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chiefupstart's comments:
on Faith in the Northwest
"...they're easier to manipulate and brainwash."
Easier than whom? If you mean non-theists, you're not doing a very good job of bearing out that point. It's fair to say that your posts exhibit a very knee jerk and uncritical (dare I say brainwashed) ideology concerning religion. I must say, your faith is stronger than mine, dude.
Ah well, this thread is getting old and cold. Don't forget to turn off the lights when you leave, ok Tom. Thanks.
Easier than whom? If you mean non-theists, you're not doing a very good job of bearing out that point. It's fair to say that your posts exhibit a very knee jerk and uncritical (dare I say brainwashed) ideology concerning religion. I must say, your faith is stronger than mine, dude.
Ah well, this thread is getting old and cold. Don't forget to turn off the lights when you leave, ok Tom. Thanks.
posted 4 years, 11 months ago
view in context
on Faith in the Northwest
Tom, I'm disappointed. I was maybe hoping for an articulate, point-by-point rebuttal - but all you got is cheap slogans and school yard insults.
You know, had we met under different circumstances we probably could have enjoyed a beer together. It's too bad really.
You know, had we met under different circumstances we probably could have enjoyed a beer together. It's too bad really.
posted 4 years, 11 months ago
view in context
on Faith in the Northwest
No - no it doesn?t ?Fit right here?, Tom. This is a thread about faith in the Pacific Northwest not a platform for your repugnant assertion that all spiritual/religious people are ignorant child abusers. Your rhetoric is beginning to sound insecure. You demand proof from other thread contributors for their beliefs while continuing to spew your goofy logic with impunity. The truly secure believer (non-theist or theist ? just so you don?t mistake my meaning here) can engage others in argument and discourse without resorting to blatantly insulting and mean tactics. But I guess if that?s all you have in your arsenal?
Your thread contributions have only served to crystallize my observation that, when non-theists are given a pop-culture voice by the likes of Dawkins, Hitchins and Harris, they can appear every bit as bigoted, intellectually lazy, mean-spirited, misinformed, uneducated, superstitious and, yes, hypocritical as any theist. Many of us as theists long for a reasoned discussion with someone even half as capable as Aldous Huxley or Bertrand Russell.
Your thread contributions have only served to crystallize my observation that, when non-theists are given a pop-culture voice by the likes of Dawkins, Hitchins and Harris, they can appear every bit as bigoted, intellectually lazy, mean-spirited, misinformed, uneducated, superstitious and, yes, hypocritical as any theist. Many of us as theists long for a reasoned discussion with someone even half as capable as Aldous Huxley or Bertrand Russell.
posted 4 years, 11 months ago
view in context
on Faith in the Northwest
?...and still cower behind the variable B.S. of their particular superstition?
Not sure I understand. I see hundreds of religious people every week who are involved and helping their communities, giving of their finances and time and personally sacrificing their immediate desires in order to aid others.
??number of political candidates who seem to think I'll consider their belief in spirits and invisible friends to be a qualification for a job that will allow them to affect my life??
Fair enough and well stated.
?Any belief system that posits an omniscient and omnipotent deity like Christianity or Islam also predisposes its followers to assume the most arrogant of postures ? created in the image of their god.?
To you it appears arrogant, to many spiritual people it brings meaning and purpose to life. To be created in the image of a highly improbable accident doesn?t do much for a sense of purpose in this life. Oh wait, you?re from the Foucault school of thought, i.e. ?There simply is no purpose in life?get over it.? Well alright but this philosophy has proven simply unlivable to many individuals that are smarter than you or me ? arguably even to Foucault. What I find to be arrogant is the assumption that > 93% of the earths? population is backward, mislead and uncritical while you, magically enough, seem to have all the obvious answers.
?No wonder that "believers" can't appreciate the sense of awe and wonder a convinced atheist feels when looking out at the vast grandeur of the galaxies and the spaces between them. We are intimately aware that there is something greater than ourselves, but it's right there in front of us ? not up in cloud-land ? and it is part of us and is our source.?
Oh where to start. This statement demonstrates a lack of even remedial understanding of scientific history and the contributions to it by Christianity. Starting with the preservation of literacy and learning after the fall of the Western Empire, through St. Thomas Aquinas and his development of rigorously logical theology, on over to Nicolaus Copernicus and the advent of the Scientific Revolution, and on to Fresnel, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Eddington and on and on and on?. It is because, not it spite of, our doctrine of a created universe that Christians believe the universe can be understood logically in the first place. There is not much point in studying a random system for too long because you never come to repeatable conclusions. And FYI, the idea of a random and non-created universe was around long before Darwin. That one goes aaaaaaaaaall the way back to ancient paganism. So if you wish to feel more enlightened in your non-belief, that?s fine I suppose.
?Those who cling so stubbornly to their faith without examining it from outside suffer from a kind of fear peculiar to the small-minded.?
Yes, you?re absolutely correct.
?Surely, being mere humans (although claiming the apex of so-called creation), we cannot possibly have any way to determine right from wrong without the omniscient guidance of a God?
No, we cannot. Philosophers have tried building a moral framework without God for millennia and gotten nowhere fast. Without God my morality is as good as yours, is as good as Hitlers and there is no way you can posit otherwise without slipping in the concept of an overarching morality created by someone or something. Natual law? Not a chance. As Ravi Zacharias would counter, ?In some cultures they love their neighbors, in others they eat them. Do you have a preference?? Even Bertrand Russell was not as certain of this dogma as you seem to be for when confronted with the question of morality?s bedrock during a debate with Frederick Copleston, Russell claimed he knew right from wrong ??by feeling, what else??. Well I?m sure Pol Pot felt moral too.
Not sure I understand. I see hundreds of religious people every week who are involved and helping their communities, giving of their finances and time and personally sacrificing their immediate desires in order to aid others.
??number of political candidates who seem to think I'll consider their belief in spirits and invisible friends to be a qualification for a job that will allow them to affect my life??
Fair enough and well stated.
?Any belief system that posits an omniscient and omnipotent deity like Christianity or Islam also predisposes its followers to assume the most arrogant of postures ? created in the image of their god.?
To you it appears arrogant, to many spiritual people it brings meaning and purpose to life. To be created in the image of a highly improbable accident doesn?t do much for a sense of purpose in this life. Oh wait, you?re from the Foucault school of thought, i.e. ?There simply is no purpose in life?get over it.? Well alright but this philosophy has proven simply unlivable to many individuals that are smarter than you or me ? arguably even to Foucault. What I find to be arrogant is the assumption that > 93% of the earths? population is backward, mislead and uncritical while you, magically enough, seem to have all the obvious answers.
?No wonder that "believers" can't appreciate the sense of awe and wonder a convinced atheist feels when looking out at the vast grandeur of the galaxies and the spaces between them. We are intimately aware that there is something greater than ourselves, but it's right there in front of us ? not up in cloud-land ? and it is part of us and is our source.?
Oh where to start. This statement demonstrates a lack of even remedial understanding of scientific history and the contributions to it by Christianity. Starting with the preservation of literacy and learning after the fall of the Western Empire, through St. Thomas Aquinas and his development of rigorously logical theology, on over to Nicolaus Copernicus and the advent of the Scientific Revolution, and on to Fresnel, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Eddington and on and on and on?. It is because, not it spite of, our doctrine of a created universe that Christians believe the universe can be understood logically in the first place. There is not much point in studying a random system for too long because you never come to repeatable conclusions. And FYI, the idea of a random and non-created universe was around long before Darwin. That one goes aaaaaaaaaall the way back to ancient paganism. So if you wish to feel more enlightened in your non-belief, that?s fine I suppose.
?Those who cling so stubbornly to their faith without examining it from outside suffer from a kind of fear peculiar to the small-minded.?
Yes, you?re absolutely correct.
?Surely, being mere humans (although claiming the apex of so-called creation), we cannot possibly have any way to determine right from wrong without the omniscient guidance of a God?
No, we cannot. Philosophers have tried building a moral framework without God for millennia and gotten nowhere fast. Without God my morality is as good as yours, is as good as Hitlers and there is no way you can posit otherwise without slipping in the concept of an overarching morality created by someone or something. Natual law? Not a chance. As Ravi Zacharias would counter, ?In some cultures they love their neighbors, in others they eat them. Do you have a preference?? Even Bertrand Russell was not as certain of this dogma as you seem to be for when confronted with the question of morality?s bedrock during a debate with Frederick Copleston, Russell claimed he knew right from wrong ??by feeling, what else??. Well I?m sure Pol Pot felt moral too.
posted 4 years, 11 months ago
view in context
on Faith in the Northwest
"I am sick of religious tolerance, particularly when it is used to justify bigotry."
Oh that's rich. Sorry Scott but your stated position is about as arrogant and bigoted as I've ever heard. You cannot go through life slinging pig s**t in the eyes of people and not expect a response. Just FYI. You have simply shown that a non-theist can be just as bigoted, uncritical and unthinking as any theist. Thanks for playing.
Oh that's rich. Sorry Scott but your stated position is about as arrogant and bigoted as I've ever heard. You cannot go through life slinging pig s**t in the eyes of people and not expect a response. Just FYI. You have simply shown that a non-theist can be just as bigoted, uncritical and unthinking as any theist. Thanks for playing.
posted 4 years, 11 months ago
view in context
on Faith in the Northwest
?That child is under the risk of "excommunication" from her own parents, food, and shelter, if she questions or asks for evidence of that "truth".?
C?mon ? I don?t believe this in general for a moment and I doubt you do either, Mr. Ford. Having been reared in a Christian family, I was always free to doubt, question and even reject my parents? faith - as I did for many years - without fear of losing the love, protection and guidance of my parents and friends. In addition, most of my friends were and still are Christian. To the best of my knowledge, they?ve all managed to question, modify or abandon their faith at times throughout life under their own guidance without fear of retribution from their parents. Come to think of it, I don?t personally know of one individual whose experience even remotely resembles your statement above.
?Consider peer pressure, how would that child find friends or companions??
Roller skating, church, school, the mall ? what, do you think we all lived chained to a church dungeon wall somewhere?
?There is so much pressure to go along to get along that it gets far too easy to just give in.?
Sigh ? yes. And we had to give in to brussels sprouts and broccoli as well. It was truly a shameful period of childhood.
"Now ask how many human dysfunctions are because of religion?
It is monstrous! It is three thousand years of child abuse at the whim of a King!"
I'm tired of seeing this old, flaccid argument flung about in these religious debates. It's so completely intellectually dishonest I don't know where to begin. OK, let's begin with Stalin and atheistic communism, under whose purges millions of his nations own died - millions more continue to suffer even today in the name of this anti-religious worldview.
I don?t even take Dawkins seriously when he espouses this argument. So really, lovingly leading a child down a spiritual path through their formative years is tantamount to child abuse? Give us all a break. Perhaps we should withhold judgment calls about nutrition or bicycle safety from our children as well since that would be imposing our will on them and they should be free to discover these things on their own.
What you cannot possibly realize, Mr. Ford, is that many, many (> 93% of world population) people really do believe in a spiritual reality that they consider to be of at least equal importance with nutrition and physical safety. They also consider their childrens? spiritual training to be honorable and sacred and don?t take kindly to anyone painting it as child abuse! That is simply inflammatory and misinformed rhetoric that serves no purpose in civil dialog.
C?mon ? I don?t believe this in general for a moment and I doubt you do either, Mr. Ford. Having been reared in a Christian family, I was always free to doubt, question and even reject my parents? faith - as I did for many years - without fear of losing the love, protection and guidance of my parents and friends. In addition, most of my friends were and still are Christian. To the best of my knowledge, they?ve all managed to question, modify or abandon their faith at times throughout life under their own guidance without fear of retribution from their parents. Come to think of it, I don?t personally know of one individual whose experience even remotely resembles your statement above.
?Consider peer pressure, how would that child find friends or companions??
Roller skating, church, school, the mall ? what, do you think we all lived chained to a church dungeon wall somewhere?
?There is so much pressure to go along to get along that it gets far too easy to just give in.?
Sigh ? yes. And we had to give in to brussels sprouts and broccoli as well. It was truly a shameful period of childhood.
"Now ask how many human dysfunctions are because of religion?
It is monstrous! It is three thousand years of child abuse at the whim of a King!"
I'm tired of seeing this old, flaccid argument flung about in these religious debates. It's so completely intellectually dishonest I don't know where to begin. OK, let's begin with Stalin and atheistic communism, under whose purges millions of his nations own died - millions more continue to suffer even today in the name of this anti-religious worldview.
I don?t even take Dawkins seriously when he espouses this argument. So really, lovingly leading a child down a spiritual path through their formative years is tantamount to child abuse? Give us all a break. Perhaps we should withhold judgment calls about nutrition or bicycle safety from our children as well since that would be imposing our will on them and they should be free to discover these things on their own.
What you cannot possibly realize, Mr. Ford, is that many, many (> 93% of world population) people really do believe in a spiritual reality that they consider to be of at least equal importance with nutrition and physical safety. They also consider their childrens? spiritual training to be honorable and sacred and don?t take kindly to anyone painting it as child abuse! That is simply inflammatory and misinformed rhetoric that serves no purpose in civil dialog.
posted 4 years, 11 months ago
view in context
