Don't dictate beliefs

[It aint necessarily so]

“I have something to say to the religionist who feels atheists never say anything positive: You are an intelligent human being. Your life is valuable for its own sake. You are not second-class in the universe, deriving meaning and purpose from some other mind. You are not inherently evil--you are inherently human, possessing the positive rational potential to help make this a world of morality, peace and joy. Trust yourself.”– Dan Barker

”There is joy in rationality, happiness in clarity of mind. Freethought is thrilling and fulfilling--absolutely essential to mental health and happiness.”– Dan Barker

”For my money, I'll bet on reason and humanistic kindness. Even if I am wrong I will have enjoyed my life, the existence of which is under little dispute.”– Dan Barker

“The longer I have been an atheist, the more amazed I am that I ever believed Christian notions.”– Dan Barker

“Freethinkers reject faith as a valid tool of knowledge. Faith is the opposite of reason because reason imposes very strict limits on what can be true, and faith has no limits at all. A Great Escape into faith is no retreat to safety. It is nothing less than surrender.”– Dan Barker

“There are many gods which Christians reject. I just believe in one less god then they do. The reasons that you might give for your atheism toward the Roman gods are likely the same reasons I would give for not believing in Jesus.”– Dan Barker

”It is wrong for a secular government to promote prayer. We think the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional. What if the president declared a National Day of Cursing God because He failed us on September 11? Americans would say, "You've overstepped your authority." That's how we feel when he promotes prayer.”– Dan Barker

”Look at the posture of prayer. It is the posture of slavery, of bowing before your master. We are a proudly rebellious country. We kicked out the master. Now here comes the government telling us to humbly bow again.”– Dan Barker

”Not thinking critically, I assumed that the successful prayers were proof that God answers prayer while the failures were proof that there was something wrong with me.”– Dan Barker

”Prayer never changes the laws of nature.”– Dan Barker

“Faith is a cop-out. It is intellectual bankruptcy. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits.”– Dan Barker

“Some theists, observing that all 'effects' need a cause, assert that God is a cause but not an effect. But no one has ever observed an uncaused cause and simply inventing one merely assumes what the argument wishes to prove.”– Dan Barker

“Atheists claim god is unproved, not disproved.”– Dan Barker

“In any argument, the burden of proof is on the one making the claim. If a person claims to have invented an antigravity device, it is not incumbent on others to prove that no such thing exists. The believer must make a case. Everyone else is justified in refusing to believe until evidence is produced and substantiated.”– Dan Barker

[It aint necessarily so]

derek4 wrote:

<quoted text>
and the point is?

The point is that your god is dying in the light of reason. He wasn't crucified. He was mortally wounded in the Garden and has been dying ever since he peeked over the edge of his cloud at Adam and Eve eating from the tree of knowledge, fell to earth, and was impaled by the largest and sharpest branch on that tree.

Did you know that Gehenna was a trash heap? When your god is done twitching, he will be added to the trash heap of forgotten and unloved gods with Odin and Zeus like so much refuse from man's dark past. Nobody alive at that time will mourn him any more than they do Gilgamesh or Marduk today.

[It aint necessarily so]

derek4 wrote:

Atheism is a religion which places it's faith in science instead of God (or "gods").

http://nirmukta.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/1... [cartoon]

[It aint necessarily so]

derek4 wrote:

Go have a cup of coffee, then sit down....place your hands on your forehead and massage it. Maybe that will help stimulate you so that you can think of something new to post instead of the garden variety rhetoric you always write, lmao.

Seriously? Most of what you do is cut-and-paste the same tired prepared apologetics. The rest of your posts are effete insults.

[It aint necessarily so]

Hedonist wrote:

1. Religion: "(1): the service and worship of God or the supernatural (2): commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance". In spite of you lame attempt to make up your own definition.

Nice. You obviously had the exact same idea when you saw that definition: this will make a fine snack to feed repeatedly to Christian lexical prescriptionists.

Here's another for your files:

"faith - strong belief in God"
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/amer...

Hey - it's in the dictionary!

[It aint necessarily so]

derek4 wrote:

Atheists trust in science and believe the theory of evolution is fact. Point to one who doesn't.

Me.

[It aint necessarily so]

Hedonist wrote:

Religion: "(1): the service and worship of God or the supernatural (2): commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance". In spite of you lame attempt to make up your own definition.

derek4 wrote:

To #1 on your list, you omitted and stopped short of definition #4 of religion in the Merriam-Webster link I provided for you

You are so easy.

[It aint necessarily so]

derek4 wrote:

The religion of atheism as it ...

There is no religion of atheism. From Merriam-Webster :

Religion: "(1): the service and worship of God or the supernatural (2): commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance".

Merriam-Webster said it. I believe it. That settles it.

[Khatru]

Chess Jurist wrote:

<quoted text>
You're lying.
Why do Christians lie?

It's lies for Jesus - they love it.

[Khatru]

derek4 wrote:

<quoted text>
What good is a wealth of fraudulent scientific evidence, lol?
And there we go,“sad” again.
Funny how many times atheists use the word sad, which says a lot about how they feel most of the time.
Like I told you once before, science has done a beautiful job of cheapening itself with no help from me.

You go right ahead and deny evolution - you're free to do that.

You're also free to say the moon is made of cheese.

[Khatru]

derek4 wrote:

<quoted text>
Sorry you can't comprehend the Bible. You should get someone who is informed to help you. Try a minister.

If the god of the Bible meant for his message to be understood then the evidence suggests he's failed.

Otherwise we wouldn't have so many different Christian denominations and sects each claiming to be right at the expense of the others.

Then you have the mixed messages in the Bible itself - sure there are good things in there but it's also full of primitive barbarisms.

Nietzsche questioned the goodness of an omniscient, omnipotent god who doesn't even make sure that his creatures understand his intention. This god who allows doubts to persist for thousands of years. Nietzsche also went on to liken the god of the Bible to a deaf man making all kinds of ambiguous signs and gestures when some sort of danger is present.

[Khatru]

derek4 wrote:

<quoted text>
Did Allah answer your prayers too, as you probably rejoiced along with the terrorists over the godless killings? The God I serve did not answer the prayers of the terrorists. That's why I don't believe in false gods (i.e., Allah). To believe in a false god is to be godless. Actually the spelling should be Godless in this case.

Atheists don't pray to any gods; surely you know that by know.

Perhaps your god is weaker than their god.

[Khatru]

Langoliers wrote:

<quoted text>
"In an attempt to further their careers and justify the claims that evolution is a legitimate theory, many scientists have fraudulently deceived the world by planting or reconstructing fossils which they would claim to be authentic finds. The most widely published evolution fraud was committed in China in 1999, and published in in the National Geographic"
http://www.nwcreation.net/evolutionfraud.html

Science is till spectacularly successful.

You want real and tangible truths about our reality? Trust in science.

You want to read a load of superstitious mumbo jumbo about talking donkeys and snakes, cockatrices, dragons, flat earth, Pi=3, 2000 year old zombies, etc? Trust in Christianity.

[Khatru]

Langoliers wrote:

<quoted text>
"The problem is that the god of the Bible is a terrible communicator"
An atheist who criticize the actions of something he doesn't believe exist.
D O L T

Think of me as the away team coming to your town and beating your team on their home ground.

[Khatru]

Langoliers wrote:

<quoted text>
I'll let you reread this maybe like the 10 or 11 time you might get it.
Then again most likely not.
After all you keep criticizing the actions of something you are suppose to believe doesn't exist.
And then there is the 97.7% EX members of you faith.
Dude your down below 2.5% of the population. 2.3%!!!!
"Since circumference = PI x diameter as any elementary geometry book will tell you, therefore the Bible "seemingly" tells us that PI = 3. Since "this is obviously false, therefore the Bible cannot be from God..." is how some people like to reason.
But obviously the wisdom of God is greater than the wisdom of man:
In this verse the word for "circumference" (QaVa in Hebrew) is written with an extra letter (qavah).
Since in Hebrew all letters are also numbers, we can take the ratio of (the gematriacal value of) the unusual word form (qof, vaf, he ) to the regular word form (qof, vaf). Given that Qof = 100, Vaf = 6 and He = 5 we find that
( 111 / 106 )=( 3.14150943.../ 3 )
The real value: PI = 3.1415926...
The difference between 3 x 111/106 and PI is 0.0000832 which is only an error of 0.00026%.
It is interesting to compare the "Solomonic" approximation of PI with the approximations used by the Babylonians and Egyptians.
PI = 3.1415926... Error
Babylon : 3 1/8 = 25/8 = 3.125 0.0165926
Egypt : 3 13/81 = 256/81 = 3.16049382... 0.0189012
"Solomon": 333/106 = 3.14150943... 0.0000832
Since the ancient Egyptian or Babylonian approximations are much older than the time of Solomon it might be interesting find out what the usually used approximation of PI was at that time (Solomon was King around 1000 B.C.) in this or other parts of the world. Any helpful information on this question would be very much appreciated."
http://www.answering-islam.org/Religions/Nume...

What happened to all that nonsense you were spouting about me taking things out of context?

I did exactly what you said and it didn't make the slightest bit of difference to what I was saying.

Score another point for me.

The biblical creation myth in Genesis talks about "days". You've already stated that you take this as a day and not some other time span.

The Bible also says the circle was 30 cubits round by 10 cubits across. Why don't you accept that?

I guess you know that it's best not to believe everything you read in the Bible.

There's hope for you yet.

[Khatru]

Langoliers wrote:

<quoted text>
No it didn't wind me up I just found it disgusting, something only a worm head could enjoy.

You've led a sheltered life.

Perhaps it's time you pulled your head out of that bible.

[Khatru]

Langoliers wrote:

<quoted text>
Keep trying you might get there some day.
Me myself, I'm here to bash the shit out of atheist like you.

How very Christian.

[Khatru]

derek4 wrote:

<quoted text>
Atheism is a religion which places it's faith in science instead of God (or "gods").
How atheists hate the word FAITH - but faith (in the evidence of science) is one of their strong points. Science is really all they have to support their godless religion.
From: Yahoo News:
Study: Fraud growing in scientific research papers
Oct 1, 2012
Fraud in scientific research, while still rare, is growing at a troubling pace, a new study finds.
A review of retractions in medical and biological peer-reviewed journals finds the percentage of studies withdrawn because of fraud or suspected fraud has jumped substantially since the mid-1970s. In 1976, there were fewer than 10 fraud retractions for every 1 million studies published, compared with 96 retractions per million in 2007.
The study authors aren't quite sure why this is happening. But they and outside experts point to pressure to hit it big in science, both for funding and attention, and to what seems to be a subtle increase in deception in overall society that science may simply be mirroring.
Fraud in life sciences research is still minuscule and committed by only a few dozen scientific scofflaws. However, it causes big problems, said Arturo Casadevall, a professor of microbiology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Casadevall is the lead author of the study which looked at the reasons for 2,047 retractions among many millions of studies published in journals and kept in a government database for medically focused research.
Fraud was the No. 1 cause of retractions, accounting for 43 percent of them. When fraud was combined with other areas of misconduct, such as plagiarism, it explained about 2 out of 3 retractions, the study found.
"Very few people are doing it, but when they do it, they are doing it in areas that are very important," Casadevall said. "And when these things come out, society loses faith in science."
http://news.yahoo.com/study-fraud-growing-sci...
COMMENTS:
Note key sentence:
"Very few people are doing it, but when they do it, they are doing it in areas that are very important," Casadevall said. "And when these things come out, society loses faith in science."
Other key words to note:“faith in science”
[The public has “FAITH” in science; atheists have “FAITH” in science. Atheists have “FAITH”, whether they like to admit it or not.]

The public and atheist faith in science is based on its spectacular success rate with explaining our reality.

Something in which religions fail dismally.

[Khatru]

derek4 wrote:

<quoted text>
Atheists trust in science and believe the theory of evolution is fact. Point to one who doesn't.
Ranting and whining is your expertise.
Did you really think before you wrote this (?):“Scientists NEVER have "faith" in science.”
So they don't believe in their own field of work and knowledge? So they know, as I do, that science and / or the “evidence” is not worthy of faith, confidence, or trust, yet they continue to participate in something which isn't credible? I see. If they have been reading the news stories I've seen, it's little wonder they see it as deeply flawed, therefore not worthy of confidence. Maybe they are catching on.
You have expressed extravagant faith in science. You have expressed your faith that the peer review system catches the errors, in spite of the hundreds, if not thousands of scientific articles which say it does not. I've posted maybe a hundred on this very forum which prove my point.
“Judging by analyses showing that the number of retractions during the past ten years has skyrocketed, it is reasonable to conclude that the self-regulating peer review system suffers from serious underlying defects.”
http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/846/94/
I have no “fear” of science (unless I was taking some of the new medications on the market produced by fraudulent scientists – in which case I might indeed be afraid) because I do not place my faith and confidence in science, as you do.
Yes, you are indeed pitiful and transparent, as you lamely try and fail to defend your faith.

No theories are fact.

Theories represent our best explanations of facts.

The majority of the world's Christians accept that evolution is a fact.

[Khatru]

It aint necessarily so wrote:

<quoted text>
But you just provided us the definition of a religion at http://www.topix.com/forum/religion/atheism/T... :
<quoted text>
That's exactly the opposite of atheism.
You're not about to tell me that there is more than one definition of religion, are you?

Bam!

Another lying Christian caught out through his contradictions.