Koyaanisqatsi

It is categorically impossible for an atheist to be "biased" when it comes to religion.

Impossible.

Nor do any of us "brainwash" people, unless it is to clean out all of the shit cult leaders have been defecating into their member's craniums since birth.



Sorry, but nothing pisses me off faster than being falsly accused of crimes that only cults are guilty of.

[ August 15, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>

Perchance

Hello, Jove, and welcome to II!

The first question I remember having concerned the Adam and Eve story. I went to a Catholic kindergarten (luckily, only for the one year), and I wanted to know why snakes could talk in that story but not now- which was the way the teacher put it. I was extremely interested in animals as a child, and if a talking snake had existed, I wanted to know so I could talk to it . But the teacher didn't really answer. She just repeated what she'd said about the talking snake existing "in the story."

(Really, you would think a kindergarten teacher could manage the questions of a five-year-old).

After that came questions about who God's parents were, where God was, what Jesus looked like, if we came from Adam and Eve or monkeys (I came down on the side of the monkeys), and finally how God could be watching me all the time, the way my grandmother insisted he was (and why he would want to watch me, for example, going to the bathroom). I think the last chance I had to believe in Christianity faded when I threw my children's Bible across the room because I was mad at God promising to kill the descendants of Esau (in Obidiah), when they hadn't done anything to him.

Sometimes I wonder if I might not have become religious if I were raised in a family that did have the answers to these questions (and, well, a family that went to church and a father who didn't openly mock religion and bring me books on evolution all the time). After all, these were a child's questions. Were they too simple? Did I dismiss Christianity out of hand because of them? Should I have sought more answers before deciding that God didn't matter?

But then again, if they were so simple, I probably would have found the answers to them somewhere- if not in my family, then somewhere else since I started reading about more than just animals. And I haven't.

-Perchance.

WJ

Jehovah's ... I can see a possible inconsistency. On the other hand, most intellegent people see the inconsistency of atheism. Specifically, why have you just posted in the EOG other than to just say, hi?

Walrus

Koyaanisqatsi

Yes, it's so inconsistent of us to comprehend the simple fact that fictional characters from ancient cult mythologies do not factually exist.

Darwin's Finch

This isn't going to turn into another thread where WJ tries to make us see that we're really just agnostics with bad consciences, is it?

Is it?

Welcome, Jove.

[ August 15, 2002: Message edited by: Darwin's Finch ]</p>

Perchance

I don't, and I think of myself as intelligent.

Five possibilities:

1) I'm not really that intelligent.
2) Atheism doesn't have inconsistencies.
3) It has inconsistencies I can't see, even if I am intelligent.
4) You are making this up as you go along.
5) More than one of these is true.

I take 5- 2 and 4, with a dash of 3.

-Perchance.

WJ

Well perchance, I've got to hand it to you, the first step in correcting the inconsistency is recognizing it! Some say that's what intellegence means.

I will argue, though, that 2 is absolutely false But of course that would only demonstrate your inconsistent use of reason, the potential for contradiction that is. You see, I *can* talk about a God; *you* can't!

AJ Ayer for President!

Darwin's Finch

There is no inconsistency in discussing literary characters.

WJ

There is inconsistency in discussing *nonexistent attributes* of literary characters.

Perchance

You can talk easily about something logically contradictory, defined by everything it is not, and which most likely doesn't exist?

No wonder you see inconsistencies in atheism!

-Perchance.