double post
I must have over looked her last statement.
And I just wanted to post some bs.
what religion?
I've just discovered the best site about Isalm:
Apostates of Islam
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We left Islam
Who we are:
We are ex-Muslims. Some of us were born and raised in Islam and some of us had converted to Islam at some moment in our lives. We were taught never to question the truth of Islam and to believe in Allah and his messenger with blind faith. We were told that Allah would forgive all sins but the sin of disbelief (Quran 4:48 and 4:116). But we committed the ultimate sin of thinking and questioned the belief that was imposed on us and we came to realize that far from being a religion of truth, Islam is a hoax, it is hallucination of a sick mind and nothing but lies and deceits.
What we believe:
Some of us have embraced other religions but most of us have simply left Islam without believing in any other religion. We believe in humanity. We believe that humans do not need to follow a religion to be good. All we need to follow is the Golden Rule. All we have to do is to treat others they way we expect to be treated. This is the essence of all the goodness. All good religious teachings stem from this eternal principle. This is the ultimate guidance humanity need. This is the Golden Rule.
Why Mohammed was not a prophet:
One who claims to be a messenger of God is expected to live a saintly life. He must not be given to lust, he must not be a sexual pervert, and he must not be a rapist, a highway robber, a war criminal, a mass murderer or an assassin. One who claims to be a messenger of God must have a superior character. He must stand above the vices of the people of his time. Yet Muhammad’s life is that of a gangster godfather. He raided merchant caravans, looted innocent people, massacred entire male populations and enslaved the women and children. He raped the women captured in war after killing their husbands and told his followers that it is okay to have sex with their captives and their “right hand possessionsâ€
Apostates of Islam
----
We left Islam
Who we are:
We are ex-Muslims. Some of us were born and raised in Islam and some of us had converted to Islam at some moment in our lives. We were taught never to question the truth of Islam and to believe in Allah and his messenger with blind faith. We were told that Allah would forgive all sins but the sin of disbelief (Quran 4:48 and 4:116). But we committed the ultimate sin of thinking and questioned the belief that was imposed on us and we came to realize that far from being a religion of truth, Islam is a hoax, it is hallucination of a sick mind and nothing but lies and deceits.
What we believe:
Some of us have embraced other religions but most of us have simply left Islam without believing in any other religion. We believe in humanity. We believe that humans do not need to follow a religion to be good. All we need to follow is the Golden Rule. All we have to do is to treat others they way we expect to be treated. This is the essence of all the goodness. All good religious teachings stem from this eternal principle. This is the ultimate guidance humanity need. This is the Golden Rule.
Why Mohammed was not a prophet:
One who claims to be a messenger of God is expected to live a saintly life. He must not be given to lust, he must not be a sexual pervert, and he must not be a rapist, a highway robber, a war criminal, a mass murderer or an assassin. One who claims to be a messenger of God must have a superior character. He must stand above the vices of the people of his time. Yet Muhammad’s life is that of a gangster godfather. He raided merchant caravans, looted innocent people, massacred entire male populations and enslaved the women and children. He raped the women captured in war after killing their husbands and told his followers that it is okay to have sex with their captives and their “right hand possessionsâ€
I just wanted to add that a friend of mine pointed that website out to another friend, who lives in Qatar and it turns out that his school has that website blocked - and he can't view it.
I also think much of the argument put forward on that website can ultimately be expanded to cover all religion.
I believe that the problem with Islam is the same problem with all religion - it is the fact that people are prepared to believe dogmatic teachings over rational arguments based on observation.
Every personal experience that a Christian has felt has also been experienced by Muslims, Hindus and even the followers of the Cargo Cults. They can't all be right, and there is nothing that pushes any particular religion as more likely to be true, it is clear from science and from observations of humanity that all the religions are false and the world will continue to be in peril until people start accepting evidence over what they would like to be true.
You look at an issue like Global Warming - something that the vast majority of scientists have been saying is going to happen and is happening because of human reasons for over 30 years, and yet in that time, and every single year since then, we've actually put out more greenhouse gas emissions. Instead of trusting the science, we believed the dogma and the lies of those with much to lose. We are now seeing what a serious predicament we've placed humanity in. We need to start trusting science and making rational decisions. If we can't back up our decisions with objective observational evidence and rational argument, we're making the wrong decision.
I also think much of the argument put forward on that website can ultimately be expanded to cover all religion.
I believe that the problem with Islam is the same problem with all religion - it is the fact that people are prepared to believe dogmatic teachings over rational arguments based on observation.
Every personal experience that a Christian has felt has also been experienced by Muslims, Hindus and even the followers of the Cargo Cults. They can't all be right, and there is nothing that pushes any particular religion as more likely to be true, it is clear from science and from observations of humanity that all the religions are false and the world will continue to be in peril until people start accepting evidence over what they would like to be true.
You look at an issue like Global Warming - something that the vast majority of scientists have been saying is going to happen and is happening because of human reasons for over 30 years, and yet in that time, and every single year since then, we've actually put out more greenhouse gas emissions. Instead of trusting the science, we believed the dogma and the lies of those with much to lose. We are now seeing what a serious predicament we've placed humanity in. We need to start trusting science and making rational decisions. If we can't back up our decisions with objective observational evidence and rational argument, we're making the wrong decision.
From Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris pg 25 - 32.
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One of the most pernicious effects of religion is that it tends to divorce morality from the reality of human and animal suffering. Religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are not—that is, when they have nothing to do with suffering or its alleviation. Indeed, religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are highly immoral—that is, when pressing these concerns inflicts unnecessary and appalling suffering on innocent human beings. This explains why Christians like yourself expend more "moral" energy opposing abortion than fighting genocide. It explains why you are more concerned about human embryos than about the lifesaving promise of stem-cell research. And it explains why you can preach against condom use in sub-Saharan Africa while millions die from AIDS there each year. You believe that your religious concerns about sex, in all their tiresome immensity, have something to do with morality. And yet, your efforts to constrain the sexual behavior of consenting adults—and even to discourage your own sons and daughters from having premarital sex—are almost never geared toward the relief of human suffering. In fact, relieving suffering seems to rank rather low on your list of priorities. Your principal concern appears to be that the creator of the universe will take offense at something people do while naked. This prudery of yours contributes daily to the surplus of human misery.
Consider, for instance, the human papillomavirus (HPV). HPV is now the most common sexually transmitted disease in the United States. The virus infects over half the American population and causes nearly five thousand women to die each year from cervical cancer; the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that more than two hundred thousand die worldwide. We now have a vaccine for HPV that appears to be both safe and effective. The vaccine produced 100 percent immunity in the six thousand women who received it as part of a clinical trial. And yet, Christian conservatives in our government have resisted a vaccination program on the grounds that HPV is a valuable impediment to premarital sex. These pious men and women want to preserve cervical cancer as an incentive toward abstinence, even if it sacrifices the lives of thousands of women each year.
There is nothing wrong with encouraging teens to abstain from having sex. But we know, beyond any doubt, that teaching abstinence alone is not a good way to curb teen pregnancy or the spread of sexually transmitted disease. In fact, kids who are taught abstinence alone are less likely to use contraceptives when they do have sex, as many of them inevitably will. One study found that teen "virginity pledges" postpone intercourse for eighteen months on average—while, in the meantime, these virgin teens were more likely than their peers to engage in oral and anal sex. American teenagers engage in about as much sex as teenagers in the rest of the developed world, but American girls are four to five times more likely to become pregnant, to have a baby, or to get an abortion. Young Americans are also far more likely to be infected by HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. The rate of gonorrhea among American teens is seventy times higher than it is among their peers in the Netherlands and France. The fact that 30 percent of our sex-education programs teach abstinence only (at a cost of more than $200 million a year) surely has something to do with this.
The problem is that Christians like yourself are not principally concerned about teen pregnancy and the spread of disease. That is, you are not worried about the suffering caused by sex; you are worried about sex. As if this fact needed further corroboration, Reginald Finger, an Evangelical member of the CDC's AdviÂsory Committee on Immunization Practices, recently announced that he would consider opposing an HIV vaccine—thereby condemning millions of men and women to die unnecessarily from AIDS each year—because such a vaccine would encourage premarital sex by making it less risky. This is one of many points on which your religious beliefs become genuinely lethal.
Your qualms about embryonic stem-cell research are similarly obscene. Here are the facts: stem-cell research is one of the most promising developments in the last century of medicine. It could offer therapeutic break-throughs for every disease or injury process that human beings suffer—for the simple reason that embryonic stem cells can become any tissue in the human body. This research may also be essential for our understanding of cancer, along with a wide variety of developmental disorders. Given these facts, it is almost impossible to exaggerate the promise of stem-cell research. It is true, of course, that research on embryonic stem cells entails the destruction of three-day-old human embryos. This is what worries you.
Let us look at the details. A three-day-old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst. There are, for the sake of comparison, more than 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly. The human embryos that are destroyed in stem-cell research do not have brains, or even neurons. Consequently, there is no reason to believe they can suffer their destruction in any way at all. It is worth remembering, in this context, that when a person's brain has died, we currently deem it acceptable to harvest his organs (provided he has donated them for this purpose) and bury him in the ground. If it is acceptable to treat a person whose brain has died as something less than a human being, it should be acceptable to treat a blastocyst as such. If you are concerned about suffering in this universe, killing a fly should present you with greater moral difficulties than killing a human blastocyst.
Perhaps you think that the crucial difference between a fly and a human blastocyst is to be found in the latter's potential to become a fully developed human being. But almost every cell in your body is a potential human being, given our recent advances in genetic engineering. Every time you scratch your nose, you have committed a Holocaust of potential human beings. This is a fact. The argument from a cell's potential gets you absolutely nowhere.
But let us assume, for the moment, that every three-day-old human embryo has a soul worthy of our moral concern. Embryos at this stage occasionally split, becoming separate people (identical twins). Is this a case of one soul splitting into two? Two embryos sometimes fuse into a single individual, called a chimera. You or someone you know may have developed in this way. No doubt theologians are struggling even now to determine what becomes of the extra human soul in such a case.
Isn't it time we admitted that this arithmetic of souls does not make any sense? The naive idea of souls in a Petri dish is intellectually indefensible. It is also morally indefensible, given that it now stands in the way of some of the most promising research in the history of medicine. Your beliefs about the human soul are, at this very moment, prolonging the scarcely endurable misery of tens of millions of human beings.
You believe that "life starts at the moment of conception." You believe that there are souls in each of these blastocysts and that the interests of one soul—the soul of a little girl with burns over 75 percent of her body, say—cannot trump the interests of another soul, even if that soul happens to live inside a Petri dish. Given the accommodations we have made to faith-based irrationality in our public discourse, it is often suggested, even by advocates of stem-cell research, that your position on this matter has some degree of moral legitimacy. It does not. Your resistance to embryonic stem-cell research is, at best, uninformed. There is, in fact, no moral reason for our federal government's unwillingness to fund this work. We should throw immense resources into stem-cell research, and we should do so immediately. Because of what Christians like yourself believe about souls, we are not doing this. In fact, several states have made such work illegal. If one experiments on a blastocyst in South Dakota, for instance, one risks spending years in prison.
The moral truth here is obvious: anyone who feels that the interests of a blastocyst just might supersede the interests of a child with a spinal cord injury has had his moral sense blinded by religious metaphysics. The link between religion and "morality"—so regularly proclaimed and so seldom demonstrated—is fully belied here, as it is wherever religious dogma supersedes moral reasoning and genuine compassion.
-----
One of the most pernicious effects of religion is that it tends to divorce morality from the reality of human and animal suffering. Religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are not—that is, when they have nothing to do with suffering or its alleviation. Indeed, religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are highly immoral—that is, when pressing these concerns inflicts unnecessary and appalling suffering on innocent human beings. This explains why Christians like yourself expend more "moral" energy opposing abortion than fighting genocide. It explains why you are more concerned about human embryos than about the lifesaving promise of stem-cell research. And it explains why you can preach against condom use in sub-Saharan Africa while millions die from AIDS there each year. You believe that your religious concerns about sex, in all their tiresome immensity, have something to do with morality. And yet, your efforts to constrain the sexual behavior of consenting adults—and even to discourage your own sons and daughters from having premarital sex—are almost never geared toward the relief of human suffering. In fact, relieving suffering seems to rank rather low on your list of priorities. Your principal concern appears to be that the creator of the universe will take offense at something people do while naked. This prudery of yours contributes daily to the surplus of human misery.
Consider, for instance, the human papillomavirus (HPV). HPV is now the most common sexually transmitted disease in the United States. The virus infects over half the American population and causes nearly five thousand women to die each year from cervical cancer; the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that more than two hundred thousand die worldwide. We now have a vaccine for HPV that appears to be both safe and effective. The vaccine produced 100 percent immunity in the six thousand women who received it as part of a clinical trial. And yet, Christian conservatives in our government have resisted a vaccination program on the grounds that HPV is a valuable impediment to premarital sex. These pious men and women want to preserve cervical cancer as an incentive toward abstinence, even if it sacrifices the lives of thousands of women each year.
There is nothing wrong with encouraging teens to abstain from having sex. But we know, beyond any doubt, that teaching abstinence alone is not a good way to curb teen pregnancy or the spread of sexually transmitted disease. In fact, kids who are taught abstinence alone are less likely to use contraceptives when they do have sex, as many of them inevitably will. One study found that teen "virginity pledges" postpone intercourse for eighteen months on average—while, in the meantime, these virgin teens were more likely than their peers to engage in oral and anal sex. American teenagers engage in about as much sex as teenagers in the rest of the developed world, but American girls are four to five times more likely to become pregnant, to have a baby, or to get an abortion. Young Americans are also far more likely to be infected by HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. The rate of gonorrhea among American teens is seventy times higher than it is among their peers in the Netherlands and France. The fact that 30 percent of our sex-education programs teach abstinence only (at a cost of more than $200 million a year) surely has something to do with this.
The problem is that Christians like yourself are not principally concerned about teen pregnancy and the spread of disease. That is, you are not worried about the suffering caused by sex; you are worried about sex. As if this fact needed further corroboration, Reginald Finger, an Evangelical member of the CDC's AdviÂsory Committee on Immunization Practices, recently announced that he would consider opposing an HIV vaccine—thereby condemning millions of men and women to die unnecessarily from AIDS each year—because such a vaccine would encourage premarital sex by making it less risky. This is one of many points on which your religious beliefs become genuinely lethal.
Your qualms about embryonic stem-cell research are similarly obscene. Here are the facts: stem-cell research is one of the most promising developments in the last century of medicine. It could offer therapeutic break-throughs for every disease or injury process that human beings suffer—for the simple reason that embryonic stem cells can become any tissue in the human body. This research may also be essential for our understanding of cancer, along with a wide variety of developmental disorders. Given these facts, it is almost impossible to exaggerate the promise of stem-cell research. It is true, of course, that research on embryonic stem cells entails the destruction of three-day-old human embryos. This is what worries you.
Let us look at the details. A three-day-old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst. There are, for the sake of comparison, more than 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly. The human embryos that are destroyed in stem-cell research do not have brains, or even neurons. Consequently, there is no reason to believe they can suffer their destruction in any way at all. It is worth remembering, in this context, that when a person's brain has died, we currently deem it acceptable to harvest his organs (provided he has donated them for this purpose) and bury him in the ground. If it is acceptable to treat a person whose brain has died as something less than a human being, it should be acceptable to treat a blastocyst as such. If you are concerned about suffering in this universe, killing a fly should present you with greater moral difficulties than killing a human blastocyst.
Perhaps you think that the crucial difference between a fly and a human blastocyst is to be found in the latter's potential to become a fully developed human being. But almost every cell in your body is a potential human being, given our recent advances in genetic engineering. Every time you scratch your nose, you have committed a Holocaust of potential human beings. This is a fact. The argument from a cell's potential gets you absolutely nowhere.
But let us assume, for the moment, that every three-day-old human embryo has a soul worthy of our moral concern. Embryos at this stage occasionally split, becoming separate people (identical twins). Is this a case of one soul splitting into two? Two embryos sometimes fuse into a single individual, called a chimera. You or someone you know may have developed in this way. No doubt theologians are struggling even now to determine what becomes of the extra human soul in such a case.
Isn't it time we admitted that this arithmetic of souls does not make any sense? The naive idea of souls in a Petri dish is intellectually indefensible. It is also morally indefensible, given that it now stands in the way of some of the most promising research in the history of medicine. Your beliefs about the human soul are, at this very moment, prolonging the scarcely endurable misery of tens of millions of human beings.
You believe that "life starts at the moment of conception." You believe that there are souls in each of these blastocysts and that the interests of one soul—the soul of a little girl with burns over 75 percent of her body, say—cannot trump the interests of another soul, even if that soul happens to live inside a Petri dish. Given the accommodations we have made to faith-based irrationality in our public discourse, it is often suggested, even by advocates of stem-cell research, that your position on this matter has some degree of moral legitimacy. It does not. Your resistance to embryonic stem-cell research is, at best, uninformed. There is, in fact, no moral reason for our federal government's unwillingness to fund this work. We should throw immense resources into stem-cell research, and we should do so immediately. Because of what Christians like yourself believe about souls, we are not doing this. In fact, several states have made such work illegal. If one experiments on a blastocyst in South Dakota, for instance, one risks spending years in prison.
The moral truth here is obvious: anyone who feels that the interests of a blastocyst just might supersede the interests of a child with a spinal cord injury has had his moral sense blinded by religious metaphysics. The link between religion and "morality"—so regularly proclaimed and so seldom demonstrated—is fully belied here, as it is wherever religious dogma supersedes moral reasoning and genuine compassion.
Why Does God Hate Amputees?
I'm sure we've all heard stories of people with cancer or aids or some other deadly disease praying to God and then being miraculously healed. The funny thing about these stories is they always involve aliments that cannot be seen. Why is it that people who have had an arm or leg removed are never healed? Like all works of imagination, we are unable to understand the behaviour of God.
I'm sure we've all heard stories of people with cancer or aids or some other deadly disease praying to God and then being miraculously healed. The funny thing about these stories is they always involve aliments that cannot be seen. Why is it that people who have had an arm or leg removed are never healed? Like all works of imagination, we are unable to understand the behaviour of God.
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BainbridgeShred
- Post Master General
- Posts: 2352
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I'm sure we've all heard stories of people with cancer or aids or some other deadly disease praying to God and then being miraculously healed. The funny thing about these stories is they always involve aliments that cannot be seen. Why is it that people who have had an arm or leg removed are never healed? Like all works of imagination, we are unable to understand the behaviour of God.
HAHAHAHAHA. Are you trying to make funny funny joke joke or are you serious here? Hahahahaha. OMG WHY DUN TEH AMPUTEE'S GET THEIR ARMS BACK GOD WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY U R SO EVAL
HAHAHAHAHA. Are you trying to make funny funny joke joke or are you serious here? Hahahahaha. OMG WHY DUN TEH AMPUTEE'S GET THEIR ARMS BACK GOD WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY U R SO EVAL
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QuantumBalance
- 100-Watt Warlock
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Why don't you actually read the website, instead of making fun of an argument you can't understand?BainbridgeShred wrote:I'm sure we've all heard stories of people with cancer or aids or some other deadly disease praying to God and then being miraculously healed. The funny thing about these stories is they always involve aliments that cannot be seen. Why is it that people who have had an arm or leg removed are never healed? Like all works of imagination, we are unable to understand the behaviour of God.
HAHAHAHAHA. Are you trying to make funny funny joke joke or are you serious here? Hahahahaha. OMG WHY DUN TEH AMPUTEE'S GET THEIR ARMS BACK GOD WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY U R SO EVAL
What I'm saying is that all those stories of miraculous healing are false - and you can see they're false, because they never manifest themselves in ways that we can document and see. Why is that? God is only happy to help people who healing won't reveal his existence?
Jeremy, thanks for all the info.
Letter to a Christian Nation is definitely next on my buying list. Actually I think I'll buy a few copies cause I know some people who need to read it.
The problem I see with this argument against all religions is that i think it overlooks peoples need for religion. There has to be a reason why religion is so wide spread, humans want to find meaning in life. You have to admit that science doesn't provide all the answers and people are always going to be easily fooled into believing something that proposes to have the answers and give them a sense of security, no matter how false it may be.
Personally I don't think it's wrong for someone to believe in a god, I just think they need to understand that they can never know the truth of that god and that science is the only way to gain a better understanding of our existence.
I don't think we need to deny people their belief in the unknown but we should seek to create a world where peoples actions are based on understanding and facts not beliefs.
Letter to a Christian Nation is definitely next on my buying list. Actually I think I'll buy a few copies cause I know some people who need to read it.
The problem I see with this argument against all religions is that i think it overlooks peoples need for religion. There has to be a reason why religion is so wide spread, humans want to find meaning in life. You have to admit that science doesn't provide all the answers and people are always going to be easily fooled into believing something that proposes to have the answers and give them a sense of security, no matter how false it may be.
Personally I don't think it's wrong for someone to believe in a god, I just think they need to understand that they can never know the truth of that god and that science is the only way to gain a better understanding of our existence.
I don't think we need to deny people their belief in the unknown but we should seek to create a world where peoples actions are based on understanding and facts not beliefs.
Scott Kirchner
http://www.ausfootbag.org
http://www.ausfootbag.org
Well stated Scott. If we did live in a world where people made rational decisions, I wouldn't have a problem with religion. If we could make religion into something that doesn't cause people to make irrational decisions, that would be great. Unfortunately at the moment that's not the case, and part of the problem is that the moderate religions and agnostics give shelter to extremist beliefs. Because we have to tolerate some religious belief, we have to tolerate all religious belief. The only answer, as it says on that Islam website, is education. You can't force people to think a particular way, but there is a direct link (according to both Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and MENSA - I can find a firm source for this if demanded) between religious belief and level of education. The higher somebodies education, the less likely they are to be religious. Of America's top scientists about 95% have no religious belief - compared with about %15 of the general population.
In other news, I'm about to read a new book. In Six Days: why 50 scientists choose to believe in creation. Interesting title. I have never felt like I choose to be an atheist, but that I look at the world and the evidence and can only draw that conclusion. I am sure I could not just make a decision to believe in God, I don't know what it would take - but something significant (there is strong evidence that brain damage can lead to changes in people's religious belief - either towards or away from God - so maybe that's what I need).
In other news, I'm about to read a new book. In Six Days: why 50 scientists choose to believe in creation. Interesting title. I have never felt like I choose to be an atheist, but that I look at the world and the evidence and can only draw that conclusion. I am sure I could not just make a decision to believe in God, I don't know what it would take - but something significant (there is strong evidence that brain damage can lead to changes in people's religious belief - either towards or away from God - so maybe that's what I need).
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james_dean
- space cowboy
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- Joined: 26 Oct 2004 23:11
- Location: Bendigo, Vic, Australia
Obviously, . . .
God does hate amputees. We know this because he never heels them.
God hates people who allow their bodies to be mutilated.
This is why everyone with piercings and tatoos goes to hell when they die.
I don't understand why they are trying to use this simple fact as a way
to prove God is imaginary.
God does hate amputees. We know this because he never heels them.
God hates people who allow their bodies to be mutilated.
This is why everyone with piercings and tatoos goes to hell when they die.
I don't understand why they are trying to use this simple fact as a way
to prove God is imaginary.
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max
- Australofrenchbrityorkus
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Hey Jeremy, I have seen the correlations you talk of. You have also no doubt seen this little aggregation od data:
image taken from this site
Also, I think I found what Jeremy was refereing to. Here is a page that references a great deal of Intelligence / Religiosity tudies throughout the years.
image taken from this site
Also, I think I found what Jeremy was refereing to. Here is a page that references a great deal of Intelligence / Religiosity tudies throughout the years.
Maxime Boucoiran
French ConneXion
BFC
French ConneXion
BFC
Interesting. Actually I was referring to what Richard Dawkins says in the God Delusion, which he states was a MENSA study into studies between religion and intelligence (39 out of 43 found a direct inverse relationship - as shown in that graph that Max posted). I'm afraid I can't tell you the direct source that he gives in the book, as I have lent it to a friend, but I'm sure anybody can go buy a copy, find the page, turn to the back and then tell us exactly where that study was published.
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wolfpac444
- Your Friendly Admin
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Just a bump because I asked that question a while ago and never got an answer. If another Christian can answer it, that would be tops.Jeremy wrote:Sorry for the double post, I'd be interested to see your essay on why Christians do good things, Jamie. Go into some depth. If you can write it in Gonzo journalism style you get bonus points
Of course Marc Hauser explains it, from a scientific point of view, very well in his book; Moral Minds; How Nature designed Our Sense Of Right And Wronggw, but his answer, formulated by surveying cultures on every continent, is probably not the answer you want to give (because he would show, through his evidence, that 95% of people want to do good things, regardless of religious belief and culture. Religion just changes the definition of good).
Also I posted a link to this debate a while ago, and it was an awesome debate so I wanted to remind people of it.
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/209/story_20904.html
Sam Harris debating religion with Andrew Sullivan.
Here is the final word from Sam Harris;
-------------------
Dear Andrew-
Many thanks for your latest essay. I must say, if we were at a dinner party, this is where I might be tempted to admit that rational dialogue can take us only so far (So, how are things over at The Atlantic?...). But we are not at a dinner a party, and I think you and I have a responsibility to see whether a conversation of this sort can ever terminate in a proper meeting of minds.
I am, of course, unconvinced by your response. But this can hardly disappoint you, as it was not intended to convince me. You simply wrote to inform me that you have never doubted God’s existence, cannot account for how you came to believe in Him, and are well aware that these facts will not (and should not) persuade me of the legitimacy of your religious beliefs. I now feel like a tennis player, in mid-serve, who notices that his opponent is no longer holding a racket.
You have simply declared your faith to be immune to rational challenge. As you didn’t come to believe in God by taking any state of the world into account, no possible state of the world could put His existence in doubt. This is the very soul of dogmatism. But to call it such in this context will seem callous, as you have emphasized how your faith has survived—and perhaps helped you to survive—many harrowing experiences. Such testimonials about the strength and utility of faith mark off territory that most atheists have learned never to trespass. This reminds me of the wonderful quotation from Mencken: “We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.â€
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james_dean
- space cowboy
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- Joined: 26 Oct 2004 23:11
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Thanks for posting that, I read the debate so far when you first posted it and probably wouldn't have remembered to go back and read the last bit. Will read it when I have time.
My essay on why christians do good? Because it's right. Because they have a conscience, because they care. Because they love God and want to please him. Because they're scared of going to hell? Of course some would, but that's not why they're supposed to.
But let's face it, not everyone who calls themself a christian really is.
My essay on why christians do good? Because it's right. Because they have a conscience, because they care. Because they love God and want to please him. Because they're scared of going to hell? Of course some would, but that's not why they're supposed to.
But let's face it, not everyone who calls themself a christian really is.
Can you back up that argument with any kind of evidence? Simply stating that something is the case proves nothing and means nothing.
Also who decides what a Christian is? Which people who call themselves "Christians" are not? What reasons do you base that view on? Is it possible they don't think you're a real Christian? How do we objectively decide who is right?
Also who decides what a Christian is? Which people who call themselves "Christians" are not? What reasons do you base that view on? Is it possible they don't think you're a real Christian? How do we objectively decide who is right?
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james_dean
- space cowboy
- Posts: 2268
- Joined: 26 Oct 2004 23:11
- Location: Bendigo, Vic, Australia
When people call themselves a christian and say they are following the bible, when in reality they aren't, and aren't following Jesus, they are not christians.
Stop being such an ass Jeremy, geez. It's pretty obvious christians do good for a lot of the same reasons athiests do. What do you want me to do, take a friggen survey? No I'm not going to go searching for studies to support my argument when it's extremely obvious and doesn't require proof. We're not in a court of law.
Stop being such an ass Jeremy, geez. It's pretty obvious christians do good for a lot of the same reasons athiests do. What do you want me to do, take a friggen survey? No I'm not going to go searching for studies to support my argument when it's extremely obvious and doesn't require proof. We're not in a court of law.
I don't think it's obvious at all - I think your arguments are actually common misconceptions, and that the evidence actually shows that they are false.
Speaking of which, what evidence do you have that Christians would not do the same good things if they gave up their religious beliefs? Would them being atheists mean that they would carry out bad actions? Is their religious belief the only thing that makes them do good things, or are they good people regardless of their religious belief?
If you think it's the latter, what good does Christianity really do?
Speaking of which, what evidence do you have that Christians would not do the same good things if they gave up their religious beliefs? Would them being atheists mean that they would carry out bad actions? Is their religious belief the only thing that makes them do good things, or are they good people regardless of their religious belief?
If you think it's the latter, what good does Christianity really do?