Atheists - prove it.

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you are what you is - so right on, and I yam whatta yam, and a man ain't nothing but a man

Thank you for your history. Useful and enjoyable. Your course - including the parents - sounds nearly a clone of mine - except I was reading, not watching the screen, because most years we had no TV and when we did it was preempted by my younger siblings for Howdy Doody and the like or by my parents for news.

Did see PARTS [reception was bad] of Donovan';s Brain one weekend.

In my case there was a switch in the teack. In yours - hey, man, walk your own walk. It is all we can do anyway.

Well, the only "control" I had in that was in the matter of nothing having been forced upon me, but if you are happy and I am happy, then let us all now just sit around and have a friendly giggle, eh?!

Side note: Considering how often I used to come into PPR and "lead with the chin" and often get quickly obliged, I like things as they are today much better!

Religious belief. It helps if you don't chop the last words off a sentence. O_O

As for the rest, I'm waiting to see how many more times you can contradict yourself.

Heck, maybe I could leave you to just argue alone.

Yes, but your treatment of 2 isn't acceptable.


No, for you to know that requires that you have a mental capacity for that.


What exactly do you want proven? You don't have a philosophical analysis, and you don't seem to know what it means.


Except the point of dispute is the conclusions, and I've already presented a few logical arguments against any notion of God, which would apply to anything you used.


.... umm.... the fact that it is a psychological disease. If you're disputing self-evident facts with me, then I don't see how we can go further.


Healing a body-part is some pretty solid transformation. Even further, Jesus certainly did this, God could do this, and yet we don't see this done. If you want a specific example, why not brain cancer. Brain cancer impacts a person's moral capabilities, but God doesn't have a BCPA?


You say he just did....


Right, because intellectual competence just isnt' your thing. Got it.

But he can't be considered moral if he just allows bad things to happen. The use of "sovereign" accomplishes nothing, and I've already shown this.

1.

Last edited by Bethie on 09 May 2011, 12:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The implication being that we DO?

If the consequences of something are unacceptable, it can't be true!!
/sarcasm

"Such and such horrible disease."
"She can't have that."
"...it fits all the symptoms."
"Yeah, but it's not curable!"

~a certain TV doctor~

People love to think they are better than other people for whatever reason. When the reason is religion or lack of religion then another human vice, the "us versus them" paradigm, comes into play.

Show me even but even just one lie I have ever posted here on WP!

But if you wish/must, just keep right on trying to trash me to distract other people away from your own whatever.


Yes, and that was a major part of what kept me that way -- its hopelessness apart from its "sky fairy" stuff -- and that is why I had to abandon all of that in order to eventually recover.

I know I am as good is it comes. I gladly recognize that in others. I enjoy productive disagreement - with out the us versus them.

Certainly.


Possibly so, and that would not rally matter to me either way.


I have made no mention or even speculation of any such thing. Rather ...

In the 1930s, Dr. William D. Silkworth -- know as "Silky" to early A.A. members -- had worked unsuccessfully in the cases of many hundreds (at least) of alcoholics. Somewhere along in there, he wrote this:

"We believe, and so suggested a few years ago, that the action of alcohol on these chronic alcoholics [after they begin drinking again] is a manifestation of an allergy; that the phenomenon of craving is limited to this class and never occurs in the average temperate drinker. These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all ...
"[They begin drinking] essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol ...
"They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks - drinks which they see others [who do not have their so-called 'allergy'] taking with impunity. After they have succumbed to the [initial] desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops ...
"... [with all 'real alcoholics' (as mentioned later on in the book) having] one symptom in common: they cannot start drinking without developing the phenomenon of craving. This phenomenon, as we have suggested, may be the manifestation of an allergy which differentiates these people, and sets them apart as a distinct entity. It has never been, by any treatment with which we are familiar, permanently eradicated. The only relief we have to suggest is entire abstinence."

Back in the 1930s, Dr. Silkworth risked much criticism and ridicule from among his own colleagues for even having the idea of alcoholism being a disease. So, and since there was really no need to use that term at that particular time anyway, he opted for "allergy" to describe at least the physical part of the alcoholic's overall "mind and body" dilemma.

Once the word was out about the seemingly-latest "treatment" for alcoholism, it is a simple fact that doctors who had previously just avoided alcoholics altogether ...

"Many doctors and psychiatrists ...
"One of these men ('Silky'), staff member of a world-renowned hospital, recently made this statement to some of us: 'What you say about the general hopelessness of the average alcoholic's plight is, in my opinion, correct. As to two of you men (Bill W., a stock broker, and Dr. Bob, a proctologist), whose stories I have heard, there is no doubt in my mind that you were 100% hopeless, apart from divine help. Had you offered yourselves as patients at this hospital, I would not have taken you, if I had been able to avoid it. People like you are too heartbreaking ...'"
(page 43)

... suddenly became interested in trying to help ... but alcoholics were almost never able to pay their bills! So, it seemed insurance was needed, and that is where/when Marty Mann began helping to get alcoholism "officially recognized" so alcoholics could get insurance to pay for whatever any doctor might be willing to do for him or her as long as s/he could pay.

Note: I had earlier said "sold out" simply because most early A.A. members did not want her to do that and end up bringing too many ignorant or ill-informed doctors into the mix.

How did you think anyone might think there had been any kind of "conspiracy" in any of that?


As the delusional agnostic I used to be, I have never believed "there is no god".


Once again: He does not intervene! Even at this very moment I am completely free to get up from here and go right back to drinking myself to death without ever having even the slightest concern about any interference or "intervention" from any kind of god. That (me drinking again) is not ever going to happen, of course, but only because I yet (and also quite voluntarily) leave my own will and life under His "management" (rather than my own), so to speak.


You really should be very careful with that word around here.

Last edited by leejosepho on 09 May 2011, 1:10 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Winning 'tude you got there.

Yes, when asked, He does.

If I didn't I would never have lasted at the U so long as I did.