Why must I keep making topics like this?
Offline Oh wait, I remember. To counter the other million topics I get nowhere arguing in.
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/1999/09/16/texas990916.html
About 150 people, mostly teenagers, were in the crowded church when Ashbrook started shooting.
Witnesses said he yelled: "What you believe is bullshit" and "stay still." They said he smoked a cigarette as he calmly reloaded his gun and kept shooting.
He then rolled a pipe bomb down one of the aisles that exploded a short time later.
For the last time, Theism isn't bad, atheism isn't bad people are bad.
If you realize this, than good on you. If not, I am struggling to make it more clear.
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Offline Theism is bad because it pushes people onto a poor course, atheism is absent of any course and allows critical inquiry (the most logical form of thinking) to dictate ones course.
Nothing in atheism makes you immune to irrationality. They can be driven by greed, power, lust etc...
So why can't Theists be driven by secular motives?
Now, I want you to try and understand the average Christian mindset...
Quote:They attribute unusual and special significance to peripheral and incidental events, construing what transpires between persons in a manner that signifies a fundamental lack of social comprehension and logic. . . . As a consequence of their misrenderings of the meaning of human interactions, they construct idiosyncratic conceptions regarding the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others. . . . They interpose personal irrelevancies, circumstantial speech, ideas of reference, and metaphorical asides in ordinary social communications. . . . Owing to their problematic information gathering and disorganized processing, their ideas may result in the formation of magical thinking, bodily illusions, odd beliefs, peculiar suspicions, and cognitive blurring that interpenetrates reality with fantasy
This mindset is taught to Christians at birth by other people who lack critical thinking skills. In turn, often when one abandons faith they are left with the remnants of religion which include sometimes an inability to think critically. In the case of the shooter referenced in the case above, who was raised with religion, he actually developed this inability to think critically. I commonly refer to this disorder as Christian thinking however psychologists look at these disorders as schizotypal personalities or grandiose delusional disorder.
In fact, in the above paragraph (the red text), I was not only giving you a description of poor Christian thinking I was specifically stealing from the psychological evaluation of the motives of your shooter, Larry Gene Ashbrook, and they were in fact explaining him as schizotypal personality. Unfortunatly we don't yet live in a world where it's safe for psychologists to explain and make the correlation, but it's there.
Congrats, you just generalized approx 2.6 billion people.
We all hold some sort of irrational beliefs, does that mean we all have schizotypal personalities?
With all that said... I agree that people will do bad or good irregardless of religious beliefs, however I believe that religious thinking leads us all down a more dangerous path than learning how to think logically as a child by rejecting ludicrous asinine and outright retarded reasoning like "faith."
The only thing Theists are 'illogical' in is their believe in God. It has nothing to do with their political beliefs.
And with all that said...
"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." - Nobel Prize winning Physicist Steven Weinberg
No, extreme desperate circumstances cause good people to do evil things.
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Offline darth_josh wrote:Evidence isn't treated as an insult in logical arguments. Like I said, if you had evidence that atheism caused me to be a poo-poo head then we would have to hear it and do our best to make sure that atheism was the cause.
We have done just that with regard to Mr. Ashbrook. People with your same mindset are willing to stop when they get to the part about schizotypal disorders. Some of us go on to read what his fantasy land was all about. Unfortunately, none of that explains the church killings either. Unless there really were secret CIA members in the congregation. lol.
Moving on, we find that Ashbrook's dead father had driven a church bus for a local church of christ. It is speculated that the death of Ashbrook's father was a precipitating event to the Wedgewood Baptist incident.
This just gets worse and worse for your argument that theism wasn't involved as a cause for this act of violence.
Why bring up the fact his dad drove a bus for a chruch? It is irrelevant, unless it was for the same church he shot up.
Cpt., I knew I'd have to connect that for you. I had too high of hopes for this conversation progressing.
His father drove a bus for the church of christ. The attacks occured at Wedgewood BAPTIST church.
He was shouting anti-baptist rhetoric.
Have you ever met or talked to any church of christ congregants?
If not, I strongly encourage you to attend ONE service at least to find out the depth of their religious extremism. Ask one of the elders/deacons what their opinions concerning baptists are. I have access to MANY of the different denominations in christianity where I live including the 'fringe' elements like the baptist schism congregations left over from whichever reformation dating back decades.
You passed right over the rest of my response. Did I hit a nerve?
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Offline Cpt., I knew I'd have to connect that for you. I had too high of hopes for this conversation progressing.
His father drove a bus for the church of christ. The attacks occured at Wedgewood BAPTIST church.
He was shouting anti-baptist rhetoric.
Have you ever met or talked to any church of christ congregants?
If not, I strongly encourage you to attend ONE service at least to find out the depth of their religious extremism. Ask one of the elders/deacons what their opinions concerning baptists are. I have access to MANY of the different denominations in christianity where I live including the 'fringe' elements like the baptist schism congregations left over from whichever reformation dating back decades.
Are you serious?
You clearly hate Christians, so if you shoot up a church can I blame it on your atheism?
You passed right over the rest of my response. Did I hit a nerve?
Yes, because I hit my head on the table due to the stupidity.
Evidence isn't treated as an insult in logical arguments. Like I said, if you had evidence that atheism caused me to be a poo-poo head then we would have to hear it and do our best to make sure that atheism was the cause.
So you get your motives from secular sources. Why can't Theists?
We have done just that with regard to Mr. Ashbrook. People with your same mindset are willing to stop when they get to the part about schizotypal disorders. Some of us go on to read what his fantasy land was all about. Unfortunately, none of that explains the church killings either. Unless there really were secret CIA members in the congregation. lol.
No, YOU have done it with regard to Ashbrook. How does Theism explain them? If it caused it, why don't we see all Theists shoot up churches?
MAYBE he THOUGHT there were CIA memebers in the congregation. People with these kinds of schioziod disorders do not think rationally. Any Theist will doubt that there were CIA agents in the church.
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Offline Well, that's that.
For the last fucking time to you, I do not hate christians. I despise christianity.
I'm afraid it would be rather difficult to hate christians while being married to one.
Nice attempt on the ad hominems though.
You bring up the valid point that theists do draw motives from secular sources. In fact, todangst has already written concerning christian theft of secular morality.
The problem is seemingly that you believe ALL of their motives are secularly based and choose to ignore the bad influences of their respective beliefs as a cause for this instance.
You have actually done what you have declared reprehensible in the making of this topic in the first place. You have taken one instance and tried to apply it as an intrinsic flaw to an argument that you have failed to comprehend.
I have tried to see your side of this issue many times before. It just didn't match the evidence given concerning the causes in the majority of instances. Especially THIS one.
Why did Ashbrook hit a baptist church if his other delusional behavior indicated the CIA crap?
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Offline Well, that's that.
For the last fucking time to you, I do not hate christians. I despise christianity.
I believe this is the only time I made that accusation.
I'm afraid it would be rather difficult to hate christians while being married to one.
I thought you despised Christianity?
Nice attempt on the ad hominems though.
Thanks, I''m relatively new to them.
You bring up the valid point that theists do draw motives from secular sources. In fact, todangst has already written concerning christian theft of secular morality.
The problem is seemingly that you believe ALL of their motives are secularly based and choose to ignore the bad influences of their respective beliefs as a cause for this instance.
You seem to be missing my point.
If you think Christians must steal from secular morality, then how can any of their motives be non-secular?
Do you at least concede that secular motives can drive Theists?
I argue secular motives are the main motivation.
You have actually done what you have declared reprehensible in the making of this topic in the first place. You have taken one instance and tried to apply it as an intrinsic flaw to an argument that you have failed to comprehend.
You do this far more than I.
I have tried to see your side of this issue many times before. It just didn't match the evidence given concerning the causes in the majority of instances. Especially THIS one.
I'll try to clear this up
yes or no question:
If someone said Sailor Moon told them to shoot up a Walmart, would you blame Sailor Moon cartoon?
Why did Ashbrook hit a baptist church if his other delusional behavior indicated the CIA crap?
I have no clue, I'm not Ashbrook.
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I disagree. I think they did it for secular reasons and only attributed it to their God because they hold that religion.
From the link YOU posted
http://www.cnn.com/US/9909/16/church.shooting.03/
Larry Gene Ashbrook, 47, stormed into a teen prayer rally at the Wedgwood Baptist Church spouting anti-Baptist rhetoric
For some reason clinking your link still doesn't work for me, but I copied and pasted the URL and it worked.
http://department.bloomu.edu/crimjust/pages/articles/church_shooting.htm
who burst into a church service for teen-agers and spewed anti-Baptist rhetoric as he opened fire and rolled a pipe bomb down an aisle.
I looked for the Houston Chronicle article but couldn't find it.
[MOD EDIT - fixed link]
No they couldn't. This has been my argument from quite a while
I don't understand then where you're coming from.
I guess one could argue that religion is 'the straw that broke the camel's back' in the driving force behind the action. However, this is almost impossible to determine because of the secular motives I pointed out. What I do is compare it to secular sources, can I find a secular groups that commits X?
For example, BGH pointed out the hinderence of evolution. I conceded that this was caused by religion since I cannot find any secular reasons to oppose evolution. I however, feel this should not mean the end of religion, since this can be fixed by the realization that God/revolution can co-exist.
I am trying to find the same for Terrorism. A cause of Terrorism that can only be attributed to religion. So far I have seen secular goals behind the actions. That makes it difficult to determine if they did it for the religious causes or secular causes.
Are you refereing to your answer to my charity question? In that case, their are obviously secular reasons to give to charity. The same logic I used above applies. I personally don't think religion caused their charitable actions for the reasons I stated above.
See my first point. If you concede it isn't religion alone, how do you know getting rid of religion will end it?
I don't think any religious reason to do X can ever be valid. If someone bases it soley on religion then I say it would be invalid.
Selective reading sucks dude. Of course there are secular groups that do terrorist acts. I've lived both in Oklahoma and Germany when the terrorist stuff was going on (Oklahoma City Bombing and whatever was going on in Germany, I don't remember... to go on further I've been in traffic jams in Germany where terrorist acts happened, although I was too young to remember) and, I've lost people that were close to me in both the OKC bombing and the second WTC attack.
The point is, though, is that religion gives one more of a reason to commit such acts as the reward is infinitely greater than risk, atleast in their eyes. If you eliminate this risk/reward ratio to where the risk out weighs the reward we definitally wouldn't be seeing as many suicide bombings in Iraq.
And please, don't think I think that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11.
I don't think so. I think their 'reward' is the U.S withdrawl. I don't get the 'risks'. Obviously death would be one, but I think they feel that getting U.S forces out of Iraq is worth it. I think the groups offer the suicide bombers, benefits for their family. That their family will get a better life if they commit this action.
BTW you think Iraq had something to do with 9/11
*selectivly ignores*
I think if we understood where we each of us was coming from we would be on the same page or at least you wouldn't need to ask why it is you need to keep arguing a point wondering why you haven't won us over.
Ok I'm going to try something else here. No names, no analogy, just letters and numbers.
Lets say we have action A and cause 1 or 2.
So 1 or 2 might yield A.
Does it follow that 2 yielding A means 1 can't yield A?
Does it follow that 1 yielding A means 2 can't yield A?
Does it follow that nothing should be done about 1 if 2 yields A?
Does it follow that nothing should be done about 2 if 1 yields A?
What is the bases of 1 and 2?
If the bases of 1 or 2 is not valid what is more of a problem?
If people don't think about the bases of 1 or 2 whats more of a problem?
What if the number with the invalid base prevents A based on the number with the valid base?
What if the number with the valid base prevents A based on the number with the invalid base?
I don't see getting rid of religion as the BIG fix to irrationality, but I see religion as irrational and it has a big influence.
Numbers Letter again...
If irrational element A is one of the biggest and influential elements wouldn't that seem like the a good target?
It seems like you want to make religion into something that does nothing so it can't be viewed as a threat.
Thats a strawman pineapple many people have said that they don't see getting rid of religion as THE fix. And unless you are talking about religious rituals that cause harm thats not something I'd agree with. I say that because I don't see how people would accept it if religion wasn't viewed as a valid reason for something.
So what is the purpose of religion then?
"anti-baptist rhetoric" NOT anti-theist or anti-religious rhetoric.
Please tell me that hasn't been the misunderstanding this whole time.
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Cpt_Pineapple, look i understand your fustration, i really do, i mean it must be a pain to defend your faith or beliefs, everytime a believer or sorts does something bad because they believe in the dogmas of their respective beliefs, and the justification they use is the bible or god told them so. Yeah i get tired of people saying that atheists are immoral etc etc etc. yeah atheists can be complete assholes.
However with your arguement it fails usually in 2 fundamental ways, 1) yes people do bad things no matter what, however would some of them do it if they didn't believe in their religious beliefs? Such as those that commit murder of gays (god does say to kill them and you know it as much as i do), the murder of others of different religious beliefs (Again so many scriptures of different beliefs do state to kill the unbelievers/infidels) etc etc etc, most horrible things that many religious people do, they have the scriptures to justify it or their beliefs in there respective deity.
2) Atheists don't have this dogmatic or scripture following, so to prove that a person of non religious belief did something because of their atheists belief is hard. Many say look at hitler, stalin, mao.....but they complete ignore the fact that they had their own dogmas (stalin and mao was communisim, hitler was nazism and fascist ideas/dogma) that were not directly derived from their atheistic belief, they may have been part of their dogma but it was not directly the cause of those new dogmatic beliefs. Usually it can be shown they are mentally unstable, however in the believer format it may not be they are mentally unstable, but TRUELY believe their faith, dogma and scriptures as to be completely true, after all faith requires ZERO proof none, not ONE small little itsy bitsy bit of evidence outside of faith.
So until you can address these issues it will contiue to come up, yes i know it's a pain in the ass, but your pretty smart person, maybe you will understand it one day, or come up with a more compelling arguement, until then, grab a coffee, or tea or beer or what ever you take to relax, inhale deeply, exhale and relax. Otherwise you are going to drive yourself nuts.
So you think that there would be the same number of suicide bombings if the end reward taught to them by islam was something other than virgins? I dunno, say, a burning place filled with infinite pain and suffering? No, there wouldn't be as many suicide bombings.
Eliminating the plus sides of killing others "in the name of god" would get rid of MANY of them. I'll expand. There is a reason why the IRA did little to no suicide bombings.
I think a better representation of cause is 'an extreme form of 1' and an 'extreme form of 2' , since the religion is obviously taken to the extreme, as is the political objectives.
Do you think religion as a whole is a good target? Or the part that terrorists claim to drive them?
I see every reason to attack the more irrational and extreme sects of Theism, but not Theism itself.
For example, I think that U.N peacekeeping missions and political negotiations would do wonders for cutting down on terrorism. Do you agree?
If we do that, we are cutting down on the religious causes as well, by removing the percieved persecution and getting the people to realize that God isn't telling them to kill their enemies, and their enemies may not actually be enemies.
Because I say that it is political causes, I feel that political solutions are the best remedy.
I do believe Religion does nothing. And I do not percieve it as a threat. Perhaps you should move out of Texas and come to Canada so you can see first hand, how religion can be neutral. I'm sure if I moved to Texas, I might be able to see what you see.
I personally think that education and learning will fix the bad and allow us to keep religion.
That answer is different for every person. I personally believe it gives purpose. It doesn't motivate me to do anything it is simply a believe based on faith.
Are you serious? Being a babtist is being theist, and belonging to a religion. Babtists are Theists, and follow a religion.
If I said 'darth_josh, you are a poo-poo head for not beliving in God' That would be an anti-atheist insult. I am insulting you because you're an atheist.
The point of using random variables was to remove whatever connotations the word might have. By added 'extreme form' to the equation you miss the point and shift the cause to something else. Basically you are now saying it isn't X thats causing this its an extreme form of X. Most of X is nothing like the extreme X. Action A wasn't even defined. Not negative, not positive, not big, not small. Maybe this action was listening to parents. You could find secular reasons to do this, but little timmy might just be remembering that bible verse and doesn't feel like burning in hell.
I don't limit myself to the extremes or fundies alone because the moderates add support to extremes. The base for "extreme" religion is the religion. It doesn't take a fundy to slow science or support things that break down secular government.
Depends on the terrorist. You go into an area with guns people are going to see you as a threat. Maybe even one in the same with their old threat. I know if I felt I was being invaded or oppressed I wouldn't back down. Its kinda hard to reach a compromise if feel someone should get the fuck out of my country and they want to stay.
Dude growing up in texas has nothing to do with my dislike of religion. There was no altar-boy experience or some personal grip I have. I looked at religion's history, validly, and effects on thought processes. Where do people get these ideas? Why is this accepted?
Maybe you don't have people who are making laws in your area for religion or fucking up your school system, but I do and thats just crap going on locally. I don't go "why can't all these fundies just be quite? If religion was just something people hide everything would be ok."
Education doesn't always fix problems bases on emotional reasons.
Doesn't purpose motivate you? I find it kinda of odd you feel like arguing to keep something around that doesn't do anything and can't have any valid actions based on it.
A theist can be anti-baptist...
All baptists are theist (I would assume), but not all theists are baptist.
If you could provide as much evidence that atheism has caused me to be a poo-poo head...
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Yes, I am frustrated. I will adress 1 and 2 as I proceed with this topic
Yes, Tamil Tigers are Hindu and have more suicide bombings that any Islamic group. (Oh, and they're secular, I think they're Communists)
That's actually a good point. I jumped the gun on that.
I keep hearing this argument. I have no idea why.
Do you think the U.S should withdraw from Iraq? If you said yes, then by using your logic you support Iraqi insurgents. I know you don't, but it's an example of moderate or extreme. If you are moderate and hold the belief, then you may use passive means such as petioning to Congress etc... If you take that view to the extreme, you fly off to Iraq and detonate a car bomb.
Here's some letters/numbers for you
You support A
Joe also supports A
You take action 1 to support A
Joes takes action 2 to support A
1 involves handing out flyers, and raising public awareness to A
2 involves taking over a public, holding hostages and demanding government support A.
Should 1 be prohibited because it supports A because it is A that caused action 2?
That is what I'm saying. Say you live in Lebanon and Israel uses your house for Artillary practice and killed your family. Wouldn't you hate Israel regardless of your religion (or lack thereof)? Wouldn't you view Israel with hatred and want them out of your country? This is the driving force behind terrorism, not religion.
That is why I think ending religion won't end this.
Not really. I use secular motives.
True, but we may never know. What would convince you he was anti-Theist? If he went and killed Jews, after? He might be anti-Theist and shot up the baptists church, was he suppose to shoot up every other religion to qualify as anti-Theist? 'He can't be anti-Theist, he missed the Hindus.'
You can now see my sarcasim seeping in.
It doesn't matter. If I think that being an atheist has caused you to be a poo-poo head then I would be commiting an anti-atheistic insult.
The base of 1 and 2 are not the same in that scenario. 1 wants their government to get out. 2 wants someone elses government to get out of their country, that or just kill solders.
The religious moderate and the religious extreme have the same base religion. Both involve faith, worship, and holybooks. Also it isn't just people killing or riping apart secular government that I'm worried about but how people are thinking.
Using this as an example is pointless. I don't use it as an example for religious terrorism and I have already pointed out how it isn't logical to think that one event caused without religion means that religion can't cause it.
Pineapple stop using that strawman.
So religion is useless again.
Talking about religion generally might be a good way.
I've stated before that many of the religious people I know lead largely secular lives, but this is a general comment about the hypocrisy inherent to moderate religious practice. There are, of course, different areas where such people diverge or align with the orthodoxy of their religious sect. That religion influences people is uncontroversially plain. Without religion, blocking embryonic stem cell research (performed on specimens headedd for bio-waste) is an arbitrary act of malevolence. Without religion, young, educated people wouldn't have cause to believe they have a better life awaiting them after this one; and no such comforting thoughts to push them toward the battlefield, or press the button on their bomb belt. These acts are senseless because they are based on corrupt data; memes derived by benighted manipulators. Their influence is tangible and harmful. Not harmful in every circumstance, but as it draws people away from reality, it makes them vulnerable to manipulation.
You seem to have made the same mistake I did. A could be anything. It could be to get the government to cut down on CO2 emissions, or the Iraq pull out etc...
Is this your problem? Them having faith? That this faith can be manipulated?
This is why I keep bringing up the Christians that don't support the IRA etc.... Those Christians question the IRAs motives they don't just blindly follow them.
My whole argument is basically that they added on religion to their political motives because they are religious. I don't think religion is the cause.
I don't understand. If you concede that their are secular causes as well, then how do you know that the terrorist did it due to the religious motives or the secular motives? Since terrorists mix the two together it is almost impossible to tell. I'm going with the secular because of the example I stated above.
Then what are you saying? Religion is just another motive?
So is wearing a blue shirt.
Religion is the person's interputation of the world. Some believe a God created it, some don't. It is up to the person, not the world.
This action would qualify to say he hates Baptists, but whether he is only anti-baptist or anti-Theist and targeted Baptists because they're Theists is unkown.
Evidence isn't treated as an insult in logical arguments. Like I said, if you had evidence that atheism caused me to be a poo-poo head then we would have to hear it and do our best to make sure that atheism was the cause.
We have done just that with regard to Mr. Ashbrook. People with your same mindset are willing to stop when they get to the part about schizotypal disorders. Some of us go on to read what his fantasy land was all about. Unfortunately, none of that explains the church killings either. Unless there really were secret CIA members in the congregation. lol.
Moving on, we find that Ashbrook's dead father had driven a church bus for a local church of christ. It is speculated that the death of Ashbrook's father was a precipitating event to the Wedgewood Baptist incident.
This just gets worse and worse for your argument that theism wasn't involved as a cause for this act of violence.
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Me and joe aren't using the same thing to get our ideas. Fundies use religion and faith so criticize it. Religion and faith aren't something people should be basing decisions on.
One of them. But isn't that it can be manipulated but because its worthless and people treat it as the final answer. If thats the base of someones thinking I see a problem.
They still follow religion. If two people used a bad calculator to answer a math problem I'm not going to keep myself from criticizing the calculator because one person isn't going around blowing shit up.
If I never said religion was the cause for those people it doesn't matter.
1 causing A does not mean 2 cannot cause A.
I already explained how I go about trying to figure out what their motives are.
It a motive based on illogical reasoning people don't like to question.
A person's interpretation of the world effects how people think and no, its not up to the person its up to the evidence and truth of the matter.
You were trying to argue that being anti-baptist was anti-theist and thats not the case.
The real problem with this question is that there is no data to validate the atheist position. While we can say what society is like with religion, we can only speculate what it would be like without it. So to say religion breeds violence and atheism doesn't is a conclusion based on evidence for only half the equation. Until a utopian atheist society exists, there is no evidence to show that that would necessarily happen.
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We can use Sweden which is 80 percent atheists/agnostic (more atheists than agnostic) as a model if you like.
Perhaps. But until the society is under duress we can't know how it would react. When things are going well, there isn't much motivation or opportunity for demagogury. And a few generations of a small country is hardly a representative sample.
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But it's not really an argument in religion's favor to say that people are prone to cling to easy answers and bad ideas. They may find the equivalent in secular ideology, but it's not a prerequisite.
I won't argue that people have and will again use religion for heinous acts. But without a fully atheistic culture to examine, we can't do anything but speculate what will result from people's capacity for blindly following leadership. Atheism will not eliminate irrational behavior and there will always be those that take advantage of this fact.
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Far be it for me to point out what seems obvious, but the OP's linked articles make no mention that the guy who perpetrated the killings was atheist. In fact, the words atheism and atheist appear no where in the articles. So what evidence is there that this guy was, in fact, atheist?
I agree with your observation on the nature of "moderate" religiuos practice. There can be only one truth, and that truth can be realized only in its entirety. Christianity, as it exists today, is a welter of denominations because of denials of various aspects of that truth.
The malevolent act, the "termination of the pregnancy", the abortion, has already occurred. We have no right to profit from the fruit of an evil act perpetrated due to selfishness against the most helpless and innocent humans.
Without religion, young, educated people wouldn't have cause to devote themselves to working amidt the impoverished, the diseased and the destitute. Without religion they would instead dedicate themselves to themselves.
There are battlefields which are necessary, there is indeed a time to unsheath the sword in defense of righteous causes. Granted, such causes may be few, but they do exist.
If it wasn't the cause of religion driving extremists, there would be another cause, political dissatisfaction, economic deprivation, etc. Give the whole religion causes all strife BS a rest.
These acts are senseless because they are based on the dubious interpretations of cleary stated doctrines. They aren't based on a pseudo-scientific imprint by our forebearers.
Is there really all that much to be said for reality?
[MOD EDIT - fixed quotes]
"With its enduring appeal to the search for truth, philosophy has the great responsibility of forming thought and culture; and now it must strive resolutely to recover its original vocation." Pope John Paul II
Theism is bad because it pushes people onto a poor course, atheism is absent of any course and allows critical inquiry (the most logical form of thinking) to dictate ones course.
Now, I want you to try and understand the average Christian mindset...
This mindset is taught to Christians at birth by other people who lack critical thinking skills. In turn, often when one abandons faith they are left with the remnants of religion which include sometimes an inability to think critically. In the case of the shooter referenced in the case above, who was raised with religion, he actually developed this inability to think critically. I commonly refer to this disorder as Christian thinking however psychologists look at these disorders as schizotypal personalities or grandiose delusional disorder.
In fact, in the above paragraph (the red text), I was not only giving you a description of poor Christian thinking I was specifically stealing from the psychological evaluation of the motives of your shooter, Larry Gene Ashbrook, and they were in fact explaining him as schizotypal personality. Unfortunatly we don't yet live in a world where it's safe for psychologists to explain and make the correlation, but it's there.
With all that said... I agree that people will do bad or good irregardless of religious beliefs, however I believe that religious thinking leads us all down a more dangerous path than learning how to think logically as a child by rejecting ludicrous asinine and outright retarded reasoning like "faith."
And with all that said...
"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." - Nobel Prize winning Physicist Steven Weinberg
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This sounds like a negative definition like supernatural. If atheism is the absense of a god belief then doesn't it lack an ontology in the same way as the term supernatural? It is only defined by what it is not.
And how can you not have a course? If you remove all direction then you have chaos. The direction or course of atheism is the reliance on critical thinking.
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Granted, an atheist culture won't be immune to the poor logic or judgement we humans are sometimes prone to. Maintaining a religious culture, however, we've condemned ourselves to it.
You lose me already. The argument against religious moderation is meant to encourage people to see that they've already defected to largely secular causes, while only paying lip-service to their religions. That religion is a white elephant for most people, a relic they drag around with them like a broken manual typewriter. Quaint and useless. I guess cartoonish fundamentalism was the implied alternate choice.
Aborted fetuses are a source, but so are frozen embryos from fertility clinics. The latter blastocysts are spherical collections of ~150 cells, and those that are not implanted will be discarded. Whatever your objection to either, denying research based on them is cockeyed morality. I'm not going to get sidetracked on some abortion debate (do a search, we've already had this discussion), but the choice we have in legislation dealing with research isn't to abort or not, discard or not, it's whether to make the best of it and try to find cures for suffering people.
Argument from assertion, and easily disproved. What a grim, nasty, degrading view of humanity, to sell-out all that is moral and charitable in its character to the most asinine of mythological works.
LOL.
"All strife" is a straw-man. Nobody said that. You haven't bothered to deny that religion influences nasty and irrational acts, and that's all I've seen asserted by atheists on this thread.
LOL, again.
(Oh man, that was torture to edit. It's not too late to install PunBB!
Do you know that was nothing but gobleddygook?
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Please illuminate me.
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When all theists are in heaven (one can only hope!) there will be atheists left. If all natural things are excluded there is nothing left, this nothing includes the supernatural.
Atheism does not have a programme of study and thus atheists can be objective over decision making, whereas theism has a doctrine that can push people to bad courses of action.
e.g. Atheists realise that it is fine to work on a sunday. If a practicing Christian is requested to work on a sunday they may feel discriminated against.
I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.
Atheism is wrong because it rejects something that excludes itself from existing by definition? That thing being a supernatural "god." If your "god" isn't supernatural, and isn't personal, and is more of a pantheistic "god," you're just taking the word "nature" and putting a little pink bow on it.
A rock lacks god belief. If atheism lacks beleif and advocates nothing, then just what is it? It is no different than a rock.
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Oh no, now you've hit your head, too.
A rock is an object. Atheism is a concept based on observable reality (just as "god" is a concept based on the anthropomorphizing of nature). If it doesn't seem like a complete and satisfying philosophy, it's not meant to be. It's merely the rational answer to a stupid question. Atheists can diverge on everything but that one question, by definition.
What a crock.
The way you put, atheism is worthless. It lacks anything of value. It is a non-concept. But in practice, atheists think others should be atheists becuase to be otherwise is to deny reality. So in truth atheism DOES advocate something. And militant atheism goes further in claiming that theism is a mind disease that should be irradicated. The definition of atheism as lack of god belief is nothing more than linguistic contortions.
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People who think there is something they refer to as god don't ask enough questions.
It is not a logical argument, it is a retorical one.
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What happened to you and Pineapple? Seriously. You guys used to be sharper.
Atheism doesn't advocate any course of action, it only rejects the theist position. This "negative" phrasing is only necessary because of cultural circumstances, nothing else. If religion hadn't proliferated among so many of our ancestors, the distinction would be unecessary because only a minority would be trying to practice archaic rituals. An atheist is free to think others should be atheists, or to be completely apathetic. You're the one trying to redefine words.
Its only a crock to you because it doesn't tell you want you want to hear.
No, some atheists advocate something close to that and it varies from atheist to atheist.
Militant? I didn't know there was atheist traning camps or talk of violence.
No wave, it just not the definition you want to hear...
I would think by now you would know the difference in weak and strong atheism.
I never said atheism advocates something. Atheists must find secular motives. My argument is that Theists can also follow secular motives, so why tie it to their religion?
Sorry, I wasn't trying to collude your premise with wavefreak's, I was referring to the drastic shift in approach.
I've already responded to the secular versus religious motives thing.
Why bring up the fact his dad drove a bus for a chruch? It is irrelevant, unless it was for the same church he shot up.
Phah!
I don't want to *hear* any particular definition. I know what an atheist is. I just get tired of words. In the end, we all take our pants off when we shit. We get up, eat, have sex, blah blah. Ultimately athiest and theists alike react to the day to day world largely because of how their internal beliefs tell them to. Actually, this little rant is very much in the spirit of the OP. I honestly give far less weight to words and ideas than I do to how people behave. Are you an atheist that has compassion for humanity? Then you are my brother. Are you a theist that considers yourself too righteous to help the poor? Then you are my enemy. Fancy words and esoteric ideas, whether from the mouths of theists or atheists, cannot mask the stink of contempt and hostility, nor can humble words from an uneducated peasant hide a pure heart.
OK. Rant over ....
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I already stated they mostly get it from secular sources.
Welcome to politics.
They still follow religion. If two people used a bad calculator to answer a math problem I'm not going to keep myself from criticizing the calculator because one person isn't going around blowing shit up.
This seems to condratict your below statement. Please clarify.
If I never said religion was the cause for those people it doesn't matter.
See above.