Atheism

Cool JPB . . . thanks for pointing that out . . . i missed it before, but as this thread is overrun with trolls who just want to derail the discussion, that's no surprise.

Inferentially, there was always a great deal of doubt even in western societies. More than 2000 years ago, Cicero produced the following analogy, very similar to the Reverend Paley's watchmaker analogy:



This was from his work On the Nature of Gods. Would this sort of analogy have been necessary, would Cicero have been at pains to make such an argument, had there not been a significant doubt, or impious incredulity in his society?

The Chinese characters for the nation of China actually translate as "middle kingdom"


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It was always an interesting attitude to me. The significant thing is that these "religious" attitudes were not ubiquitous, but were the province of the aristocracy and the so-called emperors.

God is an invention of man. It's is man's task to perfect God. The evil in the world is due to an imperfect God being unable to deal with human nature. The more man perfects God the less evil there will be and it is impossible to perfect a non-existent entity.

A belief in the entity is necessary to perfect It.

The problem of evil is that it requires a belief in a malignant or incompetent God or that it is innate in fundamental human nature. The atheist rules out the former and is left with an evil mankind. A highly intelligent species produced by evolution with evolutionary instincts. Once the atheist has done that he has to accept the evil done in the name of anything as just another way of doing evil. Criticising it is as daft as criticising Mt. Everest. His own solutions to the problem of evil can just as easily lead to evil as can other solutions given that solutions are society-wide and have to be implemented by large numbers of people rather than just himself sat in front of his computer having ridiculous megalomaniacal fantasies between sips of hot-chocolate.

I recognise that such fantasies are not ridiculous if they are in the service of getting easy, convenient and relatively cost-free shags. Which, of course, requires women to sell themselves short in any manner they can be made or hypnotised into doing. Even going so far as to make them accept that they can be substituted and have no monopoly which can only be done by an extended education in the field of the Higher Learning.

Don't try it in the pub. Seminars and suchlike are the place.

Okay, this one is actually very, very funny. I've been chuckling for five minutes now. I'm gonna share this with my Christian sister (she'll laugh) - my mother (she'll giggle, but say, 'Oh Rebecca Jean....such language!) my kids (they'll laugh - it'll remind them of bluntcards - which they know I love) and my best atheist friend (he'll laugh too).
So see - Christians and atheists can agree on some things. Thanks for posting this hingehead - it's been my laugh of the day today.

I think the thrill is more in "shut-the-****-up" than in anything else. The sheer daring of it.

Is the book a Bible? If it is it looks to be open about where Solomon's Song is and then the caption can be altered to----well read it and see the possibilities which are more likely judging from his loving arm around her.

You are easily amused Rebecca. The picture was picked out to make the caption. Actually captions should be made to fit the picture.

Could it be the Kama Sutra?

What amuses me is the thought of any man trying to put that one over on me, my sister or my mother. As if....you probably wouldn't want to be there for the reaction he'd get. That's what's so funny about it to me.

And I'm STILL LAUGHING

Ya think, Rocky?

And they went to the Philippines, then other SE Asian countries, did the same in Hawaii, the list is long and brutal.

It is interesting that both William Prescott and Francis Parkman, respectively the 19th century American experts on Spain in the New World and France in North America, seemed to have made a genuine effort to separate their own religion and world view from their reportage on the aboriginal Americans. Both acknowledge that often the only records they have are those provided by the conquerors. Of course, being Protestants, that may have been due to their disdain for the Catholics who were the Spanish and French colonizers. Nevertheless, Parkman, for example, reports the comments of the Jesuits with a great deal of skepticism and scorn, while pointing out that the French got along much better with the aboriginal Americans than other nations did, and compares their policies favorably with the English Protestants of the North American Atlantic coast. (The one exception being the Iroquois. Within weeks of landing in what became Canada, Samuel de Champlain joined an Ottawa war party which badly damaged and drove off the annual Iroquois raid. The Iroquois never forgave the French, and spent, literally, more than a century attempting to exterminate them. In fact, they attempted to exterminate all of the aboriginal allies of the French in an attempt to bankrupt the French fur trade and engross its proceeds for their own trade with the Dutch and the English.)

Prescott, whose monumental work runs to more than 20 volumes, divided each volume into tomes, and at the beginning of each tome, he does sketches of his historical sources. He frequently does thumbnail biographies of principle primary source writers, and that included aboriginals who became Catholics, learned to read and write Spanish, and wrote accounts of their own recollections of the conquest and those of their fathers and grandfathers

By and large, though, the Dutch and English Protestants seem to have had no interest in the history and ethnology of the aboriginals. They just wanted them out of the way.

Spendi, stop trying to explain it away. It is funny.



Could you remind me, what rule number is that?

Sure. Anything to oblige.

When Henry James submitted his play The Saloon to the Stage Society in London (about 1907) it was rejected. "A houseful of rubbish" they said. James was advised to "stick a happy ending on it" so that he "could give victory to one side just as artistically as to the other". They said that such a facility revealed a " shallow and misleading" idea of what art was. And so it does.

The picture is a short play. It can be given any ending the chooser of the picture wishes in order to push his own boat out irrespective of the context the picture was taken in. The guy might be choosing his dinner from a cookbook. Or anything anybody fancies.

So it is no surprise to the viewer that the caption writer chose what he did if he's promoting atheism in order to justify persuading some lady, say, to abort the little mite he had so gratuitously landed her with. And an essential aspect of wit is the surprise. And it's no surprise that hinge borrowed his useless effort presumably unable to think up his own.

I was being kind. Using understatement. It's actually dire and it is the conditioned puritan streak kicking over the traces with an obscenity, which one can hardly imagine having been said in the situation depicted. Rebecca poses as the "liberated woman" who can mix it with the guys and that is what draws her to it. I wonder does hinge use language like that in front of any daughters or nieces he might have or those of his friends and neighbours. If not he is using A2K to have a fling in that daring direction.

I advise Rebecca not to share it with her sister who might well think that her living in England is corrupting her mind.

A couple of sociologists have made a study of the frequency of obscenity in conversations and they have concluded that high frequencies are associated with danger. Infantry men for example. Trawlermen. Also with testing conditions. Which is borne out by my own experience.

One assumes therefore that users of obscenity feel themselves in danger or stressed up or that they are aping those who are in danger or stressed in order to shave off a little of their cachet for themselves from the confines of the scented cotton-wool cocoon they are living in provided by the soldiers, fishermen, miners and repairers of power lines during blizzards.

It's worse than dire. It's pathetic.

What a coincidence. I'm reading 'The Beast in the Jungle', by Henry James right now and really enjoying it. I'd forgotten what a good storyteller he was.

Spendius - the reason this is so funny to me is the incongruity of the situation.
If atheists want to believe that all Christian women allow themselves to be spoken to like that and that all Christian men speak to their female family members in such a way - so be it. Whatever. I know how ridiculously inane and stereotypical that is.
It's funny to me because I can't imagine it ever happening - okay? That's it. It's outside of my experience and so was an unimaginable surprise to me. I wasn't expecting it.

I don't pose as a 'liberated' woman. But I've never been spoken to by any man like that - ever. So what does that make me in reality? A liberated poseur? I don't know.

And my sister has already noted and acknowledged the fact that my language has deteriorated since I started working in the prison - yes - which is in England. But I'd be willing to bet if I were working in a prison in the US, F*** would be tossed around just as freely, and I'd have picked it up there too.

It's a bad habit I've picked up and have to work to suppress - just like I have to remember to try not to say 'innit' or 'I'm not bovvered'- they're both so fun to say.

Well, there you go. That explains the whole 'prison language' angle.

Henry James is said to be an "art for art's sake" man. Those who view art as a practical method of improving mankind think it is effete. I have no view on the matter. I like both.

The first can easily become a hothouse of narcissistic sentiment and the other descend to Soviet propaganda posters.

But at their best they both have value for me.

The picture and caption were neither. It was dreadful. It was as bad as a picture of Mr Obama shown as saying "I'm only in it for the dough--suckers." Which I don't think even the Republicans have stooped to.

You can completely disregard my opinion and refer to it as bullshit, I don't care. Most atheists tend to be blatantly disrespectful and in my defense I believe your rebuttal is bullshit. Atheists have the same baseless and redundant arguments, turning to science for all their answers. Well science was flawed from the get go. This is why it is constantly changing because human beings can never fully comprehend God's creation. We continue to search for answers out in the universe but the truth lies within ourselves. I would like to see one atheist give a logical explanation of the universe without a creator. Everything with design has a designer. Period. This reality was designed by God, this dimensional realm was created by a limitless deity. I know this to be true and no nonsensical theories proposed by atheists who feel they are intellectually superior to those who believe in God will ever change that, just as your beliefs that there is no God will probably never change. Man has free will, he can believe whatever he wants, I just choose to believe in God. I don't need to present any evidence because the evidence is all around us. You just need to open your eyes.

In the first place, I said that an atheist does not need science to become an atheist. Conveniently, you overlooked my statement. Secondly, you want me to accept your religious view without offering one speck of proof. You are the disrespectful one, coming to a thread by and about atheists to spread your propaganda.

Still not offering any proof of anything I see.

You should probably put the gun down and back out of this thread, you clearly have nothing to offer on the atheist experience except to serve as an object lesson in why we find some religionists eminently creepy and bordering on psychotic.

If I wandered into your lounge room and said:

This reality was designed by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, this dimensional realm was created by a limitless deity. I know this to be true and no nonsensical theories proposed by christians who feel they are intellectually superior to those who believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster will ever change that, just as your beliefs that there is no the Flying Spaghetti Monster will probably never change. Man has free will, he can believe whatever he wants, I just choose to believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I don't need to present any evidence because the evidence is all around us. You just need to open your eyes.

How would you respond?

I know! Its just so easy, right? No logical explanation is needed. It's all just magic.

Also, just wondering, how respectful do you think Christians are to atheists? More or less than the other way around? Oh, that's right, atheists are undeserving of respect by definition, and should expect scorn and eternal punishment for their evil and stupidity.

I was trying to persuade a bloke in the pub the other night not to spend £1965 on his own funeral. That was the price he was being asked. He only has one relative and hasn't seen her for years. At one point I said to him "are you an atheist?" thinking he probably was and thus the pointlessness of his proposal could be exposed and he could have about 800 pints with the money. He said, "I'm not exactly an atheist". An atheist who was in the conversation said to him, "you can't be not exactly an atheist." And laughed. I smirked myself.

They argued the point while I sang "On Ilkley Moor B'at 'at" quietly.

I told him that the local council will bury him for free once his toes turn up. But he wanted a nice coffin and to end up in his hometown cemetry next to his Mum. The council don't do that.