warrenm2

Nice one John

OllyK

Indeed, it's not often the Haynes manual tells you to remove the wheels with a wheel brace in one chapter then tells you to remove them with an angle grinder in the next. If it did, people would throw it away for being useless.

Boo!

OllyK

No offence maybe you need to think your responses through a little more, and also try reading, and I do mean really reading your own scriptures. When you actually start to look at it in detail with open eyes - a different truth may become apparent to you!

OllyK

I rather like that!! If you ever get the inclination, there would be a great number of people interested in your account at http://forums.randi.org/forumdisplay.php?f=4

john banks

Interesting forums. Will need to have a read when I'm not too busy driving fast cars and making money

jasey

Curses - beat me to it .

Question for all Born again Christians.

What "led" you to God.

Death in the Family?
Illness?
Depression ?
Lack of Friends ?

I am genuinely interested. All the "Born Agains" I've met have had some sort of trauma that they couldn't cope with.

OllyK

To be honest, I think Les's post shows a lack of understanding. It's like saying to a Hindu, on your death bed you'll realise you're wrong and convert to christianity.

I suspect "some atheists" may hedge their bets, but I'd suggest they are more likely to be agnostic / apathetic in the first place. I also suspect that any reference to a god by the rest is more of a profanity than a plea.

TheBigMan

We laugh at what people believed 500 years ago, and in a few hundred years people will laugh at what we believe in now (well what some of us believe in ayway).

If we do not self-destruct, eventually science will provide all the answers, whether we ever get to that point though is debatable.

OllyK

Judaism has its roots some 4000 years back and is still going strong, although most of the older religions have died out. So while there have been advances in some areas, others have been slower to progress or even stagnant.

I suspect we'll self destruct first, probably at the hands of religion.

TheBigMan

I'd agree with that.

Has quite alot to answer for doesn't it.....

OllyK

There are certainly some (but not all) pretty horrifc events through history that can be laid squarely at the feet of some religious group or other. The tension between the Abrahamic religions at the moment seems very high and we are at a time when the desctructive capability of even the least well armed groups is quite terrifying.

Leslie

Olly,

With all respect, you appear to be the most fundamentalist atheist I have ever known of. It seems to be like a religion to you.

Les

OllyK

How many oxymorons and how much misunderstanding can you cram in to 2 small sentences?

I've come to expect well thought out and expressed points from you Les, and very much enjoy our exchanges in religious debate, but this is the second time in this thread where you seem to be throwing out sentences without giving them your usual level of due consideration, and I doubt very much if it is down to ignorance of the subject matter.

Atheism isn't a religion it's merely a lack of belief in the existence of a god(s). In other areas of life no big deal is made of lacking a belief in things with no supporting evidence, we don't make mention of the Apixieists or the Afairyists on a day to day basis, indeed most people are those as well.

Once you realise that atheism isn't a religion, the clue is in the word, a-theism, literally "without theism" or "without a belief in god", you realise that it's impossible to be a fundamentalist as there is no scripture or sacred text to iterpret, literally or otherwise.

warrenm2

^^ Hes got a point Les.....

Geezer

Though not a fan of any organised religion, I don't think religion is necessarily to blame. Stalin was an athiest............

Religions are created by people. ALl the evils done in the name of that religion are just perpetrated by bad people, who if they didn't belong to that religion would find another reason to commit bad acts.

The teachings of any religion just reflect morals and standards of the time (hence women have little standing in Christianity), so you can't even say it's Gods word.

Their have been various sects/religions throughout history that have had terrible crimes attributed to them, but at the end of the day, it's just humans who are bad.

Geezer

OllyK

And Hitler claimed to be a christian although I don't think he claimed to act in the name of his god. Hence why I put the double caveats "some" and "not all" in 1 sentence!!

Many of the "evils" were done in the name of the better good. The Spanish Inquisition, due to such pasionate belief that being a heretic or pagan would result in your place in hell, tried to redeem them by purifying them in fire whilst still alive. That's just religion and ignorance getting in the way, not being evil for the sake of it.

While there are evil humans about, no doubt, having more things to argue about doesn't help the situation.

jasey

Somewhere between the two standpoints is where the truth's at.

Bad people can use religion to get good people to do bad things !

Sums it up for me .

OllyK

That's true, but misguided people can misinterpret the writings of their religion and kick off a holy war as a result of it. Look at all the recent calls to Jihad to defend slurs on the Islamic faith. When people are that twitchy about their beliefs I find the whole thing rather worrying.

jasey

Most of the w@nkers at the demos etc come under the heading of "Bad People" for me. When they get batton-charged the Good people watching on telly start to get upset because the police are attacking their religion - not a buch of trouble making ar$eholes !

john banks

If this was a thread about Islam rather than its Christian slant (because of the contributors) I would be nervous about contributing.

That would be a shame because open debate is good. I could be criticised for being unfair in that I would feel afraid of the repercussions of open debate about Islam. I could also experience repercussions.

So I stay quiet, as do I suspect others, out of fear. It worries me that over time this could allow fundamentalism to run riot due to apathy or fear of the consequences of open debate.

Am I alone?

OllyK

Well I'm happy to wade in to pretty much any religious discussion, regardless of denomination. Having an atheist in the discussion can be quite a useful diplomatic ploy as you'll often see the theists gang up on what they see as a bigger enemy

I'm happy for anybody to have any belief they wish, but if you have that freedom, than I have the freedom to question and discuss it, if not with you, with others. If you want me to stop, get rid of the religion.

Sbradley

Sorry, I've been away (and, shock horror. devoid of Internet) for a couple of days.

To answer your commendably direct questions equally directly.

No.
No.
Probably not/probably not/no.
Absolutely not.

OK?

SB

Mungo

I think with "bad people" such as Hitler and Stalin, the "religion" aspect of their power is more a cult of personality. They almost develop a spiritual being in the eyes of their followers, in the manner of an early religious leader such as Moses, Mohammed or Jesus Christ, or even a latter-day leader such as David Koresh or L.Ron Hubbard. It's how that cult of personality is then utilised which really matters. A good (in the moral sense) example of this would be Mother Theresa.

jasey

Hitler & Stalin preyed on fear - much like a vicar/priest does during a recruitment drive down the local funeral parlour .

Sbradley

Olly, does your atheism also preclude humour?

I though Les was making a gentle and intelligent joke. Remember jokes?

Ah well, Stalin was a humourless b4stard as well, I'm told. Maybe it's an atheist thing...

SB

PS That last line was also a joke.

GaryCat

I've read it. I was raised as a Christian methodist and went to church every Sunday. Like many others I was brainwashed and indoctrinated by vicars (one of whom was a paedophile) and by my parents and their parents.

The bible is a work of semi-fiction from many sources with little or no relevance to the world today.

GaryCat

The thread is about the existence, or otherwise, of God. Therefore Islam is as much under attack from atheists as Christianity or Judaism.

Fuzz

I think it stemed from Illness for one of my family.

Where's this morsel heading?
You think they need "something" to hang onto because maybe the man in the dark cloak is sharpening his scythe ?

Andy

Sbradley

While I've been in the internet free void for the last couple of days I have had a chance to do some navel gazing and try to figure out some sort of definition for what I see as God.

As several people have asked, here's a stab at a definition.

This is not easy, but it's a basis for what I believe in. Please note that we are talking about God here - not the church, the bible or any religion you like. Nor am I referring to any of His authorised representatives on earth, claimed or otherwise.

Please preface all the following comments with "I believe" or something of that ilk.

Right.

God isn't an elderly chap sitting on a cloud. Nor is he one of many manifestations we see represented lobbing thunderbolts around. God, if He has a shape at all, is somewhat amorphous. In fact amoebic might be a better description, as I'll attempt to explain later.

Several sources say "God is love." I prefer to see God as positive energy. That's love, happiness, kindness and so on. Energy is the only word I can use though it isn't really the right term - at least not in our current frame of reference - because this energy attracts like for like. So positive energy accumulates together. Perhaps there is an opposite as well, where all the nasty stuff - hate, fear, anger etc - gathers. I don't know.

So God is an amoebic blob of positive energy. We know that our thoughts, feeling, emotions and indeed our actions are all the result pulses of electricity going from a part of our brains to another part, either firing a physical or a chemical response. We also know that when we die that electrical activity stops. We also know that any electrical pulses are detectable and that they affect things around them - magnetic fields, for example. Now maybe the energy that we produce constantly as a function of our living goes off into the void and collects with its similar energy. If we do lots of good, positive suff then it collects with the good, and vice versa. So we are, in essence (literally) with God. And when we die, the last vestiges of our electrical energy peter out and disperse the same way.

Of course, like any other single celled organism, there is a nucleus. That bit I can't explain, even vaguely. I can't explain how God made everything. Maybe He's been around for a very long time and is simply the acumulated energy of many, many previous life forces in many, many previous universes, gradually developing the sentient power to influence His environment. In honesty I can't even put my hand on my heart and declare that I truly believe He did create it all. But I can see no problem with evolutionists and creationists living side by side if you accept that when God created man in His own image he created a single celled creature. And that single cell creature divided (figuratively giving up that mythical rib) to create another. And we evolved from there. He may well have put the mechanisms in place to allow that evolution, but I still don't see a problem with being a believer in evolution and in God.

That'll do for the moment. More when I can get my head around some other bits.

SB

GaryCat

Good post SB... nicely put.

I think what you are referring to is the same optimism that Humanists feel about the world and about mankind in general... same concept, different terminology.

Like you, Humanists respect the right of other people to have their beliefs, even if they cannot accept the beliefs themselves.