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alt.atheism

re soc motss et al princeton axes matching funds for boy scouts student writes somewhere roger colin shouse writes about radical gay dogma somewhere else he claims not to claim to have a claim to knowing those he doesn t know there are at least twenty instances of this kind of muddleheaded fourth reich sophistique shit in his postings maybe more in fact i m not sure the instances could be counted because they reproduce like a virus the more you consider his words my question is this what is the best response to weasels like shouse and stan krieger possibilities a study them dispassionately and figure out how they work then remember what you ve learned so as to combat them when they or their clones get into office contribute your insights to your favorite abnormal psych ward b learn to overcome your repugnance for serial murder this posting is totally uncalled for in rec scouting the point has been raised and has been answered roger and i have clearly stated our support of the bsa position on the issue specifically that homosexual behavior constitutes a violation of the scout oath specifically the promise to live morally straight there is really nothing else to discuss trying to cloud the issue with comparisons to blacks or other minorities is also meaningless because it s like comparing apples to oranges i e people can t control their race but they can control their behavior what else is there to possibly discuss on rec scouting on this issue nobody including bsa is denying anybody the right to live and or worship as they please or don t please but it doesn t mean that bsa is the big bad wolf for adhering to the recognized positive religious and moral standards on which our society has been established and on which it should continue to be based stan krieger all opinions advice or suggestions even unix system laboratories if related to my employment are my own summit nj smk usl com

alt.atheism

re a little too satanic in article mimsy umd edu mangoe cs umd edu charley wingate writes pnanci ann miller writes p p my favorite reply to the you are being too literal minded complaint is p that if the bible is really inspired by god and if it is really that p important to him then he would make damn certain all the translators and p scribes and people interpreting and copying it were getting it right p literally if not then why should i put any merit at all in something p that has been corrupted over and over and over by man even if it was p originally inspired by god p pthe corrupted over and over theory is pretty weak comparison of the pcurrent hebrew text with old versions and translations shows that the text phas in fact changed very little over a space of some two millennia this pshouldn t be all that suprising people who believe in a text in this manner pare likely to makes some pains to make good copies well corrupted the first time is good enough seeing that the bible was constructed years after jesus s death in the text of merchants ie owe this and owe that i wonder how anyone can take the literal word seriously obviously it was not intended for such nonsense otherwise the authors of the bible would not need to plagerize sp off of the asians for most of the contents that can be interperated to make sense

alt.atheism

re americans and evolution p my atheism is incidental and the question of god is trivial p p but p p it matters a great deal to me when idiots try to force their belief on me p when they try to enforce their creation myths to be taught as scientific p fact in school when they tell me i can have no morals because morals are p from god when a successful presidential candidate says that an atheist p shouldn t be considered a citizen and couldn t be patriotic because after p all this is one nation under god when the fundies try to take over the p party that may well provide the next president of the united states of p america so that they can force their beliefs on the rest of the country p et cetera p p that s why i subscribe to alt atheism p p and in the middle of this people who aren t mind readers pop up on p alt atheism to tell me what i do or don t believe or to concoct some p straw man reason why i don t share their particular belief p p you think i should just accept this p p this isn t particularly a dig at fundamentalist christians i have been p told on alt atheism that i reject allah because i am too proud to embrace p islam and that i reject krishna because my eyes are closed but most of p the religious nuts who post on alt atheism are some kind of militant p christian who can t accept that others don t share their beliefs this p kind of stuff should be kept on talk religion misc where it belongs p p atheism isn t a belief it s the absence of belief in any gods p p p do you have a problem with this p p p bill pfirst i would like to say that atheism is in fact a belief it is a beilief pbecause a belief in something you hold to with ador and faith an atheist says there are no gods this cannot be proven therefore you are excepting this on pfaith alone that is a belief secondly you complain so much about how the pfundamental christians are trying to force their beliefs on you but you don t pmention anything about how the atheists such as madamme murry o hare founder pof the atheists association in austin texas and robert sherman from the chicago area have been trying to force their beliefs on everyone by trying to get rid of god from our society by banning religious paintings from parks during chistmas forcing cities to change their town seals if there is any mention of god in it like sherman has done or trying to get the slogan in god we trust off of the american currency you also talk about creation myths as if they are in fact myths and tha p p p phave concrete evidece of this you probably pdon t and that just enforces my point that your atheism is just as much belief as my christianity if this is not so please do show me why it isn t pmark covalt the only real problem i have with the argument of christianity is that they seem to ignore their origin that being asiatic in origin as soon as christians become the good non ego centric buddhists they are supposed to be then i might listen my opinion i speak not for my place of employment but i should christ was over rated and will the atf follow koresh the current christ through his ascention to heaven

alt.atheism

re alt atheism faq introduction to atheism i have an addition to the faq regarding why are there no atheist hospitals if i recall correctly johns hopkins was built to provide medical services without the backing of a religious group thus making it a hospital dedicated to the glory of weak atheism might someone check up on this brian evans bad mood bad mood sure i m in a bad mood bevans carina unm edu i haven t had sex ever virgin mary

alt.atheism

re theists posting in article c ux aic ra nrl navy mil khan itd itd nrl navy mil umar khan writes stuff deleted is there a concordance for the faq which translation is considered most authoritative is there an orthodox commentary for the faq available is there one faq for militant atheists and another for moderate atheists or do you all read from the same faq if so how do you resolve differences of interpretation hmmmmmmmmmmmm i can put the same question to followers of any religion how do you moslems resolve differences of opinion don t tell me that there is one interpretation of the quran read the soc culture newsgroups you will zillions of different interpretations naren naren tekig pen tek com all standard disclaimers apply

alt.atheism

re genocide is caused by atheism snm ultb isc rit edu s n mozumder writes more horrible deaths resulted from atheism than anything else list of killings in the name of religion iran iraq war civil war in sudan riots in india pakistan in massacares in bangladesh in inquistions in america in s x million x crusades i am sure that people can add a lot more to the list i wonder what bobby has to say about the above standard excuses will not be accepted naren all standard disclaimers apply

alt.atheism

re genocide is caused by atheism nanci ann miller nm w andrew cmu edu writes snm ultb isc rit edu s n mozumder writes more horrible deaths resulted from atheism than anything else there are definitely quite a few horrible deaths as the result of both atheists and theists perhaps since i m a bit weak on history somone here would like to give a list of wars caused led by theists this thread seems to be arguing the validity of a religious viewpoint according to some utilitarian principle i e atheism religion is wrong because it causes death the underlying moral is that death is wrong this is a rather arbitrary measure of validity get some epistemology richard harlequin com internet richard harlequin co uk internet rptb uk ac cambridge phoenix janet zen buddhist

alt.atheism

re radical agnostic not reply to zazen austin ibm com e h welbon there is no means that i can possibly think of to prove beyond doubt that a god does not exist but if anyone has one by all means tell me what it is therefore lacking this ability of absolute proof being an atheist becomes an act of faith in and of itself and this i cannot accept i accept nothing on blind faith invisible pink flying unicorns need i say more i harbor no beliefs at all there is no good evidence for god existing or not some folks call this agnosticism it does not suffer from blind faith at all i think of it as don t worry be happy for many atheists the lack of belief in gods is secondary to an epistemological consideration what do we accept as a reliable way of knowing there are no known valid logical arguments for the existence of gods nor is there any empirical evidence that they exist most philosophers and theologians agree that the idea of a god is one that must be accepted on faith faith is belief without a sound logical basis or empirical evidence it is a reliable way of knowing there is probably nothing else most people would accept in the absence of any possibility of proof even when we agree to take someone elses word on faith we just mean that having found this person to be reliable in the past we judge him likely to be a reliable source now if we find faith less reliable than logic and empirical evidence everywhere else why assume it will provide reliable knowledge about gods the difference between the atheist and the theist is fundamentally then one of whether or not faith is held to be a reliable way of knowing rather than as some agnostic posters would have it whether ones faith is in gods or no gods the theist believes that faith is an acceptable basis for a belief in gods even if he rejects faith as reliable at other times for example in his work as a scientist the atheist believes that only logic and empirical evidence lead to reliable knowledge agnosticism seems to me a less defensible position than theism or atheism unless one is a sceptic in regards to all other knowledge without evidence why should we believe in gods rather than santa claus or the easter bunny i would also like to point out as others have that the atheist doesn t require absolute knowledge of the lack of gods i don t believe that there is any such thing as absolute knowledge atheism is the best and simplest theory to fit the lack of facts and so should be held until contrary evidence is found david nye nyeda cnsvax uwec edu midelfort clinic eau claire wi this is patently absurd but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities bertrand russell

alt.atheism

re is keith as ignorant as he seems mam mouse cmhnet org mike mcangus writes no everything wouldn t be ok but it would be a start now wait if the religious organizations were no longer tax exempt what other beef could you have they would then have as much right to lobby as would any other group you asked would everything be okay i answered no everything encompasses more than just the tax exempt status of religious organizations well if everything wouldn t be okay then tell us what it is that wouldn t be okay that is if religions were no longer tax exempt then what would be wrong with their lobbying or otherwise attempting to influence politics keith

alt.atheism

re keith schneider stealth poster mam mouse cmhnet org mike mcangus writes let me see if i understand what you are saying in order to talk knowledgeably about religion atheists must first have been so immersed in a religion that only the rare individual could have left no you don t understand i said that i don t think people can discuss the subjective merits of religion objectively this should be obvious people here have said that everyone would be better off without religion but this almost certainly isn t true but really are you threatened by the motto or by the people that use it the motto is a tool let s try to take away the tool but guns and axes are tools both of which have been used for murder should both be taken away that is to say i don t think motto misuse warrants its removal at least not in this case keith

alt.atheism

re keith schneider stealth poster cmtan iss nus sg tan chade meng dan writes i somewhat agree with u however what it comes to theist religion it s a different matter that s because religion is like a drug once u use it it s very difficult to get out of it that s because in order to experience a religion u necessarily have to have blind faith and once u have the blind faith it s very diffcult for you to reason yourself back to atheism again therefore it s unreasonable to ask people to try religion in order to judge it it s like asking people to try dying to find out what death is like well now we can t judge death until we are dead right so why should we judge religion without having experienced it people have said that religion is bad by any account and that it is in no way useful etc but i don t totally agree with this of course we cannot really say how the religious folk would act had they not been exposed to religion but some people at least seemed to be helped in some ways by it so basically we can not judge whether religion is the right route for a given individual or even for a general population we can say that it is not best for us personally at least you can choose not to use religion might be hard to try to find out its benefits as you state above keith

alt.atheism

re political atheists mmwang adobe com michael wang writes i was looking for a rigorous definition because otherwise we would be spending the rest of our lives arguing what a christian really believes i don t think we need to argue about this ks do you think that the motto points out that this country is proud ks of its freedom of religion and that this is something that ks distinguishes us from many other countries mw no ks well your opinion is not shared by most people i gather perhaps not but that is because those seeking to make government recognize christianity as the dominant religion in this country do not think they are infringing on the rights of others who do not share their beliefs yes but also many people who are not trying to make government recognize christianity as the dominant religion in this country do no think the motto infringes upon the rights of others who do not share their beliefs and actually i think that the government already does recognize that christianity is the dominant religion in this country i mean it is don t you realize recognize this this isn t to say that we are supposed to believe the teachings of christianity just that most people do like i ve said before i personally don t think the motto is a major concern if you agree with me then what are we discussing ks since most people don t seem to associate christmas with jesus much ks anymore i don t see what the problem is can you prove your assertion that most people in the u s don t associate christmas with jesus anymore no but i hear quite a bit about christmas and little if anything about jesus wouldn t this figure be more prominent if the holiday were really associated to a high degree with him or are you saying that the association with jesus is on a personal level and that everyone thinks about it but just never talks about it that is can you prove that most people do associate christmas most importantly with jesus anyways the point again is that there are people who do associate christmas with jesus it doesn t matter if these people are a majority or not i think the numbers do matter it takes a majority or at least a majority of those in power to discriminate doesn t it keith

alt.atheism

re political atheists livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes the probability that the automobile system will kill someone innocent in an accident goes asymptotically close to just like the court system however anyone who doesn t like the automobile system can opt out as i have this isn t true many people are forced to use the automobile system i certainly don t use it by choice if there were other ways of getting around i d do it secondly we do try to make the automobile system as safe as possible because we do recognize the danger to the innocent whereas the us the current example is not trying to make the court system safer which it could fairly easily do by replacing fatal punishments with non fatal punishments but i think that the court system has been refined over hundreds of years in the us britain and other countries we have tried to make it as fair as possible can it be made better without removing the death penalty besides life imprisonment sounds like a fatal punishment to me keith

alt.atheism

re political atheists dace shrike und ac za roy dace writes keith allan schneider keith cco caltech edu wrote some soldiers are dependent on religion for a number of purposes and some are no doubt dependent on cocaine yet i don t see the military paying for coca fields while religion certainly has some benefits in a combat situation what are the benefits of cocaine keith

alt.atheism

re pompous ass mvs psuvm psu edu writes many people would probably think especially if the fanatics propogandized this that this was a conflict between the atheists and the religious many would get the impression that we were trying to outlaw religion if we contintue to try to remove all things with a religious reference that s not what the people i ve asked think perhaps you would be right if you said the fundamentalists would think this way after all they think they are being oppressed when they are not allowed to oppress however you have not shown where you get this idea that many people would probably think it s atheism vs religion winner take all as far as i can tell it is your groundless prediction that this will happen but you haven t taken into the account of propoganda remember if you asked germans before wwii if the jews shoudl be slaughtered they would probably answer no but after the propoganda machine rolled through at least some were able to tolerate it you see it only takes a small group of fanatics to whip up a general frenzy the propoganda machines have been in gear over a number of issues including abortion and gays look at some of the things that have happened well so far they have passed one amendment which is currently under intense scrutiny and they have failed to outlaw abortion which is their prime goal on that issue yep they seem sooo effective sure well they haven t managed to outlaw abortion due to the possible objectivity of the courts but they have managed to create quite a few problems for people that wanted to have an abortion they could create similar problems for us and it could be worse they can try to stop abortions by blocking clinics etc but imagine what they d have to do to stop atheism besides the margin of error is very large when you only talk to two people better than your one that is your opinion also i have branched out and the informal survey is up over half a dozen now and what have they said were you questions unbiased keith you would claim that my questions are biased the minute i posted them because the answers agreed with me everyone i have asked about the possible removal of the motto the christian portion has expressed regret about its loss because they like it however when it is pointed out to them that a new motto will not be in the works none have expressed the desire to rape murder pillage etc which you have basically claimed so you are able to convince them individually but could you convince a whole room of them a whole nation as for the atheist portion i know some around here they have all expressed disgust with the motto some noted being harassed by christians who used the motto to try to seem justified and all would see it gone yes i d be glad if it were gone to i ve never supported it however i think that it is a minor problem that can be easily ignored contrasted with what could happen an what may be likely which christians designed the motto does the motto say anything about jesus why do you think that it refers only to christians christians wrote it christians think that their religion is right and all others are wrong therefore why would they include other religions in the realm of being correct i doubt that any other religions were meant to be included well i am not clear on the religious convictions of francis scott key the motto can be attributed to him but it is at least clear that he believed in a god and surely there are a few christians that think as you say but i don t think that most do do you think that all christians actively despise other religions most that i have met haven t and don t do so no christian that i have queried thinks it means anything but them and only them why not ask some people of other faiths sorry i would but christianity is just so awfully popular around here suppose you could ask a few people well i have asked a hindu moselem and a few jews and all of them think that it is applicable to them of course i can t say that these people just some that i know pretty well are accurate representations of their faiths it is always a good idea to assume that there were dissenting views on any given issue you are assuming that all the views were the same and nothing leads to this conclusion without evidence to the contrary i doubt that there were dissenting opinions you claim there were provide some evidence for your assertion well i d really like to and i ve tried but i really don t know where to get access to congressional records from the s can anyone help out here comparing christians to nazis interesting only in the sense that neither can probably convinced to change their beliefs no again the motto on the money doesn t cost you anything extra however if you abolished the motto we d all have to pay to have all the dies and plates redone like people paid before to get them changed to have the motto on them you now need to show that there is a good reason to change everything again also i doubt that they use th same plates for more than a year s printing this would make it easy to remove the motto simply make next year s plates without it your claim evidently is that they will have to pay extra somewhere provide some evidence for this assertion so are you saying that they redesign the plates each year anyway your whole argument conveniently deleted i see was that the motto somehow costs us all a lot of money this is just not correct the ones i read didn t mention anything about jesus i think the issue was concerning the distinction between religion and not how could it be between religious and not religious the motto refers to god it is a religious motto the question is whether or not it is only christian you say it is more i doubt this provide some evidence for this assertion that is to say the religion of this country and the non religion of the ussr that was what most of those quotes were about and some included all atheists in general as well i don t think that any of the quotes although i seem to have lost them mentioned anything at all about jesus they advocated religion over non religion a specific religion was not mentioned you have missed this point i said that the motto didn t say anything about anyone in particular that is the motto doesn t imply anything about your particular beliefs it doesn t say that everyone trusts in some form of god only that the nation on the whole does we have been through this before it s obvious it does not include me this much is beyond doubt your claim again is that the motto refers to more than christians based on the facts that christianity says all other religions are wrong and because it seems that the motto was written by christians i doubt your claim so you are saying that all christians must believe that all other religions should be outlawed just because they think they are wrong that s silly i think the flat earthers are wrong but i don t advocate their banishment based on this idea i doubt that any additional expense would even be incurred by removing the motto provide some evidence for your claim that it would i think that any such cost would be insignificant i mentioned the slight cost because you said that the motto was costing us a lot of money by being on our currency disregarding the digression of the other motto if it is used for harassment and no other purpose has been found for it why should it not be removed well mottos in general don t really have purposes i don t think it should be removed because i think the benefit would be outweighed by the consequences and do you know what the vote was were there other opinions do you think that the main reason the motto was required by law was to bother atheists do you think that this is what the majority of congress at the time had in mind if you do then show why again it is the opinion of the people who put it there that i am concerned with then you should be concerned with the opinion of the entire congress again it is not necessary that the complete majority shared the purpose of confronting godless communism with this motto why not it is the majority that put it there the general public probably does not know about the anti atheist intent of a few people in the s either i daresay more people remember the s than the time when key wrote the anthem but do they remember the debate surrounding the motto do they remember that some people intended it to be a message against atheists why don t you include this in your little survey that you were conducting you claim here that scientists would believe someone s claims i doubt this provide evidence for your assertion what should i ask some scientists the probability that something einstein said about relativity is worthy i mean if einstein said it there s a good chance that it was right at least at the time as for the courts the method scientists use can be applied i need not agree with the court by default because of a good record you need not agree with them all of the time but you would certainly think that their decisions would be good evidence in favor of some point what but you said you didn t agree with the court because they allowed congress to attempt to make an amendment prohibiting flag burning if you don t realize that something like this is external to the realm of the court s power then how can i be confident that you know anything about the court s powers i mean if you don t know how the court works how can you participate in a discussion of the court a judge can go to speak before congress and still you ignore the abortion gag rule as you make your claims on abortion no i think that it would be clearly inappropriate for a supreme court justice to testify before congress during the consideration of a constitutional amendment and in order for the court to rule on something a case usually must be presented mushrooms flowers trees buildings signs whatever the analogy is the same just because something that i might find offensive is present doesn t mean that my rights are being violated we are talking about something put there by people keith not a mushroom no one caused that mushroom to exist unless you re finding things offensive in a mushroom farm yes some mushrooms can be planted and i don t appreciate mushrooms on my pizza either this is not the case with the motto and you re ignoring the harassment which is the only known result of the motto and you re ignoring that somewhere along the line people were forced to put the motto there who was forced to put the motto there what do you mean keith

alt.atheism

re a visit from the jehovah s witnesses suopanki stekt oulu fi writes on apr mst jbrown batman bmd trw com said god is eternal a b jesus is god c a therefore jesus is eternal c b this works both logically and mathematically god is of the set of things which are eternal jesus is a subset of god therefore jesus belongs to the set of things which are eternal everything isn t always so logical mercedes is a car that girl is mercedes therefore that girl is a car unfortunately your phrasing is ambiguous re writing more carefully we have at least two possibilities the first things called mercedes are cars that girl is called mercedes therefore that girl is a car that is entirely valid as a piece of logical deduction it is not sound because the first statement is false similarly i would hold that jim s example is valid but not sound another possible interpretation of what you wrote is there exists at least one car called mercedes that girl is called mercedes therefore that girl is a car which isn t valid mathew

alt.atheism

re political atheists keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes mathew mathew mantis co uk writes perhaps we shouldn t imprision people if we could watch them closely instead the cost would probably be similar especially if we just implanted some sort of electronic device why wait until they commit the crime why not implant such devices in potential criminals like communists and atheists sorry i don t follow your reasoning you are proposing to punish people before they commit a crime what justification do you have for this look up irony keith mathew

alt.atheism

re political atheists keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes mathew mathew mantis co uk writes as for rape surely there the burden of guilt is solely on the rapist not so if you are thrown into a cage with a tiger and get mauled do you blame the tiger as far as i know tigers are not sentient if i were pushed into a pool with some dolphins and they attacked me i might be inclined to blame the dolphins rather than the person doing the pushing as a dolphins are not usually aggressive and b they seem to have well developed brains and a capacity for abstract thought as a matter of fact tigers rarely attack humans unless the human provokes them of course if they are in a cage which is far too small that might count as provocation mathew

alt.atheism

re political atheists kmr po cwru edu keith m ryan writes i am almost sure that zyklon b is immediate and painless method of death if not insert soem other form and ethnic and minority groups have been killed mutilated and exterminated through out history so i guess it was not unusual so you would agree that the holocost would be allowed under the us constitution in so far the punishment i doubt they recieved what would be considered a fair trial by us standards don t be so sure look what happened to japanese citizens in the us during world war ii if you re prepared to say let s round these people up and stick them in a concentration camp without trial it s only a short step to gassing them without trial after all it seems that the nazis originally only intended to imprison the jews the final solution was dreamt up partly because they couldn t afford to run the camps because of the devastation caused by goering s total war those who weren t gassed generally died of malnutrition or disease mathew

alt.atheism

re atheist i dbstu rz tu bs de benedikt rosenau writes in article ii i b w w mantis co uk tony lezard tony mantis co uk writes deletion my opinion is that the strong atheist position requires too much belief for me to be comfortable with any strong atheists out there care to comment humans just come up with the idea of a spiritual parent it is one of the artifacts of human thought the evidence for that is quite overwhelming and the information content of the conceived is vanishing in other words if there were gods they would hardly make sense and it is possible to explain the phenomenon of religion without gods the concept is useless and i don t have to introduce new assumptions in order to show that no leap of faith required for me your mileage may vary yes i fully agree with that but is it i don t believe gods exist or i believe no gods exist as mandtbacka finabo abo fi mats andtbacka pointed out it all hinges on what you take the word believe to mean unfortunately this is bound up in the definitions of strong and weak atheism at least according to the faq atheism is characterized by an absence of belief in the existence of god some atheists go further and believe that god does not exist the former is often referred to as the weak atheist position and the latter as strong atheism it is important to note the difference between these two positions weak atheism is simple scepticism disbelief in the existence of god strong atheism is a positive belief that god does not exist please do not fall into the trap of assuming that all atheists are strong atheists from mathew s an introduction to atheism version last modified apr should the faq be clarified to try to pin down this notion of belief can it tony lezard is tony mantis co uk or tony mantis co uk uknet ac uk or things like tony uk co mantis uk ac nsfnet relay or last resort arl phx cam ac uk pgp public key available on request

alt.atheism

re political atheists mccullou snake cs wisc edu mark mccullough writes i think you mean circular not recursive but that is semantics recursiveness has no problems it is just horribly inefficient just ask any assembly programmer tail recursive functions in scheme are at least as efficient as iterative loops anyone who doesn t program in assembler will have heard of optimizing compilers mathew

alt.atheism

re an anecdote about islam in bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu writes deletia i don t understand the point of this petty sarcasm it is a basic principle of islam that if one is born muslim or one says i testify that there is no god but god and mohammad is a prophet of god that so long as one does not explicitly reject islam by word then one must be considered muslim by all muslims so the phenomenon you re attempting to make into a general rule or psychology is a direct odds with basic islamic principles if you want to attack islam you could do better than than to argue against something that islam explicitly contradicts in the deletions somewhere it mentioned something about chopping off of hands being a punishment for theft in saudi arabia assuming this is so i wouldn t know and assuming it is done by people fitting your requirement for muslim which i find highly likely then would you please try to convince bobby mozumder that muslims chop people s hands off come back when you ve succeeded disclaimer it s great to be young and insane

alt.atheism

a fundamental contradiction was a visit from jws jbrown batman bmd trw com writes will is self determination in other words god created conscious beings who have the ability to choose between moral choices independently of god all will therefore is free will the above is probably not the most representative paragraph but i thought i d hop on anyway what strikes me as self contradicting in the fable of lucifer s fall which by the way i seem to recall to be more speculation than based on biblical text but my ex rcism may be showing is that as benedikt pointed out lucifer had perfect nature yet he had the free will to choose evil but where did that choice come from we know from genesis that eve was offered an opportunity to sin by a tempter which many assume was satan but how did lucifer discover invent create call the action what you will something that god had not given origin to also where in the bible is there mention of lucifer s free will we make a big fuss about mankind having free will but it strikes me as being an after the fact rationalisation and in fact like salvation not one that all christians believe in identically at least in my mind salvation and free will are very tightly coupled but then my theology was roman catholic still how do theologian explain lucifer s fall if lucifer had perfect nature did man how could he fall how could he execute an act that a contradicted his nature and b in effect cause evil to exist for the first time lucio de re lucio proxima alt za tab stops at four

alt.atheism

re atheist tony lezard tony mantis co uk writes my opinion is that the strong atheist position requires too much belief for me to be comfortable with any strong atheists out there care to comment as far as i can tell strong atheists are far outnumbered on alt atheism by weak atheists at the cost of repudiating the faq i think too much is made of the strong vs weak atheism issue although in the context of alt atheism where we re continually attacked on the basis that strong atheists believe in the non existence of god i think the separation is a valid one to cover my arse what i m trying to say is that there is an infinitely grey area between weak and strong as well as between strong and the unattainable mathematical atheism i wish whereas i logically can only support the weak atheist position in effect i am a strong atheist and wish i could be a mathematical one to justify my strong atheist position i believe i need only show that the evidence presented in favour of any of the gods under scrutiny is faulty if i read the faq correctly no argument for the existence of god generic as represented by mainstream theologians has ever been found to be unassailable to me this is adequate evidence that the real god is undefinable or at least no definition has yet been found to be watertight which in turn i accept as sufficient to base a disbelief in each and every conceivable god i m a little fuzzy on the edges though so opinions are welcome but perhaps we should change the thread subject lucio de re lucio proxima alt za tab stops at four

alt.atheism

re the inimitable rushdie re an anecdote about islam jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger writes why would the rushdie case be particularly legitimate as i ve said elsewhere on this issue rushdie s actions had effects in islamic countries so that it is not so simple to say that he didn t commit a crime in an islamic country actually it is simple a person p has committed a crime c in country x if p was within the borders of x at the time when c was committed it doesn t matter if the physical manifestation of c is outside x for instance if i hack into nasa s ames research lab and delete all their files i have committed a crime in the united kingdom if the us authorities wish to prosecute me under us law rather than uk law they have no automatic right to do so this is why the net authorities in the us tried to put pressure on some sites in holland holland had no anti cracking legislation and so it was viewed as a hacker haven by some us system administrators similarly a company called red hot television is broadcasting pornographic material which can be received in britain if they were broadcasting in britain they would be committing a crime but they are not they are broadcasting from denmark so the british government is powerless to do anything about it in spite of the apparent law breaking of course i m not a lawyer so i could be wrong more confusingly i could be right in some countries but not in others mathew

alt.atheism

re an anecdote about islam in article bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger writes in cases of prostitution both the man and the prostitute would be punished in public quite severely deletion no gregg you cannot say a is lenient and a punishes severely in public unless of course it is one of the exceptions implied by almost all matters that depends on the statistics and who is punished in public if some power for example nothing islamic about it allows men to rape women five times before blowing the rapist s head off in public then i d call that leniency wouldn t you you have given that example it is not lenient end of argument and chopping off the hands or heads of people is not lenient either it rather appears that you are internalized the claims about the legal system without checking if they suit the description and wasn t the argument that it takes five men to rape a woman according to islamic law while i don t approve of it i think both the prostitute and the customer have the right to do what they do in other words punishing them is a violation of their rights and to punish them severely in public is just another pointer to the hysteria connected with sexuality in so many religions believe what you like no i even believe what i don t like can you give better answers than that have you got any evidence for your probably opposite claims in this case i don t see why i should accept the complex ridden views of an oriental goatherd ah yes i forget that the west is historically so much without sexual neurosis oriental goatherd really intellectual a fact if memory serves and most will see the connection between the primitive machism in the orient and in islam if people agree on having sex it is fine and i would assume that a god would have a clue of what the detrimental effects of supressing it are huh ever heard of aids of course you ll probably go on to say that god must be evil because he allows the disease to exist bla bla as usually you miss the point aids is neither spread only through sex nor necessarily spread by having sex futher the point is a very important point the urge for sex is stronger than the fear of aids it is even stronger than the religious attempts to channel or to forbid sex the consequences of suppressing sex are worse than the consequences of aids please note that the idea that everybody would end up with aids when sex is not controlled is completely counterfactual and since you have brought up the point is your god evil or not benedikt

alt.atheism

re biblical rape in article apr watson ibm com strom watson ibm com rob strom writes in article ba f c i dbstu rz tu bs de i dbstu rz tu bs de benedikt rosenau writes i didn t have time to read the rest of the posting but i had to respond to this i am absolutely not a messianic jew another mistake sorry i should have read alt messianic more carefully benedikt

alt.atheism

re soc motss et al princeton axes matching funds for boy scouts in article apr midway uchicago edu shou midway uchicago edu writes in article pi dhinn ub dsi dsinc com perry dsinc com jim perry writes bigots never concede that their bigotry is irrational it is other people who determine that by examining their arguments no i expected it you ve set yourself up a wonderful little world where a bigot is whomever you say it is this is very comfortable for you imagine never having to entertain an argument against your belief system simply accuse the person making of being a bigot well this particular thread of vituperation slopped its venom over into alt atheism where we spend most of our time entertaining arguments against our belief system without resorting to accusing others of bigotry it s somewhat ironic that our exposure to bigotry happens in this instance to have originated in rec scouting since i always understood scouting to teach tolerance and diversity i understand bigotry to be irrational prejudice against other people who happen to be of a different race religion ethnic background sex or other inconsequential characteristics all the evidence i ve seen indicates that sexual orientation and lack of belief in gods are exactly such inconsequential characteristics thus pending further evidence i conclude that those who show prejudice against such people are bigots and organizations that exclude such people are discriminatory jim perry perry dsinc com decision support inc matthews nc these are my opinions for a nominal fee they can be yours

alt.atheism

re americans and evolution in article pq tinn lp senator bedfellow mit edu bobs thnext mit edu robert singleton writes deletion i will argue that your latter statement i believe that no gods exist does rest upon faith that is if you are making a positive statement that no gods exist strong atheism rather than merely saying i don t know and therefore don t believe in them and don t not believe in then weak atheism once again to not believe in god is different than saying i believe that god does not exist i still maintain the position even after reading the faqs that strong atheism requires faith no it in the way it is usually used in my view you are saying here that driving a car requires faith that the car drives for me it is a conclusion and i have no more faith in it than i have in the premises and the argument used but first let me say the following we might have a language problem here in regards to faith and existence i as a christian maintain that god does not exist to exist means to have being in space and time god does not have being god is being kierkegaard once said that god does not exist he is eternal with this said i feel it s rather pointless to debate the so called existence of god and that is not what i m doing here i believe that god is the source and ground of being when you say that god does not exist i also accept this statement but we obviously mean two different things by it however in what follows i will use the phrase the existence of god in it s usual sense and this is the sense that i think you are using it i would like a clarification upon what you mean by the existence of god no that s a word game the term god is used in a different way usually when you use a different definition it is your thing but until it is commonly accepted you would have to say the way i define god is and that does not exist it is existence itself so i say it does not exist interestingly there are those who say that existence exists is one of the indubitable statements possible further saying god is existence is either a waste of time existence is already used and there is no need to replace it by god or you are implying more with it in which case your definition and your argument so far are incomplete making it a fallacy deletion one can never prove that god does or does not exist when you say that you believe god does not exist and that this is an opinion based upon observation i will have to ask what observtions are you refering to there are no observations pro or con that are valid here in establishing a positive belief deletion where does that follow aren t observations based on the assumption that something exists and wouldn t you say there is a level of definition that the assumption god is is meaningful if not i would reject that concept anyway so where is your evidence for that god is is meaningful at some level benedikt

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re is morality constant was re biblical rape this frayed thread has turned into a patented alt atheism on ping pong game and i don t have any strong disagreement so i ll try to stick to the one thing i don t quite follow about the argument it seems to me that there is a contradiction in arguing that the bible was enlightened for its times i e closer to what we would consider morally good based on our standards and past experience on the one hand i hope this summarizes this argument adequately and on the other hand in article apr watson ibm com strom watson ibm com rob strom writes in article phpe inn g dsi dsinc com perry dsinc com jim perry writes disclaimer i m speaking from the jewish perspective where the bible means what many call the old testament and where the interpretation is not necessarily the raw text but instead the court cases commentaries and traditions passed down through jewish communities this seems the crux to me if you judge the bible according to a long line of traditions and interpretations coming down to the current day rather than on its own merits as a cultural artifact then of course it will correspond more closely with more contemporary values but if that s how the bible is actually being used today shouldn t that be how we should judge it if most people use scissors to cut paper shouldn t consumer s reports test scissors for paper cutting ability even though scissors may have been designed originally to cut cloth that s possibly a good way to judge the use of the bible in teaching jewish morality today but it hardly seems fair to claim that this highly interpreted version is what was enlightened for its times to attempt to extend the analogy this is like saying that the original scissor makers were unusually advanced at paper cutting for their times even though they only ever cut cloth and had never even heard of paper i m not arguing that the bible is disgusting though some of the history depicted in it is by modern standards however history is full of similar abuses and i don t think the biblical accounts are worse than their contemporaries or possibly ours on the other hand i don t know of any reason to think the history described in the bible shows less abuse than their contemporaries or ours that complex and benign moral traditions have evolved based on particular mythic interpretations of that history is interesting but i still don t think it fair to take that long tradition of interpretation and use it to attack condemnation of the original history jim perry perry dsinc com decision support inc matthews nc these are my opinions for a nominal fee they can be yours

alt.atheism

re political atheists mathew mathew mantis co uk writes as for rape surely there the burden of guilt is solely on the rapist unless you force someone to live with the rapist against his will in which case part of the responsibility is yours i m sorry but i can t accept that unless the rapist was hypnotized or something i view him as solely responsible for his actions not necessarily especially if the rapist is known as such for instance if you intentionally stick your finger into a loaded mousetrap and get snapped whose fault is it keith

alt.atheism

re islamic authority over women in article apr ultb isc rit edu snm ultb isc rit edu s n mozumder writes one thing that relates is among navy men that get tatoos that say mom because of the love of their mom it makes for more virile men compare that with how homos are raised do a study and you will get my point oh bobby you re priceless did i ever tell you that my policy with bobby s posts should anyone give a damn is to flick through the thread at high speed searching for posts of bobby s which have generated a whole pile of followups then go in and extract the hilarious quote inevitably present for sig purposes works for me for the guy who said he s just arrived and asked whether bobby s for real you betcha welcome to alt atheism and rest assured that it gets worse i have a few pearls of wisdom from bobby which i reproduce below is anyone keith keeping a big file of such stuff in allah s infinite wisdom the universe was created from nothing just by saying be and it became therefore allah exists bobby mozumder proving the existence of allah wait you just said that humans are rarely reasonable doesn t that contradict atheism where everything is explained through logic and reason this is the contradiction in atheism that proves it false bobby mozumder proving the existence of allah plus to the believer it would be contradictory to the quran for allah not to exist bobby mozumder proving the existence of allah and now one thing that relates is among navy men that get tatoos that say mom because of the love of their mom it makes for more virile men compare that with how homos are raised do a study and you will get my point bobby mozumder being islamically rigorous on alt atheism mmmmm quality and quantity from the new voice of islam pbuh cheers simon simon clippingdale simon dcs warwick ac uk department of computer science tel university of warwick fax coventry cv al u k

alt.atheism

re soc motss et al princeton axes matching funds for boy scouts in article apr cbnewsl cb att com stank cbnewsl cb att com stan krieger writes the point has been raised and has been answered roger and i have clearly stated our support of the bsa position on the issue specifically that homosexual behavior constitutes a violation of the scout oath specifically the promise to live morally straight please define morally straight and don t even try saying that straight as it is used here implies only hetersexual behavior eg straight as in the slang word opposite to gay this is alot like family values everyone is talking about them but misteriously no one knows what they are one thing that relates is among navy men that get tatoos that say mom because of the love of their mom it makes for more virile men bobby mozumder snm ultb isc rit edu april the one true muslim left in the world

alt.atheism

re soc motss et al princeton axes matching funds for boy scouts in article apr cbnewsl cb att com stank cbnewsl cb att com stan krieger writes roger and i have clearly stated our support of the bsa position on the issue specifically that homosexual behavior constitutes a violation of the scout oath specifically the promise to live morally straight there is really nothing else to discuss apparently not in response to his claim that it terrifies gay people not to be able to indoctrinate children to our lifestyle or words to that effect i sent roger a very calm carefully written detailed letter explaining simply why the bsa policy does indeed terrify me i did not use inflammatory language and left myself extremely open for an answer thus far i have not received an answer i can conclude only that roger considers his position either indefensible or simply not worth defending trying to cloud the issue with comparisons to blacks or other minorities is also meaningless because it s like comparing apples to oranges i e people can t control their race but they can control their behavior in fact that s exactly the point people can control their behavior because of that fact there is no need for a blanket ban on homosexuals what else is there to possibly discuss on rec scouting on this issue you tell me tim pierce usted es la de la tele eh la madre twpierce unix amherst edu del asesino ay que graciosa bitnet twpierce amherst pedro almodovar

alt.atheism

re biblical rape in article apr watson ibm com strom watson ibm com rob strom writes deletion the thread biblical rape was initiated by david o hunt here is his posting in article feu ko xsf kpc p andrew cmu edu david o hunt bluelobster cmu edu writes i m pretty sure i ve seen biblical rules for when it s allowable to rape prisoners what the codes are about that etc could some more knowledgable soul than i please let me know some references he asked a very narrow question and i gave a very narrow answer yes sorry i have got that wrong my apology deletion no david hunt s post didn t mention a god nor did my response you were the first to bring up the idea of the bible being given by god most jews don t believe this in any literal sense so no fun but i must have met the minority then and given by god refers to any action whereby a god god causes or better effects something rob i am not intimate with jewish theology but i understand that you are a messianic jew correct me if i am wrong but it appears that the views of messianic jews on metaphysics is different to that of the majority of jews while jewish theology overall is quite distinct from the christianic god views i have heard that it is possible for jews to attribute evil to their god an no no for christians the bible is still seen as effect of the interaction of some god with man deletion no i thought we agreed that though jews disagree there are a set of core beliefs that they do agree upon one of which is that the commandments are accessible and written in the language of the time and another of which is that there must be a legal system to update them the context was metaphysics even when the process of adapting the commandments is not transcendent the justification of the process lie in metaphysic specualtion i wonder how you break out of the shackles of having metaphysics in your system deletion could you explain this with respect to the original commandments being discussed that is the commandment that says if you feel like raping a woman prisoner you should instead wait and marry her what about the way this commandment is given invalidates it is is in a book that commands to commit genocide among other reprehensible deeds the context is repulsive and it is foul play imo to invoke some relatively enlightened passages as an example for the content of the whole book big deletion the point is that i see that there is a necessary connection between the theology you use and the interpretation of the bible only very loosely my interpretation of the bible is based on a long tradition of jewish scholars interpreting the bible theology doesn t really enter into it there are jewish atheists who interpret the laws of charity essentially the same way i do no not the interpretation of some laws but the interpretation of the bible as in the example that sodom and gomorrha mean argue with god the whole idea that it is metaphorically and yet allows you to argue with a god whatever that means that alone is a theo logic question is proof of a theology used you pose another metaphysical riddle no you do well you wrote this fine so we have some major spirit with neither absolute power nor absolute knowledge and as it appears limited means or will to communicate with us some form of spiritual big friend do you admit that using god in this context is somewhat unusual am i right in the assumption that it cannot have created the universe as well and that the passages in the bible referring to that or its omnipotence are crap that s what i meant by the riddle it is an important question in the light of what for instance the passage witrh sodom and gomorrha means either there is some connection between the text the fact that it exists and your interpretation of it or it is purely arbitrary further the question is why is has one to carry the burden of biblical texts when one could simply write other books that convey the message better you might answer that one can t becuase some peculiar biblical information might be lost but that holds true of every other book and the question remains why has the bible still a special place can t it be replaced somehow is it ok to bargain the dangerous content of the bible against some other message that is included as well deletion do you see the danger in doing so especially with the metaphers used in the bible i think the danger of doing so is less than either the danger of having a frozen system of laws or having no laws sorry but there are worse systems does not say anything about if one could not have a better system deletion if we read two stories about the importance of helping the poor and in one god is a spirit and in the other god has a body which is more important helping the poor or resolving the contradiction about the corporeal nature of god if we read two stories in the bible one that god commands people to kill children for being idolaters and another where god kills children directly what is more important to resolve the message that children are to be killed or if it has to be done by god and the argument you have given is a fallacy while it may not be important in the context you have given to find out if god is corporeal or not it can be crucial in other questions religious believers resolve contradictions with that they choose one of the possibilities given in an arbitrary way and have the advantage of being able to attribute their decision to some god one cannot resolve questions by the statement do what is good when what is good depends on the question benedikt

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re atheist in article epvk b w w mantis co uk tony lezard tony mantis co uk writes deletion in other words if there were gods they would hardly make sense and it is possible to explain the phenomenon of religion without gods the concept is useless and i don t have to introduce new assumptions in order to show that yes i fully agree with that but is it i don t believe gods exist or i believe no gods exist as mandtbacka finabo abo fi mats andtbacka pointed out it all hinges on what you take the word believe to mean for me it is a i believe no gods exist and a i don t believe gods exist in other words i think that statements like gods are or somehow interfere with this world are false or meaningless in ontology one can fairly conclude that when a exist is meaningless a does not exist under the pragmatic definition of truth a exists is meaningless makes a exist even logically false a problem with such statements is that one can t disprove a subjective god by definition and there might be cases where a subjective god would even make sense the trouble with most god definitions is that they include some form of objective existence with the consequence of the gods affecting all believers derive from it a right to interfere with the life of others deletion should the faq be clarified to try to pin down this notion of belief can it honestly i don t see the problem benedikt

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re why is sex only allowed in marriage rationality was islamic marriage in mar ultb isc rit edu snm ultb isc rit edu s n mozumder writes my case is that everything wrong in the world will end if people start believing in islam and that horrors to mankind are all caused by the lack of belief atheism for the last time bobby lack of belief in your god does not imply atheism just because some moslems aren t moral does not mean they don t believe in a god named allah although their allah may not do the things your allah does if a moslem says he she believes that a god exists he she is a theist though maybe not a true follower of islam murder victims a year caused by atheism poverty massive hate crimes such low respect for the human body distrust among people everything wrong all caused by atheism peace jerk bobby mozumder sami aario can you see or measure an atom yet you can explode a cc tut fi one sunlight is comprised of many atoms your stupid minds stupid stupid eros in plan from outer space disclaimer i don t agree with eros

alt.atheism

re motto mania mathew writes i prefer mark jason dominus s suggestion that the motto should be changed to mind your own fucking business in this era of aids isn t someone s fucking everyone s interest semi i propose we have no motto recently in the glorious state of maryland the only state whose state song refers to abraham lincoln as a tyrant people have gotten all wound up over the state motto which we inherited from the calverts fatti maschii parole femine which if you read italian says manly deeds womanly words or something to that effect in the state which not so long ago had four women out of seven representatives this represents a problem the official solution was to change the translation so now it means strong deeds gentle words my personal suggestion was changing it to walk softly and carry a big stick c wingate the peace of god it is no peace but strife closed in the sod mangoe cs umd edu yet brothers pray for but one thing tove mangoe the marv lous peace of god

alt.atheism

re a visit from the jehovah s witnesses good grief the amount of energy being spent on one lousy syllogism says volumes for the true position of reason in this group c wingate the peace of god it is no peace but strife closed in the sod mangoe cs umd edu yet brothers pray for but one thing tove mangoe the marv lous peace of god

alt.atheism

benediktine metaphysics benedikt rosenau writes with great authority if it is contradictory it cannot exist contradictory is a property of language if i correct this to things defined by contradictory language do not exist i will object to definitions as reality if you then amend it to things described by contradictory language do not exist then we ve come to something which is plainly false failures in description are merely failures in description i m not an objectivist remember c wingate the peace of god it is no peace but strife closed in the sod mangoe cs umd edu yet brothers pray for but one thing tove mangoe the marv lous peace of god

alt.atheism

re gospel dating so then you require the same amount of evidence to believe that i a own a pair of bluejeans and b have superhuman powers well i could use the argument that some here use about nature and claim that you cannot have superhuman powers because you are a human superhuman powers are beyond what a human has and since you are a human any powers you have are not beyond those of a human hence you cannot have superhuman powers sound good to you anyway to the evidence question it depends on the context in this group since you are posting from a american college site i m willing to take it as given that you have a pair of blue jeans and assuming there is some coherency in your position i will take it as a given that you do not have superhuman powers arguments are evidence in themselves in some respects when you say the existence of sic jesus i assume that you mean just the man without any special powers etc yep many will agree that it is very possible that a man called jesus did in fact live in fact i am willing to agree that there was some man named jesus i have no reason to believe that there wasn t ever a man good however most of the claims are extradinary eg virgin birth virgin in the sense of not having any sexual intercourse resurection son of god etc those claims require extra evidence extra evidence why don t we start with evidence at all i cannot see any evidence for the v b which the cynics in this group would ever accept as for the second it is the foundation of the religion anyone who claims to have seen the risen jesus back in the day period is a believer and therefore is discounted by those in this group since these are all ancients anyway one again to choose to dismiss the whole thing the third is as much a metaphysical relationship as anything else even those who agree to it have argued at length over what it means so again i don t see how evidence is possible i thus interpret the extraordinary claims claim as a statement that the speaker will not accept any evidence on the matter c wingate the peace of god it is no peace but strife closed in the sod mangoe cs umd edu yet brothers pray for but one thing tove mangoe the marv lous peace of god

alt.atheism

a remarkable admission jon livesey writes i m certainly not going to attempt to distinguish between different flavours of christian all loudly claiming to be the one true christian well it s obvious that you don t attempt otherwise you would be aware that they don t all loudly claim to be the one true christian i ve tried to avoid using the phrase is is not christian because of these ownership issues instead i ve tried the phrase nicene christianity in an attempt to identify the vast majority of christianity which has roughly similar viewpoints on the core theological issues the jws do not fall within this group and in fact espouse a position known as arianism which is rejected by all the nicene churches and virtually everyone else as well c wingate the peace of god it is no peace but strife closed in the sod mangoe cs umd edu yet brothers pray for but one thing tove mangoe the marv lous peace of god

alt.atheism

re gospel dating benedikt rosenau writes the argument goes as follows q oid quotes appear in john but not in the almost codified way they were in matthew or luke however they are considered to be similar enough to point to knowledge of q as such and not an entirely different source assuming you are presenting it accurately i don t see how this argument really leads to any firm conclusion the material in john i m not sure exactly what is referred to here but i ll take for granted the similarity to the matt luke q material is different hence one could have almost any relationship between the two right up to john getting it straight from jesus mouth we are talking date of texts here not the age of the authors the usual explanation for the time order of mark matthew and luke does not consider their respective ages it says matthew has read the text of mark and luke that of matthew and probably that of mark the version of the usual theory i have heard has matthew and luke independently relying on mark and q one would think that if luke relied on matthew we wouldn t have the grating inconsistencies in the geneologies for one thing as it is assumed that john knew the content of luke s text the evidence for that is not overwhelming admittedly this is the part that is particularly new to me if it were possible that you could point me to a reference i d be grateful unfortunately i haven t got the info at hand it was i think in the late s or early s and it was possibly as old as ce when they are from about why do they shed doubt on the order on putting john after the rest of the three because it closes up the gap between supposed writing and the existing copy quit a bit the further away from the original the more copies can be written and therefore survival becomes more probable and i don t think a one step removed source is that bad if luke and mark and matthew learned their stories directly from diciples then i really cannot believe in the sort of big transformation from jesus to gospel that some people posit in news reports one generally gets no better information than this and if john is a diciple then there s nothing more to be said that john was a disciple is not generally accepted the style and language together with the theology are usually used as counterargument i m not really impressed with the theology argument but i m really pointing this out as an if and as i pointed out earlier one cannot make these arguments about i peter i see no reason not to accept it as an authentic letter one step and one generation removed is bad even in our times compare that to reports of similar events in our century in almost illiterate societies the best analogy would be reporters talking to the participants which is not so bad in other words one does not know what the original of mark did look like and arguments based on mark are pretty weak but the statement of divinity is not in that section and in any case it s agreed that the most important epistles predate mark c wingate the peace of god it is no peace but strife closed in the sod mangoe cs umd edu yet brothers pray for but one thing tove mangoe the marv lous peace of god

alt.atheism

re yeah right benedikt rosenau writes and what about that revelation thing charley if you re talking about this intellectual engagement of revelation well it s obviously a risk one takes many people say that the concept of metaphysical and religious knowledge is contradictive i m not an objectivist so i m not particularly impressed with problems of conceptualization the problem in this case is at least as bad as that of trying to explain quantum mechanics and relativity in the terms of ordinary experience one can get some rough understanding but the language is from the perspective of ordinary phenomena inconsistent and from the perspective of what s being described rather inexact to be charitable an analogous situation supposedly obtains in metaphysics the problem is that the better descriptive language is not available and in case it holds reliable information can you show how you establish that this word reliable is essentially meaningless in the context unless you can show how reliability can be determined c wingate the peace of god it is no peace but strife closed in the sod mangoe cs umd edu yet brothers pray for but one thing tove mangoe the marv lous peace of god

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re radical agnostic not in article apr cnsvax uwec edu nyeda cnsvax uwec edu david nye wrote reply to zazen austin ibm com e h welbon there is no means that i can possibly think of to prove beyond doubt that a god does not exist but if anyone has one by all means tell me what it is therefore lacking this ability of absolute proof being an atheist becomes an act of faith in and of itself and this i cannot accept i accept nothing on blind faith invisible pink flying unicorns need i say more i harbor no beliefs at all there is no good evidence for god existing or not some folks call this agnosticism it does not suffer from blind faith at all i think of it as don t worry be happy for many atheists the lack of belief in gods is secondary to an epistemological consideration what do we accept as a reliable way of knowing there are no known valid logical arguments for the existence of gods nor is there any empirical evidence that they exist most philosophers and theologians agree that the idea of a god is one that must be accepted on faith faith is belief without a sound logical basis or empirical evidence it is a reliable way of knowing could you expand on your definition of knowing it seems a bit monolithic here but i m not sure that you intend that don t we need for example to distinguish between knowing plus equals or apples plus apples equals apples the french knowing that jerry lewis is an auteur and what it means to say we know what socrates said this is patently absurd but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities bertrand russell i like this epigraph perhaps the issue is learning which if any absurdities merit further exploration gene

alt.atheism

re political atheists bobbe vice ico tek com robert beauchaine writes my personal objection is that i find capital punishment to be cruel and unusual punishment under all circumstances it can be painless so it isn t cruel and it has occurred frequently since the dawn of time so it is hardly unusual i don t take issue with the numbers a single innocent life taken is one too many but innocents die due to many causes why have you singled out accidental or false execution as the one to take issue with keith

alt.atheism

re yeah right in article mimsy umd edu mangoe cs umd edu charley wingate writes for several years i ve periodically asked charley wingate to explain this mythical alternative to rationality which he propounds so enthusiastically when he pops up every few months his reluctance to explain indicates to me that it s not so hot i ve said enough times that there is no alternative that should think you might have caught on by now and there is no alternative but the point is rationality isn t an alternative either the problems of metaphysical and religious knowledge are unsolvable or i should say humans cannot solve them if there is truly no alternative then you have no basis whatsoever for your claim the usual line here which you call a prejudgment of atheism and dispute is that reason is all we have here you admit that you have no alternative no possible basis for the claim that there is anything other than reason or that reason is inapplicable in religious knowledge except possibly that reason conflicts with religious knowledge this sounds very much like i can t provide a rational defense for my belief but prefer to discard rationality rather than accept that it may be false i hope it makes you happy but your repeated and unfounded assertions to this effect don t advance your cause jim perry perry dsinc com decision support inc matthews nc these are my opinions for a nominal fee they can be yours

alt.atheism

re yeah right in article mimsy umd edu mangoe cs umd edu charley wingate writes benedikt rosenau writes and what about that revelation thing charley if you re talking about this intellectual engagement of revelation well it s obviously a risk one takes ah now here is the core question let me suggest a scenario we will grant that a god exists and uses revelation to communicate with humans said revelation taking the form paraphrased from your own words this infinitely powerful deity grabs some poor schmuck makes him take dictation and then hides away for a few hundred years now there exists a human who has not personally experienced a revelation this person observes that not only do these revelations seem to contain elements that contradict rather strongly aspects of the observed world which is all this person has ever seen but there are many mutually contradictory claims of revelation now based on this can this person be blamed for concluding absent a personal revelation of their own that there is almost certainly nothing to this revelation thing i m not an objectivist so i m not particularly impressed with problems of conceptualization the problem in this case is at least as bad as that of trying to explain quantum mechanics and relativity in the terms of ordinary experience one can get some rough understanding but the language is from the perspective of ordinary phenomena inconsistent and from the perspective of what s being described rather inexact to be charitable an analogous situation supposedly obtains in metaphysics the problem is that the better descriptive language is not available absent this better language and absent observations in support of the claims of revelation can one be blamed for doubting the whole thing here is what i am driving at i have thought a long time about this i have come to the honest conclusion that if there is a deity it is nothing like the ones proposed by any religion that i am familiar with now if there does happen to be say a christian god will i be held accountable for such an honest mistake sincerely ray ingles ingles engin umich edu the meek can have the earth the rest of us are going to the stars robert a heinlein

alt.atheism

re ancient islamic rituals in pkqe inn n lynx unm edu cfaehl vesta unm edu chris faehl writes in article apr monu cc monash edu au darice yoyo cc monash edu au fred rice writes deleted to get to the point therefore in a nutshell my opinion is that pre marital sex makes the likelihood of extra marital sex more probable furthermore in my opinion extra marital sex helps break down partnerships and leads to greater divorce rates this in turn in my opinion creates trauma and a less stable environment for children who are then in my opinion more likely to grow up with psychological problems such as depression etc and thus sex outside of marriage is in the long run harmful to society i think that you are drawing links where there are none having sex before marriage has nothing to do with adultery once committed into marriage the issue as i see it is more of how committed you are to not foisting pain on your spouse and how confident you are about yourself in addition what someone does within their marriage is their own business not mine and not yours i have witnessed strong relationships that incorporate extra marital sex i would agree with your assertion about children children should not be witness to such confusing relationships if adultery is stressful to adults which i assume it in general is how can we expect children to understand it where is the evidence for my opinions at the moment there are just generalities i can cite for example i read that in the th century the percentage of youth and people in general who suffer from depression has been steadily climbing in western societies probably what i was reading referred particularly to the usa similarly one can detect a trend towards greater occurrence of sex outside of marriage in this century in western societies particularly with the sexual revolution of the s but even before that i think otherwise the sexual revolution of the s would not have been possible particularly with the gradual weakening of christianity and consequently christian moral teachings against sex outside of marriage i propose that these two trends greater level of general depression in society and other psychological problems and greater sexual promiscuity are linked with the latter being a prime cause of the former i cannot provide any evidence beyond this at this stage but the whole thesis seems very reasonable to me and i request that people ponder upon it why is it more reasonable than the trend towards obesity and the trend towards depression you can t just pick your two favorite trends notice a correlation in them and make a sweeping statement of generality i mean you can and people have but that does not mean that it is a valid or reasonable thesis at best it s a gross oversimplification of the push pull factors people experience my argument is mainly a proposal of what i think is a plausible argument against extra marital sex one which i personally believe has some truth my main purpose for posting it here is to show that a plausible argument can be made against extra marital sex at this stage i am not saying that this particular viewpoint is proven or anything like that just that it is plausible to try to convince you all of this particular point of view i would probably have to do a lot of work researching what has been done in this field etc in order to gather further evidence which i simply do not have time to do now also note that i said that i think extra marital sex is a prime cause in my opinion of the generally greater levels of psychological problems especially depression in western societies i am not saying it is the prime cause or the only cause just a prime cause i e one of the significant contributions to this trend i think when you say you think my view is simplistic you have forgotten this i admit that there are probably other factors but i do think that extra marital sex and imo subsequent destabilization of the family is a significant factor in the rise in psychological problems like depression in western society this century fred rice darice yoyo cc monash edu au

alt.atheism

re ancient islamic rituals in ednclark kraken ednclark kraken itc gu edu au jeffrey clark writes cfaehl vesta unm edu chris faehl writes why is it more reasonable than the trend towards obesity and the trend towards depression you can t just pick your two favorite trends notice a correlation in them and make a sweeping statement of generality i mean you can and people have but that does not mean that it is a valid or reasonable thesis at best it s a gross oversimplification of the push pull factors people experience basically the social interactions of all the changing factors in our society are far too complicated for us to control we just have to hold on to the panic handles and hope that we are heading for a soft landing but one things for sure depression and the destruction of the nuclear family is not due solely to sex out of marriage note that i never said that depression and the destruction of the nuclear family is due solely to extra marital sex i specifically said that it was a prime cause of this not the prime cause or the only cause of this i recognize that there are probably other factors too but i think that extra marital sex and subsequent destabilization of the family is probably a significant factor to the rise in psychological problems including depression in the west in the th century fred rice darice yoyo cc monash edu au

alt.atheism

re why is sex only allowed in marriage rationality was islamic marriage in apr proxima alt za lucio proxima alt za lucio de re writes darice yoyo cc monash edu au fred rice writes my point of view is that the argument all sexism is bad just simply does not hold let me give you an example how about permitting a woman to temporarily leave her job due to pregnancy should that be allowed it happens to be sexist as it gives a particular right only to women nevertheless despite the fact that it is sexist i completely support such a law because i think it is just fred you re exasperating sexism like racialism is a form of discrimination using obvious physical or cultural differences to deny one portion of the population the same rights as another in this context your example above holds no water whatsoever there s no discrimination in denying men maternity leave in fact i m quite convinced that were anyone to experiment with male pregnancy it would be possible for such a future father to take leave on medical grounds okay i argued this thoroughly about weeks ago men and women are different physically physiologically and psychologically much recent evidence for this statement is present in the book brainsex by anne moir and david jessel i recommend you find a copy and read it their book is an overview of recent scientific research on this topic and is well referenced now if women and men are different in some ways the law can only adequately take into account their needs in these areas where they are different by also taking into account the ways in which men and women are different maternity leave is an example of this it takes into account that women get pregnant it does not give women the same rules it would give to men because to treat women like it treats men in this instance would be unjust this is just simply an obvious example of where men and women are intrinsically different now people make the naive argument that sexism oppression however maternity leave is sexist because men do not get pregnant men do not have the same access to leave that women do not to the same extent or degree and therefore it is sexist no matter however much a man wants to get pregnant and have maternity leave he never can and therefore the law is sexist no man can have access to maternity leave no matter how hard he tries to get pregnant i hope this is clear maternity leave is an example where a sexist law is just because the sexism here just reflects the sexism of nature in making men and women different there are many other differences between men and women which are far more subtle than pregnancy and to find out more of these i recommend you have a look at the book brainsex your point that perhaps some day men can also be pregnant is fallacious if men can one day become pregnant it will be by having biologically become women to have a womb and the other factors required for pregnancy is usually wrapped up in the definition of what a woman is so your argument when it is examined is seen to be fallacious you are saying that men can have the sexist maternity leave privilege that women can have if they also become women which actually just supports my statement that maternity leave is sexist the discrimination comes in when a woman is denied opportunities because of her legally determined sexual inferiorities as i understand most religious sexual discrimination and i doubt that islam is exceptional the female is not allowed into the priestly caste and in general is subjugated so that she has no aspirations to rights which as an equal human she ought to be entitled to there is no official priesthood in islam much of this function is taken by islamic scholars there are female islamic scholars and female islamic scholars have always existed in islam an example from early islamic history is the prophet s widow aisha who was recognized in her time and is recognized in our time as an islamic scholar no matter how sweetly you coat it part of the role of religions seems historically to have served the function of oppressing the female whether by forcing her to procreate to the extent where there is no opportunity for self improvement or by denying her access to the same facilities the males are offered you have no evidence for your blanket statement about all religions and i dispute it i could go on and on about women in islam etc but i recently reposted something here under the heading islam and women if it is still at your news site i suggest you read it it is reposted from soc religion islam so if it has disappeared from alt atheism it still might be in soc religion islam i forgot what its original title was though i will email it to you if you like the roman catholic church is the most blatant of the culprit because they actually istitutionalised a celibate clergy but the other religious are no different let a woman attempt to escape her role as child bearer and the wrath of god descends on her your statement that other religions are no different is i think a statement based simply on lack of knowledge about religions other than christianity and perhaps judaism i ll accept your affirmation that islam grants women the same rights as men when you can show me that any muslim woman can aspire to the same position as say khomeini and there are no artificial religious or social obstacles on her path to achieve this aisha who i mentioned earlier was not only an islamic scholar but also was at one stage a military leader show me the equivalent of hillary rhodam clinton within islam and i may consider discussing the issue with you the prophet s first wife who died just before the hijra the prophet s journey from mecca to medina was a successful businesswoman lucio you cannot make a strong case for your viewpoint when your viewpoint is based on ignorance about world religions fred rice darice yoyo cc monash edu au

alt.atheism

re ancient islamic rituals in ba c i dbstu rz tu bs de i dbstu rz tu bs de benedikt rosenau writes in article apr monu cc monash edu au darice yoyo cc monash edu au fred rice writes there has been some discussion on the pros and cons about sex outside of marriage i personally think that part of the value of having lasting partnerships between men and women is that this helps to provide a stable and secure environment for children to grow up in deletion as an addition to chris faehl s post what about homosexuals well from an islamic viewpoint homosexuality is not the norm for society i cannot really say much about the islamic viewpoint on homosexuality as it is not something i have done much research on fred rice darice yoyo cc monash edu au

alt.atheism

re benediktine metaphysics in article mimsy umd edu mangoe cs umd edu charley wingate writes benedikt rosenau writes with great authority if it is contradictory it cannot exist contradictory is a property of language if i correct this to things defined by contradictory language do not exist i will object to definitions as reality if you then amend it to things described by contradictory language do not exist then we ve come to something which is plainly false failures in description are merely failures in description how about this description an object that is at one time both a euclidean square and a euclidean circle i hold that no object satisfying this description could exist the description is inconsistent and hence describes an object that could not exist now suppose someone pointed to a bicycle and said that object is at one time both a euclidean square and a euclidean circle this does not mean that the bicycle does not exist it measn that the description was incorrectly applied the atheist says the descriptions of god that i have been presented with are contradictory and hence describe something that cannot exist now your position so far as i can gather is that god exists but the descriptions atheists have been presented with are simply bad descriptions of it this is roughly analogous to someone who has never seen a bicycle and when they ask for a description from people who claim to have seen one are told that it is a euclidean circle square can they be blamed for doubting rather strongly that this bicycle exists at all i m not an objectivist remember no kidding sincerely ray ingles ingles engin umich edu the meek can have the earth the rest of us are going to the stars robert a heinlein

alt.atheism

re islamic authority over women in article apr dcs warwick ac uk simon dcs warwick ac uk simon clippingdale writes for the guy who said he s just arrived and asked whether bobby s for real you betcha welcome to alt atheism and rest assured that it gets worse i have a few pearls of wisdom from bobby which i reproduce below is anyone keith keeping a big file of such stuff sorry i was but i somehow have misplaced my diskette from the last couple of months or so however thanks to the efforts of bobby it is being replenished rather quickly here is a recent favorite satan and the angels do not have freewill they do what god tells them to do s n mozumder snm ultb isc rit edu satan and the angels do not have freewill they do what god tells them to do s n mozumder snm ultb isc rit edu

alt.atheism

re a visit from the jehovah s witnesses good grief in article mimsy umd edu mangoe cs umd edu charley wingate writes the amount of energy being spent on one lousy syllogism says volumes for the true position of reason in this group i agree we spend too much energy on the nonexistance of god satan and the angels do not have freewill they do what god tells them to do s n mozumder snm ultb isc rit edu

alt.atheism

evo homosexuality was re princeton etc sorry bill i had to clear this up there may be good evolutionary arguments against homosexuality but these don t qualify in article c vwn jf darkside osrhe uoknor edu bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner writes c wainwright eczcaw mips nott ac uk wrote deletions it would seem odd if homosexuality had any evolutionary function deletions so every time a man has sex with a woman they intend to produce children hmm no wonder the world is overpopulated obviously you keep to the monty python song every sperm is sacred and if as you say it has a purpose as a means to limit population growth then it is by your own arguement natural consider the context i m talking about an evolutionary function one of the most basic requirements of evolution is that members of a species procreate those who don t have no purpose in that context oh i guess all those social insects e g ants bees etc which have one breeding queen and a whole passel of sterile workers are on the way out huh these days is just ain t true people can decide whether or not to have children and when soon they will be able to choose it s sex c but that s another arguement so it s more of a lifestyle decision again by your arguement since homosexuals can not or choose not to reproduce they must be akin to people who decide to have sex but not children both are as unnatural as each other yet another non sequitur sex is an evolutionary function that exists for procreation that it is also recreation is incidental that homosexuals don t procreate means that sex is only recreation and nothing more they serve no evolutionary purpose i refer you to the bonobos a species of primate as closeley related to humans as chimpanzees that is very closely they have sex all the time homosexual as well as heterosexual when the group finds food they have sex before the go to sleep at night they have sex after they escape from or fight off prdators they have sex sex serves a very important social function above and beyond reproduction in this species a species closely related to humans there is some indication that sex performs a social function in humans as well but even if not this shows that such a function is not impossible sincerely ray ingles ingles engin umich edu the meek can have the earth the rest of us are going to the stars robert a heinlein

alt.atheism

vonnegut atheism yesterday i got the chance to hear kurt vonnegut speak at the university of new hampshire vonnegut succeeded isaac asimov as the honorary head of the american humanist association vonnegut is an atheist and so was asimov before asimov s funeral vonnegut stood up and said about asimov he s in heaven now which ignited uproarious laughter in the room from the people he was speaking to around the time of the funeral it s the funniest thing i could have possibly said to a room full of humanists vonnegut said at yesterday s lecture if vonnegut comes to speak at your university i highly recommend going to see him even if you ve never read any of his novels in my opinion he s the greatest living humorist greatest living humanist humorist as well peace dana

alt.atheism

re yet more rushdie re islamic law in article apr monu cc monash edu au darice yoyo cc monash edu au fred rice writes i should clarify what muslims usually mean when they say muslim in general anyone who calls themselves a muslim and does not do or outwardly profess something in clear contradiction with the essential teachings of islam is considered to be a muslim thus one who might do things contrary to islam through ignorance for example does not suddenly not become a muslim if one knowingly transgresses islamic teachings and essential principles though then one does leave islam you and mr bobby really need to sit down and decide what exactly islam is before posting here according to zlumber one is not a muslim when one is doing evil a muslin can do no evil according to him one who does evil is suffering from temporary athiesm now would the members who claim to be muslims get their stories straight satan and the angels do not have freewill they do what god tells them to do s n mozumder snm ultb isc rit edu

alt.atheism

re request for support in article apr sei cmu edu dpw sei cmu edu david wood writes if you must respond to one of his articles include within it something similar to the following please answer the questions posed to you in the charley challenges agreed satan and the angels do not have freewill they do what god tells them to do s n mozumder snm ultb isc rit edu

alt.atheism

re bill conner in article c y mlr darkside osrhe uoknor edu bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner writes could you explain what any of this pertains to is this a position statement on something or typing practice and why are you using my name do you think this relates to anything i ve said and if so what bill could you explain what any of the above pertains to is this a position statement on something or typing practice satan and the angels do not have freewill they do what god tells them to do s n mozumder snm ultb isc rit edu

alt.atheism

re soc motss et al princeton axes matching funds for boy scouts in article jvigneau apr cs ulowell edu jvigneau cs ulowell edu joe vigneau writes if anything the bsa has taught me i don t know tolerance or something before i met this guy i thought all gays were faries so the bsa has taught me to be an antibigot i could give much the same testimonial about my experience as a scout back in the s the issue wasn t gays but the principles were the same thanks for a well put testimonial stan krieger and his kind who think this discussion doesn t belong here and his intolerance is the only acceptable position in scouting should take notice the bsa has been hijacked by the religious right but some of the core values have survived in spite of the leadership and some scouts and former scouts haven t given up seeing a testimonial like this reminds me that scouting is still worth fighting for on a cautionary note you must realize that if your experience with this camp leader was in the bsa you may be putting him at risk by publicizing it word could leak out to the bsa gestapo bill mayne

alt.atheism

re soc motss et al princeton axes matching funds for boy scouts c wainwright eczcaw mips nott ac uk wrote i jim i always thought that homophobe was only a word used at act up rallies i didn t beleive real people used it let s see if we agree on the term s definition a homophobe is one who actively and militantly attacks homosexuals because he is actually a latent homosexual who uses his hostility to conceal his true orientation since everyone who disapproves of or condemns homosexuality is a homophobe your implication is clear it must necessarily follow that all men are latent homosexuals or bisexual at the very least crap crap crap crap crap a definition of any type of phobe comes from phobia an irrational fear of hence a homophobe not only in act up meetings the word is apparently in general use now or perhaps it isn t in the bible wouldst thou prefer if i were to communicate with thou in bilespeak does an arachnophobe have an irrational fear of being a spider does an agoraphobe have an irrational fear of being a wide open space do you understand english obviously someone who has phobia will react to it they will do their best to avoid it and if that is not possible they will either strike out or run away or do gaybashings occur because of natural processes people who definately have homophobia will either run away from gay people or cause them or themselves violence isn t that what i said what are you taking issue with here your remarks are merely parenthetical to mine and add nothing useful it would seem odd if homosexuality had any evolutionary function other than limiting population growth since evolution only occurs when the members of one generation pass along their traits to subsequent generations homosexuality is an evolutionary deadend if i take your usage of the term homophobe in the sense you seem to intend then all men are really homosexual and evolution of our species at least is going nowhere so every time a man has sex with a woman they intend to produce children hmm no wonder the world is overpopulated obviously you keep to the monty python song every sperm is sacred and if as you say it has a purpose as a means to limit population growth then it is by your own arguement natural consider the context i m talking about an evolutionary function one of the most basic requirements of evolution is that members of a species procreate those who don t have no purpose in that context another point is that if the offspring of each generation is to survive the participation of both parents is necessary a family must exist since homosexuals do not reproduce they cannot constitute a family since the majority of humankind is part of a family homosexuality is an evolutionary abberation contrary to nature if you will well if that is true by your own arguements homosexuals would have vanished years ago due to non procreation also the parent from single parent families should put the babies out in the cold now cos they must by your arguement die by your argument homosexuality is genetically determined as to your second point you prove again that you have no idea what context means i am talking about evolution the preservation of the species the fundamental premise of the whole process but it gets worse since the overwhelming majority of people actually prefer a heterosexual relationship homosexuality is a social abberation as well the homosexual eschews the biological imperative to reproduce and then the social imperative to form and participate in the most fundamental social element the family but wait there s more read the above i expect you to have at least ten children by now with the family growing these days sex is less to do with procreation admittedly without it there would be no one but more to do with pleasure in pre pill and pre condom days if you had sex there was the chance of producing children these days is just ain t true people can decide whether or not to have children and when soon they will be able to choose it s sex c but that s another arguement so it s more of a lifestyle decision again by your arguement since homosexuals can not or choose not to reproduce they must be akin to people who decide to have sex but not children both are as unnatural as each other yet another non sequitur sex is an evolutionary function that exists for procreation that it is also recreation is incidental that homosexuals don t procreate means that sex is only recreation and nothing more they serve no evolutionary purpose since homosexuals have come out the closet and have convinced some policy makers that they have civil rights they are now claiming that their sexuality is a preference a life style an orientation a choice that should be protected by law now if homosexuality is a mere choice and if it is both contrary to nature and anti social then it is a perverse choice they have even less credibility than before they became prominent people are people are people who are you to tell anyone else how to live their life are you god tm if so fancy a date here s pretty obvious dodge do you really think you ve said anything or do you just feel obligated to respond to every statement i am not telling anyone anything i am demonstrating that there are arguments against the practice of homosexuality providing it s a merely an alternate lifestlye that are not homophobic that one can reasonably call it perverse in a context even a atheist can understand i realize of course that this comes dangerously close to establishing a value and that atheists are compelled to object on that basis but if you are to be consistent you have no case in this regard to characterize any opposition to homosexuality as homophobic is to ignore some very compelling arguments against the legitimization of the homosexual life style but since the charge is only intended to intimidate it s really just demogoguery and not to be taken seriously fact is jim there are far more persuasive arguments for suppressing homosexuality than those given but consider this a start again crap all your arguments are based on outdated ideals likewise the bible would any honest christian condemn the ten generations spawned by a bastard to eternal damnation or someone who crushes his penis either accidently or not both are in deuteronomy i m sure your comment pertains to something but you ve disguised it so well i can t see what where did i mention ideals out dated or otherwise your arguments are very reactionary do you have anything at all to contribute as to why homosexuals should be excluded from participation in scouting the reasons are the same as those used to restrict them from teaching by their own logic homosexuals are deviates social and biological since any adult is a role model for a child it is incumbent on the parent to ensure that the child be isolated from those who would do the child harm in this case harm means primarily social though that could be extended easily enough you show me anyone who has sex in a way that everyone would describe as normal and will take of my hat puma baseball cap to you one man s meat is another man s poison what has this got to do with anything would you pick a single point that you find offensive and explain your objections i would really like to believe that you can discuss this issue intelligibly bill

alt.atheism

fluids vs liquids west next wam umd edu brian west writes deleted a similar analogy can be made with glass for those of you who don t know glass is a liquid go ask your science teacher and does flow deleted if your science teacher tells you glass is a liquid try to get a different science teacher b glass is a supercooled fluid it is not a liquid except at very high temperatures the definition of liquid includes readily takes the form of its container let s try to be more accurate here we don t want people to think we re creationists now do we uucp uunet tektronix sail mikec or m cranford uunet tektronix sail labs tek com mikec principal troll arpa mikec sail labs tek com relay cs net resident skeptic csnet mikec sail labs tek com teklabs tektronix

alt.atheism

re gospel dating in article c vyfu jj darkside osrhe uoknor edu bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner writes keith m ryan kmr po cwru edu wrote wild and fanciful claims require greater evidence if you state that one of the books in your room is blue i certainly do not need as much evidence to believe than if you were to claim that there is a two headed leapard in your bed and i don t mean a male lover in a leotard keith if the issue is what is truth then the consequences of whatever proposition argued is irrelevent if the issue is what are the consequences if such and such is true then truth is irrelevent which is it to be i disagree every proposition needs a certain amount of evidence and support before one can believe it there are a miriad of factors for each individual as we are all different we quite obviously require different levels of evidence as one pointed out one s history is important while in fussr one may not believe a comrade who states that he owns five pairs of blue jeans one would need more evidence than if one lived in the united states the only time such a statement here would raise an eyebrow in the us is if the individual always wear business suits etc the degree of the effect upon the world and the strength of the claim also determine the amount of evidence necessary when determining the level of evidence one needs it is most certainly relevent what the consequences of the proposition are if the consequences of a proposition is irrelvent please explain why one would not accept the electro magnetic force of attraction between two charged particles is inversely proportional to the cube of their distance apart remember if the consequences of the law are not relevent then we can not use experimental evidence as a disproof if one of the consequences of the law is an incongruency between the law and the state of affairs or an incongruency between this law and any other natural law they are irrelevent when theorizing about the truth of the law given that any consequences of a proposition is irrelvent including the consequence of self contradiction or contradiction with the state of affiars how are we ever able to judge what is true or not let alone find the truth by the way what is truth please define before inserting it in the conversation please explain what truth or truth is i do think that anything is ever known for certain even if there is a truth we could never possibly know if it were i find the concept to be meaningless satan and the angels do not have freewill they do what god tells them to do s n mozumder snm ultb isc rit edu

alt.atheism

re is morality constant was re biblical rape in article c w pv jxd darkside osrhe uoknor edu bil okcforum osrhe edu bill conner writes there are a couple of things about your post and others in this thread that are a little confusing an atheist is one for whom all things can be understood as processes of nature exclusively there is no need for any recourse to divnity to describe or explain anything there is no purpose or direction for any event beyond those required by physics chemistry biology etc everything is random nothing is determnined this posts contains too many fallacies to respond too the abolishment of divinity requires the elimination of freewill you have not shown this you have not even attempted to however the existance of an omniscience being does eliminate freewill in mortals posted over five months ago no one has been able to refute it nor give any reasonable reasons against it satan and the angels do not have freewill they do what god tells them to do s n mozumder snm ultb isc rit edu

alt.atheism

re gospel dating in article mimsy umd edu mangoe cs umd edu charley wingate writes deletion i cannot see any evidence for the v b which the cynics in this group would ever accept as for the second it is the foundation of the religion anyone who claims to have seen the risen jesus back in the day period is a believer and therefore is discounted by those in this group since these are all ancients anyway one again to choose to dismiss the whole thing the third is as much a metaphysical relationship as anything else even those who agree to it have argued at length over what it means so again i don t see how evidence is possible no cookies charlie the claims that jesus have been seen are discredited as extraordinary claims that don t match their evidence in this case it is for one that the gospels cannot even agree if it was jesus who has been seen further there are zillions of other spook stories and one would hardly consider others even in a religious context to be some evidence of a resurrection there have been more elaborate arguments made but it looks as if they have not passed your post filtering i thus interpret the extraordinary claims claim as a statement that the speaker will not accept any evidence on the matter it is no evidence in the strict meaning if there was actual evidence it would probably be part of it but the says nothing about the claims charlie i have seen invisible pink unicorns by your standards we have evidence for ipus now benedikt

alt.atheism

re contradictions in article c oys clj austin ibm com yoder austin ibm com stuart r yoder writes then what would it have to do with in the universe you theists cannot understand that inside the universe and outside the universe are two different places put god outside the universe and you subtract from it the ability to interact with the inside of the universe put it inside the universe and you impose the rules of physics on it god is outside the universe things outside the universe do not have the ability to interact with the inside of the universe therefore god cannot interact inside the universe has no basis whatsoever you seem to have positive knowledge about this is a corrallary of the negation of would contridict although we do not have a complete model of the physical rules governing the inside of the universe we expect that there are no contradictory events likely to destroy the fabric of modern physics on the other hand your notion of an omnipotent omniscient and infinitely benevolent god is not subject to physical laws you attempt to explain this away by describing it as being outside of them beyond measurement to me beyond measurement means it can have no measurable effect on reality so it cannot interact ergo your god is irrelevant god is beyond measure beyond measurement means it can have no measurable effect on reality therefore god cannot have a measurable effect on reality has no basis whatsoever is a corrallary of the negation of would contradict satan and the angels do not have freewill they do what god tells them to do s n mozumder snm ultb isc rit edu

alt.atheism

ontology was benediktine metaphysics in article mimsy umd edu mangoe cs umd edu charley wingate writes if it is contradictory it cannot exist contradictory is a property of language if i correct this to things defined by contradictory language do not exist no need to correct it it stands as it is said i will object to definitions as reality if you then amend it to things described by contradictory language do not exist then we ve come to something which is plainly false failures in description are merely failures in description you miss the point entirely things defined by contradictory language do not exist though something existing might be meant conclusions drawn from the description are wrong unless there is the possibility to find the described and draw conclusions from direct knowledge of the described then another possibility is to drop the contradictory part but that implies that one can trust the concept as presented and that one has not got to doubt the source of it as well i m not an objectivist remember neither am i but either things are directly sensed which includes some form of modelling by the way or they are used in modelling using something contradictive in modelling is not approved of wonder why we remain with the question if something contradictory can be sensed as contradictory an important point is that either one manages to resolve the contradictions or one is forced not to use or to refer to the contradictory part in drawing conclusions or one will fall in the garbage in garbage out trap benedikt

alt.atheism

re the inimitable rushdie references deleted to move this to a new thread in article bu edu jaeger buphy bu edu gregg jaeger writes in article phkf inn p dsi dsinc com perry dsinc com jim perry writes rushdie is however as i understand a muslim the fact that he s a british citizen does not preclude his being muslim rushdie was an atheist to use local terminology not to put words in his mouth at the time of writing tsv and at the time of the fatwa in february well if he was born muslim i am fairly certain he was then he is muslim until he explicitly renounces islam so far as i know he has never explicitly renounced islam though he may have been in extreme doubt about the existence of god being muslim is a legal as well as intellectual issue according to islam to put it as simply as possible i am not a muslim i do not accept the charge of apostacy because i have never in my adult life affirmed any belief and what one has not affirmed one can not be said to have apostasized from the islam i know states clearly that there can be no coercion in matters of religion the many muslims i respect would be horrified by the idea that they belong to their faith purely by virtue of birth and that a person who freely chose not to be a muslim could therefore be put to death salman rushdie in good faith god satan paradise and hell all vanished one day in my fifteenth year when i quite abruptly lost my faith and afterwards to prove my new found atheism i bought myself a rather tasteless ham sandwich and so partook for the first time of the forbidden flesh of the swine no thunderbolt arrived to strike me down from that day to this i have thought of myself as a wholly seculat person salman rushdie in god we trust i think the rushdie affair has discredited islam more in my eyes than khomeini i know there are fanatics and fringe elements in all religions but even apparently moderate muslims have participated or refused to distance themselves from the witch hunt against rushdie yes i think this is true but there khomenei s motivations are quite irrelevant to the issue the fact of the matter is that rushdie made false statements fiction i know but where is the line between fact and fiction about the life of mohammad only a functional illiterate with absolutely no conception of the nature of the novel could think such a thing i ll accept it reluctantly from mobs in pakistan but not from you what is presented in the fictional dream of a demented character cannot by the wildest stretch of the imagination be considered a reflection on the actual mohammad what s worse the novel doesn t present the mahound mohammed character in any worse light than secular histories of islam in particular there is no lewd misrepresentation of his life or that of his wives that is why few people rush to his defense he s considered an absolute fool for his writings in the satanic verses don t hold back he s considered an apostate and a blasphemer however it s not for his writing in the satanic verses but for what people have accepted as a propagandistic version of what is contained in that book i have yet to find one single muslim who has convinced me that they have read the book some have initially claimed to have done so but none has shown more knowledge of the book than a superficial newsweek story might impart and all have made factual misstatements about events in the book if you wish to understand the reasons behind this as well has the origin of the concept of the satanic verses see the penguin paperback by rafiq zakariyah called mohammad and the quran i ll keep an eye out for it i have a counter proposal i suggest that you see the viking hardcover by salman rushdie called the satanic verses perhaps then you ll understand jim perry perry dsinc com decision support inc matthews nc these are my opinions for a nominal fee they can be yours

alt.atheism

re a visit from the jehovah s witnesses in article apr batman bmd trw com jbrown batman bmd trw com writes in article c twso m hq ileaf com mukesh hq ileaf com mukesh prasad writes in article apr batman bmd trw com jbrown batman bmd trw com writes in article p v ainn e matt ksu ksu edu strat matt ksu ksu edu steve davis writes bskendig netcom com brian kendig writes the earth is evil because satan rules over it this is a new one to me i guess it s been a while since a witness bothered with me are they implying that satan is omniscient you might try tricking them into saying that satan is all knowing and then use that statement to show them how their beliefs are self contradictary no satan is not omniscient but he does hold dominion over the earth according to christian theology note not to be confused with jw s theology what are the standard theologies on who what created satan and why orthodox christian theology states that god created lucifer satan along with the other angels presumably because he wanted beings to celebrate glorify existence and life and thereby god along with him actually the whys and wherefores of god s motivations for creating the angels are not a big issue within christian theology but god created lucifer with a perfect nature and gave him along with the other angels free moral will lucifer was a high angel perhaps the highest with great authority it seems that his greatness caused him to begin to take pride in himself and desire to be equal to or greater than god he forgot his place as a created being he exalted himself above god and thereby evil and sin entered creation actually the story goes that lucifer refused to bow before man as god commanded him to lucifer was devoted to god oh yeah there is nothing in genesis that says the snake was anything more than a snake well a talking one had legs at the time too i don t think pointing out contradictions in stories is the best way to show the error in theology if they think a supernatural entity kicked the first humans out of paradise because they bit into a fruit that gave them special powers well they might not respond well to reason and logic brian

alt.atheism

re ancient islamic rituals in article apr monu cc monash edu au darice yoyo cc monash edu au fred rice writes there has been some discussion on the pros and cons about sex outside of marriage where is the evidence for my opinions at the moment there are just generalities i can cite for example i read that in the th century the percentage of youth and people in general who suffer from depression has been steadily climbing in western societies probably what i was reading referred particularly to the usa similarly one can detect a trend towards greater occurrence of sex outside of marriage in this century in western societies particularly with the sexual revolution of the s but even before that i think otherwise the sexual revolution of the s would not have been possible particularly with the gradual weakening of christianity and consequently christian moral teachings against sex outside of marriage i propose that these two trends greater level of general depression in society and other psychological problems and greater sexual promiscuity are linked with the latter being a prime cause of the former i cannot provide any evidence beyond this at this stage but the whole thesis seems very reasonable to me and i request that people ponder upon it fred rice a muslim giving his point of view darice yoyo cc monash edu au i think this is a big leap sex depression one example is myself where no sex depression but seriously promiscuity is on a decline depression is not and it might be more reasonable to say depression promiscuity i think depression is more likely to come from emotional problems relationships family job friends and promiscuity is used as an escape since i see marriage as a civil and religious bond rather than an emotional bond i don t see a problem with sex before not outside of marriage so long as you have the same commitment and devotion as what is expected from a married couple of course this is just my opinion brian

alt.atheism

re yeah right in article mimsy umd edu mangoe cs umd edu charley wingate writes and what about that revelation thing charley if you re talking about this intellectual engagement of revelation well it s obviously a risk one takes i see it is not rational but it is intellectual does madness qualify as intellectual engagement too many people say that the concept of metaphysical and religious knowledge is contradictive i m not an objectivist so i m not particularly impressed with problems of conceptualization the problem in this case is at least as bad as that of trying to explain quantum mechanics and relativity in the terms of ordinary experience one can get some rough understanding but the language is from the perspective of ordinary phenomena inconsistent and from the perspective of what s being described rather inexact to be charitable exactly why science uses mathematics qm representation in natural language is not supposed to replace the elaborate representation in mathematical terminology nor is it supposed to be the truth as opposed to the representation of gods or religions in ordinary language admittedly not every religion says so but a fancy side effect of their inept representations are the eternal hassles between religions and qm allows for making experiments that will lead to results that will be agreed upon as being similar show me something similar in religion an analogous situation supposedly obtains in metaphysics the problem is that the better descriptive language is not available with the effect that the models presented are useless and one can argue that the other way around namely that the only reason metaphysics still flourish is because it makes no statements that can be verified or falsified showing that it is bogus and in case it holds reliable information can you show how you establish that this word reliable is essentially meaningless in the context unless you can show how reliability can be determined haven t you read the many posts about what reliability is and how it can be acheived respectively determined benedikt

alt.atheism

re yet more rushdie re islamic law in p psilink com robert knowles p psilink com writes date sat apr gmt from fred rice darice yoyo cc monash edu au in p ivt cfj fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes should we british go around blowing up skyscrapers next i don t know if you are doing so but it seems you are implying that the person accused of blowing up the wtc in ny actually did it and that islamic teachings have something to do with blowing up the wtc wtc world trade centre which was the building that was blown up i think okay to make some comments the person has only been accused innocent until proven guilty remember secondly there seem to be some holes in his accusation that i read about for instance if they guy used that particular van to blow up the building and then to go back and claim his deposit back afterwards he must be incredibly stupid perhaps salamen was one of those uneducated muslims we hear so much about nevertheless he was apparently smart enough to put together a very sophisticated bomb it doesn t seem to fit together somehow actually salameh was not the only person involved the other fellow was a chemical engineer working for allied signal who had specifically studied explosive devices in school believe it or not we actually allow radical muslim types to study things like this in our universities so much for the price of freedom from what i read the other fellow told salameh how to put it together over the phone the bomb was supposedly some sort of sophisticated type so to put a i assume complicated sophisticated bomb together from instructions over the phone one must need some brains i would expect despite this there have already been many attacks and threats against mosques and muslims in the united states as a consequence of his accusation i have read o k now please tell us where this is happening i live in the u s and i have heard very little about these mosque attacks there are many mosques in houston texas and i would like to know what is going on so i can verify this or is the great jewish media conspiracy keeping us from knowing about this in the u s we heard about the mosque attacks during the desert storm venture so why is it so quiet now maybe it is localized to new jersey i read this in an article in the australian muslim times the newspaper weekly of the australian muslim community if this is true perhaps one of the muslims based in north america if they see this posting can elaborate islamic teachings teach against harming the innocent in the qur an it explicitly teaches against harming innocents even in times of war the blowing up of the wtc and harming innocents is therefore in blatant contradiction to islamic teachings this means absolutely nothing plenty of people commit violence while following what they think are valid religious principles i have seen people post many things here from the koran which could be misinterpreted if that is the explanation you wish to use by an uneducated muslim to allow them to harm idolators and unbelievers the first thing every muslim says is that no muslim could have done that because islam teaches against harming innocents and we are supposed to take you word that it never happens what do you think is the consequence does allah strike them down before the alleged violence occurs of course not muslims commit the violent act and then everyone hides behind verses in the koran we re pretty hip to that trick and i even doubt that it will come up in the trials my defense is that i am muslim and islam teaches me not to harm the innocent therefore the people who were killed must not have been innocent sure we set off the bomb your honor but you must remember sir i am a muslim allah is all powerful allah would not have allowed this are you insulting my religion great defense eh just admit that there are some incredibly stupid violent muslims in the world and stop hiding from that fact it does no one any good to deny it it only makes the more reasonable muslims look like they are protecting the bad ones can you see that i don t deny this fact the thrust of my argument here is that a salameh is according to us law innocent as he has not been found guilty in a court of law as his guilt has not been established it is wrong for people to make postings based on this assumption b islam teaches us not to harm innocents if muslims who perhaps have not realized that islam teaches this perform such actions it is not because of the teachings of islam but rather in spite of and in contradiction to the teachings of islam this is an important distinction i should clarify what muslims usually mean when they say muslim in general anyone who calls themselves a muslim and does not do or outwardly profess something in clear contradiction with the essential teachings of islam is considered to be a muslim thus one who might do things contrary to islam through ignorance for example does not suddenly not become a muslim if one knowingly transgresses islamic teachings and essential principles though then one does leave islam the term muslim is to be contrasted with mu min which means true believer however whether a muslim is in reality a mu min is something known only by god and perhaps that person himself so you will not find the term mu min used very much by muslims in alt atheism because it is not known to anybody except myself and god whether i for example am a true believer or not for example i could just be putting on a show here and in reality believe something opposite to what i write here without anyone knowing thus when we say muslims we mean all those who outwardly profess to follow islam whether in practice they might in ignorance transgress islamic teachings by muslim we do not necessarily mean mu min or true believer in islam fred rice darice yoyo cc monash edu au

alt.atheism

re gospel dating mangoe cs umd edu charley wingate writes david wood writes extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence more seriously this is just a high falutin way of saying i don t believe what you re saying are you making a meta argument here in any case you are wrong think of those invisible pink unicorns also the existence if jesus is not an extradinary claim i was responding to the historical accuracy of biblical claims of which the existence of jesus is only one and one that was not even mentioned in my post you may want to complain that the miracles attributed to him do constitute such claims and i won t argue otherwise but that is a different issue wrong that was exactly the issue go back and read the context included within my post and you ll see what i mean now that i ve done you the kindness of responding to your questions please do the same for me answer the charley challenges your claim that they are of the did not did so variety is a dishonest dodge that i feel certain fools only one person dave wood

alt.atheism

re and another thing mangoe cs umd edu charley wingate writes keith ryan writes you will ignore any criticism of your logic or any possible incongruenties in your stance you will not answer any questions on the validity of any opinion and or facts you state when i have to start saying that s not what i said and the response is did so there s no reason to continue if someone is not going to argue with my version of my position then they cannot be argued with but of course your version of your position has been included in the charley challenges so your claim above is a flat out lie further only last week you claimed that you might not answer the challenges because you were turned off by included text so which is it do you want your context included in my articles or not come to think of it this contradiction has the makings of a new entry in the next challenges post by the way i ve kept every bloody thing that you ve written related to this thread and will be only too pleased to re post any of it to back my position you seem to have forgotten that you leave an electronic paper trail on the net this is the usual theist approach no matter how many times a certain argument has been disproven shown to be non applicable or non sequitur they keep cropping up time after time speaking of non sequiturs this has little to do with what i just said and have some sauce for the goose some of the disproof is fallacies repeated over and over such as the law of nature argument someone posted recently now now let s not change the subject wouldn t it be best to finish up the thread in question before you begin new ones dave wood

alt.atheism

periodic post of charley challenges with additions new in this version challenge plus an addendum summarizing charley s responses to date this is a posting made periodically in an attempt to encourage charley wingate to address direct challenges to his evidently specious claims i ll continue to re post periodically until he answers them publicly indicates that he won t answer them stops posting to alt atheism the alt atheism community tells me to stop or i get totally bored i apologize for the somewhat juvenile nature of this approach but i m at a loss to figure out another way to crack his intransigence and seeming intellectual dishonesty this is re post charley i can t help but notice that you have still failed to provide answers to substantive questions that have been raised in response to your previous posts i submit that you don t answer them because you cannot answer them without running afoul of your own logic and i once again challenge you to prove me wrong to make the task as easy for you as possible i ll present concise re statements of some of the questions that you have failed to answer in the hope that you may address them one at a time for all to see should you fail to answer again within a reasonable time period i will re post this article with suitable additions and deletions at such time that i notice a post by you on another topic i will repeat this procedure until you either address the outstanding challenges or you cease to post to this newsgroup i would like to apologize in advance if you have answered any of these questions previously and your answer missed my notice if you can be kind enough to re post or e mail such articles i will be only too pleased to publicly rescind the challenge in question and remove it from this list now to the questions after claiming that all atheists fit into neat psychological patterns that you proposed then semi retracting that claim by stating that you weren t referring to all atheists i asked you to name some atheists who you feel don t fit your patterns to show that you indeed were not referring to all atheists that you are aware of you failed to do so please do so now question can you name any a a posters who do not fit into your stereotype here is the context for the question this is not true for everyone on this board and you are out of line in assuming that it is you however deleted the text further along where i said that i didn t mean to imply that everybody s experience was along the same lines whether or not you mean to make such implications you do so repeatedly allow me to approach the issue from another viewpoint can you name those atheists that you ve come across who do not fit into the patterns that you theorize you have taken umbrage to statements to the effect that senses and reason are all we have to go by and when pressed you have implied that we have an alternative called revelation i have repeatedly asked you to explain what revelation is and how one can both experience and interpret revelation without doing so via our senses and reason you failed to do so please do so now question can you explain what is revelation and how one can experience and interpret it without using senses and inherent reasoning here is the context for the question revelation is not reason and if we do have revelation then reasoning is not all we have first show me that revelation exists second if revelation is not perceived through the senses how exactly is it perceived according to my webster s revelation is an act of revealing or communicating divine truth now tell me how such a thing can be revealed communicated other than via the senses tell me how you can interpret this revelation other than with reason that is using your brain to interpret what you are sensing when i say there is no way for a human being to interface with the universe other than via the senses as interpreted by reason your brain it is because this is the simple truth if you have another mechanism of interface by all means share it with us then later you cannot escape the fact that our entire interface with the universe is our senses and our reason period again this is indefensible no it is simple truth i challenge you to show me otherwise then later few mystics will agree to this assertion and the common defense of redefining senses to absorb for instance mystical experiences is begs the question of whether some senses are better than others i allow you the broadest definition of senses to make things easier for you now show me that mystical experiences exist remember you aren t allowed to go by testimony of others e g mystics since you have dismissed my testimony as unreliable you know tainted by my own bias further once these mystical thingies are absorbed show me evidence that a human can recognize and respond to them short of interpretation via that person s reasoning capabilities i challenge you to show me these things if you cannot do so you might as well give up the fight then later let me reiterate you have not explained your interpretation of your experiences so it is not possible for me to have attacked them in point of fact i specifically challenged you to explain this revelation stuff that you were talking about and i note for the record that you appear to have declined my challenge what is it how is it sensed how is it interpreted and how does this sensing and interpretation occur without the conduit of our senses and reasoning abilities you have answered none of these questions that go straight to the heart of your claims if you can t answer them your claims are entirely specious you have stated that all claims to dispassionate analysis made by a a posters are unverifiable and fantastical i asked you to identify one such claim that i have made you have failed to do so please do so now question have i made any claims at all that are unverifiable and fantastical if so please repeat them here is the context for the question i must thank david wood a most sensitive and intelligent if wrong posting then later likewise the reference to unverifiable fantastical claims represents fairly accurately my reaction to all of the claims to dispassionate analysis that are repeated in this group give me your address and i ll be pleased to send you a dictionary failing that can you name one claim that i have made that is in any sense unverifiable or fantastical i demand that you retract this statement if you cannot offer up evidence if you follow your usual pattern of ignoring the challenge then you are simply an asshole first you dismissed claims by atheists that they became atheists as a result of reason then later you stated that if one accepted the axioms of reason that one couldn t help but become atheist i asked you to explain the contradiction your only response was a statement that the question was incoherent an opinion not shared by others that i have asked be they atheist or theist you have failed to answer the question please do so now question do you retract your claim that a a posters have not become atheists as a result of reason despite their testimony to that effect if you don t retract that claim do you retract the subsequent claim that acceptance of the axioms of reason inevitably result in atheism here is the context for the question first quote we have here a bunch of people who claim that their position is based on reason it is up to atheists to prove it to me then second quote but i do not see how one can accept these axioms and not end up with an atheistic point of view first you claimed that you would probably not answer these challenges because they contained too much in the way of included text from previous posts later you implied that you wouldn t respond because i was putting words in your mouth please clarify this seeming contradiction question do you prefer to respond to challenges that include context from your own posts or that i paraphrase your positions in order to avoid included text here is the context for the question first you said my ordinary rules are that i don t read articles over over lines or articles in which there is nothing but included text on the first screen these are not rules of morality but practicality then later if someone is not going to argue with my version of my position then they cannot be argued with as usual your responses are awaited with anticipation dave wood p s for the record below is a compilation of charley s responses to these challenges to date this makes no sense to me at all it gives the appearance either of utter incoherence or of answering some question of mr wood s imagination mr wood i do not subscribe to the opinion that a gauntlet thrown down on the net requires any response whatsoever at some point i might read and respond to your article and then again i might not my ordinary rules are that i don t read articles over over lines or articles in which there is nothing but included text on the first screen these are not rules of morality but practicality i left out something else i don t respond to utmost on my list of things to avoid are arguments about the arguments meta arguments as some call them when i have to start saying that s not what i said and the response is did so there s no reason to continue if someone is not going to argue with my version of my position then they cannot be argued with

alt.atheism

re political atheists halat pooh bears jim halat writes i think an objective morality does exist but that most flavors of morality are only approximations to it once again a natural or objective morality is fairly easily defined as long as you have a goal in mind that is what is the purpose of this morality maybe i m not quite getting what you mean by this but i think objective morality is an oxymoron by definition it seems any goal oriented issue like this is subjective by nature i don t get how you re using the word objective but the goal need not be a subjective one for instance the goal of natural morality is the propogation of a species perhaps it wasn t really until the more intelligent animals came along that some revisions to this were necessary intelligent animals have different needs than the others and hence a morality suited to them must be a bit more complicated than the law of the jungle i don t think that self actualization is so subjective as you might think and by objectivity i am assuming that the ideals of any such system could be carried out completely keith

alt.atheism

request for support i have a request for those who would like to see charley wingate respond to the charley challenges and judging from my e mail there appear to be quite a few of you it is clear that mr wingate intends to continue to post tangential or unrelated articles while ingoring the challenges themselves between the last two re postings of the challenges i noted perhaps a dozen or more posts by mr wingate none of which answered a single challenge it seems unmistakable to me that mr wingate hopes that the questions will just go away and he is doing his level best to change the subject given that this seems a rather common net theist tactic i would like to suggest that we impress upon him our desire for answers in the following manner ignore any future articles by mr wingate that do not address the challenges until he answers them or explictly announces that he refuses to do so or if you must respond to one of his articles include within it something similar to the following please answer the questions posed to you in the charley challenges really i m not looking to humiliate anyone here i just want some honest answers you wouldn t think that honesty would be too much to ask from a devout christian would you nevermind that was a rhetorical question dave wood

alt.atheism

re gospel dating in article mimsy umd edu mangoe cs umd edu charley wingate writes assuming you are presenting it accurately i don t see how this argument really leads to any firm conclusion the material in john i m not sure exactly what is referred to here but i ll take for granted the similarity to the matt luke q material is different hence one could have almost any relationship between the two right up to john getting it straight from jesus mouth no the argument says john has known q ie a codified version of the logia and not the original assuming that there has been one it has weaknesses of course like that john might have known the original yet rather referred to q in his text or that the logia were given in a codified version in the first place the argument alone does not allow a firm conclusion but it fits well into the dating usually given for the gospels we are talking date of texts here not the age of the authors the usual explanation for the time order of mark matthew and luke does not consider their respective ages it says matthew has read the text of mark and luke that of matthew and probably that of mark the version of the usual theory i have heard has matthew and luke independently relying on mark and q one would think that if luke relied on matthew we wouldn t have the grating inconsistencies in the geneologies for one thing not necessarily luke may have trusted the version he knew better than the version given by matthew improving on matthew would give a motive for instance as far as i know the theory that luke has known matthew is based on a statistical analysis of the texts as it is assumed that john knew the content of luke s text the evidence for that is not overwhelming admittedly this is the part that is particularly new to me if it were possible that you could point me to a reference i d be grateful yep but it will take another day or so to get the source i hope your german is good enough unfortunately i haven t got the info at hand it was i think in the late s or early s and it was possibly as old as ce when they are from about why do they shed doubt on the order on putting john after the rest of the three because it closes up the gap between supposed writing and the existing copy quit a bit the further away from the original the more copies can be written and therefore survival becomes more probable i still do not see how copies from allow to change the dating of john that john was a disciple is not generally accepted the style and language together with the theology are usually used as counterargument i m not really impressed with the theology argument but i m really pointing this out as an if and as i pointed out earlier one cannot make these arguments about i peter i see no reason not to accept it as an authentic letter yes but an if gives only possibilities and no evidence the authencity of many letters is still discussed it looks as if conclusions about them are not drawn because some pet dogmas of the churches would probably fall with them as well one step and one generation removed is bad even in our times compare that to reports of similar events in our century in almost illiterate societies the best analogy would be reporters talking to the participants which is not so bad well rather like some newsletter of a political party reporting from the big meeting not necessarily wrong but certainly bad in other words one does not know what the original of mark did look like and arguments based on mark are pretty weak but the statement of divinity is not in that section and in any case it s agreed that the most important epistles predate mark yes but the accuracy of their tradition is another problem question are there letters not from paul and predating mark claiming the divinity of jesus benedikt

alt.atheism

re americans and evolution in article ba c ac i dbstu rz tu bs de i dbstu rz tu bs de benedikt rosenau writes in article pq tinn lp senator bedfellow mit edu bobs thnext mit edu robert singleton writes deletion i will argue that your latter statement i believe that no gods exist does rest upon faith that is if you are making a positive statement that no gods exist strong atheism rather than merely saying i don t know and therefore don t believe in them and don t not believe in then weak atheism once again to not believe in god is different than saying i believe that god does not exist i still maintain the position even after reading the faqs that strong atheism requires faith no it in the way it is usually used in my view you are saying here that driving a car requires faith that the car drives i m not saying this at all it requires no faith on my part to say the car drives because i ve seen it drive i ve done more than at in fact i ve actually driven it now what does require some faith is the belief that my senses give an accurate representation of what s out there but there is no evidence pro or con for the existence or non existence of god see what i have to say below on this for me it is a conclusion and i have no more faith in it than i have in the premises and the argument used sorry if i remain skeptical i don t believe it s entirely a conclusion that you have seen no evidence that there is a god is correct neither have i but lack of evidence for the existence of something is in no way evidence for the non existence of something the creationist have a similar mode of argumentation in which if they disprove evolution the establish creation you personally have never seen a neutrino before but they exist the pink unicorn analogy breaks down and is rather naive i have a scientific theory that explains the appearance of animal life evolution when i draw the conclusion that pink unicorns don t exist because i haven t seen them this conclusion has it s foundation in observation and theory a pink unicorn if it did exist would be qualitatively similar to other known entities that is to say since there is good evidence that all life on earth has evolved from more primitive ancestors these pink unicorns would share a common anscestory with horses and zebras and such god however has no such correspondence with anything imo there is no physical frame work of observation to draw any conclusions from but first let me say the following we might have a language problem here in regards to faith and existence i as a christian maintain that god does not exist to exist means to have being in space and time god does not have being god is being kierkegaard once said that god does not exist he is eternal with this said i feel it s rather pointless to debate the so called existence of god and that is not what i m doing here i believe that god is the source and ground of being when you say that god does not exist i also accept this statement but we obviously mean two different things by it however in what follows i will use the phrase the existence of god in it s usual sense and this is the sense that i think you are using it i would like a clarification upon what you mean by the existence of god no that s a word game i disagree with you profoundly on this i haven t defined god as existence in fact i haven t defined god but this might be getting off the subject although if you think it s relevant we can come back to it further saying god is existence is either a waste of time existence is already used and there is no need to replace it by god or you are implying more with it in which case your definition and your argument so far are incomplete making it a fallacy you are using wrong categories here or perhaps you misunderstand what i m saying i m making no argument what so ever and offering no definition so there is no fallacy i m not trying to convince you of anything i believe and that rests upon faith and it is inappropriate to apply the category of logic in this realm unless someone tells you that they can logically prove god or that they have evidence or then the use of logic to disprove their claims if fine and necessary btw an incomplete argument is not a fallacy some things are not even wrong deletion one can never prove that god does or does not exist when you say that you believe god does not exist and that this is an opinion based upon observation i will have to ask what observtions are you refering to there are no observations pro or con that are valid here in establishing a positive belief deletion where does that follow aren t observations based on the assumption that something exists i don t follow you here certainly one can make observations of things that they didn t know existed i still maintain that one cannot use observation to infer that god does not exist such a positive assertion requires a leap and wouldn t you say there is a level of definition that the assumption god is is meaningful if not i would reject that concept anyway so where is your evidence for that god is is meaningful at some level once again you seem to completely misunderstand me i have no evidence that god is is meaningful at any level maybe such a response as you gave just comes naturally to you because so many people try to run their own private conception of god down your throat i however am not doing this i am arguing one and only one thing that to make a positive assertion about something for which there can in principle be no evidence for or against requires a leap it requires faith i am as you would say a theist however there is a form of atheism that i can respect but it must be founded upon honesty benedikt bob singleton bobs thnext mit edu

alt.atheism

re second law was albert sabin joel hanes jjh diag amdahl com wrote mr connor s assertion that more complex later in paleontology is simply incorrect many lineages are known in which whole structures are lost for example snakes have lost their legs cave fish have lost their eyes some species have almost completely lost their males kiwis are descended from birds with functional wings joel the statements i made were illustrative of the inescapably anthrpomorphic quality of any desciption of an evolutionary process there is no way evolution can be described or explained in terms other than teleological that is my whole point even those who have reason to believe they understand evolution biologists for instance tend to personify nature and i can t help but wonder if it s because of the limits of the language or the nature of nature bill

alt.atheism

re gospel dating keith m ryan kmr po cwru edu wrote wild and fanciful claims require greater evidence if you state that one of the books in your room is blue i certainly do not need as much evidence to believe than if you were to claim that there is a two headed leapard in your bed and i don t mean a male lover in a leotard keith if the issue is what is truth then the consequences of whatever proposition argued is irrelevent if the issue is what are the consequences if such and such is true then truth is irrelevent which is it to be bill

alt.atheism

re gospel dating jim perry perry dsinc com wrote the bible says there is a god if that is true then our atheism is mistaken what of it seems pretty obvious to me socrates said there were many gods if that is true then your monotheism and our atheism is mistaken even if socrates never existed jim i think you must have come in late the discussion on my part at least began with benedikt s questioning of the historical acuuracy of the nt i was making the point that if the same standards are used to validate secular history that are used here to discredit nt history then virtually nothing is known of the first century you seem to be saying that the bible cannot be true because it speaks of the existence of god as it it were a fact your objection has nothing to do with history it is merely another statement of atheism bill

alt.atheism

re not the omni charley wingate mangoe cs umd edu wrote please enlighten me how is omnipotence contradictory by definition all that can occur in the universe is governed by the rules of nature thus god cannot break them anything that god does must be allowed in the rules somewhere therefore omnipotence cannot exist it contradicts the rules of nature obviously an omnipotent god can change the rules when you say by definition what exactly is being defined certainly not omnipotence you seem to be saying that the rules of nature are pre existant somehow that they not only define nature but actually cause it if that s what you mean i d like to hear your further thoughts on the question bill

alt.atheism

re if only he knew prudenti juncol juniata edu wrote upon arriving at home joseph probably took advantage of mary had his way with her so to speak of course word of this couldn t get around so mary being the highly religious follower that she was decided hey i ll just say that god impregnated me no one will ever know thus seen as a trustworthy and honorable soul she was believed and then came jesus the child born from violence dave can you explain the purpose of your post i can t imagine what you must have thougt it meant bill

alt.atheism

re allah akbar and praise the lord maddi hausmann madhaus netcom com wrote and thank the lord that bill connor has returned to set us straight now i know i can die happy when my lexus se wipes out on that rain slick curve in the rest of you had best straighten up because your time is even more limited most of you are going in the flu of maddi you know you re glad to have me visit but i won t stay long this time just shopping around bill

alt.atheism

re dear mr theist pixie dl andy bgsu edu wrote for all the problems technology has caused your types have made things even worse must we be reminded of the inquisition operation rescue the ku klux klan posse comitatus the club david duke salem witch trials the crusades gay bashings etc plus virtually each and every single war regardless of the level of technology has had theistic organizations cheering on the carnage chaplains etc and claiming that god was in favor of the whole ordeal don t forget to pray for our troops this is really tedious every bad thing that s ever happened is because the malefactors were under the influence of religion does anyone really believe that i ve seen it so often it must be a pretty general opinion in a a but i want to believe that atheists are really not that dishonest please stick to the facts and having accomplished that interpret them correctly bill

alt.atheism

re is morality constant was re biblical rape jim perry perry dsinc com wrote xenophobia both de facto and de jure as implemented in legal systems is widespread while the bible although not egalitarian specifically preaches kindness to the stranger and emphasizes in the book of ruth that a foreigner can join the nation and give rise to one of the great heroes of the nation clearly better than the alternative but as an american what strikes me as strange about this story is that it should have even been considered an issue jim there are a couple of things about your post and others in this thread that are a little confusing an atheist is one for whom all things can be understood as processes of nature exclusively there is no need for any recourse to divnity to describe or explain anything there is no purpose or direction for any event beyond those required by physics chemistry biology etc everything is random nothing is determnined this would also have to include human intelligence of course and all its products there is nothing requiring that life evolve or that it acquire intelligence it s just a happy accident for an atheist no event can be preferred to another or be said to have more or less value than another in any naturalistic sense and no thought about an event can have value the products of our intelligence are acquired from our environment from teaching training observation and experience and are only significant to the individual mind wherein they reside these mental processes and the images they produce for us are just electrical activity and nothing more content is of no consequence the human mind is as much a response to natural forces as water running down a hill how then can an atheist judge value what is the basis for criticizing the values ennumerated in the bible or the purposes imputed to god on what grounds can the the behavior of the reliogious be condemned it seems that in judging the values that motivate others to action you have to have some standard against which conduct is measured but what in nature can serve that purpose what law of nature can you invoke to establish your values since every event is entirely and exclusively a physical event what difference could it possibly make what anyone does religious or otherwise there can be no meaning or gradation of value the only way an atheist can object to any behaviour is to admit that the objection is entirely subjective and that he she just doesn t like it that s it any value judgement must be prefaced by the disclaimer that it is nothing more than a matter of personal opinion and carries no weight in any absolute sense that you don t like what god told people to do says nothing about god or god s commands it says only that there was an electrical event in your nervous system that created an emotional state that your mind coupled with a pre existing thought set to form that reaction that your objections seem well founded is due to the way you ve been conditioned there is no truth content the whole of your intellectual landscape is an illusion a virtual reality i didn t make these rules it s inherent in naturalistic atheism and to be consistent you have to accept the non significance of any human thought even your own all of this being so you have excluded yourself from any discussion of values right wrong goood evil etc and cannot participate your opinion about the bible can have no weight whatsoever bill

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re bill conner could you explain what any of this pertains to is this a position statement on something or typing practice and why are you using my name do you think this relates to anything i ve said and if so what bill

alt.atheism

re islam dress code for women in ba c i dbstu rz tu bs de i dbstu rz tu bs de benedikt rosenau writes in article apr monu cc monash edu au darice yoyo cc monash edu au fred rice writes deletion of course people say what they think to be the religion and that this is not exactly the same coming from different people within the religion there is nothing with there existing different perspectives within the religion perhaps one can say that they tend to converge on the truth my point is that they are doing a lot of harm on the way in the meantime and that they converge is counterfactual religions appear to split and diverge even when there might be a true religion at the core the layers above determine what happens in practise and they are quite inhumane usually what you post then is supposed to be an answer but i don t see what is has got to do with what i say i will repeat it religions as are harm people and religions don t converge they split giving more to disagree upon and there is a lot of disagreement to whom one should be tolerant or if one should be tolerant at all ideologies also split giving more to disagree upon and may also lead to intolerance so do you also oppose all ideologies i don t think your argument is an argument against religion at all but just points out the weaknesses of human nature big deletion do women have souls in islam people have said here that some muslims say that women do not have souls i must admit i have never heard of such a view being held by muslims of any era i have heard of some christians of some eras holding this viewpoint but not muslims are you sure you might not be confusing christian history with islamic history yes it is supposed to have been a predominant view in the turkish caliphate i would like a reference if you have got one for this is news to me anyhow that women are the spiritual equals of men can be clearly shown from many verses of the qur an for example the qur an says for muslim men and women for believing men and women for devout men and women for true men and women for men and women who are patient and constant for men and women who humble themselves for men and women who give in charity for men and women who fast and deny themselves for men and women who guard their chastity and for men and women who engage much in god s praise for them has god prepared forgiveness and a great reward qur an abdullah yusuf ali s translation there are other quotes too but i think the above quote shows that men and women are spiritual equals and thus that women have souls just as men do very clearly no it does not it implies that they have souls but it does not say they have souls and it is not given that the quote above is given a high priority in all interpretations one must approach the qur an with intelligence any thinking approach to the qur an cannot but interpret the above verse and others like it that women and men are spiritual equals i think that the above verse does clearly imply that women have souls does it make any sense for something without a soul to be forgiven or to have a great reward understood to be in the after life i think the usual answer would be no in which case the part saying for them has god prepared forgiveness and a great reward says they have souls if it makes sense to say that things without souls can be forgiven then i have no idea what a soul is as for your saying that the quote above may not be given a high priority in all interpretations any thinking approach to the qur an has to give all verses of the qur an equal priority that is because according to muslim belief the whole qur an is the revelation of god in fact denying the truth of any part of the qur an is sufficient to be considered a disbeliever in islam quite similar to you other post even when the quran does not encourage slavery it is not justified to say that iit forbids or puts an end to slavery it is a non sequitur look any approach to the qur an must be done with intelligence and thought it is in this fashion that one can try to understand the quran s message in a book of finite length it cannot explicitly answer every question you want to put to it but through its teachings it can guide you i think however that women are the spiritual equals of men is clearly and unambiguously implied in the above verse and that since women can clearly be forgiven and rewarded they must have souls from the above verse let s try to understand what the qur an is trying to teach rather than try to see how many ways it can be misinterpreted by ignoring this passage or that passage the misinterpretations of the qur an based on ignoring this verse or that verse are infinite but the interpretations fully consistent are more limited let s try to discuss these interpretations consistent with the text rather than how people can ignore this bit or that bit for that is just showing how people can try to twist islam for their own ends something i do not deny but provides no reflection on the true teachings of islam whatsoever fred rice darice yoyo cc monash edu au

alt.atheism

re slavery was re why is sex only allowed in marriage in apr ennews eas asu edu guncer enuxha eas asu edu selim guncer writes you might not like what bernard lewis writes about label him as a zionist or such to discredit him etc you misrepresent me selim the hard evidence for my statements about his lack of objectivity are presented quite clearly in the book orientalism by edward said edward said by the way is a christian not a muslim i think he is pretty much objective in his treatment in race and slavery in the middle east since he clearly distinguishes between slavery under islam and the practice of slavery in other countries like the us prior to the civil war he also does not conceal that there are verses in the quran which promote the liberation of slaves what he doesn t and i don t think nobody can deduce from these verses is that slavery will eventually be abolished in islamic countries now you might rather conveniently blame the practice of slavery on muslims but the facts are out there i also fail to see the relevance of the claim of lewis being a zionist to what i wrote regarding bernard lewis him being a zionist gives him a political motive for his giving misrepresentations and half truths about islam read orientalism by edward said see the evidence for yourself in fact i may post some of it here if it isn t too long they were encyclopaedic information which anybody can access that slavery was abolished at certain dates some years after muhammed that this was the cause of tensions in the ottoman empire between the arab slave traders and the government etc we also have in the asu library volumes of british documents on slavery where reports and documents concerning slavery all around the world can be found which i checked some of the incidents lewis mentions so i don t think ones political stance has anything to do with documentary evidence i haven t read lewis s article so i can t comment directly upon it and have only spoken about his writings in general so far that his political motives make him a biased writer on islam his anti islamic polemics as i understand it are often quite subtle and are often based on telling half truths again read orientalism by edward said i am not asking you to take what i say on trust in fact i am urging you not to do so but to get this book it is a well known book and check the evidence out for yourself the issue i raised was that slaves were used for sexual purposes when it was claimed that islam prohibits extra marital sex i wrote that the prophet himself had concubines i wrote an incident in which the prophet advised on someone who did not want his concubine to get pregnant etc which is contrary to the notion that sex is for procreation only in other words such claims are baseless in the quran and the hadith if slavery is in reality as opposed to in the practice of some muslims opposed by islam then using slaves for sexual purposes is necessarily opposed too i seem to be unsuccesful in getting through to you islam is not advocating slavery slavery was an existing institution in the th century it advised on slaves being freed for good deeds etc which is nothing new many cultures saw this as a good thing what is the problem here but i can argue rightfully that slaves were discouraged about thinking about their statuses politically the quran rewards the good slave so obey your master and perhaps one day you ll be free but it is very understandable that i do not communicate with muslims since they assume the quran is from a god and i think it is a rule based system imposed on the society for preservation of the status quo slaves are a part of this system the subordination of women so that their function in society boils down to child making is a part of this system etc i understand your point of view selim i think rather it is us who are not getting through to you some of the points you repeat above i have already answered before regarding women i have made posting after posting on this subject showing that islam is not anti woman etc however have you been completely ignoring my postings or just missing them i just reposted a very good one under the title islam and women reposted from soc religion islam if this has already disappeared from your site then please email me telling me so and i will email you a copy of this excellent article imho your understanding of the issue of women in islam is sadly deficient regarding slaves my posting on slavery the second one i made which is a repost of an article i wrote early last year is based completely on the qur an and contains numerous qur anic verses and hadiths to support its point of view our approaches are different you are arguing from a historical standpoint and i am arguing directly from the teachings of the qur an and hadiths now just because people say they are muslims and perform a particular action does that automatically mean that their action is part of islam even if it is opposed by the qur an and sunnah no of course not let me give you a concrete example which might help clarify this for you the qur an prohibits drinking now if a person says i am a muslim and then proceeds to drink a bottle of beer does this now mean that islam teaches that people should drink beer of course not and only an idiot would think so do you see my point it is very natural to think that the author authors of the quran had no idea that the socio economic structure they were advocating would experience at least two paradigm shifts in years in the western cultures first with the end of the feudal era and the rise of commerce second with the industrial revolution well rules have changed and the status quo has driven muslim countries into misery trying to survive in a heathen world muslim countries have failed economically they were unable to accumulate any wealth directly due to the uncomprimising economic rules in the quran in fact the rise of islam can easily be modeled after the pyramid effect you do not produce any wealth at home but increase your wealth by conquering places you are judging islam here on capitalist terms capitalism is an ideology based largely on the assumption that people want to maximise their wealth this assumption is in opposition to islamic teachings to say islam is bad because it is not capitalist is pretty unthinking islam does not pretend to be capitalist and does not try to be capitalist this does not mean that islam does not support a free market for it does in general but there are other parts of capitalism which are opposed to islam as i understand it when this stopped you and i were left bare in the open for emperialists to devour no capital no industry very poor social services the education level in muslim countries are the lowest in the world the health statistics are miserable etc one can postulate numerous reasons for this your theory is that it is because islam is not secularist and capitalist etc etc selim i will give you a clear historical example to show you the fallacy of your views if you think as you obviously do that islam lack of education and power for a large part of history the islamic world was very powerful for a significant section of history the islamic world was the foremost in the sciences so to say that islam is for example anti education is completely absurd you try to blame this situation on islam history shows that your conclusion is false and that instead there must be other reasons for this situation you blame muslims for not following the quran but i blame muslims for following the quran well selim your viewpoint on women in islam makes me question the extent of your knowledge of islam i really think you are not knowledgeable enough to be able to judge whether the muslims are following the qur an or not your idea is baseless from historical facts it is a poor utopia the islamic world was at the forefront of the world in science at one stage yet somehow in your theory it is by following the qur an that muslims are backwards in education selim it is your thesis that is anti historical for you conveniently overlook this historical fact which contradicts your theory while my ideas are derived from social and economic history you have certainly not shown this you have merely stated it so far it seems to me that your view on islam being anti education is quite contrary to history that you are so convinced of your views makes me wonder just how objectively you are trying to look at all of this my solution to all muslims is simple cut the crap i think selim you should consider taking your own advice get the facts straight here too and work hard to reverse the effects of years of ignorance selim you have such conviction of your viewpoint yet you demonstrate ignorance not only of islam but also of islamic history particularly with respect to muslims being leaders of science till about or so i think yet you say that your viewpoint is based on history selim if i remember right you say in one of your earlier posts that you are an apostate from islam i think you should slow down and start thinking clearly about the issues and start reading some of our postings about islam rather than ignoring them as you so obviously have fred rice darice yoyo cc monash edu au

alt.atheism

re jews can t hide from keith cco in article pqdor s fido asd sgi com livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes in article apr bmerh bnr ca dgraham bmers bnr ca douglas graham writes the poster casually trashed two thousand years of jewish history and ken replied that there had previously been people like him in germany i think the problem here is that i pretty much ignored the part about the jews sightseeing for years thinking instead that the important part of what the original poster said was the bit about killing palestinians in retrospect i can see how the sightseeing thing would be offensive to many i originally saw it just as poetic license but it s understandable that others might see it differently i still think that ken came on a bit strong though i also think that your advice to masud khan before you argue with someone like mr arromdee it s a good idea to do a little homework or at least think was unnecessary that s right there have been there have also been people who were formally nazis but the nazi party would have gone nowhere without the active and tacit support of the ordinary man in the street who behaved as though casual anti semitism was perfectly acceptable now what exactly don t you understand about what i wrote and why don t you see what it has to do with the matter at hand throughout all your articles in this thread there is the tacit assumption that the original poster was exhibiting casual anti semitism if i agreed with that then maybe your speech on why this is bad might have been relevant but i think you re reading a lot into one flip sentence while probably not true in this case too often the charge of anti semitism gets thrown around in order to stifle legitimate criticism of the state of israel anyway i d rather be somewhere else so i m outta this thread doug graham dgraham bnr ca my opinions are my own

alt.atheism

alt atheism faq frequently asked questions archive name atheism faq alt atheism archive name faq last modified april version alt atheism frequently asked questions this file contains responses to articles which occur repeatedly in alt atheism points covered here are ones which are not covered in the introduction to atheism you are advised to read that article as well before posting these answers are not intended to be exhaustive or definitive the purpose of the periodic faq postings is not to stifle debate but to raise its level if you have something to say concerning one of these questions and which isn t covered by the answer given please feel free to make your point overview of contents what is the purpose of this newsgroup hitler was an atheist the bible proves it pascal s wager what is occam s razor why it s good to believe in jesus why i know that god exists einstein and god does not play dice everyone worships something why there must be a causeless cause the universe is so complex it must have been designed independent evidence that the bible is true godel s incompleteness theorem george bush on atheism and patriotism i know where hell is biblical contradictions wanted the usa is a christian nation the usa is not a christian nation subject what is the purpose of this newsgroup typical posting why have a newsgroup about atheism why do atheists organize in groups what is there to discuss response many things are discussed here including whether it is reasonable to feign theism in order to avoid upsetting one s family prayer in schools discrimination against atheists sunday trading laws the satanic child abuse myth whether one should be an overt atheist or stay in the closet how religious societies prey sic on new college students how to get rid of unwanted proselytizers whether religion is a danger to society and or the individual why people become atheists of course inevitably alt atheism tends to attract evangelical christians looking for someone to convert most readers of the newsgroup don t want to be preached to although a few seem to derive perverse pleasure from tearing apart particularly ill considered or uninformed postings subject hitler was an atheist typical posting hitler was an atheist and look at what he did response adolf hitler was emphatically not an atheist as he said himself the folkish minded man in particular has the sacred duty each in his own denomination of making people stop just talking superficially of god s will and actually fulfill god s will and not let god s word be desecrated orig ital for god s will gave men their form their essence and their abilities anyone who destroys his work is declaring war on the lord s creation the divine will therefore let every man be active each in his own denomination if you please and let every man take it as his first and most sacred duty to oppose anyone who in his activity by word or deed steps outside the confines of his religious community and tries to butt into the other hence today i believe that i am acting in accordance with the will of the almighty creator by defending myself against the jew i am fighting for the work of the lord orig ital adolf hitler from mein kampf trans ralph mannheim of course someone bad believing something does not make that belief wrong it s also entirely possible that hitler was lying when he claimed to believe in god we certainly can t conclude that he s an atheist though subject the bible proves it typical posting in the bible it says that response most of the readers of alt atheism feel that the bible is of questionable accuracy as it was written thousands of years ago by many authors who were recording oral tradition that existed many years before thus any claimed truth in it is of questionable legitimacy this isn t to say that the bible has no truth in it simply that any truth must be examined before being accepted many of the readers of this group also feel that because any passage is subject to interpretation any claim that a passage means one thing and one thing only is not legitimate note that this feeling tends to extend to other books it is also remarkable to many atheists that theists tend to ignore other equally plausible religious books in favour of those of their own religion subject pascal s wager typical posting if you believe in god and turn out to be incorrect you have lost nothing but if you don t believe in god and turn out to be incorrect you will go to hell therefore it is foolish to be an atheist response this argument is known as pascal s wager it has several flaws firstly it does not indicate which religion to follow indeed there are many mutually exclusive and contradictory religions out there this is often described as the avoiding the wrong hell problem if a person is a follower of religion x he may end up in religion y s version of hell secondly the statement that if you believe in god and turn out to be incorrect you have lost nothing is not true suppose you re believing in the wrong god the true god might punish you for your foolishness consider also the deaths that have resulted from people rejecting medicine in favour of prayer another flaw in the argument is that it is based on the assumption that the two possibilities are equally likely or at least that they are of comparable likelihood if in fact the possibility of there being a god is close to zero the argument becomes much less persuasive so sadly the argument is only likely to convince those who believe already also many feel that for intellectually honest people belief is based on evidence with some amount of intuition it is not a matter of will or cost benefit analysis formally speaking the argument consists of four statements one does not know whether god exists not believing in god is bad for one s eternal soul if god does exist believing in god is of no consequence if god does not exist therefore it is in one s interest to believe in god there are two approaches to the argument the first is to view as an assumption and as a consequence of it one problem with this approach in the abstract is that it creates information from no information this is considered invalid in information theory statement indicates one has no information about god but statement indicates that beneficial information can be gained from the absolute lack of information about god this violates information entropy information has been extracted from no information at no cost the alternative approach is to claim that and are both assumptions the problem with this is that is then basically an assumption which states the christian position and only a christian will agree with that assumption the argument thus collapses to if you are a christian it is in your interests to believe in god a rather vacuous tautology and not the way pascal intended the argument to be viewed the biggest reason why pascal s wager is a failure is that if god is omniscient he will certainly know who really believes and who believes as a wager he will spurn the latter assuming he actually cares at all whether people believe in him subject what is occam s razor typical posting people keep talking about occam s razor what is it response william of occam formulated a principle which has become known as occam s razor in its original form it said do not multiply entities unnecessarily that is if you can explain something without supposing the existence of some entity then do so nowadays when people refer to occam s razor they generally express it more generally for example as take the simplest solution the relevance to atheism is that we can look at two possible explanations for what we see around us there is an incredibly intricate and complex universe out there which came into being as a result of natural processes there is an incredibly intricate and complex universe out there and there is also a god who created the universe clearly this god must be of non zero complexity given that both explanations fit the facts occam s razor might suggest that we should take the simpler of the two solution number one unfortunately some argue that there is a third even more simple solution there isn t an incredibly intricate and complex universe out there we just imagine that there is this third option leads us logically towards solipsism which many people find unacceptable subject why it s good to believe in jesus typical posting i want to tell people about the virtues and benefits of my religion response preaching is not appreciated feel free to talk about your religion but please do not write postings that are on a conversion theme such postings do not belong on alt atheism and will be rejected from alt atheism moderated try the newsgroup talk religion misc you would doubtless not welcome postings from atheists to your favourite newsgroup in an attempt to convert you please do unto others as you would have them do unto you often theists make their basic claims about god in the form of lengthy analogies or parables be aware that atheists have heard of god and know the basic claims about him if the sole purpose of your parable is to tell atheists that god exists and brings salvation you may as well not post it since it tells us nothing we have not been told before subject why i know that god exists typical posting i know from personal experience and prayer that god exists response just as many theists have personal evidence that the being they worship exists so many atheists have personal evidence that such beings do not exist that evidence varies from person to person furthermore without wishing to dismiss your evidence out of hand many people have claimed all kinds of unlikely things that they have been abducted by ufos visited by the ghost of elvis and so on subject einstein and god does not play dice typical posting albert einstein believed in god do you think you re cleverer than him response einstein did once comment that god does not play dice with the universe this quotation is commonly mentioned to show that einstein believed in the christian god used this way it is out of context it refers to einstein s refusal to accept the uncertainties indicated by quantum theory furthermore einstein s religious background was jewish rather than christian a better quotation showing what einstein thought about god is the following i believe in spinoza s god who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists not in a god who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings einstein was unable to accept quantum theory because of his belief in an objective orderly reality a reality which would not be subject to random events and which would not be dependent upon the observer he believed that qm was incomplete and that a better theory would have no need for statistical interpretations so far no such better theory has been found and much evidence suggests that it never will be a longer quote from einstein appears in science philosophy and religion a symposium published by the conference on science philosophy and religion in their relation to the democratic way of life inc new york in it he says the more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature for him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural events to be sure the doctrine of a personal god interfering with natural events could never be refuted italics his in the real sense by science for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot but i am convinced that such behavior on the part of representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal for a doctrine which is to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark will of necessity lose its effect on mankind with incalculable harm to human progress in their struggle for the ethical good teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal god that is give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests in their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the good the true and the beautiful in humanity itself this is to be sure a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task einstein has also said it was of course a lie what you read about my religous convictions a lie which is being systematically repeated i do not believe in a personal god and i have never denied this but have expressed it clearly if something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it the latter quote is from albert einstein the human side edited by helen dukas and banesh hoffman and published by princeton university press also from the same book i do not believe in immortality of the individual and i consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it of course the fact that einstein chose not to believe in christianity does not in itself imply that christianity is false subject everyone worships something typical posting everyone worships something whether it s money power or god response if that is true everyone is a polytheist theists care just as much about those things that atheists care about if the atheists reactions to for example their families amount to worship then so do the theists subject why there must be a causeless cause typical posting sets of integers that have a lower bound each have a smallest member so chains of causes must all have a first element a causeless cause response the set of real numbers greater than zero has a definite lower bound but has no smallest member further even if it is true that there must be a causeless cause that does not imply that that cause must be a conscious supernatural entity and especially not that any such entity must match the description favoured by any particular religion subject the universe is so complex it must have been designed typical posting the presence of design in the universe proves there is a god surely you don t think all this appeared here just by chance response this is known as the argument from design it is a matter of dispute whether there is any element of design in the universe those who believe that the complexity and diversity of living creatures on the earth is evidence of a creator are best advised to read the newsgroup talk origins for a while there is insufficient space to summarize both sides of that debate here however the conclusion is that there is no scientific evidence in favour of so called scientific creationism furthermore there is much evidence observation and theory that can explain many of the complexities of the universe and life on earth the origin of the argument by design is a feeling that the existence of something as incredibly intricate as say a human is so improbable that surely it can t have come about by chance that surely there must be some external intelligence directing things so that humans come from the chaos deliberately but if human intelligence is so improbable surely the existence of a mind capable of fashioning an entire universe complete with conscious beings must be immeasurably more unlikely the approach used to argue in favour of the existence of a creator can be turned around and applied to the creationist position this leads us to the familiar theme of if a creator created the universe what created the creator but with the addition of spiralling improbability the only way out is to declare that the creator was not created and just is or was from here we might as well ask what is wrong with saying that the universe just is without introducing a creator indeed stephen hawking in his book a brief history of time explains his theory that the universe is closed and finite in extent with no beginning or end the argument from design is often stated by analogy in the so called watchmaker argument one is asked to imagine that one has found a watch on the beach does one assume that it was created by a watchmaker or that it evolved naturally of course one assumes a watchmaker yet like the watch the universe is intricate and complex so the argument goes the universe too must have a creator the watchmaker analogy suffers from three particular flaws over and above those common to all arguments by design firstly a watchmaker creates watches from pre existing materials whereas god is claimed to have created the universe from nothing these two sorts of creation are clearly fundamentally different and the analogy is therefore rather weak secondly a watchmaker makes watches but there are many other things in the world if we walked further along the beach and found a nuclear reactor we wouldn t assume it was created by the watchmaker the argument would therefore suggest a multitude of creators each responsible for a different part of creation finally in the first part of the watchmaker argument we conclude that the watch is not part of nature because it is ordered and therefore stands out from the randomness of nature yet in the second part of the argument we start from the position that the universe is obviously not random but shows elements of order the watchmaker argument is thus internally inconsistent subject independent evidence that the bible is true typical posting the events of the new testament are confirmed by independent documentary evidence for example response the writings of josephus are often mentioned as independent documentary evidence early versions of josephus s work are thought not to have mentioned jesus or james the extant version discusses john in a non christian context many scholars believe that the original mentioned jesus and james in passing but that this was expanded by christian copyists several reconstructions of the original text have been published to this effect much information appears in the ecclesiastical history of eusebius about c e it is worthless as historical material because of the deliberate falsification of the wily eusebius who is generally acknowledged as the first thoroughly dishonest historian of antiquity it is eusebius who is generally given the title of authorship for this material aside from the new testament the biographical information about jesus is more well documented for further information please consult the frequently asked questions file for the newsgroup soc religion christian subject godel s incompleteness theorem typical posting godel s incompleteness theorem demonstrates that it is impossible for the bible to be both true and complete response godel s first incompleteness theorem says that in any consistent formal system which is sufficiently expressive that it can model ordinary arithmetic one can formulate expressions which can never be proven to be valid or invalid true or false within that formal system technically speaking the system must also be recursive that is there must be a decision procedure for determining whether a given string is an axiom within the formal system essentially all such systems can formulate what is known as a liar paradox the classic liar paradox sentence in ordinary english is this sentence is false note that if a proposition is undecidable the formal system cannot even deduce that it is undecidable the logic used in theological discussions is rarely well defined so claims that godel s incompleteness theorem demonstrates that it is impossible to prove or disprove the existence of god are worthless in isolation one can trivially define a formal system in which it is possible to prove the existence of god simply by having the existence of god stated as an axiom this is unlikely to be viewed by atheists as a convincing proof however it may be possible to succeed in producing a formal system built on axioms that both atheists and theists agree with it may then be possible to show that godel s incompleteness theorem holds for that system however that would still not demonstrate that it is impossible to prove that god exists within the system furthermore it certainly wouldn t tell us anything about whether it is possible to prove the existence of god generally note also that all of these hypothetical formal systems tell us nothing about the actual existence of god the formal systems are just abstractions another frequent claim is that godel s incompleteness theorem demonstrates that a religious text the bible the book of mormon or whatever cannot be both consistent and universally applicable religious texts are not formal systems so such claims are nonsense subject george bush on atheism and patriotism typical posting did george bush really say that atheists should not be considered citizens response the following exchange took place at the chicago airport between robert i sherman of american atheist press and george bush on august sherman is a fully accredited reporter and was present by invitation as a member of the press corps the republican presidential nominee was there to announce federal disaster relief for illinois the discussion turned to the presidential primary rs what will you do to win the votes of americans who are atheists gb i guess i m pretty weak in the atheist community faith in god is important to me rs surely you recognize the equal citizenship and patriotism of americans who are atheists gb no i don t know that atheists should be considered as citizens nor should they be considered patriots this is one nation under god rs do you support as a sound constitutional principle the separation of state and church gb yes i support the separation of church and state i m just not very high on atheists upi reported on may that various atheist organizations were still angry over the remarks the exchange appeared in the boulder daily camera on monday february it can also be found in free enquiry magazine fall issue volume number page on october mr sherman had a confrontation with ed murnane cochairman of the bush quayle illinois campaign this concerned a lawsuit mr sherman had filed to stop the community consolidated school district chicago illinois from forcing his first grade atheist son to pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states as one nation under god bush s phrase the following conversation took place rs american atheists filed the pledge of allegiance lawsuit yesterday does the bush campaign have an official response to this filing em it s bullshit rs what is bullshit em everything that american atheists does rob is bullshit rs thank you for telling me what the official position of the bush campaign is on this issue em you re welcome after bush s election american atheists wrote to bush asking him to retract his statement on february st c boyden gray counsel to the president replied on white house stationery that bush substantively stood by his original statement and wrote as you are aware the president is a religious man who neither supports atheism nor believes that atheism should be unnecessarily encouraged or supported by the government for further information contact american atheist veterans at the american atheist press s cameron road address subject i know where hell is typical posting i know where hell is hell is in norway response there are several towns called hell in various countries around the world including norway and the usa whilst this information is mildly amusing the first time one hears it readers of alt atheism are now getting pretty fed up with hearing it every week subject biblical contradictions wanted typical posting does anyone have a list of biblical contradictions response american atheist press publish an atheist s handbook detailing biblical contradictions see the accompanying posting on atheist resources for details there is a file containing some biblical contradictions available from the archive server mantis co uk see the contacts file for more information subject the usa is a christian nation typical posting because of the religious beliefs of the founding fathers shouldn t the united states be considered a christian nation response based upon the writings of several important founding fathers it is clear that they never intended the us to be a christian nation here are some quotes there are many more what influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on society in some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries a just government instituted to secure and perpetuate it needs them not james madison a memorial and remonstrance i almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved the cross consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced john adams in a letter to thomas jefferson history i believe furnishes no example of a priest ridden people maintaining a free civil government this marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose thomas jefferson to baron von humboldt i cannot conceive otherwise than that he the infinite father expects or requires no worship or praise from us but that he is even infinitely above it benjamin franklin from articles of belief and acts of religion nov subject the usa is not a christian nation typical posting is it true that george washington said that the united states is not in any sense founded upon the christian religion response no the quotation often given is in fact from article xi of the treaty of tripoli stat treaty series article as the government of the united states of america is not in any sense founded on the christian religion as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws religion or tranquility of musselmen and as the said states never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any mehomitan nation it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries the text may be found in the congressional record or in treaty collections such as charles bevans treaties and other international agreements of the united states of america vol pp the english text of the treaty of tripoli was approved by the u s senate on june and ratified by president john adams on june it was recently discovered that the arabic version of the treaty not only lacks the quotation it lacks article xi altogether the person who translated the arabic to english was joel barlow consul general at algiers a close friend of thomas paine and an opponent of christianity it is possible that barlow made up article xi but since there is no arabic version of that article to be found it s hard to say in a new treaty of tripoli was ratified which no longer contained the quotation end of faq digest

alt.atheism

alt atheism faq constructing a logical argument archive name atheism logic alt atheism archive name logic last modified april version constructing a logical argument although there is much argument on usenet the general quality of argument found is poor this article attempts to provide a gentle introduction to logic in the hope of improving the general level of debate logic is the science of reasoning proof thinking or inference concise oed logic allows us to analyze a piece of reasoning and determine whether it is correct or not valid or invalid of course one does not need to study logic in order to reason correctly nevertheless a little basic knowledge of logic is often helpful when constructing or analyzing an argument note that no claim is being made here about whether logic is universally applicable the matter is very much open for debate this document merely explains how to use logic given that you have already decided that logic is the right tool for the job propositions or statements are the building blocks of a logical argument a proposition is a statement which is either true or false for example it is raining or today is tuesday propositions may be either asserted said to be true or denied said to be false note that this is a technical meaning of deny not the everyday meaning the proposition is the meaning of the statement not the particular arrangement of words used to express it so god exists and there exists a god both express the same proposition an argument is to quote the monty python sketch a connected series of statements to establish a definite proposition an argument consists of three stages first of all the propositions which are necessary for the argument to continue are stated these are called the premises of the argument they are the evidence or reasons for accepting the argument and its conclusions premises or assertions are often indicated by phrases such as because since obviously and so on the phrase obviously is often viewed with suspicion as it can be used to intimidate others into accepting suspicious premises if something doesn t seem obvious to you don t be afraid to question it you can always say oh yes you re right it is obvious when you ve heard the explanation next the premises are used to derive further propositions by a process known as inference in inference one proposition is arrived at on the basis of one or more other propositions already accepted there are various forms of valid inference the propositions arrived at by inference may then be used in further inference inference is often denoted by phrases such as implies that or therefore finally we arrive at the conclusion of the argument the proposition which is affirmed on the basis of the premises and inference conclusions are often indicated by phrases such as therefore it follows that we conclude and so on the conclusion is often stated as the final stage of inference for example every event has a cause premise the universe has a beginning premise all beginnings involve an event premise this implies that the beginning of the universe involved an event inference therefore the universe has a cause inference and conclusion note that the conclusion of one argument might be a premise in another argument a proposition can only be called a premise or a conclusion with respect to a particular argument the terms do not make sense in isolation sometimes an argument will not follow the order given above for example the conclusions might be stated first and the premises stated afterwards in support of the conclusion this is perfectly valid if sometimes a little confusing recognizing an argument is much harder than recognizing premises or conclusions many people shower their writing with assertions without ever producing anything which one might reasonably describe as an argument some statements look like arguments but are not for example if the bible is accurate jesus must either have been insane an evil liar or the son of god this is not an argument it is a conditional statement it does not assert the premises which are necessary to support what appears to be its conclusion it also suffers from a number of other logical flaws but we ll come to those later another example god created you therefore do your duty to god the phrase do your duty to god is not a proposition since it is neither true nor false therefore it is not a conclusion and the sentence is not an argument finally causality is important consider a statement of the form a because b if we re interested in establishing a and b is offered as evidence the statement is an argument if we re trying to establish the truth of b then it is not an argument it is an explanation for example there must be something wrong with the engine of my car because it will not start this is an argument my car will not start because there is something wrong with the engine this is an explanation there are two traditional types of argument deductive and inductive a deductive argument is one which provides conclusive proof of its conclusions that is an argument where if the premises are true the conclusion must also be true a deductive argument is either valid or invalid a valid argument is defined as one where if the premises are true then the conclusion is true an inductive argument is one where the premises provide some evidence for the truth of the conclusion inductive arguments are not valid or invalid however we can talk about whether they are better or worse than other arguments and about how probable their premises are there are forms of argument in ordinary language which are neither deductive nor inductive however we will concentrate for the moment on deductive arguments as they are often viewed as the most rigorous and convincing it is important to note that the fact that a deductive argument is valid does not imply that its conclusion holds this is because of the slightly counter intuitive nature of implication which we must now consider more carefully obviously a valid argument can consist of true propositions however an argument may be entirely valid even if it contains only false propositions for example all insects have wings premise woodlice are insects premise therefore woodlice have wings conclusion here the conclusion is not true because the argument s premises are false if the argument s premises were true however the conclusion would be true the argument is thus entirely valid more subtly we can reach a true conclusion from one or more false premises as in all fish live in the sea premise dolphins are fish premise therefore dolphins live in the sea conclusion however the one thing we cannot do is reach a false conclusion through valid inference from true premises we can therefore draw up a truth table for implication the symbol denotes implication a is the premise b the conclusion t and f represent true and false respectively premise conclusion inference a b a b f f t if the premises are false and the inference f t t valid the conclusion can be true or false t f f if the premises are true and the conclusion false the inference must be invalid t t t if the premises are true and the inference valid the conclusion must be true a sound argument is a valid argument whose premises are true a sound argument therefore arrives at a true conclusion be careful not to confuse valid arguments with sound arguments to delve further into the structure of logical arguments would require lengthy discussion of linguistics and philosophy it is simpler and probably more useful to summarize the major pitfalls to be avoided when constructing an argument these pitfalls are known as fallacies in everyday english the term fallacy is used to refer to mistaken beliefs as well as to the faulty reasoning that leads to those beliefs this is fair enough but in logic the term is generally used to refer to a form of technically incorrect argument especially if the argument appears valid or convincing so for the purposes of this discussion we define a fallacy as a logical argument which appears to be correct but which can be seen to be incorrect when examined more closely by studying fallacies we aim to avoid being misled by them the following list of fallacies is not intended to be exhaustive argumentum ad baculum appeal to force the appeal to force is committed when the arguer resorts to force or the threat of force in order to try and push the acceptance of a conclusion it is often used by politicians and can be summarized as might makes right the force threatened need not be a direct threat from the arguer for example thus there is ample proof of the truth of the bible all those who refuse to accept that truth will burn in hell argumentum ad hominem argumentum ad hominem is literally argument directed at the man the abusive variety of argumentum ad hominem occurs when instead of trying to disprove the truth of an assertion the arguer attacks the person or people making the assertion this is invalid because the truth of an assertion does not depend upon the goodness of those asserting it for example atheism is an evil philosophy it is practised by communists and murderers sometimes in a court of law doubt is cast upon the testimony of a witness by showing for example that he is a known perjurer this is a valid way of reducing the credibility of the testimony given by the witness and not argumentum ad hominem however it does not demonstrate that the witness s testimony is false to conclude otherwise is to fall victim of the argumentum ad ignorantiam see elsewhere in this list the circumstantial form of argumentum ad hominem is committed when a person argues that his opponent ought to accept the truth of an assertion because of the opponent s particular circumstances for example it is perfectly acceptable to kill animals for food how can you argue otherwise when you re quite happy to wear leather shoes this is an abusive charge of inconsistency used as an excuse for dismissing the opponent s argument this fallacy can also be used as a means of rejecting a conclusion for example of course you would argue that positive discrimination is a bad thing you re white this particular form of argumentum ad hominem when one alleges that one s adversary is rationalizing a conclusion formed from selfish interests is also known as poisoning the well argumentum ad ignorantium argumentum ad ignorantium means argument from ignorance this fallacy occurs whenever it is argued that something must be true simply because it has not been proved false or equivalently when it is argued that something must be false because it has not been proved true note that this is not the same as assuming that something is false until it has been proved true a basic scientific principle examples of course the bible is true nobody can prove otherwise of course telepathy and other psychic phenomena do not exist nobody has shown any proof that they are real note that this fallacy does not apply in a court of law where one is generally assumed innocent until proven guilty also in scientific investigation if it is known that an event would produce certain evidence of its having occurred the absence of such evidence can validly be used to infer that the event did not occur for example a flood as described in the bible would require an enormous volume of water to be present on the earth the earth does not have a tenth as much water even if we count that which is frozen into ice at the poles therefore no such flood occurred in science we can validly assume from lack of evidence that something has not occurred we cannot conclude with certainty that it has not occurred however argumentum ad misericordiam this is the appeal to pity also known as special pleading the fallacy is committed when the arguer appeals to pity for the sake of getting a conclusion accepted for example i did not murder my mother and father with an axe please don t find me guilty i m suffering enough through being an orphan argumentum ad populum this is known as appealing to the gallery or appealing to the people to commit this fallacy is to attempt to win acceptance of an assertion by appealing to a large group of people this form of fallacy is often characterized by emotive language for example pornography must be banned it is violence against women the bible must be true millions of people know that it is are you trying to tell them that they are all mistaken fools argumentum ad numeram this fallacy is closely related to the argumentum ad populum it consists of asserting that the more people who support or believe a proposition the more likely it is that that proposition is correct argumentum ad verecundiam the appeal to authority uses the admiration of the famous to try and win support for an assertion for example isaac newton was a genius and he believed in god this line of argument is not always completely bogus for example reference to an admitted authority in a particular field may be relevant to a discussion of that subject for example we can distinguish quite clearly between stephen hawking has concluded that black holes give off radiation and john searle has concluded that it is impossible to build an intelligent computer hawking is a physicist and so we can reasonably expect his opinions on black hole radiation to be informed searle is a linguist so it is questionable whether he is well qualified to speak on the subject of machine intelligence the fallacy of accident the fallacy of accident is committed when a general rule is applied to a particular case whose accidental circumstances mean that the rule is inapplicable it is the error made when one goes from the general to the specific for example christians generally dislike atheists you are a christian so you must dislike atheists this fallacy is often committed by moralists and legalists who try to decide every moral and legal question by mechanically applying general rules converse accident hasty generalization this fallacy is the reverse of the fallacy of accident it occurs when one forms a general rule by examining only a few specific cases which are not representative of all possible cases for example jim bakker was an insincere christian therefore all christians are insincere sweeping generalization dicto simpliciter a sweeping generalization occurs when a general rule is applied to a particular situation in which the features of that particular situation render the rule inapplicable a sweeping generalization is the opposite of a hasty generalization non causa pro causa post hoc ergo propter hoc these are known as false cause fallacies the fallacy of non causa pro causa occurs when one identifies something as the cause of an event but it has not actually been shown to be the cause for example i took an aspirin and prayed to god and my headache disappeared so god cured me of the headache the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc occurs when something is assumed to be the cause of an event merely because it happened before the event for example the soviet union collapsed after taking up atheism therefore we must avoid atheism for the same reasons cum hoc ergo propter hoc this fallacy is similar to post hoc ergo propter hoc it asserts that because two events occur together they must be causally related and leaves no room for other factors that may be the cause s of the events petitio principii this fallacy occurs when the premises are at least as questionable as the conclusion reached circulus in demonstrando this fallacy occurs when one assumes as a premise the conclusion which one wishes to reach often the proposition will be rephrased so that the fallacy appears to be a valid argument for example homosexuals must not be allowed to hold government office hence any government official who is revealed to be a homosexual will lose his job therefore homosexuals will do anything to hide their secret and will be open to blackmail therefore homosexuals cannot be allowed to hold government office note that the argument is entirely circular the premise is the same as the conclusion an argument like the above has actually been cited as the reason for the british secret services official ban on homosexual employees another example is the classic we know that god exists because the bible tells us so and we know that the bible is true because it is the word of god complex question fallacy of interrogation this is the fallacy of presupposition one example is the classic loaded question have you stopped beating your wife the question presupposes a definite answer to another question which has not even been asked this trick is often used by lawyers in cross examination when they ask questions like where did you hide the money you stole similarly politicians often ask loaded questions such as how long will this ec interference in our affairs be allowed to continue or does the chancellor plan two more years of ruinous privatization ignoratio elenchi the fallacy of irrelevant conclusion consists of claiming that an argument supports a particular conclusion when it is actually logically nothing to do with that conclusion for example a christian may begin by saying that he will argue that the teachings of christianity are undoubtably true if he then argues at length that christianity is of great help to many people no matter how well he argues he will not have shown that christian teachings are true sadly such fallacious arguments are often successful because they arouse emotions which cause others to view the supposed conclusion in a more favourable light equivocation equivocation occurs when a key word is used with two or more different meanings in the same argument for example what could be more affordable than free software but to make sure that it remains free that users can do what they like with it we must place a license on it to make sure that will always be freely redistributable amphiboly amphiboly occurs when the premises used in an argument are ambiguous because of careless or ungrammatical phrasing accent accent is another form of fallacy through shifting meaning in this case the meaning is changed by altering which parts of a statement are emphasized for example consider we should not speak ill of our friends and we should not speak ill of our friends fallacies of composition one fallacy of composition is to conclude that a property shared by the parts of something must apply to the whole for example the bicycle is made entirely of low mass components and is therefore very lightweight the other fallacy of composition is to conclude that a property of a number of individual items is shared by a collection of those items for example a car uses less petrol and causes less pollution than a bus therefore cars are less environmentally damaging than buses fallacy of division the fallacy of division is the opposite of the fallacy of composition like its opposite it exists in two varieties the first is to assume that a property of some thing must apply to its parts for example you are studying at a rich college therefore you must be rich the other is to assume that a property of a collection of items is shared by each item for example ants can destroy a tree therefore this ant can destroy a tree the slippery slope argument this argument states that should one event occur so will other harmful events there is no proof made that the harmful events are caused by the first event for example if we legalize marijuana then we would have to legalize crack and heroin and we ll have a nation full of drug addicts on welfare therefore we cannot legalize marijuana a is based on b fallacies is a type of fallacies these fallacies occur when one attempts to argue that things are in some way similar without actually specifying in what way they are similar examples isn t history based upon faith if so then isn t the bible also a form of history islam is based on faith christianity is based on faith so isn t islam a form of christianity cats are a form of animal based on carbon chemistry dogs are a form of animal based on carbon chemistry so aren t dogs a form of cat affirmation of the consequent this fallacy is an argument of the form a implies b b is true therefore a is true to understand why it is a fallacy examine the truth table for implication given earlier denial of the antecedent this fallacy is an argument of the form a implies b a is false therefore b is false again the truth table for implication makes it clear why this is a fallacy note that this fallacy is different from non causa pro causa the latter has the form a implies b a is false therefore b is false where a does not in fact imply b at all here the problem is not that the implication is invalid rather it is that the falseness of a does not allow us to deduce anything about b converting a conditional this fallacy is an argument of the form if a then b therefore if b then a argumentum ad antiquitam this is the fallacy of asserting that something is right or good simply because it is old or because that s the way it s always been argumentum ad novitam this is the opposite of the argumentum ad antiquitam it is the fallacy of asserting that something is more correct simply because it is new or newer than something else argumentum ad crumenam the fallacy of believing that money is a criterion of correctness that those with more money are more likely to be right argumentum ad lazarum the fallacy of assuming that because someone is poor he or she is sounder or more virtuous than one who is wealthier this fallacy is the opposite of the argumentum ad crumenam argumentum ad nauseam this is the incorrect belief that an assertion is more likely to be true the more often it is heard an argumentum ad nauseum is one that employs constant repetition in asserting something bifurcation also referred to as the black and white fallacy bifurcation occurs when one presents a situation as having only two alternatives where in fact other alternatives exist or can exist plurium interrogationum many questions this fallacy occurs when a questioner demands a simple answer to a complex question non sequitur a non sequitur is an argument where the conclusion is drawn from premises which are not logically connected with it red herring this fallacy is committed when irrelevant material is introduced to the issue being discussed so that everyone s attention is diverted away from the points being made towards a different conclusion reification hypostatization reification occurs when an abstract concept is treated as a concrete thing shifting the burden of proof the burden of proof is always on the person making an assertion or proposition shifting the burden of proof a special case of argumentum ad ignorantium is the fallacy of putting the burden of proof on the person who denies or questions the assertion being made the source of the fallacy is the assumption that something is true unless proven otherwise straw man the straw man fallacy is to misrepresent someone else s position so that it can be attacked more easily then to knock down that misrepresented position then to conclude that the original position has been demolished it is a fallacy because it fails to deal with the actual arguments that have been made the extended analogy the fallacy of the extended analogy often occurs when some suggested general rule is being argued over the fallacy is to assume that mentioning two different situations in an argument about a general rule constitutes a claim that those situations are analogous to each other this fallacy is best explained using a real example from a debate about anti cryptography legislation i believe it is always wrong to oppose the law by breaking it such a position is odious it implies that you would not have supported martin luther king are you saying that cryptography legislation is as important as the struggle for black liberation how dare you tu quoque this is the famous you too fallacy it occurs when an action is argued to be acceptable because the other party has performed it for instance you re just being randomly abusive so you ve been abusive too

alt.atheism

alt atheism faq overview for new readers archive name atheism overview alt atheism archive name overview last modified april version overview welcome to alt atheism and alt atheism moderated this is the first in a series of regular postings aimed at new readers of the newsgroups many groups of a controversial nature have noticed that new readers often come up with the same questions mis statements or misconceptions and post them to the net in addition people often request information which has been posted time and time again in order to try and cut down on this the alt atheism groups have a series of five regular postings under the following titles alt atheism faq overview for new readers alt atheism faq introduction to atheism alt atheism faq frequently asked questions faq alt atheism faq constructing a logical argument alt atheism faq atheist resources this is article number please read numbers and before posting the others are entirely optional if you are new to usenet you may also find it helpful to read the newsgroup news announce newusers the articles titled a primer on how to work with the usenet community answers to frequently asked questions about usenet and hints on writing style for usenet are particularly relevant questions concerning how news works are best asked in news newusers questions if you are unable to find any of the articles listed above see the finding stuff section below credits these files could not have been written without the assistance of the many readers of alt atheism and alt atheism moderated in particular i d like to thank the following people kck cs cmu edu karl kluge perry dsinc com jim perry netoprwa ncsuvm cc ncsu edu wayne aiken chpetk gdr bath ac uk toby kelsey jkp cs hut fi jyrki kuoppala geoff arnold east sun com geoff arnold torkel sics se torkel franzen kmldorf utdallas edu george kimeldorf roe quads uchicago edu greg roelofs arromdee jyusenkyou cs jhu edu ken arromdee madhaus netcom com maddi hausmann j j psuvm psu edu john a johnson dgraham bmers bnr ca douglas graham mayne open cs fsu edu william mayne ajr bigbird hri com andy rosen stoesser ira uka de achim stoesser bosullvn unix tcd ie bryan o sullivan lippard ccit arizona edu james j lippard s b rigel tamu edu s baum ydobyns phoenix princeton edu york h dobyns schroede sdsc edu wayne schroeder baldwin csservera usna navy mil j d baldwin d nibby unhh unh edu dana nibby dempsey kodak com richard c dempsey jmunch hertz elee calpoly edu john david munch pdc dcs ed ac uk paul crowley rz mips complang tuwien ac at richard zach tycchow math mit edu tim chow simon dcs warwick ac uk simon clippingdale and countless others i ve forgotten these articles are free truly free you may copy them and distribute them to anyone you wish however please send any changes or corrections to the author and please do not re post copies of the articles to alt atheism it does nobody any good to have multiple versions of the same document floating around the network finding stuff all of the faq files should be somewhere on your news system here are some suggestions on what to do if you can t find them check the newsgroup alt atheism look for subject lines starting with alt atheism faq check the newsgroup news answers for the same subject lines if you don t find anything in steps or your news system isn t set up correctly and you may wish to tell your system administrator about the problem if you have anonymous ftp access connect to rtfm mit edu go to the directory pub usenet alt atheism and you ll find the latest versions of the faq files there ftp is a a way of copying files between networked computers if you need help in using or getting started with ftp send e mail to mail server rtfm mit edu with send usenet news answers ftp list faq in the body there are other sites which also carry news answers postings the article introduction to the news answers newsgroup carries a list of these sites the article is posted regularly to news answers if you don t have ftp send mail to mail server rtfm mit edu consisting of the following lines send usenet news answers finding sources send usenet alt atheism faq send usenet alt atheism introduction send usenet alt atheism logic send usenet alt atheism resources penultimate resort send mail to mail server mantis co uk consisting of the following lines send atheism faq faq txt send atheism faq logic txt send atheism faq intro txt send atheism faq resource txt and our poor overworked modems will try and send you a copy of the files there s other stuff too interesting commands to try are help and send atheism index last resort mail mathew mantis co uk or post an article to the newsgroup asking how you can get the faq files you should only do this if you ve tried the above methods and they ve failed it s not nice to clutter the newsgroup or people s mailboxes with requests for files it s better than posting without reading the faq though for instance people whose email addresses get mangled in transit 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alt.atheism

re amusing atheists and agnostics date apr gmt from bake timmons timmbake mcl ucsb edu these bible lovers have got to chill out if we all could just relax and see atheism for what it is the funny pages could have more material atheism denies the existence of god this is logically bankrupt where is the proof of this nonexistence it s a joke so nobody can take the above sense of atheism seriously perhaps perhaps because you just made it up now put your skateboard away and read the faq learn something about atheism before you get off on these tangents

alt.atheism

re so help you god in court i don t think there is really any question about which god the courts mean the request for solemnly swearing so help you god is always made after a request to pick up the bible in your left hand and hold up your right hand in the courts of nc at least it is always an old and new testament though it is hard to imagine picking up the bible and swearing to whatever god is sometimes the least of the religious influence there is a court in greensboro nc where the judge routinely has everyone in the courtroom stand to join him in prayer at the beginning of every session i ve thought about sitting through it but i m not terribly anxious to spend days in jail

alt.atheism

re nicknames in article apr zeus calpoly edu jmunch hertz elee calpoly edu john munch wrote mathew faq can t remember his last name keith lie tally sig ryan kent finn tastic sandvick cindy popsicle toes kandolf jim face sig tims simon clip that theist clippendale umar reasonable khan rob argue with g d strom dave buckminster fuller maddi never a useful post hausmann hey what about an affectionate nickname for me you could take my wrongly spelled surname cheers kent sandvik sandvik newton apple com alink ksand private activities on the net

alt.atheism

re amusing atheists and agnostics timmbake mcl ucsb edu bake timmons writes atheism denies the existence of god this is logically bankrupt where is the proof of this nonexistence it s a joke this is one of my favorite fallacious points against atheism i e the belief that you can t deny anything that you can t prove doesn t exist this is easily nailed by showing that an infinite number of beings are conceivable but not observed to exist does this mean that we would have to believe in all of them according to the above poster we must believe in objects or beings that haven t been proved not to exist so why stop at god there could be a huge number of beings identical to ronald reagan except for trivial differences say one is missing a finger one has blond hair and they all live on other planets so we can t see them the reason no one but atheists bring this up is that none of these christians have a vested interest in these unknown beings with the exception of god fine but why do these people shoot themselves in the foot and mock the idea of a god here again is a classic atheist fallacy how did they shoot themselves in the foot radical muslims the crusades the inquisition are common examples that atheists like to bring up as marks against religion how weak only fools can take that drivel seriously how about the grand daddy of all human atrocities the stalinist movement twenty eight million people killed under this leadership which proudly featured atheism there is a big difference here stalin didn t say that he stood for a particular moral position i e against murder and terrorism etc and then did the opposite like the religious movements he was at least an honest killer this is not a support of stalin but an attack on this viewpoint saying that atheism supports murder and violence just because one man was a tyrant and an atheist is just bad logic look at all the russians that helped stalin that weren t atheists don t they contradict your point besides your point assumes that his atheism was relevant to his murdering people this is just the common assumption that atheists can t value life as much as theists which you didn t support agnostics are not as funny because they are more reasonable yet they do in some sense seem funny because they believe that the existence of god is unknowable this in itself is every bit the assumption that atheism is though it s less arrogant and pompous ah and here s another point you didn t get out of the faq an atheist doesn t have to hold the positive view that god doesn t exist he she may just have the non existence of the positive belief here s the example strong atheism i believe god does not exist a positive belief weak atheism i don t believe in a god a negative belief these are not the same some one that has never thought of the idea of god in their whole life is technically an atheist but not the kind that you are calling unreasonable or let s look at it this way in sets suppose that a given person has a huge set of ideas that i will represent as capital letters and these people then either believe that these ideas exist as real objects or not so if s santa then e s no is the person not believing in santa but still having the idea of santa but notice that even e s no is itself another idea this means you have lots of cases christian a e a yes b e b no g e g yes where g god atheist strong a e a g e g no atheist weak a e i e no g at all in the set agnostic a g e g indeterminate e why are people so afraid to say undecided it must just be another feature of human nature undecided is not a sexy trendy or glamorous word it does not inspire much hate or conflict it s not blasphemous it s not political in fact it is too often taken to mean unsophisticated nietzsche once said that a man would rather will nonexistence than not will at all but the darwinist way to put this is that humanity always prefers no or yes to a maybe because indecision is not a useful survival trait evolution has drilled it in us to take positions even false ones bake timmons iii m s

alt.atheism

christian morality is in vice ico tek com bobbe vice ico tek com robert beauchaine writes in article c l ey jts news cso uiuc edu cobb alexia lis uiuc edu mike cobb writes in vice ico tek com bobbe vice ico tek com robert beauchaine writes actually my atheism is based on ignorance ignorance of the existence of any god don t fall into the atheists don t believe because of their pride mistake how do you know it s based on ignorance couldn t that be wrong why would it be wrong to fall into the trap that you mentioned if i m wrong god is free at any time to correct my mistake that he continues not to do so while supposedly proclaiming his undying love for my eternal soul speaks volumes what are the volumes that it speaks besides the fact that he leaves your choices up to you as for the trap you are not in a position to tell me that i don t believe in god because i do not wish to unless you can know my motivations better than i do myself you should believe me when i say that i earnestly searched for god for years and never found him i definitely agree that it s rather presumptuous for either side to give some psychological reasoning for another s belief mac bob beauchaine bobbe vice ico tek com they said that queens could stay they blew the bronx away and sank manhattan out at sea michael a cobb and i won t raise taxes on the middle university of illinois class to pay for my programs champaign urbana bill clinton rd debate cobb alexia lis uiuc edu with new taxes and spending cuts we ll still have billion dollar deficits