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1 posted on 11/11/2009 2:02:10 PM PST by GodGunsGuts
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To: spirited irish; metmom; DaveLoneRanger; editor-surveyor; betty boop; Alamo-Girl; MrB; GourmetDan; ..

Well worth reading...PING!


2 posted on 11/11/2009 2:04:55 PM PST by GodGunsGuts
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To: GodGunsGuts

This is an interesting read, but are you in charge of the creationist ping or something.

As for atheists, we don’t need to rehash all their ailments again do we? It’s par for the course that an atheist will always try to manipulate others for their own gain, since the atheist denies the judge and, by default, holds values like honor, and integrity and honesty in contempt.

Ask any psychologist about the sociopathic personality and they will sum it up that the sociopath believes that everyone else shares their complete lack of empathy for others only for “good public face” they pretend to care. A sociopathic murderer will smirk and think to themselves “Good grief” when he sees the mother of the teenage girl he raped and murdered start to cry on the stand at trial.

The atheist is on a par with this, not that all atheists are murderers, but they think in similar manners to the sociopathic murderer.

Maybe atheism could be classified as a sociopathic disorder?

No offense intended.


3 posted on 11/11/2009 2:15:22 PM PST by BertWheeler (Dance and the World Dances With You!)
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To: GodGunsGuts

I see Bud Collier, Tom Poston, Kitty Carlisle, and Orson Bean. Where’s Peggy Cass?


4 posted on 11/11/2009 2:17:01 PM PST by Wacka
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To: GodGunsGuts

Thank you for the variety.


5 posted on 11/11/2009 2:22:54 PM PST by UCANSEE2
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To: GodGunsGuts
Darwin started off hard-core Christian, even considering a career in clergy.
"I liked the thought of being a country clergyman. Accordingly I read with care Pearson on the Creed and a few other books on divinity; and as I did not then in the least doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible, I soon persuaded myself that our Creed must be fully accepted."
Even on the Beagle he surprised other officers with how devout he was. His research led him to agnosticism, and the death of his daughter sealed it.
6 posted on 11/11/2009 2:25:14 PM PST by antiRepublicrat
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To: GodGunsGuts

Evangelical atheism = social autism


13 posted on 11/11/2009 3:41:13 PM PST by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus (There are only two REAL conservatives in America - myself, and my chosen Presidential candidate)
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To: GodGunsGuts

Interesting article, GGG. However, while intellectually fascinating, I fail to see the connection between Darwin’s religious beliefs and the objective scientific truth (or otherwise) of his work.


18 posted on 11/11/2009 4:41:56 PM PST by Rafterman ("If you kill enough of them, they stop fighting." -- Curtis LeMay)
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To: GodGunsGuts
Why does the question of Darwin's religious beliefs, specifically, belief in God, matter since the gentleman has been moldering away lo these many years?

What a person believes affects how they interpret the world around them, their worldview in the popular usage. And how the world molds their beliefs.

And young Master Darwin did a great deal of interpreting, assigning of causes to the effects he observed, viewing the world through the lens his world had ground.

Had Darwin been a profoundly religious man and a firm believer in the truth and inspiration of the Bible that would be just as important to know of him and how it affected him.

37 posted on 11/12/2009 10:07:09 AM PST by count-your-change (You don't have be brilliant, not being stupid is enough.)
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To: GodGunsGuts
In Germany militant Darwinismus elevated Darwin to heroic status. When the eminent Freethinker Doctor Ludwig Büchner requested an audience he thought he was greeting a noble ally. To Darwin this was a grotesque misunderstanding, but he felt unable to refuse. Darwin's wife Emma Darwin expressed her expectation that their guest "will refrain from airing his very strong religious opinions" and invited their old friend the Revd. Brodie Innes. On Thursday 28 September 1881 Büchner arrived with Edward Aveling. Darwin's son Frank was also present. Darwin wittily explained that "[Brodie] & I have been fast friends for 30 years. We never thoroughly agreed on any subject but once and then we looked at each other and thought one of us must be very ill".

In uncharacteristically bold discussions after dinner Darwin asked his guests "Why do you call yourselves Atheists?" When they responded that they "did not commit the folly of god-denial, [and] avoided with equal care the folly of god-assertion", Darwin gave a thoughtful response, concluding that "I am with you in thought, but I should prefer the word Agnostic to the word Atheist." Aveling replied that, "after all, 'Agnostic' was but 'Atheist' writ respectable, and 'Atheist' was only 'Agnostic' writ aggressive." Darwin smiled and responded "Why should you be so aggressive? Is anything gained by trying to force these new ideas upon the mass of mankind? It is all very well for educated, cultured, thoughtful people; but are the masses yet ripe for it?" Aveling and Büchner questioned what would have happened if Darwin had been given that advice before publication of the Origin, and had confined "the revolutionary truths of Natural and Sexual Selection to the judicious few", where would the world be? Many feared danger if new ideas were "proclaimed abroad on the house-tops, and discussed in market-place and home. But he, happily for humanity, had by the gentle, irresistible power of reason, forced his new ideas upon the mass of the people. And the masses had been found ripe for it. Had he kept silence, the tremendous strides taken by human thought during the last twenty-one years would have been shorn of their fair proportions, perhaps had hardly been made at all. His own illustrious example was encouragement, was for a command to every thinker to make known to all his fellows that which he believed to be the truth."

Their talk turned to religion, and Darwin said ""I never gave up Christianity until I was forty years of age." He agreed that Christianity was "not supported by the evidence", but he had reached this conclusion only slowly. Aveling recorded this discussion, and published it in 1883 as a penny pamphlet. Francis Darwin thought it gave "quite fairly his impressions of my father's views, but took issue with any suggestion of similar religious views, saying "My father's replies implied his preference for the unaggressive attitude of an Agnostic. Dr. Aveling seems to regard the absence of aggressiveness in my father's views as distinguishing them in an unessential manner from his own. But, in my judgment, it is precisely differences of this kind which distinguish him so completely from the class of thinkers to which Dr. Aveling belongs." Wikipedia

41 posted on 11/12/2009 1:42:08 PM PST by x
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