Posted on 01/26/2005 9:46:21 AM PST by 7thson
When I pulled into the parking lot this morning, I saw a car covered with sacrilegious bumper stickers. It seemed obvious to me that the owner was craving attention. I’m sure he was also seeking to elicit anger from people of faith. The anger helps the atheist to justify his atheism. And, all too often, the atheist gets exactly what he is looking for.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
> That answer marks you as an agnostic, not an atheist. The proper atheist answer is "worm-food".
Incorrect. tehre is no one proper atheist answer to that. To many it woudl be as you say. Other atheists might well believe in an afterlife or re-incarnation... just no gods involved.
> The point being?
The pint being: a flat satement that an atheist won;t ahve anything to say when asked what he/she beleives, or that an atheists believes *nothing*, is silly. Atheism only deals with the question of God. Many atheists believe in rather a lot of things. Just not gods, by definition.
> So morality is predicated on possession?
You would deny this? Is it ok if you want to, say, mash your TV? Is it ok if some total stranger does with without your permission? Is it even *possible* for you to steal your own TV from you?
How are you defining "hooliganism" here?
I think bumper stickers are pretty safe on 1st Amendment grounds, even if you personally happen to find them offensive or 'blasphemous'.
"I take atheists at their word, and the word is, they have an absence of a belief. Naturally, I ask, -- how do you celebrate that? I am collecting proposals...
"
It's a non-question. What to celebrate? I don't celebrate the lack of something. That would be completely illogical. My monuments are society's monuments. My monuments memorialize human achievements. It's simple.
Come on. That's not even close to being clever. Can't you make up a better one than that? Sheesh.
I do indeed. However, for the most part murder (even when gotten away with) provides little to no gain. Go back to the Nazi reference: what did it gain the Nazis to murder the Jews and the Roma? It's easy to see they would have done better to at the worst simply ignore them.
Does it matter whether a man marries a woman for love, or whether he marries her because it makes him more politically viable? Is marriage the same in either case?
Dan
Hard to tell that from your post:
For without God, life truly has no meaning whatsoever. Even the extermination of all mankind - or it's proliferation, would be totally irrelevant.
Do you think some people are unable to believe in God? Like they are just born that way?
Ethics, as defined by individual acceptance will displace morals as an overarching framework for community.
Offense will lead to swift retreat by the offender for fear of retribution and passers-by will be encouraged to pass by.
Since most of our bodily effort will be spent in the act of copulation, obesity will become a thing of the past along with drug addiction, alcoholism, smoking of harmful substances and all those other activities detrimental to recreation substituting for meaningful effort.
In perhaps less than a single generation, our biggest concern will be accidental procreation by backward and unenlightened tribes bent on disrupting the destiny of the groin.
First you talk about "True Christians", now you are talking about "true conservatives"
I think I got it, if they think like you, they are True conservatives or Christians.
Jesus never said He wasn't good. The rich young ruler approached Jesus and addressed Him as, "Good Teacher". Jesus replied, "Why do you call me good, there is none good but God."
What Jesus did was basically to challenge the man to make a decision about who Jesus was.
There are only two ways to take that verse. Either Jesus was claiming to be God. Or Jesus really meant that He wasn't good. But if Jesus wasn't good, then He wasn't a fit sacrifice for our sins. He would be in need of a Savior Himself.
Well, I don't know if you said that it wasn't illogical, exactly, but it was implied.
I think I've seen some "intellectual" reasons why some folks choose not to believe in God. I guess it depends on what you mean by intellectual, kwim?
The one that always interests me is the one with the fish that says "Darwin" in it. I had no idea that people worshipped Darwin.
Shalom.
Context Please! Jesus never said he was not Good. He ask " Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God" (see Matthew 19:17, Mark 10:18, and Luke 18:19). This is not a denial of His Goodness, but a question to the man to see if the man understood who Jesus was?
It all relates to another passage of scripture:
When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elijah; and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.
Matthew 16:13-17
Christ asks who others say He is. The response the disciples gave was John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. But it was Peter who could correctly answer the question.
> That's not even close to being clever. Can't you make up a better one than that?
I'm sure I could, but I'm not in the business of making up Christian bumper stickers.
Up till very recently in historical terms, the courts in the US defined public decency fairly restrictively and they were aware of the First Amendment. Direct non-argumentative blasphemy would not be tolerated.
Why hooliganism is a peculiar trait of atheist is explained in my first port here, #76
an atheist monument is absence of a monument. An atheist bumper sticker is absence of a bumper sticker. Since that is not satisfying to some atheists, instead of proclaiming their atheism they need to vandalize my monuments or insult my religion.
I think there is a difference. An atheist believes in something, even if it is that there is no God. An agnostic admits that he truly does not know.
Perhaps so. But if you want to get all technical and mathematical, then you also have to acknowledge that asserting the existence of God makes a mathematically poorer hypothesis than not. Occam's Razor and all that, since we are dragging algorithmic information theory into the discussion.
If we are being strictly rigorous in a mathematical sense, both sets of hypotheses (those that assert the existence of God and those that do not) are perfectly valid. However, by the same mathematics, the set of hypotheses that assert the existence of God are decidedly inferior in terms of the probability of being correct.
If you are a betting man, the place you put your money is obvious. Believing a hypothesis that asserts the existence of God is not necessarily irrational, but it most certainly is not the hypothesis most likely to be correct. Which is fine; I do not care what people believe as long as they recognize the limitations of their beliefs and the assertions they can make about said beliefs.
"Any Christian on this thread believe that salvation is through works?"
Probably not. The book of James, however, seems appropriate to mention here. If someone is a Christian, surely that belief will be reflected in their "works." A Christian would naturally be inclined to imitate Christ, and so would behave accordingly.
That does not mean that their "works" are the source of their salvation. Rather, their "works" are the evidence of their committment to a walk in Jesus' footsteps.
That's my understanding of the concept, anyhow.
It's impossible to deny that many atheists do "works" that cannot be distinguished from those of Christians. Anyone who knows more than a couple of atheists can attest to that.
So, what's the difference between the "works?" I say that there is no difference. The atheist does them because they are right to do. The Christian does them for the same reason, not to "build up treasures," but because they are right to do.
The bottom line is that there are good and evil people in both camps. While it's easy to say that someone doing bad things cannot really be a Christian, many claim to be such. The atheist who does good things cannot claim those acts to be because of his atheism, either.
What a person does...how a person behaves...is independent of his religious claims. I can watch a person and see how he or she behaves in a situation and decide whether that person is doing the right thing or the wrong thing. I cannot deduce from that what that person's religion might be, however.
The Samaritan's story is apt here.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.