Originally posted by SwissGambit Love, yes; care, yes; grow, not necessarily; same ideals, not hardly!
why not same ideals? do we not hold love as an ideal? care for our children, relatives, neighbours? the desire to grow as a person? it is a christian ideal to not squander god's gifts to us, that means we must use them to better ourselves (and not live a life of stagnation and fear as some christians would have us do)
Originally posted by Zahlanzi it goes to show how humans are adept at fabricating excuses to justify any horrors they make (like you mentioned in your "E" example). the point of the article is to find 10 things both sides can agree on and this was one of the easier ones. the debate is about christians and atheists mainly, so this would be the first thing (and the easiest one) to agree o cynical thing to compare 1 million deaths to 2 millions and declare the former the winner.
I say it does matter - indeed if I wanted to make the case that religion is disadvantageous to humans in general, knowing that empirical evidence suggests a theist is twice as (or even more) likely to commit attrocities as a non-theist would be very helpful.
See the thing is, though I could be evil in the name of 'E' I probably wouldn't think 'E' likes this and will grant me eternal life for it. Not so with the more 'backward' theists and their gods (and I expect there are many of these). to put it another way - we can all be b****rds if we wanted, but the religious of us think being a b****rd will make some bearded man in the sky very happy and will get them some eternally blissful reward 😞
Originally posted by Zahlanzi i am wrong if i say that chinese people only speak chinese. i am stupid if i say that fossils were made by satan to deceive us.
No, the former is most likely a sign that you are stupid, but it could just mean you are ignorant. The latter is a sign that you are irrational or delusional, but not necessarily stupid.
It was not meant to say that. it comments on the futility of one endeavour compared to another. I don't get it. What is the comment? Why the comparison?
Originally posted by Zahlanzi they were atheists and as such it can be argued they held humans as little more than fuel for the state machine (paraphrase from the article) while adhering to a certain system (atheism)
again, i am not arguing that atheism means sacrificing people casually, just that some psychopaths commited atrocious things while holding to it.
The things they did were done in the name of a twisted form of Stalinist terror of the agricultural proletariat. Their main cause was to sweep away what they saw as a western urbanised bourgeois lifestyle which they viewed as corrupting the traditional rural, largely egalitarian way of life. They were more concerned with driving people back onto the land and killing anyone who represented modern/westernised Cambodia such as doctors, engineers etc.
I cannot understand how that equates to Atheism the way that say the Religious wars that rocked Europe in the middle ages equate to religion, unless you saying that anything an Atheist does is because of their Atheism.
Originally posted by Zahlanzi why not same ideals? do we not hold love as an ideal? care for our children, relatives, neighbours? the desire to grow as a person? it is a christian ideal to not squander god's gifts to us, that means we must use them to better ourselves (and not live a life of stagnation and fear as some christians would have us do)
So some Christians would have us live a life of stagnation and fear...why? Because they have different ideals. They probably wouldn't call it stagnation, but that's essentially what they advocate.
Originally posted by Zahlanzi if i posted this in the past already i apologise. I just thought this would be more interesting than discussing evolution or noahs flood again.
Originally posted by divegeester Why try? I think you were being slightly humorous but the point is valid.
What is the motivation? Many religious people do wonderful things and bring a viewpoint that is existential and challenging.
Others don’t... 😞
On the whole religion is not a good thing. I don't expect to be able to wipe it out or convert everyone, or possibly even convert anyone, but if I can make some theists a bit more rational, then that would be a good thing.
I must note however that we have had several people on these forums admit to becoming atheist at least partly as a result of what they have read here.
Originally posted by twhitehead No, the former is most likely a sign that you are stupid, but it could just mean you are ignorant. The latter is a sign that you are irrational or delusional, but not necessarily stupid.
[b]It was not meant to say that. it comments on the futility of one endeavour compared to another. I don't get it. What is the comment? Why the comparison?[/b]
i don't understand how you believe that not knowing the chinese speak several dialects make you stupid more than believing satan (and god) have nothing better to do than scatter huge bones all over the earth.
"I don't get it. What is the comment? Why the comparison?"
i don't know how to make it any clearer. counting to infinity is as futile as trying to ridicule and harass an atheist or theist out of their belief system.
Originally posted by Zahlanzi i don't understand how you believe that not knowing the chinese speak several dialects make you stupid more than believing satan (and god) have nothing better to do than scatter huge bones all over the earth.
The former is either a case of lacking general knowledge, or the outright stupidity of assuming that everyone in China must speak only one language and not know any English or other foreign language. (of course this also depends on what your original post meant). But I see no obvious motivation for believing it irrationally ie despite having knowledge to the contrary. So either you lack the knowledge, or you are too stupid to process the knowledge.
The latter is a case of religion getting the better of you and believing something irrational. ie you believe something despite the evidence to the contrary not because you lack the intellect to work it out, but because the conclusion would conflict with other beliefs you do not wish to give up. This is a common phenomena and seems to be prevalent even amongst highly intelligent individuals (although less prevalent), and I would not describe it as 'stupidity' but rather 'delusion' or 'irrationality' as those are a better fit.
i don't know how to make it any clearer. counting to infinity is as futile as trying to ridicule and harass an atheist or theist out of their belief system. No, it is more futile. And there is no reason for comparing the two unless you want to suggest that one implies something about the other, yet you denied wanting to make any such implication. So why did you compare the two?
23 Jul '12 15:57
10 Things Christians and Atheists Can Agree On
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