bob young <alaspectrum@netvigator.com> wrote :

I doubt you'd be willing to see any form of religious belief -

Corrrrrect. I am an atheist and my mind is clear on one point -
humans love to make up gods, makes 'em feel better

[...]

Show me proof of a god and i am willing to change my point of view at
any time.

No, I'm not sure you would be.

What would you accept as 'proof'?

A
flashy appearance by the deity in question?

No, you'd just write it off
as trickery or a scam precisely BECAUSE you're an atheist.

Now, I'm not
intending to sound as though I'm suggesting that's a bad thing - it's
your choice, or your nature, and you're free to follow your own path.
But it suggests - and in particular, your outright hostility towards
religion and contempt for those who are religious suggests - that you'd
reject anything that contradicted your established view.

So what would be proof, anyway? To know what proof to expect you'd need
to know what god you're looking for.

I have proof of my god because it's
under my feet with every step I take, and it's around me all the time.

But because you reject that very concept of 'God', and consider nature
'just nature' - as though it's something dull and mundane and should be
taken for granted - you will automatically reject everything I could
possibly say or show you that might explain why I see things the way I
do. In other words, you've already reached the only opinion you're
willing, or perhaps able, to allow yourself.

I have learned a lot in my 77 years and much of it came from other
humans. Just like your god

...he threw in as a hopeful afterthought. This despite my having
explained to you that my religious beliefs are my own, and sprang from my
own contemplation of the world around me and from my own value
judgements. This also despite my having explained to you that the people
around me - my family and those of my friends who are religious - are
predominantly Christian, a religion I was raised in and have now moved
away from.

Virtually everything I have learned has come from other humans. And
since humans are part of nature and therefore part of 'God'...

(Your age, incidentally, is irrelevant. There is a range of
intelligence, morality and wisdom amongst 77-year-olds as much as there
is within any other age group.)

This is a rious subject - you claimed you could smell your god.
[I smell a rat]

The rat you smell is part of 'God'.

By the way, what does 'rious' mean?

No, the reason you bleeive your god is your mother so taught you
and her mother taught her and so on

I was raised Christian by my parents. My grandparents were also
Christian. My great-grandparents were Christian too.

So your claim here is nothing more than the product of your
prejudice.

Nope- it is downright common sense. Any Hindu can say the same.
Who's parents were right?

No idea. If I thought the religion of my parents was right, I'd share
it. But I don't. That's my point. I'm not Hindu, so presumably I don't
think they're right, either. Although that said, they're all entitled to
go with what seems right to them, so long as they don't do any harm to
anyone.

But still we're left with your apparent determination that I can only
possibly follow the religion in which I was raised.

I don't like gibberish - which is what it was, obscure verbiage of the
type so oftern used by religionists it is like laying a false trail

Because it was an explanation of my beliefs, and because those beliefs
aren't acceptable to you, it was inevitably going be gibberish as far as
you're concerned. As I said, what you THOUGHT about what I said is
irrelevant. The fact is that you asked for an answer and you got one.
That it wasn't an answer you approved of is of no consequence.

Number 1 - I am not angry, [but you seem to be].

No, not really. I'm actually spending quite a lot more time talking to
you than I probably would if I was angry.

Number 2 I reject
all religions, Christianity included and it is the one i know more
about since I, like you was brought up in it, but me, [unlike you],
had the sense to opt out.

And here is your clearest indication yet that you're not willing to read
what's in front of you. You say I haven't had the sense to opt out of
Christianity, despite my clear statement that I did, and many years ago
at that.

Granted, I didn't opt out of religion entirely, as you did, and
no doubt you'll tell me that that's what you meant. Even so, the bulk of
your comments and challenges seem to revolve around the idea that I
follow a monotheistic religion akin to Christianity because I'm
inevitably, according to you, bound to follow the religion of my parents.

I only hate te religinists who bomb each other, the rest i just feel
sorry for.

Mmm. Ostentatiously so.

I hope in future we can zero in to something a bit more realistic,
logical, tangible and solid.......

I very much doubt you hold to any such hope. Your intentions here
are well-established.

Corrrrect, to talk sense into the brainwashed.......

We both know you're not here to 'talk sense' into anyone, so I don't see
why you feel the need to pretend. It strikes me that you're here to
indulge your sense of intellectual superiority - just as some of the
religious types want to indulge theirs with lectures about righteousness.

If you really wanted to 'talk sense',

you'd need to argue people round
with reason; and to do that, you first need to understand what they
believe and why they believe it. Note that there's a big difference
between understanding why someone believes something and approving of
what they believe. Some anti-religionists are reluctant to get close
enough to the subject to seek such understanding because they fear that
doing so would either indicate some kind of weakness, or because they're
worried that they might be somehow contaminated by the beliefs they're
trying to argue against.

But Sun Tzu was right. You should know your enemy if you want to be
victorious. You need at least to know where the beliefs you're arguing
against are rooted, and you need to persuade people to question that
foundation. Otherwise you're just shouting in the wind. I mean, look at
the assumptions you've made about me: wildly inaccurate, but they tell
you all you need to know, right? But the trouble is, I've no reason to
accept your repeated assertion that religion is stupid because you've
shown that you don't know - and furthermore, you don't care - what I
believe. So why is your mindless sledgehammer approach more worthy of my
attention than the similar approaches of those fundie Christians
demanding that I submit to *their* will?

--
Midwinter

bob young <alaspect...@netvigator.com> wrote :

I doubt you'd be willing to see any form of religious belief -

Corrrrrect. I am an atheist and my mind is clear on one point -
humans love to make up gods, makes 'em feel better

[...]

Show me proof of a god and i am willing to change my point of view at
any time.

No, I'm not sure you would be. What would you accept as 'proof'? A
flashy appearance by the deity in question? No, you'd just write it off
as trickery or a scam precisely BECAUSE you're an atheist.

Now, I'm not
intending to sound as though I'm suggesting that's a bad thing - it's
your choice, or your nature, and you're free to follow your own path.
But it suggests - and in particular, your outright hostility towards
religion and contempt for those who are religious suggests - that you'd
reject anything that contradicted your established view.

So what would be proof, anyway? To know what proof to expect you'd need
to know what god you're looking for. I have proof of my god because it's
under my feet with every step I take,

and it's around me all the time.
But because you reject that very concept of 'God', and consider nature
'just nature' - as though it's something dull and mundane and should be
taken for granted - you will automatically reject everything I could
possibly say or show you that might explain why I see things the way I
do. In other words, you've already reached the only opinion you're
willing, or perhaps able, to allow yourself.

I have learned a lot in my 77 years and much of it came from other
humans. Just like your god

...he threw in as a hopeful afterthought. This despite my having
explained to you that my religious beliefs are my own, and sprang from my
own contemplation of the world around me and from my own value
judgements. This also despite my having explained to you that the people
around me - my family and those of my friends who are religious - are
predominantly Christian, a religion I was raised in and have now moved
away from.