traders who are deeply religious

Quote from vhehn:

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if christians actually followed the direction of their bible in Matt people like me would get bored and go away.


Matt.6.6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you
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President T. .Jefferson perhaps was a deist;
did literally cut miracles out of his Bible , yet still liked to study it.
When he spent gov money for bibles for Indians;
didn't cut them out there.

Howver among the many books of the Old testament;
Psalms is mentioned much, the public prayer praise AND
private prayer praise book for Israel :cool:
 
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But someone who went deep was Hitler. Basically Hitler was a genius alchemist from a very young age. No one recognized or acknowledged this. So he showed us what he could do.

Hitler worked with the 2nd and 4th dimensions to make things happen in the 3rd dimension.
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Now it seems clear why he shot himself. The truth must have been devastating. What a cuckoo!
Marx did the same stunt, but would have said, if he could, "Workers of the World, forgive me!"
 
"Pride is a belief in one's own abilities that is so excessive as to deny the recognition of God's grace. When the Seven Deadly Sins were fixed by Pope Gregory the Great, vainglory (a love of honour and glory), which had formerly stood on its own, was folded into pride. But pride is more about loving the oneself."

"Pride is universally acknowledged as the worst of the Seven Deadly Sins because the others are all said to stem from it: without that sense of superiority, you wouldn't have the nerve to flout God by committing the other six. But there's another reason why pride was designated the worst of the worst. In the middle ages, when the Seven Deadly Sins really came into their own, class distinctions were extremely important. If someone aspired to rise above their station, the social order would be thrown into chaos. Designating pride the worst of the mortal sins was a way to keep people in their place."

All that you have to do now is lose it all and take no pride in yourself.
 
Quote from archimedes:

Sure, that makes sense.

Correct me if I am wrong, then, but it seems fair to say that the hostility of many atheists is the result of an anger response... a lashing out in disgust, if you will.

It seems also fair to note, then, that while disgust and anger are often justified, they are rarely effective.

Like the buddhist observation, hate is a hot coal you pick up with your bare hand to throw at someone else. The one experiencing the rage and disgust is the one who loses from the emotional transaction -- all the more so if the holy roller gets an extra dose of self righteousness from "standing up to a heathen."

There is a great line from one of the city slickers movies: "If hate were people, I would be China." Hating outspoken bible bangers because they are callous dolts is like hating all the bad drivers in L.A. Furthermore, if someone tried to gin up a proportional sense of self-righteous indignation at all the ignorance and stupidity in this world --not just in regards to religion, but economics, politics, social interaction, technical incompetence, bad taste, everything-- their head would explode.

Perhaps it is better to recognize that mass ignorance and gross selfishness are basic evolutonary byproducts of a trial-and-error process that, while somewhat unappealing in contemplation, got us where we are today. At any given point in time, the masses are going to engage in a whole host of outrageously stupid and short-sighted activities because, on balance, we are selfish and simplistic creatures who pick and choose our beliefs for personal or societal utility, not for their veracity. Enlightenment is notable because it is such a rare thing for someone to reach for, let alone achieve.

Making peace with foolishness is like living in L.A. and recognizing that not only do bad drivers outnumber good drivers by a factor of ten to one, it has to be this way because that is how reality works. Excellence, intelligence and thoughtfulness always operate at the margins... but with just enough influence to fight against entropy and do their good work over time.

I would suggest, then, that wise atheists should find a way not just to 'deal with' their visceral reaction to fundies, but to reorder their conceptual frameworks in such a way that the perpetual handwaving of twits no longer disturbs their inner calm. This would also allow for more effective philosophical engagement with the other side on a case by case basis -- like throwing a single starfish into the sea, perhaps, but still something if one feels compelled to fight the good fight.
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If only it were a philosophical argument with a few fundies. If only life were that straightforward. But unfortunately there's a more insidious side to this religion stuff. Religion went and got institutionalized. It does not exist as just personal belief, but manifests itself more as a vehicle for political decision making and power .

When a King sat on his throne, handing down laws, decisions of state and political decrees for a certain special few of his subjects to enact, on the unfortunate others, he did so with the divine grace, guidance and authority of God.
Thankfully 230 years ago God was removed as the supreme monarch when "all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." and no more from a Deity.

The constant and persistent pressure from the political wing of the christian or any other Church (given the chance), will do everything possible to dilute the ordinary persons’ rights under that most crucial life valuing edict, up to the point if necessary where once again, the declaration for self government and independence is handed back to a high priest President , under the approval of the Almighty as declared and decided by the few chosen ones, in order to exercise their power.

The foolishness of those who would acquiesce to the watering down of the Constitution and Declaration from a sense of self righteousness derived from having God on one's side by Trusting In God as a nation , leaves plenty room for God's allies to decide and dictate in the place of the people. It is another reason why one should "fight the good fight".
 
Quote from volente_00:

For my atheist buddies


http://www.home.earthlink.net/~gbl111/atheism1.htm


http://home.earthlink.net/~gbl111/cosmos.htm
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Interesting stuff. My .02 after a quick read:

The first piece relies on a bit of sophistry; whether or not man has "free will" is not as important as what man means when he makes reference to free will. If I say that I am free to choose vanilla ice cream over chocolate, I may actually be slavishly following my genetic tendencies and cultural influences--but nevertheless I am still 'free to choose' within the context of my everyday meaning. Free will in the popular context refers to the ability to act in accordance with one's natural desires, unencumbered by outside restraint. The question of how one's nature is determined, and how 'independent' one's nature actually is, isn't really all that important except in terms of philosophical discussion. I doubt a "free thinker" would deny the subtle and undeniable influences of biology and culture. But nor would he obsess over whether or not he is "independent" of his surroundings in some technical metaphysical sense. The technicalities of free will are simply not that important; either way, it is what it is.

The first piece also tries to argue that knowledge must be independently injected with meaning somehow, otherwise words and symbols have no more meaning than waves crashing on a beach. But even if words and symbols are nothing but nonsense on one level, that doesn't take away from their value as communicative tools on another level. Words are patterns; waves crashing on the beach are patterns. If two or more people share a language--that is to say, if the words they use roughly overlap in terms of conceptual tagging--then it is possible for a person to 'transfer' a relatively complex pattern from his own mind to another's. If I say "it's raining, grab your umbrella" and the person I say it to does indeed grab an umbrella to keep from getting wet, then it doesn't really matter whether "words have meaning" or not. What matters is that a successful pattern transfer occurred.

Transfers of knowledge in regards to physical reality are similar; if I can gain knowledge of the real world from reading a science textbook, and find some way to apply that knowledge in demonstrable fashion, then the proof is right there in the pudding. Maybe words and symbols are indeed just noise like waves crashing on a beach; but they are ordered noise, arranged for deliberate purpose. If the purpose of conceptual transfer is served, then it matters not whether words have "meaning" in a metaphysical sense. To be "just another pattern" is not an insult if the pattern serves its purpose; to question whether knowledge is "valid" is a nonsense inquiry in light of pragmatic pattern transfer.

In the second piece, this passage seems to be the weakest link:

To summarize: If all past events could be traversed, then the past is
not infinite. If the past is infinite then all past events could not be
traversed to get us to the present event. Since the latter is patently
false (we are at the current event), and the former denies the main
premise of the infinite universe, which makes the proposition false, we
can conclude that the two options that maintain an infinite series of
past events are both false.

That smells like one of Zeno's paradoxes. To wit, it is impossible to travel from point A to point B, because first one must travel half the distance... and before that one must travel half the distance of half the distance, and before that half the distance of half the distance of half the distance... and so on in infinite regression.

Zeno's paradoxes were word games that obey conventional logic on one level but completely fall apart on another. They also nicely demonstrate the folly of using conventional logic in support of a grand metaphysical statement. I was in fact surprised the second author did not address Zeno.

p.s. I am not necessarily an atheist... I'm in the "true agnostic" camp for now....
 
archimedes ,
I really don't consider there is a valid argument contained in either of those missives. All they do is set up the same old bogus worn out false statement scenario, pin the rubbish on anything disagreed with, then beat the illogical controversy created around the head with any dead horse that happens to be lying nearby.
Just why the hell would anyone want to make such pathetic illogical and silly statements as the ones contained in those texts, when they want to argue and logically determine the existence of something they can't.

One starts off declaring knowledge is not actually knowledge, and the other wants to argue he and his friend have knowledge, and it is of logic, and logic is what they say it is, and logic can be illogical.
Quote:
" When I use the term 'knowledge' in this paper, I mean: 'An understanding of words, concepts and ideas that are independent or transcendent from deterministic necessity.' " un-Quote.

In other words.... "I mean to fantasize"

"What I mean something to mean is what I want something to mean. And what I want something to mean is sometimes this and sometimes that and sometimes I mean the other"
 
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