youtooellen
New Yorker
- Joined
- Apr 5, 2005
- Messages
- 2,580
Most of us evangelize about stuff that's important to us whether people want to hear it or not. We just call it something else.
Excellent point.
I push my friends into listening to U2.
Most of us evangelize about stuff that's important to us whether people want to hear it or not. We just call it something else.
Believers are the ones for coexistence.
We all know atheists don't believe in anything.
How do you know what someone else believes in.
I hope some day people would finally stop judging someone who doesn't believe the same as they do.
I may be an atheist, but I have plenty of things I believe in. And we don't murder people or start wars for what we believe in.
Atheists believe more in coexistance than you will ever understand.
Don't worry, I would.
It was an explicit reference to my position that atheists are not defined by any particular beliefs, and I struggle to come up with any common features that atheists embrace in the same way that Christians do with Christ's divinity or Muslims do for Mohammed's claims of revelation.Oh, that's just deep being deep.
He's not a religious person either.
I have no problem accepting other peoples right to believe, and respecting that, but I reserve the right to defend my position against the slanderous ideas that atheists are immoral, backstabbing, unprincipled, and hopeless.Haha, an excuse for your actions?
Some of the replies to this thread sound pretty ethnocentric. I'm South Korean and my ancestors were all Buddhists. Somehow, somewhere my family converted to Christianity.
I noticed that there aren't as many "religion wars" over there. My parents tell me that in comparison to America (the only other nation they've lived in, haha), Korea seems to be much more understanding towards each others faiths.
I'm not singling out other regions around the globe, but I just wanted to point out that maybe we're asking all the wrong questions here. It isn't the existence of God that we should be flustered over, but rather why we can't be accepting and understanding of each other and each others beliefs.
Oh, and yes. I guess your question has been answered, iron horse... there seem to be many Christians here.
I wouldn't expect you to, although from a strategic standpoint appealing to peoples emotions is an area of rhetoric that atheists ought to employ more frequently; it definitely is not a position which requires the existence of bad theology for contrast.But I think that may be because you are, in fact my brother, and this whole Aussie thing is just a cover
Just kidding. . .it's just that your particular approach to non-belief is so similar to my brother's sometimes, I swear I want to ask: "Vince . . .is that you?"
Seriously, though, I'd happily engage some of the questions you raised, but somehow I'm not sure I'd be listened to. It sounds like you've already made up your mind. . .which is fine too, but I don't really feel like I need to challenge atheists on their lack of faith. Sometimes I think unbelief is a better place to be than to be a certain kind of believer.
Seriously, a nonbeliever could just as easily be a new ager, nihilist, positivist or dialectical materialist.
You would be surprised at how much alike, these four belief systems are.
Most of us evangelize about stuff that's important to us whether people want to hear it or not. We just call it something else.
There are many similarities, which is great, but the differences are huge.
True and Christ seems to be the focal point. For Jews, Christians and Muslims. What I embrace from the four religions is the message of love. I feel it helps me to be a better person.
A_W,
do you think there are some people who's lives have been immeasurably improved by their belief in God? do you think there are addicts of all kinds who literally owe their lives to a belief in a higher power? do you think that a higher power is often the motivator behind many altruistic endeavors, including the Bush administration's single clear success increasing funding for AIDS in Africa? if you take a look at the collective charity amassed by all the believers in the world, does this perhaps negate, atone for, or even make up for all the violence and persecution perpetrated by all the believers in the world?
is the Declaration of Independence (or, even, the Enlightenment) impossible to imagine without a belief in a Higher Power wherein the eyes of said Higher Power there's a universal equality, the right to all be treated the same, the understanding that all life has value whether it's a king or a shepherd?
how do you think other highly intellectual individuals, including several on this board, are able to easily live with their faith and see none of the contradictions that you've elucidated, or they're simply not bothered by them?
A_W,
do you think there are some people who's lives have been immeasurably improved by their belief in God? do you think there are addicts of all kinds who literally owe their lives to a belief in a higher power? do you think that a higher power is often the motivator behind many altruistic endeavors, including the Bush administration's single clear success increasing funding for AIDS in Africa? if you take a look at the collective charity amassed by all the believers in the world, does this perhaps negate, atone for, or even make up for all the violence and persecution perpetrated by all the believers in the world?
is the Declaration of Independence (or, even, the Enlightenment) impossible to imagine without a belief in a Higher Power wherein the eyes of said Higher Power there's a universal equality, the right to all be treated the same, the understanding that all life has value whether it's a king or a shepherd?
how do you think other highly intellectual individuals, including several on this board, are able to easily live with their faith and see none of the contradictions that you've elucidated, or they're simply not bothered by them?
I have no problem accepting other peoples right to believe
Yes you do. Daily.
How enriching a belief system is to a person has nothing to do with the veracity of the claims, the evidence that in dominantly religious countries such as America where most community activity (which makes people lead happier lives) demands religious engagement does not make the claims at all true.A_W,
do you think there are some people who's lives have been immeasurably improved by their belief in God? do you think there are addicts of all kinds who literally owe their lives to a belief in a higher power? do you think that a higher power is often the motivator behind many altruistic endeavors, including the Bush administration's single clear success increasing funding for AIDS in Africa? if you take a look at the collective charity amassed by all the believers in the world, does this perhaps negate, atone for, or even make up for all the violence and persecution perpetrated by all the believers in the world?
is the Declaration of Independence (or, even, the Enlightenment) impossible to imagine without a belief in a Higher Power wherein the eyes of said Higher Power there's a universal equality, the right to all be treated the same, the understanding that all life has value whether it's a king or a shepherd?
how do you think other highly intellectual individuals, including several on this board, are able to easily live with their faith and see none of the contradictions that you've elucidated, or they're simply not bothered by them?
Yes you do. Daily.
Obviously some people have difficulty with honesty, it makes them uncomfortable.So critiquing beliefs is denying others right to believe??
Obviously some people have difficulty with honesty, it makes them uncomfortable.
Personally I don't think so, but it is impossible to accept the notion that we possess 'inalienable human rights' without abandoning the thinking that every idea we accept must be empirically verifiable. Of course we can (retrospectively?) argue that thinking 'As If' it were true has benefits which can be appreciated rationally (which puts it in a different category from 'belief'), but that still doesn't make it empirically true; and furthermore, I would question whether anyone who claims to accept it only insofar as it's a rationally useful 'As If' is in truth representing their own thought process accurately. It may 'feel' or 'seem' "self-evident," but in reality there isn't any evidence for it.is the Declaration of Independence (or, even, the Enlightenment) impossible to imagine without a belief in a Higher Power wherein the eyes of said Higher Power there's a universal equality, the right to all be treated the same, the understanding that all life has value whether it's a king or a shepherd?
I wouldn't put it this way exactly. Comparing answers to the question "Was Jesus divine?" can objectively speaking be one convenient, if Christian-centric, means of distinguishing doctrinally between the three. But calling that a "focal point" makes it sound as if ideas about Jesus specifically are internally significant to each religion's theology, when at least in Judaism's case they aren't: it's not that Jesus is discussed and 'rejected' in classic rabbinic Jewish theology, rather he simply isn't discussed at all; he doesn't figure in the Talmud (nor do 'Christians'), and not until medieval times when Jews lived as a diaspora minority in Christian- or Muslim-controlled lands do we finally see explicit rejections of Jesus' status *as defined by Christianity or Islam* being formally articulated *with reference to Jewish doctrine*. Whereas, as late as the era when the Talmud underwent final redaction (late 4th cen. AD for the Jerusalem edition, late 5th-early 7th cen. AD for the Babylonian edition), this simply doesn't seem to have been considered a theologically significant matter by rabbinic authorities. The case of Islam is rather different, because the Koran and hadith taken together furnish quite a bit of theological doctrine proper concerning Jesus, who's clearly accorded considerable significance, albeit not considered divine, nor as important a prophet as Muhammad.True and Christ seems to be the focal point. For Jews, Christians and Muslims.
No, I have difficulty with hostility and self-righteousness masquerading as honesty.
If you're so very respectful of believers, then what the point of your Science/Religion incompatibility thread?