Freedom From Atheism

I had to like the comment because it made me laugh----I don't know if Tyrsonswood was being serious about being pissed off as much as he was joking--------like the joke about the man that was falling to his death from an airplane, and he called out to Buddha to save him. Suddenly a large hand comes from the sky and gently catches him to slowly lower him to the ground. He responds "Thank God!" To which the giant hand flips over and, plop!---slaps him into the ground.

 

Maybe I am just dreaming but I could swear that I posted this well known atheist





last nite who thought for himself and for some reason I cant find it?


If its NOT my imagination any my post really did disappear, then question I have is how come the pic that I responded to which is designed to prejudice and slam religion by suggesting indoctrination using atheism is ok and the pic that I posted which is a historically well known atheist, one we that we all know his deeds not allowed? Is it because I am posting facts about atheists that embarrass atheists?

His mother wanted him to go to school and become indoctrinated with religion, instead he studied marx and as I said we all know how he turned out.

Maybe I just had a brain fart and thought I posted it. That happens once in a great while.

And of course my question to theprodu is what went wrong with that atheist if the last thing you would want is 'evil religion'?

 

I don't know, what went wrong with Jim Jones?



He was bat-shit nuts, thats what, same as guy you posted.

This is boring, see ya

 

yeh it is

Jones was a voracious reader as a child and studied Joseph Stalin, Karl Marx, Mao Zedong, Mahatma Gandhi and Adolf Hitler

That robe was his 'self' ordination in his political cult, not a religion as we know or expect religion to be, just like the atheists he studied. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jones

Seems there is no shortage of atheists who turned left when the sign said turn right.

Frankly if thats the best you can do in defense of atheism and is to compare a cultist nut case here and there in this case with 1000 willing deaths to 45+ million murdered/slaughtered by stalin then:

bye, see ya

 

Yes as I believe I posted much earlier in the thread that the rational process and combined procedure that goes on in the human mind in fact makes it a religion. They simply cant claim 'lack' of belief since they formed a belief there is no God, hence they do not lack a belief and would get bounced right out of any real university level debate if that were the premise used. Now if they can find a suitable argument, but until then they are a religion :scholar:

 

Fallacious thinking: Some Xs are Ys. Therefore all Xs must be Ys. KKK members are Christians.(or claim to be). Klansmen preach and practice violence and bigotry. Therefore, all Christians (including Quakers) preach and practice violence and bigotry. Joseph Stalin was a monster. Joseph Stalin was an atheist. Therefore, all atheists are monsters. Jim Jones was a left winger. Jim Jones was a mass murderer. Therefore, all left wingers are mass murderers. etc.

 

I dont recall ever using the word 'all' so why did you pin it to me?

Your whole post is inapplicable, want to try again and see if you can come a little closer to the mark of my intended meaning this time? OR are you referring to the theprodu who is in fact using a possessive making it apply to everyone?

 

Zzap, why don't you spell out why you think atheism leads to joseph stalin?

 

very simply put atheists 'lack' a moral source and the greatest of all time murderers well over 100 million dead at the hands of atheists, have been, well atheists.

The larger question is how do you think an atheist can come to understand anything about life beyond that which they can kick?

 

As long as it's written in a book by an atheist, they'll believe it.

 

What is the moral source of someone who believes that Zeus is their god? How about someone who believes that Jesus was the son of god? How about a buddhist? What is your moral source?

The scale of murders performed by someone does not reflect the scale of their evil; joseph stalin was able to kill a large amount of people by simply denying them food by controlling the roads. He was the autocrat of a powerful empire; someone could be much, much more evil than him, "evil" measured in any meaningful way you like, and simply lack the resources to perform nearly as many murders.

Atheism also doesn't contain any directions to go and murder those who are not atheists; that was a whole other ideology that stalin believed in. Atheism is a lack of belief in a deity; you can conclude nothing else about an atheist except that they don't believe in any deities.

Atheists can't kick gravity, yet they can come to study Einstein's equations, right? What does believing in a deity have to do with understanding life?

Why would I believe anything written by an atheist just because they're an atheist? Atheism stems from a tradition of unfliching questioning of authority and dogma. How exactly do you go from that to being a blind follower? I'm an atheist, and I've read plenty of things by other atheists with whom I disagree, on everything from cuisine to ethics. I've also read plenty of things from those with faith with whom I agree.

Your posts on this forum towards atheists are incredibly rude and if they were aimed at a different minority, say christians or blacks or women, would likely get you banned.

Are you even here to discuss, or just like every time, will you simply run away as soon as someone calls you out to explain yourself at the adult table?

 

Does that mean all atheists? I find that hard to believe. Most of the atheists I know personally seem to have at least as strong a "moral source" as most Christians I know. They draw on natural empathy and reciprocal altruism, often reinforced by ideals of humanism. You need to get out and meet more atheists,

 

Actually, a person can even go so far as hate speech here as long as it isn't a personal attack on one of our members.

See Forum Guideline #4.

 

To me, the morals of nonreligious people seem more real, more authentic, because we aren't just blindly following instructions from other people or trying to avoid eternal punishment for ourselves.

...unless it crosses the line into trolling.

 

morals evolved as an evolutionary advantage for us humans.
Face it, humans are one of the more "squishy" critters roaming the planet, big brains, but as weak as a day old kitten compared to most other critters.
We evolved much higher degrees of empathy than most other animals as a means of bonding the group together and maintaining a cohesive social group for survival reasons
Enter in the social construct/contract.
To keep the unspoken contract viable, morality evolved as a further evolutionary advantage for the group survival, "The Golden Rule" and all that jazz.
Enter in conflict and war.
Part of this social construct/contract that helped humans to survive was built in the notion of "us vs them" because it became important to identify members of your social group and defend against intruders.

These traits apply to most all mammals, but humans with our highly developed frontal cortex have just taken these very basic instincts and have elaborated and codified them.


it is/was that ingrained survival of the group instinct that allows a Stalin to commit the acts they do. Those that died were not members of his "group" therefore didn't fall under the same umbrella of empathy.
We all do the exact same thing to one degree or another.

 

Technically, Gravity is an Occult force as it is a force which cannot be seen.

And there is something else that you can conclude about an Atheist, and that's that not only do they just disbelieve in a Deity, they also believe that there is no Deity. It's a conclusion and a belief.

Atheism has an unflinching questioning of every Dogma except its own, which it refuses to look at directly.

 

Oh, so you're saying that Atheists share common and similar ethics?

 

But nonreligious people don't even know why they help others or why they aren't selfish (and some of them are because they just feel like it. Consider that there's no concept of hypocrisy in atheism). It basically IS just blindly following instructions.

 

I want to help you understand the world around you and atheism better, and I want to understand how someone can have the ideas you have, so let's talk.

I don't know what you mean by "no concept of hypocrisy in atheism", but we are not banned from using that word or even being victim to it. I am an atheist and I have been a hypocrite about many things throughout my life, it's a fairly common state of a affairs for all humans I imagine. Certainly we strive to not be hypocrites the same way we strive to not be liars, but I imagine it's like that pretty much no matter what your views on the existence of a deity are.

When you say that nonbelievers don't know why they help others and why they aren't selfish, a number of questions pop into my mind. You don't need to answer these questions, these are just for you to ponder over, although I would love to read your actual replies.

1) How do you know that nonbelievers don't know this? Have you spoken to many of them? Have you analyzed sociological data and come to this conclusion? Because I am an atheist and I know why I help others and why there are times that I am not selfish. At the least I have good theories or hunches, if not direct explanatory data.

2) Does believing in the existence of a deity make you be less selfish or make you want to help others more? Why? Which deities? Does believing in any other proposition also have this same effect? For example, believing in karma would seem to induce the same kind of behavior, but what about believing in ghosts? How about the Devil? How about aliens?

3) What are these instructions which atheists blindly follow in order to be less selfish? Who gives them to us? Why do we follow them? How is this different from a believer following the instructions in their holy texts?

I feel you have some very troubling misconceptions of what atheism is and what atheists are, and I'd like to be an actual real life atheist who engages with you to enrich your worldview.