Hello everyone, my name is Scott.
Offline I found your forum by googling "anti-religous quotes". There are quite a few good ones to be found here. Unfortunately, now that I've registered to start discussing religious topics, that thread seems to be denying me access now and I'm not quite sure why.
I was raised by what many might call "Bible Thumpers" and began questioning the truth behind the things I was being taught at an early age. I had lingering doubts but never really professed them or would even allow myself to think on them for too long. After I grew to adulthood, I joined the Army (after a series of other jobs). On one of my deployments, I had the notion that I would write a novel, based on events from the Bible. While attempting to write this novel I began reading the Bible through logical, adult eyes. Now, looking back it seems a bit preposterous that I ever believed any of it to begin with. Don't get me wrong, I don't think the Bible holds zero merit. Quite the opposite actually. I think the basic principles that it tries to convey are sound ones and in many situations it provides a good moral compass for humanity to follow. I just don't believe that there is an omnipotent being who will damn you to hell if you don't worship him on blind faith. I believe that some of the stories told in the Bible are based on the truth but have likely been trumped up to sound better or more miraculous.
I'd been content holding on to my belief that what my religious family wanted to believe was of no importance to me and that I should simply live and let live. Since the advent of Facebook and their constant posts about religion, I've decided lately to give them a taste of their own medicine. After all, if I'm to be subjected to their ludicrous posts about their views, why shouldn't they be subjected to mine? This is how I came to find your site.
I'm quite interested in a healthy debate with religious types who might offer some arguments for me and even attempted to post in the debate forum but was balked by another "Access Denied" error. Luckily, I found the introductions forum where it seems that I am allowed to post a new topic and perhaps this is a prerequisite to posting in other forums?
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Welcome aboard. I gave you the atheist title because it might give you access to that thread. You are an atheist, right?
It's also possible I moved the thread. I've been doing some cleaning.
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Hi, and Welcome!
I agree there are some OK ideas expressed in the Bible, but they aren't original, or necessarily the best way of putting the positive message they contain, IMHO.
And they are massively overwhelmed by the many really offensive and/or downright wrong ideas that surround them.
I am less tolerant of the Bible than Dawkins.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Greetings from near Toronto Canada. The bible is a book of bad poetry and mostly bad ideas. I agree with Bob Spence, nothing is realy original, the storys and teachings are redrafted from earlier cultures. You might try reading about those earlier cultures to understand what we are talking about. Hammarabi's code, Gilgamesh, swamplands of Iraq etc.
"Very funny Scotty; now beam down our clothes."
VEGETARIAN: Ancient Hindu word for "lousy hunter"
If man was formed from dirt, why is there still dirt?
The current URL for the anti-religious quotes page is: http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/the_rational_response_squad_radio_show/freethinking_anonymous/3515
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I guess I'm an atheist. The closest thing to a higher power that I think could exist is an advanced alien race. Nothing omnipotent though. Thanks for the welcome everyone. =)
For some reason, I'm still getting an ACCESS DENIED error when following that link. I'm not sure why.
That doesn't make any sense at all. Is anyone else having a problem seeing it?
I see it fine when logged in and out and on 3 different browsers. I'm thinking some kind of setting on your browser is off, but just a guess. Try a different browser.
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Scott, just for kicks, try this link: http://www.rationalresponders.com/node/3515
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Or try this thread: http://www.rationalresponders.com/atheist_anti_religious_quotes
You inspired me to make that page a little easier to read to anyone who finds it in google. I compiled almost all the quotes in the first post.
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The first link that Natural posted (http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/the_rational_response_squad_radio_show/freethinking_anonymous/3515) will not work anymore for anyone. The two links that work are:
http://www.rationalresponders.com/node/3515
http://www.rationalresponders.com/atheist_anti_religious_quotes
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Sorry, but none of them work when I'm logged in. I keep getting ACCESS DENIED messages. Earlier, I logged out and could view the thread again though.
Edit: Just for the sake of clarity, I'm running Google Chrome. I don't see why the cookies Chrome uses would be any different from Internet Explorer but I'll try a different browser and see if that is where the issue lies.
I clicked on that link from Chrome on Mac OSX, and it worked fine for me...
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
I just tried Internet Explorer to no avail.
If you'd care to enable post attachments, I have a screen shot of the error I'm getting as viewed through Internet Explorer. I can also email it if you'd prefer that.
It's got to be some combination of his account and that particular post (or class of posts, possibly, if that's relevant).
Could it have anything to do with his IP address? Maybe there's a block or filter on it, or on a range of IP addresses his just happens to fall under?
What if he tried making a new account? Maybe it's just some random quirk in the database for his particular user entry.
Wonderist on Facebook — Support the idea of wonderism by 'liking' the Wonderism page — or join the open Wonderism group to take part in the discussion!
Gnu Atheism Facebook group — All gnu-friendly RRS members welcome (including Luminon!) — Try something gnu!
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }
If you want to put screen caps on photobucket or similar, feel free. However, I don't expect much to come from that.
I do not have full server access but from what I understand, we are going to be doing a hardware replacement in a few hours that should fix the matter. We may go offline for a bit while it happens but once the work is done, you should be good to go.
=
First of all, welcome. This is a long post, but well worth reading.
No, the bible holds ZERO merit.
Whatever nice moral stories are in it, people before Christianity, and people outside of Christianity today, are capable of the same morality. The bible is not needed to live life. To claim such is immoral. That is simply flat out false. There are plenty of people who worship other gods or no god who are just capable of being moral.
Hijacking morality as an invention of a label, rather than accepting it as a human condition, is immoral. It was understandable back then because humans didn't know about modern evolution or modern psychology. Just as it would be immoral to go around selling the earth as flat. It was understandable when we didn't know the real shape of the earth, but it would be immoral today to teach kids that. It would allow them to grow up in ignorance.
No it does not.
It teaches you that you are incapable of doing the right thing unless you are bribed or threatened. That is childish morality. WORSE is that it is done by a deity that gives you no reprieve from his watch. Kim Jong ill does that too. He'll reward you for your loyalty, and murder you if you try to leave. That is not morality, that is simply might makes right. If Kim Jong Ill tells you not to murder your neighbor, does that make that dictator moral? Or can you figure out on your own that murdering your neighbor is wrong? And not all murder is wrong, even without a dictator telling you such. Self defense can end a life. So all you have with Kim Jong Ill and God are people making arbitrary laws by proxy of power alone. Incorporating compassion into those stories doesn't make them not dictators. Hitler owned a dog and I am sure he treated it nice, but he was still a dictator.
Adult morality involves doing the right thing even when no one sees it or gives you credit for it. If a god were truly selfless and not self centered, it should do the right thing regardless if someone kisses his ass or not and would do so even if no one knew its name. The Abraham god is all about him and that is the only goal we as humans have is to serve him. That too is not morality, that is selfish. That is what dictators do.
The god of the big three treats us as toys, lab rats, and watches us kill each other trying to vie for his love. It would be as laughable as a Jerry Springer show with two fat redneck woman beating the shit out of each other over a toothless skinny redneck man, if humans didn't take their religions so seriously. In reality, this self inflicted delusion is quite sad. It allows humans to treat each other as a sub species.
And with 7 billion humans on the planet, what would a god need(and why would a god need anything for that matter) but why would a god need 7 billion friends? If not everyone is going to get into heaven, why all the manufacturing waste?
Deities are not needed to explain the good or bad in life. Humans throughout our history have always had the same range of emotions and actions, both good and bad regardless of the myths they invent. That has been true throughout our species history and will be true until we go extinct.
The God of Abraham as a character is not movable. You cannot vote this deity out of office. You cannot impeach this deity. The god character described in the bible is the opposite of what we in western pluralistic societies value as far as leadership.
In real life, we can vote out leaders when we don't like what they do. We are not required to follow one politician and we ourselves can run for our highest offices.
The morals we find nice as stories in the bible are found in fiction as well. Friendship, selflessness are motifs found in Star Wars and Harry Potter and Charlotte's Web. And they are stories with characters that are much more developed and coherent.
Now, I do agree with human rights and will always defend pluralism, what I am doing here is not a matter of trying to oppress anyone. I will always defend a persons right to believe what they want and claim what they want. But equally important is the ability to challenge such claims.
I always try to let the believer know that this is not a matter of personal rights. This is a matter of the ability to demonstrate the credibility of the words that you utter. If evidence is valued outside religion, I see no reason not to challenge religious claims either.
If we never challenged social norms humans would still believe the earth to be flat. We would still be stuck in the caves.
I am deliberately being blasphemous. Not out of hate, but to SHOW how broken the concept is as a claim.
Once again, welcome.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Welcome Scott,
Hopefully you can get everything figured out soon with your posting abilities. When all else fails.. reboot!
I too happen to also love a healthy debate, though I am not one of those "religious types". Jesus didn't like the religious types. 
I like to point out that most of what people spot against the Bible is based on their own misconception. Case in point:
Can you tell me where in the Bible it ever mentions having blind faith? Where did Jesus ever say, "Follow me and don't ask questions!"? Just the contrary. Jesus said, " Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; <b>or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.>/b> (Jn 14:11 NIV)
I look forward to some good discussions.
Joe
Joe,
The Bible is entirely condemning of humans.
It clearly states we don't have any tools to actually question god. So we are left with simple blind faith. Ponder these
And Job 38 is God speaking to Job and telling him he has no right to question Him because Job is just a dumb piece of dust.
This lesson wasn't lost any any of the great church fathers for example Martin Luther
In the human / Jehovah relationship God is always right. The human is always wrong except where they agree with God.
And will sum up a great quote from Betrand Russell, an atheist
Religion Kills !!!
Numbers 31:17-18 - Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.
http://jesus-needs-money.blogspot.com/
Yea, the problem with this is that when this fictional Jesus says, "Question me" he only means in the sense like a child asking a teacher questions to learn. Atheists "question" not just to learn, but to challenge and test to insure quality of data. Jesus merely wants you to become part of his club(actually the writers of the gospels). They merely want you to swallow what they say, that is what they mean by "questioning".
You worship your god, not because it is real. You worship your god because the idea of having a super hero protect you is appealing. It is a self inflicted placebo. It is merely all in your head. No different than any other human in human history with any polytheist gods or monotheistic god.
God/s, dieties, super natural are all human inventions. Just like when volcanos were once believed to be gods.
Length of tradition does not make a diety real. The ancient Egyptians falsely believed that the sun was a god for 3.000 years. Popularity of believe also is a bad argument. The worlds population once believed that the earth was flat. That was not true. Muslims are the biggest religion, yet you know Allah is not a real god.
Think about all the other god claims you reject. Think about WHY you reject all those other claims. Take that logic you use to reject all those other claims and be brave in aiming it at your own claims. The only difference between you and I is that I reject one more god than you do. When you understand why you reject all other gods, you will understand why I reject yours as well.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Scott, I checked everything on my end and can see no reason why you shouldn't be able to see this: Or try this thread: http://www.rationalresponders.com/atheist_anti_religious_quotes
Try again and let me know. Do you still want to see the quotes, because I can post them in this thread. I compiled all of them into one post.
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When I'm logged into the forums, I still get this error.
Are there forum permissions that need to be set for individual users perhaps? I know vBulletin software uses forum permissions for usergroups but I've never dealt with the software this forum uses. I suspect it may be the same though.
EDIT: Another reason may be a hack that you have installed on this forum that only allows viewing of certain areas of the site and access to certain site features after X amount of posts. I'm not sure if this is the case but I figured it might be.
I am going to email you the list of quotes, so you have them.
Can you view this list of threads? http://www.rationalresponders.com/forums/semiprivateforums/freethinkinganonymous
Can you click through any of them?
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No, I get that same ACCESS DENIED error when I click that link.
I also get that error when I try to create a new topic in the following forums:
Athiest vs Theists
Kill 'em with Kindness
Biblical Errancy
The Jesus Mythicist Campaign
ONE on ONE Debate
Science
All things Environmental
Philosophy and Psychology
Evolution of Life
News & Activism
Politics
I can post new topics in the following forums:
Introductions (obviously)
The Arts: Poetry, Music, Comedy, etc...
I didn't try any of the forums below the Semi-Private Forums category on the forums index.
I can only assume that my account is in some sort of unauthorized status at this point. I did get the email, thanks. I posted that in a Note on my Facebook much to my wife's chagrin.
That was the first thing I checked and everything looked good. I will try to rebuild the permissions to the site sometime soon. Hopefully that will fix it.
If you could (even though you can't access the page) will you ensure that it's linked to: http://www.rationalresponders.com/atheist_anti_religious_quotes
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Just edited the note to include the link. If you're ever looking for someone who dabbles in web design, let me know and I'll see what I might be able to come up with for the site. It's a bit of a hobby of mine and of course there'd be no charge.
What's your area of expertise? We'd like to have php and css experts on hand for our upcoming planned site overhaul and upgrade.
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I by no means would consider myself and expert in either but I am familiar with both. For the most part, I've been installing pre-built software and then editing it to suit my needs. I've worked with the vBulletin message board system and it's counterpart content management system, vBadvanced quite extensively. Recently my site has switched gears a bit and we've begun using Wordpress, which we've modified to suit our needs. We still retain the vBulletin message board system, however due to inactivity have decided to close it and concentrate on other aspects of the site.
I like to toy with the graphic design and site layout aspects by creating what I want the site to look like in imaging software such as PhotoShop or Paint Shop Pro and then editing existing software that I've installed to match what I've come up with. You can see a sample of my work at www.projectfanboy.com. The design is mostly mine but admittedly, my partner on the site is more knowledgeable when it comes to editing Wordpress.
Excellent work!
Are you good with photoshop or similar program? How about animated gifs?
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Scott try to login now: ATHEIST QUOTES
I think ex-minister figured it out.
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Seems to be working now, thanks! What was the issue?
With regards to animated GIF's, yes I've toyed with them in the past but honestly they've pretty much gone the way of the dinosaur in web design. What where you thinking?
P.S. I'm working on a site layout that I'll either post or email you when it's complete.
I'm currently working on www.briansapient.com in fact... let me get back to it.
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Scott, it turned out to be an arcane setting that never should have happened. Perhaps Brian can figure it out. I don't really know as I do not have sever access.
@Brian: What are you looking for in terms of graphics? Most of what I post here are my own creations. I can make stuff as needed. Also, I agree with Scott, animated gifs are a bit of dinosaur territory. I have software that should be able to manage it but it is really not that big of a deal today.
=
Welcome! Glad it's all sorted now.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Thanks for the warm welcome everyone! =)
Good to meet you - have fun here.
You may be gettin' into deep waters. Do yourself a favor and get some off the shelf (down~loadable) browsers Okay ?