Atheism

The crap written on that page is misleading bullshit, that's why. It's trying to open up a fake gap in the kids' heads where they can wedge an imaginary diety in.

Never seen electricity? Poke your head out during a thunderstorm, or watch a spark plug gap or view any of the demonstrations of arcing available. Electricity is visible and I've seen it. I can see it anytime I like, which is a lot more than I can say for any alleged divine creator.

Never heard electricity? Stand under some high-voltage power lines. Listen to the crack of static electricity when you grab a metal doorknob. Listen to someone arc welding. It's audible and I've heard it. I can hear it anytime I like, which is a lot more than I can say for any alleged divine creator.

Never felt electricity? Well, see, I have. I've had the **** shocked out of me more times than I care to remember. It's tangible, and I can feel it anytime I like, which is a lot more than I can say for any alleged divine creator.

Never observed electricity? Well, seeing, hearing and feeling are direct empirical observations, but thanks to the careful application of reasoning and the technological innovations that have resulted from it, we can measure electricity consistently in a wide variety of ways. I have an ohmmeter. I have eyes, ears, skin and an ohmmeter. I can observe electricity anytime I like, which is a lot more than I can say for any alleged divine creator.

I'd appreciate it if xtians would stop abusing their children's minds with such twisted distortions. They're holding not only those children, but humanity back from achieving its potential, not to mention justifying all sorts of racial, gender, sectarian and sexual discrimination and the widespread violence that results from them. All over some ancient Bronze Age myths composed and embellished orally over generations by an elite few in order to maintain political dominance over the illiterate, ignorant and gullible masses of wandering goat-herders.

Imagine. An adult who tells you that there's an invisible, all-powerful entity that nobody can detect, but that made everything and is running everything, and who wants the equally invisible, undetectable spirit within you to either go to heaven (if you dance to the right tune) or burn forever in Hell, if you **** up and believe the wrong part of the babble, or if you fail to believe in said alleged diety, no matter how utterly adept he is at hiding from you. If such a diety did exist, **** him. What a twisted, sadistic ****.

But you're not talking about the Church. You are referring to theism and atheism. Atheism is too broad a term for discussion on this subject to be fruitful also, but you trot it out anyway when you talk about whether atheists support society’s attitude to porn.


So why trot it out?

I was commenting on the page hh posted. Nothing else.

It said--"We can see hear and feel only what electricity does" As you so ably point out to those who need to be told how to suck eggs.

It went on to say--" But we cannot say what electricity is like itself".

I see nothing wrong with those statements. I can't comment on the rest of the text for obvious reasons.

Hell went out in the 16th century and James Joyce buried the concept in Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. If you want to continue with ideas of hell in order to knock them down it is your privilege. Some of us think you do that in order to undermine the Church's teaching concerning pantsdown positions.

I think you lack either the wit or the courage to undermine such teachings properly. Which I can do reasonably plausibly as long as my audience consists of neurotic free thinkers. I certainly wouldn't try it with an experienced theologian.



What do you suggest as an alternative?

That page is meant to deceive young minds with misinformation, that's my objection to it.

What is a thing apart from its properties? A force is what it does. If it does nothing, it's undetectable and therefore indistinguishable from that which does not exist, such as the alleged diety that allegedly made and runs everything from his secret hiding spot up there in heaven, perhaps somewhere behind one of the superclusters of galaxies that we can actually see and measure.

The search for the thing-in-itself was put to a belated grave by Hume, and scientists moved on to looking for the fundamental forces that govern the universe. Seeing as how they couldn't find a divine entity anywhere, y'know. We know a helluva lot more about electricity than we do about the alleged super-dooper, invisible, undetectable-in-any-way, almighty Creator of the Universe who has repeatedly promised/threatened to judge our immortal, also-invisible-undetectable-in-any-way souls.

I lack the courage to undermine the church's teachings properly? Wtf? What do you think I'm doing right now? I'm calling bullshit bullshit, or as the babble-thumpers prefer, a spade a spade.

Not sure what you meant by those "pantsdown positions", unless you're referring to priests and little boys.

I studied Philosophy and Religion in university because I was planning to become an Episcopal priest. What I learned in the course of studying the history of the babble, a course taught by a Baptist minister, mind you, convinced me that it was all made up. De-converting me certainly wasn't what that theologian had in mind, but the facts and findings of impartial theologians speak loudly and he had the integrity to present them fairly.

I have no fear of going toe-to-toe with any theologian. If there were one here, I'd be a lot more technical in my objections and underminings. However, as it stands, I have yet to encounter anyone who can give a reasonably well-thought-out defense of the xtian mythology, cosmology or ontology. If you'd like to give it a whirl, I'm happy to offer the best I have.

As for your last question regarding what I suggest as an alternative: I suggest suspending all beliefs on metaphysical issues and sticking with empirical evidence and necessary inference. Think Pyrrho of Elis.

Edit: If I seem a bit touchy, please consider that I quit smoking 2 days ago. It's probably better to flame out online than to murder someone IRL.

As far as I am aware most modern philosophers define atheism as the rejection of the existence of the Christian God.

I am not concerned about the semantics. The Church is clear enough on sexual matters. Undermining its position using various forms of wordplay are neither here nor there. "In the President we trust" is not considered suitable for dollar bills because more than half of the population wouldn't trust the President as far as they could throw him. According to what I see at least. The only people here who trust the Prime Minister are the more naive of his party workers.

The motto has appeared on US coinage since 1864 and on bills since 1957.

So get the real issue tackled. Undermine the Church's teaching on rumpy-pumpy like Freud and de Sade tried to do. That's what you are actually here to do. Pretending you don't know it won't wash with me. I know why you get your semantics out if you don't.

If the Church taught to look both ways before you cross the road nobody would give a damn about its God and His wisdom. It has to be something personally important to justify the invective and the obsession.

The problem is that people are not being defined correctly if a definition says one thing and yet people who have a slightly different point of view get labeled incorrectly.

Here is an example. I don't reject the existence of a god. I say I am not convinced that there is a god. I don't believe there is a god. So you tell me, how should I be labeled? Most would call me an atheist, yet I don't reject the existence of a god. Therefore who is improperly labeling me? Myself? Or the dictionary or philosophers?

Come up with a better word that suits a person who does not believe in gods or gods. If atheism is about rejecting a god's existence then we need a term that better suits those who don't believe or are not convinced that there is a god or gods.

Until then we are stuck using atheism even though it is not accurate description of a person who lacks a belief in a god. Now if you try to suggest that I am rejecting the existence then you are setting up a strawman.

You have my sympathies in your resolution to quit smoking and thereby deprive those of your brain cells which thrive on nicotine, or some other ingredient of tobacco smoke, which the Constitution was partly designed to promote the use of, of their sustenance. Your murderous impulses are evidence that the Pipe of Peace was no idle sales gimmick.

What you are experiencing is a return to that brain state which you had before you started smoking. The normal I am forced to say. Pure. pristine and unsullied by the artifice of mankind. Escaping that normality was why you started smoking in the first place. The brain cells which the chemicals in fine Virginia hand-rolling tobacco stimulate remain dormant without their experience of the physiological excitations provided by the fragrant substances. Stagnant.

I refer you to Prof. D.J. Aidley's book The Physiology of Excitable Cells.

Thank you, I feel better already. Still going to burn in hell for all eternity, though, because the all-loving deity who created me so imperfectly said so. Oh, well. Can't have everything, can we?

Some experts claim that the brain cells I referred to are the source of wit and creativity. My own experience of non-smokers emphatically bears out such a claim. A stopped-smoking journalist acquaintance of mine told his readers that when he travelled on the long-distance train he chose to ride in the smoking compartments because the conversation in the NOZMO KING section was unbearable.

Alas even smoking compartments no longer exist. Smokers go by car now. Trying to imagine the Blackpool seaside girls of my youth without their cigarettes is as bad as trying to imagine a rose with no petals.

I remember seeing the "oldest person in the world" on TV. She was 130 odd I think. She lived in the boonies of the Ukraine or somewhere near there. Obviously they asked her what she put her longevity down to and she said smoking, a pipe, from being five and a glass of the local moonshine before turning in. She had never been ill either so she was neither use nor ornament to the medical profession.

Cool. Therefore, god! Now I got it!

That is where we disagree. The page seems to me to encourage young females to just dry their hair and not worry about how the gizmo worked. I approve of that. And it is deceptive to pretend that they can find out how it works by watching lightning, listening to power lines or seeing a welding spark or applying their brain power to the problem when all their brain power is being applied to finding a husband who will settle them down somewhere pleasant with their kids and take care of the buggers for the rest of his life.

I would expect to find on turning the page a guide to how to make jam roly poly and runny custard. Or steak-and-kidney pudding with deep fried potato chips, 2 veg, and thickly buttered bread to dip the gravy up with.

You know what I find interesting FBM that spendius only addressed the last line of your response to him. He spent two posts referring to your last statement about quitting smoking and completely ignored everything else you were talking about. As if the quitting were the topic. He is like a raccoon to shiny things. The quitting smoking was just too shiny he forgot or didn't pay any attention to anything else that was said.

Anyways, I just wanted to mention that and say good luck with the quitting. I know first hand it is tough. Get past two weeks and you are golden. If you get cravings find ways to distract yourself and try not to think about it. When you start thinking about it, you'll just want it more. Habits are best broken by replacing them with new habits. (hopefully healthier ones.)

It's good to know that you are just being silly with all this.

I'm getting the feeling that spendius is a Poe, after all.

And thanks for the encouragement on the quitting smokes thing. So far it's been clear sailing. I'm replacing smokes with alcohol. What could possibly go wrong?

Well for starters, you'll pick up smoking again. Smoking and drinking go hand in hand. Not to mention that if you get drunk your will power to quit will go out the window and you'll just say **** it, ill quit tomorrow and a week later you are wondering what happened and why you are still smoking.

Isn't agnosticism the word?

Not that I think it matters. The more important problem is trying to square postive reinforcers to behaviour in the here and now at the personal level with what theologians working on the aversive consequences over long periods of time.

Heroin is banned not because of its effects in the short term. With heroin the time frame for the negative effects to show is much shorter than that involved in social institutions over centuries. It is easier for us to see.

Someone arguing about secularisation in relation to their own positive reinforcers, which means causing repeats, is at cross purposes with someone who is organising a successful culture which will run and run for a lot longer than any other culture has done.

And those marketing personal, here and now, positive reinforcers have all the best cards.

Good advice, but the alcohol hasn't broken my resolve. I'd rather be poked in the eye with a sharp stick than light another one of those coffin nails.

I guess I underestimated your will power. If you can beat it while drunk then you have won the battle. Now you just have to wait it out and let the physical desire wane. Continued lucks.

Gracias. Maybe the year spent as a Buddhist monk gave me a little more mind control than average. We'll see.

That would explain it. I wouldn't be surprised if it were the case.