ripuree
“Religion gives people bad reasons to be good, when good reasons are actually available". Sam Harris"With or without religion, 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."- Steven Weinberg
Anthony_McCarthy ripuree
Sam Harris thinks it's OK to kill people for what they believe instead of what they do. He has proposed the idea of nuking cities in the Middle East killing tens of millions of people in a single day. He has justified torture.Steve Weinberg's career is in the branch of science that gave us atomic and nuclear weapons, not to mention nuclear power, most of the big names in that science, the men who did that, atheists. At Sean Carroll's Moving Naturalism he rejected even the atheist's pitiful attempt at coming up with an artificial substitute for morality by saying he cared more about his family and his university department than he did the needs of other people. He also rejected another pathetic atheist attempt to come up with an artificial substitute for morality, one he said he used to accept, utilitarianism (you can hear him say it on the YouTube of the event). He is entirely unqualified to make that statement because he is amoral.
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Anthony_McCarthy Steve Lives
Well, obviously the atheists who think that Harris and Weinberg's names add authority to their expressions of sterotypical bigotry. Which I think speaks to the reality of atheists who, online these days, seem to be uniformly bigoted and conceited as regards the vast majority of humanity.
Steve Lives Anthony_McCarthy
You see, that's the problem with you apologists. When you can't answer the questions, you get all defensive and whiny. You can't prove anything. All you can do is spout blatant bullshit and try to misdirect. Like for instance, what you are doing right now. You are not addressing the statements, you are attacking the men that said them. Your religion is ridiculous. Seriously, where is your god? Is it so pathetic that it couldn't even leave contemporary evidence of his sons existence? So weak that it needs you to stand up for him and pass on the mystical knowledge of his existence? If there really was a god, with all that power, we would all know it. There is no god, there never has been, and there never will be. Grow up. Just because I think you and most of humanity are idiots, doesn't make me a bigot or conceited. What would I have to say to make you think I was not a bigot or conceited? Gee Anthony, you are 100% correct, can I join your cult? Something like that? I am sooooo sick of you religious wingnuts asserting your nonsense then whining when someone disagrees or asks for evidence. Prove it, or get off my porch.
Anthony_McCarthy Steve Lives
You obviously don't see the problem of blatant hypocrisy because in the past eleven years, since Harris started scribbling his hate books you've shown you don't care about lying, bigotry, hypocrisy and a series of related things because atheism is amoral and atheists figure as long as they can get away with something, it's allowed. It's allowed to atheists, that is, you want to have it both ways, you want an exemption from the requirements of integrity while holding everyone else to them.You are a liar and a bigot and an apologist for the hypocrisy of Harris and Weinberg, and I don't accept your insistence on a double standard, especially one that favors atheists, and if you can consider the vast majority of humanity as you do, and that is obviously the majority POV of atheists, we're more than able to consider atheists the biggest manifestation of assholism on the pseudo-left today.I wouldn't want an asshole as big of you associated with anything I was associated with, it's bad enough to have you screwing up liberal-left politics and culture, you could only ruin more of that by increased activity, destroying any possibility of the left gaining political offices and changing laws and life for the better. The atheists and their associated peudo-left is the biggest reason for the political failure on the left in the last half century.Weinberg is a piece of shit as he demonstrated at Carroll's Moving Naturalism Forward failure and Harris is one of the most extreme of hate speech spewers around. If he weren't an atheist that he sounds like the farthest of the far right would be obvious to even someone as stupid as you. That he is an atheist makes that OK with you and the rest of the atheists who love hate talk as long as it's an atheist saying it. Get out of the real left, assholes.- Update:
ripuree Anthony_McCarthy According to Christians and the Bible, aren't we relegated to the eternal fires of hell, if we do not believe in the Bible's God? Yet, don't we have examples of God's irrational killing of humans, of whose independent thinking, God did not approve? Didn't God, in one of his irrational bouts of vengeance, turn a woman into a "pillar of salt" for the simple act of turning around to look at the burning City from which she was escaping? And yet, that woman had lived in that City all of her life, and had been perfect in God's sight. Thus God had granted her the opportunity to escape death by burning, which he didn't see fit to offer to the majority of other inhabitants --including babies, animals and the old.And didn't said, supposedly peaceful and loving Father of all mankind lead an invading army of Jews into occupied territory, to transfer such territory to Jews. Simply because he decided that Jews were his Chosen People, while some others were Cursed? Were the majority of the massacred people in that invasion not innocent civilians, who did no wrong to God or the Jews?So does God's examples of senseless blood thirst, injustice
and apparent insanity make him entirely unqualified to promote himself as a God of unconditional: love, peace and truth for all of mankind? Should God not be a better example of the rules he expects mankind to keep? And finally, if God's many examples of immorality, injustice, nonsense and divine schizophrenia does not impeach him universally across the board in life activities, under what system of reasoning, are you reconciling the holding of mere humans to a "higher" standard than your God?In conclusion, I was not aware that Sam Harris proposed the killing of humans for their beliefs instead of their actions. But now that you've informed me, that does not decrease the validity of his quoted statement. And while Nuclear energy and power have been misused, the misuses do not negate the fact that it has many good uses that we: have, can and will continue to benefit from. Hurricanes and Volcanoes are also destructive and have caused much pain and suffering. But they're also: necessary, good and beneficial to the earth and mankind. Inside of Sam Harris, you, I and God are potential for good and bad. Let us focus on the great benefits of the good that comes out of all, while never embracing the bad, or pretending that God is all good, when obviously your God is not.Anthony_McCarthy ripuree No. Many Christians have been universalists, many of the earliest Christians were. It says that Jesus came so that all people could be saved. Unless you believe that Jesus failed in what he came to do, you would be inclined to be a universalist. Though some would allow people the ability to choose whether or not to be saved, allowing for free will, some hold with predestination and deny that free will and choice comes into whether or not someone is saved.I'm always amused when atheists complain about the idea that some people are not saved and that some are predestined because there are no greater predestinarians than atheists, no greater deniers of salvation for everyone. Atheists say we are all bound for oblivion, that there is no reality to inherent rights and moral obligations. It has no moral proscription of mass murder, oppression, enslavement, it has no mechanism for saying that those are wrong, it has no means of even saying that every single criminal act that they attribute to religion is wrong. They deny that free will and even consciousness is real, the very consciousness that they use to come to their illogical ideas about such things. Materialists, and almost every atheist I have ever encountered is a materialist, must hold that all of our thoughts are the product of our brain chemistry, that what we think is predetermined by that chemistry and the physical forces we encounter as those chemicals react and produce our thoughts. This means that all human thoughts are merely the results of physical actions without any transcendent property such as truth attached to them. That is the logical outcome of that belief. However atheists, as all fundamentalist thinkers exempt their beliefs, their preferences which they hold does have that property of transcending their own beliefs.As every atheist I've ever known is a materialist, all of them inevitably disbelieve in the absolute prerequisites for being a real as opposed to a pseudo-liberal. They don't believe in free will, free thought, inherent rights, real equality, an absolute moral obligation to respect rights on an equal basis. Atheism, at least in its most common form, is incompatible with the goals of a real as opposed to a pseudo-left.
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You see, that's the problem with you apologists. When you can't answer the questions, you get all defensive and whiny. You can't prove anything. All you can do is spout blatant bullshit and try to misdirect. Like for instance, what you are doing right now. You are not addressing the statements, you are attacking the men that said them. Your religion is ridiculous. Seriously, where is your god? Is it so pathetic that it couldn't even leave contemporary evidence of his sons existence? So weak that it needs you to stand up for him and pass on the mystical knowledge of his existence? If there really was a god, with all that power, we would all know it. There is no god, there never has been, and there never will be. Grow up. Just because I think you and most of humanity are idiots, doesn't make me a bigot or conceited. What would I have to say to make you think I was not a bigot or conceited? Gee Anthony, you are 100% correct, can I join your cult? Something like that? I am sooooo sick of you religious wingnuts asserting your nonsense then whining when someone disagrees or asks for evidence. Prove it, or get off my porch.
ReplyDeleteFairly typical of on-line "arguments":
1) Seriously, where is your god? Is it so pathetic that it couldn't even leave contemporary evidence of his sons existence? I love how this conflates a religious claim (Jesus=Son of God) with historical ignorance. The historical proof of Jesus wasn't even a real question in the 19th century, and has never been an issue among scholars, even Biblical scholars who are not religious (there are a lot of them). But letting knowledge replace ignorance would be dropping a brick in this guy's intellectual souffle, so....
(2) So weak that it needs you to stand up for him and pass on the mystical knowledge of his existence? If there really was a god, with all that power, we would all know it.
I would gladly point him to many discussions of the power of powerlessness, many passages of scripture regarding God's unwillingness to "prove" God's presence by ovewhelming displays of power, and simply point to the fact that no two people agree on anything beyond simply analytical statements (a la Hume) like "This stone is heavy," and even then we'd quibble over the parameters of "heavy." Besides, as Kierkegaard pointed out, if you acknowledge God, you don't need proof; if you don't, no proof is possible.
(3) Just because I think you and most of humanity are idiots, doesn't make me a bigot or conceited. What would I have to say to make you think I was not a bigot or conceited? Maybe that you don't really think most of humanity are idiots? It would be a start, though I'd have a hard time setting that aside once you'd asserted it.
Good grief.
(4) I am sooooo sick of you religious wingnuts asserting your nonsense then whining when someone disagrees or asks for evidence. Prove it, or get off my porch.
Fine: I say you're a Turing Test, "Steve Lives." Prove me wrong. Go ahead, prove your existence.
That'll keep you busy to the end of your life, and maybe you won't harm anyone else in the process. It would be an improvement.....
And the quotes about religion that started the whole thing, are just profoundly ignorant. Always amazes me when people are so proud of how much they don't know.
ReplyDeleteSo does God's examples of senseless blood thirst, injustice
ReplyDeleteand apparent insanity make him entirely unqualified to promote himself as a God of unconditional: love, peace and truth for all of mankind?
First, cite me an example, rather than half-remembered stories taken out of context with which you are vaguely familiar. Then let's discuss the parameters and definition of "unconditional love,peace, and truth for all mankind (I prefer "humankind," but anyway....). And discuss the universalist appeal of the Hebrew covenant, which was not meant to convert all people to Judaism, but to bring all the nations of the world to peace and harmony (the "holy mountain" image of Isaiah). Let us, in other words, get the story straight, rather than quarrel in the restrictive terms of your ignorance.
Should God not be a better example of the rules he expects mankind to keep? See above. Your examples are grounded on lack of knowledge, not a lacking in the nature of God.
And finally, if God's many examples of immorality, injustice, nonsense and divine schizophrenia does not impeach him universally across the board in life activities, under what system of reasoning, are you reconciling the holding of mere humans to a "higher" standard than your God?
You know, God makes this challenge to the prophets more than once in the scriptures. You could look it up. Makes for fascinating reading. And it shows up in the Book of Job, too; not to mention the story of Jonah (not just the whale story).
This isn't, in other words, the challenge you think it is. It is the tiny fists of a child demanding candy or some treat, not the reasoning of an adult seeking knowledge and understanding.
Come back when you are thinking like an adult. It won't be a conversion moment for you, but arguing with children is a fool's pastime.