Atheism

Seems they're over-doing the one child policy in China.

I think one child may be a too high target to reach in the future given the gender imbalance caused by male child preference. I actually worry a bit about China's social stability over the next generation. I also wonder what their response to will be to India becoming the most populous nation on earth around 2o30.

What about atheist humans? How do you account for them in your reply?

I couldn't agree more.

I haven't. But, I have had them tell me, on an internet forum, how stupid I am for having a belief in God.

Again, you misread me. I am not whining, but maybe you are since you only show up to mock any post I make. Grow up.

I've never had an internet forum wake me up early on a weekend morning. And a forum is lot easier to move out of than your house.

Why would you have to move? The sensible thing to do is tell them you are not interested. Not to run away.

In this spirit, then, let me share a resource I discovered today about being an atheist in a religious culture. WGBH, Boston's public radio station, has an interesting interview with Daniel Denett. In the process of researching his book Breaking the Spell--Religion as a natural phenomenon, Dennett discovered atheists in surprising places: pulpits in churches. He found the phenomenon interesting enough to initiate a study on it.

Here is WGBH's site for the interview.

Here is Dennet's paper (PDF) on the first stage of the study, published in the Journal of Evolutional Psychology

I hope, and think, you will find them both worth your time.

Because Trep, they don't stop coming, even when you tell them you are not interested, and telling one isn't telling them all. And by then they've already woken me up. Assholes. They're like telemarketers who make my dogs bark.

Should I offer you some sage advice on dealing with people who call you stupid for believing in God?

I am going to open them up right now. I saw a news item someplace the other day, on atheist ministers in Christian churches, but failed to keep up with the URL.
>edit<
I believe this is the same information, except in more detail. Thanks.

Did I just see on Colbert that one candidate for Republican chair of the House Energy committee says we don't have to worry about climate change because God promised Noah he wouldn't flood the world again?

That's when religion scares me.

And that habit of taking some bits of the bible literally, but saying other bits aren't meant to be taken literally, and no-one agreeing which bits are which. So if I convert God will send me my own set of bible errata slips?

Theism is just like atheism. There are so many kinds of atheism, there's the kind that says there is/are no god(s), but other atheists believe there is/are no god(s). Some atheist sects even think there is/are no god(s).

Given the really poor and contradictory instructions given to us I think that if god(s) did actually exist that that atheists and theists stand an equal chance of stumbling onto whatever it is the divine wanted us to do.

I show up for a lot of other reasons, as the evidence of the last several pages shows. You're a legend in your own mind. You're the one who needs to grow up--and start by asking yourself what continually draws you back to this thread to whine about how abused you are.

That looks interesting, Thomas, thanks. I'm going to check it out when i have a little more time for it.

I like to think of myself as an open minded person, willing to listen and give everybody a chance, not to look down on people. I don't like hating or despising, I'd be more in favour of understanding and tolerance. But I think it is Self Defence kicking in when dealing with religious people, because I know straight away there is no dealing with them, no compromise, just raving and book thumping and their more likely to attack than I am, personally or even physically. So I wish we could all get on, but that's never going to happen, So I'm nailing my colours to the mast. I despise religion.

I am not fond of religion, but I have great success in making religious people think by being polite and knowledgable about their beliefs. I have met a very belligerant few, but most are simply going with the good feeling that comes from listening to the clown out the front on Sundays/Saturdays. The best sermons on humanity, in my experience, have come from catholic priests. Some of the most belligerant I have met are Mormons.

You will never change them overnight, and such change should be seen as rather dangerous for them, but if you make them think about anomalies in their religion you have done a good job of starting the process of them challenging their own beliefs. Some come out of this stronger in their beliefs, others reach a new level in their belief as to what constitutes God. Slowly, some start to realise the God they have been told about is a nonsensical attempt to understand the unknowable. That is the best you can hope for.

Would it ever be possible to change the mind of these Agnostics here ? Religious people are tarred with the same brush. The best you can hope for is to make them think.

Holy smoke!!!

Do all these lofty and sublime thoughts actually ennoble your sordid and powerless little days as blind matter rolls on its relentless way with no thought of good or evil or the random course of its physical vagaries?

Do these paltry nostrums, previously rehearsed by millions, facilitate a pretence of being undismayed at the universe of Chance and the promiscuous and shameless tyranny that rules your outward lives with a scientific severity you can do nothing about?

Is your proud defiance of irresistable forces which don't recognise your existence, and which your conceits imagine tolerate your knowledge and vituperations, built upon nothing more substantial than the ideals you have fashioned for yourselves out of your own wantonness gilded with linguistic constructions of the most common sort.

The last few pages are as like the sound of a dog pound as makes no difference. Howlings at the moon are entirely religious.

I invited you all to enjoy your atheism and to celebrate it. It seems you need the Christian to bark at and to distract your attention from the reality going on all around you. Atheism is a mere sect of Christianity.

As if atheism can be rendered valid because some pillock knocks at your door and disturbs your snoozing or another silly sod spends the church collection money on whores. Someone at the same escapist game as you lot.

"It's no go the Yogi man,
It's no go Blavatsky
All we want is a bank balance
And a bit of skirt in a taxi."

This is no thread for atheists. It's a thread for bad-tempered clowns to get something they can't articulate off their chests.

Did any of you see the little film I linked of the daily doings of those creatures of the jungle with which we share the greatest amount of DNA and which are our closest relation on Darwin's tree of life? I'm sorry to have to report that it profoundly shocked some of our twee evolutionists.

Even though you don't need my pardon, I pardon you the bait you throw at the atheists as it's fair game.

You always peddle the same points despite the demonstrated facts that not all atheists are the same.

I may be a clown but I'm not bad-tempered.

I also can, and did, articulate the reasons that make me an atheist and a reasonable one.

In your eagerness to bash atheism, you fail to provide valid reasons why I should be a religious person.

If you just can't, then avoid generalisations that patently undermine your sometimes sound stance...

Me too

Scientists have been measuring the water around Greenland, and found that it's about 40 degrees - warm enough to melt the ice and flood low-lands around the world.

Places like Venice is doomed.