monty

I trust that was the JBS’ sentiment, not Dylan’s. I would blow some fuses at any remark disparaging Lincoln (and it takes some doing to attack Jefferson or either Roosevelt who became President).

And would also feel that the ones disparaging Lincoln would be silly because he also was, like many religious people today, also a pick and chooser regarding the bible.

http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2008/04/did-abraham-lin.html

Because he believed in God, or Providence, or some kind of supernatural power beyond this earth that controlled the fates of people and nations. He sometimes quoted Shakespeare’s line, “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,/Rough-hew them how we will,” which must have appealed to the former axeman in him. As a child, he absorbed a stern Calvinism from Baptist preachers who emphasized the power of an omnipotent God, the kind of deity who notes the fall of every sparrow. As an adult, he must have spoken of his religious beliefs to his law partner William Herndon often enough to pique Herndon’s curiosity, but not fully enough to satisfy it, as evidenced by Herndon’s inclusion of questions about religion in almost all of his interviews with Lincoln’s New Salem acquaintances.

Lincoln’s ideas, whatever they were, were not easy to grasp. While he accepted the notion of providence, and referred to it often, he rarely spoke publicly of Jesus Christ. In New Salem Lincoln associated with freethinkers who doubted the divinity of Jesus, and he wrote an essay mocking the idea that Jesus was the son of God. Lincoln’s friends, anxious to protect his budding political career, threw the manuscript into the fire.

As he matured, Lincoln learned to be more careful about expressing his views on religion. He must have said enough, however, to develop a reputation as an infidel. In 1846, when he ran for Congress against a well known Methodist preacher named Peter Cartwright, he found himself on the defensive against Cartwright’s charges that he was not a believer. Lincoln responded with a public statement that would remain the longest explanation of his religious beliefs he would ever write.

“I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or of any denomination of Christians in particular,” Lincoln wrote, in carefully measured words that reflect the tone of more recent political denials. Although strictly true, Lincoln left open the possibility that he had spoken with unintentional disrespect. In the next paragraph he agreed with his readers that it would be wrong for any candidate to scoff openly at religion, and stated that he himself would not vote for such a person, because “I still do not think any man has the right thus to insult the feelings, and injure the morals, of the community in which he may live.” Lincoln again managed to have it both ways: he shared his audience’s disapproval of “infidels,” but only those who scoff “openly” and thereby insult the majority’s feelings. He didn’t say that he belonged to the majority, and tacitly reserved the possibility that he scoffed at religion, just not openly.

Over time, Lincoln’s interest in religion grew. The death of his son Eddie in 1850 gave him cause to ponder the brevity and meaning of life on earth, and of course the casualties of the Civil War forced him to confront the issue every day. By the time he came to write the Second Inaugural Address in 1865, with its mature theological contemplation of the inscrutability and justice of the Almighty, he had gone far beyond the easy skepticism of his youth.

As noted with many founding fathers, the god Lincoln had was not necessarily the one from the bible and his was a curious case of picking and choosing more from the old testament than the new one. We’ll see if Lincoln is not thrown under the bus by dougie_monty.

[simster]

@dougie_monty

I trust that was the JBS’ sentiment, not Dylan’s. I would blow some fuses at any remark disparaging Lincoln (and it takes some doing to attack Jefferson or either Roosevelt who became President).

So, now you’re defending Jefferson?

How about getting back to the topic at hand?

[Sage_Rat]

@GIGObuster

As noted with many founding fathers, the god Lincoln had was not necessarily the one from the bible and his was a curious case of picking and choosing more from the old testament than the new one. We’ll see if Lincoln is not thrown under the bus by dougie_monty.

Lincoln wrote a book that shot down religion. It was never published, and he had the manuscript destroyed.

[

“Mr. Lincoln was never a member of any Church, nor did he believe in the divinity of Christ, or the inspiration of the Scriptures in the sense understood by evangelical Christians.” (Life of Lincoln, p. 486.)

“When a boy, he showed no sign of that piety which his many biographers ascribe to his manhood. When he went to church at all, he went to mock, and came away to mimic.” (Ibid, pp. 486, 487.)

“When he came to New Salem, he consorted with Freethinkers, joined with them in deriding the gospel story of Jesus, read Volney and Paine, and then wrote a deliberate and labored essay, wherein he reached conclusions similar to theirs. The essay was burned, but he never regretted nor denied its composition. On the contrary, he made it the subject of free and frequent conversations with his friends at Springfield, and stated, with much particularity and precision, the origin, arguments, and objects of the work.” (Ibid., p. 487.)

"The community in which he lived was preeminently a community of Freethinkers in matters of religion; and it was no secret, nor has it been a secret since, that Mr. Lincoln agreed with the majority of his associates in denying the authority of divine revelation. It was his honest belief, a belief which it was no reproach to hold in New Salem, Anne Domino, 1834, and one which he never thought of concealing. It was no distinction, either good or bad, no honor, and no shame. But he had made himself thoroughly familiar with the writings of Paine and Volney – the Ruins by the one, and The Age of Reason by the other. His mind was full of the subject, and he felt an itching to write. He did write, and the result was a little book. It was probably merely an extended essay, but it is ambitiously spoken of as ‘a book’ by himself and by the persons who were made acquainted with its contents. In this work he intended to demonstrate –

"'First, that the Bible is not God’s revelation.

"‘Second, that Jesus was not the son of God.’

“No leaf of this volume has survived. Mr. Lincoln carried it in manuscript to the store of Samuel Hill, where it was read and discussed. Hill was himself an unbeliever, but his son considered his book ‘infamous.’ It is more than probable that Hill, being a warm personal friend of Lincoln, feared that the publication of the essay would some day interfere with the political advancement of his favorite. At all events, he snatched it out of his hand, and threw it into the fire, from which not a shred escaped.” (Ibid, pp. 157, 158.)

](http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/steinlinc.htm)

[clairobscur]

@dougie_monty

Jesus told the apostles that he was the fulfillment of the Law. I think this was mentioned in Romans 10:4; I’m not sure that’s the correct verse…

Fulfilling it isn’t the same as changing it. And he also told them that not a dot in the law would change until the end of times. So how come Christians are eating pork and aren’t circumcized?