Atheism

Well, we certainly don't lack for evidence that theists react hysterically to the mere thought of there being atheists. Make sh*t up indeed.

I have a friend, who, when we met in the 1960s, was a church-going Seventh Day Adventist. He heard me arguing with some other ship mate, but never joined in. He sometimes laughed at us. Once he argued evolution with me. We both were short on ammunition. In the following years he studied marine biology, as we drifted apart. Not many years ago, we reconnected and now stay in touch through emails. He mentioned once that he is not a Christian. I did not ask him for details. Although he heard me argue with a rabid Christian, in the 60s, I never once ridiculed his church or told him he ought to think like me. He did it on his own, through filtering all the new information and seeing that evolution is essentially the truth.

I'm an atheist. Nobody here bothers me or is wasting my time. I would soon put a stop to that if they were.

I don't want to convert anybody to atheism because if everybody did convert to atheism our societies would be profoundly different and in ways I don't think any atheist contributors here would approve of.

Other atheists ignore this very important point because it frightens them. In fact it is the only point worthy of consideration in adult circles. In that sense they are all trolling. A philosophical point of view, with no consideration of social consequences, concerning the existence or otherwise of God has no merit.

If the thread was called Republicanism we would be debating policy. So what is the atheist policy. farmerman once suggested re-education camps for the religious. That is at least a start.

I would segregate the sexes which would put an end to all the raping and assaulting and I would organise reproduction on scientific lines with couplings approved by scientific authorities and with the babies being brought up in state nurseries from the start.

Recreational sexual activity would be based on a reward system more formalised than it is now. Religious buildings would either be re-cycled for building materials or put to other uses. I know of two churches which are used for commercial activity and one that is now a house. Staff would be put to other work.

"In Dawkins we trust" would appear on all currency notes and Presidential speeches would end with "have a good day". All decedent music would be banned. Private property would cease to exist except for personal items like combs and toothbrushes.

A well run and humane open prison is a reasonable model to start from.

Never in all my life have I come across such vacuous juvenile tripe as is being posted on this thread purporting to be a discussion about atheism. All it is is a bunch of trolls trying to justify their infractions of the Christian moral teachings regarding rumpy-pumpy.

Setanta regularly belittles Jesus. And what use is " a lot of what He reportedly said" when that is merely a cherry picking exercise. I presume His condemnation of adultery and exchange markets are excluded.

Now that is real made up ****. The epitome of vacuous juvenile tripe.

"You're my friends if you follow me. I don't call you servants, but I call you friends"- (John 15:15)

Actually...he mostly called them "sheep"...and that seems to be more appropriate than either servants or friends.

And that is more belittling of Jesus.

If you want to try before you buy, check out his book readings on YouTube. I have a particular fondness for his 2006 talk in Lynchburg, VA. His question-and-answer session with students from Falwell's Liberty University is interesting. Here's the talk:



. . . and here's the Q&A.



Confession time: You will find that a lot of things Dawkins says sound familiar. That's because I steal from him relentlessly.

I think I am on the verge of downloading Dawkins. More later.

Romeo quoted Jesus- "You're my friends if you follow me. I don't call you servants, but I call you friends"- (John 15:15)

Frank Apisa replied:

"Friends" is definitely the word he used in the above verse..
In other verses he likened the population of earth to being like a flock of sheep without a shepherd, so he stepped up to the plate to take command-
"My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they know me" (John 10:27)
Likewise there are "shepherds" in every walk of life, only we call them generals, brigadiers, squadron leaders, admirals, captains etc, and their strength of character communicates itself to the "flock" of men under their command-

"My religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me. That is the way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave"- Gen Thomas 'Stonewall' Jackson

So you apparently agree. Jesus often referred to his followers as "sheep."

And nearly as I can tell...for many of them, that word applies.

Dawkins always gets my hackles up because of his "gene centered" views of evolution, and much of his anti-most anything.

When he and Gould debated, Gould tore him a brand new three car garage asshole

Apisa must have given History the go by.

Very little anti-Christian rhetoric compares them with sheep. In fact there would be no anti-Christian rhetoric if the comparison had substance.

But we need to be careful with the devious use of "many".

Gould was a master...Dawkins is, for the most part, primarily a rabble-rouser. I certainly do not know which of these guys is closer to the truth...and they both may be off track. But I trust Gould a lot more.

Frank Apisa said:

Yes many "christians" are braindead wimps, perhaps they think they're supposed to be like mindless sheep, but that's not the sort of people he wants.
"For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power....that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured" (2 Tim 1:7 Col 4:12)
I like Jesus and I regard myself as one of his "gang members"!
Me a sheep? That'll be the day! I'm an ex-convict for heavens sake (3 month vigilante rap in 2002)!
Check out my arrogant, self-assured super-confident body language and "ex-con swagger" in this vid under my wargaming name of 'Poor Old Spike', play it fullscreen for maximum dramatic effect..



PS- Johnny Cash was a Christian and this song would make a good "Christian theme song" because it touches on the central christian theme of not letting the World push you around-
Jesus said:- "The world wants you to dance to its tune......God has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners...to release the oppressed" (Matt 11:16/17,Luke 4:18 )

A policy by definition is a principle or protocol to guide the events ... in order to achieve rational outcomes.
IMV the main principle of atheism is: The Intelligence (the intelligent design of the universe) is nothing, and the gambling (the probability-driven evolution) is everything.
The protocol to guide these events is the casino theory (the general theory of probability & uncertainty) and the rationale standing behind it is the zero-sum game theory - if the the big bang is the only omnipresence in the universe, there is no probability space for God to exist.
Oh, I forgot the arrogance ... but these are details.

You mean the arrogance of pretending that there is a god and showing zilch evidence of such?

"Atheism" only exists in the minds of the god-botherers. There is no such thing as a monolith of atheists--they aren't people who share a belief, they are people who have at least one thing in common, which is that they don't believe that there is a god. The claim that there is any such thing as an "atheist policy" is ludicrous, and almost unbelievably stupid.

That is correct. The only possible "policy" is that dictated by biology and that is not a proper policy because animals are dictated to in the same way and animals have no policy because they don't have the concept.

Hence they, atheists and animals, would find it impossible to organise a piss-up in a brewery.

It isn't often that we get to see somebody shaft their own position quite so comprehensively. What use are people with no policy? It's a good job they weren't "selected in" 2000 years ago. We only got here through policy in opposition to that dictated by biology.

I just downloaded Dawkins. Will see what the fuss is about for myself.
I don't like the idea of building organizations for atheists, because, as some here, setanta, for instance, pointed out, the lack of belief in deism is the only thing we all have in common.

So, christians and other religion affiliates are not animals?

Have you some evidence an atheist can not organize a piss-up?

Or are your breweries religion owned?

Gould has had the experience of first hand evidence. Dawkins , even when he was teaching, benefited from second hand data that, Im sure, he never vetted .

Dawkins is kinda smarmy also. In public venues that I attended, he was more interested in cleverness than facts. He always turned questions back onto his "genocentric crap".
Course Gould and Eldredge were never too convincing with their "Punctuated Equilibrium" hypothesis of the 1980's. Even though Gould was shown some examples of where his own field data fell through, he never flinched. (BUT at least he wasn't full of himself like Dawkins)