luvablefrog is offline luvablefrog Post #11  February 11,2009, 6:24pm
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As to the original post, there was a catholic in office. It was JFK.


Now to the question, I agree that many times well-meaning and well-intentioned people of ANY faith(christianity, athiesism, whatever) tend to dig in their heels about what they believe and turn people away from even wanting to hear about it, let alone be open-minded. That said, I have friends that are athiest and agnostic. Do I agree with their beliefs? No, but cramming it down their throats and browbeating them with the whole "I'm right and you are wrong" thing is going to lose me these friends for one, and for two, that type of attitude is going to result in nobody listening anyway. I try to show them love and display my faith in a way that does not repel anyone (which according to what I believe, is a sin). I spent time talking with a friend who defines himself as agnostic, just because I wanted to know what that meant to him. I think faith and beliefs, whatever category one puts themselves into, is still uniquely personal for each person. I can pray for you, even think you are wrong in your beliefs, all without telling you, condescending to you, or argueing with you.


I also agree that morals and values are not found only in people who believe as I do. In fact, sad to say, I see less and less people who define themselves as "christians" that live in a "christian" way. Maybe it's that I expect them to hold a higher standard, I really don't know. Either way, we are all human, and we all have shortcomings. I think all of humanity has a responsibility to live in a way that doesn't cause harm to others, and to do what they know to be the right thing. I think that society in general has lost it's moral compass, and that the whole "Do it if it feels good/you want it" attitude may be it's very downfall.
 
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NightyskyBlue is offline NightyskyBlue Post #12  February 11,2009, 6:59pm
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luvablefrog,483095 wrote :

As to the original post, there was a catholic in office. It was JFK.
I asked if there was any non christian/catholic presidents, not just non christian. But thanks for the thought .
 
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NightyskyBlue is offline NightyskyBlue Post #13  February 11,2009, 7:06pm
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RobInPlano,482970 wrote :

From the strong negative stereotypes of Christians that I've seen, I suspect that many athiests initially rejected religion based on a strong negative experience with religion. I can't blame them. But breaking those stereotypes is the first step to being able to tone down the hostility on both sides.
It's a common misconception that Atheists went through something that averted them from religion. But from those I know, this is not the case or anything near it. Truly choosing atheism was the result of carefully thinking about the world and coming to the belief that there could not be a god. I personally never had a negative experience with a religion besides ppl trying to convert me (haha). But that had no influence on my beliefs. I don't have anything against the members of any religion, nor have I ever been angry at a "god". I just believe what I believe.
 
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blackprince11 is offline blackprince11 Post #14  February 25,2009, 2:13pm
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godlessinseattle,482565 wrote :

Scratch an atheist and you will see before you a mind just as closed as the most fundamentalist religionists. I have nothing personal against atheists other than they tend, as a group, to be a little too certain of the rightness of their cause and this sense of rightness (righteousness) can be dangerous if it was linked to power.
Can anyone say "cognative dissidence?" How could you attach danger to an athiest and their so called sense of "righteousness" being linked to power and not acknowlege all of the death, destruction, and opression associated with people inseats of power that have "religion" who have commited all of the above named crimes against humanity in the name of a "One True god" with a smile on their faces? Im so tired of that kind of thinking.
 
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notamaninpower is offline notamaninpower Post #15  February 25,2009, 3:12pm
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blackprince11,504737 wrote :

godlessinseattle,482565 wrote :


Scratch an atheist and you will see before you a mind just as closed as the most fundamentalist religionists. I have nothing personal against atheists other than they tend, as a group, to be a little too certain of the rightness of their cause and this sense of rightness (righteousness) can be dangerous if it was linked to power.


Can anyone say "cognative dissidence?" How could you attach danger to an athiest and their so called sense of "righteousness" being linked to power and not acknowlege all of the death, destruction, and opression associated with people inseats of power that have "religion" who have commited all of the above named crimes against humanity in the name of a "One True god" with a smile on their faces? Im so tired of that kind of thinking.
She cannot respond as she was banned shortly after this quoted post.


IDO understand what she was trying to say (and she has made posts in the past supporting non-believers and blasting RR fundies). But I must disagree with herpainting ALL of us atheists with the same exact brush as she has done in the quoted post above.


She HAS contributed to the discourse in a positive way in the past, but (I guess) had just rubbed too many people in the wrong way to be allowed to stay on this site.


BTW, she might even have agreed with you on your point above.
 
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blackprince11 is offline blackprince11 Post #16  February 26,2009, 9:57am
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I would just like to give all of our fellow athiests some little known facts that you all may or may not know. This nation was not founded as a "Christian" nation, it was founded as quite the opposite. The thirteen colonies under the English Crown were founded on the premis of religion but our founding fathers saw what religion was doing to the people and how the King of England was using religion through surrogates to keep the colonies fighting and fearing one another and they absolutely hated it! One of the reasons that the rebellion was started was taxes, yes, but just as much as taxes were the reason another reason was the religious upheaval that was destroying families and communities throughout the colonies. These are some of the words of our most famous founding fathers; Benjamin Franklin "Lighthouses are more useful than churches.", John Adams "This would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it!", Thomas Jefferson "Christianity is the most perverted system ever shone on man." So when all the religious nutbags start in on their whole "This is a Christian nation!" thing or the "This country was founded on Christian ideals!" speach just break out this e-mail and if they dont want to take my word for it tell them to do some research on the facts and not what someone told them! Love, peace, and hairgrease!
 
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tumbleweed is offline tumbleweed Post #17  February 27,2009, 2:19pm
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well i was once refered to as a athiast, not really shur why i never clamed to believe in anything stongly enough to be put in any of these groups, i still would rather not call myself anything but a free thinker, meaning i believe in what makes sence, at any rait im now a cristien as it makes sence to me, i dont mind being called a cristien but dont call me something im not, i have never been an athiest this refers to a certan type of thinking ,to day i think the same as i did when refered to as an athiest, nothing has changed other than the fact that i now believe in jesus, im still a free thinker and allways will be
 
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BuzWeaver is offline BuzWeaver Post #18  February 28,2009, 9:17am
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Atheism by definition is self defeating. Atheist are Anthropocentric, they aren't satisfied with appropriate truth or relative truth, but claim to see the ins and outs of the game quite clearly being the absolute denial of the absolute. Atheist espouse intellect and logic, however this is simply a method to immunize themselves from intellectual honesty.



"Now, if I were independent of all other existence, and were myself the author of my being... I should have given myself all those perfections of which I have some idea, and I should thus be God." -Rene Descartes
 
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blackprince11 is offline blackprince11 Post #19  February 28,2009, 12:30pm
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BuzWeaver,508572 wrote :


Atheism by definition is self defeating. Atheist are Anthropocentric, they aren't satisfied with appropriate truth or relative truth, but claim to see the ins and outs of the game quite clearly being the absolute denial of the absolute. Atheist espouse intellect and logic, however this is simply a method to immunize themselves from intellectual honesty.



"Now, if I were independent of all other existence, and were myself the author of my being... I should have given myself all those perfections of which I have some idea, and I should thus be God." -Rene Descartes


Listen here Buz, if anything about any religion were absolute then it would be able to hold up against the test of proof and evidence. If you were on trial for murder and all the evidence pointed in your direction, and after all of the evidence was presented by the prosecution, the only thing that your legal council had to say to the jury at their closing argument was that if they didn't have enoughFAITH to disregard all of the evidence pointing towards guilt, that they were "Anthropocentric", and ignoring "appropriate" or "relative truth" and in "denial of the absolute", you would be well on your way to a prison cell for the rest of your life or to death row. Hopefully, you would be intelligent enough to immediately fire your legal council and move for a mistrial. Im curious as to what you think intellectual honesty really is?If your definition of intellectual honesty is believing in unbelievable things so that when you die you can go to a magical place in the sky and meet an invisible space-god that will answer all of your questions about life and death, then I think I'll continue to be intellectually "dishonest". How convinient that the bible, which was supposed to be the inspired word of god, dosent answer any of the questions about life or death that clergy say will be answered when you go to heaven. How convinient that you will only know the answers to the, so-called, mysteries in life and death after you're dead and its of no benifit to you or anyone else.... you know?..... Because you're dead already! Who cares at that point, you're laying on a cloud taking a harp lesson, right? Seems to me that if a space-god was involved in creation and went to the trouble to inspire men to write a book he would mention those little tid-bits of info that would deminish violence and misrepresentation in his name and not be so vague and ambiguous. If he's so powerful and all knowing then why not resolve all those issues that he knows would be a cause of mass genocide and mass opression in the future? Not to mention why dosen't he just destroy the devil if he's so powerful and wise? Whats he waiting for, more and more huge masses of people to be sucked into the devils game? It dosent make any sense at all and in the wise words of Judge Judy " Things that don't make sense tend to not be true!" Now I don't know who Rene Descartes is (I think that I've heard of him before) but where does he get the idea that anyone thinks that they created themselves? Noone thinks that. I think I'll continue to listen to those wise old souls who were smart enough to break away from a king that claimed to be the local representative of the space-god and start a country where we are free from all of that nonsense,thank you very much.
 
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BuzWeaver is offline BuzWeaver Post #20  February 28,2009, 5:57pm
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Not all religions hold up to truth, at least depending on the process and elements of the belief system. Any belief system has to have logical consistency, empirical adequacy and experiential relevance. The Judeo-Christian belief system is exclusive because it follows not only this level of coherence and continuity, but specifically addresses origin, condition, salvation and destiny. We know what life is like after death because we have the person of Jesus Christ. All these concepts make the Judeo-Christian belief system complete. The Atheist by virtue of not having anything from which to establish their definitions choose to simply discard the Torah or Bible as evidence and witness to its viability as evidence.

The Hindu Upanishad states nothingness is where life comes from, this is an incomplete system. Even Gautama Buddha used terms like heaven and hell even though in classical Buddhism it’s none-theistic. What this proves for all of us is a struggle to find person hood, a struggle to find relationships, a struggle to explain what is good and what is evil, as well as finding meaning.

Ask any Muslim and they will tell you that the Qur’an is word for word perfect (in only one language). The Muslim will say it’s a perfect revelation of Allah in the eye of a Muslim. They will affirm that again and again. That’s why no translation of the Qur’an will do justice in their estimation of the Qur’an, it is the perfect expression of Allah himself as dictated to Muhammad who recited it. Out-side of Allah there is nothing else, this does not account for origin, condition, salvation and destiny, consistently or coherently.

As far as science is concerned there isn't a reputable scientist in the professional field or in academics that has definitively or quantifiably defined origin. What science has discovered or will discover would have already existed. So unless science can transcend time they can't definitively define or account for origin.

The essence of the scientific method is empiricism, the acquisition of knowledge through the experiences of our senses. Science, then, does not begin with what is definitely known. Instead, it allows evidence, which must be interpreted, to lead the inquirer where it will.

Our scientific laws are simply the result of observed uniformities. If I let go of my car keys, they fall to the ground. This happens each time I drop them; so we theorize and construct the Law of Gravity. Although we accept this as a fact, it is not proved as such. Instead, we have reached a conclusion (or proposed a theory) by induction, not deduction. Induction is a philosophical term given to the process of using evidence to reach a wider conclusion: The evidence infers that your conclusion is the best explanation.

Logic demands that only deductive knowledge is strictly provable. To deduce something we must start with a truth ‘definitely known’ and then by the logical process of inference arrive at certain facts that bring us to a conclusion.

C.S. Lewis mentions about ethics, when a ship goes out to the high seas there are three questions it must answer, number one, why is it out there in the first place, number two how to keep from sinking and number three, how to keep from bumping into other ships.

The first questions answers essential ethics (why are we out here), the second answers individual ethics (how to keep from self destruction) and the third one answers social ethics (how to keep from bumping into one another).

Unless you really know why you’re out there in the first place keeping from bumping into one another is merely a secondary notion.

Objective moral values exist only if God exist. Objective moral values do exist therefore God exist (this is elementary logic). The Naturalist can say I don’t have to accept that, but out-side of God they aren’t able to anchor objective moral values, yet intuitively they know that some objective moral values can be so certain within their own mind. Yet, they are unable to anchor it, they then move away from it to try and come out with some other explanations, maybe a subjective notion of this.

When Ravi Zacharias was at the University Nottingham, a student said, there is too much evil in this world there cannot be a God. Ravi said to him, but sir, when you say there is such a thing as evil aren’t you assuming there is such a thing as good? Yes, said the student. Then Ravi said, when you say there is such a thing as good, aren’t you assuming there is a moral law and the basis from which to differentiate between good and evil?

The student struggled for a while and said, I will grant you that. Ravi continued by saying, when you say there is such a thing as a moral law aren’t you in some way assuming there is a moral law giver, because if there is no moral law giver there is no moral law, if there is not moral law there is no absolute good, if there is no good there is no evil what is your question, because you are trying to disprove the moral law giver.

The student stood stun for a minute and said what then am I asking you?
 
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