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Richard Dawkins: Attention Governor Perry: Evolution is a fact
- Thread starter speculawyer
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njean777 said:
Wait, are you pulling my leg? I feel like candid camera is going to come out now and shake me.
You are really basing your creation belief on...christian bands? Your standard of morality on christian bands? Not even reading the source of these christian bands faith? }
Well now it's all the more perplexing you are so dogmatically opposed to letting go and letting people call a spade a spade re: fairy tales and it's all the more amusing you're getting angry at people fairly criticizing the religious institutional system.
Oh yeah, EDIT:
And you did get your idea of God from the Bible. Because Christian bands got their idea of God from the Bible and so you, inadvertently, also got your idea of God from the Bible, however twisted that interpretation may have been when it eventually reached your clearly impressionable mind.
nib95 said:
No need to apologize, I'm used to people avoiding reality by trying to claim I'm being too abrasive. It's nothing new.
As I said earlier, it's far easier for people to criticize the tone of someone's message and the personality of the person delivering said message then to fairly judge the message itself. It's even more true of religious individuals. Disappointing as it may be, as long as people prop up religion to be beyond reproach and criticism, atheists and such are always going to be deemed too disrespectful by a group of sad individuals, because for some illogical reason they believe religion needs to be protected.
Atramental
Banned
Now I've seen everything.Amir0x said:
I was indoctrinated as a child, too. I too feel that it's child abuse. Making a child afraid for no reason is child abuse. Especially when people are constantly telling you that sinners and unsaved people will have you burning away in hell FOREVER, which a lot of smart people say has absolutely no basis in the bible. There are tons of smart, not-crazy people on GAF who's views I think are perfectly fair and balanced ways of looking at things from a religious perspective.
Most religious people in the USA aren't that way. Most of them are pretty nuts, tbh. So yeah, I do think that religion poisons, but not because everyone and everything that is religious is bad, but because religion gives uneducated, overly superstitious people power that they should not have. The power to change US policy and law based off their religion which has no evidence of being true? While it is a downside to the freedom given in democracy, it is something that needs to be fought as much as possible.
Most religious people in the USA aren't that way. Most of them are pretty nuts, tbh. So yeah, I do think that religion poisons, but not because everyone and everything that is religious is bad, but because religion gives uneducated, overly superstitious people power that they should not have. The power to change US policy and law based off their religion which has no evidence of being true? While it is a downside to the freedom given in democracy, it is something that needs to be fought as much as possible.
I wasn't going to respond, but I had to call this out.njean777 said:
I was raised in a Christian household. My sister is marrying the son of a pastor of a 5k member church. My other sister is marrying her boyfriend she met at that same church. My mom and dad have based their entire life around God. I, being the skeptic that I am, didn't buy Noah's Ark as a boy and drifted away since then.
I say these things, so you understand that I know Christianity. Real talk time:
The Holy Bible, in its entirety, is your holy book. All of it. Now, must Christians disregard the Old Testament because they feel that Jesus' resurrection means you don't have to listen to that old shit. Regardless, the New Testament should be followed. You need to read it.
All of it.
You need to understand exactly what you believe.
The virgin birth. The resurrection. Paul's letters. The miracles. The fact that THE CREATOR OF ALL THE UNIVERSE had to MURDER HIS SON to SAVE THE PEOPLE HE MADE because of a sin HE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN. ALL OF IT.
Because, you defending the bible when your understanding of it is "i listen to Christian music" is crap. If your reason for believe God is real is "just because i do," that's crap as well. You should have a reason for believing. Basing your spiritual life on a Reliant K single is a bad decision.
Atramental said:
i am interested in this new directional sect of christianity called "CHRISTIAN BAND PHILOSOPHY", another new way to contort the Bible into shapes it doesn't resemble at all upon actually reading it. I always love reading about these new emergent interpretations of Biblical scripture. They always contain such delightfully absurd contortionist logic.
Timedog said:
That's why I think compared to some, my indoctrination was relatively harmless. As Jehovah's Witnesses, my parents never believed in hell. I was spared that little bit of undignified bullshit.
Of course, they still believed in Armageddon the description of which used to terrify me as a child.
TacticalFox88
Banned
Christian Belief....based on Music? I...wait...WAT?
njean777
Member
Hate me all you want people, but at least I am being truthful. I am not gonna lie because in the bible it says not to. But all religion is bad so I guess me telling the truth is bad.
I will eventually read the bible. I have more important things that matter right now. Im sorry I was enjoying my life as a kid and not being force fed religion.
I will eventually read the bible. I have more important things that matter right now. Im sorry I was enjoying my life as a kid and not being force fed religion.
Veezy said:
I don't know what's so confusing about that, Veezy. It's a perfectly logical thing to do.
Plus he had a bet with Satan, Veezy. A bet. And you don't just place a bet lightly, oh no. You fuckin' sacrifice the world before you hedge on a bet.
njean777 said:
Hate doesn't enter into the equation. I hate no one, because that's the logical and rational way to be based on common sense. I do, however, feel pity for you because you're content to continue to live your life in a non-thinker's coat, failing to critically analyze any position you hold.
Your second and third sentences are so ridiculous that it's hard to not at this point think you're fucking with me.
Amir0x said:
Armaggedon is so horrifying. I'm not religious at all anymore, but I still read Revelation about once per year. It's the craziest, most amazing pile of awesomeness I've ever read. I've thought many times about making a thread about how awesome Revelation is from a non-religious perspective.
Timedog said:
It really is. I still vividly remember a nightmare I had about Armageddon when I was ten. To this day it was one of the most vivid nightmares I've ever had. I remember how the sky looked, the sickening feeling in my stomach realizing how helpless I was as the ground began to open up and the many headed beasts exited the cracks, slaughtering thousands in front of me. As the transcendent angelic choir began to open their many mouths and blow the final trumpet, signaling the end of things. I just remember hearing a clock toll before buildings started collapsing, meteors and blood red seas and everyone being eviscerated and right at the moment I was about to be crushed waking up.
God fuck that shit.
Sir,njean777 said:
Nobody is hating you. The problem is that you are basing your religious belifs on music.
You have more important things to do? Son, you don't think that understanding a faith you're defending is pretty damn important? Not being force fed religion? It's your holy book. You have to believe ALL OF IT regardless of whether you've read it.
You really should flip through a few pages. It's soul we're talking about here. Eternal damnation is on the line.
EDIT: You cannot discuss your religious beliefs WHEN YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THEIR FOUNDATION. It's not about critical thinking, it's about knowing your position to begin with considering you're already defending it.
If you look at the ten commandments closely they aren't the resplendent repositories of human morality most people make them out to be. 1 and 2 have nothing to do with being a good person. Then there is the sabbath, name in vain, etc. Again, not much to do with morality. Even the one about not committing murder is seemingly nullified in the story itself, given the actions Moses and his people take soon afterward.njean777 said:
If by sacrificing your life to save others, you mean purely self-sacrifice -- sure. If you mean vicarious redemption (though I don't think you do) that has moralistic issues of its own.
Now, you have to simply apply socio-biological principles to the assertion that Biblical moral teachings have an effect on humanity as a whole to see how that just isn't true. One would have to believe that Moses and his people did not know the difference between right and wrong when it came to murder, stealing, rape, lying, etc. up until they reached the foot of Mt. Sinai. We know that simply isn't the case. And it wasn't from a fear of higher power, at least, not exclusively or primarily. Humans are moral (not morally good or bad, just moral) creatures. The mechanisms for morality or the need/want of morality have (again) socio-biological origins (not specific morals themselves). I'd like to believe that the reason my Christian neighbors aren't stealing my stuff and killing my family is because they are good people, not because they are commanded or forced too. And I believe they would act the same, even if they were to lose their religion.
Besides, things like the "Golden Rule" and basic moral teachings akin to the Bible can be found in the dialects of Confucius and dozens of other pre-Chrisitan philosophies. Also, the Chinese at the time were significantly ahead of bronze-age Palestine in terms of societal development and technology. They seemed to function just finely on a moral level (didn't wipe themselves out), without the so called "Biblical" morality.
I'll try to keep my usual cynicism out of this and say that, there are objectively "more" moral things that could have been added that were left out. As Ami said, the abuse of children being a big one.
njean777 said:
...
I'm sorry at this point I really can't tell if you're just stringing me along and sarcastically trolling me. I really can't, genuinely. I've never seen someone so perfectly play the role of clueless religious anti-intellectual while simultaneously trying to argue against others for being ignorant and being disrespectful for criticizing religion as it should be. It's almost a remarkable performance.
Assuming you are serious, do you really not know why it is a problem to base your entire moral philosophy off a religious book you've never read but only seen interpret second or third hand by bands you're not even sure understand the material they're singing about? Do you really not understand why being so incurious about your creation belief makes you completely ill-prepared for contributing anything of note to a reasoned discussion of why it is wrong? Do you not understand why having virtually no knowledge of the holy book for which your particular version of the Abrahamic God is gleamed is terrible if you're trying to make a point that the Bible isn't filled with horrible things?
Do you really, genuinely not understand this? Your English degree has -nothing- to do with it
Atramental
Banned
We don't hate you. We're just perplexed. That's all.njean777 said:
nib95 said:I agree with you Ami. It's sort of how I felt on your comments about the 3DS's 3D tech when you hadn't actually even tested it yourself yet, but based it instead off your use of similar technology from other products!
Except the technology is extremely similar, both having exactly the same downsides and upsides. There is little to no variation between them. It's more like choosing between the NIV translation or the King James Version. One can easily gleam all the weaknesses and strengths from either version of the tech. It's not anything up for interpretation, like the Bible is.
Further, it needs be said, that the constant return to that event only serves to weaken your position. It neither bothers me at all nor leads anyone to think it's anything except a distraction technique, so I'm not sure what you stand to gain from it. It shows, in other words, transparently how one is trying to avoid discussing the points being raised. So far, it's been immensely helpful in determining when someone does not have the ability to defend their points.
Feel free to continue to journey down the path of self-defeat, but I can assure you I'm completely at peace with it.
njean777 said:
Like this. njean777 at this point is just gleefully stringing people alone. He has no intention to actually defend his outrageous points of view. I assume that is the case for most people here.
Veezy said:
Religion is largely tradition and family to religious people. Like family they'll defend it always. I remember reading online dating profiles of religious women and about half of them would list God as a higher priority than their family.
I think that's why religious people react so personally to arguments about their religion because to them it's like arguing their family which translates into "hating" because you can't argue a family.
There's also political and social beliefs that go with many religions. I remember the "It's the right thing to do" and "it's wrong" reactions to ideas, like Gay rights, when I was a kid. Early in my life I was the one saying it.
CornBurrito
Member
njean777 said:
A great number of the ten commandments existed well before the Bible.
Amir0x said:
It was a joke. Chill. In case you missed it, I agreed with you on that post!
On a side note, you cannot say the tech and it's implementation is exactly the same without ever having tried the 3DS itself. You simply cannot. Fact that so many people who personally used the device's 3D functionality and disagreed with you should ring alarm bells in itself. Anyway, that's a discussion for another thread.
Ah, I stand corrected. Yes, they really are.njean777 said:
Look, I get where you're coming from. You were told to believe it when you were younger, you got the moral spoon feeding, and believed. A lot of us did.
However, you're an adult now. As an adult, you have a responsibility, to yourself, to understand why and what you believe. You say you're a Christian. You say you got most of it from the music. Hell, most kids did. My parents played the local Jesus station on loop. It's still not a legit excuse to have not read the bible yet.
Seriously, Heaven is an eternity worshiping God. Shouldn't you know a little bit about him before the second coming to determine if you even really wanna go? Chapter or two a day of quiet time will get you through it. Skip genealogy crap and get to the meat.
njean777
Member
Amir0x said:
What views were outrageous? I only asked for people to respect people on their beliefs that was the only point of view I had. TBH I did more agreeing with you then fighting The only problem I ever had was with your abrasive mouth that is it. I already claimed that religion shouldn't be taught in school, and also that the bible has some good parts in it thats about all I have really said in this thread. From what I remember reading the bible does have some good parts in it, I'm sorry I have not studied the damn thing as much as you. Oh and the part about not voting for people if you do not like them. What about any of that is outrageous?
Angry Fork
Member
Holy shit this thread is still going on. I feel bad for Amirox I know he likes debating but I know you must rage at times with some of these guys. I debated in here for like 3-4 pages before I said I had enough.
At least this thread got me more into Dawkins though, guy is hilariously blunt, exactly the kind of shit I like. Looked up tons of youtube vids, eventually I got to this one which pretty much just blew my mind in terms of the amount of stupidity in the audience. I had this idea that only Americans were so christian and idiotic but I guess there's some overseas that are the same.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hxR0lQzNSI
The Francesca historian lady on the panel is hot + athiest. Practically everything she said I was like hubba hubba. Dawkins gave her the eye at times lol.
At least this thread got me more into Dawkins though, guy is hilariously blunt, exactly the kind of shit I like. Looked up tons of youtube vids, eventually I got to this one which pretty much just blew my mind in terms of the amount of stupidity in the audience. I had this idea that only Americans were so christian and idiotic but I guess there's some overseas that are the same.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hxR0lQzNSI
The Francesca historian lady on the panel is hot + athiest. Practically everything she said I was like hubba hubba. Dawkins gave her the eye at times lol.
CornBurrito
Member
I'm honestly stunned at the idea of someone basing their worldview off of lyrics from various songs.
As a fan of Dawkins, that program doesn't help his case. I thought he did a rather poor job from what I recall. He handles himself well in the scientific aspect, but not so much in the philosophical. His television series was the best on film stuff from him.Angry Fork said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scarHc8RA0g
njean777 said:
Ok, let me try to rewind this back because clearly me and everyone else are reading your comments extremely differently from how you think you're writing them.
Your whole problem from the start has been that you're angered that people are being 'disrespectful' to religion, right? You made inferences to the fact that religion is mostly harmless and people just want to be allowed to believe what they want to believe. You said you're a Christian and you just believe because 'you just do.'
I've discussed at extensive length why religion is not mostly harmless. Why indoctrination is extremely dangerous to socialized mankind. I've discussed why religious threat to politics and other such dangers, which this thread is about, is precisely why it is necessary to treat religion EXACTLY as harshly as any other hypothesis for creation.
So far, your issue with me has been the tone. I do not hate you. I do not hate religious people. I hate religion. I hate the New Testament, and the Qu'ran, and the Torah. And because they are what they are, and because they claim what they claim, it is my job to vigorously eviscerate their contents with the proofs we know thanks to modern science and historical study.
I can list to you thousands of examples of historical falsehoods in the Bible, thousands of examples of contradictions within the Bible itself, thousands of examples of morally abhorrent statements. And yet, I'm told it's either 'a product of the time' and that 'God has nothing to do with it' (in which case, why do you believe in an Abrahamic God again?) or that there's some inherent cultural and social value in religion that couldn't be just gained by natural means and common sense (without any justification to this fact) and that this is enough to say religion should continue to exist? This is a reason to be super respectful of religion, above and beyond what I would be about any other subject? Why do they deserve special treatment?
Your comments on this matter are even more questionable. You were angry that I compared God to the Flying Spaghetti Monster because 'people really believe in God.' That somehow makes it right? Just because people really believe in God makes him no less false than the Flying Spaghetti Monster and no more worthy of regard.
At every corner, you've made some excuse for the behavior of the religious or have been excessively vague to the point where one has to assume you're defending it against all reason.
And then you drop that you're 'doubting God'. Only once, of course, maybe to try to establish your credentials here. But there is literally NO evidence of that whatsoever, so it makes one even more skeptical of your posts.
Angry Fork said:
You got it. I love debating. Time has flew tonight. I hope these people keep debating because it's fascinating.
The only anger I have is reserved for those who use religion to promote hatred and things like murder, politically religious points of view, etc, to which I have no reason to suspect any of the pro-religious people ITT are guilty of. Ignorance, perhaps, defending the behavior, perhaps, but not personally guilty.
I'm gonna say this, because we're getting to the heart of the issue.njean777 said:
Your religious belief is based on the music inspired by the Holy Bible. Yet, You haven't read it. Yet, you believe in all of it because ya have to, that's part of the deal of being a Christian. Why should anybody respect your belief when you don't know what it is?
That, at the end of the day, is why there are so many aggressive Atheists. Many religious people have an influence in the world at large and not only do not understand/agree with scientific/medical fact, but don't even understand what they themselves profess they believe. Yet, what they "believe" becomes/influences public policy.
Obsessed said:
I don't really think that's all that surprising. A lot of that music aims to create a rapturous feeling.
I'm not surprised the music encapsulated him. Some people get that feeling from listening to music, others from experiencing life, and others from reading the texts.
EDIT: I think if you step in a church with an amazing choir, you'd experience a similar feeling. Actually I recall a time at a choir where I heard an atheist say "Almost makes me want to believe in God again", or something like that.
Angry Fork
Member
For sure I agree Dawkins wasn't on his A game there, but I think that's partly because it seemed like the majority of the people there were pro-Bible but there were some funny bits in it and was worth watching.MuseManMike said:
Haven't seen what you linked yet about to watch now thanks.
TacticalFox88
Banned
I still can't get over this shit. You're making the claim that an OMNIPOTENT DIVINE BEING is real...ON MUSIC! Jesus CHRIST!
Salacious Crumb
Junior Member
Angry Fork said:
The religious dude in this video is hilarious. He's like the religious version of what religious people think Dawkins is, if that makes sense.
njean777
Member
Veezy said:
But when did I ever once say I do not agree with science? FFS I believe in evolution. I have never said science is wrong at all. I raised the big bang question because I was actually interested at what the answers would be.
Now for anybody interested at all just so you can know where I get my influence and if you are just the least bit curious read the lyrics of Underoath, The Devil Wears Prada, August Burns Red, As I Lay Dying, Norma Jean. Heck I will post some lyrics so you don't even need to look at them if anybody wants them. I do not listen to creed, jars of clay or any of those bands.
If you can stand heavy music then go ahead and give them a listen, but if you can not then don't.
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