Atheism requires as much faith as religion?

[Double Fine]

moki wrote:

<quoted text>
I have some Schnapps at home. What's yr fave drink River?

Double Fine wrote:

<quoted text>
Water

G_O_D wrote:

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LOL

Hehehehe

[Dave Nelson]

-Skeptic- wrote:

<quoted text>
Evidence or f*ck off it's been that simple since the dawn of time itself.

Evidence for a "truth", eh?

Here's a truth.

One or both of your parents carried some defective genes.

The evidence?

You.

[Hidingfromyou]

Why Bible scholars lose their faith:

"Bart Ehrman: First, I lost my fundamentalist faith because of my scholarship. Like Bill Dever, I have a fundamentalist background. I had a very high view of Scripture as the inerrant word of God, no mistakes of any kind—geographical or historical. No contradictions. Inviolate. My scholarship early on as a graduate student showed me that in fact these views about the Bible were wrong. I started finding contradictions and finding other discrepancies and started finding problems with the Bible. What that ended up doing for me was showing me that the basis of my faith, which at that time was the Bible, was problematic. So I shifted from being an evangelical Christian to becoming a fairly mainline liberal Protestant Christian.
What ended up making me lose my faith was kind of related to scholarship: When I was at Rutgers University, I taught a course on the problem of suffering in Biblical traditions, where I dealt with issues of theodicy throughout different Biblical books, both Hebrew Bible and the New Testament—

Shanks: What is theodicy?

Ehrman: Theodicy is the question of how God can be righteous, given the amount of suffering in the world. The issue as it’s usually put today is that if God is all-powerful and is able to prevent suffering, and is all-loving so that he wants to prevent suffering, why is there suffering? This problem isn’t ever expressed that way in the Bible, but Biblical authors do deal with the problem by asking: Why does the people of God suffer? In teaching this course, the thing that struck me is just how different the answers are. Depending on what part of Job you read, you get one set of answers. If you read the Prophets, you get a different set of answers. If you read apocalyptic literature, you get still a different set of answers.

This made me think more deeply about my own understanding of why there’s suffering in the world. Finally, because I became dissatisfied with all the conventional answers, I decided that I couldn’t believe in a God who was in any way intervening in this world, given the state of things. So that’s why I ended up losing my faith."

http://creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/other...

[G_O_D]

Dave Nelson wrote:

What is the benefit in believing you are just a glorified piece of stellar shit coming and going in a flash?...

What is point in pretending you aren't ?

[RiversideRedneck]

Hidingfromyou wrote:

<quoted text>
You honestly know next to nothing about this stuff, hey?
It's easy: you look at the bone density, muscle attachment sites and joint sizes.
Strong muscles compress bones, increasing the density (you see this not only in the mass of the bone, but in the cellular structure). Muscle attachment sites are either large (powerful muscles) or small (weak). Joints are mechanical in nature; there are mathematical relationships between the size of the parts and how much force they can take.
The above is how we know that neanderthals were so strong, they could crush the bones of your hand with a handshake. They were stronger than contemporaneous humans - but the woman my friend dug up was a human.

I understand that, but he's talking about a 26,000 year old fossil...

It's all assumptions, not fact.

[RiversideRedneck]

Hidingfromyou wrote:

<quoted text>
You're pretty naive about science and religion. Look at your comments - you actually believe that your inability to imagine something and your lack of knowledge of something are arguments against that thing.
They're not. It just means you don't know what you're talking about (defining features of ignorant and naive).

I don't believe that at all, quite the contrary. It's atheists that "actually believe that their inability to imagine something and their lack of knowledge of something are arguments against that thing".

Atheists, it seems, live their lives with a very closed mind with almost no ability to imagine or dream, because imagiation & dreams can't be proven.

[Dave Nelson]

Hidingfromyou wrote:

Why Bible scholars lose their faith:
"Bart Ehrman: First, I lost my fundamentalist faith because of my scholarship. Like Bill Dever, I have a fundamentalist background. I had a very high view of Scripture as the inerrant word of God, no mistakes of any kind—geographical or historical. No contradictions. Inviolate. My scholarship early on as a graduate student showed me that in fact these views about the Bible were wrong. I started finding contradictions and finding other discrepancies and started finding problems with the Bible. What that ended up doing for me was showing me that the basis of my faith, which at that time was the Bible, was problematic. So I shifted from being an evangelical Christian to becoming a fairly mainline liberal Protestant Christian.
What ended up making me lose my faith was kind of related to scholarship: When I was at Rutgers University, I taught a course on the problem of suffering in Biblical traditions, where I dealt with issues of theodicy throughout different Biblical books, both Hebrew Bible and the New Testament—
Shanks: What is theodicy?
Ehrman: Theodicy is the question of how God can be righteous, given the amount of suffering in the world. The issue as it’s usually put today is that if God is all-powerful and is able to prevent suffering, and is all-loving so that he wants to prevent suffering, why is there suffering? This problem isn’t ever expressed that way in the Bible, but Biblical authors do deal with the problem by asking: Why does the people of God suffer? In teaching this course, the thing that struck me is just how different the answers are. Depending on what part of Job you read, you get one set of answers. If you read the Prophets, you get a different set of answers. If you read apocalyptic literature, you get still a different set of answers.
This made me think more deeply about my own understanding of why there’s suffering in the world. Finally, because I became dissatisfied with all the conventional answers, I decided that I couldn’t believe in a God who was in any way intervening in this world, given the state of things. So that’s why I ended up losing my faith."
http://creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/other...

If you take anything written by man as an absolute truth you are doing so based on faith in the veracity of the writer, and subject to personal interpretations of the words used.

You're gonna lose if you bet your life's savings on it.

In this instance of the gentleman's reasons, he needs to go back to the first few pages of that book. In the beginning. Man got cast out and was then on born to suffer on his own. Getting back to the good life is an individual endeavor. Whining and moaning don't do it. Simple fact is you have to dissociate yourself from greater mankind, being just one of the herd and its mindset, to establishing a personal relationship with the creative force so you can find the way back. Mankind is in the open range, not in a dairy barn.

However, feel free to continue saying moo if it suits you. If you feel you are one of the smartest cows in the herd, why would you want to complicate your life here any? Just hope the cattle trucks and cowboys don't show up. Those smarts that gave you status in the herd ain't going to do you much good by that time.

:-)

Good morning, sweetie.

<smooch>

[RiversideRedneck]

Hidingfromyou wrote:

Why Bible scholars lose their faith:
"Bart Ehrman: First, I lost my fundamentalist faith because of my scholarship. Like Bill Dever, I have a fundamentalist background. I had a very high view of Scripture as the inerrant word of God, no mistakes of any kind—geographical or historical. No contradictions. Inviolate. My scholarship early on as a graduate student showed me that in fact these views about the Bible were wrong. I started finding contradictions and finding other discrepancies and started finding problems with the Bible. What that ended up doing for me was showing me that the basis of my faith, which at that time was the Bible, was problematic. So I shifted from being an evangelical Christian to becoming a fairly mainline liberal Protestant Christian.
What ended up making me lose my faith was kind of related to scholarship: When I was at Rutgers University, I taught a course on the problem of suffering in Biblical traditions, where I dealt with issues of theodicy throughout different Biblical books, both Hebrew Bible and the New Testament—
Shanks: What is theodicy?
Ehrman: Theodicy is the question of how God can be righteous, given the amount of suffering in the world. The issue as it’s usually put today is that if God is all-powerful and is able to prevent suffering, and is all-loving so that he wants to prevent suffering, why is there suffering? This problem isn’t ever expressed that way in the Bible, but Biblical authors do deal with the problem by asking: Why does the people of God suffer? In teaching this course, the thing that struck me is just how different the answers are. Depending on what part of Job you read, you get one set of answers. If you read the Prophets, you get a different set of answers. If you read apocalyptic literature, you get still a different set of answers.
This made me think more deeply about my own understanding of why there’s suffering in the world. Finally, because I became dissatisfied with all the conventional answers, I decided that I couldn’t believe in a God who was in any way intervening in this world, given the state of things. So that’s why I ended up losing my faith."
http://creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/other...

So, basically, Satan spoke, he listened. Got it.

[Dave Nelson]

G_O_D wrote:

<quoted text>
What is point in pretending you aren't ?

Quality of life, and less being owned by others.

Plus it allows you to be more creative on a personal level. You are less concerned about what your human masters think of you.

[Hidingfromyou]

RiversideRedneck wrote:

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I understand that, but he's talking about a 26,000 year old fossil...
It's all assumptions, not fact.

No, baby, it's all fact. They're bones, btw - not mineralized fossils. We can even measure their DNA.

Why do you argue with me? You haven't got a clue what you're talking about whereas I'm an professional in the field...

Here:

"Abstract
Temporal trends in postcranial robusticity within the genus Homo are explored by comparing cross-sectional diaphyseal and articular properties of the femur, and to a more limited extent, the humerus, in samples of Recent and earlier Homo. Using both theoretical mechanical models and empirical observations within Recent humans, scaling relationships between structural properties and bone length are developed. The influence of body shape on these relationships is considered. These scaling factors are then used to standardize structural properties for comparisons with pre-Recent Homo (Homo sp. and H. erectus, archaic H. sapiens, and early modern H. sapiens). Results of the comparisons lead to the following conclusions: 1) There has been a consistent, exponentially increasing decline in diaphyseal robusticity within Homo that has continued from the early Pleistocene through living humans. Early modern H. sapiens are closer in shaft robusticity to archaic H. sapiens than they are to Recent humans. The increase in diaphyseal robusticity in earlier Homo is a result of both medullary contraction and periosteal expansion relative to Recent humans. 2) There has been no similar temporal decline in articular robusticity within Homo–relative femoral head size is similar in all groups and time periods. Thus, articular to shaft proportions are different in pre-Recent and Recent Homo. 3) These findings are most consistent with a mechanical explanation (declining mechanical loading of the postcranium), that acted primarily through developmental rather than genetic means. The environmental (behavioral) factors that brought about the decline in postcranial robusticity in Homo are ultimately linked to increases in brain size and cultural-technological advances, although changes in robusticity lag behind changes in cognitive capabilities.© 1993 Wiley-Liss, Inc."

Do you understand what they're saying? Humans have been getting weaker since about 30 000 years ago - and this accelerated at 12 000 years ago. Any guesses as to why we got weaker?

http://www.researchgate.net/publication/22762...

[Hidingfromyou]

RiversideRedneck wrote:

<quoted text>
So, basically, Satan spoke, he listened. Got it.

baaaa-hahahahahahah!!!

LOL

hahahahahahahaha, oh, god, that's one of your funniest!

hahahaha, still howling! crazy funny!

[T-Town Clown]

Hidingfromyou wrote:

<quoted text>
No, baby, it's all fact. They're bones, btw - not mineralized fossils. We can even measure their DNA.
Why do you argue with me? You haven't got a clue what you're talking about whereas I'm an professional in the field...
Here:
"Abstract
Temporal trends in postcranial robusticity within the genus Homo are explored by comparing cross-sectional diaphyseal and articular properties of the femur, and to a more limited extent, the humerus, in samples of Recent and earlier Homo. Using both theoretical mechanical models and empirical observations within Recent humans, scaling relationships between structural properties and bone length are developed. The influence of body shape on these relationships is considered. These scaling factors are then used to standardize structural properties for comparisons with pre-Recent Homo (Homo sp. and H. erectus, archaic H. sapiens, and early modern H. sapiens). Results of the comparisons lead to the following conclusions: 1) There has been a consistent, exponentially increasing decline in diaphyseal robusticity within Homo that has continued from the early Pleistocene through living humans. Early modern H. sapiens are closer in shaft robusticity to archaic H. sapiens than they are to Recent humans. The increase in diaphyseal robusticity in earlier Homo is a result of both medullary contraction and periosteal expansion relative to Recent humans. 2) There has been no similar temporal decline in articular robusticity within Homo–relative femoral head size is similar in all groups and time periods. Thus, articular to shaft proportions are different in pre-Recent and Recent Homo. 3) These findings are most consistent with a mechanical explanation (declining mechanical loading of the postcranium), that acted primarily through developmental rather than genetic means. The environmental (behavioral) factors that brought about the decline in postcranial robusticity in Homo are ultimately linked to increases in brain size and cultural-technological advances, although changes in robusticity lag behind changes in cognitive capabilities.© 1993 Wiley-Liss, Inc."
Do you understand what they're saying? Humans have been getting weaker since about 30 000 years ago - and this accelerated at 12 000 years ago. Any guesses as to why we got weaker?
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/22762...

Evolution is a lie!

[Hidingfromyou]

RiversideRedneck wrote:

<quoted text>
I don't believe that at all, quite the contrary. It's atheists that "actually believe that their inability to imagine something and their lack of knowledge of something are arguments against that thing".
Atheists, it seems, live their lives with a very closed mind with almost no ability to imagine or dream, because imagiation & dreams can't be proven.

I don't know if you've noticed, but you and I haven't only been talking about God here - but also homosexual behavior, evolution, planetary formation, paleoanthropology. Unlike me, you know almost nothing. I'm guessing it was your religion that did that to you.

It told you "God did it" is an acceptable answer to all life's mysteries, so you just turned your brain off.

Unlike you, atheists are full of creativity. We aren't afraid to explore reality like you people - you're utterly closed minded. You actually believe in intellectual laziness as some kind of virtue!

Your answer to everything is "God did it." That's a worthless, stupid answer - it actually hurts people. Imagine if the discoverers of insulin stopped and said "gosh this is hard, let's just say 'God did it'" - imagine if any physicist or medical researcher did that! We wouldn't have power lines, antibiotics, antivirals - anything.

God did it is not an answer. Willful ignorance is abject idiocy - and it's ruining your great nation.

[Hidingfromyou]

T-Town Clown wrote:

<quoted text>Evolution is a lie!

A damn lie!

T-Town!!! How are you my friend?!? I hope well! Oh, how I have missed you!

[Hidingfromyou]

Dave Nelson wrote:

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If

Hey, thanks for reading! Glad you are making an attempt to stay informed.

[Dave Nelson]

Hidingfromyou wrote:

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Hey, thanks for reading! Glad you are making an attempt to stay informed.

Love, the only thing you inform me of is your ignorance, as in your interpretation of religious belief as it relates to exploring existence in your post previous to this.

[Dave Nelson]

The greatest minds in science, the ones that started modern science, did so under very strong Christian influences.

Even Charles Darwin.

Some had questions about the religion, and had their own views, but most all stayed deist. Darwin at the most became agnostic in his latest years.

"In November 1878 when George Romanes presented his new book refuting theism, A Candid Examination of Theism by "Physicus", Darwin read it with "very great interest", but was unconvinced, pointing out that its arguments did not rule out God creating matter and energy at the beginning of the universe, with a propensity to evolve. If theism were true, "reason might not be the only instrument for ascertaining its truth"."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_...

The seventeenth century was not that far advanced over the Iron Age. Within a few hundred years, in a Christian civilization, look how far we have advanced.

The Egyptions, Sumerians, Greek, Roman, Hindus, Taoists, Buddhists, and atheists had more time and the same opportunity to advance. They didn't.

Please can the bullshit about Christianity inhibiting science. Atheists are now trying to hijack the accomplishments it made possible.

[Catcher1]

Dave Nelson wrote:

<quoted text>
Am I supposed to care what you think?

It's not what I think.

It's a fact, Dave.

You have shown cowardice.

That makes you a coward.

[scaritual]

Dave Nelson wrote:

You would say it was scientific proof if he said he didn't remember a thing.

What I would say, what I will say is the only scientific proof in the story is that Alexander was in a coma, due to an infection of the cerebral cortex. That is all that can be verified.

Dave Nelson wrote:

He was a neurosurgeon. He was on some sort of life support with his fellow doctors watching over him. Not a guy off the street. I am sure he has given considerable thought to the experience from his professional and educational background.

I think he wants to sell books.

Dave Nelson wrote:

Yes, these memories could be the result of a transitional stage from his coma to consciousness again. If you have a memory it is because it was written in your physical brain. However, whatever occurred during the coma translated into some coherent stream of consciousness when the light came back on.

Or, nothing happened during the coma, since there was no higher function brain activity. Whatever it is he remembers could be from just before the coma, after the coma, or a dream afterwards. He mentions that he wrote things down for days and weeks after.

What if he had some bizarre hallucinatory stage as he came out of the coma or close to death state and he recalled the hallucination over the next few days, now it's developed into an NDE, when it was just a brain in *kickstart* mode?

What if that is what every NDE is?

What I just mentioned is just as valid a hypothesis as the NDE is.

Dave Nelson wrote:

There is just no way science can determine what goes on in the subconscious during such an event.

For now, I agree.

Who knows what we'll be able to determine in the next 10-50 years?

Dave Nelson wrote:

The fact is he survived. Whether he would have laying out in the wilderness, where the species developed, versus being under life support, is another story. During the coma he was evidently doing some self repair.

That and the cocktail of antibiotics fighting the infection in his cortex, and other drugs used to maintain body functions(electrolytes, nutrition etc...). I'm sure he was hooked up to all sorts of equipment, IV's, and other apparatus.

Dave Nelson wrote:

I've been knocked out for surgery and didn't remember a damned thing, and I have had a NDE as the result of severe trauma and I had memories, visual ones only, of that unconscious state. They were different than his, and of much shorter duration.

Yeah, NDE's do vary, and when they talk about the "core experience". There are a total of 7 components of the "core experience, and here's the thing, you need only have 1 of those out of the 7 to be classified as having a "core experience(Unless they've changed criteria).

This is my opinion — that doesn't help the case of NDE proponents.

There should be a minimum number of the "core experiences" in order to qualify.

Dave Nelson wrote:

The really telling point of such experiences is the fear of death you have tends to evaporate afterwards. What was a remote concept of it all ending and going to the big sleep turns into a reality. Your consciousness doesn't die. It isn't the same as here, that is because of the physical addons of life experience, but there is a core that remains. You can still have reservations about physical death, but primarily abut how you die. A quality of physical comfort thing.

Yeah, and guess what, Dave? It doesn't bother me to die. I agree, I'd prefer to not have an oak tree fall on me and be crushed, in pain for 5 hours, or linger on in a hospital bed and broken leading up to my demise.

My eventual death does not worry me at all.

Dave Nelson wrote:

You have to be on the inside of such experiences to understand.

Or maybe not.

To say you have to go through a brush with death(which I have), and experience an NDE(which I haven't) in order to not fear death is pure conjecture.

[scaritual]

Just Results wrote:

<quoted text>
Aren't you that hateful atheist I saw on another bigtoed atheist thread?

You must have me confused with a theist.

Another "bigtoed" atheist thread?

I wasn't aware there was a "bigtoed" atheist thread at all.

What is this "bigtoed" atheist thread you speak of?