There are 300 FEWER ATHEISTS today than there were yesterday.

[웃 910]

I figured you to say something like that. It's easy to run around mocking what you do not understand....but provide proof....know for certain....that is not so easy.

For every response you give me I can provide 3 proofs. And I can do this until I've laid out 100s of proofs.

1) 93% of the smartest most elite scientists in this country are atheists.

2) You poke fun of the Big Bang theory. One, who created God? Two, how long do you want to make the universe? Already at 14 billion years Christianity fits into a 1-year timeline at 4.5 seconds to midnight on December 31st! Do you want to make it 1 billion? Fine, let's defy science and say the universe is 1 billion years old. That would make (after dividing 1 billion by 365 to get days, then by 24 to get hours, then by 60 to get minutes, then by 60 again to get seconds) each second 31.709792 YEARS long....So divide 2000 years by 31.709792 and you learn that Christianity (on this timeline) represents 63.07200 seconds before midnight on December 31st at 11:58pm and 57 seconds!!! A little better, but not much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Still a pathetic and embarrassing place on the timeline to place your faith! It sounds like to me you want to make the universe much OLDER...Maybe infinitely old? That would make 2000 years ago even more pathetic and meaningless!!! At least back in the early days of Christianity they seriously believed the universe young. Like maybe 5000 years old! They had no idea how off they were! So it makes sense, being the scientific retards that they were, to make up fairy tales about the creation of life. Nowadays we have scientists that don't "make fairy tales up", they study, they experiment, they hypothesize, they observe, and they find out exactly why things are the way they are. No - a rainbow doesn't mean God is promising never to make a big flood. No, Adam and Eve were not the first humans. No - Noah didn't gather all the animals, reptiles, and insects on a wooden boat and set sail! No - rods didn't turn into snakes. No - Sampson didn't have super human strength with long hair and weak as a mouse with short hair. And no - Jesus didn't turn water into wine. And no - God didn't show us His master plan of how loving he is by hammering nails into his only son while he was still alive making him either bleed or starve to a slow and painful death.

God, Muhamed, and Jesus (pbutts) are not special. One is fake, one is a child molester, and one was a hippy socialist that would be despised by the Republican party if alive today. Didn't like rich people, wanted to care for the sick, and for the poor. Jesus (pbutt) sounds like a Big Government Democrat to me.

3) There are about 600 million stray dogs on this planet. Many starving, ribs showing, full of disease. What kind of God "knows" about this crisis in advance, and doesn't provide enough resources for them to roam happily on full stomachs.

[웃 910]

A Gallup poll in May found that more than nine out of 10 Americans believe in God. These numbers drop for groups of younger Americans, liberals, those living in the Eastern United States, those with postgraduate educations and political independents. However, belief in God is nearly universal among Republicans and conservatives and, to a slightly lesser degree, in the South.

[Captain Oates 911]

I figured you to say something like that. It's easy to run around mocking what you do not understand....but provide proof....know for certain....that is not so easy.

You do understand that your behaviour is no different than those you mock? Here you are in a public forum, evangelizing your non-belief, mocking those who do not agree with you mercilessly. When there are enough atheists, they will persecute the religious just a viscously as the so called religious have persecuted the atheists...

I disagree Austin, when you go and attack other's beliefs, you should be able to provide a shred of proof to back your claims. And I tell you that your absolute belief that there is no God is just as stubborn and childish as those who believe in flying spaghetti bolognese monsters. It is just the fairy tale you choose to believe.

LI, you are a big proponent of the big bang theory, yes? You want me to believe that the universe just sprang into existance spontaneously? Just because? And what was going on before the universe took it upon itself to create itself?

I fundamentally disagree that I need to provide evidence when I attack someone's beliefs if their beliefs are so absurd that no facts can either support or disprove them.

My mother believed that if she rubbed steak on a wart and buried it, the steak and the wart would rot away in the same time scale. By the time a wart is bothersome, the virus has 3 months or so to live and therefore the 'cure' works in the minds of the superstitious. In my assessment you are not religious, you are as superstitious as my mother was.

If she spilled salt she had to throw a pinch over her left shoulder or something bad would happen. Also if a mirror cracked - 7 years bad luck. My ex wife is even more superstitious and is now a devout christian.

She told me that she wanted me to burn in hell for eternity for suggesting that my son's behavior was encouraged by her excusing his irresponsible ways. They use their religion as a weapon to burn their opponents in hell forever and religious people are just plain vicious and violent and without any morals.

How else would you explain witch burning, locking up pregnant teenagers in cellars and thousands more cruelties inflicted by you people

Don't you people have any remorse or shame for what you have done down through the centuries ? You are responsible for more killing and torture and cruelty than any other factor in society yet claim the moral high ground and say I must be immoral because I am not one of you !

When I meet a person who has come to atheism through thinking and reasoning, I invariable find that person is far more moral than any christian - most of whom sheepishly take on their parents religion and go through life in a slack jawed manner practicing everything they have been taught and who must be opposed and crushed and evangelized into submission.

Religious people are out to dominate and make everyone bend the knee. I would rather die than live in a place like south carolina

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

Then Webster is mistaken, or merely representing the (inaccurate) majority concensus.

Consider the etymology. As "amoral" means "without morals" (rather than immoral), "atheist" means "without theism". The word, like the position, is reactionary. It asserts no belief of its own - rather it distances itself from existing philosophy.

The religious tolerance article is fairly comprehensive: http://www.religioustolerance.org/atheist4.htm

Ok, per that site, my reference to Atheist simply implies reference to the term Strong Atheist.

[웃 910]

If you believe in God. Meet the greatest mass murderer of all times. Let's forget all other natural disasters, just look at earthquakes, and let's only count humans (ignoring the tens of millions of animals destroyed by these *natural* disasters - but hey, he doesn't discriminate - man, women, child, animal, or his own son!):

1) 1556 Shaanxi earthquake - 830,000 dead

2) 1976 Tangshan earthquake - 242,000 to 779,000 dead

3) 2010 Haiti earthquake - 100,000 to 316,000 dead

[scandal 951]

You do understand that your behaviour is no different than those you mock? Here you are in a public forum, evangelizing your non-belief, mocking those who do not agree with you mercilessly. When there are enough atheists, they will persecute the religious just a viscously as the so called religious have persecuted the atheists...

I don't think anyone should be mocked for their beliefs. I certainly don't mock you, if you present yourself as a person of Faith. I don't share that Faith, but that's me. We can have an intelligent discussion while respecting the fact that we're going to disagree. People have a propensity to both good and evil, and that's true regardless of whether they profess Faith or do not. No one has monopoly on ethical behavior. We all as individuals aspire to the Golden rule- treat others as you would have them treat you. That is equally true for the religious and for those of us without religion.

LI, you are a big proponent of the big bang theory, yes? You want me to believe that the universe just sprang into existance spontaneously? Just because? And what was going on before the universe took it upon itself to create itself?

These are good questions, and they do have answers. What you believe is up to you, of course, but physics does lay out a framework for understanding these deep questions. I've posted this several times previously in similar threads, but since the questions are good ones and come up repeatedly I don't mind answering again (yes, I know you did not address them to me but rather to Nathan).

In short, general relativity tells us that the very fabric of the universe itself - space-time - is inherently tied to the matter and energy within the universe. The universe contains matter and energy, and the matter and energy distribution shape spacetime, by requiring that all energy (photons) travel along geodesics (shortest-line segments in 4-D spacetime).

The Big Bang was the singularity at which this state of affairs came to be. At the instant of the Big Bang all of the matter and energy the Universe would ever hold came into existence, and it all obeyed the laws of physics which themselves came into existence at that time. The sudden existence of matter/energy (equivalent under special relativity) is what created the geometry of the containing Universe - spacetime. The universe immediately began expanding from that singularity and is doing so until this present day - an accelerating expansion, it is now known.

Hence, one needs to be very careful when discussing the concept of "time" and temporal words like "before" and "after" in relation to early Cosmology. Time itself, as we know it, only comes into existence after the Big Bang has happened, and there is a matter/energy distribution which can in turn create a containing geometry. So the word "after" Big Bang has meaning, and brings us to the present day. But time (as we know it) did not exist "before" the Big Bang. There was no matter. No energy. No space. No time. No universe. Nothing at all.The word "before" simply does not apply.

That's as far as physics will take you in answering these questions. I, personally, am content with that. I don't need any further metaphysics to allow my mind to create a meta-concept of meta-time which allows me to have a meta-before where I can instill a meta-creator who engineers the Big Bang for me. I'm content that the Big Bang happened (it clearly did - the astronomical data from quasars and background radiation is unshakable) and I don't need a magician in the corner to operate its mechanics. However I don't begrudge those who want to speculate on such a metaphysical.

What I would say, however, is that the mainstream religions as practiced by humans do NOT have creation stories compatible with the cosmological account we now have. For example, the Judeo-Christian story of creation simply does not fit. Nor is it alone, for obvious reasons. None of the world faiths take into account the actual creation of our universe because all of them were imagined by humans with no knowledge of this actual creation story. For that reason I have no use, personally, for any of them.

Now if someone purported a Religion (BigBangism?) in which the Deity of the story were in fact the magician who created the laws of physics and the material universe at that exact moment 14billion years ago, then at least there would be a Religion consistent with science. But we have no such Faith as practiced on Earth, and the Faiths we do have crash pretty hard upon those rocks. In my estimation, at least.

Peace.

[scandal 951]

If you believe in God. Meet the greatest mass murderer of all times. Let's forget all other natural disasters, just look at earthquakes, and let's only count humans (ignoring the tens of millions of animals destroyed by these *natural* disasters - but hey, he doesn't discriminate - man, women, child, animal, or his own son!):

LI, in what way does this constitute any sort of proof of the non-existence of God? I really fail to see that.

All it does is indicate that God (if he exists) is at best indifferent to the sufferings of humanity, or perhaps even takes a vengeful sadistic glee in those sufferings. Either explanation is possible and either allows for a God to be out there. It's true that religions generally preach a just and merciful God, but from a philosophical point of view no one said it has to be so. Maybe God created the Universe and filled it with playthings like us for the express purpose of tormenting us, much as a sadistic boy might keep a jar full of flies just so he can pick them out one at a time and tear its wings off.

[웃 910]

I don't think anyone should be mocked for their beliefs. I certainly don't mock you, if you present yourself as a person of Faith. I don't share that Faith, but that's me. We can have an intelligent discussion while respecting the fact that we're going to disagree. People have a propensity to both good and evil, and that's true regardless of whether they profess Faith or do not. No one has monopoly on ethical behavior. We all as individuals aspire to the Golden rule- treat others as you would have them treat you. That is equally true for the religious and for those of us without religion.

These are good questions, and they do have answers. What you believe is up to you, of course, but physics does lay out a framework for understanding these deep questions. I've posted this several times previously in similar threads, but since the questions are good ones and come up repeatedly I don't mind answering again (yes, I know you did not address them to me but rather to Nathan).

In short, general relativity tells us that the very fabric of the universe itself - space-time - is inherently tied to the matter and energy within the universe. The universe contains matter and energy, and the matter and energy distribution shape spacetime, by requiring that all energy (photons) travel along geodesics (shortest-line segments in 4-D spacetime).

The Big Bang was the singularity at which this state of affairs came to be. At the instant of the Big Bang all of the matter and energy the Universe would ever hold came into existence, and it all obeyed the laws of physics which themselves came into existence at that time. The sudden existence of matter/energy (equivalent under special relativity) is what created the geometry of the containing Universe - spacetime. The universe immediately began expanding from that singularity and is doing so until this present day - an accelerating expansion, it is now known.

Hence, one needs to be very careful when discussing the concept of "time" and temporal words like "before" and "after" in relation to early Cosmology. Time itself, as we know it, only comes into existence after the Big Bang has happened, and there is a matter/energy distribution which can in turn create a containing geometry. So the word "after" Big Bang has meaning, and brings us to the present day. But time (as we know it) did not exist "before" the Big Bang. There was no matter. No energy. No space. No time. No universe. Nothing at all.The word "before" simply does not apply.

That's as far as physics will take you in answering these questions. I, personally, am content with that. I don't need any further metaphysics to allow my mind to create a meta-concept of meta-time which allows me to have a meta-before where I can instill a meta-creator who engineers the Big Bang for me. I'm content that the Big Bang happened (it clearly did - the astronomical data from quasars and background radiation is unshakable) and I don't need a magician in the corner to operate its mechanics. However I don't begrudge those who want to speculate on such a metaphysical.

What I would say, however, is that the mainstream religions as practiced by humans do NOT have creation stories compatible with the cosmological account we now have. For example, the Judeo-Christian story of creation simply does not fit. Nor is it alone, for obvious reasons. None of the world faiths take into account the actual creation of our universe because all of them were imagined by humans with no knowledge of this actual creation story. For that reason I have no use, personally, for any of them.

Now if someone purported a Religion (BigBangism?) in which the Deity of the story were in fact the magician who created the laws of physics and the material universe at that exact moment 14billion years ago, then at least there would be a Religion consistent with science. But we have no such Faith as practiced on Earth, and the Faiths we do have crash pretty hard upon those rocks. In my estimation, at least.

Peace.

Nice! I guess one way to explain the "time didn't exist until the Big Bang" is (from Bryson's book) using the earth as a sphere example. If someone from another planet happened to live on a "square planet" with edges where you fall off at the end. He would not understand how the hell it would be possible to have a spherical earth. "Huh? That doesn't make sense. Where is the edge on this place? You guys are crazy! I know there is an edge that you fall off of."

Same way it doesn't make since for us to understand "no before".

------------------------

Back to 3 more proofs.

1) Top 10 Deadliest *Natural* Disasters.

2) Top 6 Deadliest Communicable Diseases ... About 300 million killed, give or take 50 million. *Loving Creator. Number 1 on the list (Black Death) was spread by a *naturally* created rat by God:

3) 22 Famines Mass Exterminating at Least 1 million a piece due to non-Intelligent Design of natural resources such as access to *natural* fruits, veggies, water *naturally* positioned around the earth by God:

Edited November 2, 2011 by Lord Infamous

[웃 910]

LI, in what way does this constitute any sort of proof of the non-existence of God? I really fail to see that.

All it does is indicate that God (if he exists) is at best indifferent to the sufferings of humanity, or perhaps even takes a vengeful sadistic glee in those sufferings. Either explanation is possible and either allows for a God to be out there. It's true that religions generally preach a just and merciful God, but from a philosophical point of view no one said it has to be so. Maybe God created the Universe and filled it with playthings like us for the express purpose of tormenting us, much as a sadistic boy might keep a jar full of flies just so he can pick them out one at a time and tear its wings off.

Precisely, it proves that either God is a sadistic mass murderer, or that he doesn't exist. I support the latter.