Atheists Flock to Secular Sunday School

joebudda »

Thu Nov 29, 2007 3:13 pm Agree: 0   Disagree: 1

schumacr-
You will notice my skepticism in this one.

In regards to fulfilled prophecies
For starters most of the world’s religious beliefs claim to be true because of fulfilled prophecies. The popular beliefs of the time that the four gospels claim to document had there fulfilled prophecies too. Even your bible acknowledges this, Deut. 13:1-3. Then we have people like Nostradamus that dot our histories.

Assuming the prophecies are indeed “visions” of the future. Does that mean all fulfilled prophecies are divinely influenced? And if the claims of monotheism are correct, all “prophets” for this one god? Or does it not necessary have to be divinely influenced but some kind of natural psychic ability, as the bible eludes to in the Deuteronomy verses? And if this is true what reason is there to believe any fulfilled prophecies are divinely influenced?

Or what about claimed fulfilled prophecies that were never prophesied in the bible?

Like in John 7:38 where Jesus said, “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water”. Nowhere in the bible was this prophesied even though here it is claimed to be fulfilled.

Or how about Luke 24:46. Speaking to his disciples on the night of his resurrection, he said, "Thus it is written and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day.". Paul also writes of this, 1 Corinthians 15:3-4. But nowhere in the Old Testament does this “third day” prophecy exist. So what “scripture” are they referring too?

I know of many more but I only have so many characters to use here.

I would like to move onto the “virgin birth” prophecy quickly. Because of the Dead Sea Scrolls we know that “virgin” was a mistranslation from the Hebrew text which means “young woman”. And this translation error people still use as evidence of the divine.

I would also like to fit in the dating of the writings in the New Testament.
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/

The earliest writings were from Paul. But the said prophecies are claimed to be fulfilled in the gospels and the earliest dating is at least 50 years after Jesus is said to have died. And if you look into the synoptic gospel claims, that much of the gospels were copied word for word form each other. This this undermines the claim that these were first hand accounts. And then this means we can’t trust that these are accurate representations, meaning the “fulfilled prophecies” might have easily be written in during the writing of these gospels for some unknown agenda.

I could go on but I will stop here for now.

Atheists Flock to Secular Sunday School

joebudda »

Thu Nov 29, 2007 10:03 am Agree: 1   Disagree: 0

holito8-
I don’t believe you were able to show how I was mistaken, this is why.

[[“The test only show what is measurable not that you are "free and clear."]]

Yes but the point was that we use absence of evidence as evidence of absence all the time. Here is another example, lets say I presented you what looked and in everyway appeared to be an empty fishbowl and told you there was a fish in it. You would think I was mad. You would look at that empty fishbowl and conclude there is no fish in it. This is using this method. You are not seeing any evidence of the fish so then you conclude there is no fish because there is no evidence of the fish.

[[“Tell me. Have you seen a lion construct a house or fly a plane. A lion obey the laws he was given and does not depart from them.”]]

This type of reasoning is disingenuous; also know as “stacking the deck” to favor you. I will show you using reasoning along the same lines.
Have you ever seen a human run as fast as a cheetah or swim as fast as a shark?

All species have their attributes that separate them from the other species. Of course you wish the attributes you hold are better then the ones other animals hold. But really all we are doing by such reasoning is falling pray to our own arrogance.

And regarding all of your “devil” claims.
Before I can accept this “devil” of yours, do you have any tangible evidence that it even exists? Because I have not been convinced that this “devil” of yours does indeed exist. And if there is no reliable evidence of this “devil” of yours then why should I accept your claims that you attribute to this “devil”. As far as I know you can be falling pray to your own confirmation bias, thereby attributing these things to this “devil” and thus preventing you from seeing the “real” causes.

Atheists Flock to Secular Sunday School

joebudda »

Thu Nov 29, 2007 9:43 am Agree: 0   Disagree: 0

Schumacr-
Once again, I wish you a good day.

[[”My question to you would then be: what type of evidence would be persuasive to you in terms of considering that God exists?”]]

I guess it would depend on the evidence and how reliable it is. The best way to answer this question is to present your best evidence and I will either accept it or explain why and give reasons why I reject it.

[[“But there must be a way (and a necessity) to transcend this moral relativism, wouldn’t you say?”]]

Not to sure what you mean by “transcend”. But I know open dialogue works. Think of it this way, slavery was a “good” thing until people who didn’t think so had the freedom to give their reasons why they didn’t slavery was “good”. And it what through this open dialogue that allowed people to present their cases that ended up persuading the majority that slavery isn’t a good thing.

[[“when has your dog/cat ever prayed for you? Only man looks upward to a transcendent.”]]

To be honest I am having trouble taking this seriously. But I think you are presenting a type of ontological argument. I don’t find these kinds of arguments persuasive because we can “dream up” anything, and because we can dream it up does that then mean it must be true?

Think of it this way, if I told you that I can imagine an omniscient shade of green does that them mean that shades of green are omniscient?

This is why I can not accept these types of ontological arguments. We can replace the god with anything and the argument stands just as well.

Regarding practicing what one believes?
I can only take someone’s word for what they claim to believe. I know there are all kinds of Christianity, some believe “works” are the most important element for salvation, while others believe all you need to do is believe. I know they both can be support with the bible depending on how it is interpreted. So I don’t believe it is my place to judge.

Atheists Flock to Secular Sunday School

joebudda »

Wed Nov 28, 2007 10:06 am Agree: 0   Disagree: 1

Schumacr-
Good day to you.

Regarding morals.
If there isn’t a god, being there is no reliable evidence for one, then this god can not be killed. And if we are to use this absence of evidence as evidence of absence, as we do with pretty much everything else.

An example would be if we take an HIV test, lets say 50 times, and every time it comes back negative we then assume we don’t have HIV, this is just one example where we use absence of evidence as evidence of absence.

If we don’t assume a god exists, which is all I see a belief in god is, an assumption, then man is his own “measure”, irregardless if people believe in a god or not.

I view “good and evil” as subjective value judgments we give to things and/or behaviors. I know of no reliable evidence of them being magical forces, if that is what you are alluding too.

All evidence suggests that our morals seem to be both genetic and social.

Genetic evidence is all other social species we see around the world. We don’t see social species killing members of their own “in-group” off, we see them looking out for each other and even putting themselves in harms way to protect the “in-group”. From prides of lions to hives of bees we see these behaviors. Seems like a very human trait from our perspective, but we seemingly want to believe that we are have the monopoly on these types of altruism. We can even see this cross species altruism, think of the stories where the family dog puts itself in harms way to protect a member of the family. This is one of the subjects I have invested hours of research in, so I don’t want to go on for too longs, I will answer questions if you have them or cite sources of need be.

Social based morals, this seems to be self evident when examined with a critical eye. We see morals differ from culture to culture. Here in the US most people believe that the death penalty is a “good” thing, where as in many other countries the majority see the death penalty as a barbaric subhuman behavior.

But does belief in a god mean they are more likely to behave more morally? According to the statistics, the contrary seems to be true. If we look at violent crime rates, by either state or by country it seems the more religious the population of the location is the higher the crime rate is. I am not making any judgments, just stating what the statistics show. And this holds true whether you look by state or by country, though there are the anomalies as with anything.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_tot_cri-crime-total-crimes

Even if we look at prison populations, there are much more religious then there are atheist by percentage. What I mean by this is there are around 15% who claim to be atheist in the United States and only around 0.209% who say they are atheist in prison.
http://www.holysmoke.org/icr-pri.htm

Atheists Flock to Secular Sunday School

joebudda »

Tue Nov 27, 2007 8:47 pm Agree: 0   Disagree: 0

moderation-
If I am understanding you correctly, are you insinuating that if what I think isn't what you think then I shouldn't express what I think? But if we don't question and test what we think how can we know if we are correct or not?

Because it seems me to be something along those lines. If not then I apologize.

We should encourage questioning and alternate views, and demand them to be supported, not the suppression of them. If we allow that then we are one step away form totalitarianism. I prefer having intellectual freedom if you are asking for my opinion on the matter.

Atheists Flock to Secular Sunday School

joebudda »

Tue Nov 27, 2007 8:07 pm Agree: 0   Disagree: 0

moderation-
How very Christian of you.

That is okay, I forgive you.

Atheists Flock to Secular Sunday School

joebudda »

Tue Nov 27, 2007 6:50 pm Agree: 1   Disagree: 0

schumacr-

Regarding Hitler.
You are making assumptions you can not support. The most we can do is take his word on it, the same goes for anyone really. But it really doesn’t matter if he was Christian or not. What is important to note is he used Christianity to convince Christians to partake in the atrocities they committed. This is why dogma is dangerous, we should all question, even more so when we are told not too.

What is this “atheist belief” that Stalin and the others were living to the letter? Is it Communism? Because it was Marxist Communism that they were “pushing”. Once again this falls back to unquestionable dogma, not atheism.

What is atheism?
It is “not theism“, that is it. So it is not something, it is nothing really. It is a label that people like you pretend is “something” though it is really “not something”, in this case not theism. It is like labeling someone who doesn’t believe in karma as an akarmaist. Because they don’t believe in karma does that automatically mean they are, lets say, Big Foot believers? Of course not, that would be silly.

So the term atheist is an illusion of language. Being the label exist it gives the illusion it is something. When in reality it isn’t something.

Yes it is the first law, good catch.
Well regarding this law, energy can only be changed. And you are correct the universe is “cooling off”. This is where Einstein comes into the picture. This is explained as the energy is changing into mass as E=MC^2 shows. So what we seem to be observing is the universe changing occurring to the laws of physics.

So Einstein shows that mass is energy (so to speak), and energy can only change, meaning it can not be created or destroyed. This shows that the universe in one form or another has always been, according to the evidence. The evidence being the laws of physics itself. So realistically the universe isn’t “running down” it is only changing.

Regarding what I believe, I believe in all kinds of things. But regarding the worlds theistic views, you can think of me as a skeptic. This means I will withhold my emotional and personal investment until I am persuaded otherwise. If this Christian does exist he should know what will convince me, so the ball is in his court.

Atheists Flock to Secular Sunday School

joebudda »

Tue Nov 27, 2007 3:36 pm Agree: 2   Disagree: 0

Regarding the "eternal universe".

If Einstein was correct that mass can become energy and vise versa. Which all evidence supports this.

And if the third law of thermal dynamics is correct, stating that mass/energy can not be created or destroyed. Once again all evidence supports this.

Then the universe has always existed in one form or another. The big bang is just he furthest back we can look in its current form.

Please take some time and learn something about what you are claiming before you push it as meaningful in anyway.

Atheists Flock to Secular Sunday School

joebudda »

Tue Nov 27, 2007 3:30 pm Agree: 3   Disagree: 0

schumacr

I am not really understanding your point. For starters according to Hitler, Hitler was a Christian.

And everyone else was killing for their Ideologies they were using to control others. In these cases their Ideology was Marxism in its various forums. Just as Christianity is an Ideology that has been used as a tool to control others. So it is dogma that is the enemy, not atheism or theism.

I know you are attempting to insult atheists by such a poorly researched post, but I don't believe anyone has killed for atheism. The reason being atheism is "not theism", so it isn't something, isn't isn't an ideology, it isn't a belief, it is a label theist pinned on people whom didn't believe their fantastic claims. It would be silly to kill for nothing.

So please get your facts straight so we do continue to propagate such lies.

Thank you.