Does God Exist?

thedope:

I didn't create myself, but I do now. Humans create themselves.

God is your fetish, as it is for all theists. My good is without god.

I can help you to speak the truth.

What omnipresent absence indeed! In the beginning was the deed. You and I, dispellers of need. Physicality has us freed.
:-D

Me, you lummox! :-D

You won't find me saying it can't be.

You have my words in lieu of my speech.

I must ask you to explicate just what it is there that you state. :-D

Not yet to come!? LOL No. When did it ever stop coming thedope?! :-D

Whose?

:-D

You can call me god all you like thedope, but I'm just who I am.

No. You're forgetting the call for more.

lol Acceptance and recognition are not their own kind of acquisition?

I don't doubt your credentials as pleasure-giver. As sooth-sayer however, you've got a way to go! ;-D

 

no, not at all.

Airyfox did lay claim to being a student of theology and Okies question is very relevant to the discussion as it gives insight into the level of possible education that airy may actually posses in the area of study in question.

If a person claims credentials, what is irrelevant or denigrating about asking for further info?

The overall general naivete' resonant in AiryFox's position does tend to call into question the degree of formal education in the field that has been claimed, does it not?

 

Am I the only one who thinks the militant atheist thing is annoying?

 

No :mickey:

 

I wasn't so much interested in his credentials than in getting some idea where he's coming from. He's been making pretty fanatical assertions over and over again, with virtually no supporting facts to back them up. It's difficult to get into a discussion when somebody just spouts hatred. I find it a little ironic that asking him to provide that information is considered "denigrating", when every single one of his comments has been denigrating or worse to believers. What course could he possibly have taken, or what book could he possibly have read, to get such warped views of Christianity or religion? The string of quotations from Harris and Hitchens resemble proof texts used by fundamentalist preachers to support their positions--as though the atheist gurus were gospel. I happen to be taking a course right now on the Christian religion in which we're using as a text Diarmaid MacCulloch's massive (1000 pages+) tome, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. It's certainly possible to find evidence in the book unfavorable to Christians, but a balanced view would have to ackowledge the positive, as well.

 

Okiefreak:

I must have missed where Airyfox was spouting hatred?



Okiefreak to Airyfox:

He sounds sane enough. The goddled on the other hand aren't beginning to sound like nut jobs to me, it's as though they're committed. :-D

Jesus Christ. Get a room. Or help with the dj'ing for fucks sake. :-D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkYlxK21E8M"]Militant moods - terminal outcasts - frontline records - YouTube

 

Uhm, did you skip a page? Where I said totally irrelevant I was being sarcastic of course...
I thought Dejavu's post was kind of denigrating, to be clear.

I don't find it annoying in the first place but more ironic. The thing this militant atheist seems to dislike most is intolerance and people telling him what he should believe and how he should behave. But unfortunately in his attempt to counter that he is doing exactly the same thing

 

Ok, that makes more sense considering most of Dejvua's posts are denigrating towards people of a different opinion concerning religion.

 

I thought it was rather obvious I was being sarcastic about the irrelevant part (because Airy was trying to use that as an excuse to not answer a question several times) and who's post I ment was denigrating... That will teach me to be even more consistent in quoting what I was exactly responding to

 

I made the assumption because it appeared, as often happens, as if you, Airy and Okie were engaged in one convo, while thedope and Dejavu were engaged in another.
I thought you were responding to Okie in keeping with the convo.

My bad.

 

Heh. lol

Have you met Tori Amos? She's not elite .. she's Divine. Do you buy what she's singing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfRfBdSMMh4"]Tori Amos - Devils And Gods - YouTube

Ever play Devils and Angels? It's a game. The rebellion. What's it all about? Fuck if I know!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAFTnvzHrsM"]Jack Off Jill - Angels Fuck Devils Kiss - YouTube

 

Indeed. Maybe some kind of selective perception? (I don't see how you could miss it)

 

Well you invoke your own efforts as being all that but you always stand in relationship. Humans intone themselves in relation but they are given life. You do not create yourself but you create in your own likeness and image.

No my god is fundamental to all our efforts. I am not (a theist,) I am a human being.
God is a word that describes experiential condition, our devoted condition.

Provided we speak it together. You have not been as helpful as you have been a naysayer, god exists but not for me.
Well, specialness is the vain minds greatest defense against the truth that we can only speak together if we should each speak it at all. In absence of togetherness you speak of alliances as in I'm on the atheist's side and I think that is a two dimensional view not a whole understanding.

It is the thought, the conception that leads to freedom if your body represent that for you. You were accomplished before you ever appeared. I repeat illumination happens in a flash and is the light by which all deeds are known, reflected upon or anticipated. Creation is a law without opposite and our eyes are binocularly focused in one direction.

Who the fongul are you?

I have your coyness in lieu of transparency.

Newly conceived, my first memory.

Exactly, current emergence is not a linear progression it is redundant reverberation. Say I am over and over without break and it becomes Maya.

Being is shared.

That is what the burning bush said veg head.

Not at all. A call for more is not a concern of the moment but a reflection on the past.

If the abstract be substantial or a thought be a deed is my answer to this inquisition.

Having and being are the same. We can see you are conflicted about that having not been soothed in saying whatever!

 

They will invoke some reason or authority if they want to kill and they would want to kill if they thought killing delivered what they want or they had a belief in human sacrifice as the appeaser for our lack of good authority.

 

Speaks of your conviction, not their commitment.

 

Thanks. let's look at the context of my post first, and then take the article point by point.

I was responding to a statement by Airy fox that no atheist ever killed anybody "in the name of atheism". Frankly, I don't know whether or not any atheists have done that in the name of atheism. But atheists have killed millions in the name of secular ideologies, such as dialectical materialism. In fact the body count from these killings in the past one hundred years is considerably higher than by religious folks. So I was saying the detail that the atheists did not use the name of atheism seems trivial. In counterpoint, somebody brought up that the atheist leaders were actually pursuing their own personal power trip instead of the cause of atheism. Probably true, but I pointed out that they wouldn't have been in a position to do so without the help of atheist true believers. It seems to me a bit hypocritical to rail against the carnage caused by religion while dismissing the greater carnage caused by atheists simply because atheists didn't name it as atheist.

To be clear, let's consider what I didn't say. I didn't say that atheism per se leads to violence or bad conduct. I don't believe that it does. I know lots of atheist. In fact I'm having supper with a group of them tonight and have no fears about them poisoning my food, because they're righteous people with good family values. But some of the posters on this forum do give the impression that religion is inherently immoral and leads to bad conduct--specifically mass murder. That's the point I was addressing. Nor did I say that atheists are communists, fellow travelers, etc. The atheists I know have a variety of political leanings, mostly more conservative than mine. In fact, one thing I deplore is the tendency to make sweeping generalizations about people who are really quite diverse, such as atheists and theists. Most Quakers, Amish, Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc, wouldn't harm a fly, and have never done so. It makes no sense to hold them responsible for the Crusades, the witch trials, heretic burnings, and other atrocities committed by different groups during different periods of history. The crimes of theism, like those of atheism, were committed by individuals often acting for twisted personal motives. It's useful to learn from their mistakes, so that they might not be repeated in the future.

Now let's look at the particulars of your quotation:
I've already addressed the point about "in the name of" so I won't beat that horse anymore.

The article states: "... none of the people that are commonly listed (and some that are less commonly mentioned like Idi Amin, Fidel Castro, and Kim Il-Sung) left religion out of the picture. Instead of worship of a supernatural deity that speaks directly into the ear of the leader, these men simply bypassed the middle man and pronounced themselves akin to the deity. ..."
This is an ingenious effort, also attempted by Sam Harris, to exonerate atheism by making atheist bad actors into non-atheists. These atheist leaders were really worshiping themselves, so they were really religious, so their atheism doesn't count and their crimes can be chalked up to more evil by religion. Atheists will argue strenuously on Hip Forums that atheism is not a religion, but when atheists go astray, it's obviously because they were being religious. But note it isn't religion in the usual sense of supernatural claims or involvement. I'd agree that there are important similarities between religion and secular movements like communism, nationalism, objectivism, etc. But at the same time, rejecting the supernatural is an important difference. (BTW, Idi Amin was a Muslim.)

Next we have the argument: "... Even if we, for the sake of argument, granted all of the above (untrue) assumptions – that atheistic dictators committed their crimes from a position of atheistic moral authority – this argument would still be completely worthless... Making the assertions that morality comes from the divine assumes the existence of the divine... Saying that theists are super-nice doesn’t mean that the gods exist any more than saying atheists are shitty people does. Both positions are entirely orthogonal to the central claim of whether or not gods are real. ..."
I nowhere asserted, nor believe, that morality comes from the divine, so the argument that we're assuming the existence of the divine doesn't hold. Saying that God is good presupposes moral standards that are independent of God. Otherwise, we'd simply be saying God "is what He is" (which, come to think of it, is what He did say). But in the post I was responding to, an atheist accused theists of being immoral." So the argument cuts both ways.

 

Just to say it: today is Good Friday.

 

I've often wondered why this perception develops and why people feel that Dejavu and I have a private conversation. Conversation between parties requires the parties be conversant. Anyone can directly challenge or amend anything Dejavu or I or anyone else says. I for one remain attentive to all that is being said, an informative basis, even the guerilla thought bombing by Meagain.

 

What makes it so?