If you're atheist why brother so much with G-d?

Yeah and I'm afraid of snakes, too. But, I get comfort from the fact that I know enough about them to not piss myself when I see one. It was hard to work up the courage to learn about them, but my pants are much dryer these days because I know what to expect from them. Knowledge trumps fear in this case for sure. Same effect with Glenn Beck.

Oooooh totally!!! Some of the "doomsday" things we know about scare the livin' bejeezuz out of me, but I'm not sure if it scares me more than ignorance.

lol... I'm making that my new life's slogan.

 

Nietzsche believed in belief!

 

"The mountain tops are always warmer than the valleys, even in the winter."

 

I think he may have believed in that which can be known.

 

Believing in knowledge is like breathing.

"Unworthy of belief, that is what I call you realists! You are unfruitful: therefore you lack belief. But he who had to create always had his prophetic dreams and star auguries--and he believed in belief!"

 

Yes, knowledge is, being shared or shared being.

 

What obligation is there to share this information? You said yes, so therefore there is knowledge regardless of if there is anyone to conceive it?

 

Most of this I politely dissagree with, and frankly don't want to pick it apart and answer each point, though I see how you arrived at them from what I said (I'm not really mad.... if I'm mad online, I go do something else) *edit* but I feel the need to say, I don't think it makes me insecure about my beliefs, just because I wish to tear down other beliefs. I think it is plain evil that peoples lives are wasted in this manner, and I could not think well of myself if I where complacent with this.

But you seem to have misinterpreted my last statement... I mean, yes, all mono-theistic gods are pretty much "Gawd", but jews, christians, and muslims all literally worship the SAME god. They disagree about what happend later, but it's the same god, from the start, and the religions claim the same founder, abraham. If they followed the covenant with god they all claim, no problems would exist between them. (I'm no religious scholar or anything, don't get me wrong.... but I'm working to change that) No matter what they think about ANYTHING else, they all share a god, not just in role, but in actual identity.

Also, I shouldn't have said I hate god, I meant to say compleatly discount, aside from when I'm arguing about religion or the things that have happend in the name of "god". If I where christian I would hate god, because of all the horrible things he (would be) directly responsible for each and every minute of each day, but God never crosses my mind in the "normal" sense, I have various thoughts, suspicions, and even(unfortionatly) superstitions, but none of them have any place for god.

 

You are so fixated upon attributing to God "the capacity to do unreasonable things" that you are failing to see that humanity innately has that capacity whether religion is involved or not.
An idiot without reason wouldn't do anything.
There is a reason behind every decision, and the type of violent mentality it takes for a person to fly a plane into a building would manifest itself in that same person with or without religion. Religion simply becomes the excuse, the justification, not the initial desire or cause.

What are the principles of Islam?
Christianity?
Buddhism?

Your stance upon the inherent harmfulness of these things tells me you don't understand them.
Atheism as an ideal does not involve slaughtering ethnic groups or believers. My point was that a man who identified as an atheist and thought he was promoting good under the guise of atheism was actually disconnected from the principles of atheism, just like believers who commit violence and think they are truly following their religion are disconnected from it as well.

It is a double standard to say "Islam caused 9/11" and then turn around and say "Atheism did not cause Stalin's terror campaigns".

An accurate statement would be that neither Stalin nor the men who devised 9/11 were truly following the tenets of their respective paradigm.

Anything can cause destruction.
If you seek to remove from humanity each and everything that is a potential hazard, then there is nothing left, because the possibility for destruction is in humanity, not a blame to place at the feet of a certain object or belief system.

Maybe I should clarify -
By lineage I meant more than just direct kin.
The human nature that recognizes patterns is the same human nature that indulges whimsical patterns.

Yes, both of those instances are regrettable, and they also aren't an accurate barometer by which to judge the average religious believer.

 

It is not JUST god, I've said this several times before. It is conviction for things someone doesn't understand, and god usually fills this spot.

The definition of justification is "something (such as a fact or circumstance) that shows an action to be reasonable or necessary"

I think you should reconsider what an 'initial desire or cause' is.

This doesn't tell me anything about your proposed 'principals of atheism'

Your not even making sense anymore.

There are Atheist religions. You using the word Atheist like its a belief system is nothing but confusing.

The men who did 9/11 were following a belief system, I could care less what someone calls it. The fact that there are Islamic tenants that define how a man should live indicates that the men who carried out the attack were probably guided by those tenants.

Why do you keep disregarding the fact that there are people who don't believe in god?

You keep explaining how its human nature to cause destruction and to hate other people, and i'm pretty sure we both know this isn't true.

You are mistaking survival for destruction. Else you will need to explain to me why survival has to include killing and distorting facts.

You think this is true because you aren't regarding the reason they did what they did, only that they did it.

I read somewhere that they are promised 500 virgins or something like that. If i thought this was true, I would be filling out my Al quaida application right now.

The only problem is there is no reason to believe anything in the bible. There is nothing indicating its truth. There is nothing indicating the existence of god, and people still pray.

I don't ask that you answer all of this, because I don't want this to get boring and abandoned, since I hate to see someone making mistakes like this, so i'l just ask it this way.
If people are willing to pray, what else are they willing to do?

Note: There is proof for some of the locations in the bible and things like that, but i'm talking particulars.

 

March...


Onward christian soldiers
marching as to war...
with the cross of Je-sus
going on before.


ZW

 

A better question would have expressed the fact that the reason for praying, and the reason for destroying buildings in NYC are the same.

 

Can't answer that but 80 years of misery seems about the going rate to 10 minutes of ecstasy. Give or take 99% What's your point?

 

An atheist doesn't have to believe, YOU who think that really need to step back ad look at the complete definition and origin of the word. Trapped by your own ignorance and language system designed by theists does not mean atheism has to be a belief system.

Lets also define BELIEVE; in the context of religion and the forums that we're in, BELIEVE is synonymous with FAITH. So to use the term BELIEVE regarding an atheist viewpoint is a fallacy and an insult.

 

Stand by your narrow minded view of the definition and call me asinine!

Ignoramus!

 

To get back to the original subject, I think those who aren't religious go after the beliefs of those who are religious for the exact same reason religious folks go after subjects like evolution or the big bang theory. I think people (though maybe not admittedly) want to be right, they want to think their way is the truth, they're simply comfortable in their beliefs, they see how their beliefs tie in with the world around them; these are but a few reasons.

 

There is no proof that what you advocate is true, so you have nothing to be ashamed about.

 

with your qualifying note added, I actually agree with the statement.

There is no proof that what you advocate is true, so you have nothing to be ashamed about.

 

Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins are cases in point. The former believes there can be no neutrals in the battle against religion, you're either for us or against us. Where have we heard that fanatical line before? The Cold War rhetoric against India? The latter thinks a religious upbrining is a form of child abuse. What would happen if his followers had political power? Would the police be showing up at our doors to take our kids away? Any reasonable person with a sense of history can see the potential for violence behind these ideas. They haven't caused harm yet, because they haven't caught on. Let's keep it that way. We have enough fanatics in the world.

Very well put, but the fanatics who follow Harris wouldn't understand, for obvious reasons. Fundamental to the arguments of Harris, Hitchens and Dawkins is the notion that religious fundamentalism is the prototype of all religion, which is an obvious fallacy. Harris attempts to handle Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot by arguing that they are really religions, forgetting that he defined religion as belief in a supernatural being. Unlike his own brand of fanaticism, they caught on.
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Much violence, including suicide bombings, is a result of fanaticism. Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and you are fanatics. I rest my case.

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