Goodbye Atheism

gbee

nagirrac wrote: »

They did not just arrive spontaneously and if people think kids will turn out grand with no teaching in personal morals and ethics, that is an experiment that I imagine you can see the results of without having to wander too far.

It's the lying part that causes underlying problem for those that are effected. Your parents are your most important asserts as a baby and young child, you rely on them, you as a parent need to be truthful and instil honesty as a basic tenet.

As a child if you can't trust your parents, you have no one or no thing you can trust.

At the moment our cities have ample examples of the current system, morals. law and order, lifestyles and so on, all having got a religious upbringing but from parents who do not in fact have any religion nor belief ~ so make it a law that one does not bring their children up in any religion until 12 or so.

I'm not banning religion, an in fact this aspect is not new to me, the Church Of Ireland have adult Baptism and Confirmation already.

equivariant

MisterEpicurus wrote: »

I have to comply with Robindch rules so I think it's come to make concluding remarks.

Excellent flounce

...
I think, on balance, that the pure atheists have won the argument.

Despite all the rhetoric from the other side, including the red herrings and equivocation fallacies such as comparing AI to other legitimate organizations with actual central interests. We've highlighted that the name AI, on balance, makes no sense except for ego and pride and not one based on reason - the very tool AI recommends those to employ.

"Atheist Ireland" makes no sense as a name for an Irish association of atheists that are interested in promoting atheism. Hmmmm... I'll have think more about this - I must be missing something.

We've seen a lot of 'AI represent us, and we'll back them to the death' type behaviour, which is quite disconcerting but is what I expected from Organized Atheism (or Nugentism as I highlighted above). Now that I've made my concluding remarks, I'm going to take the debate over to the AI forum to continue it in more detail as the moderator has recommended.

/flounce

Now that you guys have "won the argument" we need to act on this.
Perhaps you could do the following. Yourself and iMyself and whoever else could go away and spend some time thinking of a better name. Take as long as you want. When you are done, you could write up a submission explaining your proposal to the association currently known as Atheist Ireland and send it to them. This would be a valuable service to the community (in many ways) as it would allow AI to concentrate on less weighty matters such as campaigning for a secular state and a fair school system, while you and your team of "pure atheists" deal with the important stuff.

iMyself

equivariant wrote: »

Excellent flounce



"Atheist Ireland" makes no sense as a name for an Irish association of atheists that are interested in promoting atheism. Hmmmm... I'll have think more about this - I must be missing something.

/flounce

Now that you guys have "won the argument" we need to act on this.
Perhaps you could do the following. Yourself and iMyself and whoever else could go away and spend some time thinking of a better name. Take as long as you want. When you are done, you could write up a submission explaining your proposal to the association currently known as Atheist Ireland and send it to them. This would be a valuable service to the community (in many ways) as it would allow AI to concentrate on less weighty matters such as campaigning for a secular state and a fair school system, while you and your team of "pure atheists" deal with the important stuff.

An official statement to clarify they are not an authority over atheists in Ireland and merely represent their own members will suffice. And seeing as Mr Nugent has already clarified this on here, and seeing as a name is just a name, then I dont really see what the problem is. Regardless of how many more important things there are to do. He found time to debate the issue here, I'm sure someone in AI can spare 5 mins to put an official statement up on the website. Otherwise we can only conclude that our assertions are true.

Basically, the ball is in AI's court to put this to bed and end the debate. I think both sides can agree thats fair, do you think?

nagirrac

iMyself wrote: »

Right, due to their lack of a religious upbringing. And what are your views on paedophiles? You'd have to say, right up there on a par with sociopaths. Yet how is it that paedophilia is so rampant in the catholic church? These are very religious people doing very evil things. How can that be?

No, nothing to do with a religious or non religious upbringing and please don't insult me by suggesting I made such a conection. Sociopaths become sociopaths because of something in their upbringing that converting them from being psychopaths (who is quite common) to having an intense hatred for people to want to kill them. Like all sadistic behavior once they start they cannot stop, the thrill lures them on and they become addicted.

Paedophiles represent about 3-5% of the population in terms of tendancy, the great majority are men. I agree they are absolute monsters when they act on their tendancies, but again nothing to do with belief or non belief. Paedophiles who act out on their tendancies seek out professions and organizations that give them access to children (churches, boy scouts, BBC shows). I have seen no evidence that globally the # of paedophiles is greater in the Catholic church than in general society. Ireland is probably an exception because the RCC held so much power and the state did nothing to pursue these monsters. It was the obvious place for them to go to gain access to children and both the church and the state were morally and criminally negligant in not protecting the most vulnerable of their members and citizens.

Absolutely, religious people do very evil things, as do non believers. Clearly religious paedophiles are not followers of their religous teaching though, JC for example was quite specific in his teaching on harming children.

ShooterSF

nagirrac wrote: »

I know they get little sympathy on A&A but they still represent the best solution for a big majority of society, they are truly an opium for the masses. I would much prefer a state with religion right now than one without.

Ah yes you and I are big enough and strong enough to handle the truth. But the masses?! No we better feed their fragile mind something comforting. And you dare call atheists arrogant?

nagirrac

ShooterSF wrote: »

Ah yes you and I are big enough and strong enough to handle the truth. But the masses?! No we better feed their fragile mind something comforting. And you dare call atheists arrogant?

Unfortunately the only examples we have where religion was actively removed from society had very bad outcomes, check out the statistics on the # of people killed within their own states by Marxist regimes since 1917. Clearly it wasn't Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot doing all the killing personally.

I don't subscribe to the argument that we as a race are more "enlightened" now and we will never repeat the savagery of the 20th century. Hopefully that day will come. I struggle as much as anyone to understand how people can inflict such suffering on their fellow man and the best I can come up with are the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from his Templeon address.

"More than a century ago, while I was still a child, I remember older people offering the following description for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: Men had forgotten God, that's why all this has happened. Since then I have spent 50 years working on the history of our Revolution, in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonials, and have already contributed 8 volumes of my own toward the effort to clear up the rubble from that upheavel. But if I were asked today to formulate as concise an explanation for the main cause of the runious revolution that swallowed up 60M of our people, I could not put it better than repeat: Men have forgotten God, that's why all this happened".

His 1978 Harvard address is also well worth reading where he was very critical of Western society and quite prophetic on where blind materialism was leading.

fitz0

bluecode wrote: »

I'm seriously confused, what arrogance? There is no God. That's all. Atheism is a label for people who like labels.

There is no God. That's all.

I'm not an atheist because that implies I believe something.

My only reality is that there is not such thing as God and people who believe otherwise are deluded.

It's the attitude that says 'We have the truth' that rankles. We don't have the truth, we have a neutral position as non-believers, as atheists. If it becomes a positive assertion that there are no gods and this is the 'truth' that's a whole other matter, quite the same as the religious position.

Michael Nugent

nagirrac wrote: »

JC for example was quite specific in his teaching on harming children.

Yes, the Bible quotes Jesus as saying that he will kill the children of Jezebel for the sins of their mother.

Michael Nugent

fitz0 wrote: »

It's the attitude that says 'We have the truth' that rankles. We don't have the truth, we have a neutral position as non-believers, as atheists. If it becomes a positive assertion that there are no gods and this is the 'truth' that's a whole other matter, quite the same as the religious position.

No atheist I know claims to "have the truth" in the absolutist sense that your sentence implies.

But recognizing that we cannot know things for certain does not mean that we are neutral on whether or not something is true.

Speaking strictly philosophically, we cannot know anything.

Speaking in ordinary day-to-day language, when we say we "know" something, this includes several unspoken conditions. It means something like:

Based on the currently best available evidence…
Based on applying reason to that evidence…
Based on forming beliefs most proportionate to the evidence…
Based on reaching conclusions beyond reasonable doubt…
Based on accepting that we may be mistaken…
Based on being open to the possibility of new evidence…

… we can reasonably say that we know something to be the case.

pauldla

nagirrac wrote: »

Unfortunately the only examples we have where religion was actively removed from society had very bad outcomes, check out the statistics on the # of people killed within their own states by Marxist regimes since 1917. Clearly it wasn't Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot doing all the killing personally.

I don't subscribe to the argument that we as a race are more "enlightened" now and we will never repeat the savagery of the 20th century. Hopefully that day will come. I struggle as much as anyone to understand how people can inflict such suffering on their fellow man and the best I can come up with are the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from his Templeon address.

"More than a century ago, while I was still a child, I remember older people offering the following description for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: Men had forgotten God, that's why all this has happened. Since then I have spent 50 years working on the history of our Revolution, in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonials, and have already contributed 8 volumes of my own toward the effort to clear up the rubble from that upheavel. But if I were asked today to formulate as concise an explanation for the main cause of the runious revolution that swallowed up 60M of our people, I could not put it better than repeat: Men have forgotten God, that's why all this happened".

His 1978 Harvard address is also well worth reading where he was very critical of Western society and quite prophetic on where blind materialism was leading.

Oh dear, back to this again...?

To your second point, the Solzhenitsyn quote. The great bloodlettings of the 20th century mostly happened pre-1950. Two World Wars, the Ukranian famine, the Armenian genocide, the Spanish Influenza pandemic, etc. But many say that the Great Moral Decline happened post-1950. The Rise of Communism, Rock'n'Roll, the Swinging Sixties, the drug culture, gay rights, free love, declining numbers of church-goers, etc. So how do we explain this? Was God getting his retaliation in first, for people forgetting God? "Your descendants will forget me, so I'm killing you all now?" Or is the thesis complete nonsense..?

fitz0

Michael - Perhaps that's what bluecode meant but it came across as absolutist in the terms (s)he used - realise the truth, there is no god, people who believe otherwise are deluded - and more strongly in gbee's comments about being 'a level above the masses' and his (her) dismissive attitude to dissent.

No atheist I know has ever claimed to have truth either but that's strictly offline. There's a difference in people's expression online, but it may just be an issue of phrasing things a certain way.

As for neutrality, how is atheism in itself not neutral? All it really entails is not believing there are gods. That's not a positive assertion, it's just a disbelief of another positive assertion. What we do based on that outlook is not neutral, such as the work AI and yourself so, but the lack of belief itself is absolutely neutral.

iMyself

nagirrac wrote: »

No, nothing to do with a religious or non religious upbringing and please don't insult me by suggesting I made such a conection. Sociopaths become sociopaths because of something in their upbringing that converting them from being psychopaths (who is quite common) to having an intense hatred for people to want to kill them. Like all sadistic behavior once they start they cannot stop, the thrill lures them on and they become addicted.

Paedophiles represent about 3-5% of the population in terms of tendancy, the great majority are men. I agree they are absolute monsters when they act on their tendancies, but again nothing to do with belief or non belief. Paedophiles who act out on their tendancies seek out professions and organizations that give them access to children (churches, boy scouts, BBC shows). I have seen no evidence that globally the # of paedophiles is greater in the Catholic church than in general society. Ireland is probably an exception because the RCC held so much power and the state did nothing to pursue these monsters. It was the obvious place for them to go to gain access to children and both the church and the state were morally and criminally negligant in not protecting the most vulnerable of their members and citizens.

Absolutely, religious people do very evil things, as do non believers. Clearly religious paedophiles are not followers of their religous teaching though, JC for example was quite specific in his teaching on harming children.

The point I was making is that teaching someone religion does not necessarily make them morally sound people. To suggest that these priest simply do not follow the religious teachings backs up my point. There is something else that makes people good regardless if whether they are taught religionor not. Empathy definitely has something to do with it as well as the selfishness of doing things for your own personal gain either consciously or subconsciously. You rub my back, I rub your back. People like nice people, there is a lot to gain by being nice.

ShooterSF

nagirrac wrote: »

Unfortunately the only examples we have where religion was actively removed from society had very bad outcomes, check out the statistics on the # of people killed within their own states by Marxist regimes since 1917. Clearly it wasn't Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot doing all the killing personally.

So you're saying you believe most of humanity are murdering psychopaths and we need to keep them believing in "the opium of the masses" to stop their killing sprees? Wow it get's better and better. I don't want you to think I'm putting words in your moth but your defense for giving the masses a comfortable lie is a fear of mass genocide.

Oh and promoting atheism != actively removing religion from the country. But you knew that.

Michael Nugent

fitz0 wrote: »

If it becomes a positive assertion that there are no gods and this is the 'truth' that's a whole other matter, quite the same as the religious position.

That depends on what you mean by the word god.

If it is just an unspecific assertion about a word that can mean anything, then it is impossible to say anything about it.

Once you start to define it, then it becomes progressively easier to take a reasonable position.

• Saying that it is true that the Christian God does not exist is very different than saying that the Christian God does exist.
• Saying that it is true that Thor does not exist is very different than saying that Thor does exist.
• Saying that it is true that Allah does not exist is very different than saying that Allah does exist.
• Saying that it is true that Neptune does not exist is very different than saying that Neptune does exist.

In each of these cases, there is no reliable evidence that the god in question does exist, and lots of reliable evidence that the god in question is an idea invented by humans.

I am quite comfortable asserting that it is true the Christian God does not exist, subject to the unwritten assumptions about claims of knowledge that I outlined in my previous post.

iMyself

For what it's worth, my son is going on 3 and has absolutely no concept of religion. Jesus Christ is something his dad shouts when he comes across an idiot on the road. And I have to say, so far so good. No sociopathic tendencies or general evilness whatsoever. He is actually a very kind, gentle and caring child and already shows signs of ethical development. He'll share his toys, take turns, hug you when you are sad, tell you he loves you, he loves to help out, has a wonderful sense of humour and all round good nature. Some things we have to teach him to understand, but mostly he simply has a built in genetic nature to be good.

Sharing toys is actually a good example. To begin with he used to be very protective over his toys. But now he realises that when he goes to his friends houses it's nice when he gets to play with their toys and now he can empathise. There is also the personal advantage that if he shares his toys, the favour gets reciprocated.

Michael Nugent

fitz0 wrote: »

No atheist I know has ever claimed to have truth either but that's strictly offline. There's a difference in people's expression online, but it may just be an issue of phrasing things a certain way.

I don't think it is an online/offline thing. I think it is more that conversations skip between talking in strictly philosophical language and ordinary day-to-day terms. Speaking in either language, you can tease out whatever problem you are addressing. Skipping between the two languages in the same conversation causes all sorts of problems.

fitz0 wrote: »

As for neutrality, how is atheism in itself not neutral? All it really entails is not believing there are gods. That's not a positive assertion, it's just a disbelief of another positive assertion. What we do based on that outlook is not neutral, such as the work AI and yourself so, but the lack of belief itself is absolutely neutral.

Well, I don't agree that all that atheism entails is not believing that there are gods. It can also entail positively believing that there are gods. But let's park that debate for a moment, and I will run with your preferred definition.

Once the proposition that gods exist has been put to you, it is impossible to remain strictly neutral about whether or not you believe it is correct. You may have lots of doubt or little doubt, but you inevitably come down, however slightly, on the side of believing it or disbelieving it.

How you choose to describe the position that you have arrived at is not the same thing as the position itself.

For example, some people describe their position as "lack of belief" as a debating tactic to put the onus of proof on theists. Some people will refuse to say they believe there is no god unless they have 100% proof there is no god, but will happily say they believe other assertions despite not having 100% proof of them.

Again, a lot depends on whether you are speaking strictly philosophically or in ordinary day-to-day language.

nagirrac

Michael Nugent wrote: »

Yes, the Bible quotes Jesus as saying that he will kill the children of Jezebel for the sins of their mother.

A perfect example of the lunatic fringe I spoke about in an earlier post who quote a few words from the bible with no understanding of what the words mean or their context. First of all if one were interested in what Jesus had to say I would start with the 4 gospels and not with the Book of Revelation. I doubt you have such interest though and are more interested in scoring points using as irrational an argument as a fundamentalist Christian does.

If you ever bothered to speak to someone knowledgable on scripture as opposed to taking your knowledge on scripture from Richard Dawkins you would know that the meaning of the text in question is that children refers to followers and Jezebel refers to the devil or evil. When Jesus talks about death he is talking about spiuritual death. It has nothing to do with killing kids.

nagirrac

pauldla wrote: »

Oh dear, back to this again...?

To your second point, the Solzhenitsyn quote. The great bloodlettings of the 20th century mostly happened pre-1950. Two World Wars, the Ukranian famine, the Armenian genocide, the Spanish Influenza pandemic, etc. But many say that the Great Moral Decline happened post-1950. The Rise of Communism, Rock'n'Roll, the Swinging Sixties, the drug culture, gay rights, free love, declining numbers of church-goers, etc. So how do we explain this? Was God getting his retaliation in first, for people forgetting God? "Your descendants will forget me, so I'm killing you all now?" Or is the thesis complete nonsense..?

Solzhenitsyn is talking about man's behavior towards his fellow man, not sure why you are attributing anything to God. His point is that the only explanation he could come to for such inhumanity is the absence of spirituality. Read the complete address to understand it a bit better. If you want to understand his views on Western society read his Harvard address.

You are leaping to conclusions that neither he made nor I am making in quoting him.

nagirrac

iMyself wrote: »

The point I was making is that teaching someone religion does not necessarily make them morally sound people. To suggest that these priest simply do not follow the religious teachings backs up my point. There is something else that makes people good regardless if whether they are taught religionor not. Empathy definitely has something to do with it as well as the selfishness of doing things for your own personal gain either consciously or subconsciously. You rub my back, I rub your back. People like nice people, there is a lot to gain by being nice.

I agree. The question is why people do bad or in extreme cases abominable things. They clearly lack a moral compass, how they get to this point is the interesting bit which admittedly is not well understood.

Zombrex

nagirrac wrote: »

Unfortunately the only examples we have where religion was actively removed from society had very bad outcomes, check out the statistics on the # of people killed within their own states by Marxist regimes since 1917. Clearly it wasn't Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot doing all the killing personally.

I don't subscribe to the argument that we as a race are more "enlightened" now and we will never repeat the savagery of the 20th century. Hopefully that day will come. I struggle as much as anyone to understand how people can inflict such suffering on their fellow man and the best I can come up with are the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from his Templeon address.

"More than a century ago, while I was still a child, I remember older people offering the following description for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: Men had forgotten God, that's why all this has happened.

Nonsense. These things happen for the same reasons over and over, and it has nothing to do with forgetting God.

They happen because people are easily persuaded to inflict violence on others if they are convinced that they are threatened by this other group and that the action is justified and righteous.

The Communists convinced people of this through the idea that the working classes were oppressed and manipulated by the elite and that violent resistance was acceptable. And when they were in power they convinced people that they knew what was best for society and that those who disagreed with them were acting against the best interests of the society, and thus deserving of punishment.

And can you guess what traditionally has been the greatest abuser of such forms of human manipulation? That's right, religion.

It is comical how easy it is to get someone to do something immoral if you can simply convinced them that it is the will of a deity that they worship and which will reward them for devotion. Even today Jews Christians and Muslims attempt to justify the descriptions of genocide in the Old Testament as moral and good because God ordered them.

pauldla

nagirrac wrote: »

Solzhenitsyn is talking about man's behavior towards his fellow man, not sure why you are attributing anything to God. His point is that the only explanation he could come to for such inhumanity is the absence of spirituality. Read the complete address to understand it a bit better. If you want to understand his views on Western society read his Harvard address.

You are leaping to conclusions that neither he made nor I am making in quoting him.

You quoted Solzhenitsyn as saying "Men have forgotten God, that's why all this happened". In relation to "the savagery of the 20th century", as you put it yourself.

Perhaps I have jumped to conclusions. Can you expand upon your earlier post, please?

Michael Nugent

nagirrac wrote: »

A perfect example of the lunatic fringe I spoke about in an earlier post who quote a few words from the bible with no understanding of what the words mean or their context. First of all if one were interested in what Jesus had to say I would start with the 4 gospels and not with the Book of Revelation. I doubt you have such interest though and are more interested in scoring points using as irrational an argument as a fundamentalist Christian does.

If you ever bothered to speak to someone knowledgable on scripture as opposed to taking your knowledge on scripture from Richard Dawkins you would know that the meaning of the text in question is that children refers to followers and Jezebel refers to the devil or evil. When Jesus talks about death he is talking about spiuritual death. It has nothing to do with killing kids.

Ah yes, the selective metaphor defense, combined with the assumption that you are talking with somebody who knows nothing about Christian scripture.

That quote clearly was not intended as a metaphor. It was intended as a real-life message to one of seven real-life churches that were having real-life problems in the real-life world.

Not only did Jesus threaten to kill the children of Jezebel because of her fornication, he threatened to “kill her children with death,” an unnecessary and counterproductive tautology for a supposed metaphor.

A better defense for you would be to say the author of Revelation simply made the whole thing up, but that would open up a can of worms regarding the rest of the Bible.

nagirrac

ShooterSF wrote: »

So you're saying you believe most of humanity are murdering psychopaths and we need to keep them believing in "the opium of the masses" to stop their killing sprees? Wow it get's better and better. I don't want you to think I'm putting words in your moth but your defense for giving the masses a comfortable lie is a fear of mass genocide.

Oh and promoting atheism != actively removing religion from the country. But you knew that.

You are putting words in my mouth.

I believe we are born neither "good" nor "bad". All personality disorders come from upbringing and environment. You may be surprised at how many psychopaths there are in the broad sense of the word, most leading reseachers say 2-4%. In a country like the US for example that is 5 -10 million people with the potential to become violent sociopaths. If religion helps keep these people in check I am all for it.

Its not the general public that rational well balanced people have to worry about, it's the sociopaths.

fitz0

Michael Nugent wrote: »

I don't think it is an online/offline thing. I think it is more that conversations skip between talking in strictly philosophical language and ordinary day-to-day terms. Speaking in either language, you can tease out whatever problem you are addressing. Skipping between the two languages in the same conversation causes all sorts of problems.

Agreed, I find it's more common when writing or typing to use philosophical language hence the online/offline distinction, which is not a perfectly correct split but appropriate to my experience of discussing atheism.

Michael Nugent wrote: »

Once the proposition that gods exist has been put to you, it is impossible to remain strictly neutral about whether or not you believe it is correct.

...

Again, a lot depends on whether you are speaking strictly philosophically or in ordinary day-to-day language.

I partially agree with you here, in that once the discussion begins a position must be taken and neutrality is no longer a reasonable position. But it does not change the neutrality of disbelief itself. We use that position as a basis, but what we deduce from that starting point may be wholly different.

I can understand that you don't see atheism as I do, but since you are actively involved in promoting atheism this is perfectly reasonable. You can't debate a neutral position. My issue originally was with a superior attitude that I found distasteful, not with the positions to debate atheism from.

nagirrac

Michael Nugent wrote: »

Ah yes, the selective metaphor defense, combined with the assumption that you are talking with somebody who knows nothing about Christian scripture.

That quote clearly was not intended as a metaphor. It was intended as a real-life message to one of seven real-life churches that were having real-life problems in the real-life world.

Not only did Jesus threaten to kill the children of Jezebel because of her fornication, he threatened to “kill her children with death,” an unnecessary and counterproductive tautology for a supposed metaphor.

A better defense for you would be to say the author of Revelation simply made the whole thing up, but that would open up a can of worms regarding the rest of the Bible.

I have no idea why the writer or writers of the Book of Revelation attributed the passage you refer to to Jesus, given that it does not appear in any of the 4 gospels. What I do know is your interpretation is completely at odds with the interpretation of any leading theologian. If you don't mind I'll go with an expert interpretation rather than that of Richard Dawkins who as we have seen in his debates with theologians has no clue regarding scripture and its meaning.

The "children" referred to in the text and one has to read the full text and indeed the full New Testament to get the context are the "followers" of Jezebel, the methaphor for sexual depravity in the Old Testament. It has nothing to do with killing kids. Could you point me to the relevant section in the 4 gospels where Jesus is quoted regarding killing kids?

Your literal interpretations of scripture are as irrational as those of a Creationist and sadly all too common to disciples of Dawkins. Dawkins has given up debating theologians because he has had his ass handed to him on several occasions.

ShooterSF

nagirrac wrote: »

You are putting words in my mouth.

I believe we are born neither "good" nor "bad". All personality disorders come from upbringing and environment. You may be surprised at how many psychopaths there are in the broad sense of the word, most leading reseachers say 2-4%. In a country like the US for example that is 5 -10 million people with the potential to become violent sociopaths. If religion helps keep these people in check I am all for it.

Its not the general public that rational well balanced people have to worry about, it's the sociopaths.

I don't think I am. You suggested that lies and deceit "still represent the best solution for a big majority of society, they are truly an opium for the masses."

2 - 4% is not a large majority, not that I think lies are the solution to such a problem. Also if you think personality orders stem from upbringing and are in no way genetic then religion and lying might you know be part of your problem.

When I asked how you didn't think it was arrogant to think the majority of people need to be fooled you suggested that people need to be lied to or we'd risk the genocide seen in Stalin's authoritarian state. So I took it to mean you felt "a big majority of society" would turn to murder and oppression. If you'd care to correct the reason you feel we should lie to the masses or I've missed your reason feel free to spell it out better.

Oh and here's the posts mentioned incase,

nagirrac wrote: »

I know they get little sympathy on A&A but they still represent the best solution for a big majority of society, they are truly an opium for the masses.

ShooterSF wrote: »

Ah yes you and I are big enough and strong enough to handle the truth. But the masses?! No we better feed their fragile mind something comforting. And you dare call atheists arrogant?

nagirrac wrote: »

Unfortunately the only examples we have where religion was actively removed from society had very bad outcomes, check out the statistics on the # of people killed within their own states by Marxist regimes since 1917. Clearly it wasn't Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot doing all the killing personally.

Michael Nugent

I'll come back to the rest of your comment later, but for now

nagirrac wrote: »

I have no idea why the writer or writers of the Book of Revelation attributed the passage you refer to to Jesus, given that it does not appear in any of the 4 gospels.

Presumably you feel the same about any beliefs that Paul attributed to Jesus, given that he wrote his letters before the Gospels were written?

nagirrac wrote: »

Could you point me to the relevant section in the 4 gospels where Jesus is quoted regarding killing kids?

Matthew 15:3-4

Jesus replied, "And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ "

gbee

Funny thing about this thread IMO, obviously is it's more like a couple of Christian theologians trying to score points to get into heaven, with one claiming he knows more about it, but does not believe in it, more than the guy who says he does believe in it.

Me, I could not possibly argue with them, I kicked the Bible into the trash years and years ago, this thread makes me not want to be either religious nor atheist.

I'm looking for a new name for myself, because this is seriously stupid TBH. I can just see it now, St Peter & Paul's packed, atheists to the left, christians to right and we all trading bible chapter and verses ................ :rolleyes:

ShooterSF

Michael Nugent

gbee wrote: »

Funny thing about this thread IMO, obviously is it's more like a couple of Christian theologians trying to score points to get into heaven, with one claiming he knows more about it, but does not believe in it, more than the guy who says he does believe in it.

Yes, we’re all exactly the same.

And James Randi debunking spoon-bending is exactly the same as Uri Geller.

And Penn and Teller are exactly the same as people who claim to actually do magic.

And Phil Plait is exactly the same as believers that the moon landing was faked.

There is no difference between any of them.