Believe in god? Read this!

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To use your own argument "I don't care about your religious martyrs at all therefore your argument is irrelevant".

To be serious for a second though arguing that atheists that consider religious dangerous are being intolerant is similar to say that people that think serial rapists are dangerous are being intolerant.

Intolerance only applies if the sole reason a person has for opposing an idea is the dislike of that idea.

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Common ignorance of the details of a belief is not grounds for saying a belief is dangerous.

well it is relevant, as you can see a religious belief KILLED a kid. do you think the mom and dad would have tried to have a faith healing if they weren't religious? no. whatever was wrong with the kid they would have taken them to the doctor. so in conclusion religion killed the kid, take that away and doctors would have gotten involved and yeah i guess i am creating an ideology. a common sence ideology that doesnt pray for faith healings. or hang my life on wishful thinking. smart move wouldnt you say?

Unless I am misinterpreting it, I find the premise of the OP rather inane. The acts and the outcome in the linked to article, prove nothing whatsoever about God's existence or non-existence.

Pathetic or not, why does our existence need justification? Obviously we are here, I see no need to justify 'here-edness'. I cannot see what is depressing about it either. If there is a heaven, then there is an everlasting hell, now that's depressing.


Everything is pointless when its point has lapsed. But for many their happiness continues to have a point even after their 'passing'. My father is dead, I still get benefit from the happiness he had in life. This makes me a nicer, happier person, and the benefits are passed on to those I interact with.

Even in those cases where an individual's happiness serves no point after their death, the happiness was its own point and so the point has been served and lapsed. Why is that a tragedy? Still whacks the pants off of everlasting torment in my opinion.

Because he is the God of the bible, and the bible is his infallible word and promises that those who ask of the lord God, so shall receive of him, also people should not worry, because God looks after birds, and apparently, we're better (than birds).


Or sins if you prefer. Are you suggesting any of this was a surprise to the one and same God who made us this way? It's God's recipe, if you do not like the pudding, take it up with the baker.

If you believe in God and intend to be dutiful to your God, then you need to believe God made us more special than chickens, and gave us (rather than chickens) the privilege of prayer. Also God placed the chickens into our stewardship, and it is our duty to make use of them. For further reading, you might wish to consult your bible, which is evidentially yet another duty owed to God by believers/followers thereof.

These things are sins. Once they created a barrier between ourselves and God, so God sent his only begotten son to earth to die on the cross and in so doing wash away our sins in his blood. By believing that Jesus (God's only begotten son) wiped our sins clean in his sacrificial blood, the barrier to God is removed, and how then could our prayers not be heard? Your God is well aware we are all sinners. He sent his son on a mission and this mission included the message that sin is hateful, but sinners are not.

At any rate, if a God's definition of righteousness is being willing to happily hand your virgin daughters over to 10's of 1000s of men to rape, what makes you think that same God does not approve of rape? This is evidently one of the weaker endorsements of rape in the bible. In God's eyes, handing your concubine over to be raped to death constitutes a sin against you (rather than a sin against the concubine and God), and raping all virgins in a city you've just put to the sword is a noble occupation. It's also fine to take your slave-girl to bed, providing you scourge them afterwards. If you think the slave-women concerned might be willing, check out Mel Gibson's film about Jesus to see what is meant by scourge.

Unless biblical female slaves were universally inclined to masochism, I find their willingness to be scourged as the price of sleeping with their master, somewhat doubtful. I find it highly unlikely many women would willingly go to bed with some bloke knowing they would inevitably be whipped bloody afterwards.

except it's not intolerance but pragmatism. religion isn't pragmatic at all. it bases belief in unprovable (or just fallacious) ideas and leaves the victim more vulnerable, less knowledgeable, and more like our cavemen predecessors than anything that resembles anything displaying mental evolution.

If we include atheism, then I would say...
Yes!
Exterminate! Exterminate!

Last edited by greenblue on 15 Dec 2008, 3:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

But it is, parts of it anyway, the most fundamental aspects, very pragmatic indeed.
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it's pragmatic like how the horse and carriage was pragmatic...up until cars came along. people needed explanations for the universe and the questions too big for our grasp at the time but now things are catching up rapidly and explaining beyond what even the bible tried to (ie, going beyond simply the beginning of the universe into what may have happened before then).

No, pragmatic like dreams. Dreams are "just" when our brains go offline at night, for 15-20 minutes every 75-90 minutes or so, to transfer short-term memory into long-term memory.

But dreams are wonderful subjective experiences too, if you remember them anyway. They are like windows into deepest parts of what I have lived, which remind me of the richness of life that is in there/in my mind.

No psychologist explaining that dreaming is just the transfer of short to long term memory can actually provide me with that experience. Which is both useful, ( essential to mental health in fact ), and beautiful/inspiring.

What I mean is that belief in god is a highly pragmatic thing; for some/many it may be essential for health. Both useful, and wonderful, intense, like dreams feel. Real but not real.

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So like religion if I were to base my life on my nightmares and went on a killing spree that would be acceptable?

It's only pragmatic for those indoctrinated too early in their life to find or accept the alternatives religion discourages.

and what is waxing poetic supposed to prove?

Okay, without the words "wonderful", "beautiful", "richness", "inspiring" then. ... I woke up this morning knowing that my use of these words, and, I admit, rather waffly presentation, would almost inevitably have provoked this kind of reaction.

What I mean is that no amount of science explaining why we dream will take away the human need to dream. Dreaming is essential to mental health, to functioning. It is what we experience, ( and what an experience ) when short term memory is transferred to long term memory.

And religious belief is for me something like that. Very useful, helpful, and also, often, "beautiful" .


I was brought up in a non-churchgoing family, by parents who almost never mentioned god. I went to secular schools, and have at no time and in no way been indoctrinated against science, and yet I believe in god and that some religious beliefs/much of religion, ( though not all ), is deeply pragmatic, dealing with fundamental truths of human experience.

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So is psychology.

In any case I understand your need to believe God exists and therefore the "beauty" of the universe is meant just for us but the meaning of "beauty" is such a subjective thing that no two people will look at the same thing your looking at and see the same thing your seeing so it is simply your opinion leading you to believe extraordinary claims not because they are practical or true but rather because it fills a psychological need you never found another source for and now have stopped looking.

why do you assume that? how do you know what science can or can't explain?

I said "no amount". It wouldn't matter how much science explained about why dreams happen, that would not take away the human need to dream.

Or do you think that science might one day enable us to transfer short term memory to longterm memory without dreaming? The kind of brain which could do that might indeed not experience a need to believe in god.
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I said "no amount". It wouldn't matter how much science explained about why hunger happens, that would not take away the human need to eat.

Or do you think that science might one day enable us to gain nutrients and minerals without eating? The kind of stomach which could do that might indeed not experience a need to believe in god.
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point being: simply because you attach an arbitrary meaning to something doesn't make it true...it's just creating mysticism about a function of the human body....and i just came back from lunch so a tasty reminder helped with the analogy.

^ Umm...

You are putting science on some pedestal almost as if it's like this superpowerful instrument of man that subverts the laws of physics to grant us magical powers.

Science is nothing more than the most reliable method by which we can find out the truth about reality, thanks to the scientific method. Science doesn't do anything. Humans use science to find stuff out.

What we can explain through science, and the accuracy of the explanation, is only limited by the amount of data we can gather from the natural world.