You probably accept the existence of hallucinations and synesthesia. The brain is capable of interpreting reality in ways that are not real. But in modern day, we generally think that this only happens as a result of illness or genetic disorder. But if you read up on things like koro and witch trials, you’ll realize that we disbelieve so much today not because it’s not real, but because we were taught as children not to believe it. If you had grown up being taught that cats and dogs are the male and female of the same species, and everyone else had as well, your brain would skip over all the evidence in the world that demonstrated that this just wasn’t the case. You would look at a couple of sagging cat testicles swaying back and forth between its hind legs and honestly believe that you were seeing saggy labia or something.
Science didn’t just help us to measure reality and confirm theories. How we view reality today is probably significantly changed because scientific tests forced us to accept that a lot of what we physically saw and knew to be true in our hearts, was actually not testable reality.
Well, that’s very :mad:ing convenient. Now try walking into a Lexus dealership and buying a car with the million dollars I have but can’t demonstrate or communicate to anyone else.
If you claim to have proof but can’t communicate or demonstrate it, that’s called “no proof” or, in some circles, “chickenshit.” What you have is an argument. An argument is not the same as evidence. When you argue that X exists but have no evidence, that’s a pretty lousy argument.
You have no concept of how hilarious I find it that you have to specifically exclude the circumstances that would allow me to demonstrate my evidence.
Here’s the difference: If you ask me to demonstrate X, I will take you to place X can be found. If I ask you to demonstrate God, where will you take me? Heaven? Please, show me the map of how to get to Heaven, or at least a point from which God can be observed. I imagine it would involve some kind of telescope.
Except that I have evidence for cosmic rays, but you have no such evidence for God.
No, that’s bullshit. You can’t prove something’s non-existence. You are not making any point that I can comprehend. What kind of experiment could you set up to prove something doesn’t exist? I’m not even sure how that would work.
I CAN demonstrate that X cannot be found at a particular place, time, and circumstance. I CAN argue that evidence of X was flawed or misinterpreted. I CAN argue (not demonstrate) that Y evidence excludes the possibility of X. But I cannot, under any circumstances, demonstrate that X does not exist. If trying to prove something doesn’t exist is science, your concept of science needs work.
No one can disprove God. It can’t be done. What we do have is a very compelling argument that the attributes assigned to God are inconsistent with our understanding of the universe. If I have evidence of X, and Y contradicts X, but Y has no evidence, then there is no conceivable reason to favor Y over X.
Why do we need to replace religion with anything?
Why do the masses need to be dominated?
Why are we worried about the stupid?
Also, no one gives a :mad: about evolutionary models or social interactions. I am sick to death of hearing people say that religion is the only source of law and morality. That is bullshit. Stop it. People have laws and morality because of EMPATHY, not because the magical sky-person had to teach us what’s right and wrong. I don’t hurt people because all evidence suggests that they are much like me, and I have enough empathy to imagine that they feel pain and loss the same way I do. I don’t like it, and I don’t want others to have to experience those same feelings. I don’t need any external agent, government, or divinity to explain that to me, because I am a rational human being who understands and has empathy for my fellow man.
And BTW, people have been repeating “Thou shall not kill” for thousands of years and the world is still a pretty shitty place. Maybe its time to try something different. Also, if you actually read the Bible, for someone who says “Thou shall not kill,” God actually kills a fuck-ton of people. If God does exist, and the Bible is an accurate portrayal of God and his works, then God is a sadistic hypocrite who deserves neither our love nor our worship.
PPPFFFFFTTT!!! :smack: I can’t believe I just read that. That is the biggest load of chickenshit I’ve ever seen. Please don’t judge X by the people who claim to be X and who work to promote X and should live their lives according to X. What a :mad:ing farce. You’ve got to be kidding me.
Bullshit.
Complete and total bullshit.
The Nazis did not invent evolution. They did not represent evolution (as evolution isn’t a thing that has or needs representatives) and they did not practice evolution (as evolution is not an ideology or community) and they couldn’t “implement” evolution even if they tried (it is not something that humans can choose to do). What they did do was argue for the importance of unnatural selection, which is also not the same thing as evolution.
It would be more correct to say that I will judge National Socialism by how the Nazis implemented it. I absolutely will judge National Socialism by the people who claim to be National Socialists and who work to promote National Socialism and should live their lives according to National Socialism. On the same note, I will judge Islam by how Muslims implement it, I will judge Judaism by how Jews implement it, and I will judge Communism by how the Communists implement it.
People don’t implement “evolution” any more than they implement gravity, sunlight, or the laws of thermodynamics.
I disbelieve plenty of things that I was taught to believe in as a child. The difference is that I was taught to think critically and examine evidence, rather than assume a magical world where things happen with no cause or consistency.
For example, I completely believed in Santa Claus. Then I realized (A) the attributes we ascribe to Santa Claus contradict all evidence I have about how the world works and (B) my parents (who all available evidence suggested were well-educated on the topic and right about most things) introduced new evidence by telling me he wasn’t real.
Bullshit.
I would believe the same thing everyone else believed, until someone actually studied the subject and arrived a new conclusion. I would draw new conclusions when new evidence is introduced. I would also ask myself whether my objections to the new evidence are rational.
People believe in witchcraft and fan death and whatever other weird chickenshit is out there because people are not taught or practiced in critical thinking, which is another way of saying they are idiots.
I wanted desperately to believe because I was told that was the only way to avoid hell. I could be forgiven any other sin, but not disbelief. So I tried and tried to have that “Experience” everyone told me I would have. God would talk to me personally if I just prayed harder. But god didn’t speak to me, so I thought it was because I was already left out of the book of life that god wrote before time began.
It’s not a completely inapt comparison. The Nazis didn’t actually understand evolution, but they thought they did, and their racial outlook was heavily influenced by it. More to the point, some creationist fundamentalists do argue against evolution by trying to tie it to the Nazis.
“Please don’t judge us by the worst people who think they’re on our side, and we’ll extend you the same courtesy.” I’m sure you’ll object in some way, but I hardly thought his post was nonsensical.
And again I have to ask: There are ways to tell quack science from the real thing, but how do we tell quack religion from the real thing? Where are the clear guidelines and procedures that can assist a person in saying “I can’t blame this on religion because it definitely doesn’t fit the profile of real religion.”? Until such guidelines are presented, you can’t really compare how people use quack science to harm people to how people use religion to harm people.
I might want that to be true, but I wouldn’t want to believe them independently of their truth.
This I do understand, because here it isn’t simply a matter of deciding to believe. But even having that desire presupposes there’s a God to talk to you in the first place, and that hell exists.
I used to have this friend, who, like me, was an adamant atheist. He had some other troubles though, as well, and eventually found himself in jail for hitting his wife. While in jail, some other jailbird (why we no use that word anymore?) re-converted him back to Jesus. He got out and wrote me this long letter explaining how he’d found evangelical Catholicism. I told him he was welcome to believe any fairy tale woo he wanted, but my support of that stops with the word “evangelism.” The next couple emails were Jesus this and Jesus that and finally, I wrote him a short note: “I told you that I would not tolerate evangelism. We’re done.” I’ve been friends with that guy since middle school (we’re now in our mid-40s) and I cut him off like a cancerous tumor. De-friended and blocked.
I’m not going to debate religion, I’m not going to try to convert or deconvert anyone to any given belief system. I am also not going to tolerate other people shoving their woo bullshit down my throat. My friend is dead to me, so I completely relate to the OP’s sadness. He was a cool guy until he chose to handle his problems with a Jesus-crutch instead of taking responsibility for himself and CHANGING HIS BEHAVIOR. Now he can feel better about wife beating because Satan, instead of getting some actual therapy and medication and learning to handle his emotions in some other way than violence inflicted on people he loves. Um, no. Unacceptable.
To some extent I think that’s true, but if everyone around you believes something and there’s no ready evidence, it’s difficult to get corrected.
In the case of Santa Claus, the evidence is pretty obvious (gee, mommy and daddy barricade the closet every year for a month before Christmas and mom nudges dad every time she talks about “Santa” bringing presents) and no one’s going to let you live to adulthood still believing it.
If that’s a verbatim quote I’m astonished he wasted one other word on you. I mean, I’m just a dumb fuck and rude to boot, but I didn’t use language like that to my cousin the Christian Scientist even when he posted something about a woman who fell out of a boat and lay at the bottom of a lake for half an hour but didn’t drown because she had decided not to die, and called it “wonderfully Scientific”. :dubious:
Indeed. Animals manage to exhibit concepts of fairness and justice, presumably without believing in religion. These things are good for reinforcing/maintaining social bonds, and in turn that’s good for you.
This TED talk is 18 minutes long, but worth viewing:
I clicked on this thinking it may be about The Who. I haven’t listened to The Who in a way too long of a time.
You know what is funny is if you replace Christian in this thread with *Islam *or *Judaism *or Hinduism. I’d love to see how brave everyone calling this person a fool for getting back in touch with his faith would be if he belonged to one those other religions. But since we are talking about Christianity, that sounds like something grandma, who uses outdated racist terms like African-American, would be into.
If he had said that - if he had said something like, “Please don’t judge Christianity by the actions of the Spanish Inquisition …” it would be entirely sensical. However, that’s not what he said.
i.e., “Please don’t judge us by how we behave, and we won’t judge you by how the Nazis behaved”. The Nazis are not to evolution what Christians are to Christianity.
How about this? Don’t judge this Christian by the actions of that Christian?
I am a Christian and I have several close friends that are…passionately Atheist. We respectfully agree to disagree and have had several very interesting conversations over the years about our opposing views. It works because I absolutely agree that at a certain point, my faith is just that, faith. I have no proof for it other than my own feelings and beliefs and I can respect that is difficult for someone else to accept and believe as their own.
It also works because I don’t subscribe to crazy fundamentalist viewpoints.
I guess my response would be to try to get over your own snobby judgement of this friend, or not. Whether or not you agree with someone’s beliefs or not doesn’t mean you have to hold them in contempt because they choose something you may not.
I agree with Poysyn. I’m so new to reconnecting (like my third time even) with my faith, that I’m not even sure if I should call myself a Christian or not. Regardless, I’m trying to get over seeing God through a lens of others’ actions. Believe or not (and my husband still identifies as an atheist, with perhaps one foot in the church door), but there’s no reason not to treat individuals with respect. Sure, there’s exceptions like the folks who are attempting to prevent equality in marriage, but overall, I think we should look to ourselves first and then worry about how a single person and their actions affect us later. Just saying.
