Atheism vs. Religion

[Vincent]

Originally Posted by Marcel Petrin

That "challenge" you feel? It's called Cognitive Dissonance:

Thanks for the diagnosis Dr. Freud.

[Vincent]

Originally Posted by Marcel Petrin

As far as your links go, sorry, those are not credible given the source. That group is well known for hoaxes. Peer reviewed or published original research please.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Globa...ound-in-Turkey

I mean really, Noah's Ark of all things?

There have been multiple claims to have found Noah's Ark. Not all of them can be correct obviously. Perhaps none of them are. Whether any of them are deliberate hoaxes or honest enthusiastic mistakes, I don't know. But you may note that, as I am not convinced of the reliability of the finds, I did not post any of the Noah's Ark evidence. You found that all on your own.

If however you believe that the photographs of the chariot wheels and Solomons columns and the beach surrounded by water and mountains and the narrow valley through which the Israelites and subsequently the Egyptians trekked are all faked, then you are welcome to go down to Egypt yourself and take a looksee. That is if you need to hold the horse bones in your hands to believe that those horse bones actually rest on the ocean floor.

Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

[Paul Turnbull]

Could someone pass the popcorn please.

[Chmilz]

"I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."-Stephen F Roberts

[Marcel Petrin]

Originally Posted by Vincent

None of those quotes condone slavery, they only reference slavery, which as I said was a common and acceptable practice at that time. If God wrote letters about our modern day society he would probably reference our class structure, our politics, our social norms and our sins, but none of that would equate to condonation. He would only use those references to things we understand in order to teach us how we should live.

See, that's the problem with the Bible: it's a product of its times and the men who wrote it. If it were truly a product of God's Hand or guidance, surely the all-loving and all-knowing God would have condemned the ownership of other human beings, regardless of what prevailing thought about it was. Wrong is wrong, is it not?

But listen, we're obviously not going to agree about any of this, so there's little point in continuing.

[ajs]

Ideas on Radio One this week pertains to this discussion nicely. Particularly the episode featuring John Caputo. http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/

[Gord Lacey]

Has anyone seen the documentary "The Exodus Decoded"? I found it very interesting.

[Marcel Petrin]

I haven't no, but it appears that it was quite heavily criticized: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exo...ed#Credibility

[KC]

Seems that the religious extremists figure the atheists and Wisconsinites are to blame for the murders at the Sikh temple. Apparently not the white supremists - nor the Nazis.



Pat Robertson Blames Atheists And Those Who Hate God For Wisconsin Temple Shooting
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1749532.html

"...people who are atheists, they hate God, they hate the expression of God, and they are angry at the world, angry with themselves, angry with society and they take it out on innocent people who are worshipping God..."

"Whether it's a Sikh temple, or a Baptist church, or a Catholic church, or a Muslim mosque – whatever it is – I just abhor this kind of violence, and it's the kind of thing that we should do something about," Robertson said on The 700 Club.


Westboro Baptist Church Gloats Over Wisconsin Temple Shooting

http://www.inquisitr.com/293790/west...mple-shooting/

"Though members did their usual victim-blaming for the attack, the “church” leader Fred Phelps took it a step further, saying the attack came because God was angry that the Westboro Baptist Church members were once treated poorly in Wisconsin." "


Sikh temple gunman Wade Michael Page was a "gentle and kind and loving" child, stepmom says

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_1...-stepmom-says/

"In a 2007 performance in South Carolina, the group played under a giant swastika flag emblazoned with the face of Adolph Hitler."






And from among the Huffington Post article's comments was a link to this article...

Atheists Supply Less Than 1% Of Prison Populations, While Christians Make -Up 75%.

http://current.com/community/9283193...make-up-75.htm

excerpt:

"It's suprising how many people say to me, "You're an Atheist? You must
have no conscience about commiting crime then." Nothing could be further
from the truth. In fact, if we examine the population of our prisons, we
see a very different picture:

In "The New Criminology", Max D. Schlapp and Edward E. Smith say that two
generations of statisticians found that the ratio of convicts without
religious training is about 1/10 of 1%. W. T. Root, professor of
psychology at the Univ. of Pittsburgh, examined 1,916 prisoners and said
"Indifference to religion, due to thought, strengthens character," adding
that Unitarians, Agnostics, Atheists and Free-Thinkers are absent from
penitentiariers or nearly so.

During 10 years in Sing-Sing, those executed for murder were 65% Catholics,
26% Protestants, 6% Hebrew, 2% Pagan, and less than 1/3 of 1% non-religious.

Steiner and Swancara surveyed Canadian prisons and found 1,294 Catholics,
435 Anglicans, 241 Methodists, 135 Baptists, and ..."

[Marcel Petrin]

Why is anyone surprised (or concerned) at the idiocy that regularly falls out of the mouth of Robertson and Westboro?

[howie]

^ I'm certainly not surprised, but I always have some concern because some other religious wacko will probably feed on these guys' words and they might just be the tipping point for said wacko going out on another shooting spree.

[Marcel Petrin]

Well, in the Phelps' case, we can only hope that the wacko who goes on a shooting spree heads directly for them. If you haven't read up a bit on their shenanigans over the years, it's kind of like a car crash. You just can't look away.

[KC]

It seems that, "You're either with us, or against us" - under any doctrine including atheism.

"The heathen, broadly speaking, were never persuaded, never convinced, never won by the appeal of the new doctrine; they were either transferred by their kings into the Church like so many cattle, or beaten down into submission after generations of resistance and massacre." (source: see below)


http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-.../2884487/posts
Harold Eberle: "Christianity Unshackled: Are You A Truth Seeker,"*Destiny Image Publishers, 2009

"Stalin was responsible for about 20 million deaths and Mao Zedong's regime for approximately 70 million.*
Pol Pot, who led the Communist Party faction known as the Khmer Rouge, killed over 1.5 million of his own Cambodian people.6 Add to these numbers the atrocities committed by Soviet dictators like Lenin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev.
Also add atheists like Fidel Castro and Kim Jong-il. All total, atheistic regimes have slaughtered more than 100 million people within the last 100 years. That averages to more than 1 million people per year. "
http://books.google.com/books?id=GpbM9RHYO5AC&pg=PT236


SPREAD BY THE SWORD?
Is holy war against Christians and Jews—“infidels”—a perversion of Islam? Here’s the evidence, from Islamic texts and history.
by Mark Hartwig, Ph.D.
http://www.answering-islam.org/Terro...the_sword.html

"... Historian Bernard Lewis notes:

"For almost a thousand years ... Europe was under constant threat. In the early centuries it was a double threat—not only of invasion and conquest, but also of conversion and assimilation. All but the easternmost provinces of the Islamic realm had been taken from Christian rulers, and the vast majority of the first Muslims west of Iran and Arabia were converts from Christianity. North Africa, Egypt, Syria, even Persian-ruled Iraq, had been Christian countries, in which Christianity was older and more deeply rooted than in most of Europe. Their loss was sorely felt and heightened the fear that a similar fate was in store for Europe.[1]"


"When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withhold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to [accept] Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them. ... If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah’s help and fight them.[12]"


http://holysmoke.org/hs00/by-sword.htm
"The summary of seven hundred years of Christian expansion on northern Europe is that the work was mainly done by the sword, in the interests of kings and tyrants, who supported it, as against the resistance of their subjects, who saw in the Church an instrument for their subjection. Christianity, in short, was as truly a religion of the sword as Islam.
"The heathen, broadly speaking, were never persuaded, never convinced, never won by the appeal of the new doctrine; they were either transferred by their kings into the Church like so many cattle, or beaten down into submission after generations of resistance and massacre. The misery and the butchery wrought from first to last are unimaginable. If the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Peru, with their Church-based policy of suppressing heathenism, be added to the record, the total of evil becomes appalling: for the Spanish Priest Las Casas estimated the total destruction of Native life (in South America) at twelve millions.

"All this slaughter took place by way of expansion, and is exclusive of the further record of the slaughters wrought by the Church within its established field." --- Robertson - History of Christianity.