Datasets:

beyond

/

20NG

like 0

alt.atheism

re pompous ass in article ql jiinn df gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes arromdee jyusenkyou cs jhu edu ken arromdee writes look i m not the one that made those nazi comparisons other people compared what the religious people are doing now to nazi germany they have said that it started out with little things but no one really knew about any of these little things strangely enough and grew to bigger things they said that the motto is but one of the little things you just contradicted yourself the motto is one of those little things that nobody has bothered mentiopning to you huh the little things above were in reference to germany clearly people said that there were similar things in germany but no one could name any they said that these were things that everyone should know and that they weren t going to waste their time repeating them sounds to me like no one knew either i looked in some books but to no avail that s not true i gave you two examples one was the rather pevasive anti semitism in german christianity well before hitler arrived the other was the system of social ranks that were used in imperail germany and austria to distinguish jews from the rest of the population neither of these were very terrible in themselves but both helped to set a psychology in which the gradual disenfranchisement of jews was made easier jon

alt.atheism

re thoughts on christians excerpts from netnews alt atheism apr re thoughts on christians by dave fuller portal hq vi i m sick of religious types being pampered looked out for and worst of all respected more than atheists there must be an end in sight i think it d help if we got a couple good atheists or even some good steadfast agnostics in some high political offices when was the last time we had an openly atheist president have we ever i don t actually know these aren t rhetorical questions how bout some supreme court justices one thing that really ticked me off a while ago was an ad for a news program on a local station the promo said something like who are these cults and why do they prey on the young ahem ever hear of baptism at birth if that isn t preying on the young i don t know what is i used to be ack barf a catholic and was even confirmed shortly thereafter i decided it was a load of bs my mom who really insisted that i continue to go to church felt it was her duty to bring me up as a believer that was one of the more presumptuous things i ve heard in my life i suggested we go talk to the priest and she agreed the priest was amazingly cool about it he basically said that if i didn t believe it there was no good in forcing it on me actually i guess he wasn t amazingly cool about it his response is what you d hope for indeed expect from a human being i s pose i just didn t expect it i find it absurd that religion exists yet i can also see its usefulness to people facing up to the fact that you re just going to be worm food in a few decades and that there isn t some cosmic purpose to humanity and the universe can be pretty difficult for some people having a readily available pre digested solution to this is pretty attractive if you re either a gullible enough b willing to suspend your reasoning abilities for the piece of mind or c have had the stuff rammed down your throat for as long as you can remember religion in general provides a nice patch for some human weaknesses organized religion provides a nice way to keep a population under control blech chris chris leger sophomore carnegie mellon computer engineering remember if you don t like what somebody is saying you can always ignore them

alt.atheism

it s all mary s fault you know it just occurred to me today that this whole christian thing can be blamed solely on mary so she s married to joseph she gets knocked up what do you think ol joe will do if he finds she s been getting around so mary comes up with this ridiculous story about god making her pregnant actually it can t be all that ridiculous considering the number of people that believe it anyway she never tells anyone the truth and even tells poor little jesus that he s hot shit the son of god everyone else tells him this too since they ve bought mary s story so what does mary actually turn out to be an adultress and a liar and the cause of mankind s greatest folly just my recently minted two cents chris chris leger sophomore carnegie mellon computer engineering remember if you don t like what somebody is saying you can always ignore them

alt.atheism

re rawlins debunks creationism in article apr rambo atlanta dg com wpr atlanta dg com bill rawlins wrote we are talking about origins not merely science science cannot explain origins for a person to exclude anything but science from the issue of origins is to say that there is no higher truth than science this is a false premise says who other than a hear say god by the way i enjoy science you sure don t understand it it is truly a wonder observing god s creation macroevolution is a mixture of percent science and percent religion guaranteed within three percent error bill i hereby award you the golden shovel award for the biggist pile of bullshit i ve seen in a whils i m afraid there s not a bit of religion in macroevolution and you ve made a rather grand statement that science can not explain origins to a large extent it already has bill rawlins wpr atlanta dg com peter w walker yu shall i tell you what knowledge is when dept of space physics you know a thing say that you know it when and astronomy you do not know a thing admit you do not know rice university it this is knowledge houston tx k ung fu tzu

alt.atheism

re some thoughts bissda saturn wwc edu dan lawrence bissell writes first i want to start right out and say that i m a christian well this is alt atheism i hope you arent here to try to convert anyone it makes sense to be one many would disagree the book says that jesus was either a liar or he was crazy a modern day koresh or he was actually who he said he was well you shouldn t give any particular book too much weight actually i don t think that any of these statements is correct it is more likely that most of jesus fame was attributed to him after his death by those who had some strong motives some other things to note he fulfilled loads of prophecies in the psalms isaiah and elsewhere in hrs alone what s a prophecy and what s so significant about them i don t think most people understand what a christian is i think we understand it is certainly not what i see a lot in churches rather i think it should be a way of life and a total sacrafice of everything for god s sake well sell your computer and donate you life to your religion now don t waste any time keith

alt.atheism

re after years can we say that christian morality is in article qkq t n horus ap mchp sni de frank d s uucp frank o dwyer writes i ll take a wild guess and say freedom is objectively valuable i base this on the assumption that if everyone in the world were deprived utterly of their freedom so that their every act was contrary to their volition almost all would want to complain therefore i take it that to assert or believe that freedom is not very valuable when almost everyone can see that it is is every bit as absurd as to assert it is not raining on a rainy day i take this to be a candidate for an objective value and it it is a necessary condition for objective morality that objective values such as this exist you have only shown that a vast majority if not all would agree to this however there is nothing against a subjective majority in any event i must challenge your assertion i know many societies heck many us citizens willing to trade freedom for security whatever promises that have been made can than be broken john laws a man without the honor to keep his given word

alt.atheism

re islamic authority over women snm ultb isc rit edu s n mozumder writes in article apr wam umd edu west next wam umd edu writes and belief causes far more horrors crusades the emasculation and internment of native americans the killing of various tribes in south america the inquisition the counter reformation and the wars that followed the salem witch trials the european witch hunts the holy wars of the middle east the colonization destruction of africa the wars between christianity and islam post crusade the genocide biblical of the canaanites and philistines aryian invasion of india the attempted genocide of jews by nazi germany the current missionary assaults on tribes in africa i think all the horrors you mentioned are due to lack of people following religion d by lack of people following religion i also include fanatics people that don t know what they are following d so how do you know that you were right why are you trying to shove down my throat that religion causes horrors it really covers yourself something false to save yourself peace bobby mozumder i just thought of another one in the bible so it s definately not because of lack of religion the book of esther which i read the other day for other reasons describes the origin of pur im a jewish celbration of joy and peace the long and short of the story is that people were killed when people were tripping over all of the peacefull solutions lying about you couldn t swing a sacred cow without slammin into a nice peaceful solution course joshua and the jawbone of an ass spring to mind i agree with bobby this far religion as it is used to kill large numbers of people is usually not used in the form or manner that it was originally intended for that doesn t reduce the number of deaths directly caused by religion it is just a minor observation of the fact that there is almost nothing pure in the universe the very act of honestly attempting to find true meaning in religious teaching has many times inspired hatred and led to war many people have been led by religious leaders more involved in their own stomache contentsthan in any absolute truth and have therefore been driven to kill by their leaders the point is that there are many things involved in religion that often lead to war whether these things are a part of religion an unpleasant side effect or as bobby would have it the result of people switching between religion and atheism spontaneously the results are the same religious groups have long been involved in the majority of the bloodiest parts of man s history atheists on the other hand preen preen are typically not an ideological social caste nor are they driven to organize and spread their beliefs the overuse of nazism and stalinism just show how true this is two groups with very clear and specific ideologies using religious persecution to further their means anyone who cannot see the obvious namely that these were groups founded for reasons entirely their own who used religious persecution not because of any belief system but because it made them more powerfull is trying too hard basically bobby uses these examples because there are so few wars that were not specifically fought over religion that he does not have many choices well i m off to key west where the only flames are heating the bottom of little silver butter dishes ciao chris blask

alt.atheism

re objective morality was re political atheists in article ql utinn sg gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes i want to know how this omniscient being is going to perform the feat of definitely terming actions right or wrong if you were omniscient you d know who exactly did what and with what purpose in mind then with a particular goal in mind you sould be able to methodically judge whether or not this action was in accordance with the general goal but now you are contradicting yourself in a pretty massive way and i don t think you ve even noticed in another part of this thread you ve been telling us that the goal of a natural morality is what animals do to survive but suppose that your omniscient being told you that the long term survival of humanity requires us to exterminate some other species either terrestrial or alien does that make it moral to do so jon

alt.atheism

re pompous ass in article ql pinn ef gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider says andrew newell tan psuvm psu edu writes sure they may fall back on other things but this is one they should not have available to use it is worse than others the national anthem should it be changed too god bless america the list goes on worse maybe not but it is definately a violation of the rules the us govt supposedly follows maybe the others should be changed to but i m not personally as concerned about the anthem since i don t come across it in daily nearly unavoidable routines every christian and i d be tempted to rub that motto in the face of christians when debunking their standard motto slinging gets boring then you d be no better than the people you despise i don t despise the people just their opinions i meant when chatting with the ones who refuse to listen to any idea other than their own then it just becomes an exercise for amusement for the motto to be legitimate it would have to read in god gods or godlessness we trust would you approve of such a motto no not unless the only way to get rid of the current one was to change it to such as that

alt.atheism

re moraltiy was re political atheists in article ql ekinn gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes what if i act morally for no particular reason then am i moral what if morality is instinctive as in most animals saying that morality is instinctive in animals is an attempt to assume your conclusion which conclusion you conclusion correct me if i err that the behaviour which is instinctive in animals is a natural moral system see we are disagreeing on the definition of moral here earlier you said that it must be a conscious act by your definition no instinctive behavior pattern could be an act of morality you are trying to apply human terms to non humans pardon me i am trying to apply human terms to non humans i think there must be some confusion here i m the guy who is saying that if animal behaviour is instinctive then it does not have any moral sugnificance how does refusing to apply human terms to animals get turned into applying human terms i think that even if someone is not conscious of an alternative this does not prevent his behavior from being moral i m sure you do think this if you say so how about trying to convince me you don t think that morality is a behavior pattern what is human morality a moral action is one that is consistent with a given pattern that is we enforce a certain behavior as moral you keep getting this backwards you are trying to show that the behaviour pattern is a morality whether morality is a behavior pattern is irrelevant since there can be behavior pattern for example the motions of the planets that most all people would not call a morality i try to show it but by your definition it can t be shown i ve offered four times i think to accept your definition if you allow me to ascribe moral significence to the orbital motion of the planets and morality can be thought of a large class of princples it could be defined in terms of many things the laws of physics if you wish however it seems silly to talk of a moral planet because it obeys the laws of phyics it is less silly to talk about animals as they have at least some free will ah the law of silly and less silly what mr livesey finds intuitive is silly but what mr schneider finds intuitive is less silly now that s a devastating argument isn t it jon

alt.atheism

re the inimitable rushdie in article bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger writes in article bcc b ics uci edu bvickers ics uci edu brett j vickers writes in article bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger writes well seeing as you are not muslim the sort of fatwa issued by khomeini would not be relevant to you i can understand your fear of persecution and i share it even more than you being muslim however rushdie s behavior was not completely excusable as much as i considered some of the so called islam related dialogue here a total waste of time i somehow can t restrain myself in this instance so gregg try this p s t i come to my senses and accept the all knowing wisdom and power of the quran and allah not only that but allah himself drops by to congratulate me on my wise choice allah rolls a few bones and we get down then allah gets out the crisco bends over and invites me to take a spin around the block wow p s t i realize that maybe allah is looking for more of a commitment than i m ready for so i say man i ve got some programming to do gotta go i ll call you p s t thinking it over i renounce islam btw gregg allah said he still thinks of you jim

alt.atheism

re the inimitable rushdie in article bafa d i dbstu rz tu bs de i dbstu rz tu bs de benedikt rosenau writes yes but fortunately religions have been replaced by systems that value human rights higher secular laws seem to value criminal life more than the victims life islam places the rights of society and every member in it above the rights of the individual this is what i call true human rights by the way do you actually support the claim of precedence of islamic law in case you do what about the laws of other religions as a muslim living in a non muslim land i am bound by the laws of the land i live in but i do not disregard islamic law it still remains a part of my life if the laws of a land conflict with my religion to such an extent that i am prevented from being allowed to practise my religion then i must leave the land so in a way islamic law does take precendence over secular law but we are instructed to follow the laws of the land that we live in too in an islamic state one ruled by a khaliphate religions other than islam are allowed to rule by their own religious laws provided they don t affect the genral population and don t come into direct conflict with state laws dhimmis non muslim population are exempt from most islamic laws on religion such as fighting in a jihad giving zakat alms giving etc but are given the benefit of these two acts such as military protection and if they are poor they will receive zakat if not what has it got to do with rushdie and has anyone reliable information if he hadn t left islam according to islamic law or is the burden of proof on him benedikt after the fatwa didn t rushdie re affirm his faith in islam didn t he go thru a very public conversion to islam if so he is binding himself to islamic laws he has to publicly renounce in his belief in islam so the burden is on him mas c i t i z e n c a d e n c e d e s i g n s y s t e m s inc masud ahmed khan mas cadence com all my opinions

alt.atheism

re slavery was re why is sex only allowed in marriage in article apr bradford ac uk l newnham bradford ac uk leonard newnham writes oh this all sounds so nice everyone helping each other and always smiling and fluffy bunnies everywhere wake up people are just not like that it seems evident from history that no society has succeeded when it had to rely upon the goodwill and unselfishness of the people isn t it obvious from places like iran that even if there are only a few greedy people in society then they are going to be attracted to positions of power sounds like a recipe for disaster leonard e mail l newnham bradford ac uk leonard i ll give you an example of this my father recently bought a business the business price was pounds and my father approached the people in the community for help he raised pounds in interest free loans from friends and relatives and muslims he knew had cash and the rest he got a business loan after paying off the muslim lenders many of them helped him with further loans to help him clear the bank debt and save him from further intrest this is an example of a muslim community helping one another why did they help because of their common identity as muslims in turn my father has helped with people buying houses to minimise the amount of intrest they pay and in some cases buy houses intrest free with the help of those more fortunate in the community the fact is leonard it does work without a fluffy bunny in sight ithat is the beauty of islam mas c i t i z e n c a d e n c e d e s i g n s y s t e m s inc masud ahmed khan mas cadence com all my opinions

alt.atheism

re pompous ass andrew newell tan psuvm psu edu writes sure they may fall back on other things but this is one they should not have available to use it is worse than others worse maybe not but it is definately a violation of the rules the us govt supposedly follows oh for the motto to be legitimate it would have to read in god gods or godlessness we trust would you approve of such a motto no not unless the only way to get rid of the current one was to change it to such as that what is wrong with this motto now if you wouldn t approve of even that one i am beginning to think that you just have something against mottos in general what do you think of e plurbis unum keith

alt.atheism

re pompous ass livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes the little things above were in reference to germany clearly people said that there were similar things in germany but no one could name any that s not true i gave you two examples one was the rather pevasive anti semitism in german christianity well before hitler arrived the other was the system of social ranks that were used in imperail germany and austria to distinguish jews from the rest of the population these don t seem like little things to me at least they are orders worse than the motto do you think that the motto is a little thing that will lead to worse things keith

alt.atheism

re morality was re political atheists livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes explain to me how instinctive acts can be moral acts and i am happy to listen for example if it were instinctive not to murder then not murdering would have no moral significance since there would be nothing voluntary about it see there you go again saying that a moral act is only significant if it is voluntary why do you think this and anyway humans have the ability to disregard some of their instincts so only intelligent beings can be moral even if the bahavior of other beings mimics theirs you are starting to get the point mimicry is not necessarily the same as the action being imitated a parrot saying pretty polly isn t necessarily commenting on the pulchritude of polly you are attaching too many things to the term moral i think let s try this is it good that animals of the same species don t kill each other or do you think this is right or do you think that animals are machines and that nothing they do is either right nor wrong animals of the same species could kill each other arbitarily but they don t they do i and other posters have given you many examples of exactly this but you seem to have a very short memory those weren t arbitrary killings they were slayings related to some sort of mating ritual or whatnot are you trying to say that this isn t an act of morality because most animals aren t intelligent enough to think like we do i m saying there must be the possibility that the organism it s not just people we are talking about can consider alternatives it s right there in the posting you are replying to yes it was but i still don t understand your distinctions what do you mean by consider can a small child be moral how about a gorilla a dolphin a platypus where is the line drawn does the being need to be self aware what do you call the mechanism which seems to prevent animals of the same species from arbitrarily killing each other don t you find the fact that they don t at all significant keith

alt.atheism

re objective morality was re political atheists livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes in another part of this thread you ve been telling us that the goal of a natural morality is what animals do to survive that s right humans have gone somewhat beyond this though perhaps our goal is one of self actualization but suppose that your omniscient being told you that the long term survival of humanity requires us to exterminate some other species either terrestrial or alien now you are letting an omniscient being give information to me this was not part of the original premise does that make it moral to do so which type of morality are you talking about in a natural sense it is not at all immoral to harm another species as long as it doesn t adversely affect your own i guess keith

alt.atheism

re new member jcopelan nyx cs du edu the one and only writes welcome i am the official keeper of the list of nicknames that people are known by on alt atheism didn t know we had such a list did you your have been awarded the nickname of buckminster so the next time you post an article sign with your nickname like so dave buckminster fuller thanks again jim humor means never having to say you re sorry copeland of course the list has to agree with the nickname laws laid down by the gipu almost years ago you know the of them that were written on the iron tablets that melted once and had to be reinscribed since i am a prophet of the gipu i decree that you should post the whole list of nicknames for the frequent posters here nanci

alt.atheism

re political atheists livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes well chimps must have some system they live in social groups as we do so they must have some laws dictating undesired behavior so why must they have such laws the quotation marks should enclose laws not must if there were no such rules even instinctive ones or unwritten ones etc then surely some sort of random chance would lead a chimp society into chaos keith

alt.atheism

re pompous ass in article qlef inn dn gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes the little things above were in reference to germany clearly people said that there were similar things in germany but no one could name any that s not true i gave you two examples one was the rather pevasive anti semitism in german christianity well before hitler arrived the other was the system of social ranks that were used in imperail germany and austria to distinguish jews from the rest of the population these don t seem like little things to me at least they are orders worse than the motto do you think that the motto is a little thing that will lead to worse things you don t think these are little things because with twenty twenty hindsight you know what they led to jon

alt.atheism

re objective morality was re political atheists in article qlf ginn sn gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes in another part of this thread you ve been telling us that the goal of a natural morality is what animals do to survive that s right humans have gone somewhat beyond this though perhaps our goal is one of self actualization humans have gone somewhat beyond what exactly in one thread you re telling us that natural morality is what animals do to survive and in this thread you are claiming that an omniscient being can definitely say what is right and what is wrong so what does this omniscient being use for a criterion the long term survival of the human species or what how does omniscient map into definitely being able to assign right and wrong to actions but suppose that your omniscient being told you that the long term survival of humanity requires us to exterminate some other species either terrestrial or alien now you are letting an omniscient being give information to me this was not part of the original premise well your original premises have a habit of changing over time so perhaps you d like to review it for us and tell us what the difference is between an omniscient being be able to assign right and wrong to actions and telling us the result is does that make it moral to do so which type of morality are you talking about in a natural sense it is not at all immoral to harm another species as long as it doesn t adversely affect your own i guess i m talking about the morality introduced by you which was going to be implemented by this omniscient being that can definitely assign right and wrong to actions you tell us what type of morality that is jon

alt.atheism

re slavery was re why is sex only allowed in marriage in article apr cadence com mas cadence com masud khan writes leonard i ll give you an example of this my father recently bought a business the business price was pounds and my father approached the people in the community for help he raised pounds in interest free loans from friends and relatives and muslims he knew had cash and the rest he got a business loan after paying off the muslim lenders many of them helped him with further loans to help him clear the bank debt and save him from further intrest this is an example of a muslim community helping one another why did they help because of their common identity as muslims in turn my father has helped with people buying houses to minimise the amount of intrest they pay and in some cases buy houses intrest free with the help of those more fortunate in the community sorry wrong this is how banks got started in the first place sooner or later your father and his pals will lend money to someone who eventually goes broke and then they will realise that they havn t been managing risk very well then they will ask themselves what it is that they need to quantify risk and to persuade borrowers not to take on greater loans than they can carry and since they don t all want the worry of doing the calculations and handling the money some of them will specialise in that then they ll reinvent interest but like good muslims they ll call it something else the fact is leonard it does work without a fluffy bunny in sight ithat is the beauty of islam riiiight that s why john major opened a new government department a couple of months ago to help to promote minority business because they can do it all themselves by lending one another cups of sugar jon

alt.atheism

re morality was re political atheists in article qlettinn oi gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes explain to me how instinctive acts can be moral acts and i am happy to listen for example if it were instinctive not to murder then not murdering would have no moral significance since there would be nothing voluntary about it see there you go again saying that a moral act is only significant if it is voluntary why do you think this if you force me to do something am i morally responsible for it and anyway humans have the ability to disregard some of their instincts well make up your mind is it to be instinctive not to murder or not so only intelligent beings can be moral even if the bahavior of other beings mimics theirs you are starting to get the point mimicry is not necessarily the same as the action being imitated a parrot saying pretty polly isn t necessarily commenting on the pulchritude of polly you are attaching too many things to the term moral i think let s try this is it good that animals of the same species don t kill each other or do you think this is right it s not even correct animals of the same species do kill one another or do you think that animals are machines and that nothing they do is either right nor wrong sigh i wonder how many times we have been round this loop i think that instinctive bahaviour has no moral significance i am quite prepared to believe that higher animals such as primates have the beginnings of a moral sense since they seem to exhibit self awareness animals of the same species could kill each other arbitarily but they don t they do i and other posters have given you many examples of exactly this but you seem to have a very short memory those weren t arbitrary killings they were slayings related to some sort of mating ritual or whatnot so what are you trying to say that some killing in animals has a moral significance and some does not is this your natural morality are you trying to say that this isn t an act of morality because most animals aren t intelligent enough to think like we do i m saying there must be the possibility that the organism it s not just people we are talking about can consider alternatives it s right there in the posting you are replying to yes it was but i still don t understand your distinctions what do you mean by consider can a small child be moral how about a gorilla a dolphin a platypus where is the line drawn does the being need to be self aware are you blind what do you think that this sentence means there must be the possibility that the organism it s not just people we are talking about can consider alternatives what would that imply what do you call the mechanism which seems to prevent animals of the same species from arbitrarily killing each other don t you find the fact that they don t at all significant i find the fact that they do to be significant jon

alt.atheism

re after years can we say that christian morality is in article c jxru t news cso uiuc edu cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb writes what do you base your belief on atheism on your knowledge and reasoning couldn t that be wrong actually my atheism is based on ignorance ignorance of the existence of any god don t fall into the atheists don t believe because of their pride mistake bob beauchaine bobbe vice ico tek com they said that queens could stay they blew the bronx away and sank manhattan out at sea

alt.atheism

re yet more rushdie re islamic law in article bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger writes in article qi l jkj fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes i hope an islamic bank is something other than bcci which ripped off so many small depositors among the muslim community in the uk and elsewhere grow up childish propagandist gosh gregg i m pretty good a reading between the lines but you ve given me precious little to work with in this refutation could you maybe flesh it out just a bit or did i miss the full grandeur of it s content by virtue of my blinding atheism bob beauchaine bobbe vice ico tek com they said that queens could stay they blew the bronx away and sank manhattan out at sea

alt.atheism

re morality was re political atheists in article ql inn a gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes what i ve been saying is that moral behavior is likely the null behavior do i smell sig material here bob beauchaine bobbe vice ico tek com they said that queens could stay they blew the bronx away and sank manhattan out at sea

alt.atheism

re cruel was re political atheists in article ql mdinn gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes but we were discussing it in relation to the death penalty and the constitution need not define each of the words within anyone who doesn t know what cruel is can look in the dictionary and we did or with no dictionary available they could gain first hand knowledge by suffering through one of your posts bob beauchaine bobbe vice ico tek com they said that queens could stay they blew the bronx away and sank manhattan out at sea

alt.atheism

re pompous ass in article ql jiinn df gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes the little things above were in reference to germany clearly people said that there were similar things in germany but no one could name any they said that these were things that everyone should know and that they weren t going to waste their time repeating them sounds to me like no one knew either i looked in some books but to no avail if the anne frank exhibit makes it to your small little world take an afternoon to go see it bob beauchaine bobbe vice ico tek com they said that queens could stay they blew the bronx away and sank manhattan out at sea

alt.atheism

re thoughts on christians in article ofnwyg wb voa andrew cmu edu pl u andrew cmu edu patrick c leger writes ever hear of baptism at birth if that isn t preying on the young i don t know what is no that s praying on the young preying on the young comes later when the bright eyed little altar boy finds out what the priest really wears under that chasible bob beauchaine bobbe vice ico tek com they said that queens could stay they blew the bronx away and sank manhattan out at sea

alt.atheism

re political atheists in article qlfd inn gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes well chimps must have some system they live in social groups as we do so they must have some laws dictating undesired behavior so why must they have such laws the quotation marks should enclose laws not must oh your highness and exactly why should the quotation marks enclose laws not must in case you didn t notice it s the function of the must that i wish to ironicise if there were no such rules even instinctive ones or unwritten ones etc then surely some sort of random chance would lead a chimp society into chaos perhaps the chimps that failed to evolve cooperative behaviour died out and we are left with the ones that did evolve such behaviour entirely by chance are you going to proclaim a natural morality every time an organism evolves cooperative behaviour what about the natural morality of bee dance jon

alt.atheism

re objective morality was re political atheists livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes humans have gone somewhat beyond what exactly in one thread you re telling us that natural morality is what animals do to survive and in this thread you are claiming that an omniscient being can definitely say what is right and what is wrong so what does this omniscient being use for a criterion the long term survival of the human species or what well that s the question isn t it the goals are probably not all that obvious we can set up a few goals like happiness and liberty and the golden rule etc but these goals aren t inherent they have to be defined before an objective system is possible how does omniscient map into definitely being able to assign right and wrong to actions it is not too difficult one you have goals in mind and absolute knoweldge of everyone s intent etc now you are letting an omniscient being give information to me this was not part of the original premise well your original premises have a habit of changing over time so perhaps you d like to review it for us and tell us what the difference is between an omniscient being be able to assign right and wrong to actions and telling us the result is omniscience is fine as long as information is not given away isn t this the resolution of the free will problem an interactive omniscient being changes the situation which type of morality are you talking about in a natural sense it is not at all immoral to harm another species as long as it doesn t adversely affect your own i guess i m talking about the morality introduced by you which was going to be implemented by this omniscient being that can definitely assign right and wrong to actions you tell us what type of morality that is well i was speaking about an objective system in general i didn t mention a specific goal which would be necessary to determine the morality of an action keith

alt.atheism

islam is caused by believing was re genocide is caused by theism in article apr ultb isc rit edu snm ultb isc rit edu s n mozumder writes i m only saying that anything can happen under atheism being a beleiver a knowledgeable one in religion only good can happen this is becoming a tiresome statement coming from you it is a definition not an assertion islam is good belief in islam is good therefore being a believer in islam can produce only good because islam is good blah blah blah that s about as circular as it gets and equally meaningless to say that something produces only good because it is only good that it produces is nothing more than an unapplied definition and all you re application is saying that it s true if you really believe it s true that s silly conversely you say off handedly that anything can happen under atheism again just an offshoot of believe it and it becomes true don t believe it and it doesn t like other religions i m aquainted with islam teaches exclusion and caste and suggests harsh penalties for behaviors that have no logical call for punishment certain limits on speech and sex for example to me this is not good i see much pain and suffering without any justification except for the waving of the hand of some inaccessible god by the by you toss around the word knowledgable a bit carelessly for what is a knowledgeable believer except a contradiction of terms i infer that you mean believer in terms of having faith and if you need knowledge to believe then faith has nothing to do with it does it jim halat

alt.atheism

re the inimitable rushdie re an anecdote about islam in article bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger writes he d have to be precise about is rejection of god and his leaving islam one is perfectly free to be muslim and to doubt and question the existence of god so long as one does not reject god i am sure that rushdie has be now made his atheism clear in front of a sufficient number of proper witnesses the question in regard to the legal issue is his status at the time the crime was committed i d have to say that i have a problem with any organization religious or not where the idea that simple speech such as this is the basis for a crime jim halat

alt.atheism

re the inimitable rushdie re an anecdote about islam in article ursa bear com halat pooh bears jim halat writes in article bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger writes he d have to be precise about is rejection of god and his leaving islam one is perfectly free to be muslim and to doubt and question the existence of god so long as one does not reject god i am sure that rushdie has be now made his atheism clear in front of a sufficient number of proper witnesses the question in regard to the legal issue is his status at the time the crime was committed i ll also add that it is impossible to actually tell when one rejects god therefore you choose to punish only those who talk about it jim halat

alt.atheism

re a silly question on x tianity in article apr daffy cs wisc edu mccullou snake cs wisc edu mark mccullough writes sorry to insult your homestate but coming from where i do wisconsin is very backwards i was never able to understand that people actually held such bigoted and backwards views until i came here i have never been to wisconsin though i have been to neighbor minnesota being a child of the middle atlantic ny nj pa i found that there were few states in the provences that stood out in this youngster s mind california texas and florida to name the most obvious three however both minnesota and wisconsin stuck out solely on the basis of their politics both have always translated to extremely liberal and progressive states and my recent trip to minnestoa last summer served to support that state s reputation my guess is that wisconsin is probably the same at least that was the impression the people of minnesota left with me about their neighbors the only question in my head about wisconsin though is whether or not there is a cause effect relationship between cheese and serial killers jim halat

alt.atheism

re the nonexistance of atheists date apr edt from kmagnacca eagle wesleyan edu in article bskendigc jcwx jzn netcom com bskendig netcom com brian kendig writes s c a quotes deleted it really looks like these people have no idea at all of what it means to be atheist there are more bobby mozumder clones in the world than i thought well that explains some things i posted on soc religion islam with an attached quote by bobby to the effect that all atheists are lying evil scum and asked if it was a commonly held idea among muslims i got no response asking about the unknown i guess you should have tried one of the soc culture groups in the middle east or south asia area they are a little more open than the islam channel i think someone defined atheists as polytheists cuz they say we think the world created itself or something like that so each particle is a god which created the other gods the soc culture african is also nice for some contrasting viewpoints on the benevolence of religion especially when sudan is mentioned

alt.atheism

keith is a relativist in article pigidinnsot gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes not so if you are thrown into a cage with a tiger and get mauled do you blame the tiger aha he admits it he is a moral relativist keith if you start wafffling on about how it is different for a human to maul someone thrown into it s cage so to speak you d better start posting tome decent evidence or retract your i think there is an absolute morality blurb a few weeks ago keith the desert brat john j mcvey elc eltnc eng whyalla uni s australia f levels unisa edu au t s a k c darwin o for replies mail to whjjm wh whyalla unisa edu au disclaimer unisa hates my opinions bb bb it doesn t make a rainbow any less beautiful that we god s name is smack understand the refractive mechanisms that chance to for some produce it jim perry perry dsinc com alice in chains

alt.atheism

re some thoughts in article healta saturn wwc edu healta saturn wwc edu tammy r healy writes i hope you re not going to flame him please give him the same coutesy you ve given me tammy if a person gives a well balanced reasoned argument tammy then all are happy to discuss it with him if he makes astounding claims which are not backed up with any evidence then he must be expected to substantiate them if the original author had said that everything was his own opinion and not supportable then people would have simply ignored him he did not he claimed many things and his logic was seriously flawed his argument was for christianity in an effort to try to convince atheists like myself to believe him and his message i for one will not take things as read if you told me that pink fluffy elephants did the dance of the sugar plum fairy on the dark side of jupiter then i would demand evidence adda adda wainwright does dim atal y llanw o eczcaw mips nott ac uk o mae sig ma ar werth

alt.atheism

re objective values v scientific accuracy was re after years can we say that christian morality is in article c j jzv dcs ed ac uk tk dcs ed ac uk tommy kelly wrote in article qjahh mrs horus ap mchp sni de frank d s uucp frank o dwyer writes science the real world has its basis in values not the other way round as you would wish it you must be using values to mean something different from the way i see it used normally and you are certainly using science like that if you equate it to the real world science is the recognition of patterns in our perceptions of the universe and the making of qualitative and quantitative predictions concerning those perceptions science is the process of modeling the real world based on commonly agreed interpretations of our observations perceptions it has nothing to do with values as far as i can see values are well they are what i value they are what i would have rather than not have what i would experience rather than not and so on values can also refer to meaning for example in computer science the value of is true and is false science is based on commonly agreed values interpretation of observations although science can result in a reinterpretation of these values objective values are a set of values which the proposer believes are applicable to everyone the values underlaying science are not objective since they have never been fully agreed and the change with time the values of newtonian physic are certainly different to those of quantum mechanics steve lang slang sling slink slick slack shack shank thank think thick

alt.atheism

victims of various good fight s in article tekig pen tek com naren tekig pen tek com naren bala writes list of killings in the name of religion iran iraq war civil war in sudan riots in india pakistan in massacares in bangladesh in inquistions in america in s x million x crusades massacre of jews in wwii million massacre of other inferior races in wwii million communist purges million socialism is more or less a religion catholics v protestants quite a few i d imagine recent goings on in bombay iodia sp area disease introduced to brazilian oher s am tribes x million naren the desert brat john j mcvey elc eltnc eng whyalla uni s australia f levels unisa edu au t s a k c darwin o for replies mail to whjjm wh whyalla unisa edu au disclaimer unisa hates my opinions bb bb it doesn t make a rainbow any less beautiful that we god s name is smack understand the refractive mechanisms that chance to for some produce it jim perry perry dsinc com alice in chains

alt.atheism

re keith schneider stealth poster in article pa f innpit gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes but really are you threatened by the motto or by the people that use it every time somone writes something and says it is merely describing the norm it is infact re inforcing that norm upon those programmed not to think for themselves the motto is dangerous in itself it tells the world that every true american is god fearing and puts down those who do not fear gods it doesn t need anyone to make it dangerous it does a good job itself by just existing on your currency keith the desert brat john j mcvey elc eltnc eng whyalla uni s australia f levels unisa edu au t s a k c darwin o for replies mail to whjjm wh whyalla unisa edu au disclaimer unisa hates my opinions bb bb it doesn t make a rainbow any less beautiful that we god s name is smack understand the refractive mechanisms that chance to for some produce it jim perry perry dsinc com alice in chains

alt.atheism

re it s all mary s fault pl u andrew cmu edu patrick c leger writes you know it just occurred to me today that this whole christian thing can be blamed solely on mary so she s married to joseph she gets knocked up what do you think ol joe will do if he finds she s been getting around so mary comes up with this ridiculous story about god making her pregnant nice attempt chris verrry close you missed the conspiracy by step joseph knew who knocked her up he couldn t let it be known that somebody else got ol mary prego that wouldn t do well for his popularity in the local circles so what happened is that she was feeling guilty he was feeling embarrassed and they decided to improve both of their images on what could have otherwise been the downfall for both clever indeed come to think of it i have gained a new respect for the couple maybe joseph and mary should receive all of the praise being paid to jesus dave buckminster fuller how is that one o keeper of the nicknames

alt.atheism

re origins of the bible adda wainwright writes he stated that thousands of bibles were discovered at a certain point in time which were syllable perfect this therefore meant that there must have been one copy at a certain time the time quoted by my acquaintance was approximately years after the death of jesus this is as far as i know complete nonsense the codification of the bible as we have it now came very much later c wingate the peace of god it is no peace but strife closed in the sod mangoe cs umd edu yet brothers pray for but one thing tove mangoe the marv lous peace of god

alt.atheism

re the inimitable rushdie i apologize for the long delay in getting a response to this posted i ve been working reduced hours the past couple of weeks because i had a son born the day after umar s article was posted btw i did respond within a couple of days but it turns out that a a coincidental news software rearrangement caused postings from this site to silently disappear rather than going out into the world this is a revision of that original response in article c q ct ra nrl navy mil khan itd itd nrl navy mil umar khan writes in article ps finnm u dsi dsinc com perry dsinc com jim perry writes only a functional illiterate with absolutely no conception of the nature of the novel could think such a thing this was in response to the claim that rushdie made false statements about the life of mohammed with the disclaimer fiction i know but where is the line between fact and fiction i stand by this distinction between fiction and false statements however it s not for his writing in the satanic verses but for what people have accepted as a propagandistic version of what is contained in that book i have yet to find one single muslim who has convinced me that they have read the book some have initially claimed to have done so but none has shown more knowledge of the book than a superficial newsweek story might impart and all have made factual misstatements about events in the book you keep saying things like this then you accuse people like me of making ad hominem arguments i repeat as i have said in previous postings on aa i have read tsv from cover to cover i had not seen that claim or i might have been less sweeping you have made what i consider factual misstatements about events in the book which i have raised in the past in the islam a clearer view thread as well as the root of the yet more rushdie re islamic law thread my statement was not that you had not read the book but that you had not convinced me that you inter alia had as i said before if you want to defend your position then produce evidence and respond to the evidence i have posted so far you have not of course my statement was not directly aimed at you but broadly at a number of muslim posters who have repeated propaganda about the book indicating that they haven t read it and narrowly at gregg jaeger who subsequently admitted that he hadn t in fact read the book vindicating my skepticism in at least that one case so far the only things i have to go on regarding your own case are a the statements you made concerning the book in the a clearer view posting which i have challenged not interpretation but statements of fact for instance rushdie depicts the women of the most respected family in all of islam as whores and b your claim which i had not seen before this that you have indeed read it cover to cover i am willing to try to resolve this down to a disagreement on critical interpretation but you ll have to support your end by responding to my criticism i have no doubt as to the ability of a particular muslim to go through this book with a highlighter finding passages to take personal offense at but you have upheld the view that tsv is intended as an attack on islam and upon muslims this view must be defended by more than mere assertion if you want anyone to take it seriously i am trying very hard to be amicable and rational and i appreciate it but welcome to the club i am defending my honest opinion that this book should not be construed as a calculated or otherwise insulting attack on islam and the parallel opinion that most of the criticism of the book i have seen is baseless propaganda i have supported my statements and critical interpretationa with in context quotes from the book and rushdie s essays which is more than my correspondents have done of course you are more than welcome to do so jim perry perry dsinc com decision support inc matthews nc these are my opinions for a nominal fee they can be yours

alt.atheism

re amusing atheists and agnostics chris faehl writes many atheists do not mock the concept of a god they are shocked that so many theists have fallen to such a low level that they actually believe in a god you accuse all atheists of being part of a conspiracy again without evidence rule condescending to the population at large i e theists will not win many people to your faith anytime soon it only ruins your credibility fallacy atheism is a faith lo i hear the faq beckoning once again wonderful rule deleted you re correct you didn t say anything about a conspiracy correction hard atheism is a faith rule don t mix apples with oranges how can you say that the extermination by the mongols was worse than stalin khan conquered people unsympathetic to his cause that was atrocious but stalin killed millions of his own people who loved and worshipped him and his atheist state how can anyone be worse than that i will not explain this to you again stalin did nothing in the name of atheism whethe he was or was not an atheist is irrelevant get a grip man the stalin example was brought up not as an indictment of atheism but merely as another example of how people will kill others under any name that s fit for the occasion rule if you rely on evidence state it we re waiting as opposed to relying on a bunch of black ink on some crumbling old paper atheism has to prove nothing to you or anyone else it is the burden of dogmatic religious bullshit to provide their evidence which we might you be referring to and how long are you going to wait so hard atheism has nothing to prove then how does it justify that god does not exist i know there s the faq etc but guess what if those justifications were so compelling why aren t people flocking to hard atheism they re not and they won t i for one will discourage people from hard atheism by pointing out those very sources as reliable statements on hard atheism second what makes you think i m defending any given religion i m merely recognizing hard atheism for what it is a faith and yes by we i am referring to every reader of the post where is the evidence that the poster stated that he relied upon oh yes though i m not a theist i can say safely that by definition many theists are not arrogant since they boast about something outside themselves namely a god or gods so in principle it s hard to see how theists are necessarily arrogant because they say such and such is absolutely unalterably true because my dogma says it is true i am not prepared to issue blanket statements indicting all theists of arrogance as you are wont to do with atheists bzzt by virtue of your innocent little pronoun they you ve just issued a blanket statement at least i will apologize by qualifying my original statement with hard atheist in place of atheist would you call john the baptist arrogant who boasted of one greater than he that s what many christians do today how is that in itself arrogant i m not worthy only seriously misinformed with your sophisticated put down of they the theists your serious misinformation shines through bake timmons iii there s nothing higher stronger more wholesome and more useful in life than some good memory alyosha in brothers karamazov dostoevsky

alt.atheism

re islam and scientific predictions was re genocide is caused by atheism in bb c i dbstu rz tu bs de i dbstu rz tu bs de benedikt rosenau writes in article apr monu cc monash edu au darice yoyo cc monash edu au fred rice writes and it is he god almighty who created the night and the day and the sun and the earth all the celetial bodies swim along each in its rounded course holy quran hmm this agrees with the ptolemic system of the earth at the centre with the planets orbitting round it so copernicus and gallileo were wrong after all you haven t read very carefully if you look again you will see that it doesn t say anything about what is circling what anyway they are not moving in circles oops sorry my words not the words of the qur an nor is there any evidence that everything goes around in a rounded course in a general sense wishy washy statements are not scientific note that the celestial bodies in the above verse is an interpolation which is why it is in brackets it is the translator s incorrect imho interpretation here is maurice bucaille s translation he studied arabic for his research into the qur an and science of this verse god is the one who created the night the day the sun and the moon each is travelling in an orbit with its own motion qur an the positive aspect of this verse noted by dr maurice bucaille is that while geocentrism was the commonly accepted notion at the time and for a long time afterwards there is no notion of geocentrism in this verse or anywhere in the qur an fred rice darice yoyo cc monash edu au

alt.atheism

re islam and scientific predictions was re genocide is caused by atheism in cindy apr solan solan unit no cindy solan solan unit no cynthia kandolf writes various quotes deleted in the interest of saving a little bit of bandwidth but i will copy the koran quote and it is he god almighty who created the night and the day and the sun and the earth all the celetial bodies swim along each in its rounded course holy quran as it has been pointed out this quote makes no claim about what orbits what the idea that something orbited something had been held as true for many years before the koran was written so the fact that it says something orbits something is hardly surprising insight my concern is with the word rounded there are two interpretations of this word it means in a circle this is wrong although many believed it to be true at the time the koran was written in other words it is not describing our neighborhood of the universe as it really exists but as it was thought to be at the time this has implications which i hope are obvious to everyone it means in a rounded shape which could include elipses the geometrical form which most nearly describes the orbits of the planets this is also not a great insight look at the shapes you see in nature very few of them even approach a square or rectangle those are human created shapes everything in nature is rounded to some degree even the flat earthers don t try to claim earth is a rectangle children who draw imaginary animals seldom give them rectangular bodies we seem to instinctively recognize that nature produces rounded shapes hence the assumption that the orbits of the planets would be round hardly takes divine inspiration it is good to remember that every translation is to some extent an interpretation so as you point out below one must really go back to the original arabic regarding the verses relevant to nature i prefer to use dr maurice bucaille s translations in his book the bible the qur an and science for in general his translations are more literal maurice bucaille translates the portion of the verse you are addressing as each one is travelling with an orbit in its own motion also note that the celestial bodies in the first translation quoted by you above is the translator s interpolation it is not existent in the original arabic which is why it is included in brackets perhaps someone who can read the original arabic can eliminate one of these interpretations at any rate neither one of them is exactly impressive you re right what the verses do contain isn t all that remarkable however dr bucaille a surgeon that s how he s a dr thinks it is significant that the above verse contains no geocentric ideas even though geocentrism was all the rage up until the th century or so and this goes for the rest of the qur an as well which has about verses or so regarding nature i think i remember reading once fred rice darice yoyo cc monash edu au

alt.atheism

re societally acceptable behavior in article c qgm dl news cso uiuc edu cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb writes merely a question for the basis of morality moral ethical behavior societally acceptable behavior i disagree with these what society thinks should be irrelevant what the individual decides is all that is important who is society i think this is fairly obvious how do they define what is acceptable generally by what they feel is right which is the most idiotic policy i can think of how do we keep from a whatever is legal is what is moral position by thinking for ourselves mac michael a cobb and i won t raise taxes on the middle university of illinois class to pay for my programs champaign urbana bill clinton rd debate cobb alexia lis uiuc edu with new taxes and spending cuts we ll still have billion dollar deficits

alt.atheism

re origins of the bible in article apr cs nott ac uk eczcaw mips nott ac uk a wainwright writes hi i have been having an argument about the origins of the bible lately with a theist acquaintance he stated that thousands of bibles were discovered at a certain point in time which were syllable perfect this therefore meant that there must have been one copy at a certain time the time quoted by my acquaintace was approximately years after the death of jesus hi adda most bible scholars agree that there was one copy of each book at a certain time the time when the author wrote it unfortunately like all works from this time period and earlier all that exists today are copies cutting all of the crap out of the way ie god wrote it could anyone answer the following how old is the oldest surviving copy of the new testament there are parts of books scraps really that date from around the mid second century a d there are some complete books letters etc from the middle third century the first complete collection of the new testament dates from the early th century a d throughout this period are writings of various early church fathers leaders who quoted various scriptures in their writings is there any truth in my acquaintance s statements if you mean that someone discovered thousands of bibles which were all perfect copies dating from the last part of the st century no if you mean that there are thousands of early manuscripts within the dates given above but not letter perfect and that the most probable text can be reconstructed from these documents and that the earliest original autographs now lost probably were written starting sometime shortly after a d then yes from who where did the bible originate from the original authors we call them matthew mark luke john peter paul james and one other not identified how long is a piece of string as long as you make it adda regards jim b

alt.atheism

re amusing atheists and agnostics james hogan writes timmbake mcl ucsb edu bake timmons writes jim hogan quips summary of jim s stuff jim i m afraid you ve missed the point thus i think you ll have to admit that atheists have a lot more up their sleeve than you might have suspected nah i will encourage people to learn about atheism to see how little atheists have up their sleeves whatever i might have suspected is actually quite meager if you want i ll send them your address to learn less about your faith faith yeah do you expect people to read the faq etc and actually accept hard atheism no you need a little leap of faith jimmy your logic runs out of steam fine but why do these people shoot themselves in the foot and mock the idea of a god i hope you understand now yes jim i do understand now thank you for providing some healthy sarcasm that would have dispelled any sympathies i would have had for your faith bake real glad you detected the sarcasm angle but am really bummin that i won t be getting any of your sympathy still if your inclined to have sympathy for somebody s faith you might try one of the religion newsgroups just be careful over there though make believe i m whispering in your ear here they re all delusional jim sorry i can t pity you jim and i m sorry that you have these feelings of denial about the faith you need to get by oh well just pretend that it will all end happily ever after anyway maybe if you start a new newsgroup alt atheist hard you won t be bummin so much good job jim bye bake more slim jim tm deleted bye bake bye bye bye bye big jim don t forget your flintstone s chewables bake timmons iii there s nothing higher stronger more wholesome and more useful in life than some good memory alyosha in brothers karamazov dostoevsky

alt.atheism

studies on book of mormon hi i don t know much about mormons and i want to know about serious independent studies about the book of mormon i don t buy the official story about the gold original taken to heaven but haven t read the book of mormon by myself i have to much work learning biblical hebrew i will appreciate any comment about the results of study in style vocabulary place names internal consistency and so on for example there is evidence for one writer or multiple writers there are some mention about events places or historical persons later discovered by archeologist yours in collen andres grino brandt casilla santiago agrino enkidu mic cl chile no hay mas realidad que la realidad y la razon es su profeta

alt.atheism

re gulf war and peace niks in article apr bmerh bnr ca dgraham bmers bnr ca douglas graham writes wait a minute you said never play a chamberlain since the us is playing chamberlain as far as east timor is concerned wouldn t that lead you to think that your argument is irrelevant and had nothing to do with the gulf war actually i rather like your idea perhaps the rest of the world should have bombed or maybe missiled washington when the us invaded nicaragua grenada panama vietnam mexico hawaii or any number of other places wait a minute doug i know you are better informed than that the us has never invaded nicaragua as far as i know we liberated grenada from the cubans to protect us citizens there and to prevent the completion of a strategic air strip panama we invaded true twice this century vietnam we were invited in by the government of s vietnam i guess we invaded saudi arabia during the gulf war eh mexico we have invaded mexico or times once this century but there were no missiles for anyone to shoot over here at that time hawaii we liberated it from spain so if you mean by the word invaded some sort of military action where we cross someone s border you are right out of but normally invaded carries a connotation of attacking an autonomous nation if some nation invades the u s virgin islands would they be invading the virgin islands or the u s so from this point of view your score falls to out of mexico panama what s a peace nik is that somebody who doesn t masturbate over guns n ammo or what is it supposed to be bad to be a peace nik no it s someone who believes in peace at all costs in other words a person who would have supported giving hitler not only austria and czechoslakia but poland too if it could have averted the war and one who would allow hitler to wipe all all jews slavs and political dissidents in areas he controlled as long as he left the rest of us alone is it supposed to be bad to be a peace nik you ask well it depends on what your values are if you value life over liberty peace over freedom then i guess not but if liberty and freedom mean more to you than life itself if you d rather die fighting for liberty than live under a tyrant s heel then yes it s bad to be a peace nik the problem with most peace niks it they consider those of us who are not like them to be bad and unconscionable i would not have any argument or problem with a peace nik if they held to their ideals and stayed out of all conflicts or issues especially those dealing with the national defense but no they are not willing to allow us to legitimately hold a different point of view they militate and many times resort to violence all in the name of peace what rank hypocrisy all to stop we warmongers who are willing to stand up and defend our freedoms against tyrants and who realize that to do so requires a strong national defense time to get off the soapbox now doug graham dgraham bnr ca my opinions are my own regards jim b

alt.atheism

re amusing atheists and agnostics nancyo fraser sfu ca nancy patricia o connor writes timmbake mcl ucsb edu bake timmons writes rule don t mix apples with oranges how can you say that the extermination by the mongols was worse than stalin khan conquered people unsympathetic to his cause that was atrocious but stalin killed millions of his own people who loved and worshipped him and his atheist state how can anyone be worse than that you re right and david koresh claimed to be a christian yup i can hear the millions cheering for dk right now josef stalin eat your heart out bake timmons iii there s nothing higher stronger more wholesome and more useful in life than some good memory alyosha in brothers karamazov dostoevsky

alt.atheism

he has risen our lord and savior david keresh has risen he has been seen alive spread the word my sole intention was learning to fly

alt.atheism

re idle questions for fellow atheists acooper mac cc macalstr edu wrote i wonder how many atheists out there care to speculate on the face of the world if atheists were the majority rather than the minority group of the population i ve been thinking about this every now and then since i cut my ties with christianity it is surprising to note that a large majority of people at least in finland seem to be apatheists even though of the population are members of the lutheran church of finland religious people are actually a minority could it be possible that many people believe in god just in case it seems people do not want to seek the truth they fall prey to pascal s wager or other poor arguments a small minority of those who do believe reads the bible regularly the majority doesn t care it believes but doesn t know what or how people don t usually allow their beliefs to change their lifestyle they only want to keep the virtual gate open a christian would say that they are not born in the spirit but this does not disturb them religion is not something to think about i m afraid a society with a true atheist majority is an impossible dream religions have a strong appeal to people nevertheless a promise of life after death is something humans eagerly listen to coupled with threats of eternal torture and the idea that our morality is under constant scrutiny of some cosmic cop too many people take the poison with a smile or just pretend to swallow and unconsciously hope god wouldn t notice also how many atheists out there would actually take the stance and accor a higher value to their way of thinking over the theistic way of thinking the typical selfish argument would be that both lines of thinking evolved from the same inherent motivation so one is not intrinsically different from the other qualitatively but then again a measuring stick must be drawn somewhere and if we cannot assign value to a system of beliefs at its core than the only other alternative is to apply it to its periphery ie how it expresses its own selfishness if logic and reason are valued then i would claim that atheistic thinking is of higher value than the theistic exposition theists make unnecessary assumptions they believe in i ve yet to see good reasons to believe in gods or to take a leap of faith at all a revelation would do however why do we value logic and reasoning this questions bears some resemblance to a long disputed problem in science why mathematics works strong deep structuralists like atkins have proposed that perhaps after all everything is mathematics is usefulness any criterion petri petri pihko kem pmp mathematics is the truth pihatie c finou oulu fi physics is the rule of sf oulu kempmp the game finland phoenix oulu fi chemistry is the game

alt.atheism

re societally acceptable behavior in article c r at asv news cso uiuc edu cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb writes in qvabj g j horus ap mchp sni de frank d s uucp frank o dwyer writes in article c qgm dl news cso uiuc edu cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb writes am i making a wrong assumption for the basis of morals where do they come from the question came from the idea that i heard that morals come from whatever is societally mandated it s only one aspect of morality societal morality is necessarily very crude and broad brush stuff which attempts to deal with what is necessary to keep that society going and often it s a little over enthusiastic about doing so individual morality is a different thing it often includes societal mores or society is in trouble but is stronger for example some people are vegetarian though eating meat may be perfectly legal merely a question for the basis of morality moral ethical behavior societally acceptable behavior who is society depends on the society doesn t help is the point irrelevant no often the answer is we are but if society is those who make the rules that s a different question if society is who should make the rules that s yet another i don t claim to have the answers either but i don t think we do it very well in ireland and i like some things about the us system at least in principle how do they define what is acceptable depends on again this comes from a certain question see above well ideally they don t but if they must they should do it by consensus imo how do we keep from a whatever is legal is what is moral position by adopting a default position that people s moral decisions are none of society s business so how can we put people in jail how can we condemn other societies because sometimes that s necessary the hard trick is to recognise when it is and equally importantly when it isn t and only interfering when it s truly necessary why would it be necessary what right do we have to interfere imo it isn t often that interference i e jail and force of various kinds and degrees is both necessary and effective where you derive the right to interfere is a difficult question it s a sort of liar s paradox force is necessary for freedom one possible justification is that people who wish to take away freedom shouldn t object if their own freedom is taken away the paradox doesn t arise if we don t actively wish to take way anyone s freedom the introduction of permissible interference causes the problem that it can be either too much or too little but most people seem to agree that some level of interference is necessary they see the need for a justice system how can we even define that term only by consensus i guess thus you get a situation where the law often allows what honour forbids which i ve come to believe is as it should be i admit i don t understand that statement what i mean is that while thus and such may be legal thus and such may also be seen as immoral the law lets you do it but you don t let yourself do it eating meat for example frank o dwyer i m not hatching that odwyer sse ie from hens by evelyn conlon

alt.atheism

re islamic genocide in p psilink com robert knowles p psilink com writes date apr gmt from frank o dwyer frank d s uucp in article apr monu cc monash edu au darice yoyo cc monash edu au fred rice writes just borrowing your post mr rice in p psilink com robert knowles p psilink com writes are you sure that democracy is the driving force behind the massacres in east timor it is certainly odd that so many of the worlds massacres occur along religious lines independently of any claims to a democratic form of government are ireland and northern ireland considered democracies would you attribute their problems to democracy even though they are democracies which motivates them more religion or democracy mr rice was pointing out a fallacy in the assertion that islam is evil because some of those who claim to follow it are evil not asserting that democracy causes massacres as i read it that is right he was and i was pointing out that his use of indonesians killing the east timorese as a result of democracy was a bit weak because democracy is not much of a motivation for doing much of anything in indonesia from what i remember east timor was a former portguese territory which was forcibly annexed by indonesia last i heard over indonesians have died trying to keep east timor a part of indonesia being a former portuguese colony there is a strong catholic influence in east timor as i recall so it seems a bit odd that yet again we have another war being fought between people who just happen to have different religions purely coincidental i guess but then the real motivation is to get the vote out and make democracy work in indonesia i pointed out the secession movement in aceh which has also been brutally dealt with in the past by the indonesian government the harshly with all secessionist movements the evidence it appears to me that the indonesian government has dealt very harshly with all secession movements i know that the head of the indonesian armed forces for a very long time was benny murdani a christian indonesia has been heavy handed in east timor for a long time even when murdani was head of the armed forces the people who make up the indonesian government are in general motivated by national interests not religious ones fred rice darice yoyo cc monash edu au

alt.atheism

re amusing atheists and agnostics robert knowles writes my my there are a few atheists with time on their hands ok first i apologize i didn t bother reading the faq first and so fired an imprecise flame that was inexcusable how about the nickname bake flamethrower timmons sure but robert koresh fetesh sic knowles seems good too you weren t at the koresh compound around noon today by any chance were you remember koresh dried for your sins and pass that beef jerky umm umm though i wasn t there at least i can rely on you now to keep me posted on what what he s doing have you any other fetishes besides those for beef jerky and david koresh bake timmons iii there s nothing higher stronger more wholesome and more useful in life than some good memory alyosha in brothers karamazov dostoevsky

alt.atheism

re christian morality is in article c prca news cso uiuc edu cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb says in vice ico tek com bobbe vice ico tek com robert beauchaine writes in article c l ey jts news cso uiuc edu cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb writes if i m wrong god is free at any time to correct my mistake that he continues not to do so while supposedly proclaiming his undying love for my eternal soul speaks volumes what are the volumes that it speaks besides the fact that he leaves your choices up to you leaves the choices up to us but gives us no better reason to believe than an odd story of his alleged son getting killed for us and little new in the past few thousand years leaving us with only the texts passed down through centuries of meddling with the meaning and even wording most of this passing down and interpretation of course coming from those who have a vested interest in not allowing the possibility that it might not be the ultimate truth what about maybe talking to us directly eh he s a big god right he ought to be able to make time for the creations he loves so much at least enough to give us each a few words of direct conversation what he s too busy to get around to all of us or maybe a few unquestionably miraculous works here and there speaks volumes upon volumes to me that i ve never gotten a chance to meet the guy and chat with him

alt.atheism

re death penalty gulf war in article f rusnews w w mantis co uk mathew mathew mantis co uk writes jbrown batman bmd trw com writes in article e rusnews w w mantis co uk mathew mathew mantis co uk writes yes fortunately we have right thinking folks like your good self in power and it was therefore deemed acceptable to slaughter tens or even hundreds o thousands of iraqis in order to liberate oil h h hkuwait we won the war hurrah hurrah the number of civilian iraqi deaths were way over exaggerated and exploited for anti war emotionalism by the liberal news media the facts are that less iraqis died in the gulf war than did civilians in any other war of comparable size this century let s analyze this claim a little how is the size of a war defined by number of participants geographical area number of countries involved number of casualties size of armies duration numbers of casualties both absolute and as a percentage of those involved geographical area and numbers of countries too are all measures of size in this case i d say the relevant statistic would be the number of combatants total troops compared to total casualties from among the total civilian population in the affected geographical area which other comparable wars are we talking about vietnam and korea might make good comparisons which liberal news media are we talking about western news in general but in particular the american mass media cbs nbc abc etc the general tone of the news during the whole war was one of those poor poor iraqis along with look how precisely this cruise missile blew this building to bits this was due mostly to the short duration coupled with precise surgical bombing techniques which were technically possible only recently i suspect that medical advances may have something to do with it too i agree how about all the innocent people who died in blanket bombing in ww i don t hear you bemoaning them perhaps because the topic hasn t cropped up if you want my opinion i think that the blanket bombing of german cities at the end of world war two was the most appalling act of wholesale slaughter this country has committed in centuries bomber harris was no hero of mine perhaps so and maybe the atomic bomb was a mistake too but that s easy to say from our enlightened viewpoint here in the s right back then it was all out war and germany and japan had to be squashed after all a million or more british had already died hundreds of thousands of french a couple hundread thousand or so americans and millions of russians not to mention a few million jews poles and other people of slavic descent in german concentration camps all things considered the fire bombings and the atomic bomb were essential and therefore justified in bringing the war to a quick end to avoid even greater allied losses i for one don t regret it war is never an exact science but with smart bombs it s becoming more exact with a smaller percentage of civilian casualties sometimes mistakes are made targets are misidentified innocents die that s war the way it really is entrenched political rulers operating in their own selfish interests without regard for the lives of other people that is the way war really is sure and it s the people who suffer because of them all the more reason to depose these entrenched political rulers operating in their own selfish interests or do you mean that this applies to the allies as well why all the fuss about kuwait and not east timor bosnia or even tibet if iraq is so bad why were we still selling them stuff a couple of weeks before we started bombing i make no claim or effort to justify the misguided foreign policy of the west before the war it is evident that the west especially america misjudged hussein drastically but once hussein invaded kuwait and threatened to militarily corner a significant portion of the world s oil supply he had to be stopped sure the war could have been prevented by judicious and concerted effort on the part of the west before hussein invaded kuwait but it is still hussein who is responsible for his decision to invade and once he did so a strong response from the west was required mathew your sarcasm is noted but you are completely off base here you come off sounding like a complete peace nik idiot although i feel sure that was not your intent what s your intent to sound like a loving christian well you aren t doing a very good job of it well it s not very loving to allow a hussein or a hitler to gobble up nearby countries and keep them or to allow them to continue with mass slaughter of certain peoples under their dominion so i d have to say yes stopping hussein was the most loving thing to do for the most people involved once he set his mind on military conquest so the iraqi war was wrong eh i m sure that appeasement would have worked better than war just like it did in ww eh who even mentioned appeasement and what makes you think the situation is even remotely analogous to world war two i mentioned it if we hadn t intervened allowing hussein to keep kuwait then it would have been appeasement it is precisely the lessons the world learned in ww that motivated the western alliance to war letting hitler take austria and czechoslavkia did not stop ww from happening and letting hussein keep kuwait would not have stopped an eventual gulf war to protect saudi arabia i guess we shouldn t have fought ww either just think of all those innocent german civilians killed in dresden and hamburg yes do germans are human too you know sure what was truly unfortunate was that they followed hitler in his grandiose quest for a thousand year reich the consequences stemmed from that tyrants like hussein have to be stopped his kind don t understand diplomacy they only understand the point of a gun my only regret is that bush wimped out and didn t have the military roll into baghdad so now hussein is still in power and the iraqi people s sacrifice not to mention the americans who died was for naught i look forward to hearing your incisive comments about east timor and tibet what should i say about them anything in particular and as for poor poor rodney king did you ever stop and think why the jury in the first trial brought back a verdict of not guilty yes amongst the things i thought were hmm there s an awful lot of white people in that jury so it was the policemen on trial not rodney king and under american law they deserved a jury of their peers if there had been black officers involved i m sure their would have been black jurors too this point of allegedly racial motivations is really shallow those who have been foaming at the mouth for the blood of those policemen certainly have looked no further than the video tape but the jury looked at all the evidence evidence which you and i have not seen when i see a bunch of policemen beating someone who s lying defenceless on the ground it s rather hard to imagine what this other evidence might have been so it s hard to imagine so when has argument from incredulity gained acceptance from the revered author of constructing a logical argument can we expect another revision soon just kidding if there is some wonderful evidence why is it seemingly being kept secret why not tell everyone what it is then everyone could say oh yes you re right king deserved a good beating and we could all live happily ever after i have to admit that i wonder this too but neither the prosecution nor the defense is talking so one cannot conclude either way due to the silence of the principals law in this country is intended to protect the rights of the accused whether they be criminals or cops one is not found guilty if there is a reasonable doubt of one s guilt and only the jury is in a position to assess the evidence and render a verdict fine but i m still finding it hard to imagine what the reasonable doubt was in this case i mean the cops certainly seem to be beating someone who s lying defenceless on the ground what s your explanation mass hallucination orbital mind control lasers faked video footage do tell ok it certainly seemed to me that there was excessive force involved and frankly the original not guilty verdict baffled me too but then i learned that the prosecution in the first case did not try to convict on a charge of excessive force or simple assault which they probably would have won they tried to get a conviction on a charge of aggravated assault with intent to inflict serious bodily harm a charge which news commentators said was akin to attempted murder under california law based on what the prosecution was asking for it s evident that the first jury decided that the officers were not guilty note not not guilty of doing wrong but not guilty of aggravated assault with the intent of inflicting serious bodily harm the seeds of the prosecutions defeat were in their own overconfidence in obtaining a verdict such that they went for the most extreme charge they could if the facts as the news commentators presented them are true then i feel the not guilty verdict was a reasonable one mathew thou shalt not kill unless thou hast a pretty good reason for killing in which case thou shalt kill and also kill anyone who gets in the way as unfortunately it cannot be helped jim brown bible for loving christians thanks mathew i like the quote pretty funny actually i m a monty python fan you know kind of seems in that vein of course oversimplifying any moral argument can make it seem contradictory but then you know that already regards jim b loving christian

alt.atheism

re free moral agency in article c pxqs lm darkside osrhe uoknor edu bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner says dean kaflowitz decay cbnewsj cb att com wrote now what i am interested in is the original notion you were discussing on moral free agency that is how can a god punish a person for not believing in him when that person is only following his or her nature and it is not possible for that person to deny what his or her reason tells him or her which is that there is no god i think you re letting atheist mythology confuse you on the issue of webster myth a traditional or legendary story a belief whose truth is accepted uncritically how does that qualify indeed it s almost oxymoronic a rather amusing instance i ve found that most atheists hold almost no atheist views as accepted uncritically especially the few that are legend many are trying to explain basic truths as myths do but they don t meet the other criterions also divine justice according to the most fundamental doctrines of christianity when the first man sinned he was at that time the you accuse him of referencing mythology then you procede to launch your own xtian mythology this time meeting all the requirements of myth salvation the idea of punishment is based on the proposition that everyone knows instinctively that god exists is their creator and ah but not everyone knows that god exists so you have a fallacy there s nothing terribly difficult in all this and is well known to any reasonably biblically literate christian the only controversy is and that makes it true holding with the bible rules out controversy read the faq if you ve read it you missed something so re read not a bad suggestion for anyone i re read it just before this with those who pretend not to know what is being said and what it means when atheists claim that they do not know if god exists and don t know what he wants they contradict the bible which clearly says that everyone knows the authority of the bible is its claim to be should i repeat what i wrote above for the sake of getting it across you may trust the bible but your trusting it doesn t make it any more credible to me if the bible says that everyone knows that s clearly reason to doubt the bible because not everyone knows your alleged god s alleged existance refuted while the species wide condemnation is justified those that claim that there is no evidence for the existence of god or that his will is unknown must deliberately ignore the bible the ignorance itself is no excuse no they don t have to ignore the bible the bible is far from universally accepted the bible is not a proof of god it is only a proof that some people have thought that there was a god or does it prove even that they might have been writing it as series of fiction short stories as in the case of dionetics assuming the writers believed it the only thing it could possibly prove is that they believed it and that s ignoring the problem of whether or not all the interpretations and biblical philosophers were correct there are people who have truly never heard of the bible again read the faq freedom you are free to ignore god in the same way you are free to ignore gravity and the consequences are inevitable and well known in both cases that an atheist can t accept the evidence means only bzzt wrong answer gravity is directly there it doesn t stop exerting a direct and rationally undeniable influence if you ignore it god on the other hand doesn t generally show up in the supermarket except on the tabloids god doesn t exert a rationally undeniable influence gravity is obvious gods aren t secondly human reason is very comforatble with the concept of god so much so that it is in itself intrinsic to our nature human reason always comes back to the question of god in every generation and in no human reason hasn t always come back to the existance of god it has usually come back to the existance of god in other words it doesn t generally come back to the xtian god it comes back to whether there is any god and in much of oriental philosophic history it generally doesn t pop up as the idea of a god so much as the question of what natural forces are and which ones are out there from a world wide view human nature just makes us wonder how the universe came to be and or what force s are currently in control a natural tendancy to believe in god only exists in religious wishful thinking i said all this to make the point that christianity is eminently reasonable that divine justice is just and human nature is much different than what atheists think it is whether you agree or not xtianity is no more reasonable than most other religions and it s reasonableness certainly doesn t merit eminence divine justice well it only seems just to those who already believe in the divinity first not all atheists believe the same things about human nature second whether most atheists are correct or not you certainly are not correct on human nature you are at the least basing your views on a completely eurocentric approach try looking at the outside world as well when you attempt to sum up all of humanity andrew

alt.atheism

re genocide is caused by theism evidence in article qibo f o horus ap mchp sni de frank d s uucp frank o dwyer writes in the absence of some convincing evidence that theist fanatics are more dangerous than atheist fanatics i ll continue to be wary of fanatics of any stripe i think that the agnostic fanatics are the most dangerous of the lot fair point actually i mentioned theists and atheists but left out agnostics mea culpa no wonder in the light of that you are a probably a theist who tries to pass as an agnostic i still remember your post about your daughter singing chrismas carols and your feelings of it well by the way would you show marginal honesty and answer the many questions you left open when you ceased to respond last time benedikt

alt.atheism

re islamic genocide in article qi b ec horus ap mchp sni de frank d s uucp frank o dwyer writes deletion few people can imagine dying for capitalism a few more can imagine dying for democracy but a lot more will die for their lord and savior jesus christ who died on the cross for their sins motivation pure and simple got any cites for this nonsense how many people will die for mom patriotism freedom money their kids fast cars and swimming pools a night with kim basinger or mel gibson and which of these things are evil read a history book fred and tell me why so many religions command to commit genocide when it has got nothing to do with religion or why so many religions say that not living up to the standards of the religion is worse than dieing coincidence i assume or ist part of the absolute morality you describe so often theism is strongly correlated with irrational belief in absolutes irrational belief in absolutes is strongly correlated with fanatism benedikt

alt.atheism

re where are they now in article ql d vo dr pepper east sun com geoff east sun com geoff arnold sun bos r h coast near the top writes your posting provoked me into checking my save file for memorable posts the first i captured was by ken arromdee on feb on the subject re atheist too that was article here your question was article which is an average of about articles a day for the last three years as others have noted the current posting rate is such that my kill file is depressing large among the posting i saved in the early days were articles from the following notables hey it might to interesting to read some of these posts especially from ones who still regularly posts on alt atheism from loren sunlight llnl gov loren petrich from jchrist nazareth israel rel jesus christ of nazareth from mrc tomobiki cho cac washington edu mark crispin from perry apollo hp com jim perry from lippard uavax ccit arizona edu james j lippard from minsky media mit edu marvin minsky an interesting bunch i wonder where is hee hee hee i ain t going to say whatever promises that have been made can than be broken john laws a man without the honor to keep his given word

alt.atheism

re cruel was re political atheists in article ql mdinn gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes this whole thread started because of a discussion about whether or not the death penalty constituted cruel punishment which is forbidden by the us constitution yes but they didn t say what they meant by cruel which is why a you have the supreme court and b it makes no sense to refer to the constitution which is quite silent on the meaning of the word cruel they spent quite a bit of time on the wording of the constitution they picked words whose meanings implied the intent we have already looked in the dictionary to define the word isn t this sufficient we only need to ask the question what did the founding fathers consider cruel and unusual punishment hanging hanging there slowing being strangled would be very painful both physically and psychologicall i imagine firing squad note not a clean way to die back in those days etc all would be considered cruel under your definition all were allowed under the constitution by the founding fathers whatever promises that have been made can than be broken john laws a man without the honor to keep his given word

alt.atheism

re political atheists in article ql ajinn kj gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes well chimps must have some system they live in social groups as we do so they must have some laws dictating undesired behavior why must whatever promises that have been made can than be broken john laws a man without the honor to keep his given word

alt.atheism

re some thoughts in article bissda saturn wwc edu bissda saturn wwc edu dan lawrence bissell writes the arguements he uses i am summing up the book is about whether jesus was god or not i know many of you don t believe but listen to a different perspective for we all have something to gain by listening to what others have to say read the faq first watch the list fr some weeks and come back then and read some other books on the matter in order to broaden your view first benedikt

alt.atheism

re who says the apostles were tortured in article qiu innpq srvr engin umich edu ingles engin umich edu ray ingles writes as evidence for the resurrection it is often claimed that the disciples were tortured to death for their beliefs and still did not renounce their claim that jesus had come back from the dead now i skimmed acts and such and i found a reference to this happening to stephen but no others where does this apparently very widely held belief come from is there any evidence outside the bible is there any evidence in the bible i sure haven t found any early authors and legends the most important sources can be found in the martyriologia of the catholic church makes the grimms look like exact science benedikt

alt.atheism

re political atheists in article qlfd inn gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes well chimps must have some system they live in social groups as we do so they must have some laws dictating undesired behavior so why must they have such laws the quotation marks should enclose laws not must if there were no such rules even instinctive ones or unwritten ones etc then surely some sort of random chance would lead a chimp society into chaos the system refered to a moral system you havn t shown any reason that chimps must have a moral system except if you would like to redefine everything whatever promises that have been made can than be broken john laws a man without the honor to keep his given word

alt.atheism

re where are they now in article ql d vo dr pepper east sun com geoff east sun com writes your posting provoked me into checking my save file for memorable posts the first i captured was by ken arromdee on feb on the subject re atheist too that was article here your question was article which is an average of about articles a day for the last three years as others have noted the current posting rate is such that my kill file is depressing large among the posting i saved in the early days were articles from the following notables from loren sunlight llnl gov loren petrich from jchrist nazareth israel rel jesus christ of nazareth from mrc tomobiki cho cac washington edu mark crispin from perry apollo hp com jim perry from lippard uavax ccit arizona edu james j lippard from minsky media mit edu marvin minsky an interesting bunch i wonder where is didn t you hear his address has changed he can be reached at the following address dkoresh branch davidian compound waco tx us i think he was last seen posting to alt messianic jim if god is dead and the actor plays his part sting his words of fear will find their way to a place in your heart history without the voice of reason every faith is its own curse will teach us without freedom from the past things can only get worse nothing

alt.atheism

re free moral agency are you saying that their was a physical adam and eve and that all humans are direct decendents of only these two human beings then who were cain and able s wives couldn t be their sisters because a e didn t have daughters were they non humans genesis and the days of adam after he begat seth were eight hundred years and he begat sons and daughters felicitations chris ho stuart

alt.atheism

re death penalty gulf war long in article x rusnews w w mantis co uk mathew mathew mantis co uk writes jbrown batman bmd trw com writes in article f rusnews w w mantis co uk mathew mathew mantis co uk writes which liberal news media are we talking about western news in general but in particular the american mass media cbs nbc abc etc the general tone of the news during the whole war was one of those poor poor iraqis along with look how precisely this cruise missile blew this building to bits most odd over here there was very little about the suffering of the iraqi civilians until towards the end of the war and then it was confined to the few remaining quality newspapers true at first the news media seemed entranced by all the new gizmos the military was using not to mention the taped video transmissions from the missiles as they zeroed in on their targets but later and especially after the bunker full of civilians was hit they changed their tone it seemed to me that they didn t have the stomach for the reality of war that innocent people really do die and are maimed in warfare it s like they were only pro gulf war as long as it was nice and clean smart missiles dropping in on military hqs but not when pictures of dead dying and maimed civilians started cropping up what naive hypocrites how about all the innocent people who died in blanket bombing in ww i don t hear you bemoaning them discussion about blanket bombing and a bombs deleted all things considered the fire bombings and the atomic bomb were essential and therefore justified in bringing the war to a quick end to avoid even greater allied losses i should have said here militarily justified it seems from your comments below that you understood this as meaning morally justified i apologize what about the evidence that america knew japan was about to surrender after hiroshima but before nagasaki is that another lie peddled by the liberal media conspiracy i have often wondered about this i ve always thought that the first bomb should have been dropped on japan s island fortress of truk a good inpenatrable military target the second bomb could ve been held back for use on an industrial center if need be but i digress yes i have heard that we found evidence after the war btw that japan was seriously considering surrender after the first bomb unfortunately the military junta won out over the moderates and rejected the us s ulimatum therefore the second bomb was dropped most unfortunate imo i for one don t regret it nuke a jap for jesus i don t regret the fact that sometimes military decisions have to be made which affect the lives of innocent people but i do regret the circumstances which make those decisions necessary and i regret the suffering caused by those decisions why all the fuss about kuwait and not east timor bosnia or even tibet if iraq is so bad why were we still selling them stuff a couple of weeks before we started bombing i make no claim or effort to justify the misguided foreign policy of the west before the war it is evident that the west especially america misjudged hussein drastically but once hussein invaded kuwait and threatened to militarily corner a significant portion of the world s oil supply he had to be stopped oh i see so we can overlook his using chemical weapons on thousands of people but if he threatens your right to drive a huge gas guzzling car well the man s gotta go actually it was the fact that both situations existed that prompted us and allied action if some back water country took over some other back water country we probably wouldn t intervene not that we don t care but we can t be the world s policman or if a coup had occured in kuwait instead of an invasion then we still wouldn t have acted because there would not have been the imminent danger perceived to saudi arabia but the combination of the two an unprovoked invasion by a genocidal tyrant and the potential danger to the west s oil interests caused us to take action i ve moved a paragraph from here to later on if we hadn t intervened allowing hussein to keep kuwait then it would have been appeasement right but did you ever hear anyone advocate such a course of action or are you just setting up a strawman i m not setting up a strawman at all if you want to argue against the war then the only logical alternative was to allow hussein to keep kuwait diplomatic alternatives including sanctions were ineffective i guess we shouldn t have fought ww either just think of all those innocent german civilians killed in dresden and hamburg yes do germans are human too you know sure what was truly unfortunate was that they followed hitler in his grandiose quest for a thousand year reich the consequences stemmed from that translation they were asking for it well in a sense yes they probably had no idea of what end hitler would lead their nation to but what about those who didn t support hitler s dreams of conquest it s not as if they democratically voted for all his policies the nsdap got in the elections of and that was the last chance the german people got to vote on the matter they suffered along with the rest why does this bother you so much the world is full of evil and circumstances are not perfect many innocents suffer due to the wrongful actions of others it it regretable but that s the way it is there are no perfect solutions i look forward to hearing your incisive comments about east timor and tibet what should i say about them anything in particular the people of east timor are still being killed by a dictatorship that invaded their country hell even western journalists have been killed all this was happening before the gulf war why didn t we send in the bombers to east timor why aren t we sending in the bombers now probably because we re not the saviors of the world we can t police each and every country that decides to self destruct or invade another nor are we in a strategic position to get relief to tibet east timor or some other places here s that paragraph i moved what s your intent to sound like a loving christian well you aren t doing a very good job of it well it s not very loving to allow a hussein or a hitler to gobble up nearby countries and keep them or to allow them to continue with mass slaughter of certain peoples under their dominion so i d have to say yes stopping hussein was the most loving thing to do for the most people involved once he set his mind on military conquest the chinese government has a policy of mandatory abortion and sterilization of tibetans tibetan people are rounded up tortured and executed amnesty international recently reported that torture is still widespread in china why aren t we stopping them in fact why are we actively sucking up to them by trading freely with them tell me how we could stop them and i ll support it i for one do not agree with the present us policy of sucking up to them as you put it i agree that it is deplorable and as for poor poor rodney king did you ever stop and think why the jury in the first trial brought back a verdict of not guilty yes amongst the things i thought were hmm there s an awful lot of white people in that jury so it was the policemen on trial not rodney king erm surely it s irrelevant who s on trial juries are supposed to represent a cross section of the population are they or are they supposed to reflect the population of the locale where the trial is held normally this is where the crime is committed unless one party or the other can convince the judge a change of venue is in order i m not an expert on california law or even us law but it seems that this is the way the system is set up you can criticize the system but let s not have unfounded allegations of racial prejudice thrown around and under american law they deserved a jury of their peers you are saying that black people are not the peers of white people no not at all the point is that the fact that there were no blacks on the first jury and that rodney king is black is totally irrelevant this point of allegedly racial motivations is really shallow this idea of people only being tried before a jury of people just like them is really stupid should the nuremburg trials have had a jury entirely made up of nazis germans perhaps peers doesn t mean those who do the same thing like having murderers judge murderers it means having people from the same station in life presumably because they are in a better position to understand the defendent s motivation s those who have been foaming at the mouth for the blood of those policemen certainly have looked no further than the video tape but the jury looked at all the evidence evidence which you and i have not seen when i see a bunch of policemen beating someone who s lying defenceless on the ground it s rather hard to imagine what this other evidence might have been so it s hard to imagine so when has argument from incredulity gained acceptance from the revered author of constructing a logical argument we re not talking about a logical argument we re talking about a court of law as the faq points out some fallacious arguments are not viewed as fallacies in a court of law ok granted however you are using this reasoning as part of your logical argument in this discussion this is not a court of law if the facts as the news commentators presented them are true then i feel the not guilty verdict was a reasonable one were you not talking earlier about the bias of the liberal media conspiracy the media is not totally monolithic even though there is a prevailing liberal bias programs such as the macneil lehrer news hour try to give a balanced and fair reporting of the news there are even conservative sources out there if you know where to look hurrah for rush btw i never used the word conspiracy i don t accept without far more evidence theories that there is some all pervading liberal conspiracy attempting to take over all news sources thou shalt not kill unless thou hast a pretty good reason for killing in which case thou shalt kill and also kill anyone who gets in the way as unfortunately it cannot be helped jim brown bible for loving christians thanks mathew i like the quote pretty funny actually i m a monty python fan you know kind of seems in that vein of course oversimplifying any moral argument can make it seem contradictory but then you know that already ha ha only serious i an atheist am arguing against killing innocent people you a supposed christian are arguing that it s ok to kill innocent people so long as you get some guilty ones as well hardly i didn t say that it s a good thing tm to kill innocent people if the end is just unfortunately we don t live in a perfect world and there are no perfect solutions if one is going to resist tyranny then innocent people on both sides are going to suffer and die i didn t say it is ok it is unfortunate but sometimes necessary i a moral relativist am arguing that saturation bombing of german cities at the end of world war ii was as far as i can see an evil and unnecessary act i would agree that it was evil in the sense that it caused much pain and suffering i m not so sure that it was unnecessary as you say that conclusion can only be arrived at by evaluating all the factors involved and perhaps it was unnecessary as let s say we now know that doesn t mean that those who had to make the decision to bomb didn t see it as being necessary rarely can one have full known of the consequences of an action before making a decision at the time it may have seemed necessary enough to go ahead with it but don t assume that i feel the bombing was morally justified i don t i just don t condemn those who had to make a difficult decision under difficult circumstances you having criticised moral relativism in the past are now arguing that i am in no position to judge the morality of allied actions at the end of the war you certainly are not in such a position if you are a moral relativist i as an absolutist am in a position to judge but i defer judgment you are arguing that the actions need to be assessed in the particular context of the time and that they might have been moral then but not moral now wrong they were neither moral then nor now they seemed necessary to those making the decisions to bring a quick end to the war i simply refuse to condemn them for their decision where s your christian love where s your absolute morality oh how quick you are to discard them when it suits you as ivan stang would say jesus would puke one day i will stand before jesus and give account of every word and action even this discourse in this forum i understand the full ramifications of that and i am prepared to do so i don t believe that you can make the same claim mathew and btw the reason i brought up the blanket bombing in germany was because you were bemoaning the iraqi civilian casualties as being so deplorable yet blanket bombing was instituted because bombing wasn t accurate enough to hit industrial military targets in a decisive way by any other method at that time but in the gulf war precision bombing was the norm so the point was why make a big stink about the relatively few civilian casualties that resulted in spite of precision bombing when so many more civilians proportionately and quantitatively died under the blanket bombing in ww even with precision bombing mistakes happen and some civilians suffer but less civilians suffered in this war than any other iany other in history many iraqi civilians went about their lives with minimal interference from the allied air raids the stories of hundreds of thousands of iraqi civilian dead is just plain bunk yes bunk the us lost servicemen in ww over four years and the majority of them were directly involved in fighting but we are expected to swallow that hundreds of thousands of civilian iraqis died in a war lasting about months and with the allies using the most precise bombs ever created at that what hogwash if hundreds of thousands of iraqi civilians died it was due to actions hussein took on his own people not due to the allied bombing regards jim b

alt.atheism

re amusing atheists and agnostics maddi hausmann chirps timmbake mcl ucsb edu bake timmons writes first of all you seem to be a reasonable guy why not try to be more honest and include my sentence afterwards that honest it just ended like that i swear that s nice hmmmm i recognize the warning signs alternating polite and rude coming into newsgroup with huge chip on shoulder calls people names and then makes nice whirrr click whirrr you forgot the third equality whirrr click whirrr see below whirr click whirr frank o dwyer might also be contained in that shell pop stack to determine whirr click whirr killfile keith allen schneider frank closet theist o dwyer maddi the mad sound o geek hausmann whirrr click whirrr bake timmons iii there s nothing higher stronger more wholesome and more useful in life than some good memory alyosha in brothers karamazov dostoevsky

alt.atheism

re islam and scientific predictions was re genocide is caused by atheism in article apr monu cc monash edu au darice yoyo cc monash edu au fred rice writes the positive aspect of this verse noted by dr maurice bucaille is that while geocentrism was the commonly accepted notion at the time and for a long time afterwards there is no notion of geocentrism in this verse or anywhere in the qur an there is no notion of heliocentric or even galacticentric either my sole intention was learning to fly

alt.atheism

re amusing atheists and anarchists mccullou whipple cs wisc edu writes my turn i went back and reread your post all you did is attack atheism and say that agnosticism wasn t as funny as atheism nowhere does that imply that you are agnostic or weak atheist as most people who post such inflammatory remarks are theists it was a reasonable assumption sorry you re right i did not clearly state it rule condescending to the population at large i e theists will not win many people to your faith anytime soon it only ruins your credibility how am i being condescending to the population at large i am stating something that happened to be true for a long time i couldn t believe that people actually believed in this god idea it was an alien concept to me i am not trying to win people to my faith as you put it i have no faith religion was a non issue when i had the attitude above because it never even occurred to me to believe atheist by default i guess you could say the most common form of condescending is the rational versus irrational attitude once one has accepted the assumption that there is no god s and then consider other faiths to be irrational simply because their assumption s contradict your assumption then i would say there s a lack of consistency here now i know you ll get on me about faith if the positive belief that god does not exist were a closed logical argument why do so many rational people have problems with that logic but you probably like me seem to be a soft atheist sorry for the flamage the line about atheists haveing something up their sleeves is what seemed to imply that sorry been reading too much on the clipper project lately and the paranoia over there may have seeped in some what is the clipper project btw rule don t mix apples with oranges how can you say that the extermination by the mongols was worse than stalin khan conquered people unsympathetic to his cause that was atrocious but stalin killed millions of his own people who loved and worshipped him and his atheist state how can anyone be worse than that many rulers have done similar things in the past only stalin did it when there was plenty of documentation to afix the blame on him the evidence is that some of the early european rulers ruled with an iron fist much like stalin s you threw in numbers and i am sick of hearing about stalin as an example because the example doesn t apply you managed to get me angry with your post because it appeared to attack all forms of atheism it might have appeared to attack atheism in general but its point was that mass killing happens for all sorts of reasons people will hate who they will and will wave whatever flag to justify it be it cross or hammer sickle the stalin example is important not only because it s still a widely unappreciated era that people want to forget but also because people really did love him and his ideas even after all that he had wrought the evidence i am referring to is more a lack of evidence than negative evidence say i claim there are no pink crows i have never seen a pink crow but that doesn t mean it couldn t exist but this person here claims that there are pink crows even though he admits he hasn t been able to capture one or get a photo or find one with me etc in a sense that is evidence to not believe in the existence of pink crows that is what i am saying when i look at the evidence i look at the suppossed evidence for a deity show how it is flawed and doesn t show what theists want it to show and go on first all the pink crows unicorns elves arguments in the world will not sway most people for they simply do not accept the analogy why one of the big reasons is that many many people want something beyond this life you can pretend that they don t want this but i for one can accept it and even want it myself sometimes and there is nothing unique in this example of why people want a god can love as a truth be proven logically themselves namely a god or gods so in principle it s hard to see how theists are necessarily arrogant makes no sense to me they seem arrogant to make such a claim to me but my previous refutation still stands and i believe there may be another one on the net john the baptist boasted of jesus to many people i find it hard to see how that behavior is arrogant at all many christians i know also boast in this way but i still do not necessarily see it as arrogance of course i do know arrogant christians doctors and teachers as well technically you might consider the person who originally made a given claim to be arrogant jesus for instance are you talking about all atheism or just strong atheism if you are talking about weak atheism which i believe in then i refuse such a claim atheism is a lack of belief i used good ol occam s razor to make the final rejection of a deity in that as i see things even if i present the hypothesises in an equal fasion i find the theist argument not plausible i speak against strong atheism i also often find that the evidence supporting a faith is very subjective just as say the evidence supporting love as truth is subjective i believe i answered that i apologize for the as you stated incorrect assumption on your theism but i saw nothing to indicate that you were an agnostic only that you were just another newbie christian on the net trying to get some cheap shots in no apology necessary bake timmons iii there s nothing higher stronger more wholesome and more useful in life than some good memory alyosha in brothers karamazov dostoevsky

alt.atheism

re so help you god in court in article tan psuvm psu edu andrew newell tan psuvm psu edu writes in article apr daffy cs wisc edu mccullou snake cs wisc edu mark mccullough says in article monack helium monack helium gas uug arizona edu david n monack writes another issue is that by having to request to not be required to recite the so help me god part of the oath a theistic jury may be prejudiced against your testimony even though atheism is probably not at all relevant to the case what is the recommended procedure for requesting an alternate oath or affirmation dave sorry for using a follow up to respond but my server dropped about a weeks worth of news when it couldn t keep up when the you are asked to swear so help you god and you have to say it ask which one jesus allah vishnu zues odin get them to be specific don t be obnoxious just humbly ask then quitely sit back and watch the fun james l felder sverdrup technology inc phone nasa lewis research center cleveland ohio email jfelder lerc nasa gov some people drink from the fountain of knowledge other people gargle

alt.atheism

re some thoughts in article healta saturn wwc edu healta saturn wwc edu tammy r healy writes deletia wrt pathetic jee zus posting by bissel i hope you re not going to flame him please give him the same coutesy you ve given me no he hasn t extended to us the courtesy you ve shown us so he don t get no pie tammy i respect your beliefs because you don t try to stamp them into my being i have scorn for posters whose sole purpose appears to be to evangelize tammy

alt.atheism

re who says the apostles were tortured the traditions of the church hold that all the apostles meaning the surviving disciples matthias barnabas and paul were martyred except for john tradition should be understood to read early church writings other than the bible and heteroorthodox scriptures c wingate the peace of god it is no peace but strife closed in the sod mangoe cs umd edu yet brothers pray for but one thing tove mangoe the marv lous peace of god

alt.atheism

re some thoughts in article saturn wwc edu bissda saturn wwc edu dan lawrence bissell writes first i want to start right out and say that i m a christian it makes sense to be one have any of you read tony campollo s book liar lunatic or the real thing i might be a little off on the title but he writes the book anyway he was part of an effort to destroy christianity in the process he became a christian himself sounds like you are saying he was a part of some conspiracy just what organization did he belong to does it have a name the book says that jesus was either a liar or he was crazy a modern day koresh or he was actually who he said he was logic alert artificial trifercation the are many other possible explainations could have been that he never existed there have been some good points made in this group that is not impossible that jc is an amalgam of a number of different myths mithra comes to mind some reasons why he wouldn t be a liar are as follows who would die for a lie wouldn t people be able to tell if he was a liar people gathered around him and kept doing it many gathered from hearing or seeing someone who was or had been healed call me a fool but i believe he did heal people logic alert argument from incredulity just because it is hard for you to believe this doesn t mean that it isn t true liars can be very pursuasive just look at koresh that you yourself site he has followers that don t think he is a fake and they have shown that they are willing to die by not giving up after getting shot himself koresh has shown that he too is will to die for what he believes as far as healing goes if i rememer right the healing that was attributed is not consistent between the different gospels in one of them the healing that is done is not any more that faith healers can pull off today seems to me that the early gospels weren t that compeling so the stories got bigger to appeal better niether was he a lunatic would more than an entire nation be drawn to someone who was crazy very doubtful in fact rediculous for example anyone who is drawn to david koresh is obviously a fool logical people see this right away therefore since he wasn t a liar or a lunatic he must have been the real thing or might not have existed or any number of things that is the logical pitfall that those who use flawed logic like this fall into there are bifurcations or tri quad etc that are valid because in the proceeding steps the person shows conclusively that the alternatives are all that are possible once everyone agrees that the given set is indeed all there are then arguments among the alternatives can be presentent and one mostly likely to be true can be deduced by excluding all other possible alternatives however if it can be shown that the set is not all inclusive then any conclusions bases on the incomplete set are invalid even if the true choice is one of the original choices i have given at least one valid alternative so the conclusion that jc is the real mccoy just because he isn t one of the other two alternative is no longer valid some other things to note he fulfilled loads of prophecies in the psalms isaiah and elsewhere in hrs alone this in his betrayal and crucifixion i don t have my bible with me at this moment next time i write i will use it jc was a rabbi he knew what those prophecies were it wouldn t be any great shakes to make sure one does a list of actions that would fullfill prophecy what would be compeling is if there were a set of clear and explicit prophecies and jc had absolutely no knowledge of then yet fullfilled them anyway i don t think most people understand what a christian is it is certainly not what i see a lot in churches rather i think it should be a way of life and a total sacrafice of everything for god s sake he loved us enough to die and save us so we should do the same hey we can t do it god himself inspires us to turn our lives over to him that s tuff and most people don t want to do it to be a real christian would be something for the strong to persevere at but just like weight lifting or guitar playing drums whatever it takes time we don t rush it in one day christianity is your whole life it is not going to church once a week or helping poor people once in a while we box everything into time units such as work at this time sports tv social life god is above these boxes and should be carried with us into all these boxes that we have created for ourselves here i agree with you anyone who buys into this load of mythology should take what it says seriously and what it says is that it must be a total way of life i have very little respect for xians that don t if the myth is true then it is true in its entirity the picking and choosing that i see a lot of leaves a bad taste in my mouth jim james l felder sverdrup technology inc phone nasa lewis research center cleveland ohio email jfelder lerc nasa gov some people drink from the fountain of knowledge other people gargle

alt.atheism

re some thoughts on fri apr gmt healta saturn wwc edu tammy r healy said trh i hope you re not going to flame him please give him the same coutesy you trh ve given me but you have been courteous and therefore received courtesy in return this person instead has posted one of the worst arguments i have ever seen made from the pro christian people i ve known several jesuits who would laugh in his face if he presented such an argument to them let s ignore the fact that it s not a true trilemma for the moment nice word maddi original or is it a real word and concentrate on the liar lunatic part the argument claims that no one would follow a liar let alone thousands of people look at l ron hubbard now he was probably not all there but i think he was mostly a liar and a con artist but look at how many thousands of people follow dianetics and scientology i think the baker s and swaggert along with several other televangelists lie all the time but look at the number of follower they have as for lunatics the best example is hitler he was obviously insane his advisors certainly thought so yet he had a whole country entralled and came close to ruling all of europe how many germans gave their lives for him to this day he has his followers i m just amazed that people still try to use this argument it s just so obviously wrong ed mccreary o edm twisto compaq com if it were not for laughter there would be no tao

alt.atheism

re thoughts on christians on apr gmt bobbe vice ico tek com robert beauchaine said rb in article ofnwyg wb voa andrew cmu edu pl u andrew cmu edu patrick c leger writes ever hear of baptism at birth if that isn t preying on the young i don t know what is rb rb no that s praying on the young preying on the young comes rb later when the bright eyed little altar boy finds out what the rb priest really wears under that chasible the same thing scotsmen where under there kilt i ll never forget the day when i was about tweleve and accidently walked in on a roomfull of priests sitting around in their underware drinking beer and watching football kind of changed my opinion a bit they didn t seem so menacing after that ed mccreary o edm twisto compaq com if it were not for laughter there would be no tao

alt.atheism

re victims of various good fight s on apr f levels unisa edu au the desert brat said tdb disease introduced to brazilian oher s am tribes x million to be fair this was going to happen eventually given time the americans would have reached europe on their own and the same thing would have happened it was just a matter of who got together first ed mccreary o edm twisto compaq com if it were not for laughter there would be no tao

alt.atheism

re after years can we say that christian morality is frank d s uucp frank o dwyer writes in article apr abo fi mandtbacka finabo abo fi mats andtbacka writes and these objective values are please be specific and more importantly motivate i ll take a wild guess and say freedom is objectively valuable yes but whose freedom the world in general doesn t seem to value the freedom of tibetans for example mathew

alt.atheism

re koresh is god the latest news seems to be that koresh will give himself up once he s finished writing a sequel to the bible mathew

alt.atheism

re where are they now a in article qi innf n senator bedfellow mit edu tcbruno athena mit edu tom bruno writes stuff deleted which brings me to the point of my posting how many people out there have been around alt atheism since i ve done my damnedest to stay on top of more stuff deleted hmm usenet got it s collective hooks into me around or so right after i switched to engineering i d say i started reading alt atheism around i ve probably not posted more than messages in the time since then though i ll never understand how people can find the time to write so much i can barely keep up as it is ed mccreary o edm twisto compaq com if it were not for laughter there would be no tao

alt.atheism

re after years can we say that christian morality is reply to frank d s uucp frank o dwyer i m one of those people who does not know what the word objective means when put next to the word morality i assume its an idiom and cannot be defined by its separate terms give it a try objective morality is morality built from objective values from a dictionary of philosophy by anthony flew objectivism the belief that there are certain moral truths that would remain true whatever anyone or everyone thought or desired for instance no one should ever deliberately inflict pain on another simply to take pleasure in his suffering might be thought of as a plausible example even in a world of sadists who all rejected it the contention remains true just as remains correct even if there is no one left to count the problem for the objectivist is to determine the status of moral truths and the method by which they can be established if we accept that such judgements are not reports of what is but only relate to what ought to be see naturalistic fallacy then they cannot be proved by any facts about the nature of the world nor can they be analytic since this would involve lack of action guiding content one ought always to do the right thing is plainly true in virtue of the vords involved but it is unhelpful as a practical guide to action see analytic and synthetic at this point the objectivist may talk of self evident truths but can he deny the subjectivist s claim that self evidence is in the mind of the beholder if not what is left of the claim that some moral judgements are true the subjectivist may well feel that all that remains is that there are some moral judgements with which he would wish to associate himself to hold a moral opinion is he suggests not to know something to be true but to have preferences regarding human activity david nye nyeda cnsvax uwec edu midelfort clinic eau claire wi this is patently absurd but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities bertrand russell

alt.atheism

re the inimitable rushdie in article apr st andrews ac uk nrp st andrews ac uk norman r paterson writes i don t think you re right about germany my daughter was born there and i don t think she has any german rights eg to vote or live there beyond the rights of all ec citizens she is a british citizen by virtue of her parentage but that s not full citizenship for example i don t think her children could be british by virtue of her in the same way i am fairly sure that she could obtain citizenship by making an application for it it might require immigration to germany but i am almost certain that once applied for citizenship is inevitable in this case more interesting is your sentence in fact many people try to come to the us to have their children born here so that they will have some human rights how does the us compare to an islamic country in this respect do people go to iran so their children will have some human rights would you more interesting only for your propaganda purposes i have said several times now that i don t consider iran particularly exemplary as a good islamic state we might talk about the rights of people in capitalist secular third world countries to give other examples of the lack of rights in third world countries broadly say for example central american secular capitalist countries whose govt s the us supports but who amnesty international has pointed out are human rights vacua gregg

alt.atheism

re after years can we say that christian morality is in vice ico tek com bobbe vice ico tek com robert beauchaine writes in article c jxru t news cso uiuc edu cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb writes what do you base your belief on atheism on your knowledge and reasoning couldn t that be wrong actually my atheism is based on ignorance ignorance of the existence of any god don t fall into the atheists don t believe because of their pride mistake how do you know it s based on ignorance couldn t that be wrong why would it be wrong to fall into the trap that you mentioned also if i may what the heck where we talking about and why didn t i keep some comments on there to see what the line of thoughts were mac bob beauchaine bobbe vice ico tek com they said that queens could stay they blew the bronx away and sank manhattan out at sea michael a cobb and i won t raise taxes on the middle university of illinois class to pay for my programs champaign urbana bill clinton rd debate cobb alexia lis uiuc edu with new taxes and spending cuts we ll still have billion dollar deficits

alt.atheism

re koresh is god on fri apr mathew mathew mantis co uk said m the latest news seems to be that koresh will give himself up once he s m finished writing a sequel to the bible also it s the th now can the feds get him on tax evasion i don t remember hearing about him running to the post office last night ed mccreary o edm twisto compaq com if it were not for laughter there would be no tao

alt.atheism

re the pope is jewish west next cville wam umd edu stilgar writes the pope is jewish i always thought that the pope was a bear you know because of that little saying does a bear shit in the woods is the pope catholic there must be some connection between those two lines

alt.atheism

re bible quiz in article kmr po cwru edu kmr po cwru edu keith m ryan writes in article qgbmt c f usenet ins cwru edu cr cleveland freenet edu frank d kirschner writes only when the sun starts to orbit the earth will i accept the bible since when does atheism mean trashing other religions there must be a god of inbreeding to which you are his only son pope john paul

alt.atheism

re islamic authority over women benedikt rosenau i dbstu rz tu bs de wrote when the object of their belief is said to be perfect and make the believers act in a certain way and we observe that they don t we have a contradiction something defined contradictorily cannot exist that what the believe in does not exist secondly there are better explanations for why they believe than the existence of the object of their belief have you read the faq already benedikt benedikt i can t recall anyone claiming that god makes anyone act a particlar way i think that you re attempting to manufacture a contradiction god is said to require certain behavior but the only compulsion is the believer s sense of duty a standard of conduct does exist but we are free to ignore it or misunderstand it or distort it in whatever ways we find convenient but our response to god s edicts can in no way be used to question god s existence the behavior of believers is a completely separate question from that of god s existence there is nothing contradictory here to say that something defined contadictorily cannot exist is really asking too much you would have existence depend on grammar all you can really say is that something is poorly defined but that in itself is insufficient to decide anything other than confusion of course your point that there are better reasons for the phenomenon of belief than the object of belief may lead to a rat s nest of unnecessary complexity i think i know what you re implying but i d like to see your version of this better alternative just the same bill

alt.atheism

re islamic authority over women scott d sauyet ssauyet eagle wesleyan edu wrote regardless of people s hidden motivations the stated reasons for many wars include religion of course you can always claim that the real reason was economics politics ethnic strife or whatever but the fact remains that the justification for many wars has been to conquer the heathens if you want to say for instance that economics was the chief cause of the crusades you could certainly make that point but someone could come along and demonstrate that it was really something else in the same manner you show that it was really not religion you could in this manner eliminate all possible causes for the crusades scott i don t have to make outrageous claims about religion s affecting and effecting history for the purpsoe of a a all i have to do point out that many claims made here are wrong and do nothing to validate atheism at no time have i made any statement that religion was the sole cause of anything what i have done is point out that those who do make that kind of claim are mistaken usually deliberately to credit religion with the awesome power to dominate history is to misunderstand human nature the function of religion and of course history i believe that those who distort history in this way know exaclty what they re doing and do it only for affect bill

alt.atheism

re some thoughts james felder spbach lerc nasa gov wrote logic alert argument from incredulity just because it is hard for you to believe this doesn t mean that it isn t true liars can be very pursuasive just look at koresh that you yourself cite this is whole basis of a great many here rejecting the christian account of things in the words of st madalyn murrey o hair face it folks it s just silly why is it okay to disbelieve because of your incredulity if you admit that it s a fallacy bill

alt.atheism

re some thoughts kent sandvik sandvik newton apple com wrote in article vice ico tek com bobbe vice ico tek com robert beauchaine wrote someone spank me if i m wrong but didn t lord liar or lunatic originate with c s lewis who s this campollo fellow anyway i do think so and isn t there a clear connection with the i do believe because it is absurd notion by one of the original christians origen there is a similar statement attributed to anselm i believe so that i may understand in both cases reason is somewhat less exalted than anyone posting here could accept which means that neither statement can be properly analysed in this venue bill

alt.atheism

re thoughts on christians ed mccreary edm twisto compaq com wrote on apr gmt bobbe vice ico tek com robert beauchaine said rb in article ofnwyg wb voa andrew cmu edu pl u andrew cmu edu patrick c leger writes ever hear of baptism at birth if that isn t preying on the young i don t know what is rb rb no that s praying on the young preying on the young comes rb later when the bright eyed little altar boy finds out what the rb priest really wears under that chasible does this statement further the atheist cause in some way surely it s not intended as wit bill

alt.atheism

re thoughts on christians kent sandvik sandvik newton apple com wrote this is a good point but i think average people do not take up christianity so much out of fear or escapism but quite simply as a way to improve their social life or to get more involved with american culture if they are kids of immigrants for example since it is the overwhelming major religion in the western world in some form or other it is simply the choice people take if they are bored and want to do something new with their lives but not somethong too new or too out of the ordinary seems a little weak but as long as it doesn t hurt anybody the social pressure is indeed a very important factor for the majority of passive christians in our world today in the case of early christianity the promise of a heavenly afterlife independent of your social status was also a very promising gift reason slaves and non romans accepted the religion very rapidly if this is a hypothetical proposition you should say so if it s fact you should cite your sources if all this is the amateur sociologist sub branch of a a however it would suffice to alert the unwary that you are just screwing around bill

alt.atheism

re nicknames maddi hausmann madhaus netcom com wrote jcopelan nyx cs du edu the one and only writes we could start with those posters who annoy us the most like bobby or bill your wish is my command bill shit stirrer connor bobby circular mozumder i m not sure my new nom d net is exactly appropriate but it comes very close considering what i have to wade through before i make one of my insightful dead on the money repsonses i have to agree that something s getting stirred up i would like to believe my characterization of what i respond to would be kinder though but if you insist i am also surprised to find that i have offended anyone but in some cases it s unavoidable if i am to say anything at all for those to whom fairness is important check out my contributions haven t i been most generous and patient a veritable paragon of gentility oh btw i don t mind being paired with bobby i admire his tenacity how many of you would do as well in this hostile environment you think i m offensive read your own posts love and kisses bill p s my name is conner not connor no point in humiliating the innocents

alt.atheism

re islamic authority over women keith m ryan kmr po cwru edu wrote nice cop out bill i m sure you re right but i have no idea to what you refer would you mind explaining how i copped out bill

alt.atheism

re death penalty was re political atheists this is fascinating atheists argue for abortion defend homosexuality as a means of population control insist that the only values are biological and condemn war and capital punishment according to benedikt if something is contardictory it cannot exist which in this case means atheists i suppose i would like to understand how an atheist can object to war an excellent means of controlling population growth or to capital punishment i m sorry but the logic escapes me and why just capital punishment what is being questioned here the propriety of killing or of punishment what is the basis of the ecomplaint bill