Atheism

more likely a devil

Why would a person bring a child into a world full of sin and temptation? You would think one would want to avoid having offspring condemned to an eternity of fire and torture if said offspring were not able to avoid the ways of the flesh. Not only that, but even if the child were to be righteous and upright in the pursuance of the enth degree of Biblical teachings, there is nothing to prevent the purportedly loving god of Abraham from smiting him and ten of thousands of other innocents down because .... well, because that was his will that particular moment.

I think I would rather raise a child on the ledges of a 1000 foot cliff, at least then we would both have the realities of actually falling to guide our behavior.

Oh, and thanks for the laugh, Spendius. "The Christian dispensation" The greatest obstacle to thinking and innovation in our otherwise progressive civilization is forever being touted by its slaves as somehow the opposite. Just because there were Christians nearby does not mean they had anything to do with that progress other than act as a drag on it. We have had the great luck to have any number of innovators who, when faced by the fear-mongers and oppositionists of the Church, have had the courage to say "Bugger off."

Joe( Not, sadly, that they ever listen, or bugger off far enough.)Nation

Actually Joe I was thinking of teething, injections, being grinned at by ugly adults, being weighed, being fucked about, being imprisoned in schools and **** on by ugly and stupid teachers who are shaping you into production line or trench fodder, being taxed by a bunch of stone-faced officials, dealing with snow, insects and girls, having to get out of bed before mid-day and get dressed, and trying to be a success, to please people like you, being lied to day in and day out, knowing the end is coming and nobody gives a **** and only pretends to in order to put forth virtue, exposed to chicken flu, swine fever, traffic wardens and hands held forth, being hedged in by laws that it takes 20 feet of a lawyer's shelves to explain, eyesight failing, teeth falling out, ---not the tenth of it. That's pretty lucky.

Hell went out in the 16th century--have you not heard Joe? It's your straw comforter.

Explain to us all how 2, maybe 4, million years of human intelligence only produced Faustian science in Europe in the last tick of the evolutionary clock. Go on Joe--give it a go. With all those different cultures to choose from it should be easy.

Atheists would never have got a sniff. Modern science of dynamic force and spatial extension is an entirely Christian production. Lock, stock and barrel.

Don't people laugh at you for talking like that. Or snigger behind your back. What you know about science could be engraved on a pinhead with a pneumatic drill.

Somehow I question if the early scientists such as Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton would all agree with that statement.

In any case you are just following the path of others believers in lying for Jesus.

The US were founded on so call Christian principles by all good Christians founding fathers is another great lie in the name of and for the glory of the lord.

This is morphing into the "Aetheists, your life is meaningless" Thread.

Same buncha doofii sellin their hokum.

Falling into spendi's trap - diverting the thread to focus on him.

Spendius, just try reading what people write before you ask them to answer the same question you are about to ask.


Already answered. Those involved in the progress of science told whatever Church fathers were in opposition to shut up and mind their bibles and the fees they were charging for the absolution of sins. You name it, blood transfusions, the study of anatomy, the quantum theories of matter, vaccinations, the mathematically ascertained orbits of the planets and even the predictions of weather forecasting as well as the use of the iron plow, for crying out loud, all of these and hundreds of other things were all decried from various pulpits in Europe as non-Biblical.
To say nothing of the big unveiler, Natural Selection.
And Europe and it's people said to the various Church Fathers : "Hush up. This stuff is real, you can continue to spew the fairy tales and collect enough money to build another cathedral, but in the meanwhile we are going to carry on as if you aren't germane to the argument because you're not."

And the church and it's misogynistic "fathers" (there's a laugh for you.) being cowards and probably, like all good con-men, knowing when the pigeon can't be wrung, backed off.
Hence, science in Europe.

Meanwhile, the mullahs kept a hard rein on the inventors of algebra and algorithms, so that when the engineers of British Petroleum arrived in Saudi Arabia in 1930, they had to show the sons of the people who invented the pump in 2500 BCE how to get oil out of the ground.

Nobody knows what science was snuffed out by the missionaries of South America and Africa.
If there was such a thing as sin, that would be a biggie.

Nobody knows what other science would have come out of China and Japan had it not been for the isolation imposed by the superstitious. China's saving grace was the Confucianists who without the help of a belief in a deity, found ways of building social structure and brilliant systems of roadway and water delivery.
Any poor sap who while in the grips of the Church in Europe did good science, Mendeleev comes to mind, did so by ignoring the mutterings of the fear-filled brothers.

And you say hell disappeared in the 16th Century, HAH, you obliviously have not attended services in the Middle United States recently. Hell, they say, is right out their front door.

Joe(fear thy god, yes, and stay forever dim.)Nation

No, because "disposition" doesn't mean "inevitability". All it means is a statistical probability. So yes -- there could be a genetic disposition to be religious, and some people raised in a religious family could still become atheists.

The best counter to the kind of religionist argument you cite comes from Daniel Dennett (I think). It's that we humans are also genetically hard-wired to catch the common cold. Every human culture has it. And what good does that do for us? How does that make the common cold something we ought to cherish?

I already made that point, Thomas, to the effect that there is no plausible reproductive value in subscribing to such superstitions.

Which means very little except that you can spell the names of four guys you have heard of and trot them out so that people will think you know something about them.

They would all have agreed with the statement. Newton especially. He was a religious fruitcake. Way out.

And Canon Nicolas Koppernigk, was in the Vatican in 1500 and in correspondence with Cardinal Schoenberg. His uncle Lucas, who brought him up after his father died, was a Bishop. He procured for Nicolas the comfortable prebend of the Canonry of Frauenburg and his eldest sister was slotted in as Mother Superior of the Cistercian convent at Kulm. Uncle Lucas's bastard son by either a "pious virgin" or a "whore" depending which tale you read, was made Mayor of Braunberg. American Holy Rollers are like girl guides compared to men of the world such as old Lucas.

It was an absentee prebend until he was 40. And he has another one. He was "Scholasticus of the Collegiate Church of the Holy Cross in Breslau. His Book of Revolutions was dedicated to Pope Leo X who was a patron of the arts and sciences in an age of tolerance.

Johannes Kepler was more or less insane and not without good reason. He believed in horoscopes and that number was the key to religious revelation. He attended theological seminary from 13 to 18. He was headed for the priesthood when somebody died and a mathematics post came vacant. He was shunted into that to get rid of him from the seminary. Such is genius. And he was one.

I could write at length about Galileo but for now I'll just say that he was well connected in the Vatican. Cardinal del Monte wrote--" If we were still living under the ancient Republic of Rome, I verily believe that there would have been a column on the Capitol erected in Galileo's honour."

Pope Paul V received him in audience and the Jesuit Roman College honoured him with a day long ceremony.

As Arthur Koestler wrote--" The Jesuit Order was the spearhead of the Catholic Church. Jesuit astronomers everywhere in Europe--Scheiner in Ingoldstadt, Lanz in Munich, Kepler's friend Guildin in Vienna, and the Roman College in a body --began to support the Tychonic system as a half way house to the Copernican which was, of course, incorrect.

Save your name dropping for the street corner Bill. This is an international forum.

Quote me a lie I have told.

The ass looks over the hedge and brays.

How so. I'm on the argument not on me. Your statement is tantamount to suggesting A2K should shut down. What else can we make of it if any post that Ed doesn't agree with can be dismissed with such a bark.

Atheists obviously want a clear field and a one-way megaphone. Anybody else is setting a trap and diverting the argument to himself. And that is precisely how they behave if ever they get power. Which they won't. They are pissing into the wind.

Sounds like Spendi has been visiting Google this day. Nothing happening while you wait for your dole check?

And you not a religious fruit case LOL.

Second as Newton did not buy into the three equal parts of the three in one god head he more then likely would had been burned at the old stake and or torture to death if that fact had been known in his lifetime.

Find that stuff on Google fm and I'll show my arse in the Co-op window.

All you lot know about Galileo has come from the circularity you are revolving in coming from those centres of information, such as the media conglomerates wande quotes, which have a financial interest in rejecting the teachings of the Church because it pays to pander to the growing numbers of people who are--

1-Complicit in an abortion. Not abortion note. An abortion. A specific one.

2- Complicit in an adultery.

3- Complicit in an incident of sex before signing the documents. Casual sex.

4-Complicit in a male homosexual event.

5-Complicit in a divorce.

**wanking is only a venial sin.

A dole check??? I should be so lucky.

Name dropping was the only thing Bill was engaged in. He knows nothing about the guys he tried to scrape a bit of integrity off. **** all. And I hope my remarks cause him to go find out about them.

He was on the magical incantation trick.

If there had been nothing happening here I might have given the full story.

True he was very well connected with the leadership of the church and that fact is likely the only thing that save his life in the end.

That however is not promoting science when you do not kill one of the the scientists for challenging the church world view and just prevented him from further writings and give him house arrest instead for the rest of his days.

Come on Bill. Quote me a lie I have told. That's what you were asked to do.

Lie???????

Why should I need to do that?

Your claims that religion promote science and in fact make it possible and I am challanging that position as the major early scientists was all just one small slip from having a very slow death at the hands of the Church.

In a number of cases they arranged their works to be publish only after their deaths so to be beyond the reach of the church torturers.

Not my idea of supporting science even if it your.

Hah. It's not what you say is wrong, it's what you leave out.So funny. Where to start? Copernicus dedicated Revolutions to Leo X No....., twas one of the Pauls , but he couldn't get anything printed without kowtowing to his boss, Christ's Vicar on Earth whoever he was. You have the right time period though. Leo X, also made famous by pissing Martin Luther off because the sales of indulgences, was one of the least religious Pontiffs in history, yeah, a patron of the arts, stacking up the sculptures while not exactly paying much attention to saving souls. More importantly, Copernicus had his theory intact some thirty years before he dared to put into open circulation. (He had passed around a brief of the theory for years but feared crossing the Church, so to speak.)

The Church was still hanging onto the idea -- as a sacred truth-- that Europe, Asia and the newly discovered Africa were the whole of the world. That this one interconnected landmass was the sole creation of God surrounded by water all around. Amen. This is in the 1520-30's, a little inconvienent truth for them was that the Spanish, Portuguese and even the English (using an Italian mariner, John Cabot -real name, Cabato) were sailing back and forth to an entirely non-theological part of the world.

One of the things that Copernicus saw in Germany were new maps of the discovered lands floating there in a impossible place. But they were real. As real as his theory on the Sun's position vis a vis the Earth. Sorry, your Holiness, we are not the center of anything.
Your holy truths are bullshit.

So, one chunk of sacred truth falls, so do others, so do they all. Copernicus STILL waited until he was breathing his last before getting his work printed, so the boys in the cassocks couldn't get to him with their nonsense of excommunication.

Thanks,S< a pretty good example of the Church's interference with truth overcome finally by facts in evidence and one person's willingness finally to say "Here. You toffs are wrong."

Copernicus dodged out death's door, poor Galileo-- almost sixty years later-- got himself condemned because the Church, that institution you champion, was still insisting that the earth was in the center. That belief alone put navigation and the discovery of the calculation of longitude back 100 years.

Joe(The Jesuits would have put the Church straight, but they spent those years killing Protestants.)Nation

Spendi, you seem to be ignoring the stats that are out there. Some links were provided some pages back about teen (pre-marital) sex and pregnancy, divorce rates, etc. A higher percentage of believers do these things than atheists. At least in this country this is true.