Jayhawker Soule

Have I been that obvious?

Sorry, slept late. How might I help you?

hal9000

ok I was barking up the wrong tree with RD. Youhoo any fundies want to play on this thread?

FarSeeker

Sorry about responding to only the 1st post (and not reading any Subsequent responses), but I just felt like jumping in.

One popular response to statements like "God Bless America" on this site is "which God?" So I ask Mr. Payne, "which human reasoning?"

If there is no deity, then all religion is simply human reasoning, and by your own opinion, a dismal failure. What caused this failure? What is it in the belief in supernatural deities that could "cause" people to commit the atrocities you moan about?

"They" were in control. "They" used their logic and reason to develop their laws. You say they failed. What makes you think that somehow you and your reasoning and logic will do any better?

Perhaps you will claim the "learn from history" or "stand on their shoulders" response, but this fails too. Marxists had the same resources you have, and failed utterly. You cannot claim that the vast majority of people in all the countries under those Atheists' control were somehow inherently evil.

One interesting point I have been trying to make about this is that whatever you say about Marxism (such as calling it a "quasi-religion") you just don't have many people disagreeing with it on this web site. Yeah, I've heard the responses to that, "well there aren't many Marxists on this site / in our society /" etc. My reply is that there would be many religious people on this site if you did criticize religion either.

Any way, I doubt you can use your logic and reason to develop a universal morality and ethics, or enforce it if you could. Look at Nietzsche, Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Deng, Dr. Peter Singer, and numerous others. These being Atheistic people applying their best reasoning, still failed to do better that those religious authorities you attack.

Consider that not long ago Holland had a problem with doctors euthanasing old people without their permission. We would call that murder, but it was just another friendly service to the doctors.

Or perhaps I see the problem that one Atheist debater had when asked to establish why murder was wrong thru reason alone. Instead of answering, he attacked the questioner by implying the questioner believed murder wasn't wrong -- an obvious Ad Hominem attack. Yet this prominent Atheist proudly reported this attack, in his book, as a great victory for his logic.

I'll make a simple wager: If you can convince Dr. Peter Singer that a new born baby is always fully human and deserving of legal protection in all circumstances, I'll admit you have a chance in a flaming hot void of succeeding.

I don't hold out much hope tho.

Wizardry

Presumably everybody’s.

Nothing about religion even remotely resembles reasoning.

Lack of reasoning.

Blind submission to authority and dogma. It’s painfully easy to get people to do something terrible if they don’t actually think about what they’re doing. On the other hand, you try getting a group of thinking people to all agree to commit atrocities like that. It’s much, much harder.

They weren’t bad starts, either. I think that the Judeo-Christian morality is a perfectly good starting point, but that doesn’t mean that all rational inquiry should stop there.

They didn’t clearly oppose slavery or the oppression of women. They didn’t say anything about governmental power being derived from the consent of the governed. They didn’t allow for further rational inquiry of these concepts. That’s not exactly a sparkling record.

“Those who don’t learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.” Crazy us.

And we learn from their failures. Duh.

We don’t claim that. We don’t even believe in evil.

It’s a quasi-religion because even though it doesn’t believe in a god, it is an authority-based system that doesn’t allow questioning of its doctrines. Just like religion. Marx’s writings are the Truth with a capital ‘T’. In my book, it might as well be a religion.

I do not understand what you are trying to say here.

Oh, and I suppose that we all should be getting our morality from invented sky fairies, rather than thinking

Who said that atheists automatically come up with good ideas? We don’t. We’ll have a few miscues, and a few nutjobs, but at the end of the day, we’ll come up with something that makes sense.

That would be bad.

So would I.

And illegal, I’m sure. Your point is?

I don’t really trust your presentation of this debate. If it is accurate, that atheist can’t debate worth a damn. It doesn’t even seem like that hard of a question.

We are social animals. We live in a society. If killing other members of the society wasn’t deemed incorrect, then killing would become a routine event. Considering that people don’t generally like being killed, they would tend to avoid other members of the society for fear of their lives. Hence, the society would collapse. The outlaw of murder within a society is a vital component to the survival of that society.

Why should Dr. Singer change his views?

If you can convince me why Dr. Singer is wrong without appeal to the supernatural, then I will accept your wager.

That’s a great let down for all of us.

Peace out.

owlafaye

I had one Christian poster tell me disparagingly that "Logic, Reason and Common Senes were the "trinity" of atheism"

We are dealing with morons folks. Christian posters to these boards are mentally deficient and very unstable. Yet, the fact that they are welcome escapes them completely.

The Christian boards have you silenced or booted within 4 or 5 posts, yet these people are welcome on all atheist/agnostic boards.

These are the Christian "shock troops" seeking favor in the eyes of the Lord. They are also the most dangerous people in the entire Christian Movement.

Occasionally they entice one of their "ministers" to come do battle with us heathens...and he promptly leaves in confusion and probably praises the shock troops from the pulpit the next Sunday for their abuses suffered at the hands of the "heathens".

Dangerous folks you are talking to, remember that.

owlafaye

...replying to Pandora: You sure have a good grip and a nice simple way of posting. I identify with you strongly.

owlafaye

Mass Murderer?

A huge asteroid strike is badly needed. I think we could survive and that our knowledge and technology could survive.

In this way, we would sping into the future...Progress would be phenomenal. Christanity would survive of course. Can't be helped, but then they would be in a much more hostile environment.

David M. Payne

Sorry I have been remiss in answering this thread, but I’m working on a new short story, “Osama bin Eternal” and it and my life off line have been dominating my time reciently.

Farseeker Said [Blah, Blah, Blah] and that he didn’t read the rest of the posts in this thread but thought he would jump right in anyway. (Hint Far, read the rest of the posts, and you will find many of your answers.) Well, let me welcome you to the Sec-Web Far. I was going to answer you anyway, but Wizardry did such a good job of it that I’ll let his remarks stand for me on your post. (Thanks Wiz.)

FarSeeker

Why no one sees the failure of your reasoning here is beyond me. These two statements are contradictory.
First you claim NOTHING in religion resembles reasoning, then claim at least one thing IS reasonable.

Don’t you see how you are the blind leading the blind?

Please read the Bible without the blinders that Atheist propaganda has forced on you. The Bible demands justice and fairness for everyone in a time when people you defend were committing mass infanticide. It wasn’t the Greeks who outlawed slavery (they had 2 types of people, Greek freemen and barbarians/slaves), China (both ancient and modern) didn’t outlaw slavery. The Roman Republic/Empire didn’t outlaw slavery. The Soviet Union didn’t outlaw slavery. England and the USA outlawed slavery and basically forced that law on the world. But now that Europe cultures have turned away from God, they don’t care that slavery has returned.

While you may not accept God’s authority, it is there.

Atheism doesn’t clearly oppose slavery or the oppression of women. Those who fought against it were Christian more than anything else. On another thread some Atheist tried to imply that Atheism was responsible for the Civil rights movement of the 20th century; completely ignoring REVEREND Martin Luther King.

But you’re not!
There is a thread on this site dedicated to using the “all Christians are insane” idea of the Soviet Union to lock up Christians for their beliefs.
One Atheist, in the “Skeptical Inquire,” said basically that religion should be put under house arrest.
A demented judge down south is trying to outlaw public prayer.
Another writer in “Free Inquiry” hates Christians because they keep saying, “bless you” when she sneezes.
This is a very short list of Atheists not learning from history.

An old cry against the unbalanced nature of this Forum.

Atheists on this site do not criticize Marxists. (Therefore I don’t see that you really disagree with them.) It has been claimed that that is because they don’t post here, but that is illogical because you would abuse Christians even if we did not post here (admitted by an Atheist). You attack Christianity and Christians for things you think they were responsible for, but hardly a peep about Marxists. This is apparently favoritism for fellow Atheists.
Paraphrased: “When they come for you, will there be any one to speak up?”

1.) Because you have obviously apparent, rational proof that babies are people? Or don't you think infanticide is wrong? (I guess not.) Maybe this is related to why the doctors mentioned above did not consider euthanasia to be murder.

Without God, humans are just animals, no more special than that bacteria your body just destroyed. So under Atheism murder isn't necessarily wrong, it's just a personal choice (That adds a whole new meaning to the phrase "Pro-Choice"), and forcing your morality on others isn’t allowed. Or is it?

If you can't convince a Princeton college professor of "bioethics" that babies are people, how are you going convince anyone that your "rationally developed" morality must be accepted? Or are you going to simply force your beliefs on everyone?

No, no, that can't be right; killing a unhatched eagle will get you arrested, killing an unborn baby is "just getting rid of a blob of flesh" (which can sense the world around it, react to voices, suck its thumb, consume and eliminate; etc.). A prematurely born baby is a baby (for now at least), and its twin still in the womb is a blob of discardable flesh, that is the essence of abortion and the point of failure of Atheist morality.

2.) I can't, and neither can you. That is why you are afraid to accept my challenge.

Admit it, all you are trying to do is in creating your "rational morality" is develop your own religion.

[ April 09, 2002: Message edited by: FarSeeker ]</p>

hal9000

Farseeker you may want to read this,<a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/features/2000/payne1.html" target="_blank">The Revenge of the Petty Bourgeois Intelligentsia</a> and this,<a href="http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetId=77" target="_blank">The Mensa Flu.</a> before you go much further down this road. Calling DP a communist is pretty far off base.

[ April 10, 2002: Message edited by: hal900069 ]</p>