Atheism

We understand that, spendi. But you came back to make your case after trying to rile the waters - in which you worded the post to point to atheism. (on an atheism thread).

I did nothing of the sort ed. My wording was specifically neutral. I never sought to suggest and nor did I say that atheism led to illness.

Hi spendius; Would you please explain exactly what you mean by this statement in laymens terms so that we can all understand. Thanks

It's too late reasoning. Spendi don't have the bollocks to stand by his assertion. He's already skedaddled sideways like a crab with diaper rash.

The guy only wants to divert attention from the topic to himself. He constantly makes this grab on threads concerning atheism, religion and science. We (myself included) often aid him in his endeavors.

I can hardly get more "layman terms" than that.

What can I do about some here instransigently determined to read something into my question that is not there. There are possibilities which exclude atheism in the "position". Unless it's inherited. And even that might only be a genetic susceptibilty to other things.

The responses I'm getting suggest to me that there's a sensitivity on the issue. Asserting that there is no issue has a lot of science to get past. We humans are not machines. We do not know what makes us ill.

Scientists say that even "accidents" are not random.

That's bollocks free gobshite. I made no assertion. And the proof is on the record.

All that breeding, how could there possibly be time for any conflict?

hmmm... strange this is, Charlie and I had this discussion on Thursday night - weird

<inserts, I don't know what I believe in which is kinda pathetic - I believe in something that I guess only I understand>

however, Osso, as you may possibly have read, my best friend is going through breast cancer (cut out, nip and tuck) and radio commencing shortly. Thursday night she met, for the first time, her oncologist who said the cancer had been there between 5-10 years - I don't know how they know these things, but anyhoo...

she is convinced that something triggered it - she believes an outside factor which occured in her life which were traumatic for her, caused the cancer. She's totally convinced.

I'm more scientific I guess re illness... I don't know. I do believe illnesses can be psychosomatic - fer sure!

I don't know what line of thinking I have for it - but her belief and faith is MASSIVE strong - she's a Christian and has great faith and believes God has healed her, through the various twists of fate of finding out she had it, the surgeon and the overwhelming prayers, ommmms and good wishes of other people, God ultimately healing her.

Like I say, we have different beliefs... I have faith, but I'm more inclined towards Nature.

but if that's what she believes - I'm not going to take it away from her and part of me shares of great belief because that is good for her and works.

It was just interesting that you posted that and I hadn't seen it, and well, she believes that happened.

Just musing.

Carry on.

If you want to know about God, you might want to talk to an atheist.

Heresy? Perhaps. But a survey that measured Americans' knowledge of religion found that atheists and agnostics knew more, on average, than followers of most major faiths. In fact, the gaps in knowledge among some of the faithful may give new meaning to the term "blind faith."

A majority of Protestants, for instance, couldn't identify Martin Luther as the driving force behind the Protestant Reformation, according to the survey, released Tuesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Four in 10 Catholics misunderstood the meaning of their church's central ritual, incorrectly saying that the bread and wine used in Holy Communion are intended to merely symbolize the body and blood of Christ, not actually become them.
Atheists and agnostics -- those who believe there is no God or who aren't sure -- were more likely to answer the survey's questions correctly. Jews and Mormons ranked just below them in the survey's measurement of religious knowledge -- so close as to be statistically tied.

So why would an atheist know more about religion than a Christian?

American atheists and agnostics tend to be people who grew up in a religious tradition and consciously gave it up, often after a great deal of reflection and study, said Alan Cooperman, associate director for research at the Pew Forum.

"These are people who thought a lot about religion," he said. "They're not indifferent. They care about it."

Atheists and agnostics also tend to be relatively well educated, and the survey found, not surprisingly, that the most knowledgeable people were also the best educated. However, it said that atheists and agnostics also outperformed believers who had a similar level of education.

The groups at the top of the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey were followed, in order, by white evangelical Protestants, white Catholics, white mainline Protestants, people who were unaffiliated with any faith (but not atheist or agnostic), black Protestants and Latino Catholics.

Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists were included in the survey, but their numbers were too small to be broken out as statistically significant groups.

Stephen Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston University and author of "Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know -- And Doesn't," served as an advisor on the survey. "I think in general the survey confirms what I argued in the book, which is that we know almost nothing about our own religions and even less about the religions of other people," he said.

He said he found it significant that Mormons, who are not considered Christians by many fundamentalists, showed greater knowledge of the Bible than evangelical Christians.

The Rev. Adam Hamilton, a Methodist minister from Leawood, Kan., and the author of "When Christians Get it Wrong," said the survey's results may reflect a reluctance by many people to dig deeply into their own beliefs and especially into those of others.

"I think that what happens for many Christians is, they accept their particular faith, they accept it to be true and they stop examining it. Consequently, because it's already accepted to be true, they don't examine other people's faiths. … That, I think, is not healthy for a person of any faith," he said.

The Pew survey was not without its bright spots for the devout. Eight in 10 people surveyed knew that Mother Teresa was Catholic. Seven in 10 knew that, according to the Bible, Moses led the exodus from Egypt and that Jesus was born in Bethlehem.

The question that elicited the most correct responses concerned whether public school teachers are allowed to lead their classes in prayer. Eighty-nine percent of the respondents correctly said no. However, 67% also said that such teachers are not permitted to read from the Bible as an example of literature, something the law clearly allows.

Copyright 2010 Los Angeles Times
Copyright © 2010, Tribune Interactive

That's pretty damned high-larious, Boss.

I thought it quite funny too.

Especially this bit--

--

which contains the purport of the message and indeed is its main point. The secondary intention is obviously to suggest that atheists generally are "well-educated" so that those reading the twaddle will feel suitably gratified and understandably in agreement with the necessary definitions despite them being neither justified nor, indeed, any attempt being made to do so. It would seem that in some quarters one only need use the expression "well-educated" and the company take it as a scientific fact that the person using it is actually well educated and that the listeners, by nodding in agreement and by being addressed by such a person, are themselves well educated.

My own surveys of this field have led me to the opposite conclusion but I think my definition of "well-educated" being more or less the polar opposite of Mr Cooperman's is the probable cause of the discrepancy. And more particularly and emphatically with regard to the female sex.

The well brought up and pious Christian lady is a puzzle and as much a joy to conquer as any difficult climb in the Alps, and quite as rewarding, whereas the atheist lady is an open book for which only a glance at a biology text is necessary for a complete understanding of her working parts. (see Reproductive Physiology in the Higher Primates by Prof. Harold Stubbins Ph.D.)

I can just picture you off to the public house with your mountain climbing gear on...

I'm not too keen in my sentences being truncated pan. 'Tis a devious trick.

So, for new viewers, I demand the right to correct your lapse of taste and give the full sentence. It read--



A parenthesis of that nature is considered to be an integral component of the sentence if only to stimulate a good laugh.

Comparing the conquering of a Christian lady with the conquering of an Alp is in exquisitely bad taste, no matter how you slice and dice your sentences.

You might think your comparison is clever but I'm sure there are many females reading your tripe that know you for a lout mired in the mores of the 19th century. Why they don't thumb your posts into oblivion I can't imagine.
I heard no one laughing. Did you?

I like exquisite bad taste. It's a popular genre.

But my sentence wasn't an example. It was a compliment to Christian ladies actually who are mortified to be called "easy".

I've often wondered whether the sub-text of attacks on Christianity are to render ladies "easy" like Aldous Huxley portrayed them in his atheistic Brave New World or like the eugenicists would insist they are in order to bring their plans for human perfection to fruition.



That's simply bad taste. There speaks the true misogynist. It never enters my head to wonder why ladies do what they do. Bowing my head to the Goddess is my lot in life. I have no idea what ladies think of my posts. If you have hypnotised some I daresay they will think what you think.

Cue Sir Cliff Richard's Living Doll.

I must admit that I stole the "Reproductive Physiology in the Higher Primates by Prof. Harold Stubbins Ph.D." joke off Professor Germaine Greer with a little twist of my own.

Shells on Mountains


Every major mountain range on earth contains fossilized sea life—far above sea level and usually far from the nearest body of water. Attempts to explain “shells on mountaintops” have generated controversy for centuries (a).

An early explanation was that a global flood covered these mountains, allowing clams and other sea life to “crawl” far and high. However, as Leonardo da Vinci wrote (b), under the best conditions, clams move too slowly to reach such heights, even if the flood lasted hundreds of years; besides, the earth does not have enough water to cover these mountains. Others said that some sea bottoms sank, leaving adjacent sea bottoms (loaded with sea creatures) relatively high—what we today call mountains. How such large subterranean voids formed to allow this sinking was never explained. Still others proposed that sea bottoms rose to become mountains. Mechanisms for pushing up mountains were also never satisfactorily explained. Because elevations on earth change slowly, some wondered if sea bottoms could rise miles into the air, perhaps over millions of years. However, mountaintops erode relatively rapidly—and so should fossils slowly lifted by them. Furthermore, mountaintops accumulate few sediments that might protect such fossils. Some early authorities, in frustration, said the animals grew inside rocks—or the rocks simply look like clams, corals, fish, and ammonites. Some denied the evidence even existed.

The means by which mountains were pushed up in hours during a global flood will soon be presented. The mechanism is simple, the energy and forces are sufficient, and supporting evidence is voluminous—not just seashells on mountains. [see
Edit [Moderator]: Link removed

a. Alan Cutler, The Seashell on the Mountaintop (New York: Dutton, 2003).

“Nothing is so high, nothing is so far from the sea that we cannot find [shells] of those creatures that only live in sea water.” Jan Van Gorp (1569), as quoted by Cutler, p. 59.

John Woodward, An Essay Towards a Natural History of the Earth (London: 1695; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1978), pp. 3–74.

b. During the period 1508 to 1515, Leonardo da Vinci carefully studied the shells he found high in the Italian mountains. He raised valid arguments against all the hypotheses that others were proposing to explain shells on mountains, but he offered no explanation of his own. [See Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Vol. 2, editor Jean Paul Richter (New York: Dover Publications, 1970), pp. 208–218.]

The Seemingly Impossible Events of a Worldwide Flood Are Credible, If Examined Closely.

http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/EarthSciences16.html#wp1018602

The shells have been adequately explained by science, dude. Read what they say about it before posting this stuff. Please.

Why did you come on a site called Able To Know ed?

You seem to have no desire to know any ******* thing at all about any ******* thing under the sun aside from what you already know and which was probable set in stone at a very early age.

That post, like your response to one of mine tonight, contains not one scorrick of meaning and ables no ****** to know any ******* thing other than what your ignorant and stupid self thinks we all ought to think.

Is there not an internet site for petulant indignation thrummers with little or no literary ability?

Leaving aside the rather obvious objection that shells, other than those of nautilii, are not the remains of sea creatures which migrate from one place to another, or one depth to another over short periods of time, i found it amusing that this joker's source quotes remarks made in the early 16th century, the mid-16th century, and the end of the 17th century as evidence. Couldn't come up with anything more contemporary?

Of course, none of that addresses the issue of the conditions under which these mollusks are alleged to have travelled to the mountain tops. A literal reading of the bible has the water reaching to fifteen cubits above the top of the tallest mountains. So there would literally have been miles of fresh water depostited on top of the salt water of the seas within 40 days. Yet we are expected to believe that creatures adapted to salt water, and a pressure of two or three atmospheres at the most, in conditions which would have destroyed their food sources, were able to move through fresh water at pressures hundreds of times greater than that for which they were adapted--only to die on the mountain tops, apparently able to move up, but not back down again.

As usual, scripture puts strains on one's credulity which one would not accept from any other source.