| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Elf M. Sternberg" |
| Date: |
23 Feb 2004 12:12:01 AM |
| Object: |
Re: Question For atheists |
"The Church of The Painful Truth" <Nospam@Nomarketing.com> writes:
I assume you meant the Christian deity and my answer is the entire faith
fails the giggle test.
+Why is it that you do not believe in God?+
If you want to convince me that your god-story is worth my (or
any other person's) consideration, you'll have to convince me that your
beliefs are coherent, naturalistic, universal and moral. Since you're
tossing the Bible at me, let me toss it back; there is no way you can
convince me with that particular book.
It is hardly coherent: an almighty somehow cannot deal with iron
(a common belief among *pagan* nomads, since the working iron requires a
more permanent establishment to support ironsmithing); he declares
incest to be evil then invites Abraham to marry his sister; he says he
abhors liars but himself engages is deceit; he forbids murder and then
orders and assists in genocide after genocide, slaughtering man, woman,
and infant child.
It isn't naturalistic. It purports to describe the origin of
the world in ways completely undermined by observations you can make
with your own eyes. It says that rabbits chew their cud, that insects
have four legs, that snakes once had legs, and that the earth is flat.
I understand the need of ancient peoples to explain the way the world
works to their satisfaction, but we have a better sense of the way the
world works.
It can hardly be described as universal. To be fair, no
religion that claims to have a knowledge of God can be described as
universal; each claims to have "the truth," and often these claims are
mutually exclusive and externally contradictory. One cannot believe in
both Krishna and Christ (well, except for some new agers who have
nontraditional views of both), and each claims that the only way to
escape some awful afterlife is to follow that particular set of
ideological directives. People do not have a common experience of the
almighty to begin to ascribe to him universal attributes. From this
clash of characteristics one can safely assume that something very human
is at work, rather than something supernatural and omnipotent.
It isn't moral. Prior to the age of telecommunications, it was
easy for the masses to feel safe and secure in the knowledge that they
were the majority-- all they ever saw was fellows of their own
particular belief, and few ever moved more than fifty miles from their
birthplace. They could buy the fantasy that the rare, eternally
condemned unbeliever was "out there," set only to bedevil their
existence sporadically if at all. But now we know that the Earth is a
large and diverse place, and we can no longer be smug about having the
best answer; no religion can claim to be anywhere near a majority, and
only the most isolated misanthrope can say that everyone he knows
believes as he does. Christianity, in the face of this diversity, says
that your friends, your loved ones, your family, all mankind other than
those who share a belief in the resurrected Jesus, no matter how
innocent, no matter how good, are condemned after a brief life to an
eternity of torment. Anyone comfortable believing that borders on
sociopathy.
Christian "morality" isn't morality at all. Morality describes
the boundaries established among conscious individuals, agreed upon
through discourse and maintained voluntarily. What *you've* got, kiddo,
is subjugation via the threat of damnation. "Might makes right," which
apparently works great for gorillas, chimpanzees, and other mindless
primate societies, but I expect better out of human beings. For
civilized human beings integrity and humanity matter; the tyranny put
out by your little mystery religion is patently barbaric.
So do us a favor. Don't continue with your primitive desert
nomad bleating. Your welcome to follow your adolescent moral scheme
that bleaches as much doubt and mystery out of human existence as it can
and then entraps the rest in endless ritual and myth, but don't expect
me to swallow it.
Elf
.
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| User: "Danny Kodicek" |
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| Title: Re: Question For atheists |
23 Feb 2004 06:52:35 AM |
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"Elf M. Sternberg" <elf@drizzle.com> wrote in message
news:m3ptc6tj7a.fsf@drizzle.com...
It isn't naturalistic. It purports to describe the origin of
the world in ways completely undermined by observations you can make
with your own eyes. It says that rabbits chew their cud, that insects
have four legs, that snakes once had legs, and that the earth is flat.
Er... Snakes *did* once have legs. Okay, they weren't snakes then, but
still...
Danny
.
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| User: "\Rev Dr\ Lenny Flank" |
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| Title: Re: Question For atheists |
23 Feb 2004 05:49:00 PM |
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Danny Kodicek wrote:
"Elf M. Sternberg" <elf@drizzle.com> wrote in message
news:m3ptc6tj7a.fsf@drizzle.com...
It isn't naturalistic. It purports to describe the origin of
the world in ways completely undermined by observations you can make
with your own eyes. It says that rabbits chew their cud, that insects
have four legs, that snakes once had legs, and that the earth is flat.
Er... Snakes *did* once have legs. Okay, they weren't snakes then, but
still...
Some of them WERE still snakes --- Pachyrachis, for instance.
===============================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"
Creation "Science" Debunked:
http://www.geocities.com/lflank
DebunkCreation Email list:
http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/DebunkCreation
-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
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.
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| User: "C. Thompson" |
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| Title: Re: Question For atheists |
23 Feb 2004 07:58:33 AM |
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Danny Kodicek wrote:
"Elf M. Sternberg" <elf@drizzle.com> wrote in message
news:m3ptc6tj7a.fsf@drizzle.com...
It isn't naturalistic. It purports to describe the origin of
the world in ways completely undermined by observations you can make
with your own eyes. It says that rabbits chew their cud, that
insects have four legs, that snakes once had legs, and that the
earth is flat.
Er... Snakes *did* once have legs. Okay, they weren't snakes then, but
still...
Danny
Read yer bibble. The snake had legs then it lost em. Individuals evolving?
Chris
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| User: "Danny Kodicek" |
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| Title: Re: Question For atheists |
23 Feb 2004 08:42:04 AM |
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"C. Thompson" <rockwallaby@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:c1crtr$ae7$1@pat.cis.cuny.edu...
Danny Kodicek wrote:
"Elf M. Sternberg" <elf@drizzle.com> wrote in message
news:m3ptc6tj7a.fsf@drizzle.com...
It isn't naturalistic. It purports to describe the origin of
the world in ways completely undermined by observations you can make
with your own eyes. It says that rabbits chew their cud, that
insects have four legs, that snakes once had legs, and that the
earth is flat.
Er... Snakes *did* once have legs. Okay, they weren't snakes then, but
still...
Danny
Read yer bibble. The snake had legs then it lost em. Individuals
evolving?
Lamarckian evolution, I suppose. Inheritance of divinely-cursed
characteristics.
Danny
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| User: "mel turner" |
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| Title: Re: Question For atheists |
23 Feb 2004 07:33:35 PM |
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In article <ojo_b.9288$h44.1064582@stones.force9.net>,
dannynews@well-spring.co.uk [Danny Kodicek] wrote..
"C. Thompson" <rockwallaby@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:c1crtr$ae7$1@pat.cis.cuny.edu...
Danny Kodicek wrote:
"Elf M. Sternberg" <elf@drizzle.com> wrote in message
news:m3ptc6tj7a.fsf@drizzle.com...
It isn't naturalistic. It purports to describe the origin of
the world in ways completely undermined by observations you can make
with your own eyes. It says that rabbits chew their cud, that
insects have four legs, that snakes once had legs, and that the
earth is flat.
Er... Snakes *did* once have legs. Okay, they weren't snakes then, but
still...
Danny
Read yer bibble. The snake had legs then it lost em. Individuals
evolving?
Lamarckian evolution, I suppose. Inheritance of divinely-cursed
characteristics.
Does that mean that all modern groups of snakes must have inherited
their shared "curse" from a common ancestor, and thus are all one
"kind", despite their morphological and taxonomic diversity? If so,
many snake lineages seem to have "microevolved" after the Fall a
considerable number of remarkable adaptations, like moveable
hollow fangs and venom glands, rattles, etc. The sorts of functional
adaptations that creationists very often like to argue can't possibly
have evolved naturally...
And what's with all the several non-snake groups of legless lizards,
limbless caecilian amphibians, paired-finless moray eels, etc.?
Were they standing too close to the guilty snake and got hit by the
same poorly-aimed, scattershot "curse"?
[Some true snakes have much better-developed vestigial [hind] limbs
than do some non-snake lizards.]
The story of course seems a Kiplingesque "just-so story" of
"How the Snake Lost its Legs"...
cheers
.
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