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How to talk to an atheist (and you must)
Townhall.com ^ | January 24, 2005 | Mike S. Adams

Posted on 01/26/2005 9:46:21 AM PST by 7thson

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To: missyme

"They could of said I have to die no getting out of it, I can choose to beleive I will spend eternity in the dirt or I can choose to beleive that GOD will catch me when I jump and will lead me with him in Paradise..It is a choice Mineral Man.
"

It would still make no difference in their decision whether to jump or burn. Would your deity not save them either way.

I would have the same decision to make if I were in that situation...to jump or burn. The consequences of each would be the same. I'd have no decision to make regarding believing in some deity or another, though. I disbelieve in all of them.


541 posted on 01/27/2005 10:12:20 AM PST by MineralMan (godless atheist)
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To: annalex

What I meant was that what a person believes determines their choices and actions in life. It is very powerful.


542 posted on 01/27/2005 10:13:48 AM PST by RobRoy (I like you. You remind me of myself when I was young and stupid.)
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To: Stone Mountain

You rephrase my original thesis, more or less: atheists have no ability and possibly less need to glorify their worldview and the little need that they have is in the bumper sticker domain. When they get too obnoxious, force would be justified to enforce public decency.


543 posted on 01/27/2005 10:14:33 AM PST by annalex
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To: ichabod1

> I don't think you know what a Christian is.

Turn it around: I don't think you know what an atheist is. I also don't think you know what *I* am.

> people don't trust atheists because your values aren't rooted in anything.

People may think that, but they'd be wrong.

> So they don't vote for people who espouse it.

People had a hard time voting for *Catholics.*


544 posted on 01/27/2005 10:14:48 AM PST by orionblamblam
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To: MineralMan

So are you telling me that if you had to make the decision to burn by fire or jump to your death your thought your mind is going to tell you "Well this is it, I am spending my eternity as dirt so which will be less painless fire or falling? if you do that, is that not a "CHOICE"?


545 posted on 01/27/2005 10:15:43 AM PST by missyme (imho)
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To: missyme

So are you "guessing" when you believe in everything that is in the bible? Just curious - you accused me of guessing when it came to my world view, and I admitted to it. How about you?


546 posted on 01/27/2005 10:16:11 AM PST by Stone Mountain
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To: annalex
You rephrase my original thesis, more or less: atheists have no ability and possibly less need to glorify their worldview and the little need that they have is in the bumper sticker domain. When they get too obnoxious, force would be justified to enforce public decency.

Boy, I was with you right there until your last sentence... but I believe we have the right to be obnoxious in this country, even if it is a right I rarely exercise (although some might disagree with me on that!).
547 posted on 01/27/2005 10:18:26 AM PST by Stone Mountain
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To: Modernman
We live in a society where people who engage in sociopathic, violent behavior tend to have the full force of the law dropped on them. That's an example of co-operation:

That only by virtue of having bigger guns you can force people to cooperate with you? And your label of sociopaths may make you feel superior to them, but it doesn't fool me. They don't agree with your version of society? You don't agree with theirs. Why are they the sociopaths and not you?

As I said, it doesn't matter whether you call them your homeys or your police department, having stronger thugs on your side is the way you survive. If the police were on their side you WOULD be the sociopath by definition.

The fullest evidence that Darwin is against our social structure is that all similar structures in the animal kingdom are also maintained by force. The strong survive and the strong should survive. Only when the girlie-men of western civilization understand this will we be able to guarantee our survival against the barbaric forces arrayed against us. But I doubt we will. Greater civilizations than ours have fallen into that same feel good trap.

Shalom.

548 posted on 01/27/2005 10:21:32 AM PST by ArGee (After 517, the abolition of man is complete)
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To: Alamo-Girl; marron; Michael_Michaelangelo; Doctor Stochastic; js1138; PatrickHenry; gobucks; ...
Until an atheist (metaphysical naturalist) can respond with a scientifically or mathematically plausible explanation to every one of the following challenges, I shall assert that atheism is a "religion" whose faith is a rejection of diety in favor of self.

Hello A-G! It seems you have thrown down the gauntlet: This is a most incisive list of questions designed to challenge the most fundamental assumptions of the metaphysical naturalists out there. Well done!

Of course, not every metaphysical naturalist is an atheist (the theme of this thread). Many are simply agnostic. But if anyone will seriously consider these questions, they may find they are able to broaden their perspectives thereby. To anyone but an atheist, these are not "dangerous questions."

I often wonder about the psychology of atheism, what motivates it, and what atheists hope to achieve/obtain from it. I guess in the end, atheists somehow believe that God is dangerous in some way to their personal well-being (however understood). But this strikes me as being an absolute inversion of natural truth. Still, inverted truth seems to have many champions these days. I wouldn't know how else to explain a Michael Newdow, a Richard Lewontin, a Noam Chomsky, et al., than that they are "inverted" (unnatural) people, trying to invert the world into a "more pleasing shape." (E.g., as much unlike the one God "shaped" as possible.... FWIW

I also think you're right to call atheism a "religion" -- an inverted one, an ersatz one, to be sure; but a religion nonetheless. Methinks it is a religion devoted to the worship, not of God, but of "Me." Thanks for this great post!

549 posted on 01/27/2005 10:22:10 AM PST by betty boop
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To: Stone Mountain

Since GOD gave me Free Will a Brain and a Bible I beleive through GOD's word his promises and through prayers I will spend eternity with him.

GOD is not a guessing game to me I talk to him in prayer he answers me, I believe in Jesus Christ and as a human being I don't try to figure out the Mystery of GOD and his ultimate plans however the world has been around alot longer than I have and will be after I am long gone, I choose to beleive I will continue to live even after my body dies and decay's not out of "wishful thinking" but what GOD says about life death and eternity.


550 posted on 01/27/2005 10:23:42 AM PST by missyme (imho)
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To: Stone Mountain
right to be obnoxious in this country

This is a common misunderstanding of the First Amendment. Rather than getting theoretical over it, let me remind you that public decency laws were upheld till very recently in this country by judges that understood the Constitution far better than the current bunch.

551 posted on 01/27/2005 10:24:32 AM PST by annalex
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To: MineralMan

sorry, I misunderstood your experience.

I would contend that you didn't actually die -- that your soul never actually left your body.

Have you considered that?

(I realize that you may not even believe you have a soul. I will just assert that a "blank" experience is a rather shaky prop for your beliefs.)


552 posted on 01/27/2005 10:25:29 AM PST by Zechariah_8_13 ("Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.")
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To: tortoise; Alamo-Girl; marron; Michael_Michaelangelo; Doctor Stochastic; js1138; PatrickHenry; ...
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.

But this statement is absurd, tort!!! The hypotheses we humans construct re: the reality or the unreality of God can never be the measure or test of God. His reality does not depend in any way on human will or desire to prove or disprove His "existence." In other words, the ancient insight continues to be valid (and perennially so, it seems to me): Man is not the measure.

553 posted on 01/27/2005 10:30:47 AM PST by betty boop
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To: missyme

"So are you telling me that if you had to make the decision to burn by fire or jump to your death your thought your mind is going to tell you "Well this is it, I am spending my eternity as dirt so which will be less painless fire or falling? if you do that, is that not a "CHOICE"? "

Of course it's a choice. The only difference is that I won't be thinking about some mythical "eternity." I'll be thinking about which would be the most painless death. I'd guess it would be buy jumping, but I'm not in that situation.

I would not be thinking about some choice regarding an afterlife I don't believe exists, just about the immediate situation. You might be thinking about different things than I did.

In fact, each individual in the towers who had to make such a decision had his or her own things to think about. There were Christians, Jews, Moslems, atheists, and probably Buddhists, Shintos, Jains, and Hindus in that building, each facing death. Each had a different way of looking at the situation, I'm sure.

The Hindu might wonder what he was going to be reincarnated as. You might wonder what your "Heaven" was going to be like, just as the Muslim might wonder about his "Paradise." The Buddhist...well, who knows what the Buddhist would be wondering?

The point is that everyone has some sense of the meaning of death. Yours is one sense, based on your belief in Christianity. Perhaps you can imagine no other way of thinking...I don't know. But, I can tell you that the Hindu wouldn't be thinking about Jesus, nor would followers of any of the other religions.

Yours is just one of the religions followed by human beings. Each religion answers the same questions in its own way. You, naturally, believe that yours is the correct belief, but so do the others. For each of them, the beliefs give them some apparent understanding of the meaning of life and death.

For atheists, life and death are simply life and death. It's just another way of looking at the same thing. You believe one thing...others believe otherwise. I'm afraid you simply have to accept that.


554 posted on 01/27/2005 10:32:19 AM PST by MineralMan (godless atheist)
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To: Stone Mountain

I admit, strictly speaking, to lumping weak atheists into the agnostic category, but appreciate the finer distinction of how open their mind might be to the possibility of a supreme being.

Agree completely with your definition of a strong atheist. It is my conjecture and experience that many in this category have experienced deeply traumatic experiences in their life that lead them to conclude that God can't exist, or that if He does, then He's evil for having allowed the trauma to be perpetrated on them in the first place. Their denial of God's existence is more emotional than objective.


555 posted on 01/27/2005 10:34:40 AM PST by RinaseaofDs (The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.)
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To: annalex

"When they get too obnoxious, force would be justified to enforce public decency.
"

Uffda! So, if they say something you don't like, blasphemy, for example, you feel justified in using force to stop them.

If my hypothetical bumper sticker said: "There is no God...damn it!" you'd feel justified in using force to stop me from saying that?

Sorry, annalex, that' ain't American.


556 posted on 01/27/2005 10:34:56 AM PST by MineralMan (godless atheist)
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To: annalex
This is a common misunderstanding of the First Amendment. Rather than getting theoretical over it, let me remind you that public decency laws were upheld till very recently in this country by judges that understood the Constitution far better than the current bunch.

Well, it's just your opinion that the judges who overturned the public decency laws understood the Constitution better than the ones who upheld them. In any case, those laws were overturned and I don't think it's misunderstanding the First Amendment to assert that we have a right to be obnosious in this country.
557 posted on 01/27/2005 10:35:50 AM PST by Stone Mountain
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To: DannyTN
I'd take that wager. I'm not limited to the King James version either.

Cool...Looks like I've met my match! I know what you're saying about the untrustworthy sources out there...Just try to find the historical Jesus!

Here's a trustworthy source for the 17%...Rodney Stark, a Christian professor of sociology and comparative religion. He is also the author of Victories Of Reason: How Christianity Freedom And Capitalism Led To Western Success.

1776......17%
1850......34%....1916......53%
1860......37%....1926......56%
1870......35%....1952......59%
1890......45%....1980......62%
1906......51%....1995......65%

most of the nation's leadership was Christian

That's simply not true. The founders were Deist, Christian, Jewish, Unitarian and Atheist. We have freedom of religion because there wasn't a majority of any one belief.

It's not credible that there were state religions and yet this was tolerated despite the 87% of the people not being that religion.

It wasn't tolerated
The tyranny of the state religion in Virginia was the primary reason many people joined the revolution. They began prosecuting people who refused to join the Christian church.
...
558 posted on 01/27/2005 10:37:21 AM PST by mugs99 (Restore the Constitution)
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To: 7thson
I don't have the same reaction towards atheists, even when I see them attacking my basic religious freedoms.


559 posted on 01/27/2005 10:37:50 AM PST by steve-b (A desire not to butt into other people's business is eighty percent of all human wisdom)
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To: tortoise; Alamo-Girl; marron; cornelis; Michael_Michaelangelo; Doctor Stochastic; js1138; ...
This is THE problem: theists can only convince atheists by establishing a valid prior. This it seems is nigh impossible, and so the default position remains. This is THE problem: theists can only convince atheists by establishing a valid prior. This it seems is nigh impossible, and so the default position remains.

This is a really nifty retort, tort; and would work really well if human beings lived only in their own minds, and not in their bodies, their emotional life, their connections to communities and environment, etc., etc. -- IOW, in contexts that are not limited to mental abstractions or the intellelctual life.

But they don't.

560 posted on 01/27/2005 10:40:24 AM PST by betty boop
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