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I heard if you declare yourself atheist there is a 45% chance you have toast ed at least once in your life.
Run, children...RUN!!!!
I heard if you declare yourself atheist there is a 45% chance you have toast ed at least once in your life.
I love your "No True Scotsman" fallacy. "Oh, they SAID they were religious, but really, they can't be." Give me a break.
I love how you blur 'atheists' with 'communists' and 'fascists'.
See how I did that? Well, I would say, at the very least all three have one thing in common; they are egocentric. And, to be fair, I contend -- regardless of their claims -- Mao Tse Dong, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and a whole host of other murderous communists and fascists would, by virtue of their actions and megalomania, have to be athiest, whether they professed that or something else or nothing at all.
In fact, in the company of the above three, only Adolf Hitler pretended to be doing his killing for a greater good -- as evil as his logic may have been...by all accounts, Dong and Stalin were only interested in self-preservation.
It's turtles all the way down!
I'm a Christian and I do believe that God is real and that he created us and not some big bang theory going around. I believe he did give us free will to choose our pathway in life and the Bible as how he wants us to live if we choose to do it instead of making everybody be the same and do the same thing. Yes at times in my Christian life I have doubted it and as a human being it's hard to always believe but then sometimes when you look at life and see just how complex everything is including how we work I just can't imagine it coming from nowhere and nothing. Yes I believe in the Bible and I try to follow it the best I can but I'm not going to force my beliefs on other people. People are going to choose for themselves what they're going to believe and what they're going to do.
Even Leviticus? Or is the bible to be cherry-picked?
Yeah, all these literalistic readers of the Bible should have dreads if they want to be taken seriously.
And I contend that, in fact, every person who's ever said they were atheist was actually a hard-core religious person. See how fun it is to play this game?
Being religious means believing in a religion, not necessarily following the tenets of that religion.
Being religious or not has nothing to do with those who seek power. Those who are not religious will seek power for their own ends; those who are religious will seek power for their own ends and either claim it for themselves or in the name of their God.
And atheism still does not mean either fascism or communism. To blur the lines there is ridiculous.
There are plenty of religious people who don't seek such power. There are plenty of atheists who don't either.
Leviticus by far is the strangest book in the Bible.
Read Revelation much?
If you define religion as belief, that'd be correct. Believing there is no God is as much religious as believing there is one.
True. And, if you believe in Christianity you will try to follow the tenets. I would submit Dong, Stalin, and Hitler did not believe in whatever religions they've been associated with (either by themselves, historians, or associates) or they would not have committed the atrocities they did. Further, that none of them ascribed their actions to any faith or religious belief only further demonstrates their lack of belief and points, more credibly, to their probable athiesm.
It's in how they seek and maintain power that is the defining criteria.
I would contend fascists and communists are more likely than not to be athiests. At least, in the sense they do not believe in God or they would not be capable of their actions.
There are only so many powerful positions to be attained. Not every believer or non-believer has the opportunity, means, or strive to seek power.
This is really not the forum to be talking about GOD if you really want intelligent answers, after all half the posters in here actually think fuel from a plane brought down three steel framed buildings all in one day.
I could tell you all how this Earth really came about, but to be honest I don't think your little brains could handle it.
No, no, no. Belief is slightly different from religion. I can believe in a God, but not be religious. To me, being religious means following (a majority of)the customs/cultures/rules of that religion. Hitler believed in God, but I'm not sure if he was very religious.
Hitler did actually make mention of his belief, in a few different instances. http://www.nobeliefs.com/hitler.htm. I'm not sure if he was particularly religious though. You could say that he did not follow the tenets of the Christian faith, but many people do not. Even many Christians rule out other brands of Christians as not being 'true' followers of the faith. But Hitler definitely was not an atheist.
Perhaps, but without statistics it's mainly mental masturbation. Still, more likely does not make them equal. Even IF atheists were more likely to be communists/fascists, that would not mean they take blame for anything initiated by communists/fascists.
As far as the seeking power goes, my point was that it is not religion or lack of religion that decides whether a person has a thirst for power.
I'm not sure you can make the definitive claim Hitler believed in God. Nothing he did in his latter life revealed a belief in a higher power.
Unless it is precisely because of a communist's or fascist's lack of belief that failed to restrain their actions.
Yes, people who claim to be Christian (or religious) perpetrate heinous crimes -- sometimes in the name of their belief or on the sincere belief it is in accordance with their belief. But, my contention is, at the core of their being, they do not believe in a higher power simply because they allowed their own motivations (or interpretation of their belief system) cause them to do something any objective person would know is anathema to a belief in God.
But, a belief in a higher power is more likely to restrain an abuse of power than is a belief in nothing more than self.
Do they invade other countries in the name of atheism?
No. Argument over, move along.
Anyone who thinks man came from an Ape deserves to be one.
What kind of sense does that make? Of course, they don't -- who was ever motivated by non-belief? But, instead, they are unrestrained in their actions by a lack of accountability to a higher power.
After reading some of these posts I am convinced man came from an ape!
Stop watching Fox News now. It is not a belief system; it is a classification. As for the second sentenceThat argument is schoolyard.
They're called atheist.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/agnostic
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/atheist
Last edited by Darrin; 12-12-2008 at 01:52 PM.
so then what point are you trying to make here?
the point on the opposite side is that wars were started for religious reasons.
No, the opposite of a religious war is one that is absent a religious context.
Atheism isn't non-belief. You have to believe religion has the answers to have that at ude. I look at current belief systems like I look at the Greek gods: it's a fairy tale someone made up a long time ago and has been disproven by science. It is history, motivation, and art, but it's not real. And when it's motivation it is sad. Reality is much more interesting and promotes more peace.
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