What about us atheists? Where do we stand?

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Maoilbheannacht said:


Once again, I never said anyone had to leave or get out of anything because of their beliefs. It should be noted that Adam obviously does not have a problem with his bands strong faith and spiritual beliefs and was even quoted on the ELEVATION tour saying that "God was walking through the room" on many nights.

Relax, I was just being silly. :wink:
 
Originally posted by dazzlingamy Its all so easy to say 'oh god did it' but, it opens up a lot more questions then answering anything.
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That's not how I see it at all. I would have a harder time believing that it all came from nothing than to believe that it was created by someone who has no beginning or end. Either stance involves a degree of faith, to be honest.
 
VintagePunk said:


You choose to believe that a supernatural being put the process into motion. Having seen no evidence for this, I don't. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

That was my point, that athiesm is based on belief and not science every bit as much as being a God believer is. You said that current scientific knowledge points to there being no creator. That is incorrect, because when you get to the question of "Was there an intelligent being that put the Big Bang into motion", there is nothing that can be accurately stated except one's own opinion.
 
80sU2isBest said:


That was my point, that athiesm is based on belief and not science every bit as much as being a God believer is. You said that current scientific knowledge points to there being no creator. That is incorrect, because when you get to the question of "Was there an intelligent being that put the Big Bang into motion", there is nothing that can be accurately stated except one's own opinion.

IMO, you inserting a being who has not been shown to exist scientifically is a larger leap than my view that it was set off by a random event. Occam's Razor.
 
VintagePunk said:


IMO, you inserting a being who has not been shown to exist scientifically is a larger leap than my view that it was set off by a random event. Occam's Razor.

Think about all the conditions that would have had to occur by complete coincidence in order for the Big bang to happen and then for evolution to occur without a creator. Now tell me that anything even close to that magnitude has ever been observed. Can't think of anything? Welcome to the world of faith.
 
I can't think of anything else because that's obviously the biggest thing ever - existence as we know it. There IS nothing bigger.

So, I'm not feeling the faith just yet. Nice try, though. :wink:
 
VintagePunk said:
I can't think of anything else because that's obviously the biggest thing ever - existence as we know it. There IS nothing bigger.

So, I'm not feeling the faith just yet. Nice try, though. :wink:

Sure you are. You have a belief in something you can't see nor have ever observed, nor have you seen or observed or can provide any proof for anything that even comes close to an event of such magnitude.

You can't prove it, but you believe it. That's called faith.
 
I honesty don't care if anyone in here believes my beliefes are a figment of my imagination. I hear it all the time already (as do all christians) and I've learned to take it with a grain of salt.

If you truly have faith in something you won't have the "boohoo you insulted my faith and hurt my feelings!!" attitude.
 
shart1780 said:
If you truly have faith in something you won't have the "boohoo you insulted my faith and hurt my feelings!!" attitude.

That's kind of what I've been thinking all along. If your faith is that strong, then people who don't share that faith shouldn't threaten it. :up:
 
80sU2isBest said:


Sure you are. You have a belief in something you can't see nor have ever observed, nor have you seen or observed or can provide any proof for anything that even comes close to an event of such magnitude.

You can't prove it, but you believe it. That's called faith.

Semantics. I call it a logical acceptance of the direction that current scientific knowledge is pointing towards.
 
VintagePunk said:


Semantics. I call it a logical acceptance of the direction that current scientific knowledge is pointing towards.

Not, it's not semantics, because "no creator" is not the direction toward which current scientific knowledge is pointing.
 
shart1780 said:
If you truly have faith in something you won't have the "boohoo you insulted my faith and hurt my feelings!!" attitude.

I do truly have faith, thank you very much. I won't say anything else about the discussion I was having with Amy, because I said everything I wanted to already.
 
shart1780 said:
If you truly have faith in something you won't have the "boohoo you insulted my faith and hurt my feelings!!" attitude.
I appreciate what you're saying from a logical POV, but emotionally speaking, that's not always how human beings work. A person might be hypersensitive to remarks that could potentially be interpreted as suggesting they're morally corrupt, on the basis of some aspect of their beliefs or lifestyle, because they have painful memories of having been cut off from friends or family on those grounds. Or they might be hypersensitive to potential implications that they're stupid because they grew up watching one parent repeatedly insult the other's intelligence and thus have an over-the-top determination that no one ever speak to them that way. I'm certainly not suggesting that anything like this is always the case, however, I don't think one can ever know quite why someone else's buttons always seem to get pushed over some particular issue, and therefore one shouldn't jump to conclusions about what precisely accounts for that. It may not really have anything to do with said issue at all.
 
80sU2isBest said:


If I said a car was not designed or created by anyone, that it just happened out of mere coincidence and circumstance, you'd think I was nuts. But yet you believe that this is how the world began; that the big bang just happened out of pure circumstance and coincidence. You know that a car can't just assemble itself without a designer/creator, so why do you think the world just assembled itself without a designer/creator?
A car doesn't replicate with variation and pass down heritable information in it's genes, a car isn't a concequence of organic chemistry - you can't just take higher forms of life and say thats where it all started from - you need to take the most basic nucleotide sequence that could metabolise and self-replicate and from that natural selection acted and more complex life forms appeared, evidence for this goes all the way back to the Urey-Miller Experiment where the building blocks of life could be created from raw abiotic materials in an ealy earth type reducing atmosphere, it also encompasses the genetic evidence and commonality in organisms from earth.

It's pure circumstance that on the entire surface of the earth and possibly mars a permutation of amino acids arose that could replicate and metabolise but the evolutionary pressures are what lead to the more complex forms. If you can't think in terms of evolution then no biology makes any sense, including the origin of life.
 
80sU2isBest said:


Angela, you are wrong about my intention. I am not trying to prove the worth of my views. I simply want everyone to abide by the same rules in these forums. In short, if I am expected to respect other's views, I expect people to respect mine. To explain further, I'll copy and paste part of what I wrote to Amy.

When people say "figment of imagination" they aren't talking about faith, they are saying "it doesn't exist". When you say God is a figment of imagination, you are disrespecting the beliefs of many people who believe in God. You are basically saying "Your beliefs are nothing more than mere imagination; there is nothing to them".

What I would hope for is a bit of respect for our views, not to have them dismissed as a "figment of my imagination". In this forum, Christians are expected to respect all views; if I were to tell you my views on Athiesm, it would raise a ruckus - people would accuse me of not being "tolerant" and being "disrespectful" of other viewoints. And yet, you feel that you have the right to disrespect my views by calling it a "figment of my imagination".
Thats just all kinds of wrong, you can maintain civil debate without granting respect to peoples views, especially when those views encompass the toxic and retrograde mechanisms of the human mind. The idea of tollerance extends up to being able to abide by peoples right to believe whatever they want to but at the same time it doesn't imbue protections of feelings, there is no right to have beliefs protected from criticism or challenge and that cuts over whichever school of thought one is coming from.
 
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A_Wanderer said:
Thats just all kinds of wrong, you can maintain civil debate without granting respect to peoples views, especially when those views encompass the toxic and retrograde mechanisms of the human mind. The idea of tollerance extends up to being able to abide by peoples right to believe whatever they want to but at the same time it doesn't imbue protections of feelings, there is no right to have beliefs protected from criticism or challenge and that cuts over whichever school of thought one is coming from.

Wanderer, that may be true in real life, but that doesn't apply here. People on this forum quite often rasie a big fuss about "respecting others' views". My point is that if a certain group of people are expected to be respectful, everyone should be expected to be respectful.
 
JMScoopy said:
religion is the cause of the majority, by far, of history's wars

Really? Can you name all the wars and what their causes were? I can't think of one single war that the United States has been in that has been a "religious war", including the current war. Just because Bush believes that it was God's will that we attack Saddam does not make it a "religious war". We didn't attack Iraq to wage war with Muslims. The other wars we've been in don't even have a religious context at all, except for World War 2, and that was Hitler waging war against the Jews. By the way, did you know that Hitler said that Christianity was a plague upon the earth that needed to be done away with?
 
80sU2isBest said:


By the way, did you know that Hitler said that Christianity was a plague upon the earth that needed to be done away with?

Hitler sure did hit the nail on the head that day.

JMScoopy also hit the nail on the head. Almost every single war pre 20th century was based on religion.

from the crusades in the 12th century to the british colonial wars in the 19th century.

etc etc
 
80sU2isBest said:


Really? Can you name all the wars and what their causes were? I can't think of one single war that the United States has been in that has been a "religious war", including the current war. Just because Bush believes that it was God's will that we attack Saddam does not make it a "religious war". We didn't attack Iraq to wage war with Muslims. The other wars we've been in don't even have a religious context at all, except for World War 2, and that was Hitler waging war against the Jews. By the way, did you know that Hitler said that Christianity was a plague upon the earth that needed to be done away with?


i dont rember saying ALL wars were over religion.

did i say Iraq was a religious war? and was i talking only about the united states? :scratch:

here ya go, a list of a few religious wars or wars with religious undertones

ever hear of The Crusades?

The Seven Years' War (Britain & France)
The American Revolution
The French Revolution
The Napoleonic Wars (France & Europe)
The Revolutions in the Americas
The Wars to create and preserve the British Empire (Boer War, Irish Revolution, and the Great Game with Russia would all be examples)
The American Civil War
The Crimean War
The Spanish-American War
The Great War, The War to End All Wars, or World War I (whatever you want to call it)
The Italian invasion of Ethiopia
The Spanish Civil War
Stalin's invasions of Finland, the Baltic states, and Poland
World War II
The Chinese Revolution
The Cold War, including but not limited to the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, the American intervention in Grenada, and the Soviet campaign in Afghanistan
The Cultural Revolution in China (If you don't want to call this a war I'll concede it)
Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge Revolution
The Six Day War
The Falklands War
The Persian Gulf War between Iran & Iraq
The Persian Gulf War between the United Nations and Iraq
The Breakup of Yugoslavia (beginning with Slovenia)

here is a more recent list:

Afghanistan Extreme, radical Fundamentalist Muslim terrorist groups & non-Muslims
Bosnia Serbian Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholic), Muslims
Côte d'Ivoire Muslims, Indigenous, Christian
Cyprus Christians & Muslims
East Timor Christians & Muslims
India Animists, Hindus, Muslims & Sikhs
Indonesia, province of Ambon Christians & Muslims
Indonesia, province of Halmahera Christians & Muslims
Kashmir Hindus & Muslims
Kosovo Serbian Orthodox Christians & Muslims
Kurdistan Christians, Muslims
Macedonia Macedonian Orthodox Christians & Muslims
Middle East Jews, Muslims, & Christians
Nigeria Christians, Animists, & Muslims
Northern Ireland Protestants, Catholics
Pakistan Suni & Shi'ite Muslims
Philippines Christians & Muslims
Russia,
Chechnya Russian Orthodox Christians, Muslims
South Africa Animists & "Witches"
Sri Lanka Buddhists & Hindus
Sudan Animists, Christians & Muslims
Tibet Buddhists & Communists
Uganda Animists, Christians, & Muslims

i await your reply :madspit:
 
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JMScoopy said:



did i say Iraq was a religious war? :scratch:

here ya go, a list of a few religious wars or wars with religious undertones

The Crusades
The Seven Years' War (Britain & France)
The American Revolution
The French Revolution
The Napoleonic Wars (France & Europe)
The Revolutions in the Americas
The Wars to create and preserve the British Empire (Boer War, Irish Revolution, and the Great Game with Russia would all be examples)
The American Civil War
The Crimean War
The Spanish-American War
The Great War, The War to End All Wars, or World War I (whatever you want to call it)
The Italian invasion of Ethiopia
The Spanish Civil War
Stalin's invasions of Finland, the Baltic states, and Poland
World War II
The Chinese Revolution
The Cold War, including but not limited to the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, the American intervention in Grenada, and the Soviet campaign in Afghanistan
The Cultural Revolution in China (If you don't want to call this a war I'll concede it)
Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge Revolution
The Six Day War
The Falklands War
The Persian Gulf War between Iran & Iraq
The Persian Gulf War between the United Nations and Iraq
The Breakup of Yugoslavia (beginning with Slovenia)
Afghanistan Extreme, radical Fundamentalist Muslim terrorist groups & non-Muslims
Bosnia Serbian Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholic), Muslims
Côte d'Ivoire Muslims, Indigenous, Christian
Cyprus Christians & Muslims
East Timor Christians & Muslims
India Animists, Hindus, Muslims & Sikhs
Indonesia, province of Ambon Christians & Muslims
Indonesia, province of Halmahera Christians & Muslims
Kashmir Hindus & Muslims
Kosovo Serbian Orthodox Christians & Muslims
Kurdistan Christians, Muslims
Macedonia Macedonian Orthodox Christians & Muslims
Middle East Jews, Muslims, & Christians
Nigeria Christians, Animists, & Muslims
Northern Ireland Protestants, Catholics
Pakistan Suni & Shi'ite Muslims
Philippines Christians & Muslims
Russia,
Chechnya Russian Orthodox Christians, Muslims
South Africa Animists & "Witches"
Sri Lanka Buddhists & Hindus
Sudan Animists, Christians & Muslims
Tibet Buddhists & Communists
Uganda Animists, Christians, & Muslims

and the rest
 
yolland said:

Do you realize the implications of what you're saying?


yeah , I wish Christianity never existed .

so wot ? i dont want you all killed , i just want you all to reconsider
 
vaz02 said:



yeah , I wish Christianity never existed .

so wot ? i dont want you all killed , i just want you all to reconsider

So you would impose your views onto them, or wish their religion out of existence? That's just as wrong as us being force-fed religion. It works both ways. We *all* need to have tolerance.
 
^ exactly. As I said earlier, I don't care if you believe in a God or not, the point is, not assuming everyone else is going along with you.

I think thats another thing that frustrates me. I DO believe this Iraq War and so forth has religious undertones because you mention God once and boom, its all out in the open, Christians vs Muslims, the age old battle continues yada yada yada. It annoys me that GWB says 'God told me' and what? I'm supposed to be ever greatful that the divine God spoke through a joke of a man and that therefore he can go do anything he likes because he's on a mission. I hate that he would say something like that, and ARROGANTLY think that people would understand and accept the fact that God indeed did speak to him, or that he is doing this and attacking the axis of evil under the guidance of the 'right God' i mean how PRESUMPTUOUS can you be?

Blah! Go and preach your ideas, but don't act like we're all with you under this one religious unbrella!
 
JMScoopy said:



i dont rember saying ALL wars were over religion.

did i say Iraq was a religious war? and was i talking only about the united states? :scratch:

I didn't say that you did say "all". The reason i asked you to list all the wars and their causes is because I am curious as to how someone can say that the majority of wars were fought over reliogion if they don't know the causes of all the wars.
 
80sU2isBest said:


I didn't say that you did say "all". The reason i asked you to list all the wars and their causes is because I am curious as to how someone can say that the majority of wars were fought over reliogion if they don't know the causes of all the wars.

did you see the list? :lol:

who says i dont know causes of wars? i accually paid attention to history classes in highschool and college.
 
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vaz02 said:



yeah , I wish Christianity never existed .

Millions of formerly hungry people in the US and all over the world would certainy disagree with you on that. Do you realize how much good Christians and other people who have faith in God have done for the world? Do you realize how many major charities in the world were founded by Christians and other people who have faith in God?
 
JMScoopy said:


did you see the list? :lol:

I haven't studied your list, so I'm not sure how accurate it is. But even if you are 100% accurate about all those wars being fought over religion, do you really think that your list comprises the majority of wars that have happened?

But I do know the American Civil War. believe me, I know the Civil war. I used to know more about it than I knew about anything. That war had nothing to do with religion.

I would think that the greed for land and natural and wealth resources has been at the root of far more wars than religion.
 
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