Atheist knowledge

[Marty_d]

"Dog Allbitey"... love it!

 

What Does God Like?

 

Sports.... well, a lot of competitors are very religious and ask god to help them. However the funny thing about sport is, there's winners and losers, and the losers aren't always atheists, so we can conclude that god doesn't follow sport. Can't blame him for that, neither do I.

 

Babies... who doesn't like babies? However as the World Vision adverts show, babies with malnutrition are dying in Africa all the time. Just in case you think he's racist though, white babies die too. Strangely enough mostly (but not always) from low socio-economic families. Which just goes to show that god doesn't like babies, he's not fond of poor folks either. However he LOVES babies before they're born (which the rest of us call fetuses) and calls on his more rabid followers to kill doctors who perform abortions. In fact recently a Republican politician (which means he's god's direct representative on Earth) said that if a woman is raped and becomes pregnant as a result, she should consider it a gift from god. Which means that although he doesn't like babies or poor people, he does use rapists as his own personal Santa Clauses.

 

Dinosaurs... nope, definitely didn't like them. Which is ok because they didn't exist anyway, god just planted fake bones to confuse those godless scientists who falsely believe the world is more than 6,000 years old. But he did replace them with his own scientists, who will tell you all about Intelligent Design.

 

Sex... NO NO NO. God HATES sex. Violence is ok, killing is ok, chopping off heads or blowing people up or even giving them cancer from "depleted" uranium bullets is ok, but anything to do with sex (except to make babies within marriage) is just WRONG. Which is why teenage boys must stutter out their masturbatory sins in the confessional, while ironically on the other side... and that's just heterosexual sex! Anything else is REALLY WRONG and in fact there are clear instructions from god on how to deal with "those people". However god doesn't mind blokes sleeping with their own daughters (at least, he encouraged his good buddy Job to do so). Very confusing really.

 

So it's a bit unclear as to what god likes. His dislikes are well known though.

 

1. Atheists

 

2. Masturbation

 

3. Women

 

4. Homosexuals

 

5. Scientists

 

6. Greens

 

7. Jabirus (just kidding).

 

So if you're a Green-voting lesbian atheist scientist who takes matters into her own hands when the little lady is away, there's a pitchfork with your name on it...

 

 

[turboplanner]

Why perpetuate this myth that the world is 6,000 years old, when I've gone to the trouble of posting at least twice, that there are people who believe in God going back 30,000 years in the research I've done so far.

 

Your list of dislikes is equally off the planet.

 

 

[facthunter]

Does god have a sense of humor? Is he off the planet too? HE would have to be some of the time. It's a big universe. There must be other (more deserving) beings out there, who aren't as flawed, (as we are supposed to be.) added for clarity. Nev

 

 

[DonRamsay]

Why perpetuate this myth that the world is 6,000 years old

Nobody on here except possibly the Gnarly one and a couple of his fellow believers think this planet Earth is any younger than several billion years old. But is is amusing, you have to admit, to poke fun at such hysterical fantasies.

 

. . . when I've gone to the trouble of posting at least twice, that there are people who believe in God going back 30,000 years in the research I've done so far.

I would easily be persuaded that species from which we evolved (pre homo sapiens) believed that many natural phenomena (thunder, lightning, volcano eruptions, earthquakes, even rain) were due to the work or humour of spirits.

 

Your list of dislikes is equally off the planet.

But logical based on the scriptures and damn funny - and that after all is what this section is meant to be for - Laughter!

 

 

[turboplanner]

Nobody on here except possibly the Gnarly one and a couple of his fellow believers think this planet Earth is any younger than several billion years old. But is is amusing, you have to admit, to poke fun at such hysterical fantasies.

It's possible one of the hundreds of people who contributed to copy in the Bible was a fruit loop and really thought the world was 6,000 years. There are many ridiculous and provably incorrect statements in the Bible.

 

However it is not the word of God, it's not even mandatory for those who believe in God, yet you atheists have somehow become mesmerised by it, comb through it, and pick out some trash in a desperate effort to be able to say anything.

 

 

[DonRamsay]

. . . However it is not the word of God, it's not even mandatory for those who believe in God, yet you atheists have somehow become mesmerised by it, comb through it, and pick out some trash in a desperate effort to be able to say anything.

Oh my God! Wash your mouth out Turbo. How can you possibly say it is not the word of God when the Bible says it's the word of God! Of course many Christians have drawn a line under the old testament and rely only on the new testament and the muslims have drawn a line under both and said only what Muhammad said matters.

 

And the many pagan religions have their own gods and care not for any scribblings by goat herders from several thousand years ago. And then there are our favourites, the Scientologists and their particular superstitions dreamed up post WWII.

 

No atheist could give a tinker's damn about the Bible's content. However, there are many god-fearing christians who claim that the Bible *is* the inspired word of Jehovah aka Allah aka God. The creator of this thread, Mr Gnarly, is certainly one of those people and he even denies that Allah and Jehovah and God are the same. As such, surely it is fair game to quote this thread's creator's creator's inspired word to prove what a load of cobblers it all is.

 

Those that claim some of the Bible is "Gospel" and some of it is not; and some of it is literal and some of it's parable; and some of it is just of its time and not relevant to today - they just want to have it all ways. And who is qualified to be the judge of what is inspired word and what is parable and what is just of its time?

 

But this is all just simple logic and the last thing people who forsake reason for belief want to know about is logic. After all, are we not presumptuous in trying to understand the way in which God works? Should we not all just accept that he works in mysterious ways and believe that the church hierarchy can guide us to the truth, the light and the way?

 

And, the superstitions of an uneducated primitive from 30,000 years ago is surely of no more interest than a curiosity?

 

 

[Marty_d]

C'mon Turbs, lighten up a little. If you can't laugh at religion, what's the point of it?

 

Scientology Don, now there's a beauty. Invented by a man who is known to have said "if you want to make a fortune, start a religion"... then went and did so.

 

 

[turboplanner]

Oh my God! Wash your mouth out Turbo. How can you possibly say it is not the word of God when the Bible says it's the word of God! Of course many Christians have drawn a line under the old testament and rely only on the new testament and the muslims have drawn a line under both and said only what Muhammad said matters.

I can say that because it was not required reading for my Confirmation, so there you have it first hand.

 

scribblings by goat herders

Tilting at the windmills again. What is positive fact is that the world contained architects and masons who could build Newgrange in Ireland, thousands of years before the time scale you are disparaging. It's also positive fact that astronomers were smart enough to be measuring stars and calculating precession thousands of years before your time, and we know that because there were skilled writers who provided the evidence in carvings, clay tablets and wall paintings, and whose descendents would not have stood back and allowed your goat herders to make a mess of it.

 

No atheist could give a tinker's damn about the Bible's content.

Prove it by not referring to it then in your arguments.

 

The creator of this thread, Mr Gnarly, is certainly one of those people and he even denies that Allah and Jehovah and God are the same. As such, surely it is fair game to quote this thread's creator's creator's inspired word to prove what a load of cobblers it all is.

Very poor evidence for an argument, and you certainly haven't proved that all of the Bible is a load of cobblers, since month by month, Bible stories are being accurately corroborated by written history from other sources.

 

Those that claim some of the Bible is "Gospel" and some of it is not; and some of it is literal and some of it's parable; and some of it is just of its time and not relevant to today - they just want to have it all ways. And who is qualified to be the judge of what is inspired word and what is parable and what is just of its time?

Rubbish, we're just trying to explain to you that evidence of sections of the Bible indicate that some is very accurate, and some is rubbish, and some is not understood because of the changing millenia. (I explained how when Jesus raised someone from the dead, he didn't magically create life in a dead person, but brought someone who had been excluded from the faith and was therefore "dead", back into the fold where he was "live" - it was just a matter of meaning.

 

But this is all just simple logic and the last thing people who forsake reason for belief want to know about is logic. After all, are we not presumptuous in trying to understand the way in which God works? Should we not all just accept that he works in mysterious ways and believe that the church hierarchy can guide us to the truth, the light and the way?

If you're talking about the Catholic Church, then it's not going to happen and sooner or later some evidence will come to light, most likely from Templar sources which will unmask Saul's deception.

 

And, the superstitions of an uneducated primitive from 30,000 years ago is surely of no more interest than a curiosity?

If you had gone off and studied what I wrote, and checked it out for yourself, you'd know that those people, who believed in God, were not primitive.

 

 

[DonRamsay]

Turbo, your reply above is one of the few occasions here when it is a pleasure to have the discussion and, yes, "argument". "Argument" enclosed in inverted commas here not because of a special meaning but to indicate the strict meaning of it being an exchange of views backed by logic and not the usual meaning these days of bickering - an angry exchange of "yes it is"versus "no it isn't".

 

Thanks for that.

 

There are still some fundamental issues with the entire Abrahamic (Judeo/Christian/Islamic) religion. It is not logic based, it is faith based. Their is zero useful provenance for the Judeo/Christian scriptures. The Islamic Kuran (however spelled) probably comes closest to a reputable historical document in that it has a claim of a single author and that the entire contents are the statements of the author. Even still, it is open to widely varying interpretation as is evidenced in the behaviours of muslims in the 21st Century.

 

Clearly, you cannot an argument in that sense with anyone who forsakes reason in favour of an unquestioning belief that the Bible is the inspired word of an omnipotent deity. Total waste of time and energy on both sides.

 

But, let's talk specifics in response to your reasoned criticism of my dissertation above.

 

I can say that because it was not required reading for my Confirmation, so there you have it first hand.

Like me you were probably Confirmed before achieving your teens and the age of independent reason. All I had to do was learn effectively the Creed of Nicaea adopted and enforced by Constantine in the 4th Century CE as the fundamental act of faith. Something tells me though that on the strength of your writings here, you would not be eligible for Confirmation in the 21st Century CE. Could even qualify as a heretic and blasphemer. Good thing Canon and Shariah Law are not in force in this jurisdiction, and that the Pharisees can't recommend to the Governor that you be crucified, eh?

 

What is positive fact is that the world contained architects and masons who could build Newgrange in Ireland, thousands of years before the time scale you are disparaging.

It's not the time scale I was disparaging but the tribe of desert wandering, genocidal people famous for the boastful rape of Jericho. These were superstitious people who destroyed what was perhaps the first city the world has known.

 

It's also positive fact that astronomers were smart enough to be measuring stars and calculating precession thousands of years before your time, and we know that because there were skilled writers who provided the evidence in carvings, clay tablets and wall paintings, and whose descendants would not have stood back and allowed your goat herders to make a mess of it.

All true but they were not necessarily of the tribe that assembled the old testament. The Romans had developed truly remarkable technology but, when it came to matters of religion, they were still looking at the entrails of chickens to make many of their important decisions. Still no question in my mind that the goat herders made "a mess of it".

 

Prove it by not referring to it then in your arguments.

I only ever refer to it as a counter to an argument that was formulated on the basis of the content of the Bible or of its provenance.

 

Bible stories are being accurately corroborated by written history from other sources.

I don't think so. There may be some evidence that there was a flood of almost biblical proportions but it hardly lines up with the drivel written about Noah. How simple and ignorant would a people have to be to swallow that codswallop?

 

Rubbish

Hardly an expression that belongs in our otherwise serious discussion and ignores the criticism " . . . who is qualified to be the judge of what is inspired word and what is parable and what is just of its time?". Even if it were true that "evidence of sections of the Bible indicate that some is very accurate, and some is rubbish, and some is not understood" still leaves us with the situation that who says which bit is what?

 

If you had gone off and studied what I wrote, and checked it out for yourself, you'd know that those people, who believed in God, were not primitive.

Not sure in what sense you think they were not primitive. Biologically perhaps not much different though likely to have been shorter in stature and lacking the intellectual evolution that came with the intellectual giants like Socrates, daVinci, Newton, Einstein, etc. Compared to that lot, I feel primitive!

 

 

[Marty_d]

Perhaps those early people who believed in god didn't have a choice because of the structure of their society. When the RC church was at its most powerful in Europe (pretty much running the show, with huge quantities of priests/canons/clerics living off the compulsory tithes from the rest of the population) there were people who didn't believe in god either, but unlike our current somewhat enlightened Western civilisation they didn't have the option of saying so out loud.

 

Probably much like your average citizen in Baghdad or Damascus today, the peasants didn't give a toss about religion (which would have been almost incomprehensible anyway as all the services were in Latin when the populace didn't speak it), but were raised to believe that the priests were to be obeyed in all things and that if they didn't believe, they were bound for everlasting agony in hell. This reinforced by lurid pictures painted on the church walls of souls in torment.

 

The priest/shaman/witch doctor has always historically held a position of great power. It's only in the last couple of hundred years that this power has reduced substantially in christianity, and hopefully it'll decline in islam too.

 

 

[dazza 38]

It is quite simply really, if there was a God, he wouldn't sit idle and let his priests molest children.

 

 

[pmccarthy]

I heard Philip Adams yesterday telling about reading of a Heavenly Father who sent his son to earth with supernatural powers to save mankind. The son had an earthly mother named Mary.

 

He was reading a Superman comic.

 

 

[Marty_d]

I heard Philip Adams yesterday telling about reading of a Heavenly Father who sent his son to earth with supernatural powers to save mankind. The son had an earthly mother named Mary.

He was reading a Superman comic.

Yes, I've read a story about a lion who ruled the realm letting himself be sacrificed and reappearing alive 3 days later. The Narnia stories written by C S Lewis.

 

While Lewis was a devout christian, Superman was created by a couple of Jewish Americans in the 30's, so I don't think they deliberately set out to to make him a modern day Jesus.

 

Besides, I don't think it's physically possible to crucify Superman.

 

 

[bexrbetter]

Besides, I don't think it's physically possible to crucify Superman.

Phhtt, spot the poster who has never heard of a kryptonite cross .....

 

Afghanistan women in a record store in the mid 1950s ....

 

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[Gnarly Gnu]

5 Ways Atheists Argue Their Cause (That Aren't Helping)

 

#5. The Closest Atheism Has To Leaders Are Terrible People

 

#4. It's Become Tied To Awful Ideas

 

#3. There's An Arrogance To It

 

#2. It's Become Too Defensive

 

#1. It's Focused On The Wrong Goals

 

 

 

[octave]

5 Ways Atheists Argue Their Cause (That Aren't Helping)

#5. The Closest Atheism Has To Leaders Are Terrible People

 

#4. It's Become Tied To Awful Ideas

 

#3. There's An Arrogance To It

 

#2. It's Become Too Defensive

 

#1. It's Focused On The Wrong Goals

#5 - who are these people and in what way are they terrible? As a person who does not believe in the supernatural of any kind, I don't consider that I have a "leader"

 

#4 - what "Awful Ideas" do you consider it has been tied to?

 

#3 - Non- believers just like believers can be arrogant or not, perhaps you find the most outspoken atheists to be arrogant but then I find the most outspoken believers to be arrogant. I personally would not dream of knocking on doors and trying to convert people or start a thread with an "aren't they dumb" type joke.

 

#2 - there is nothing wrong with defending one's position, everyone does have a right to express an opinion, but they do not have the right for that opinion to go unchallenged. I have no interest in converting believers into non- believers but if a believer tells me I should behave in a certain way because it says so in THEIR holy book or it is ok to teach scientific theories A, B and C but not theory D because it contradicts THEIR holy book then I have a right to politely and rationally argue.

 

#1 "Focused on the wrong goals" - I am not sure who "it" is and what you perceive the goals to be, perhaps you could enlighten me.

 

5 Ways Atheists Argue Their Cause (That Aren't Helping)

 

aren't helping what? Belief in the supernatural continues to decline.

 

I don't really understand why atheism bothers you so much, after all you believe that you will be rewarded in heaven and I will burn in hell for eternity along with those who believe in different gods or those who believe in a god but not christ.

 

 

[Gnarly Gnu]

Well the title is a link to an article written by an Atheist which includes all the subheadings I listed and he answers your questions quite comprehensively.

 

 

[facthunter]

According to who.? Nev

 

 

[bexrbetter]

but they do not have the right for that opinion to go unchallenged.

Speak for yourself!

 

 

[facthunter]

Atheism isn't a religion or a group. ( Similar to independents in the parliament) What one atheist writes means nothing because it is written by an atheist per se to other atheists.. You appear to have a problem GG. You are not of kind disposition to those who don't think as you do. Are YOU insecure? Surely "believing" which gets you to the kingdom, should be enough for you., without making it hell for those who are going there. Nev

 

 

[octave]

"but they do not have the right for that opinion to go unchallenged."

 

Speak for yourself!

OK, I will speak for myself, I believe that we should all be free to express any opinion we wish BUT we should not expect that those opinions can not be challenged.

 

 

[horsefeathers]

Welcome back Gnu.

 

But seriously, WTF are you talking about?

 

 

[facthunter]

There are laws that allow action to be taken for slander and other forms of character assassination/defamation. This is considered fair enough but in some countries is used to silence all dissent. The word can be a powerful tool to discredit a worthy person. Happens all the time. Nev

 

 

[bexrbetter]

BUT we should not expect that those opinions can not be challenged.

I don't expect my opinions to be challenged and am always shocked and surprised when they are because I am always right and only a limp wristed, snotty nosed, drunken, sewer crawling, ISIS supporting bunyip would challenge me.

 

 

[turboplanner]

OK, I will speak for myself, I believe that we should all be free to express any opinion we wish BUT we should not expect that those opinions can not be challenged.

Yes, but you could give it a rest for a while Octave, continually asking for the names of the survivors of the Titanic gets boring after a while.

 

If we are writing a thesis then yes, we would be expected to provide a bibliography and references, but this is a simple forum.