the tyranny of religion within democracy

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one thing...there's no proof...so there's nothing to disprove. the structure right now is logically wrong...there's no reason to disprove any religion because none have presented any kind of evidence that would hold up in court...afterall, religions have yet to fulfill their side of the burden of proof.


so your approach is wrong from the start....mainly beacuse it's just kind of an accepted logical fallacy. the idea that one must disprove god. if anything, the structure should be that it needs to be proven.

when i say tear down israel, i'm asked for proof. why aren't any theists asked for proof when they say "god says you can't use birth control" or "god says you can't have an abortion" or "god says you can't drink alcohol" or "god says you can't eat pork". i say to those assertions from each and every god: PROVE IT!! !


society is so deeply invested in this idea of a deity that logic is thrown out the window for the sake of the status quo.

Whatever, it hardly matters given that I was arguing from a stance that assumed the Bible. If God doesn't exist then there is no reason arguing one way or another on his stances or nature. The "he" is merely a matter of custom given that God is described as the father or king.

No, we aren't always right, we just are never wrong. How is that a load of shite? It is a legitimate argument to state that one cannot disprove Christianity with absolute certainty if one says that epistemological assumptions are not necessarily correct, which one can do in this situation.

Yes, I could, now, I wouldn't because there is no need to assert that zeus or odin were made up 5 minutes ago. Really though, if I counter-argued that then I would have no proof so I cannot disprove zeus or odin, nor can you prove that Christianity isn't the oldest religion according to my system, however, I would likely accept it for a desire to have some internal consistency by falling upon Judaism in some form or fashion. All I am doing is attacking epistemology, not proving Christianity though.

But they can resort to that kind of thing, as can every other religion and I never denied that all religions could do this. Now, frankly, your entire attack against me doesn't say that my argument is illogical, only that you expect me to follow certain rules when arguing things and frankly, I don't care about following the assumptions that other people do, and I would prefer to annihilate most of the assumptions other people make about any topic. Given that past parts of this argument I aimed to annihilate the ideas of moral meaning, and given that I have also tried to annihilate ideas countering objectivism in another thread, and I have tried to annihilate these things in the past, I really wouldn't consider myself a person bound for truth but basically a huge skeptic who loves to annihilate ideas.

I argue that neither should be or can be proven. The wrongness is the belief in knowledge.

Why do you ask them for proof? You know that they cannot prove a metaphysical being's moral view point. You cannot prove the existence of morality or the deity. Really, I just view this issue as a matter of our desire for objective morality and the problems with the nature of morality, as it is either be an unusual unknown that must be taken on faith, or nonexistent. I can say that my god claims that all babies born in 1904 did smell like licorice, there are major problems with that hypothesis, but it cannot be disproven, especially given that I have allowed for all sorts of epistemological assumptions to be rejected given the nature of religious beliefs.

and yet people who claim to be the mouthpieces of various deities are given positions of power....despite no proof.


i guess a sucker is born every minute....well...faster than that considering birthrates against religious demographics.

Yep, now they might cite some proofs, some are plain weak, others are stronger, but nothing completely definite.


Well, if you want to call it suckered then go ahead, however, they consent to the choice.

wrong. existence isn't definite. a deity as defined by the mainstream religions isn't even likely.








no they don't they're indoctrinated from birth and for most of their lives. people like me are on the outskirts and i can't challenge people because they get offended like as if i'm attacking a part of their being. it's unhealthy....but it's suckered from birth.

No, correct, I merely stated that their proofs aren't perfect in my statement, meaning that your position of atheism/atheist agnosticism is tenable and can still keep on going.


So? They still choose it after birth. Really, if we are to take the extreme determinist view of human beliefs then it hardly matters what issue we speak of from drinking Coke to loving baseball, it all ends up being indoctrination. You are challenging a part of their being though, you are challenging their world view, and people exist without a world view of some form. I don't see a norm by which to call it unhealthy though, it is life really. Frankly, what I don't get is the entire sense of paternalistic moralism taken towards theists in this thread, it is just sort of sickening, just as it would be from theists even. Paternalism tends to make me retch though. I mean, I have little problem with you claiming that you dislike an issue, but come on, where is your god that tells you that theism is wrong? What makes theism different from eating pork other than the market structure?

I propose that the Earth wasn't created in 5 minutes, nor was it 6000 years old based on scientific studies that have been done over, and over by many, many scientists who have done these things meticulously and filed them away into myriads of reports. Further reports on other things related to geology, physics, chemistry and biology simply reaffirm that the Earth isn't flat, 6000 years old or that a global flood could have happened. This is not something that might be treated as a proof, but rather as evidence. Take, for example, the chair you are sitting on, or the floor that you are standing/sitting on. Or the computer you are typing away at. If the chair/floor wasn't there, how could you be standing/sitting where you are now, and if the computer you are typing away at didn't exist, how could it be there? I need not prove that such things exist. Only that the fact that you are typing a response to me is evidence that you exist, and that you must somehow be standing or sitting on something in order for you to be typing all of this, since it is aparsimonious to think that you might be hovering or floating in the air, or existing in another dimension, or whatever other fantasy-like projection a religious type of thought might procure. Similarly, it is aparsimonious to believe that the Earth was created in only 5 minutes, without a shred of evidence to explain what we see, and to cast off all these meticulously done scientific studies as an illusion. Again, scientists' discoveries of the way the Earth really existed and was formed is not a proof, nor do scientists treat it as such. It is only evidence.

It can be taken as evidence, however, it does not disprove the counterargument and that is what must be done in this case. God says that the wisdom of the world is foolishness, his word says that sin has perverted basically all of creation, therefore creation and the world cannot be trusted over the Bible which is said to be divinely inspired within this logical structure. The issue of reduction becomes a problem if you hold the Bible beneath other evidence, but not if you hold it above.

I can't 'proove' to myself that everyone on this list isn't a figment of my own imagination, that my computer isn't the hallucination of someone stranded on a desert island for 20 years alone and finally driven insane. That I myself even have any real world existence - I could just be a brain hooked up to a computer, a la the Matrix.

However, I'd be a fool to live my life as though no one else existed outside of my head. The evidence shows that the earth is about 5 billion years old; that life is about 3 billion years old; that a global flood could never have occured; and that every animal on the planet could not be descended from a single bottle-necked pair after the flood. The simplest explanation is that the evidence is real and correct.

If you want to pretend that it was all created at once 6000 years ago, that's fine; you have a right to do so - but don't expect anyone who looks at the evidence to give you any respect for your beliefs, don't pretend it's science, and don't pretend that that fantasy has any more reality than the fantasy that fairies exist in the garden despite evidence to the contrary.

Sometimes I wish the clapping hands smiley was an option on this forum.
People have a right to whatever beliefs they wish, if other people consider this a functional impairment then that too is free choice, well said LKL, peace j

Depending upon your assumptions. There cannot be a correct answer without certain parameters for judgment. If I don't accept certain epistemological tools as being true then there is no way I can reach the same conclusion. If I relax the belief in reality then I can doubt easily. If I relax the belief in logic then there is nothing to stop me from reaching any conclusion, one has great difficulty with meta-epistemology because of the fact that you use the tools of your own epistemology to prove that your epistemology is true, which you argue is the problem with Christians and the bible.

I don't expect respect from most people for anything I say period. I never said it was science, science refers to a certain epistemological system, I denied the good of epistemology. Well, I never said anything about proving anything and haven't been working to prove things, I have only been attacking knowledge. Frankly, one can believe in garden fairies all they want unless they are a problem to me, I only care if they attack another system for being false.

Ok, I think I was arguing for free choice throughout this entire adventure though..... I just ended up countering most things by claiming a lack of truth necessary to force others to act in the "ideal" manner.

I am arguing that the Earth wasn't 6000 years old, there wasn't a global flood and it's not flat from scientific evidences, and science, no matter what you think of it, is not some mere philosophy. You can't compare the two that way; they're not necessarily compatible. Science is more than a philosophy. It is real. Science disproves that the Earth was 6000 years old, it was flat and that it might have been made in 5 minutes because scientific evidences say otherwise. You can't simply have an Earth that's 5 billion years old and 6000 years old. It's just not possible. I could provide you actual evidence that the Earth is 5 billion years old or isn't flat, but that's become trivial now. So when I argue for a 5 billion year old Earth that's more spherical than flat, I am speaking strictly from a scientific point of view; not a philosophical one.

And I do agree that people are free to believe what they want. I'm not saying people should stop believing in Christianity because their bible was wrong for making people believe the Earth was only 6000 years old or flat. That's up to them to decide. But I myself don't believe in Christianity because I know the Earth isn't 6000 years old or flat.

No, science IS a philosophy. Science was derived from a philosophy, any separation of science or promotion of science above philosophy is false as science merely describes the findings of a set of epistemological tools just like we could have other things found by other epistemological tools. Science cannot absolutely prove or disprove anything because science is a philosophical framework, it merely shows the findings of that framework. Yes, nobody is questioning logic at this point, nobody is stating that X can equal 2 things simultaneously. Avoiding the idea of a philosophical framework is ridiculous though, there is not a meta-philosophy.

Philosophy without confirmation in physical testing is mere speculation and generally useless. Science requires that a speculative thought be substantiated in tests.

Unprecedented Muslim call for peace with Christians (REUTERS)

LONDON (Reuters) - More than 130 Muslim scholars from around the globe called on Thursday for peace and understanding between Islam and Christianity, saying "the very survival of the world itself is perhaps at stake."

In an unprecedented letter to Pope Benedict and other Christian leaders, 138 Muslim scholars said finding common ground between the world's biggest faiths was not simply a matter for polite dialogue between religious leaders.

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